Kokopu Dreams by Chris Baker

pieces and watercress — a huge improvement on soggy Gingernuts. Graeme, the cook, had been running a health shop and restaurant that had been steadily losing money. He’d lost a wife and three young children and he too had the air of somebody waiting to wake up from a bad dream.
    Merenia, the woman who led the group, impressed Sean. In her mid-thirties, she was alert and aware of everyone, moving among the people, a word here, a casual caress there. She was obviously used to maintaining harmony in a large family. She didn’t take to Sean. Every time he saw her looking at him she seemed annoyed.
    â€˜I suppose you’re taking Matapihi away,’ she said eventually.
    â€˜He’s going home,’ Sean said. ‘Nothing to do with me. I’m just travelling with him.’ She gave Sean a long, hard look.
    â€˜You’ve got something on you,’ she told him.
    â€˜Nothing a hot bath wouldn’t fix,’ he countered.
    â€˜I don’t believe you. But that’s your business. Just don’t leave anything here.’
    Graeme was listening to their conversation and so was a young blonde man, tanned like a surfer. They both looked mystified. Merenia ignored them while she stared at Sean.
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be gone in the morning,’ and thinking to allay her fears even further, ‘I’ve got no business in these parts anyway.’
    The statement seemed to satisfy her, even if it left the others puzzled. Sean wondered too. What was it with him? What peculiar mark was he carrying? Merenia obviously had te matakite and Sean’s experiences with both Cally and Auntie Mihi had left something with him that had disturbed her. Or maybe it was the manaia he was wearing under his swanny. He simply didn’t know, and he realised there’d be times when he’d have to get tricky and pretend to know more than he did. He thought of the old poem about drinking deep or touching not the waters of the spring of knowledge. He thought too of the possibility of running into people who might see him as a threat. Would they turn him inside out, defending themselves from something he wasn’t even aware of?
    Matapihi rescued him. He joined their group and deflected all the attention by thanking Merenia for her hospitality and wishing her every success in the future. It felt like Sean’s last night at Ngahere all over again, except this time it wasn’t him in the frame. They were in the lounge bar, a bilious black, orange and green carpet underfoot and a faint smell of cigarettes and spilt beer still clinging to the furnishings. Somebody was playing the Bee Gees on a boombox. Sean wondered how long the batteries would last.
    They slept that night on the bar floor, Bojay grazing in a paddock out the back and Hamu inside at Sean’s feet.
    In the morning he tried to be invisible while Matapihi said his farewells to the assembled company. They looked very vulnerable to Sean, a small group of people facing a most uncertain future. He told them they’d be welcome at Ngahere, if they felt like making the journey, and was surprised to see relief on several faces.
    â€˜I mean it,’ he told them. ‘They’ll be glad of the extra people,’ and then, no idea why, he spoke to Merenia. ‘Look out for a guy called Jim,’ he said, thinking of rocks and hard places. ‘Say gidday to him for me.’
    Just south of the township was a patch of road where the surface was disintegrating even quicker than elsewhere.
    â€˜C’mon, cuz,’ Sean said to Matapihi. ‘This place gives me the creeps.’
    â€˜I’m not surprised. Hongi killed a lot of people around here. Ate some, took some for slaves. I don’t like it either. Some of them are my bones.’
    All was quiet as they rode through Wellsford a few kilometres further south. Sean remembered late-night stops halfway home from Auckland, a brick toilet