State Ward Read online

  After tea it was study time for the schoolies, clean up the dining-room for the at-homes. Then to the gym for a game called Scrag. And what a game.

  Charlie found his own in the first game he played. A simple game, it was taking the medicine ball from your end of the court down to the other, with each team having ten boys, battling your way through the opposition till you were held and the housemaster ref called: “Secure! Hand over!” So it was best to get on a roll and pass on to your team-mates before “secure” got called. Charlie realised he had strength greater than nearly all of them. Except one — Hepa.

  And he was the one who put Charlie in the medical room.

  5

  GEORGE’S CURSE

  Forget the Scrag. Hepa Wiringi punches too hard. And anyway, Hepa Wiringi was the kingpin and he told Charlie to his face, “You try me again, brother, and I’ll kill ya.” And as Hepa was the kingpin, and he was from Auckland where they breed ’em tougher and meaner, and he was two years older and a couple of stone heavier, forget the Scrag, Charlie told himself.

  A movie on Friday night. A cowboy one. Not bad, it wasn’t too old-fashioned although in black and white. A bit of free time after the movie, to talk and check out the boys from B Wing. The wing Hepa lived in, though he ruled the whole place. Only a fool crossed Hep.

  He came sauntering over to Charlie his second Friday after the movie and told him he wanted a chocolate bar Charlie was enjoying — the first canteen purchase he’d earned since he’d lost the first week’s wages in punishments. Charlie said no. Hepa said ya bedda. Charlie gave him a small piece of choc. Hepa said you’re gonna die for that. Charlie stopped Hepa halfway back to his ever-present gathering of friends and crawlers.

  “Here. I didn’t want it anyway.”

  Hepa took it, told Charlie he was lucky. Charlie felt miserable, the more so that everyone except Tommy wouldn’t come near him.

  OK then, I’ll run away, he promised himself for the umpteenth time. Just as he alternated between extreme happiness and sadness umpteen times.

  Saturday. No school. Cleaning duties first, then it’s sport. Take your pick: rugby or hockey or basketball in the gym. Rugby. Charlie took rugby, of course he did. Didn’t near everyone.

  He got put in the reserves for the first half of B versus A Wing. It was never the other way round. Not with Hepa in B Wing, it was explained to Charlie. He challenges you.

  There were some good players from both wings. Though Hepa Wiringi stood out as the charging bull prop. But there were enough who showed courage in tackling Hepa not to make the game one-sided. The ball went along Hep’s side backline, got to the winger, a dark-skinned Maori boy, lean and muscular, and everyone, even the several staff watching the game, started yelling, “RUN, GEORGE! RUN!” And laughing.

  George? The same George written all over in the cell? And why are they laughing? Is he a clumsy player? Does he drop the ball at the crucial moment? Charlie intrigued.

  But nothing clumsy or incompetent about George, as he swerved and sidestepped his way down the touchline, finally to score a try in the corner. Everyone yelling and cheering and still they were laughing as they cried, “RUN, BOY! RUN!”

  But no time to ask questions on this George, (and anyway who said he was the same George?), as Charlie got called on to the field at halftime. Flanker. Leftside. Like Kel Tremain, every flanker’s All Black dream. Charlie played well, too, as he hoped he would. Would have made the school third fifteen this year if it wasn’t for this. Nor did he feel deprived or missing of home, not out there on the paddock that could just as well have been home anyway. Rugby’s rugby.

  George started another weaving run and Charlie raced to get the dark kid. He could hear the “Run, boy, run!” yelling going on as he raced far behind the backline defence moving up on George, as he’d been taught to do by a succession of coaches and teacher coaches. And he launched himself at the flying figure, brought him down in a copybook tackle.

  But George freed the ball to his support, and Charlie was still patting himself on the back when he saw who else but Hepa Wiringi bulling through several weak tackles to cross the tryline. And Charlie hated Hepa at that moment. Just as he hated George for getting the ball free from his great tackle. So he shoved George before he turned to join his team-mates behind the goalposts as the conversion was being taken.

  He heard something said in Maori. Stopped Charlie in his tracks. When he turned he caught the sideliners laughing. At him. Not George. For George was running the other way, in that cat-like, graceful style of his. Leaving Charlie the more mystified.

  Hepa’s team won: 17–6. No tries to Charlie, but Mr Wakefield, the only Maori housemaster, said Charlie had played very well and next week he’d be in the team, not just a reserve. Happiness again. Singing in the showers. And some of his team-mates joining him. Then Charlie noticed that not only was there no housemaster with a stopwatch measuring their time in the showers, but two and three boys to a cubicle had the place filled with laughter and singing, both teams. Oh, happiness.

  He stepped out of the shower and was met with an offered handshake. The hand was dark and veiny. He shook the hand.

  “George,” it said in a shy voice. “You good tackle.” As if he had difficulty with English.

  Charlie smiling. “And you’re very fast — and you got the ball away.”

  George’s smile painfully shy. “You push me, no ball, eh?”

  “Sorry about that. I got wild you got rid of the ball. You allowed down in our rec room?” Charlie asked.

  George nodded. “I think so.”

  “Wanna come down? They sing some good songs there.”

  George broke out in a big grin. “B rec same. They sing very good.” He thumbed his bare chest, muscular it was, too. “Maori boy, they sing good all the time, eh?” And Charlie nodded.

  “Sure do.”

  George was the same who’d written his name all around the cell. Same as in the other cell. He told Charlie, over two successive Saturdays after rugby in A then B recreation room, that he’d been in the place two years and a bit more, he wasn’t sure. Told Charlie in halting English because, as he put it, “I speak Maori all the time home.”

  “So where was home where they still did that?”

  “Ruapotiki,” he said with a distinct rise in the ‘a’, so it sounded musical to Charlie’s ear.

  “Small. My pa. Not many people. Me, I am not bad, get sent here for nothing. Not do. Sorry, my Pakeha not very good.”

  He’d been sent here for rape. Rape? Charlie at first horrified. Till another kid, a friend of George’s, Brownie Timu, started acting as a kind of interpreter for when George got lost with the language. A girl visiting his village in the Eastern Bay of Plenty had apparently been raped by a group of local boys. She could not identify them, but George had made a so-called ‘confession’ to the police. “Yet how could he when he couldn’t hardly speak English?” explained Brownie who had been raised speaking both languages fluently, living not too far from George’s village out in the wops.

  So why the name written in the cells? Charlie wanted to know. But the pair suddenly clammed up at that. And they hardly even acknowledged him thereafter.

  His enquiries amongst the boys revealed that George was a chronic escaper. He never lasted long at large because his English was so poor that people became suspicious, or so the stories had it. But no one said why George kept escaping.

  On Saturday after rugby, Charlie asked George a question: “Does kehua mean ghost?”

  You’d have thought George was the ghost the way even his dark features paled. He nodded.

  “So why’d you write all that on the wall of the cell I was in?”

  George played dumb till Charlie kept pressing him, even followed him to the showers and hopped under the same one with him.

  “Come on, George. I only want to be your friend.”

  But George shook his head. “No friend with half caste can’t speak Maori.”

  “Not my fault.
Least I’m Maori.”

  “Half.” George lifted a soapy finger to his shower companion, with a little smile.

  “But the best half, eh?” Charlie with his own guarded grin.

  “You a cop why you say about kehua?” And they both laughed. Then George grew serious; and the world did not exist outside the clear plastic curtain; and nor was it strange, or unnatural, that the two of them should be about to share a secret standing naked as the day they were born.

  “You know kehua?” George hard to hear over the sound of the shower.

  “Ghosts, yeh.”

  “Bad ghosts, Ch — Say your name again to me.”

  “Char-lie.”

  “Char-lee. Bad ghosts, Char-lee. They come all the time to me. They say me, Run, Hori. Run.”

  “Hori? That your real name?” George nodding that it was. “But why would these ghosts —”

  But George cut him short with a shishing.

  “No tell, Char-lee. Please you no tell.”

  “But why do they tell you to run? And why do you listen?” Charlie as the water cascaded off George on to him, as if George was trying to hide beneath the fall of water.

  “Makutu …” Then George stepped out. Left Charlie wondering what on earth George meant by that.

  He approached Brownie later, asked him what the word meant. Brownie too went suspiciously pale of complexion. “Curse,” he said. “Maori curse.”

  So George had a Maori curse on his head.

  Took another few Saturdays for Charlie to weedle the story out of a combination of George and Brownie. His uncle and aunty, who’d brought him up, had used timber meant for building a meeting house towards building their own house. The local tohunga had put a makutu on the heads of the entire family who had sheltered under the house of stolen timber. So poor George was stuck with this for life.

  “But this is the sixties, we’re nearly into the seventies, we don’t believe that stuff no more, not like our dumb parents,” Charlie tried to persuade. But not to George did such things mean nothing, or why, he wanted to know, would he keep having this same dream vision so strong he had to do as it told?

  He spoke of a Maori warrior coming to him in his dreams and telling him in English, “Run away, Hori. You have to run away.” And so he did. The first chance he got he was gone. And always to no avail. Nor even a point. He didn’t want to keep getting into trouble. He didn’t want to spend any more time at the Home. He just wanted, like most of the boys, to get back to his own home and live life as it turned out. But how, when such a terrible thing haunted him?

  And in between times, Charlie suffered his own little curse — Hepa Wiringi. Hep had gotten a thing about Charlie, regarding him as a threat, even though no one could possibly be that to the ape-like kingpin. Even some of the staff were afraid of Hepa. Not chocolate bars, nor a packet of minties, nor anything else would shift Hepa’s fix on Charlie. Only a fight would, he told Charlie. “But you’ll kill me, Hepa. And what’ve I done wrong anyway?”

  “You’re a doink.” That word again.

  So, George haunted by his mind, and Charlie haunted by the presence of Hepa. What to do? Escape? That occurred plenty of times to Charlie. But what use? He’d get caught like George always got caught. And the cell would be there and so would Hepa, and so both his and George’s time would extend further and further at this place.

  One day Charlie and George were heading for the gym to play basketball when Hepa stopped Charlie.

  “Round the back of the gym. Now.”

  “No, Hepa. I don’t wanna fight you.”

  “Now. Or I do it right here.”

  “But why?” Charlie beside himself with hurt and confusion and not a little fear at why Hepa should single him out. Then he felt the tap on his arm from George that he should go. Take up Hepa’s offer. But Charlie wasn’t moving. Not till Hepa punched him in the face, demanded again he come round the back to sort this out. Charlie wiped the blood from his bleeding nose and sighed. OK. May as well get it over and done with. He gave George an it’s-all-right-for-you look, which George gave no reaction to except urging Charlie with his eyes to follow Hepa Wiringi.

  Round the back of the gymnasium they went. Hepa was on his toes, fists up boxing style, ready to cut loose. Charlie groaned inwardly at the awesome sight. Again he felt that discreet tap against his arm, as if a signal from George that — somehow — everything was going to be all right. He even turned to George and said, “Oh, yeah? That what the kehua told you?” Then back to lift strengthless arms to Hepa.

  The first blow felt like a train had hit him, and Charlie staggered and nearly dropped. He couldn’t even find the strength to throw a punch back, even though a confident Hepa came walking back in with no guard up. Then he saw Hepa’s face change to an expression of shock, and his face seemed to have exploded in blood. Then all Charlie saw was the back view of George and a flurry of George’s fists slamming into the kingpin. Unbelievable, Charlie watched Hepa — a boxer — covering up no different to those he’d belted around himself. Blows rained at him from everywhere. Head shots, body shots. A blur of dark-armed fists.

  Next thing George was steering Charlie towards the gym where they took their places in opposing Wing teams. And Mr Marshall, a housemaster, asked did anyone know where Hepa Wiringi was?

  The pair exchanged happy grins. And in the same shower cubicle after the game, where Hepa was noticeably absent, George told Charlie:

  “My old people they teach fight. And they teach me Hepa’s not good fighter. Too much the yap-yap, eh? Too much the —” he cupped his dark hands together and made a farting sound. Their laughter rang in the shower cubicle.

  6

  LETTER FROM THE HEAD

  Charlie was lying in bed, composing a letter in his mind:

  Dear Mum — yeah, you, too, Dad. I’ve got my own room now. I like it better than the dorm. Anyway, thanks very much for turning up at court when I got sent away. Not under proper parental control, that’s what the Magistrate said. Control? You weren’t even there.

  I thought it was the end of the world, I really did, Mum and Dad. But then I got here and I thought being in a cell was the end of the world. Then I got out and met other kids, and boy they’re worse off than me. Least you two were around, you know? And Mum, you even hugged me now and again. Even if you did it when you were in one of those drunk moods where everything makes you cry, you get wet sentimental over things like kids. The same kids you scream at in the mornings to “Get outta my face!”

  There’s kids here who’re orphans. I’d never met an orphan before. Sam Chile’s mum and dad got killed in a car crash when he was only three. He’s thirteen now, my age in case you don’t remember, and he’s been all those years in an orphanage. And boy, you wanna hear the tales he’s got to tell of cruelty and misery. And he’s just one of them.

  Hey, guess what happened a few weeks ago? Hepa Wiringi, the kingpin — a kingpin’s the toughest — well, he got done by a real Maori kid, George, who’s my best mate now. George speaks Maori, can you believe it? Like you sometimes do, Dad, when you’re drunk and making out you’re a Maori warrior. Though we know you’re no warrior. It’s only what the booze makes you believe you are. Mum says your mates call you an idiot behind your back. An idiot who backs down when a real fight comes your way. Think we don’t know? But George, he is a warrior. He thrashed Hepa, and Hepa is a boxer, a champion one, too.

  I learned something from George about so-called kingpins: George says a real kingpin is the one you don’t know about because he’s got nothing to prove. He didn’t put it in those words cos he can’t. But it’s what he meant, I’m not stupid, I can work things out. (’Cept you two.) He says bullies are always weak or they wouldn’t be bullies. Said he used to look at Hepa and wonder why everyone was afraid of him, why kids let him take their choc bars, their minties off them just when it suited. George said Hepa never tried it with him. Can you believe it, Dad? All this time, over one year they’ve both been here, and George was
the real kingpin?

  That’s what I mean, Mum and Dad. I don’t miss you so much — at all, in fact — because there’s so many interesting things happening here. And I’m learning so much. Not schoolwork stuff, they haven’t sent me to a school yet, not till they’re sure I won’t be a problem. But I sat my I.Q. tests and guess what? I’m one hundred and twenty-nine. That’s high, boy, believe me.

  Mr Davis, he’s the manager here, says I might even go to Riverton Boys’ High, and if I do, I’ll be one of only two going there from here because you have to have a few clues, eh. See? See what I might’ve become if you’d looked after me, all of us, properly? Booze, eh? It’s more important than anything and anyone, even your own kids, in your lives. Lives? Hah. Hardly lives if you drink all the time. Wait till I’m old enough to drink, I’m gonna go into a pub and order a beer, then I’ll tip it out on the floor, tell the guy to stick it right up his arse. Then I’ll go straight home to my kids and I’ll. I’ll —

  Charlie having to give that one some thought as he had no reference point for how he’d behave as a parent.

  I’ll give them a bloody big cuddle! Oh, and I’ll buy ’em a load of treats. Yeah.

  We got a couple of kids here who’ve been tortured. By their own parents, or foster parents. Live smokes on their skin, and I’ve seen the scars, Mum. Terrible, eh? And I’d say every boy here has a parent, or both of them, who’ve thrashed the hell out of him regularly. Like you two did with me, with my brothers and sister, till Roger up and hung you up, eh, Dad? Hahahaha. Boy, now that was a sight, to see you hung up by your own son. Just you wait till I get older. Might even be when I get out of here, I’ll get George to teach me to really fight, not the fighting I used to think I was good at. Not here. Too many kids tougher. Hard to accept, too. But I’m getting there, slowly, slowly.