Witi Ihimaera - Bulibasha

Pancho Villa was still alive. Huge blowflies were buzzing and maggots were already hatching in the dark stomach wound.

‘I think my right leg is broken,’ Dad said.

We set his leg with two branches and bound it tightly. Even so, he screamed and lost consciousness when we levered him out from under Pancho Villa.

‘We only have two horses,’ I said to Mum. ‘We’ll strap Dad onto my horse. You take him back to Waituhi. It’s too dangerous for the three of us to cross the river together.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll come back for you tomorrow,’ she said.

Just as they were leaving, my father’s eyes flickered. His lips were quivering.

‘I couldn’t reach the —’ He motioned to the rifle, still in its pouch, strapped to Pancho Villa’s flank. ‘Thank you, son,’ he said.

He had loved Pancho Villa.

I watched until Mum had forded the river safely, pulling Dad’s horse after her. On the other side my father motioned Mum to stop, as if he was waiting for something.

I went down to Pancho Villa, put the rifle to his head and pulled the trigger. The sound echoed around the hills.

My father’s leg was fractured in three places. The doctor put a plaster cast on it to help the bone to knit, but Dad was worried about finishing the scrubcutting. We needed the money.

‘I’ll have to hand the job over to Pani,’ he said. ‘We’ll share the contract money with him.’ He and Mum were whispering in the bedroom.

‘How many more weeks before the job’s finished?’ Mum asked.

Faith and Hope, followed by Glory, came to join me and listened through the wall.

‘Three weeks, might be four.’

‘Then I’ll do it,’ Mum said. ‘I’m as good as you at scrubcutting. Four weeks is not long.’

‘Kaore,’ Dad answered. They began to argue.

Glory looked at me: Do something. I knew what she had in mind.

I took my sisters by the hand and we knocked on Mum and Dad’s bedroom door.

‘You should all be in bed,’ Mum growled.

‘Dad,’ I said, ‘there’s no need for you to get Pani to do the work or for Mum to go out there for four weeks by herself —’

‘Were you kids listening?’ Mum asked, irritated.

‘Do you think you can handle the milking?’ I asked Dad.

‘Ae,’ he nodded.

‘Then Mum and I will finish the scrubcutting together. Faith and Hope will take on her chores in the homestead. Together Mum and I should get the job done in half the time.’

‘What about your schooling?’ Dad asked.

‘I’ll only miss two weeks —’ Glory jabbed me. ‘Oh yes, and so will Glory. She wants to come with us.’

‘Why?’

Glory was offended. What a silly question. ‘I can cut scrub too,’ she said.

The next morning Mum, Glory and I saddled up and headed into the back country. Dad said a prayer for us before we left. He was finding it difficult to let us go. All his life he had been the one to go out to work and now he was watching us take his place.

‘The only reason why Glory wants to go,’ Faith said, ‘is to get a rest from the cows!’

Glory poked her tongue out.

‘Look after your mother and your sister, son,’ Dad said.

‘We’ll send Glory back in the weekend for stores.’

We left, moving quickly through the morning glow, over the hills, past the lake, climbing higher and higher. Just before we turned the bend which would obscure the homestead, Glory turned and called –

‘Bye —’

Her voice echoed around the hills. It was just like the closing scene in Shane .

I wish I could say that the weather improved, but it worsened. Every morning we woke at six to face another day of rain. Cutting scrub was hard enough at the best of times, but working in the rain was many times worse. Mum was disheartened, but –

‘Time to start, son,’ she said.

We left Glory to make breakfast while we started on the scrub. Glory was always good at making a fire with only one match. We worked till eight, my mother always a little ahead of me. She was good at cutting scrub, and I remember how Dad often complained about her speed. He sometimes accidentally on purpose forgot to sharpen her slasher, just to slow her down. Glory brought us our breakfast — a billy of cocoa, fried bread and porridge — riding across the river with the food packed safely in the saddlebags. She stayed to help us until midday — and she was good too! But I can remember how Mum’s lips trembled when, one day, she saw that Glory’s hands were blistered and raw. At midday, Glory returned to the lean-to to make our lunch — usually mashed potatoes, pumpkin and sausages. Then back she would come, joining us until we stopped at four. By that time, sweat and rain had made us sodden.

My mother never liked riding back in the dark. She never liked camping out overnight either — a canvas tent was no protection from kehuas, not to mention Dracula. At nights, after dinner and sharpening our slashers for the next day’s work, Mum was always in a hurry to put out the kerosene lamp so Dracula would have a hard time finding us.

Even though we were separated from our father and sister, Glory still kept up her usual custom of calling out –

‘’Night Dad, ’night Mum, ’night Faith, ’night Hope, ’night Simeon.’

‘Goodnight Glory,’ I answered.

The first weekend, just as Glory was saddling up to go back to Waituhi, we heard a voice shouting. ‘Huria! Himiona!’

Coming up the hill to us was Grandmother Ramona. She had brought our stores, her sleeping gear and another slasher.

‘More hands will do the job quicker,’ she said. ‘My bees are all nice and warm inside their hives and don’t need me, and your grandfather is driving me around the bend with his being at home all the time.’

Grandmother Ramona brought kinder weather — a break in the rain. During that respite the earth warmed, the scrub dried out and became easier to cut. Although the work was hard, we established a rhythm which somehow heightened my senses to all that was happening: moments of beauty and humour as we worked together, epiphanies of illumination –

Glory, learning how to cut scrub left-handed because her right hand was swollen. Grandmother losing her footing, and laughing as she slipped and slid on her bum all the way to the bottom of the hill. My mother working ahead of us, never stopping to rest. Most of all, I remember three generations of women bending and chopping through the scrub, the steam curling off their workclothes as they ascended the hills. They wore wide-brimmed hats to stop either sun or rain from getting into their eyes, and layers of clothes to keep in their body warmth. On their legs, knee-high gumboots.

‘We’re your three women,’ Grandmother said to me one day at smoko. ‘Eh girls? We’re all Simeon’s women.’

I have never felt so proud.

Eight days after we had left Waituhi, we were finished. I put a match to the cut scrub. Whoomph and it burst into flame, bonfires of celebration. Then –

‘Me haere tatou ki te wa kainga,’ I said.

Time to go home.

Mum, Glory, Grandmother and I were glad to come down from the back country and see the smoke from the chimneys of Waituhi. Grandmother, despite her earlier reassurances, was worrying about her bees and decided to detour to her land. Mum, Glory and I continued along the gully which would take us to the homestead.

‘Simeon,’ Mum said, ‘let Dad know we’re on our way home.’

I lifted the rifle to the sky and let out two shots. The sharp reports surprised the air. When we reached the bend, pulling the packhorse after us, there was the Waipaoa River in the distance — and Dad and our sisters were racing across the paddocks to meet us. Our father was waving and yelling like a madman.