Chappy Wakes

By Oriwia Star

Chappy slept until the afternoon of the next day when he woke naked in a bare, darkened room not knowing where he was. His head was full of hot stones, his stomach riding the waves, and he needed water. Pushing the bedcovers aside he put his flutey, reedy feet to the floor, taking up the red hibiscus sarong as he recalled the events of the previous day.

Or days?

He wasn’t sure. He remembered that there had been people crowding, watching, laughing their smoky beer-and-meat breath over him. But at that moment the room was tipping him sideways, and too embarrassed to appear outside the bedroom in scars and bruises and a garment that wouldn’t stay attached to his frame, he rolled back on the bed where he lay watching the shadowy ceiling boards, knotholes in the wood spiralling out and back again like springs.

He didn’t know how much later it was when he felt his eyelids drag themselves open to see faces leaning, women with water, noiseless, lifting his head, pouring, choking him. Soon afterwards he was being lifted burning, under the armpits, under the knees, and taken along pathways, the whole world rocking, churning in tipsy patches of light and dark. He was lowered to cool ground, stretched out and washed from head to foot. Hands lifted his head and water fingered its way down his throat. There were voices now, faces outlined one moment, fading the next. The stones in his head were spilling forward then back-washing behind his eyes. He didn’t know at the time that it was Aunt Dorothea and me who carried and washed him. I had come to collect my father.

Chappy woke several hours later in long grass, looking up into the extended branches of a bush full of tiny red and white birds which were motionless and made no sound.

Nothing moved.

As he became more aware he could see that these were not coloured birds on branches. They were flowers, beaked flowers, poised as if to fly.

He turned his head to see an old woman sitting cross-legged weaving green strands, eyeing him, toothless and smiling, making something. He thought at first it must be his grandmother returned to the world to speak to him, but when this one spoke, her words were incomprehensible to him.

The woman put down the work and came to him with a cup. He sat, leaned himself up against the flower tree, forming his words of gratitude though unable to release them. But from the woman, words were spilling like rivers as he took the cup from her. She spread her arms, which hung out like handlebars, fluttering her old yams of fingers, telling him something joyful before running off and calling.

Yes, he believed she ran, bent and fast, calling. Already there were children who had somehow come unheard out of fernery, heads on sideways, inspecting him. He was aware that there was something stuck on his forehead. In a moment Grandmother Nunu returned, putting her knobbly hands on his brow, laughing because of what these hands told her.

Aunt Dorothea arrived. There followed another torrent of words during which Nunu addressed him, pulling her which-way fingers towards her chest, rolling them out again, pulling them in, ‘Speak, speak.’ That’s what her hands were asking him to do.

So, to the delight of the two women, though they had no idea what he was talking about, he spoke words in a language which seemed to them to come, not from anywhere inside his body but from out of his face. He looked like a little Jesus lying there half naked, battered, wearing his crown without thorns. Grandmother offered him water again and Aunt Dorothea peeled away the damp leaves of kawakawa from his head. They were turning to look towards a sound coming from the track.

The children, also alerted, climbed the nearest mānuka tree, threading themselves in it to see who was coming. ‘Unca Aki come, got that Chapanee pants, gotta bread and a water and a Unca Mo.’

Chappy was pleased to see his clothes and his friends. All he could do was smile, incline himself in gratitude then attempt to stand, but Aki motioned him down again. Aki would take him home before the sun went down.

Chappy buttoned his shirt, but when he stood to pull on his trousers the sky and trees began turning and his legs softened, so he leaned himself against a tree trunk and breathed deeply while the world righted itself and the sun descended. The women had gone. Kids had dropped from branches and run home before the ghosts came, before you got stole. Aki came from the spring where he had filled a cream can with water. He was telling Chappy something in a swarm of words which came from his stomach and rolled out of such a mobile face it seemed his round eyes could fall from it. ‘Lean on me,’ his words and arms were saying. Chappy stood away from the tree, the world remained still.

‘No, no, my friend. I can walk.’ Though Aki could only guess at what he might be saying to him, Chappy took steps, showing what he could do.

There was a smell of smoke and of food cooking. At the outdoor fire people had gathered again. Kids were already munching, bread in one hand, a piece of eel in the other. Chappy was given a chair to sit on and handed a plate of food. He kept his eyes lowered, aware that he was being watched, thinking that he could've done without the spoon, could’ve picked bones from the fish and eaten with his fingers like everyone else. He could’ve sat on the ground like everyone else, could’ve dipped bread in eel juice just like everyone else. Being a man who was without goods, without money, without a country, he felt foolish being treated like a man of wealth and power. He began to eat using the spoon and the tips of his fingers to flake the white flesh away from the thin ladder of bones.

End