When Oriwia arrived back from Moana-Rose’s to collect her father, Taana was lathering him up for a shave. She hurried forward onto the verandah, casting her arms about him, eager to give him the good news of her brother-in-law’s forty-hour week, the baking orders and the idea of taking people’s produce for sale. But as she stood back from him to explain it all, her chest and stomach slumped against her backbone, forcing a long gasp to come from her mouth and a stream of tears to shoot from her eyes. The gasp turned to a wail and a howl. Dorothea came rushing from the kitchen.

‘What’s happened, Girl?’ Taana asked, sitting her down, wiping shaving soap from her face and hair. Jimmy’s tears were making tracks down through the remaining lather.

‘Don’t cry, Father,’ she said, her words twanging unoiled from her throat. ‘Don’t. No. I have good news.’

Dorothea placed a cup of water in her hand and sat beside her. Taana began razoring in long strokes down the unfelt side of Jimmy’s face.

‘Benny has permanent work, forty hours a week. I have orders for baking. Times are getting better. The town is becoming busier because Pakeha farmers have money for land development, and I could take a cart of vegetables for sale.’

The three listeners took this news in silence. Chappy came, leading Nunu’s cow. Dorothea went inside to make tea. When she came out again, Jimmy had fallen asleep. She said to Oriwia, ‘But your heart is aching.’

‘The shop won’t survive, our heritage from our mother,’ Oriwia said. ‘My sister and my nieces and nephew will move away. My father won’t last forever.’

‘And you’re carrying all our debts,’ Dorothea said.

‘No. No. It’s not that. It’s not that. You saved our lives when we were little. And times are getting better.’

‘Only for some.’

Jimmy woke as Taana lifted him and seated him in the cart.

‘There,’ Taana said. ‘Take Chappy with you. Chap? Help them when they get home?’

‘He’s no weight really,’ Oriwia said. ‘Are you Dad?’

‘No weight, only a load,’ were the words Jimmy managed to press bit by bit from out of one side of his mouth.

Chappy was wearing a large shirt that had belonged to Aki, and cotton shorts that had been made for him from sarongs. For a moment his eyebrows meandered as the eyes beneath them fixed in concentration, but they pricked like pins as understanding came to him.

Oriwia, trying to remember back to that time, thought perhaps he had vaulted himself into the cart or somehow landed in it without sound and without touching the sides. But then maybe he climbed in just like anyone else. It could have been the baggy shirt, the coloured pants, the thin ankles and the bony feet which made him seem like an acrobat.