Keri Hulme - The Bone People

Simon sighed happily.

He wiped his mouth on his hands, and his hands on his jeans. Grinned at her while he did.

Then took out his notebook and wrote, JOE PICKS ME UP TONIGHT.

"You know." He has left delicate fingerprints of grease on the paper. "Well, I'm sort of pleased that you like being here, but what precisely do you think you're going to do?"

The little boy shrugged…..

"Because I'm going upstairs to do some drawing in a minute. Simon licked his fingers, then held up the pencil and pointed to himself.

Nice economical way to say, I'll draw too, assuming that's what

he means.

She stood, looking at him. The fey swirling mood had ended.

But, a tendency to steal and damage… not all there, said the radiophone voice. Joe had written:

Many thanks for the best night I've had in years. I'll buy a book on chess today and see if I can't beat you some day at your own game. There's a bloke plays at work — I'll ask him for a few tips.

Muttonbirds for lunch, and

You know, you got a fan. He thinks you're marvellous (so do I). Want a kid? Going cheap… if he's any trouble, pack him home. That'll be a better inducement to good behaviour than any hiding I threaten. Bit of cheek, eh, this letting him go back to you without so much as a word of permit from you. (But it's just before 7, and I don't think you'll welcome a call this early.) Let us know if you're doing something and don't want him round — Piri'll pick him up. Otherwise I will, tonight. Natouhoa Joe G. XXX

Very different note from the formal Thank you of yesterday.

But where's the brat been since 7 this morning? And what's all this about? It doesn't feel right. Yet nobody's stomped on my heart except family, so why am I so mistrustful of people?

A meal, and a chess game or two, and he signs the letter with kisses like a lifetime friend. And this one, grinning like a gargoyle from his chair where he's kneeling, brings a ring for a ring untaken, and the making of a garden of prayers. I don't understand it….

She wasn't smiling back at the child.

Was it being a listening ear for the man?

Someone to tell troubles to? Suspicions?…

And what is the attraction for a disturbed and zany child here?

Me? Nah, he knows I don't much like him.

"What about school though?" undecided what to do. He frowns briefly. Picks the notebook off the table, and weighs it in his hand, then takes a slip of paper from an unsealed envelope in the back of it.

It is another note from Joe, this time excusing his son's absence from school on the grounds of sickness for the week to come.

Simon is writing while she reads it.

I AM SICK SOMETIMES

"Conveniently, like now?" She returns his excuse. "How often do you actually turn up at school? Monthly? Or just a couple of times a year?"

He's writing again. JOE SAYS I GO, I GO

"I'll bet." She thinks, Hell, imagine if they both think I'm going to put up with him all the times he misses. No way.

He is looking at her narrowly.

I KNOW WHAT THEY DO. He stops, searching for a word, his teeth clenching in exasperation.

She sits down at the table again.

"You know what who does?'

He grinds his teeth.

"Is it about school, and your absence therefrom?"

No.

Then he nods.

Shakes his head.

He is actually shaking all over with the effort of trying to find a way to show what he wants to say.

"Is it a word you need? Or a whole sentence?"

He hits the table with the pencil and it breaks. Point smashed.

He puts his face in his hands.

She picks up the pencil, takes out her knife and sharpens it carefully, whittling away little resinous curls of wood. There is a faint fresh smell of cedar: it must have been an old pencil. As she makes a new point on the lead, she says slowly,

"If you like, we could start again at the beginning of this conversation, and feel our way to the words you want."

He puts his hands down on the table and avoids her eyes. He's been snivelling but quietly.

"So. Here we are at the beginning. How often do you go to school?"

MOST DAYS

He looks at that, shakes his head, and with one hand guarding his eyes, amends,

SOME DAYS

"And that's of each week?" Yes, he nods. "For some days of each week, the days Joe says you're to go to school, you go to school. Right?"

He is grinning again. Weirdly, through the tears and the breadcrumbs and the muttonbird grease. MOST TIMES, writes Simon recalcitrant.

"Occasions Joe don't know about, you play hooky? Stay away from school?

"Goodoh," to his nod, privately thinking Ratbag.

The child hugs himself, and his face goes tight again. He points to her face.

"I show an expression of disapproval or something?"

He looks puzzled momentarily, and then shakes his hand, No. He screws up his mouth at the notebook and pencil, and writes reluctantly,

I WONT STAY HERE ALL THE TIME. I KNOW WHAT THEY

DO.

"I'm beat. If you mean you're not staying here all the times you're absent from school, you're dead right. I'll be doing other things often, and won't want you underfoot. But as to this other — you know what who does? To whom?"

Simon looks at the table.

"Hey listen, some things are easier if you're not concentrating on them. Come and do some drawing with me, and forget the lost words for the moment eh? If it's important, you'll find a way to tell me, and I'll find a way to understand."

He slides off the chair and comes round the board table. He stares at her for long moments, his face unreadable. No expression in the intent stare. Then he holds his hand out, reaching for hers.

She gets up quickly, forestalling the contact.

"You'd better have a wash, eh. I mean, I'm going to. Before drawing. Grease and chalk and charcoal don't go well together."

Babbling again, Holmes. He's not contagious.

But hands are sacred things. Touch is personal, fingers of love, feelers of blind eyes, tongues of those who cannot talk… oops.

Simon still has his hand out, and his smile there, turned smirk, as though he knows perfectly well her reluctance to touch anybody's hands and is amused by it.

"What's this for now?" but gives her hand.

Thanks, mouths Simon, kissing her hand, the grin widening after.

O those bloody nonexistent teeth… draw out where they went, anything, but the staying barbs of this gentle courtesy.

Kerewin appalled.

She works with charcoal, every shade of black bearing across the white paper.

Trying again to catch the spider shadow of the morning's dreaming, but netting at random this time.

Smudge. Then a razor fine line, so keenly black it aches. Illusion of looking into a knife-thin ominous chasm.

She makes several more of them, slewed at intervals, and in the midst of them, quite suddenly, near the oily-looking smudge, she has captured something.

He can't help glancing up at the slit window.

He had heard the door bang shut, and the sound of singing, and he had climbed up into that window. But the sounds came closer, and he thought of what the owner of the house might do to him… the ground was far below, the floor inside in shadow at his feet. If he jumped… the pain in his heel had him part-crippled already, and if he hit it on the floor… so he had stayed, stiff and horribly scared.

Two times ago, he had been trapped. And the young man, very young man smooth and bearded, the young man who held his shoulder had pushed him hard against the upright of the fence and

He felt sick to the pit of his stomach, and his mind blackened.

This time! said the voice urgently.

The sun on his back in the window, and how the figure below had turned and looked straight at him, though he hadn't moved at all.

She stands back from the board and looks at it for a long time. Her gut sense says that any alteration will rip the network and allow the lively shadow to escape. Yet it feels unfinished… she closes her eyes hard, and in the dull red at the back of her lids, sees what she needs.