Gith (12 page)

'Okay, how does it go?'

'Camthree.' She pointed to the Camry that I'd put at pump
three and then at pump two. 'There.'

'So, what about pump three? Nothing?'

'Gith.'

'And what about here?' I pointed to pump six, the one on
the inside of where the van was.

She grabbed the pen from the pocket of my overalls and bent
over the paper. She drew a station wagon.

'White?'

'Gith.'

'How big? Two litre or more?'

'Narg.'

'Laser, then? Or Mazda.'

'Nar, nar.' She waved her hand to slow me down.

'Thoyota,' she said. 'Corolla.'

'A Corolla wagon.'

'Gith.'

'You know the driver?'

'Narg.'

'An out-of-towner?'

'Gith.'

So that was it then. Monty and Mavis had mixed up the
two vehicles.

'And you're sure Anneke got into the van?'

She jabbed her finger at the paper three or four times. She
was sure.

It made sense. Anneke got out of the red Holden at pump
one and walked along the forecourt, heading towards where
the cars would pull out so she could hitch another ride. She
would have gone straight past the van on the driver's side. Easy
for him to ask if she wanted a lift. Easy for her to say yes.

'So,' I said, 'what happened? The bloke asks for forty
dollars' worth. What did you do then? You went and stuck
the nozzle in his tank and set the pump. Then I guess you
served somebody else.'

'Gith.' She pointed to pump six, where the Corolla wagon
had been.

'And when you got back to collect the money Anneke was
in the van?'

'Gith.' She stopped. Then she made like she was stroking
something. 'Dog,' she said.

'There was a dog there?' I asked.

'Gith.'

'In the front seat of the van?'

'Bag.' She stretched her neck. 'Head. Theat.'

'In the back, then. With its head over the seat. What
colour? Brown?'

'Blag.'

A black dog. God, this was new.

'Anything else?' I asked.

She looked at me and opened her eyes in a mad kind of
stare.

'The bloke had big stare-y eyes, right?' I remembered the
drawings with the eyes like two fried eggs.

She nodded. 'Gith.' Or maybe not.

I didn't get it. Why would Anneke get into a vehicle with
somebody who had mad eyes? Was it the dog that made it
seem okay?

***

LATER THAT DAY Ma dropped by. She said she had come
into town to see Len but I figured that wasn't the only reason.
We stopped work and made her a cup of tea while she told
us all about the RW collection. It seemed it had been a big
success, and Joanne had got herself enough brownie points to
keep her happy for a while.

Ma wanted to know how Gith was.

'That was a terrible thing,' she said.

Gith shrugged, almost like it didn't matter that much.

'You sure you're okay?'

I went to take Gith's arm to show Ma the bruise but I got
pushed away.

'Terrible.' Ma's face was full of worry. 'Have you talked to
Hemi?'

'No,' I said.

'Are you going to?'

I didn't answer.

'If you don't I will,' she said.

'I'll talk to him.' I wasn't sure I would though.

She looked at me. Then she brightened up. 'Anna,' she said.
'Bill and Leece's bitch has pupped. Just last night. Four, there
are. I haven't been up to have a look yet but I bet they're cute.
Would you like to see them?'

'Gith.'

'Well then, why don't you come out on Saturday? We can
spend some time together.'

Gith nodded. Pleased as Punch.

'I don't mean him,' Ma went on, flicking her thumb at me.
'Just you. You can stay the night with us. What do you say?'

I guessed this had been the plan all along. Ma wanted to do
some mothering. I remembered what she had said yesterday
about me and Gith having some time apart. Gith, I could see,
was suddenly worried, and I felt my own twist of fear. But
it would only be one night, and maybe it wouldn't be a bad
thing.

'It could be fun,' I said.

'Gith.' She kind of smiled.

Ma was happy. 'I'll pick you up before lunch then.'

As she left I told her about Ray Tackett.

'He apologised?' She was surprised.

'Yeah.'

'Doesn't sound like the Ray Tackett I know. He's a bad 'un,
that young man.'

'For sure.'

'Him and his shady mates. Drugs and so on. Leece says he
feels guilty because of his brother.'

'Guilty?'

'Because Bobby's handicapped and he isn't. Could have
been the other way round.'

I wanted to say that if they had been the other way round
Bobby would have been Ray and Ray Bobby but that didn't
seem to make sense.

'But he looks after Bobby,' I said. 'He always has. I'll say
that for him.'

'That's true.'

'And Bobby's a good bloke. Basically.'

'Bobby doesn't have the brains to be anything else. Should
have called him Booby.' She gave a laugh. I thought she was
being a bit rough.

'Anyway,' I said, 'we know it wasn't Ray who got Gith.'

'Do we?'

'Sure we do. He was here, talking to her. She would have
picked him. She would have said.'

'Hmm.' She didn't sound like she wanted to believe it.

'So you can tell Dad that, eh?'

She drove off and Gith and I got back to work.

I thought about Ray Tackett and how I had never got
along with him. It was hard to say if it was down to the bad
blood between our families or something about him that
always seemed to get under my skin. It seemed he was doing
all right for himself these days, hiring casual labour and
doing contracting work. I was surprised at Ma talking about
drugs and bad company, but maybe that was just a hangover
from the early days — he was kicked out of high school for
smoking dope.

What the Tacketts said and did was always good for
a moan round the McUrran dinner tables. Sometimes I
thought the real reason for keeping the fight going was just
to give everybody something to talk about. I remember one
time there was a big storm up the head of the valley and the
stream flooded down by the Tacketts' place. Gray had maybe
a thousand head to shift to higher ground and the Old Man
took Bill down to help. They were our neighbours, after all.
For a few months after that, Gray and the Old Man managed
to be polite to each other, but then something happened to
upset somebody and it all went back to how it was before.

***

BILLY CLEAT TURNED up that afternoon, shuffling up
to the open side of the workshop and hanging around. Gith
didn't see him. She was in the pit under a car.

'Yes?' I said, walking towards him, trying to steer him away.
I made a move to grab his arm but I found I just couldn't
touch him. 'I told you to keep away from us, didn't I?'

'Yes, Mr McUrran, sir. But I owe you a favour. You been
very good to me. Sir.' He was staring down at his feet, dirty
old sneakers with the laces undone.

I looked behind me, making sure Gith couldn't see us.

'I told you,' I said, 'it's all right. I don't need anything.'

'Just a little job, sir. Just a little job.'

Jesus! I wanted to hit him. My fist was already balled up.

'Anything at all, sir. Just a little job.' He looked at me with
his big brown moony eyes but he couldn't hold it for more
than a second.

'All right,' I said. 'All right. If I give you a job will you
bugger off?'

'Oh yes, Mr McUrran, sir. Oh yes I will.'

'Right. There's a bloke that lives in the third house down
from the pub in Basingstoke Road. His name's Colin George.
There's another bloke, Rick Parline, lives in Church Street.
Not sure of the number but there's a tiled roof and a fancy
garden with two tall pointy trees. Both of them have white
vans. I want to know the makes and registration numbers.
I also want to know if they own dogs, and if they do, what
colour they are. Got that?'

'Oh yes, Mr McUrran, sir. Oh yes.' A quick look at me, a
sneaky look. He was grinning. At least I think it was a grin.
'Would that be a ten-dollar job, sir?'

Something about him was really getting to me. I was so
wound up I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't thinking
straight, that's for sure. I went into the shop and he followed
me, right behind. He stared at me while I opened the till. I
gave him another ten bucks.

'Now go,' I said. 'Get out of here and don't come back.'

'Oh no, Mr McUrran, sir.' He stuffed the note into his
pocket and turned towards the door. He stopped just outside,
looking to his left. I could tell by the angle of his body that
Gith was there, even though I couldn't see her.

'Fuck off!' I yelled at him. He looked back at me, his mouth
hanging half open. I went for him. He turned and ran. Well,
it wasn't real running. It was more like his usual shuffle, only
twice as fast. I watched him go.

When I turned round I found Gith standing in the open
side of the workshop, wiping her hands on a rag. She was
frowning and staring after Billy. Then she pulled a face like
she had just missed stepping in a puddle of spew.

'You okay?' I asked.

'Gith.' She seemed to remember what she had been doing
before. 'Thylinder,' she said. 'Thtuffed.'

'Brake cylinder?'

'Gith.' Her eyes went back to where Billy was still heading
off down the road.

'Thick,' she said. Maybe she meant 'sick'.

'Weirdo,' I said. 'Keep right out of his way.'

'Gith.'

I figured I better tell her everything.

'You know who he is? He's a rapist. Spent eight years in
jail. Cut up a woman in Palmerston North with a broken beer
bottle. A prostitute.'

She started to get tense, I could see, the stare-y look coming
into her eyes. I put my arms around her and hugged her. I was
shaking too, like there was something nasty on my skin.

'Just keep out of his way.'

'Gith,' she said into my shoulder. We stayed that way for
a while. I guess we must have looked a bit odd to anyone
passing by: two people in overalls hugging on the forecourt of
a service station. I just needed to hold her. It seemed the only
thing that could get rid of the feeling Billy Cleat gave me. It
worked after a little while.

***

BY FIVE-FORTY-FIVE WE had everything done and the
vehicles had all been collected. We were just about to shut
up shop when an old flatbed ute trundled onto the forecourt.
Moss Vield was behind the wheel. Two weirdos in one
afternoon, I thought. I stood by the pumps waiting while he
got out.

'Gidday,' I said. 'You want gas?'

He didn't answer, just walked up to me and stood so close
I could see the whiskers sprouting on his chin.

'No,' he said. Blue eyes with tiny dots of pupils, mouth like
the jaws were wired shut.

I knew he didn't want gas. It's two cents a litre cheaper
down in Katawai. He would never buy from us if he could
help it.

'Quad bike,' he said. 'Want one?'

'Quad bike? No.'

'Got a buyer?'

'Me? Hmm.' Gith and I sometimes did up vehicles and
flogged them off. It was a nice little sideline but we had to
watch how often we did it in case the IRD got on to us.

'What's wrong with it?' I asked.

'Nothing. Need the cash.'

'All right,' I said. 'I'll come and have a look at it if you
like.'

'When?'

'Don't know. Tomorrow maybe.'

Moss turned like he was on a swivel and walked straight
back to his vehicle. He started up and backed out. For some
reason I waved to him. Maybe I was trying to get some sort
of reaction. There wasn't one.

Gith was standing in the doorway. I pointed to the ute as
it headed off up the road.

'You see him? That's Moss Vield. He was at the show. He
wanted to talk to Monty. Real tall . . .'

'Gith.' She nodded.

'He wasn't driving the white wagon at pump six the day
Anneke went missing, was he?'

'Narg.'

'Good. That's what I thought.'

She pulled a face like she wanted to know why I'd asked.

'Just checking,' I said.

It was near enough to six by then so we shut up shop.

'Listen,' I said. 'I'm going to take a walk to the Arms and
buy some beer. Want to come?'

'Narg.' She pointed to the house. 'Thower.' She wanted to
get cleaned up.

'You sure?' I was a bit worried about leaving her alone.

'Go,' she said. 'Go.' She flapped her hand at me.

I did the till and the alarm and then set out along the main
road, past Len and Kath's place. The next house along had
been empty for a while and now, I saw, it had a For Sale sign
in the garden. It belonged to the Chung family, who ran the
Big Asia Takeaway, but they'd built a new place down towards
Basingstoke. Moving up in the world.

The takeaway was open. There were three kids sitting on
the bench outside. Each of them had a can of softdrink and
they were sharing a bag of chips. Dong was inside behind
the counter. I waved to him as I went past. The kids stared at
me: two boys and a girl, about eleven years old. I didn't know
their names but I'd seen them around. There always seemed to
be kids hanging round, even in the daytime when they were
meant to be at school.

On the southern corner of Maungaiti and Main was Bank
Antiques. It was in the old BNZ building, just about the
biggest thing in the town and made of the local stone. It had
a frontage with two pillars like one of those Greek temples.
The Smeeles had bought it a year or so before I moved back
to Te Kohuna with Gith, and they seemed to be doing good
business. Next door was Brenda's place, Café Allegro. I think
having the antique shop and the café side by side was a good
arrangement. People passing through would stop for one and
finish up looking into the other as well.

When Brenda had taken the building over a couple of
years earlier, it had been an old shop with a double window
front, the glass covered in faded old newspaper. She had
done it up real smart, with curtains hanging on thick brass
rails. They were thin enough to let in the light but not so
thin that you could see inside from the street. Right now the
place seemed empty, but there was still an Open sign in the
glass panel at the top of the door. I stopped there for a second
and then, I'm not sure why, I went in. A little bell rang as I
stepped inside.