Keri Hulme - The Bone People

She turns to Joe, who has flung himself down on the ground.

"Two perfect and an excellent against two perfects and a fair, right Simon sunshine?"

Joe whimpers.

"You can't tell me he's an unbiased judge."

Facedown, he can't see the coldness that comes into Kerewin's eyes.

"O, he does all right. That's a glass of pure iced orange juice you owe me, and endeavour to see there's three shots of tequila in it."

He lifts his head and brushes some of the pineneedles out of his hair. "Done," he says in a normal voice, and then drops his head again and says sobbingly, "Beaten, beaten by a mere female. I can't stand it," pounding the ground with his fist.

"I think you better bring your da a drink of something quick. The sunshine's addled him. Or maybe it's the pinescent. It does peculiar things to people-"

The boy comes over, radiating concern, mouth full of liquorice, hand full of a cup of soft drink. He dribbles the drink carefully into his father's hair and the man shrieks in surprise.

"Oath tama!" scrambling to his feet and grabbing for his son.

She stiffens. You hit him and I'll drop you like a log.

But Joe is smiling, and Simon ducks behind Kerewin giggling wildly, and whichever way Joe swings to catch him, dives the other way.

"When you two jokers have finished using me as a maypole in your catch-as-can, we might get some tea and tucker," says Kerewin plaintively.

They went on into the McKenzie country.

"Over there, there's Simon's Pass," says Kerewin.

"O? Simon's Pass?"

Joe looks at Simon. Simon says nothing.

"Who was this Simon anyway?"

"I don't know. All I've ever found out was, he was a Maori boy whistling down to

who rode a white horse called Dover."

"Evocative."

"Yeah… whenever we came this way as kids, my mother would say, There's Simon's Pass, we're nearly there, and when we asked who Simon was, that's what she'd say."

"Are we nearly there, then?"

"Not berloody likely. That was just to shut us up."

The sun's come out again.

When they came out of the high country, they'd been enclosed in mist and greyness.

The cold seeped into the car, the dampness into their spirits, and they'd driven in silence.

But here, back by the sea again, it's light and warm.

"Let's stop," suggests Joe. "Boil a tea, maybe look around a few minutes?"

Kerewin glances at him.

"You're not in any hurry to get there?"

"You are?" he counters. "I mean, we got three weeks."

She grins.

"Okay…" the car is already slowing, ". . what's the matter with Sim? Flu still getting at him?"

I think I know, but we say nothing. Yet.

"Carsick," says Joe, and the boy stirs. He is white and quiet. He looks at her and nods.

"Hell's bells, why didn't you say so before?"

"O, he'll be all right. He's always like it. Some fresh air and some fresh tea'll put life back into him. That's why I suggested the stop."

She shakes her head wonderingly. "I must say I like the lack of fuss. Every other kid I've known, and that includes self, is yelping I-wanna-cat as soon as they feel remotely queasy. It's the fun of having the car stop, or seeing your parents turn green. Very civilised, boy, very stoical, but if you had yelled we could have fixed the queasiness hours ago."

She pulls off the road near a solitary pine. "More blight," morosely, but brightens, "We can use the bugger for firing, though."

She has set up a waterheater and loaded it with pineneedles and bark by the time the man and his child are out of the car.

"Only thing wrong with yer average pine… soot. It fouls up the smokestack of this thing remarkably," popping a small twig down with great cheerfulness.

Her waterheater is shaped into two parts, cylinder on top of cone. Fill the cylinder with water, feed anything flammable down the narrow top of the cone and away she goes. The fire is protected: the water heats fast.

The black smoke disappears: pale flames dance at the mouth of the firehole.

"Ready in a minute… e boy, go look in that blue canvas satchel on the back seat, and you'll find a small bottle… wait a moment, you'll find a lot of small bottles. Better bring the whole bag to me." In an aside to Joe, "I been waiting to try this goop out for years," leering fiendishly as she says it.

He smiles. "Sometimes you're very nice," he says enigmatically, and she has time to think about that before the child comes back with her bag.

The bottles are all gillsized or smaller, and contain oils or powders or pale liquids.

She pours a spoonful of liquid from one into a cup of cold water.

"Drink it slowly," and the child swallows it, obediently slow.

Sometimes Sim, you're too damn trusting.

"What is it?" Joe has knelt down, with his arms round the boy.

"Aha." She's watching Simon closely. "It's a patented Holmes mixture. Herb extracts and things. Incidentally, I have tried it on myself, and it doesn't taste too bad."

"I'd say it even works," he says a minute later. The colour is coming back into the boy's face. "What herbs? We could make a million, eh."

"Distillations of mint, koromiko tips, manuka inner bark, and a little of the wicked weed… I don't think so. It takes too much time to gather and brew if you were doing it commercially. OK just for yourself, though. It's effective for period pains and flu-type nausea, so I figured it might work on carsickness too."

He uses one hand to sort through the little bottles, still holding onto the boy with the other.

"Bit mysterious, your labels… what's Morph, and Wit Haz? Or Unhappy Sun Bum's Oil for goodness' sake?"

"Aw come on, they're all obvious. Work 'em out."

But she hustles the bottle back into the satchel quickly.

"You okay now?" and Simon gives her a thumbs up sign. "Right. We'll have some tea, and then get on the road again. You want to drive this last stretch, Joe?"

"Not unless you're tired. I'll hold him, and we'll contemplate the scenery. He's less likely to feel sick again that way."

"I'll believe you. I've never been travel sick, car, ship, train or plane. Though I haven't tried elephants or camels yet. Or flying saucers or carpets, come to that."

"There's always a first time, scoffer. I thought I was immune until I took a canoe trip one Waitangi Day regatta. O sweet Lord was I glad when the canoe tipped, and I could decently and secretly puke in the water."

"Urk for the other swimmers… or did they all drown?"

"Waikato's a fast river… besides there were quite a few of us feeling off colour. I think it was the mussels beforehand, they might've been bad… could've been the couple of half g's I had though, or that hunk of pork. Or the kinas, or the-"

"You hungry, man? Well, endure. It's only another forty miles to home sweet home and tea."

There was a wide bay, so wide that the hills to the north were purple and hazy in the late afternoon sun. There was a small town, a straggle of houses and cribs, with a fishing fleet and store as reasons to unite them.

They passed it by.

There were rounded greenish hills that grew flax and scrawny windbeaten bushes in their gullies. There were beaches covered in grey sand and beaches clothed in ochre golden gravel.

And there was the sea.

She let the car drift round the corner, revving so it corrected the slide into a turn after a judicious wheel twist.

"Sheeit! They've made a road out of it."

Joe bit his lip.

It doesn't look much like a road. A double rut of loose shingle, and thistles growing up the middle hump. Ramshackle wire fences drooped on either side, almost overpowered by weeds.

"Kerewin says we're nearly there, sleepyhead," and the child yawns, and sits up in his lap.

There is a clump of macrocarpa shadowing the next bend in the ruts. A small neat house stands to the left, and two old dog kennels under the shade of the trees, with a cattlebeast skull between them.