Tania slammed the door shut on the bastard's back. That broad muscular back sporting his beloved SAMOA tattoo. She rushed to the window, drawn to him even now, as a sudden hush rippled through the surrounding apartments full of students awakening from last night. An expectant hush, anticipating the scream of insults, the smash and tinkle of things thrown…shards of a Saturday night becoming Sunday.
She watched as he ducked his big blond head to exit from the entrance way below. He paused amid the weekend detritus of beer bottles and slimy used condoms, cupped those huge hands to light a cigarette. She bitterly admired the set of his shoulders and lean waist, that fighter's quickness of head and eye; that physical power, which besides his broad nose, (and his tatts), was the only clue to Samoan blood. The students started up once more, disappointed, and she watched as he crossed the street to his battered red Toyota.
Wolf caught her by surprise as he turned and scanned with trained, cold-blue eyes and she froze behind the sliver of open curtain until he sat into the car, fiddled a brief moment with something from his pocket, then drove away up the street – gone upon his mysterious journey. A shiver ran through her body, for she knew the darkness he could return to, what he was capable of, and she ran to the double bed in one corner of their poky apartment and threw herself upon it. Through thin walls she could hear the muffled thumps and shouts of the students perhaps enjoying some hair of last night's dog; but thumps and shouts can have a darker side, and noises behind walls had once been footsteps in a hallway, the push of a bedroom door that sucked the breath from her shaking young body…their shaking young bodies. And she wept, because the man she had chosen to protect her was leaving once again.
Wolf lit his cigarette and gazed round slowly at an insipid Dunedin morning, sensing no menace. Here there would be no tell-tale flash of sun catching gun sight, nor the sudden silence of the jungle in that moment of death; not here in this broken stone block of Scotland rebuilt in New Zealand's deep south. He spat the day's first taste of cigarette into the rubbish at his feet and crossed the street. Reaching his car he turned and glanced up at a second-storey window in the squat grey block those smart-arse students named Lubyanka. He scanned in the way of a man whose life, and the lives of others, once depended on alertness, but the window was silent; behind that window was Tania, his sweet Maori girl, his brown sugar…and for just a brief moment, his heart ached. His eyes flashed at a quick flicker of curtain – did he see her face? But he shuddered and turned away. There could be no going back.
He sensed his old life was dead. His comfortable life in this quiet, mostly white city where almost no-one could challenge him physically. Where he could get on with forgetting about cradling Benny's broken head, the blood gushing by some foreign waterfall…until twenty-four hours ago when Lin had rung.
'Wolf? It's Lin.' Her voice, as always, warm and soft. 'Can you speak?'
'Lin babe, of course. Tarn's not here if that's what you mean. Wassup sis?'
She was silent a moment then, very quietly, 'I know what happened in Timor.' He felt two emotions together savaging his guts – one he'd known only that once before in his life, cold fear; the other an old companion, burning anger.
'Lin – what the fuck –'
'Wolf, don't try to bully me. I know what happened.'
Could she? Could she know everything? 'I'll come and see you…are you still –'
'In Nelson. You should know – I've sent enough cards.'
'It might take some time sis – I'll have to sort it with Tania.'
'I'm not going anywhere brother. And Wolf – bring me Benny's letter.'
He sat into the little car which groaned downwards under his weight, pulled a wallet out of his back pocket and fiddled awkwardly with thick fingers to retrieve two letters inside of it, one covered with bloody fingerprints, the other with little yellow butterflies, replaced both into his wallet and laid it in the glovebox. He thought then of his mother, Pepe, sender of butterflies, so very far away…and drove off with no backward glance, heading south for the highway into the distant haze of the heartland.
Pepe turned her face into the warm dawn breeze blowing in from the Samoan sea; behind her roosters were crowing to the wakening village. It was her secret, this warm breath of the Pacific Ocean that sighed over the waves breaking on the coral reef. She had always been alone here at this time, before the sun arose to cook the day; even so long ago when she had turned a younger, happier face toward the sea. Now as the breeze teased and licked her copper-brown hair she sensed change approaching, a slight dread in her belly as if the wind were trying to warn her of danger. She had felt it nearly twenty years earlier, before Hurricane Ofa had torn into her village with enormous waves which ripped up the coral beds of the lagoon, ripped up the road and the beach, and shredded the coconut palms for miles inland. She shivered slightly, lifted up the polished bone necklace she had worn almost forty years and kissed it, then stood and began to walk back to the village.
'Pepe, Pepe,' the children called as she returned, scuffing her bare toes in soft sand still cool from the night. Her secret dawn breeze had retreated into the ocean and her sense of foreboding eased – she was surrounded here by so much that was safe and enduring. For more than 2000 years her village had changed little. In the paranoid hustle of the modern world, Savaii, heart of Polynesia, was a faithful constant in her life. And yet….
'Pepe, Pepe.' The children called and she looked up to see dark clouds sweeping in over the mountain. Her dear friend, Pasifika the boxer, stood watching her with his fierce eyes from the steps of the church; the grizzled old fighter was sweeping the grounds before worshippers arrived. It was his self-appointed chore, despite the breeze quickly re-scattering the debris about him. Men…she smiled sadly to herself. Around her the children laughed and danced as the approaching edge of the rain pockmarked the sand, and she knew the torrents of the mountainous interior would soon be rushing headlong over the waterfall and on to the sea, like a lover into the arms of her beloved. She recalled a time when she and Steven had been lovers here, and quietly whispered as the children danced:
I hear you now in the rushing river, I smell you in the jungle steam. I taste you in the warm sea wind of the Savaii dawn…I feel you swimming in the ocean of my heart.
Steven sat upright in a room still barricaded from the late morning sun. This night, like every night now, he had awoken in a scream that spewed the previous day's poison out into the dark world; another dead day regurgitated into the blackness. He moved painfully to sit on the edge of the bed, then stood up to draw the curtains open, feeling only fear and revulsion at the flood of sunlight. His stomach ached with knowing what the day would bring: loneliness, bitterness, regret. And later in the day, when even the warming haze of red wine would fail once again in its promise of oblivion, he would weep for loved ones who were dead or far away. His ice-cold princess, Lara, and grandson Jonny, living far away in Australia, his war-like son Wolf and shy, smiling Benny, his life so cruelly wasted in some Indonesian shit-hole. Pepe, always, dark and gentle Pepe, his only love. And Lin…. He shuddered.
Yet tomorrow would be different, a sharper pang of fear reminded him. Tomorrow for the first time he would tell someone. Tell someone that his life was lived under rocks and in caves of his own making, that every night he awoke in a scream and every day he longed to find the guts to end it all. As he limped to the kitchen to unearth a cup he caught a quick glance at himself in a hall-way mirror – average height, average build, fair hair dulling to grey as fifty-eight approached. He smiled wanly – he was just a very average person…. But then, do average people do what he had done?
Wolf hit Alexandra close to noon. It was one of those days where the sun bakes the bare brown hills which in turn bake the little town hunkered in their heat waves, and the people endure the heat knowing that when night falls the brown hills will crack open and spew it away into the vast black sky.
'Hot day,' he nodded to the woman behind an espresso machine. He noticed she looked red-faced from the heat or blood pressure, or…maybe she'd just got hot at the sight of his six feet four inches of muscle. 'Flat white, two sugars please love.' He liked four sugars but was embarrassed to ask for them – tough guys shouldn't need sweet.
'Hot enough,' she flustered, frothing coffee with steam and milk. 'Going far?'
Her eyes looked slightly piggy because her face was puffed up from the heat, slowly cooking in the little inland town. Her helplessness hit him in a wave and he choked back the flippant thought, Far as you'll let me honey.
'Arrowtown.' He handed over a five dollar note.
'It'll be lovely now,' she crinkled her eyes at him, perhaps hoping that he might be that rare creature in her life, a man with gentleness towards women. 'You know, with the trees coming out of winter, the spring and all…I spent some time there once,' she said wistfully.
'I've got to catch up with somebody there,' he confided to her. 'An old army buddy.'
'Oh?' Her eyes lit up. So many ladies loved a soldier.
'Yeah. We got quite a bit of catching up to do, me and ol' Bruce.' And he would catch that bastard, one way or another….
'You should be there in a couple of hours or so – road's quiet today.'
He took the lid off his coffee, began to drink it there with her. 'Might stay in Queenstown tonight. Go on to Arrowtown in the morning.'
'Queenstown is so gorgeous,' she sighed.
'You get there often?'
'Now and then…first time was on my honeymoon…seems a long time ago now.' She stared out a small window, through cobwebs to the hot brown hills.
Never one to waste time on food he finished his coffee, made the signs that said he was leaving.
'Hope you have a nice trip,' she said.
'Yeah. You have a nice day too.'
'I'll try to.' She looked less swollen and flustered now. 'Goodbye.'
'See you on my way back perhaps.' He walked for the door and opened it to a visible heat wave which rippled towards him from the bare hills and slapped him in the face….
Crack! Crack! The second and third shots whiplash past his head as he hits the ground rolling, the peppery-sweet scent of bamboo mould in his nostrils. He gains some cover behind a small mound – anthill? Termite? Crack! He realizes he is screaming the drill 'Contact front! Man down!' In slow-motion time he sees the Alpha machine-gun crew make good cover to his right, it is Bruce and Benny, and Bruce's face is screaming at him to give the range and indication: 'RIT! Wolf! Give us the fucking RIT!'
He has seen no muzzle flashes, he just knows they have that high ground. Crack! The air by his head is warped by a round burning through too close, too close, leaves and dirt kick up into his eyes and face from rounds that have found the range. He should fire off tracer but must keep down, screams above the noise 'Two hundred metres!! Immediate front on the high ground!!' Close to his ear a ripping burst rip – rip—rip as Bruce and Benny fire off the gimpy machinegun, the tracers arch gracefully onto the little hill and it explodes into splintering bamboo and puffs of earth as the heavy slugs flail the target. Voice screams from behind – 'Grenadiers use forty mill!'
Wolf opens the grenade-launcher attached beneath his Steyr rifle, loads a gold-nosed grenade from his vest pocket, aims fires – Thonk! Sharp smell of burnt charge, ejects spent case, it burns hot on his wrist as it drops, reloads. Thonk! Thonk! to his left it is the dull metallic thump of someone else firing a grenade-launcher, it's Tai, the Bravo 2 gunner going for it, white teeth flashing he's laughing the big crazy Tongan he's fucking laughing, face made skull-like by his broken nose. The high ground is now a storm of steel and bamboo splinters, the flash and bang of grenades bursting Bang! Bang! Fucking beauty Tai right on target, eat that you little bastards. Then Crack! Crack! Close, too close. A ripping burst in his ear, Benny calmly firing off the gimpy, Bruce sighting through bino's, but this is coming from that hill, a fast ripping burst, and leaves and dirt sting into his face – the arseholes have a machine gun firing from high ground and he can tell from the sound it's a fast-firing Minimi. Him and Tai have used up all their grenades and Tai begins firing his Steyr, he has it on auto and the whole mag fires off in a quick burst the crazy bastard. How many of them are up there?? He's mad angry now, really fucking mad. Corporal screams 'Throw smoke!'
He takes a smoke grenade from the outside pouch of his ammo vest, fires. Grenades curve out, gush rich purple smoke that billows like a theatre curtain in the air. 'Prepare to withdraw!'
Say what? Say fucking what? And leave Tyson? Leave poor fucking Tyson?
'I said withdraw!'
Bruce and Benny look at him their eyes huge and black with adrenaline, faces fixed tight in war grins.
'Let's go Wolf!' Benny heaves up the machine gun, careful of the red-hot barrel still smoking, begins to scamper.
Corporal, shouting at Wolf. 'Wolf I fucking mean it! Withdraw!' Zip, zip, rounds are finding their way through the curtain of smoke. 'Now!'
He leaps up, the Steyr a plastic toy in his huge hands – stops and turns to take a last long look towards Tyson's body.
'Wolf!' It's Benny shouting, his face twisted in fear. 'Wolf!'
Then there was only the shimmering haze, the jungle, the men trudging in a stunned sullen silence….and that heat wave slapping out of the bush, off the grass and out of those bare brown hills….
'So how's the coffee here pal?' asked a pink-faced traveler shaking off the stiffness of long hours in a car.
Wolf slowly focused on the man, seeing no-one he really wanted to converse with. 'OK,' he grunted and carried on to his car. There was a way to go yet, to drive out of these dry brown hills and into the lakes and mountains of the heartland. He was aware of Pink-face staring after him as if he thought he was an arsehole, but it didn't bother him because he didn't like the people down here much. They were either tourists or South Islanders, and both usually gave him the shits. He gunned the little Toyota and it blasted a puff of blue smoke into the heat haze of the main highway west, heading out of the barren lands and into the mountains.
