Thunder Road (20 page)

The streets were virtually deserted now. I reached the top of the Parnell rise and waited at an intersection for the green. My head was fuzzy with fatigue, I knew I was near my limit. A ute passing in the opposite direction jolted me awake. I was no more than three metres away from it. I knew who it was without even turning my head. I hoped somehow my stillness would make me invisible. It didn’t. The suck of the big car’s throttle was followed by a screech of brakes as they made an abrupt
U-turn. I knew then that I was really in trouble.

I clicked the Norton into first and screwed back on the
throttle
. The front of the bike reared high in the air so I backed off a little to bring it down. By the time I plunged down the steep slope of Ayr Street I was doing nearly 80 ks. Coming out of the gentle right hand bend, a big concrete roundabout loomed. How could I have forgotten that? The front wheel locked up as I desperately tried to damp down the speed. There was no chance, no hope of stopping. I powered on through, relying on luck. It held. No other cars. The muffler clipped the raised edge of the roundabout, leaving a shower of sparks as I pushed the bike over to the limit, but I was through.

In the long straight next to the mangroves the ute gained on me again. I was heading into unknown streets. Too much chance of stuffing up. I turned around and doubled back
cautiously
. The big Falcon passed me on the blind corner. It was something they weren’t expecting, and I was close enough to see them gawping at me in anger and disgust: the Taylor Twins in the cab, one of them framed by a rifle barrel, Rebel on the tray.

There was one last chance. I would try to lose them in the Domain. Its trees and huge lawns, the little service roads and multiple entrances all favoured a bike. This time I took it easier around the road island; I couldn’t risk an error. Up the hill, the bike was pitifully gutless as the ute closed the gap. Finally, I played red light roulette before plunging into the dark green vastness of the Auckland Domain.

I could hear the ute behind me but I daren’t look back. The sky was beginning to lighten. As we were winding down the twisting hill towards the Stanley Street Tennis Stadium I did something that surprised even me.

On one of the corners there was a little service road, chained
off, where the park staff had their compost pits. Me and Devon had often walked past it. To the right of the post where the chain was attached there was a gap wide enough for a person to walk through. I aimed at it and then flicked off my lights and disappeared into the void. At once, I was lost in the blackness of the forest and the weightlessness of falling. Ecstatic
deliverance
. For just an instant my senses were stripped of meaning, my body unattached to the world. I was beyond safety or danger, in another realm.

Then I re-connected. Slammed by the branches of trees, the ground, and the bike all at the same moment. Three onto one. It was almost funny. The bike rode on by itself, carving a passage down the gully. I rebounded against the trunk of a small tree and dropped to the ground.

The relief of being clothed in the blackness of the forest sped through me though I was stunned and aching. I began drinking in the stillness and silence which lay just beyond my perimeter of pain. My helmet had gone and there was a
stickiness
in my hair. I was surprised to see blood on my fingers. I’d felt nothing much as the bike had crashed its way down into the ravine. The rich smelling leaf litter mingled with the
darkness
. Somewhere down the gully I could hear the clicking of the cooling engine. I lay back and looked up through a break in the tree cover.

The stars. How long since I had looked at the stars? Really looked. I saw this child hiding in an ancient wash-house. It was me, on my grandparents’ farm. There were no windows and on a bright day I would run in, slam the door and see, in those first moments of darkness, my day time constellations. Spears of light pouring through the holes in the tin roof. Just as beautiful: a universe of my own making.

Inside my leather jacket I felt the plastic bag, stuffed with the hard mass of paper. Unbelievable wads of bank notes. The smell, slightly disgusting but thrilling, wafted out through the opening and mixed with the scents of fresh sweat and old leather.

Into this poured a noise that set my teeth on edge: the
distinctive
burble of a V8 somewhere across the park. They were back. And looking for me. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t. A moment of panic. What had happened to my legs?

I heard the scrunch of wheels as the V8 turned into the service track.

Suppressing all feelings of pain, panic and exhaustion I lay still. Above me I could hear the relentless thrum of the motor and then a beam of light lit up the trees like daylight. It was the ute’s roof-mounted spotlight. I closed my eyes and imagined myself melting into the earth. Hoping: my last line of defence. It was all I had.

I could hear the Taylors and Rebel talking, calm now,
determined
, and close. They were held back by the chained-off road so the light beam was locked inches above my face. Someone ran down the path. A moment later his triumphant voice came. ‘It’s here. I’ve got the bike!’

I knew it was only a matter of time now before they found me and it was all over.

The other two ran down the slope and there was excited speculation about where I might have gone. One person, Rebel I think, walked back up to the ute while the other two
disappeared
deeper into the woods, down one of the many jogging tracks that fed into the surrounding streets. After a few moments all was quiet again.

I WAS WOKEN by voices and the chug of an engine. As the dazed randomness began to reorder itself in my mind I
remembered
Rebel and the Taylors, the night chase, the search. They were back again. Back for me. I tried to move, this time with more success. I found myself in a sitting position. My chest ached and I had to breathe shallowly. I wiggled my feet and, with an enormous sense of relief, I could see there was movement in my boots. Dizzy and stiff with pain, my hair prickly with dried blood, a thick crust around my left eye and ear, but I was upright.

The ravine below me was still beyond my line of sight so I grabbed the thin trunk of a lancewood and pulled myself up. About 30 or 40 metres down the bank, a tractor was parked, and two guys around my age were examining my bike. I could see from where I stood that the forks were hopelessly bent. There was no prospect of me riding it out of the park. I called to the guys and their heads shot around guiltily, shock clearly visible on their faces.

‘Give us a hand.’

They both bounded up the hill towards me.

‘Shit man, look at you.’

‘How long’ve you been there?’

‘I’ll get an ambulance.’

I raised my hand. I told them I was on my way to the hospital when I came off. Could they give me a ride over there?

It seemed that their supervisor was away for the morning and they could do whatever the hell they liked. Such a good
attitude, I thought. They took an arm each and helped me pick my way down to where they were parked.

The Norton was fixable but the damage was major. I felt like I had killed off the last of an endangered species. One less Norton Atlas in the world.

The two guys made a sort of bed for me out of bags of leaves on the tractor’s tray. We bumped our way up the hill, back to the main road through the park. Whatever I had done to my chest registered in every lurch. The blond one, Jeff, rode along with me, making sure I didn’t fall off. He explained that they were both on P.D. and they couldn’t stop long. If anyone found out about this it might be added to their stretch. I envied their mateship, making the most of what came along no matter what. It was like the way me and Devon had been.

The hospital was only a few hundred metres from the
entrance
to the park but it seemed longer. We attracted some amused attention as we stopped outside the main doors and they unloaded me. We stood for a moment at the revolving doors. On an impulse I said, ‘The bike’s yours if you want it. I’m finished with it.’

They looked at me doubtfully and then realised I wasn’t joking. We tried to shake hands but the pain was very sharp. I watched them for a moment as they roared down the driveway, then I limped through to Outpatients.

It was a quiet morning so I was put in a room more or less straight away. A nurse had me take off my clothes in the prep room, saying an intern would be along to check me out. I rolled up the bag of money inside my jacket and waited on the edge of the bed, just wearing socks and underpants. My chest was a mess of blue bruises and red scratches. After a while a doctor arrived. Someone familiar was by his side. It was Richard. We
both did a double take at the sight of each other. I had
forgotten
that he was a med student.

‘Hi, Richard!’

The supervising doctor was surprised too. ‘You two know each other?’

Richard nodded and went bright red. He looked annoyed. I had strayed into another area of his life.

It turned out that along with bruising and lesions to the head, I had a couple of cracked ribs. In an hour I was washed, strapped, stitched, and bandaged. Next stop was X-rays but I was starting to feel better and had had enough. There was only one thing on my mind that moment and it wasn’t cranial X-rays.

I headed to the front desk to see if Devon had been admitted. The receptionist, a stern-looking woman in her fifties, took one eyeful of me and decided she didn’t like me.

She said no one of that name had been admitted but then reluctantly added that there was another Santos. His name was Te Arepa and he had been checked in with burns and head injuries last night.

Could I see him?

No. He was in critical care and only family had visiting rights.

I was whanau. I got the ‘I don’t believe you’ stare. What relation?

Half brother. The others would be here later.

We stood there for a while, eyeballing each other and then she said that there was a little waiting room at the end of the critical care ward but I wasn’t to go in until the next of kin arrived. Level five.

I almost ran to the lift but rapid movement was like someone jabbing my ribs with a screwdriver. There was a mirror in the lift
and I could see why she was reluctant to let me go anywhere. My bandaged head and staring eyes … I looked like an escaped mental patient. On the fifth floor there was another nurse’s station. An intern about my age was chatting to a nurse, who was a bit older.

‘I’ve come to see … ahh …’ (forgetting his name for a
moment
) ‘… Te Arepa Santos.’

I was obviously interrupting something.

‘You are?’ the nurse asked.

‘Trace Santos, I’m his brother,’ I said, getting used to the lie.

She leaned towards me. ‘He’s through in room nine. His coma is induced until he’s stabilised. He’s on life support … still in a very critical state.’

I wasn’t prepared for what I saw in room nine. I imagined he would look a bit like me, with bandages and bruises, but he didn’t. He lay face forward on a little sort of hammock that supported his head. There was a tangle of wires and tubes and monitors around him that made getting close to him almost impossible. I had to sit on the floor next to the bed to see his face.

‘I was coming for you, Devon. Why didn’t you wait? Why didn’t you trust me? It was my turn. I could’ve got you out….’ The talk just poured out of me. I didn’t know what was coming next … it was a dam-burst of questions, pain, disappointment.

How long I carried on like this I have no idea, but after a while a doctor’s head peered around the corner of the bed to find me on the floor.

‘Oh, excuse me. I didn’t see you down there. I thought it was Te Arepa talking. You’re the brother?’

I nodded and climbed stiffly to my feet. My injury was making itself known now that the codeine was wearing off.

The doctor glanced at a clipboard and then placed it back on a hook at the end of the bed. ‘The prognosis isn’t good. All we can do is wait at this stage … wait for things to stabilise before we can even begin any remedial actions.’ He watched me. ‘You look as though you’ve been in the wars yourself. Were you in the same accident?’

‘Sort of.’ I didn’t want to talk.

‘The policeman in the other car died at the scene, so the police are following Te Arepa’s progress closely too. I’ve told them that he’s a long way from talking to anyone.’

It sort of hit me, that. The policeman died. Along our trail of casualties, Death was gaining on us.

Another doctor and nurse arrived and the first doctor turned to me and said, ‘You wouldn’t mind waiting in reception while we go through our tests? It’s a little tight in here.’

I found the cafeteria and had some food with my codeine. I had lost track of the last time I had eaten anything and the first few bites of my pie made me feel like vomiting. I took my coffee out into a bleak little courtyard so I could smoke. High up in the monolithic building in front of me Devon’s survival was being plotted. Nothing dramatic. Just tubes and fluids, cables sending impulses to bleeping monitors, his food now reduced to a clear liquid, and fed in through the arm. I bet he was dying for a smoke.

When I got back the nurse on level five said I couldn’t go through yet. To wait with the others. Then she disappeared. Against the wall sat a Māori man in his sixties and a girl about nine. The guy was looking at me as if expecting something so I went over to introduce myself.

‘I’m Trace Santos.’ I reached my hand forward and he stood up and held it. He leaned towards me until forehead and nose
gently touched mine. We paused for a moment, silent and still, as though he was reading the contents of my head. Then he straightened up.

‘I’m Ra, Te Arepa’s koro. This is his sister, Aroha.’

We sat and then he said with a smile, ‘Now, what branch of the whanau do you come from?’

Feeling a fool I thought it best to ’fess up and clear the air. I explained how I had just used the name to get in. How it was next of kin only. I thought I must have violated any number of protocols in using their name.

‘I’m … his friend.’ The words shrank to a whisper.

‘Then you
are
whanau,’ he said definitively and that was an end to it.

‘Me and Devon’ve been living together, here in Auckland. He never told me about his family, just about his Spanish ancestor, the pirate.’ It sounded stupid now, somehow.

‘We’re from a little place on the Coast. Te Arepa hasn’t been back for years. He left school … too early, and then struck out alone, I suppose trying to make a name for himself. And he certainly has.’

‘I never knew he was called Te Arepa. He was always Devon to me.’

‘That was his Pakeha name. He called himself that when he went off to the boarding school. He was teased there, eh, about being Māori.’

There was so much about Devon I wanted to know but this was no time to ask questions. Part of me knew that he would never be able to answer them himself.

We waited. Hour after hour. It became clear that nothing was going to happen today or perhaps even tomorrow. It would be a long vigil.

It was hot in the hospital but I couldn’t take my jacket off because it concealed my bag of money. My loot. It was
beginning
to plague me. I was sick of it. It was a heavy
uncomfortable
lump on my body, like a growth; it was the ugly driving force behind everything that had happened here. I longed to be free of it but also couldn’t part with it. That would make all the whole trail of pain and death we had travelled meaningless. All for nothing.

As evening fell, I slipped out of the hospital into the trees of the Domain. I found this ancient puriri tree by the pavilion next to the duck pond. It was so old it must have been part of the original bush which had somehow escaped destruction. About four metres up a branch had fallen and there was a shallow hole with some other little tree growing out of it. The area was fairly public, but no one was around right then so I made a tight bundle of the bag and threw it in, basketball style. A shot that would have done credit to a Michael Jordan. From ten metres back there was still a bit of the white plastic bag visible but I no longer cared. It was taken care of. I had shed an immense load and walked back to the hospital feeling like a free man. It was only back in the lift that the heavy coat of grief once more descended on me. This wasn’t a healing place.

Back in Devon’s hospital room Ra and the little girl were
playing
euchre on the floor. Devon was strung above them so he could watch too, if his blank eyes could relay the information. I joined them. I hadn’t played cards for years. These two were real sharps: flicking through the hands so quickly I could barely see what was happening before it was all over. As we played Ra talked of Devon.

‘When he was about Aroha’s age he wrote this poem. The headmaster at our little school couldn’t believe he made it up … even though he did it in front of him. He came to me and said, “Ra, this boy has a gift, a taonga. He would be wasted at the local high school. I want to apply for some scholarships for him.” Well, I thought about it: his mother dead and his father in the jail, all the local kids ending up with joints in their hands before they hit high school … and he had such promise. But then surely it was me who should be grooming him? I could see in his face, the tipuna staring out at me. First one, then another. They too were waiting for a decision … but it was hard. Finally, though, I made the mistake of so many of my generation,
thinking
that the good Pakeha education would save him. Armed with that and coming from a strong whakapapa he would be able to make his way in the world. Not follow his father’s path to the gangs first and then on to jail. The well-trodden path.’

He looked up at Devon.

‘I was wrong.’

We played on for a while, not talking. Little Aroha was
writing
the bigger scores on a piece of paper. She had some
serious
competition going with her grandfather. I was out of the equation.

‘He loved the stories about our Spanish tipuna. The so-called pirate. He pumped me for all I knew and when the facts ran out I would embellish the stories. The man grew into a legend and colonised Te Arepa’s mind. Te Arepa became Spanish, not Māori any more and when he went off to school … he forgot about us, about where he came from … but chased this pirate. The dream of treasure. Like a conquistador in search of a new Eldorado. When he was fifteen he was determined to leave school. I wanted him to go on to the university but he wouldn’t
even consider the idea. I told him, your talent is language, we need a lawyer in the family, but by this stage everything took too long, and he was in a hurry. At fifteen you know everything.’

His hands made an expansive gesture and he smiled. ‘At my age, after a lifetime of learning, you know nothing.’

We had to leave again while the doctors checked Devon out. In the waiting room the heat made me drowsier by the minute. They were a long time with him. Aroha put her head in her grandfather’s lap and went off to sleep as quickly as a light being turned off. I looked at Ra’s face in repose. It had the heavy-featured monumental quality that you see in
meeting
house carvings. There was a hugeness about the man that made you feel instantly safe. I had never come across this in a person before.

‘What’s your real name, Trace?’

His voice startled me. ‘My birth certificate says Edward, but I’ve always been Trace.’

‘King Edward,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll call you Eruera.’

I was awakened by movement through the dimmed lights of the waiting room. I realised that Devon was being wheeled away to the operating theatre, but no one told us what was happening. Aroha was still asleep but Ra watched silently. His was a weary vigil.