Bird North and Other Stories Read online

  *

  Now Tom has a sister. This morning she and my husband were atop a slide watching a man emptying the park’s rubbish bins. At the bottom of the slide she asked my husband what the man was doing. He told her about jobs and she told him she was going to be an electrician, but with wings.

  He tells me this when they get home and I smile and sip the tea he’s made me. Our daughter starts crying and when he goes to her I look out the window. Our house is high on a hill. Clustered around the harbour below are the city’s grey buildings, and spreading out from them are the people’s homes. Tonight, before sleep, I will sit with her on her bed. We will turn out the lights, make a crack in the curtains, and breathe long clouds over the glass. Then she will hold my finger like a pen and draw pictures in the sky.

  Argentina

  Todd and Rainey had gone to the camping ground’s kitchen hoping to find some food, but there were only tea bags, cooking oil, and a little salt. The kitchen was a converted rail carriage and was well lit by two bare bulbs. Opposite the small table where they sat a bench ran the length of the carriage. There was a sink at one end of the bench and an oven at the other. Above the sink a window looked across a lawn to a cabin that was adjacent to the one Todd and Rainey had rented.

  ‘Maybe we should drive back?’ said Rainey. ‘There’s food at my flat.’

  Todd sat even closer. He put one arm around her shoulder and the other around her waist. ‘But it’s getting dark,’ he said, ‘and I love our little cabin.’

  They’d met at a come-as-your-middle-name party the Saturday before. Todd had been in the laundry winding toilet paper around his hands. Rainey had come in with a bag of chips. They’d got talking. Since then, excepting a few lectures, they’d spent every minute together. They talked a lot about their first year of university, about high school and about their childhoods. Whenever they found a thing in common, whether it be sharing a favourite flavour of ice block or agreeing on an issue related to climate change, they would kiss and cuddle and say things like, ‘Isn’t this amazing? Aren’t we lucky?’

  The day before, when they’d arrived at the cabin, Rainey had taken a red candle and a hardcover book out of her bag. She’d lit the candle and put the book beside the bed.

  ‘Just what the room needed,’ said Todd, kissing her.

  It had been exciting having somewhere of their own and instead of drinking the wine and just eating the boiled eggs Rainey had brought, they’d eaten the eggs, drank the wine, and then gone to the pub where they spent the weekend’s money on two fish meals and a lot of beer.

  ‘It’s the righteous thing to do,’ Todd had said when they were agreeing to spend their last ten dollars. Earlier in the cabin Rainey had had an orgasm with him for the first time. They’d had sex before, but Todd didn’t have much experience: sometimes he came very quickly, other times his hard-on went away at the wrong moment. He’d been worried about not being a good lover, but having performed, and full of food and beer, he felt like he and Rainey were on their own planet and that everything on that planet was happy and very beautiful.

  The next morning they’d woken with hangovers. They laughed about what they’d done and about how crazy they were.

  ‘What are we going to eat?’ they giggled, holding each other close.

  ‘Grass?’ said Todd.

  ‘Worms,’ said Rainey. ‘Worms and bird’s nests.’

  ‘We’ll make a salad,’ said Todd.

  When they woke again it was early in the afternoon. There was the sound of sheep outside and then a shower of rain against the roof. Rainey had her back to Todd, but he could tell she was awake. He put his hand on her stomach and then further down. Her pelvis shifted away from him. He stopped. ‘What are you thinking about?’ he said.

  She said she was feeling sick from the alcohol and that she was hungry. Then she moved his arm and reached for her book. Todd rolled away and pretended to go back to sleep. They’d prided themselves on never doing anything but talking, drinking, and messing about in bed. After a while he left the cabin and went across to the toilet block. When he came back she was looking at her cell-phone. He didn’t want to feel suspicious. Love was meant to consume that sort of thing. He got into bed and stared at her imagining she was a glass of water and that he was a man lost in the desert. I thirst for you, I thirst for you, he chanted to himself. She stopped using her phone and stood up. She said they should go for a walk.

  They went out of the camping ground, across the railway lines and into the town. There wasn’t much to see. Outside the church a tall man was using a lawn mower.

  ‘Is that him?’ said Todd.

  ‘Who?’ said Rainey.

  Todd had never been in love before, but Rainey had. In her last year of high school she’d been in love with a basketball player. Todd swaggered in a circle around her, dribbled, then aimed a shot at a street sign. Rainey watched but didn’t say anything. He faked to one side and then went past her. ‘Slam dunk for the big man,’ he announced.

  But she wasn’t watching anymore; she was looking up and down the road. The day before, the sky had been high and blue. It had looked like it was stretched so tight that a sharp point would cause it to burst, exposing all the stars and the moons and the endless galaxies. When Todd said that to her she’d laughed and said, ‘That’s clever. I love the way you look at things.’ Then she’d moved close to him and put her hand under his T-shirt.

  As they walked back from the church the sky was grey and low and though he thought hard, Todd couldn’t think of an interesting way to describe it.

  A gravel driveway looped between the toilet block and the carriage. There was a car out there. It left the gravel and there was the gentler sound of it on the lawn. Todd got up from the table and went to the window. The car had stopped in front of the cabin. ‘A car,’ he said.

  ‘I’m going to the toilet,’ said Rainey.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ Todd said. After he’d convinced her to stay they’d had cups of black tea and looked at the pamphlets that filled the narrow plastic shelves beside the table. There was one about the Rail Trail: it had information about the length of the trail, where you could spend the night, and how to rent a bike. Another one promoted and featured the menu of the pub they’d been at the night before. After a while other than Todd mentioning the sounds Rainey’s stomach was making – he’d joked that it was like a cat crying down there – they stopped talking altogether. Three nights before, having talked non-stop for eight hours, they’d joked about the impossibility of running out of things to say. ‘Only if,’ Todd had laughed, ‘someone put a trowel through the talking part of our brains.’

  A light went on in the cabin and a man crossed the room with what looked like a sleeping bag. Todd went out of the carriage and towards the back of the toilet block. World music was coming from the car. Rainey would like it – she’d been to New Plymouth once to see the different bands. It was one of three places in New Zealand she’d been to that Todd hadn’t. Moving his feet Todd tried to find the rhythm in the music. If it had been yesterday he and Rainey might have done a little dance – she would have held her hair up and he could have rested his hands on her narrow hips. The man came out of the cabin. He waved at Todd and, walking around to the car’s boot, said something Todd didn’t understand. The man bent over the boot. He had a wide round bottom that didn’t fit the rest of him. Todd smiled. A man with a woman’s bottom – just the sort of thing Rainey would find funny. The toilet door closed. Todd went quickly to the back of the toilet block. He heard her footsteps on the gravel and then she walked past, shaking her hands as if to dry them. ‘Aaarrrrrgghhhh!’ he shouted.

  She jumped as if a motorbike had back-fired and spun around. Todd had his arms up like the boogie man. Straight away he wished he’d stayed in the kitchen.

  ‘Enough!’ she said, wearing a look he’d never seen before. Then, when he walked towards her, she said, ‘Can’t you switch it off for a moment, Todd? I’m so hungry I could eat ...’ she looked
around and motioned at the dark wet ground. ‘Grass, I could eat grass.’

  ‘And bird nests?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Pardon?’ she said, tilting forward.

  She reminded Todd of a teacher he’d been scared of. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

  Her face softened and she started to say something, but then shook her head, turned, and went in the direction of the cabin.

  The car door closed. The man had a shopping bag in each hand. He was looking at Todd. Todd tried to smile nonchalantly, but felt his face sliding. He went back into the carriage and sat at the table, then stood and went to where, if he leaned close to the glass, he could see their cabin. The light was on, but he couldn’t see her. At least her car was still there. His insides noodled about. He saw himself on the road the next day with his thumb out, holding the cloth bag he’d brought to carry his clothes. There’d be sheets of rain and then probably a typhoon.

  There was a sound on the stairs. It’s her, he thought. But it was the man from the cabin. One bag was full of potatoes, the other had milk, butter, and cooking utensils. The man smiled and said, ‘Hi,’ with a thick accent, then lifted the bags as if to put them on the bench and as if to ask if that was okay with Todd. Todd just nodded and went and sat where the pamphlets were scattered about on the table. The man filled a pot with water and set it on the element. Then he put the butter and milk on the bench. There were almost two litres of blue-top milk and the spout of the bottle was filled with creamy froth. Todd imagined one gulp after another. He’d take a large glass over to Rainey. For that cat in your belly, he’d say.

  The man was laying the utensils on the bench: a whisk, a small and then a large knife, a peeler, a masher. Todd picked up one of the pamphlets and stared past it. It was the first time they’d been near but not together. The potatoes rumbled into the sink. Todd looked up. The man was watching his reflection in the window. Todd went back to his reading. The man came over holding the peeler. He raised his eyebrows at the pamphlet, pointed at Todd, and made an up and down motion as if riding a bicycle over bumpy terrain. ‘No,’ said Todd. ‘Just here for the weekend.’

  ‘?’

  ‘The weekend. I’m a student. Me and my girlfriend ...’ Todd gestured to the place where he and Rainey had had the argument, ‘We’re students.’

  ‘Students,’ said the man through his thick accent.

  ‘Students,’ said Todd. ‘From Dunedin.’

  ‘Argentina,’ said the man, putting his hand over his heart. There was a thumb-sized map of New Zealand on the Rail Trail pamphlet. The trail and its surrounds were highlighted in a light blue box. The man pointed to the box and from there swung the peeler over the Pacific until he hit South America, where, on the table top, he delicately traced the Chilean coast and then the long talon of Argentina.

  ‘Argentina,’ Todd repeated, trying out the pronunciation.

  ‘Si,’ whispered the man, ‘Argentina.’ After a moment he made a carrying motion from Todd to where he and Rainey had argued and back again. ‘Aaah ... disaster?’ he said.

  Todd shrugged. ‘We’ve only just met, but ... I love her.’

  He’d told her the night before on their way back from the pub. He’d been lying on the railway tracks pretending he couldn’t move, staring fearfully down the rails as if a locomotive were looming, and then, on one knee, clutching her thighs, he’d looked up and said it.

  The man shaped his mouth down and shook his head as if he’d been in the same situation many times. Then shrugging expansively he went back to the sink where he started peeling the potatoes. He worked quickly. Peel went in all directions. The sound was of paper being ripped or of some animal munching wet vegetation. When he’d finished a potato he sent it tumbling and slithering in the direction of the oven. Soon they were a large flock – their carved faces glistening in the bright light. The water in the pot had started to boil and he halved then quartered the potatoes before dropping them carefully into the pot.

  The steam softened the hard light. It became warmer. Todd was hungry, but no longer hungover. Fasting, he thought, I’m sharpening my brain and my body. He raised his arms above his head, lowered them slowly as if holding a huge bell and then flexed the muscles in his young legs. Before Rainey there was a tutor he’d been into. She wore eye make-up and long skirts. The Wednesday before the party she’d come up to him at the pub holding a jug of dark beer and smelling of weed. ‘Todd,’ she’d said, ‘I bet you know how to spell assassin.’ She’d left as he was answering, but he was sure there’d been something between them. The man bustled out of the carriage with the small knife and returned with a large sprig of parsley. ‘Perejil,’ he said in his language, and then again, holding up the herb and saying the word slowly.

  ‘Perejil,’ mimicked Todd. The man smiled. ‘Argentina,’ said Todd clenching his fist.

  ‘Argentina,’ cried the man as if they were at a protest. He put the parsley on the bench and took up the large knife. It had a blue handle and a broad blade and after cleaning it with a soldier’s care he went to work. There was the cutting of the parsley and the machine-gun sound of the knife on the board. Todd got up and stood by the oven. He’d never seen anything like it. The man spun the board and went at a new angle. Soon it was all over. He put down the knife and, crouching so he was level with the bench, plucked again and again at the herb – and with that motion, like he was taking many small things from a magician’s hat, he shaped the herb into a perfect green mound. Finished, he stood and made a smoking gesture and looked questioningly at Todd.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Todd.

  The man patted Todd on the shoulder, squeezing the muscle in a comradely way, and then left the carriage.

  Steam crawled across the ceiling. Outside the music started. Todd went to the window and wiped at the condensation. By the car there was a flame and then the lit end of a cigarette. He wiped more of the window and looked down to the cabin. She was there – standing in the window watching the man, and just as he’d imagined, she was moving in time with the music. One morning before sunrise he’d lain in bed while she danced. She had long strong legs and when she did anything with her arms her ribcage was visible as were the goose bumps over the underside of her arms and small breasts. The tutor and the basketballer flew out of him like crows caught in a bushfire. He went quickly towards the door of the carriage.

  Before he got there it opened. The man came in. He had a folded square of cloth, which he handed to Todd. ‘I have to go,’ Todd said. ‘I’ve got this all wrong.’

  The man made the sound of someone trying to sooth an injured horse and cleared the pamphlets from the table. ‘Si,’ he said, pointing at the cloth. Todd handed it back. The man unfolded it and threw it across the table. A perfect fit – it was white with the red outline of a huge steak in the middle. ‘Monseñor,’ said the man, pulling a chair from the table, bowing slightly and making an encouraging sweep with his arm.

  ‘But –’ said Todd.

  The man stood with his feet together and one hand on the back of the chair. There wasn’t going to be an argument. Todd allowed himself to be seated. The man went quickly to the oven where he drained the potatoes and turned the element off. He cut a broad square from the butter dropped it in the potatoes and then grabbed a tea towel and, gesturing once more for Todd to stay exactly where he was, left the carriage. Todd got up from the chair and went to the window. The man was crossing the lawn. At the door of the cabin he took a moment to lay the tea towel across his left forearm, then he knocked. There was movement in the cabin and when she opened the door, her svelte shape.

  She crossed first, then the man – following behind and just off to the side as if he was worried she might turn and run for it. Todd looked into the pot. The butter was falling through the potatoes. On the bench the utensils were laid out like surgical instruments. There was the parsley, the milk and three bowls. He went back to the table, knowing not only what the man was going to serve them, but how he, Todd, was going to positio
n himself at the table, what he’d say when she walked in, and indeed, what he’d do and say for the rest of that night and all the days and nights to follow.

  Racquet

  When they’d bought the house the backyard had been a ramp of boggy lawn spotted with moribund bushes and trees. Leighton had transformed it by the close of summer. Now there were three tiers, steps in between, a vegetable garden, native shrubs, and a long bench wide enough for two.

  He left the table and looked off the end of the deck. On the day he finished the bench they lay there entwined, pointing out faces the sky made in the leaves of the neighbour’s gingko tree. He turned around. Sonya was still staring into her cup. He didn’t know what to say. A tennis ball was on the chair next to her. ‘Throw me the ball?’ he said, quietly.

  She looked at him. He used to skite that their brains were woven like a two-coloured frosty boy.

  ‘Right in here,’ he said, holding his left hand like it was a mitt.

  She stood up. When they were courting they would go for walks along beaches and river banks. He would juggle two stones and a muesli bar. ‘Poser,’ she would laugh, and then she’d scoop water at him until he chased her, ‘ooh aaring’ around the muesli bar clamped piratically between his teeth. Afterwards he would show her how to throw: a straight left arm, a long stride, rotate the torso and whip your shoulder, elbow and forearm through.

  The cup came at him and he ducked. There was the sound of it in the branches then a popping as it broke.

  ‘Good one,’ he said.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she said, and went into the kitchen.

  While he’d worked on the garden she’d supervised the removal of an internal wall, the relocation of a stud, the building and furnishing of the deck. When the builders left she ripped up the carpet and sanded and treated the floorboards. After that there was wallpaper to strip and a scheme of colour to put down. There was month after month of it. At the end of every day they would lead tours of their respective realms: