Page 20 of Kiwi Sin
“Some things were good,” I said. “Playing with my brothers and my cousins when we were young, all of us running and tumbling like a litter of puppies. Being outside every day, and caring for the animals. It’s hours of work every day at Mount Zion, but there’s a sort of peace to it, too, when you’re working.”
“But you’re still working,” Jack pointed out. “So that’s the same.”
I didn’t know how to explain about fitting in, or about the taste of mountain air, how pure and cold it felt in your lungs. About working beside your brothers and your dad, doing the job you knew how to do and knowing you were doing it well, and going to sleep with the sound of quiet breathing all around you. I didn’t know how to explain the way I felt now, waking in the night to the sound of the house ticking over and knowing there wasn’t another heartbeat within twenty meters of mine, and nobody who knew me, who knew who Iwas,without me saying a word.
I didn’t know how to explain, so I didn’t. “Anyway,” I said, “that’s good to know, about the flat. A tent probably isn’t necessary, because shelter’s the one thing you do have, if it’s a flat, but … camping dishes, eh. That could work. I don’t have a workshop anyway to make the furniture.”
“You could buy things on TradeMe,” Jack said. “But the camping idea would still be cheaper.”
Right. That was no flat for now, then. I’d keep saving. But I needed a car.
That was why, on a Friday evening three weeks after my evening of research with Jack, I knocked at the kitchen door and asked Drew, who actuallywashome this weekend, “May I speak to you?”
“Come in.” He took me to his office, where he waved me to a chair, sat behind the desk, and said, “Go.”
I said, “I want to buy a ute, but I’d need to park it here. And I wanted to tell you that I’m saving for my own flat. You haven’t asked yet, but I’m sure you’re wondering.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied me. “Hannah told me you’d spoken to her about it. We’re happy to have you here, and it’s barely been three months.”
“You can’t be happy about it,” I said. “People Outside don’t live like this. They pay rent.”
Drew sighed. “I understand pride and paying your own way, but we don’t need the money. Stay with us instead for now, and save for that place you want.”
“With your wife, though,” I tried to explain, then didn’t know how to go on.
“Do you have feelings for my wife?” He didn’t sound like you’d expect, though, and he didn’t look like you’d expect, either, because the corner of his mouth was twitching again.
“No!” I said, then said it again more quietly. “No. But you must feel odd about it.”
“Yeh,” Drew said, “I got a pretty shocking view of your character when you risked your life to pull a pregnant woman from a burning car. But since I’ve got a pregnant wife and three kids myself and am gone from home too much, that view’s worked for me. Also, not to get a big head about it, I’ve spent half my life evaluating men, and I’d like to think I’m a pretty fair hand at it by now. What would you do if the house caught fire some night while I was gone? If somebody tried to break in?”
“I’d do everything I could, of course. But any man would do the same.”
“Nah, mate,” Drew said. “They wouldn’t. Get the car problem solved, anyway, before you start planning to move out. You want to buy a ute, eh. That’s going to take a loan.”
“No. One of the fellas at the job is selling one. It’s old, and it barely runs, needs just about everything. Only fit for scrap, the other fellas said, but that’s why I can afford it. I’ve been saving.”
“I noticed,” Drew said. “Seeing as you’ve still got about five shirts. This would be the equivalent of the eventual shonky flat, then, with twelve generations of student filth under the burners and nasties growing amongst the bath tiles? You may want a car you don’t actually have to push.”
“I know how to fix a ute. An old one, at least, and this is an old one.”
Drew raised his downward-slanting eyebrows. “Thought you were a builder at Mount Zion.”
“I was. But I also know how to fix most things. The only problem is—I need a place to do it, and some tools. Gray’s got everything, and my dad would help me during the times where you need an extra set of hands, but he’s got a flat now and isn’t living at Gray’s place, so …”
“And Gray’s your boss,” Drew said. “Awkward to ask for the space and the tools when none of his other employees would.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I have even less claim on you than on Gray, and it can get noisy, fixing a car.”
“Nah,” Drew said. “What’s it to me? Exactly how bad is this ute, though? Floorboards actually rusted through, or …”
“Not quite that bad,” I said. “But close. Some rust patches. Sea air, eh.”
“A project, then,” he said. “Bring it on.”
* * *
That washow I ended up spending every spare minute of the next weeks in Drew’s garage, getting filthy under an ancient Ford ute with the brakes worn down to bare metal and not much of that, only two cylinders sparking, a clogged fuel line, four bald tires, and a transmission that shifted with an audibleclunk.After you held your breath and wondered whether it would shift at all, that is. Getting it back here from the jobsite had been a close-run thing.
