Keri Hulme - The Bone People

It is good for gutting, skinning, slicing, chopping, ripping, and killing.

A knife with an edge keen enough for whittling, rugged enough to hack through bone. Kerewin asked, "So where is it?"

She got very angry when he continued to deny he had it.

"I know where all my gear is, at all times. I know what's gone missing from here, and a lot has, boyo. From paperclips to cowries and a helluva stack of smokes somewhere between. I don't give a damn about them but I want my knife back. Get it, and I forget about all the other stuff, okay?"

What knife?

It is a peculiar feeling, sick to the stomach, with the dead Binny Daniels floating in and out of view, flies humming over him in a black racing cloud, a peculiar feeling trying to be angry. To pretend to be angry. It is necessary to be angry. He threw a punch at her, a neat punch sent overhand into the triangle between the wings of her ribs.

He had forgotten how fast she could move.

It was a hard hit to get back, in the centre of his chest. He buckled to the floor and Binny Daniels went flying into a thousand separate pieces, each loaded with a cargo of wildly buzzing flies.

When he got to his feet, she was standing just as she had finished the blow, eyes wide, one hand still balled in a fist.

He staggered over, a hand on the numbness, the other fisted, and went to hit her again. She slid easily to one side yelling "Simon." High and echoy and shocked. "Simon!"

He tried twice more, and each time she ducked.

So he'd turned fast as possible and before she guessed what he was going to do, kicked in the belly of her amber guitar, lying there by the window.

The room became deathly still.

Huge pale blisters rose and spread under the varnish. The wood was smashed but the strings hung free, still humming in the air.

Binny Daniels and the flies zoom back together.

Kerewin said, "Get out."

Her voice trembled.

Her hands trembled.

He can. see them still. Trembling to get hold of any part of him that can feel a hurt, and wreak vengeance on him.

She puts them behind her back.

"Get out."

He stayed as long as he could, but the shaking that envelopes her is frightening.

Besides, Binny Daniels and his retinue of flies has practically come into the Tower now. He left.

There was a group of men in Binny Daniel's garden, talking in low guarded voices.

They've put a blanket over the twisted old body. "Jesus," says one, "get that kid away from here." The flies are everywhere, in high hungry clouds.

It was nearly dark.

There was nobody in the street.

Just the long line of shop windows, their glass faces bright with the metalling of the dying sun.

He started on the left side, doing one at a time, and he had nearly finished them all, up the street and back down the other side, when the hand closed on his shoulder, and the other hand wrenched the brick from his fists.

It was Constable Morrison.

He said,

"You've done it, Gillayley. This time you've really done it. Christ, what a mess."

Holding both his bleeding hands together in one hand. Saying under his breath, looking down, eyes in the shadow of his helmet rim, "Christ, what a mess."

It didn't sound like he meant all the smashed windows, or the glass all over the street.

The constables stayed talking to Joe for a long time.

Joe held the top of his arm, tightly. After a while, he couldn't think of anything else except the bite of the fingers, and he lost the thread of the conversation.

The police said,

"He's too young to prosecute, Joe, but it's about time something got done."

The police said,

"There's already a complaint laid with Welfare that he's not receiving proper care and attention. That he's not under proper control."

"Who's laid that? Kerewin Holmes?"

Constable Morrison coughed. "They can't say who lays complaints and nor can we. But it wasn't your lady, Joe."

The police said,

"You'll probably get sued by the shop owners, or their insurance people. He's smashed in nearly all the fronts along Whitau Street. About thirty all told. Plate glass."

Constable Morrison said,

"You better take him to, Lachlan isn't it? Yeah, well get him along there tonight. Constable Murray taped his hands up at the station as best she could, but they're badly cut."

The constable reached down and touched him on the face, a tap, gentle. "Why'd you do it?"

Joe shook him. "Answer."

Constable Morrison took away his hand. "Well, we'll find out one way or the other, you know. Joe, go easy on him. There's more to this than meets the eye."

The talk went on.

In the end, the constables went back to the car.

The top of his arm ached intensely when Joe released him.

Joe said,

"Get inside."

He stamps back and forth, three steps one way, three steps the other.

"I thought you had gone to Kerewin's. I hoped you had, even though you were told not to. Where did you go?"

Forward.

"Being sullen won't get you anywhere. Answer me." Back.

"Answer me." Forward.

"All right, I'll have to ring Kerewin. A promise is a promise." Back.

"You know what that means." Forward.

"What did you do it for?" Back.

"Answer me." Forward.

"Answer me." Back.

"ANSWER ME!" Forward, away to the door, raging.

"Get your shirt off," as he goes.

The door slammed.

He took off his shirt. And his T-shirt underneath. And he took the glass splinter from his back jeans pocket. It came from the first window smashed: it is triangular, three inches long, and searingly sharp. Good as a knife. He has cut himself on it once already. He tucks it into the loose folds of bandage over his left palm, and keeps the hand stiff.

It is cold in the kitchen, even though the heater is hissing away.

There's a fly buzzing over by Bill's cage.

His hands feel as if they're burning. There is a welt already on the top of his arm, from the grip of Joe's fingers.

The door opens.

Joe beckons him out while he says into the phone, "You tell him that, e hoa, not me."

The phone was awkward to hold. He couldn't keep a proper grip on it. It kept sliding down so the listening end moved away from his ear. It is startlingly black against the white bandages.

Kerewin says,

"Are you listening, bloody Gillayley? Do you know what I think of you?"

Her voice is strange. It rasps; it grates; it abrades. She can't touch him physically so she is beating him with her voice. What she says drums through his head, resounding in waves as though his head were hollow, and the words bound back from one side to smash against the other.

She has finished having anything to do with him. she hates him. She loathes every particle of his being.

he know what that guitar meant to her?

he know what her knife meant to her?

he know what he had wrecked?

hopes his father knocks him sillier than he is now.

She has every sympathy for his father.

She didn't realise what a vicious little reptile he had to endure.

He choked.

Joe took the phone out of his hands almost gently.

He smiled a tight lean lipped smile.

"I think he got the message, e hoa."

The sickness in the pit of his stomach increases. He hasn't stopped feeling sick since he opened Binny's gate. The cold increases, except round his hands. They're glowing.

"No," Joe says, "I won't overdo it. And thanks very much for the offer. I've got a bit put away, but it won't cover this lot. Thank you very much for the offer but… get in there, you."

Joe kicked the door shut behind him.

The echo took a long time to die away.

His head is starting to buzz, to hum, as though somehow the flies have finally found a way in.

When Joe comes back into the kitchen, he is carrying his belt by the leather end. The buckle glints as it swings just above the floor.