First published in The Great Outdoors, 2019
George had disappeared; that is to say he had gone missing, a few months ago. And it turns out I was probably the last person to see him alive. At least that’s what the police say. They seem to think he’s dead. We all searched the bush around his house but there was no sign of him, not even footprints along the muddy tracks. Well, there were some of my footprints, which cast some suspicion on me, but then Sid and Mac, the other neighbours, were suspects too. There were lots of animal tracks: possums, goats, and birds, mostly George’s chooks. George’s car was still there but, as I say, no sign of George.
George had the last house on the road, right at the top of the valley, past the farms; just bush for miles. Some days it’s cloudy and drizzly up around his place and clear and sunny further down the road at my place. There are just two houses between my place and George’s and no, we hadn’t seen any strange vehicles going up the road. I’d gone up there to drop off some sweet corn and pick up some eggs, nice free range eggs. George had chooks and I had gardens. We had a kind of barter economy going among the small community in the valley and we traded fruit, vegetables, eggs, beef, pork, fish, weed, whatever.
I’d been to Sid’s place the same day; just a social call. Ally, his wife, had gone to town for the day. Sid was sitting on the sagging verandah of his rundown old farmhouse, on the bench seat of an HR Holden, whose derelict body served as a pig house under the macrocarpas. Sacks of feed mash were stored in the boot. “Last season’s heads,” he said, savouring a deep toke before handing me the joint. He gazed vacantly at his black steers snatching at what grass they could find in the overgrazed paddock and filing through the front gate that hung askew on broken hinges. There were the river flats but most of Sid’s farm was bush and scrub. His stock regularly grazed the roadside, ‘the long acre’, and neighbouring paddocks wherever they could get in. “Won’t be much this season,” he said. “Some bastard ripped up most of my plants.” Sid had a few plots of cannabis hidden away in the bush up the back, some of them actually on George’s land, and George was very anti cannabis anyway, so we all knew who pulled up the plants.
Sid’s wandering stock didn’t help to promote friendly relations with neighbours either, especially the goats. His fences were barely adequate for the steers and no match at all for the goats. I kept my garden well fenced against Sid’s animals. The goats went where they pleased, up and down the river, through the bush and onto the farms. Sid lolled on his car seat and didn’t say much but he told me he’d seen a kokako ‘up the back’ the other day, which he thought was pretty remarkable because he’d thought they were extinct. “But don’t tell anyone,” he said. “We don’t want people snooping around up here, especially not DOC.”
George lived on his own but I wouldn’t say he was a hermit; he was actually quite sociable. He lived very simply, without electricity, not that he couldn’t afford it. Sid told me George had a lot of money from when he worked as a stock broker in America before he migrated to New Zealand to escape the impending economic collapse. He didn’t trust banks so he probably had it stashed away in his house somewhere. You can’t see George’s house from the road. In fact, you can’t see it till you’re right there because it’s all surrounded by trees and the only clearings are around the chook house and fruit trees. It’s a pole house perched on the side of a hill that slopes down to the river; a two storey wooden structure with lead light windows, three storeys if you count the turret, a small round bedroom which he called the crow’s nest.
One time I went to visit George, I found him sitting on the deck, cross legged and motionless, meditating and I sat quietly and observed him for a bit, as though he were some kind of weird specimen in a museum. He was wearing the same clothes I’d always seen him in: a green and black Swandri and jeans. He had a wild and bushy beard with grey streaks running down each side of his chin, and a prominent slightly beaky nose with a scar across the bridge. I was just going to leave again, as I’d done another time when I found him sitting there but ‘not at home’ but he came round, came back to his body, as he put it. He took a deep breath, blinked his eyes open, put his glasses on and said, “Hey John, would you like a cup of tea?” as though he’d been there all the time. His eyes were magnified by the round lenses of his glasses, grey-blue eyes with a cloudy ring around the irises.
Mac, Noel MacDougal, also lived on his own, since his wife had died years ago. He’d lived in the valley most of his life and farmed sheep on the rolling hills on the other side of the road. He ran a proper farm and didn’t have much time for the layabouts and weirdos who had moved into the valley in recent years. Mac had good fences and a no nonsense approach to pests. Any goats or stray dogs that his own dogs didn’t chase off he would shoot on sight and, of course, everyone killed possums. They say he shot the odd wood pigeon as well, bush Tegals.
Mac kept to himself mostly and he’d return a wave and look away when you passed him going down the road. He never made much eye contact when you spoke to him either. He was a quietly spoken old guy, except when he was mustering sheep and shouting at his dogs. The top of the valley was a natural amphitheatre and the hills rang with near hysterical shouts of commands and reprimands. His poor confused dogs had to deal with about fifty different commands along with insults and sarcasm. So it wasn’t just your traditional “Walk up.” and “Get in behind,” but “Now look what you’ve done, you stupid bitch,” and “That’s right, scatter them all over the bloody countryside.” I’d even heard him accuse one of his dogs of leaving the bloody gate open.
Anyway, the last time I visited George, as I walked up the path with my corn I could hear him playing his flute. It sounded so much like the bellbirds, at times I couldn’t tell which was which. As I approached the house, the air was loosely packed with birdsong and liquid flute notes flowed across the top. Tuis fluting too, and clucking and cackling, cracking the gaps. One could, perhaps, slip through. A bull from down the valley bellowed in the distance, echoing round the sides.
George and I sat on his deck eating popcorn he cooked on his gas stove. We were watching a wood pigeon gorging itself on miro berries, joined by another that had been flying over the kahikateas, swooping, tilting and gliding down to join its mate. The deck was level with the bush canopy and overlooked a wide arena of bird life. A pair of neon rosellas flew past, Australian migrants, not to be found so far north, according to the books. Suddenly, George jumped up and grabbed a handful of stones from a basket on the deck. He pitched three stones in rapid succession at a goat chewing a branch of his apple tree. The third stone struck the goat and it scurried off into the bush. George used to play baseball.
“Sid’s fucking goats.” He cursed the goats and cursed Sid. Then he nestled back into his cane chair with his long legs and bare feet on the veranda rail. His feet were mottled with mud and his toenails were long and dirty. From his pocket he drew a crumpled handkerchief that crackled stiffly as he unfolded it and blew his nose noisily, a good sonorous honk. He was just grabbing another handful of popcorn when he stopped and cocked his head to listen to a distinctively different note among the fluting of the bellbirds, a more organ like note with a descending pitch. Suddenly George hopped onto the veranda rail, throwing his arms up to catch his balance. It struck me just then how strangely bird-like George was himself and I had the weird impression, just for a moment, that he was going to transform into a bird and take flight.
“Kokako!” he said excitedly, his glasses flashing in the sunlight. “Unmistakable. See the blue wattles.” I had a look through his binoculars and spotted the bird hopping about on the branches of a maire. George remained perched on the rail, his toes curled over the edge of the wood, gazing intently at this rare native crow. It glided down to the river and we followed quietly along the track, hoping to get a closer look. Fantails flitted around, snatching insects we disturbed in the bush. We didn’t see the kokako again but there was a fat wood pigeon at the river slaking its thirst after its feed of berries. It scurried along the rocks, helplessly, unable to fly as it had got so bloated and heavy. It could easily have been captured or killed right there. Anyone could be a helpless victim.
Dark clouds that had been massing on the peaks were descending, sliding down the ridges and the mist had crept over George’s house by the time I got back. I felt as though the mist had also seeped into my body and filled my head with fog. As I walked down the path back to the road I thought I could hear George’s flute again, but it couldn’t be; it could have been a bellbird or a kokako as it seemed to be coming from far above, above the mist that shrouded the hills and dimmed the sun, but I wasn’t far down the road when I came out into clear light again. The mist lifted from my head and I found myself walking home with my carton of free range eggs.