Rich Man's Coffin (33 page)

         
Black Jack choked. “I guess so.”

         
“What’s wrong?
 
Do I talk too much?”
 
He looked around anxiously and rubbed his arms and said, “Brrr.
 
It’s getting chilly.
 
Are we there yet?”

         
Black Jack said, “Mmmhmm.”

         
“Well, I don’t expect a fellow like you to understand.
 
I know you’ve had a easy life and all. You haven’t done half the things I’ve done.
 
But I appreciate you trying to listen to me anyway.” Babbled Cook.

         
The remainder of the trip was spent in complete silence, save for the methodical strokes of Black Jack’s paddle.

II

         
Under the full moon the two in the canoe pulled into Te Pukatea around two.

         
“Wake up, Dick.”

         
“Where are we?
 
What time is it?”

         
“We are home.
 
Here is where you’ll stay for the next little while.”

         
“But no one will be up.
 
What are we going to do?”

         
“No, no.
 
Don’t worry.
 
We are going to do something first, before everyone gets up.
 
I want to show you something.”

         
“I don’t know, Black Jack.
 
I’m so tired.”

         
“That is exactly why I am going to show you this.
 
It will revitalize you.”

         
Black Jack paddled over to the southern corner of the bay.
 
It was the rock corner with the cave arch that looked out over the sea that he had seen so many times before.
 
Beside the arch was a large, flat, rock terrace that jutted into the sea, forming a flat table just beneath the tide.
 
At the far side of the terrace was the rim of a deep tidal pool.
 
It was oval, wide, and very deep. Small channels on its side allowed ocean water to rush in and out with the waves.
 
At high tide, the water would surge just over the rim, rushing into the pool violently. The waves would break again at the back of the pool and wash up onto the rock terrace.
 
The deep walls of the tidal pool were covered with large mussels, clinging tightly from top to bottom.

         
Black Jack told Cook, “I want you to get in and pull some mussels for us.
 
Because it is high tide, you need to be in the water. That way you can pull the mussels when the waves go out.”

         
Cook watched the waves churn into and out of the pool, forming a swirling froth.
 
He said, “But Black Jack, those waves are only a few seconds apart.
 
I don’t know if I can do anything in that time.
 
Besides, it’s cold!
 
What do we need the mussels for, anyway?”

         
Black Jack said, “The mussels are very good, and they’re good for you.
 
They are very filling, with healing properties as well.
 
They will help you to give up your vices.
 
Also, they were my first meal here.
 
They hold a very special meaning for me.
 
Get in.” Cook hesitated, and then stepped out of the canoe, and onto the rock rim.
 
Black Jack got out of the canoe and dragged it up onto dry rock.
 
He turned to look at Cook.
 
Black Jack said again, “Get in, Dick.”

         
Cook stuck one foot into the water. He slowly lowered himself down to sit on the ledge.
 
He said, “I’m gonna have to leave my clothes on, else I’ll be cut to shreds!”

         
“You’ll be fine.
 
Now get us some of those mussels.
 
I’m hungry.”

         
Cook gently slid into the water, carefully avoiding the edges.
 
He tread water in the center of the tidal pool, coming to terms with the surging waves.
 
“Good God, man, this is work just staying off the rocks.
 
I don’t know about picking any mussels.”

         
“Try.”

         
Cook struggled to swim closer to the ledge where Black Jack stood.
 
He waited and watched the clumsy waves slosh up and down the wall over a depth of several feet.
 
He saw the mussels become exposed briefly, before being swallowed up again by the surging sea.
 
Finally, he made a desperate attempt to get close to the wall.
 
He allowed himself to drift, timing his descent with the water. He bobbed down and grabbed at shells.
 
The water surrounded and submerged him. He popped up to the ledge, waving sliced and bloody hands.
 
He sputtered, “I don’t know, Black Jack.
 
This doesn’t seem like the right way to do this.”

         
“What’s wrong, Dick?”

         
Cook pushed back from the rocks, trying to stay afloat.
 
He stammered, “Black Jack, this doesn’t feel right.
 
I’m getting tired really fast.
 
Look at my hands!”

         
“What about them?”
 
He slowly drew his mere from his belt.
 
Its green stone shimmered menacingly in the moonlight.

         
Cook looked up at him and said, “Well hell, if you’re gonna use that, I might as well get out.
 
I’m bleeding like a madman here!”
 
Cook paddled over to the ledge and placed his hands near Black Jack’s feet.
 
He prepared to climb out with the help of the next surge.
 
Black Jack squatted and slapped the broad side of the pounamu down on Cook’s hands.
 
Cook yelled, “Ouch, damn!”
 
He released the ledge and floated back to the center of the pool.
 
He shouted, “What’d you do that for?
 
The mussels are down there!”
 
He pointed a bloody finger below Black Jack.

         
Black Jack said, “I’m sorry, did that hurt, Dick?”

         
Cook replied, “Well, yes!
 
This is getting a little scary.
 
I’m getting out.”
 
He lunged once again for the ledge.

         
Black Jack met his fingers again with a slap of the mere.
 
He asked, “Do you think Kueka felt anything before she died, Dick?
 
Or do you think she was too scared to feel?
 
Which do you think would be worse, Dick?”

         
Cook flailed his arms in the water. He screamed, “Hell, I don’t know.
 
What are you askin’ me for?
 
You’re scaring the Devil out of me.
 
I thought you were my friend!”

         
Black Jack said, “I am, my friend, I am.”

         
Cook suddenly bolted for the ledge again, seeing that the wall was exposed by a lull.
 
As he reached out for the ledge, however, he mistakenly placed his hands onto a ridge of mussels just below the lip of the rim.
 
These mussels had been sitting only partially submerged by the high tide. Therefore, they were wide open.
 
There they sat, like hard-shelled Venus flytraps, awaiting some non-existent prey.
 
As Cook reached, his fingers slipped into the open mollusks, their shells snapping shut like so many small steel jaws.
 
He tried in vain to rip his hands free before the onslaught of the next wave, but his attempts were futile.
 
The swell came over him and he disappeared from view for several seconds.
 
When the water receded, his limp body waved loosely behind his outstretched arms, the look of anguish frozen on his lifeless face.

         
Black Jack poked his dead body with his mere.
 
Satisfied, he said, “Rest, my friend, rest.”

III

         
Rowing back to Kakapo, Black Jack thought about his actions.
 
He had not intended to pass judgment on his peer.
 
He had truly wanted to help the troubled man in the best way possible.
 
The healing time he had planned for Cook at Te Pukatea was real enough in his mind, he recalled; but as he drew nearer to the place, and closer to what he believed to be the truth, he had felt compelled by some outside force to follow a different plan.

         
Black Jack’s mother always said, “Judge not lest ye be judged”, and “Thou shalt not kill”; and he had always tried his best to adhere to those guidelines.
 
In this case, however, Black Jack had agonized over the murder of Kueka and his responsibility to it.
 
Who was he to judge what killing was, he wondered, with his history?
 
With time and thought, though, a difference had been discerned in his mind between the mutual slaughter of people in armed battle, and the mindless murder of a defenseless woman and her children.
 
The entire affair had dredged up the painful memories of Kumari, along with the ordeal of his early days with Robulla.
 
In the end, Black Jack had been faced with the same difficult decision:
 
To choose between revenge and justice.
 
Black Jack’s final resolution came about when he realized while rowing up the coast that both involved a certain amount of the sin of judgment. The difference between justice and revenge, he thought lay in the addition of an emotion called
anger
.
 

         
As he rowed steadily over the still waters toward the whaling station, Black Jack was alone with the troubling reality that his act of justice had not been accomplished without a certain amount of that poisonous emotion.
 
It was the same feeling when he had finally found Kumari. It had flared up inside him again while standing at Kueka’s funeral:
 

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," had said the Pastor, there amidst the amber waves of tall, windswept grass atop the lonely hill overlooking the bay.
 
“Do not seek ye then to take an eye for an eye, nor a tooth for a tooth."
 
Black Jack had only listened with one ear to the eulogy as tears of rage welled in his eyes and imagined scenes of the crime raced through his mind.
 
Partially blinded, muted, and deafened by emotion, he could not foresee the ramifications of the murder of this beautiful, young, princess niece of Robulla.
 
Neither was he prepared for the odd response of the good Reverend when he had humbly requested to receive a copy of the Bible.
 
The Preacher seemed bothered. He told Black Jack, “My son, it will do you no good if you cannot read what is inside it.”

I sure can read you like a book, Preacher.
 
Sure as I can read that Dick Cook like one.
 
Maybe you’s both taken from the same page. I don’t need no fancy words to know what’s in a man’s soul.
 
Black Jack had thought slyly as he ambled down the hill with a plan.

January, 1843. Cloudy Bay region, northwest corner of the South Island:

         
News of Kueka's murder did not fall well upon the ears of Robulla at Kapiti.
 
In good faith and out of respect for Black Jack's wishes, he awaited the outcome of the white trial in town.
 
He was naturally outraged at the acquittal of Dick Cook, a white man, on lack of evidence.
 
This came shortly after a Maori man was hung for the murder of a white woman nearby.
 
Immediately, there was talk among the Maori of
utu
, or vengeance, for Kueka.