Keri Hulme - The Bone People

They knocked them off the rocks in dozens —

"Kerewin, isn't this illegal?"

"Yep. Isn't it enjoyable?" —

and carried half a sackful stealthily away.

Back in the livingroom circle, Joe asks,

"Do you remember asking us if we wanted to come and have a holiday at a place of yours?"

"Yes." She looks at the dirty white shell, shining white and brown inside with purple shadows where the muscles had hung on.

"Well, I can take holidays soon, and Himi's got the May holidays coming up. Can we?"

"Yes."

He wipes his hands on the seat of his jeans.

"You coming too?" very casually.

She bites the last oyster in half.

"Umm, I don't know."

It is very peaceful. Leaning back, eyes closed, she can hear the, a rattle from something the boy is playing with, the rustle of Joe's paper.

"Hey, did you read this?"

"Nope. What?"

"Some tripe from these back-to-the-landers. You won't believe it, but here goes-

"The breeding of guinea pigs requires a minimum of land, little time, and practically no outlay. They feed on scraps, grass-clippings et cetera, and their flesh is nourishing and tasty. They return a reasonable amount of meat per beast.. shit, they give recipes even! I ask you, can't you just see Mrs Average slaughtering little Mary's pet guinea pig for the Sunday roast?"

She grins, eyes still shut.

"Nope, not yet. But if food ever got really short, I can see the knives come out all over suburbia… they've got a point, these fanatical fellas. The more self-sufficient you are the better."

"I had noticed… don't you bloody dare!"

The sudden yell jerks her eyes wide open.

The boy stands quickly as Joe orders, "Give them here. At once."

A box of matches, tossed to the man.

"Sailing bloody close to the wind, Haimona."

Simon stares back, unmoving, his body taut, his face hard.

Joe throws the box in the air, again and again.

"Just what in the name of all gods and little fishes is going on?" she asks plaintively.

Joe sighs. He catches the box a final time, then holds it up.

"He thinks it's funny to flick matches. You know how?"

He faces the fire, takes out a match, holds it against the striking strip with his thumb, and flicks it. The match flares explosively into flame and arcs into the fire.

"Dunno who taught him to do it," he says wearily. "Maybe he taught himself. But he had one all lined up ready for a go. At you."

She looks at the child, and then down at the floor. There's the match, lying right where the brat dropped it at Joe's yell.

You poisonous little creep.

"You," to Simon. He doesn't move.

"Turn round," Joe has a snap in his voice she hasn't heard before.

The boy turns slowly, insolently slow. He doesn't look at her, staring off to one side.

"I don't think that's funny, throwing fire at people. Why do you?"

The angular face is blank as a mask.

"Ah to hell with you then." Kerewin swivels her chair around, turning her back on him.

"What were you saying, Joe?"

He's still eyeing his son, his own face set and hard.

"Well," eyes unmoving, "Well, I was going to say that I had noticed this place is pretty self-sufficient."

She settles back in the chair again, and makes her voice low and easy.

"I'm a secret back-to-the-lander." She laughs. "Not really, but you know originally this place was going to be a dome or a yurt or an icosa. I was going to build it out of recycled goodies. Run goats and fowls, and a guinea-pig or two, and have a vegetable garden about six acres square. Then one night, while I was still in the planning stages, I sat down on the beach and thought, Holmes, what do you want? Because all these were other people's ideas… nothing wrong with them, but they didn't really fit me."

She lights her pipe, the flame glowing orange in the dim room. She can see Joe relaxing, his gaze now turned to her.

"I decided I didn't want livestock, because they demanded care and involvement… and anyway I'd never wanted them, just eggs and milk and meat. I could get that elsewhere. I'm a fisher, a forager, a hunter-gatherer, not a farmer. I don't grow much, though I like my herbs-"

"And dandelions!" The man is smiling again.

"Wow, you've noticed… I'm probably the only person in the country who nurtures the dear golden souls."

Simon is still standing, left in the dark, rigid and lonely.

She does something she hasn't done before, turns and reaches to him, sitting him down on her knee. For a moment he stiffens, looks at her quickly, his eyes shuttered.

"You're making the place look untidy, wickedness," says Kerewin easily, but she won't smile at him. Something flickers in Simon's eyes, then he smiles tentatively, folding his lids over the light come back.

Don't look in. Nobody look in.

"Mind you," continuing as though she hadn't moved, "I also look after a stand of mushrooms hereabouts, and my patches of puha and my karengo beds are very carefully tended."

"Aue," Joe shakes his head. "E hoa, ka pai."

"What for?"

He stands up, and stretches, and doesn't say why. Just, "My turn to make coffee?"

Kerewin shrugs. "Okay. Good idea."

As he goes past them towards the bench, he reaches out and taps Simon's face. The boy flinches, but the tap can't hurt him.

"Lucky," says Joe, and continues on his way. For a moment, the boy is tense, then he smiles weakly at Kerewin — a lame duck grin, I'm wrong and I know it — and twists sideways, and leans against her.

"You going to sleep?"

He glances up, then puts his thumb in his mouth and starts sucking it.

"Yerk," says Kerewin, grimacing, but makes no other comment.

She says to Joe,

"This place is almost self-sufficient. The range can live off driftwood. There's a coal seam on the property I could mine, and extract kerosene for the lamps if I needed to. I've got four solar panels providing hot water, and two that charge the nicad batteries… only the stereo and the drawing light need the electricity anyway."

"Why the emphasis on self-sufficiency? Do you believe in the millennium or something?"

"Nope. I just like to be able to do most things for myself."

"I've noticed that too," says Joe.

Later that night he said, "You're very tactful." "Peaceloving is the word. There seemed to be a fair sort of row brewing there." He sucked in his breath. "It was a bad thing he was going to

do."

The child is back in his arms, and sound asleep.

"There is a vicious streak in him, Kere, and I'm frightened it might be bred into him." Face full of gentle sadness, "I don't know what to do sometimes."

"Buggered if I would either. Probably pick up the nearest hunk of four-by-two and wallop him with it if he ever does flick a match at me. Warn him." She chuckled.

"Mmm… it's okay for adults, we can hit back, but he'll take on kids, and kids smaller than he is too. Like he fights a lot, when he's at school."

"Candidly, there can't be too many there who've smaller than he is."

"Maybe not… but he starts the fights I'm told. And he fights dirty."

"He likes fighting?"

"I don't think so… well, I don't know. Every time there's trouble, and I go along to find out what started this lot, I get about fourteen conflicting stories. But fairly often, Himi's started it. It's not always the others picking on him."

She puffed quietly on her pipe.

"You, uh, put a slightly different emphasis on a similar statement when you first came here."

He quirked his eyebrows and grinned, impishly. He looks so like Simon for a second that it's funny.

"I couldn't tell you all the bad bits at once."

She laughed.

("All things considered, I don't think he's too bad a kid." O true," said Joe quickly, "I mean, it's so bloody awkward for him not being able to talk out loud. He gets to screaming pitch very quickly with anyone who doesn't bother to try and understand him. Hardly anyone bothers. You're the rarity, eh."