Read The Crocodile Nest Online
Authors: Des Hunt
The Crocodile Nest
The sky was deep purple by the time they got to the turnoff. Luke slumped further down in the seat, moping. He’d planned to go looking for pigs in the bush, and now that would be impossible. He’d forgotten about daylight saving finishing at the weekend. From now on they would always arrive home after sunset. Alice, his mum, didn’t finish work at the café in Whitianga until after six, and by the time she got herself organized it was seven before they got home. While that hadn’t been too bad in the summer, it would be hopeless over winter—he’d never be able to do anything.
He looked across to Alice as she negotiated the turn onto the valley road. For the first time he noticed that she’d had her hair dyed again. Now it was an even brighter red than before, and so short that she looked like a scarlet hedgehog. The nose stud had been changed, too; now it was a large, heart-shaped design. Obviously she’d needed cheering up. But it didn’t seem to have
worked, for she was chomping furiously on a wad of gum—always a sign that she wasn’t happy. Probably the new job at the café was behind it. It seemed to be the same old story: they’d move to a new place looking for cheaper living and a better-paid job, only to find after a while that things were much the same as they’d been in the place they’d just left.
The valley road was called the Three-oh-nine, which seemed a pretty stupid name for a road, seeing it wasn’t any sort of highway and none of the other roads had numbers. Yet most of its residents were proud to say they lived ‘up the Three-oh-nine’, as if it were a status symbol. Status, Coromandel Peninsula style, where people enjoyed living close to Nature, never mind the bad roads, the flooding streams, the local wildlife mix of pigs, cats, goats, possums, and even the odd feral human.
Of course, there was a good side to the Three-oh-nine. Over the summer Luke had enjoyed swimming in its tea-coloured stream, trekking through the bush on imaginary pig hunts, and even climbing to the rocky tops of ancient volcanoes. But there would be little of that with the days shortening. He could already see that winter on the Three-oh-nine was likely to be wet and dreary.
Alice guided the rattling Corolla off the bitumen onto the narrow, gravel road that wound its way up into the hills. Every so often there would be a gap in the scrub where a track led into the bush. The only signs that anyone lived at the end of these were a letterbox and glimpses of light filtering through the manuka. That was another thing Luke found difficult about
the Three-oh-nine: the isolation. There was nobody his age anywhere near their place.
‘Luke,’ said Alice, softly.
‘Yeah, what?’
‘Were you going to sleep?’
‘Nah! Just thinking.’
‘What about?’
Luke studied the road in front of them. He hated it when people asked him what he was thinking. Thoughts were private things. If he wanted to share them, he’d say them out loud, wouldn’t he?
That thought was broken by a movement on the cliff side of the road. A black, fuzzy thing was crawling onto the gravel, unaware of the approaching danger
‘Possum!’ he shouted. ‘Get it, Mum! Kill it! Kill it!’
‘No!’ cried Alice, jerking the steering wheel sideways.
That was a mistake.
The front tyres hit the loose gravel and started sliding. Alice responded by spinning the wheel in the other direction. For a moment it seemed as if they’d be OK, but then the rear tyres also hit the stones and next they were sliding the other way. Again Alice swung the steering wheel—another mistake. This time the car began to fishtail. She fought with the wheel, panicking as she tried to control the swaying vehicle. And when that didn’t work, she hit the brakes.
That was the biggest mistake of them all.
The wheels locked into a skid that took them off the road and into the manuka. Bushes whipped by; twigs snapped; branches
scraped; birds squawked; and still they kept moving, crashing down the bank towards the stream where the trees were tougher and more unyielding.
It was a willow that stopped them—possibly stopped them from drowning. For when all was still, the one headlight that still glowed shone into a deep pool, surprising a dozing trout which quickly darted into the shadows below the bank.
From the road above, the possum peered down at the red tail-lights, assessing the danger. Seeing no movement, he crawled off the road and disappeared into the scrub in search of his first meal of the night: there were still a few leaves on that tasty young rata he’d discovered a couple of weeks back—just enough for his breakfast.
‘Mum. Are you OK?’
Silence. ‘Mum!’
Luke unhooked his seatbelt and twisted to see her better. She was slumped forward, her head resting on the steering wheel, arms dangling uselessly beside the seat.
‘Mum!’ he repeated with greater urgency. ‘What’s wrong?’
Slowly, her head lifted. ‘I’m all right, Luke. At least I think so.’ She wriggled her shoulders, testing for damage. ‘Yeah, I’m OK. My boobs hurt, though.’ A pause. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m all right.’ The only pain was his shoulder where the seatbelt had cut in.
‘Damn possum,’ said Alice with feeling.
‘It wouldn’t have happened if you’d run over it like I said.’
She looked at him for a moment, before letting her head slump again. ‘Oh God, what are we going to do? I can’t afford
a tow truck. I can’t afford anything.’ She began to cry.
Luke watched her without offering consolation. It upset him when his mother cried, but increasingly he didn’t know what to do about it. What could he say that would help? She was right: there was barely enough money to live on, without having to repair the car. The thing wouldn’t even be worth repairing, except it was the only way to get into town.
‘I’m going to get help,’ he said. ‘There’s that farm up the road. They’ll have a tractor.’
Alice nodded without lifting her head.
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he added.
She gave a little noise that could have been either a giggle or more sobbing.
‘You’d better turn everything off.’
She did so. The blackness was almost total. When Luke opened the door, the courtesy light came on—dim, but welcome. He left the door ajar and headed up the bank towards the road.
Surprisingly, it was not a difficult climb. Most of the scrub had been cleared by the car, and what remained now provided helpful handholds.
Looking down from above, Luke saw that the car wouldn’t be too difficult to pull out. That’s if the farmer had the right gear. As he watched, Alice adjusted the rear-view mirror onto her face. That was a good sign: it probably meant that the crying had stopped.
Dogs started barking well before Luke stepped off the road and
onto the farm track. Deep, throaty barks, suggesting big animals with long, sharp teeth. Luke would have stopped if he hadn’t heard the rattle of restraining chains. He continued cautiously, just in case there was a silent, unchained killer, shadowing him in the bushes.
The animals had worked themselves up into quite a frenzy by the time the house became visible. Light spilled out as a door opened. A piercing whistle echoed around the yard. Instantly the dogs were silent, apart from the noise of chains being dragged back into kennels. A blinding floodlight came on.
‘What are you after?’ said a voice from somewhere in front of Luke. It was male, deep like the dogs’, but not as unfriendly.
‘We’ve run off the road,’ Luke replied, shielding his eyes.
‘Where?’
‘Back towards town. Not far.’
By then Luke’s eyes had adjusted and he could see the source of the voice. The man was nowhere near as big as he’d expected, not tall anyway—wide, but not fat.
‘Were you driving?’
‘No, my mother was.’
The man chuckled. ‘Swerve to avoid a possum, did she?’
Luke nodded. ‘Yeah. I told her not to.’
‘That’s women for you,’ said the man. ‘Won’t kill the possum, but end up almost killing themselves. Is she hurt?’
‘Nah, but the car’s down the bank. We need help to get it out.’
‘How far?’
‘About twenty metres.’
‘Need a winch, then.’ The man thought for a moment before
pointing towards the implement shed. ‘You’ll find a ute over there. Go and hop in it while I turn the stove off.’ Without waiting for a reply, he headed back to the open door.
The twin-cab ute looked well used but right for the job: big, high off the ground, a winch mounted at the front. Luke had to shift a jumble of fencing tools to get enough space to sit. Even then he had to rest his feet on stuff that covered the floor.
‘Got enough room there?’ asked the man when he arrived. ‘Don’t usually have any passengers.’ He stretched his arm out towards Luke. ‘Name’s Kevin Thomas. Kev to my friends. What’s yours?’
Luke shook his hand. ‘Luke. Luke Evans.’
‘Live on the Three-oh-nine?’
‘Yeah. Further up.’
‘Which place?’
‘Just an old house.’ Luke was reluctant to admit that they lived in a place that was little more than a shack.
‘On Steve Shepherd’s property?’
‘Yeah,’ said Luke, quietly.
Kev turned and looked at him. ‘Not the Hippie House?’
Luke gave a brief nod. That’s what some of the kids at school called it.
‘Just you and your mum?’
‘Yeah. My dad died when I was little.’
‘Mmm. That must’ve been tough.’
Luke shrugged. ‘I don’t remember him.’
‘Tough on your mum, though.’
‘Yeah. S’pose so.’ Luke agreed, although he hadn’t really
thought about it before. It was one of those things they didn’t talk about.
After turning onto the road, they travelled in silence until they reached the crash scene. Alice was sitting on a mound of clay, her knees supporting her elbows, her hands cradling her head.
‘Evening,’ said Kev cheerfully, climbing out of the cab. ‘I’m Kev. Got a bit of a problem here, I gather?’
‘Alice,’ she said, standing to accept the proffered hand. ‘Yeah, you could say that.’
Kev stood on the edge, peering down at the car. ‘Doesn’t look too bad. It’s a straight pull up, and you’ve already cleared out most of the rubbish.’ He turned around and studied the road. ‘It’s up here that we need to worry about. If some of those hoons from Whitianga come along, we’ll have a serious accident.’
He fished around in the ute, coming out with two torches. ‘OK. Alice, you take this and go down to the other side of that bend. Anyone comes along, you wave them down with it. Luke, you do the same up that way.’
Reluctantly, Luke took the torch. He’d been hoping to help with the winching. Kev must have seen his disappointment, because he added: ‘Just go up so that you can see the straight, then you should be able to follow what’s happening here as well. Not that it’ll be exciting.’ He gave a little chuckle. ‘Not unless something breaks.’
Nothing did, and twenty minutes later both vehicles were parked up the road on a grassy lay-by. Kev, Alice and Luke stood in a line, studying the damage to the car in the light from the
ute. The right front of the Corolla had been punched in, taking out the headlight. Kev had already done some panel-beating on the mudguard to drag it off the tyre.
‘Could’ve been worse,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t seem to be anything mechanically wrong. You need to get that headlight fixed or the cops will soon stop you. But the rest…Well, with all that rust it was never going to get a warrant, anyway.’ He looked at Alice. ‘I gather you use it to get in and out of town?’
Alice nodded.
‘Don’t park it anywhere near the police station or they’ll surely notice there’s no warrant.’
For the first time since the accident, Alice gave a bit of a smile. ‘I always park on a backstreet, anyhow.’
‘Wise move,’ said Kev, nodding. Then after a pause: ‘You’d better keep it hidden in that shed up at your house as well.’
‘What for? There’s no reason for the cops to go up there.’
‘Oh yes, there is. Bet you they’ll be there within a couple of weeks.’
‘Why?’ snapped Alice, as if she was being accused of something.
Luke knew the answer. ‘Because that’s where the hippies lived.’
‘Right on,’ said Kev. ‘And it’s harvest time again.’
Alice looked shocked. ‘What? Marijuana? You think I’m growing marijuana?’
‘It’s not what I think. It’s what the cops’ll think. The hippies had horticultural ventures all through the bush. The cops’ll want to check out that you’re not continuing the business.’
‘Well, I’m not.’
‘Good!’
After a short silence, Luke said, ‘There is pot growing up there, though.’
‘Where?’ Alice and Kev responded together.
‘In a clearing in the bush, up behind the house, but nobody’s looking after it.’
‘It’ll be from dropped seed,’ said Kev.
‘How do you know what it is?’ Alice asked Luke, accusingly.
‘Mum, I know what pot looks like.’
‘How?’
Luke sighed. ‘Because it’s shown on posters and T-shirts and CDs and all over the Internet. Everyone knows what it looks like. Doesn’t mean I’ve been smoking it.’
‘You better pull it out, first thing you can,’ said Kev. ‘Better still: I’ll come over and give you a hand.’
‘The wild pigs have pretty well done that already,’ said Luke. Then he giggled. ‘I think they’ve been eating the stuff.’
Kev pricked up his ears. ‘You got pigs up there?’
‘Yeah! A whole lot of them. You hear them squealing at night.’
‘They get into my garden, too,’ added Alice. ‘They make a mess of everything.’
Kev grinned. ‘I can fix that—if you’ll let me.’
‘How?’ asked Luke, excitedly. ‘Kill them?’
‘Yeah, why not? If they’re young enough, we should get some decent meat. Have you ever been pig hunting before?’
Luke had…in his imagination. The thought of doing the real thing was almost overwhelming. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but I’d like to.’
Kev looked over to Alice. ‘Is that all right with you?’
Clearly it wasn’t. Luke could almost see her mind working. She didn’t want anything to do with killing pigs, but she also wanted to repay Kev. ‘OK,’ she said, finally. ‘But I don’t want to see it happen.’
‘You don’t want some of the meat?’ asked Kev.
Alice smiled. ‘I’ll take meat as long as it looks like the stuff in the supermarket. If it looks like a dead animal, I don’t want it.’
Soon it was decided. Kev would come over and see to the marijuana on Saturday. Then he would take Luke pig hunting. Even though that was only the day after next, Luke didn’t know how he was going to last until then. Friday at school would be the longest day ever.