The Predictions (24 page)

When he had settled down to a quiet, rhythmic slurp, I poked at the bloodied T-shirt, more of a tank top, that bandaged my knee.
Ouch.
I untied it and carefully unwrapped the wound, wincing when the fabric stuck to the raw skin underneath. Despite the pain, the shirt brought a smile to my face—it was an old one from the seventies, grass-green polyester, with a white number three on the back. We’d had one just like it in the communal clothing box. I hadn’t worn it much but Fritz, he had worn it all the time. In fact he had been wearing it on the day he disappeared. I looked again at the shirt—the same shirt, it had to be. The cop had asked Nelly what sort of green it was, and she had said,
bright green, the color of new spring grass
.

Gaialands

1989

T
HE GRASS-GREEN TANK TOP
with a number three on the back was soaked in my blood, the wrong person’s blood, and I wondered if I should wash it before handing it over to the cops or if that would be seen as tampering with evidence—though I supposed I had already done that by using it as a tourniquet. What would happen after that, I speculated—would the cops want to search Shakti’s caravan? Would they find her and interrogate her and maybe even arrest her? I was getting ahead of myself; and besides, the cops were idiots. The general consensus was that they had bungled the investigation. They had condescended to us, not saying outright that we had been careless, that our hippie lifestyle was to blame, but implying it. The tank top had my blood on it. If we gave it to the cops, they might find a way to pin the whole thing on us.

I was not thinking straight. I was freaked out, extrapolating, spinning conspiracies, all because of exhaustion,
a wounded knee, and not eating breakfast. I needed food, and then to talk it over with someone—not the whole commune, not in a bloody hui, but with someone who would know what to do. Paul was the most sensible, but he seemed wrong for this. Just the other night he had said it was time to put Fritz to rest. He might not be in favor of reopening the case. Hunter? He was Fritz’s father, the person most devastated by his loss, even if he wouldn’t admit it. I also still thought of him, out of habit, as the commune’s leader, the person you went to with a problem.

It was difficult to get him alone. I tried to corner him at lunch, but Katrina and Susie were there, insisting on feeding Zachary a bowl of mashed avocado, even though I told them he wasn’t ready for solid food, and their presence had seemed to scare Hunter away. In those first few days back on the commune, I hadn’t noticed how strained relations were between Hunter and the two lesbians in particular, but now that I had been here a while, I was starting to wonder how much longer they could all go on living together. There was so much tension and so little trust.

All day, the rain had been coming down in curtains, and the wind had picked up, though there was no more thunder. Over dinner, Tom cautioned that it was going to get worse overnight. “A proper storm. Fifty-knot winds, according to the weather report, and more rain—as if we need it.”

The commune dwellers were grim. Some of their seedlings, planted in early spring, had already washed away, and they couldn’t plant more until the soil dried out. It was better to stagger planting, to put some crops in early and others in
late, or else the produce ripened all at once and there was a terrible glut, so much wastage. Living off the land was perilous, each season a game of food roulette. Some winters the stores had been full and we’d eaten like kings; other years, we had subsisted on twenty-kilo bags of oats, rice, and lentils, sent over from Auckland as a last resort. At the end of those winters, the tough ones, there had always been talk of improving systems and of what had gone wrong, but no amount of planning could insure against a bad run of weather.

I waited until after dinner, until everyone had gone back to their cabins for the night, and then I bundled Zachary up and dashed through the rain and puddles to knock on Hunter’s door. He was startled to see me, and embarrassed about the state of his cabin. He made us wait on the doorstep while he rushed about inside, straightening blankets and kicking underpants beneath the bed, none of which made much difference. Inside it smelled like the bottom of a laundry basket, of three-day-old socks and wet, graying towels. So this was what happened to men who lived on their own—they gave up.

Hunter cleared a space for Zachary and me on a window seat whose squabs had seen better days, or perhaps had always been wonky and tattered. “I’m sure the little fellow’s grown since he got here,” he said, running a huge, weather-beaten thumb over Zachary’s cheek. He had spent so much time outdoors that he looked older than he was, his skin already creased and leathery. “He looks like you, you know.”

“The women all think he looks like Lukas.”

“No, he’s got your eyes,” he said. “Shy, and a bit worried.”

“Is that how I look?”

“Yup,” said Hunter. “Right now, you do.”

I took out the tank top and gave it to him, explaining where I had found it and that the blood on it was mine—nothing more than that. Hunter studied the garment carefully, then buried his face in it and broke down in tears.

I had never seen him weep before, or even shed a tear, and it was deeply unsettling. To allow him time to recover, I walked Zachary to the window and pointed his chubby finger at the trees outside. The ones nearest the cabin were already bending madly, dripping water, ahead of the storm.

Behind me, Hunter spoke. “You’re sure it’s his?”

“We signed a statement to say that’s what he was wearing when he disappeared.”

“I know. But what if there’s another shirt the same?”

“What are the odds of that?”

Hunter sank to the bed. “You’re right.”

“There was a whole bag of clothes—but I didn’t look through the rest.”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “When the weather clears. I’ll go and check out the caravan.”

“Where do you think it was all these years?”

“I don’t know,” said Hunter. “We’ll ask Shakti when she gets here.”

“Shakti?” I thought she was the last person we should involve. “Don’t you think we should tell the cops first? What if she’s a suspect?”

“She’s one of us.”

“I don’t trust her. Do you know she collected swatches of our hair?”

“That is odd,” he said. “Maybe it was for that ritual—what did she call it? The prophecies?”

“The predictions.”

“There you go.” He laughed. “We were so caught up in the spirit of the times.”

“Whatever happened to the Age of Aquarius? Wasn’t there going to be a big shift in consciousness, and everyone would be enlightened or something?”

“We were young,” he said. “We thought we could change the world.”

“From a commune?”

“We hoped our ideas would spread. That once people found out about us, they would want to live the same way.”

“Gee,” I said. “Pretty much the opposite happened. You should see London. It’s like the gold rush all over again.”

“I am constantly astounded,” said Hunter, “by man’s inability not to act in his own best interests.”

I could feel one of his lectures coming on. “The shirt,” I said. “Should we hand it in to the cops?”

“I can take it in Thursday. I’m going to Whitianga for a meeting.”

I was relieved I wouldn’t have to do it myself. “Do you think we should wash it first?”

“Wash it?”

“The blood. They might think it’s his.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I’ll explain.”

I watched him roll the shirt into a small, tidy bundle,
then look around for somewhere to put it. There was a tallboy next to his bed, bent out of shape, and he tried to open the middle drawer but it was stuck. The top drawer shunted open but only halfway, enough to shove it in. “We should probably keep this to ourselves,” he said. “You know what those women are like, always gossiping.” He laughed, to show he didn’t really mean it, or maybe to cover that he did.

“Quite a bit has changed around here, hasn’t it?”

“The women, you mean?”

“Yes, they act like they’re in charge now. Are they?”

Hunter walked to the window and shoved his hands in his pockets. “It started when Elisabeth left.” He stared out the window. “For a long time, I went to pieces. I wasn’t myself. I spent all my time on the beach, going for long, mopey walks—all that sad-sack stuff. I let a few things slide. Maintenance, taxes, planting crops. Things got very chaotic. No one was in charge. The next thing I knew, Susie and Katrina had gone off to one of those women’s conventions in Hamilton, and they came back saying it was all my fault.”

“What was?”

“Everything and anything that pissed them off. From then on, they had a name for me.” He paused, for emphasis. “Chief Bullshit Patriarchy—Chief B. P. for short.”

“Did you think of leaving?”

“Why should I?” Hunter was defiant. “This is my home. I built Gaialands up from nothing. Broke in the land with my own bare hands. All the fruit trees—I planted those. I’m not like your mother. I can’t just walk away from this place. It’s my life’s work.”

Hunter had never called Elisabeth my mother before, and I still didn’t think of her that way. “Why did Elisabeth up and leave? You must have some idea.”

“I know exactly why she left,” he said, suddenly fired up, his stance bullish, reminding me why we had all been so intimidated by him. “She thought we had fucked everything up. After Fritz went missing, and you kids all left, well, that was the proof she needed.”

I had never heard Hunter swear before. “Proof of what?”

“That we had failed as parents.”

I was indignant. “But she didn’t even try to be my mother. When you told us who our parents were, some of the mothers, they tried to get close, but Elisabeth—she didn’t do anything. She ignored me. Like she always had.”

“Because she thought it was too late!”

“Too late for what?”

“To be your mother,” said Hunter. “She didn’t think it was possible to turn back the clock.”

“Is that why you didn’t start trying to be my father?”

“No,” said Hunter. “I believed in what we were doing—in how we raised you. I still do. The mistake we made was that we didn’t stick to our guns. After we told you who your siblings were, we should have carried on as normal—kept up a unified front. But not everyone felt the same way. Some of the parents wanted to see if they could try to have a special bond with their kids. I told them it wouldn’t work, that it would only confuse you—and I was right. The second you were old enough—you all buggered off.”

“We didn’t just leave because of that.”

“I know. Things were very difficult after Fritz . . .” His voice cracked, and he turned away for a moment. “But at that stage, I was delighted by how well you had all turned out. You were exactly how I hoped you would be.”

“Which is how?”

“Liberated, freethinking.”

“But Elisabeth didn’t think so?”

I had pushed Hunter too far.

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” He went to the drawer he had hidden Fritz’s shirt in and poked around until he came up with a folded piece of paper, which he shoved into my hand.

On it was an address, the suburb in Auckland, near where Lukas and I had lived.

“Go and see her,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll be over the moon to meet her grandson. Just don’t bloody ask her to feed him!”

He had raised his voice, making Zachary cry. Outside, the rain was heavier than it had been all day, if that was possible. Our cabin wasn’t far from Hunter’s but we would get soaked. I was so tired of trying to keep Zachary dry. I started toward the door, shushing to soothe him, wondering if there was an equivalent noise that would calm Hunter down.

“Thanks for the address,” I said. “I didn’t know she kept in touch.”

“She writes to me. About once a year. The others don’t know.”

“Maybe she still loves you?”

“Hardly—she does it because she’s still angry with me for ruining her life.”

I studied the address in my hand.

“And you think I should visit her?”

Hunter shrugged. “Up to you.”

Zachary and I went back to our cabin, where we were buffeted all night by gusts of strong wind. The cabin was drafty at the best of times, but that night I feared it might take off across the fields. Zachary was oblivious to the racket, but I barely slept, and the little rest I did manage was disturbed by anxious dreams. In one, Shakti had caught me trespassing in her caravan, and I was running away from her, weighed down by Zachary, and bleeding profusely from my knee.

Susie and Katrina had been discussing a trip to Auckland they were going to make to join the protest against an antiabortion lobby group, and even though I didn’t want to be a part of their political activities, I was desperate for a break from the commune. This lobby group, all Christian, had been picketing outside the women’s hospital in rostered shifts for most of the year, but just in the last few days, the political had turned personal. The leader of the lobby group, a middle-aged white male, had launched a vicious attack on lesbians and feminists, saying they were pro-choice because they were trying to stop “normal women” from enjoying motherhood, and that if they had their way this would eventually lead to the extinction of the human race. Everyone had been discussing it nonstop at the dinner table ever since, and Susie, in particular, had been getting so fired up that I was scared she was going to take someone out. “How dare that man say that about us? He’s made it personal—and I won’t let him get away with it.”

The day after the storm, when they finally set a date for the trip to Auckland, I realized it would also give me a chance to visit Elisabeth. “Is there room in the truck for me and Zachary?” I asked Katrina, over breakfast.

“Of course,” she said. “The more the merrier.”

Hunter wasn’t at breakfast but in the afternoon, when I was helping to clean up debris with Zachary in a sling on my back, he came to find me. “This caravan of Shakti’s,” he said. “You’re sure it was in the flooded paddock next to the beach?”

“It was up against a tree—right in the middle. You couldn’t miss it.”

“Well,” said Hunter, “I did miss it. Either that or it’s not there anymore.”

“Are you sure?”

“There were a few trees down, and flooding right to the sea. I’ve never seen it like that before—the beach almost vanished. But no caravan.”

“I wonder what happened to it.”

“Those winds last night were gale force. Maybe it broke up, floated out to sea?”

“But it was so sturdy . . .”

“And very exposed, in the middle of the paddock like that.”

I wasn’t convinced. “I’m going to go and look for it—see for myself.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Hunter. “It’s not safe, there’s land slips all over the place. I’m going to warn the others to stay off the beach.”