Kokopu Dreams by Chris Baker Page B

hiss and a cloud of steam. The attack stopped instantly. The two men looked around. A huge dark shape snorted, shook its head with a jangle of harness, and went back to its munching. They looked at each other, then at the seven or eight dead dogs lying at their feet. Sean grinned. Curried dog.
    Hamu wasn’t going to wait for curry. They built the fire up again and, by its light, Sean cut a hind leg off the black Lab that Hamu had been fighting. He took it off into the long grass on the other side of the fire, growling as loud as his messy mouthful would allow.
    â€˜I’d prefer a Big Mac and fries,’ Sean said, already started on the other leg. ‘But let’s not get too fussy.’
    The dog looked to be middle-aged and, being warm and soft, didn’t butcher as easily as a sheep hung overnight, but they weren’t talking cordon bleu. They weren’t even talking Gordon Brown. Sean diced the meat, complete with bits of grass and foreign bodies, mostly obscured in the flickering light. They fried the meat in oil with plenty of salt and curry powder and let it stew in whisky. While it was cooking, Matapihi cleaned Sean’s leg with whisky, smeared on some antiseptic cream and bandaged it. He was as fussy as Marie about infection and had some cheerful words to say about gangrene and radical surgery with a panel saw. They drank whisky with the curried dog.
    â€˜Useful stuff, this,’ said Matapihi, holding up the bottle. ‘Wounds and cooking.’ He tried some more of the curried dog. ‘This is really horrible.’ He screwed up his face. ‘I’d better have another plateful.’ He finished and wiped his tin plate clean with a handful of grass. Sean did the same before they sat back with the last of the whisky.
    â€˜You can tell me your story and I’ll tell you mine,’ Matapihi said.
    So Sean told him about Te Rina and the kids and life at Pukepoto, the stone walls, the eels in the creek, the patch of taro and the bags of kanga wai below the puna.
    â€˜We had running water,’ Sean told him. ‘Run down the hill and get it.’ A little eel had lived in the puna. It kept the water clean and sweet.
    â€˜Every bath night I had to cart a dozen jerrycans of water up the hill. I had to do it again on washing days.’ Sean drifted back into memories of Te Rina and the kids. Matapihi spoke very gently.
    â€˜What happened after they were gone?’
    â€˜Hard times, bro. But I guess we were lucky. A group of us made ourselves at home on the high-school marae.’
    â€˜How come you left?’ Sean looked at Matapihi. Maybe he’d understand.
    â€˜I had a dream,’ he said. ‘A taniwha told me to go.’ Matapihi didn’t seem surprised, but he’d been embarrassed when Sean mentioned the Fever. Before Sean could ask him why, Matapihi started on his own story.
    Matapihi had been living on the coast, out from Waipoua Forest, near a place called Kawerua. Sean had dived in the lagoon there, for kina and lobster. He’d been aware of a settlement on the fringe of the forest, nestled in the coastal scrub, avoided and feared by everyone he knew, north and south of the forest.
    Matapihi lived there for a year after he’d been patched up. The people there gave him his moko, designs he’d never seen before, telling him he was now marked as belonging to them. And never mind the modern needles. They’d used the old method, chiselling the skin and rubbing in pigment so his face looked carved. He’d never known pain like it, he said.
    â€˜What about the Fever?’ Sean asked him. ‘Wasn’t that pain just as bad?’ Matapihi looked away.
    â€˜I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get sick and nor did anyone else in the kainga.’
    Sean nearly dropped the whisky bottle in surprise. ‘What do you mean, "nobody got sick"?’
    â€˜And that’s not all,’ Matapihi continued.