Tom Murphy Chapter 12

That's hard country alright. It will freeze your balls off!
said Hone.

A dawn mist hung over the pa. The far-off mountains were wreathed in slivers of September snow. I had met Hone at the long drop. With my right hand I had gestured to Hone the final stages of our journey. We would trek up the river valley on to the plateau. When we reached the first magic mountain, we would seek a way to climb it.

Gustav and I had spent the night after the picnic in the whare of Hone's family. We had eaten eel and garnishments from a giant black pot that had been stirred by a small child over the open fire place. Weekly News pages were plastered over the cracked walls. Cooking utensils cluttered the fire place. The family huddled around the fire, and shawled women gave sharp orders between puffs from their pipes. After we had eaten, we lay snuggled up together under blankets on a hard earth floor.

You can't go now. The land is too cold, said Hone.

We have made up our minds, I said.

You will die.

We don't care.

Take some rugs and raincoats. You can leave them at your father's house.

No, no. We'll be alright.

You take them! What kai do you have?

We have pies and sandwiches. We find berries on the way.

You take kereru.

I could see he was going to use his man's strength over us. I knew he would be right in his ministrations for us. I did not fear he would stop us going at all. In those times, no coloured person would detain white people, even if they were only white boys.

We returned to the whare. There was a big fuss taking place. Gustav was standing outside the door and gesticulating in his furious way. A girl inside was sulkily denying his accusations.

How dare you hitch down my trousers when I was asleep?
shouted Gustav. His face was as red as a beetroot.
Mrs Potiphar! stormed Gustav as a final insult.

Mrs Potiphar, I thought, had rather given herself away. Her bloomers had been hastily hitched up.

Tom, we are leaving at once, ordered Gustav.

Gustav's reaction did not surprise me. I had long known that Gustav could only love women in the purest most spiritual way. Any kind of physical touch from a female other than his sister he recoiled from, as if it would disease him.

I sensed after that scandal it was time to leave. Hone fetched the clothing and a tin of potted meat. We slipped out of the pa and it began to rain again. We stopped and gratefully put on the raincoats.

Two days later, huddled in our rugs and raincoats with the high meat growling in our stomachs, we saw the horses.

The bush had melted away into a barren stony landscape. Only an occasional hare and rabbit had stared at us intruders in astonishment, and then had loped away. We had ascended a small stony hill and had entered that cold wet perfumed valley.

They took our breath away and gave us cold chills these snorting, quivering wild creatures. We crouched behind the tall grasses and watched them. They were earth beings in perfect natural solitude. The stallion tossed back his mane, pricked his ears and snorted. It was a sound that echoed throughout the valley and the distant rocks. For a moment as if battle between man and horse was imminent, we all froze.

Then the mares and their young foals wheeled away as if out of spear throw. The stallion retreated with his harem. Then when the foals had been sent to the back of the colony and an old mare positioned herself at the front to watch over us, the stallion paraded his regal form before us. We waited until they had resumed browsing. Then we moved forward again.

On cue, the horses moved ahead but this time it was a leisurely canter. Between man and horse a bond of mutual curiosity lasted throughout the day. We followed the stallion. Neither man nor horse could keep their eyes and attention from each other. By the end of the day, I secretly believed he would have let us mount him. The white marking down the stallion's nose shone in the cold midday air as dazzling as the newly fallen mountain snow above us.

The tussock grass of the valley glowed in a changing mosaic of yellow and golds under the waxing and waning lights of the day. Thereupon, in evening fall, the magic mountain broke out in red glory.

I said to Gustav that we should take shelter for the night. Gustav, as if transfixed, pointed to the mountain.

We will go on until the mountain forbids us, he said in a hushed and reverential tone.

I knew this was foolish. I had heard too many stories from Dad about his search parties for foolish townie trampers. But I knew I had to go on or lose Gustav perhaps for ever.

As the landscape darkened, even the horses and the other wild creatures slipped away to their rest. We, so called cleverest of all species, stumbled on into a rocky desolate plateau. I felt as if I had already ascended the mountain peak. I felt strangely light headed and exhilarated.

We no longer belong to this bothersome earth. We are already close to the heavens, I heard my friend whisper to me.

Then he stood on a stony platform and surveyed all around him. I climbed up beside him. In the luscious moonlight we could see shapes and shadows to the far ends of these wild lands. Our adult adversaries seemed pitiful monsters indeed in this grand landscape.

We sat ourselves down and chewed through some dry bread we found in our knapsacks. When we looked up again, black clouds were scurrying across the sky. Mist was falling. This change was as rapid as though it was a new scene in a Hollywood epic.

The wind was springing up. It whipped the mist into giant fluttering shrouds. The icy liquid air stung and froze our faces. I was becoming increasingly anxious about our safety. I glanced at Gustav. His face was shining and his eyes were as sleepy and contented as if Mummy was tucking him in bed for the night. I concluded he had led me again into a mad adventure and had no clue at all that we were now in real danger. I cussed him silently under my breath and set out to take charge and rescue ourselves.

Now the storm was in earnest. Lightening flashed. The thunder rolled around the plateau and then hammered at our feet. We were now freezing even inside our rugs and coats. I grabbed Gustav's arm and we began to run back down the plateau to the valley.

The stones jarred and cut into our broken down shoes and into our feet. We could not outrun the storm. The first drops splattered down our necks. Then down it descended on us in torrents of water from black clouds that seemed to hang over the rocky mounds. We were now sodden and dripping with water. We ran with the pure abandon of feral beasts in flight.

In the blotter blackness there was no direction we could navigate by, no shelter we could find to take refuge. I glanced at Gustav. To my further annoyance with him, his water splashed face was radiating a happiness I had never seen since the Prods in holy song. Then I spotted under a grove of kanuka trees a little hut.

I knocked on the door and there was no reply. I turned the handle and it opened. We groped through the darkness until my hand touched a kerosene lamp hanging from the rafters. I rummaged through my knapsack and found a dry matchbox. I set a burning match to the lamp. A welcoming flame glowed and grew and the interior slowly lit up into a homely light. This hut had floor boards, sturdy weatherboarding and a bunk!

It flashed through my mind that we were trespassing again. But I was too exhausted and frozen to worry. Gustav took off his shoes and jacket. I remembered how easily Gustav caught chills. I had had an older brother who had stayed out all night in the wet and had died of pneumonia. I pulled off the top grey blanket. I sternly told him to take off all his clothes and lie on the bunk. Under the flickering light, he quietly stripped off his sodden dripping garments.

I felt a pang of envy and and a mysterious thumping in my chest as his lithe body stripped bare before me. His whiskered sallow cheeks glowed a little in the flickering lights as he lay himself on the lower blanket. I wrapped the upper blanket tightly over him. I found in a corner a canvas under a heap of kitchen utensils. I pulled that out and wrapped it over my friend as an eiderdown. Then I too stripped off my clothing. I kept my back to him as I stripped, but I had to turn around as I walked up to his bed. He smiled in a kind, a little surprised, condescending way as I with a pained smile walked to the bed and slid in beside him.

I let him nestle up beside me and spread an arm around my shoulders. Then I promptly fell asleep snug from the drumming rain, bewitching whistling wind and distant thunder. When I awoke, the storm had gone. Sunlight was radiating through the small window. Gustav was still asleep beside me. I started when I saw a rough bearded man's back shape sitting on a box in front of the lit fireplace. A pot was sizzling on a wire hook over the centre of the fire.

He must have heard me gasp. He turned his beefy old face around to me.

Howdy, young Tom Murphy. Who's your mate?

I introduced the still somnolent Gustav beside me. I recognised it was Woolly Jack.

Woolly Jack pulled the pot off the hook and emptied the contents of beans and bacon into two tin plates. He handed to me a plate and a spoon. He then sat on a box at the table. He proceeded with a sheaf knife, with much mouth smacking, to eat his breakfast. I greedily ate my share but took great care not to spill it over the bed.

When we had finished, Woolly Jack and I drank tea from two chipped mugs. Then Woolly Jack cut tobacco from a black slab. He offered it to me. My tobacco and tobacco papers were ruined. I had not touched any of it in our travels because Gustav could never master how to roll the stuff. Then he had complained it was a low-down habit. Woolly Jack hunted up a second pipe. Soon we were basking in its mellow smoky taste.

I now expected Woolly Jack to interrogate us about our further trespass. But to my great relief and gratitude, he remained silently puffing clouds into the fire place.

Gustav stirred to awakeness, and was served from the pot.

Woolly Jack muttered through his clenched teeth:
Your clothes and knapsacks are hanging outside to dry.

We wrapped the bed clothes around our loins and shoulders. I followed Gustav outside to inspect the sunny morning and our clothes. The view was awash and blooming with light. Gustav scratched and stretched his lithe limbs in the mountain air.

At that moment, his skinny bony frame and vivid eyes cast their most powerful spell over me. I felt that there stood beside me, with the white canvas wrapped around his shoulders, a youthful Gandhi who would one day arouse a continent to follow him.

Our under-garments were now dry. We stripped off again in this mountain solitude. Now neither of us felt any embarrassment or shame in our body nakedness.