Chappy on the Run

By Oriwia Star

Before leaving to come home that evening, Chappy went with Paa to listen to the news, which Paa translated into our language for him. Coming across on the airwaves that night was the story of the bombing of the American navy base in Hawai‘i by Japanese bombers. ‘When he heard what I was recounting,’ Paa said, ‘Chappy couldn’t move or speak. His blood stopped. He was a post. He was a ghost. I thought he would drop to the ground. I put my arm round him, holding him up. There was no blood in his head and I thought he would fold over. “It’s not your war,” I told him, but nothing was coming out of him. Nothing. Nothing. No word, no movement. Like spiked. Impaled. “Wars come from kings,” I said. “Men on high. Presidents.”

‘The post moved. The ghost reddened. It was already dark. Ghost got on the bike and loosed out. “Don’t worry,” I called after him. “They all think you’re a China Man.”’

It was a rough track that Chappy, crouched over the cork-tipped handlebars, flew along in the patch of light that his bike lamp cast over the front wheel. He had to get home to Oriwia, had to see his daughters before the detectives came for him.

Wheels.

Through the rough, over and around stones, under the overhangs, by rocks and humps and stumps and debris. Off the bike at the creek, carrying it through the water on the run. On again. There were two miles to go to the gravel road and the last bump hurtled him onto it, flat.

He was on fire.

Missiles, bullets, sabres. Blood. Moving forward over severed heads and gouting bodies. Screams. Crying. City burning. Himself on fire awaiting death. Instead waking bandaged in a place of screams.

Dreams.

Chappy sat and spat dust and stones. He was not on fire or dead, but remembered he had to escape. He stood, brushed himself down, collected scattered belongings, tested the bike and sat by the roadside with his knees drawn up, thinking that he must get home and speak to his wife. In the morning he would go.

But morning could be too late. The detectives could be at his door right now. His greatest fear was that his children could be harmed, but even if not he wouldn’t want his daughters or his wife to watch him being taken away. If he were to leave it would have to be now, but how far would an old bike get him?

Instead of going north, which would take him through the township and past his house, he decided first to go south. With the help of Mina’s husband Piki, who worked in the railyards at Paekakariki, he could board the morning train and be away north before most people were up and about.

After a two-hour bike ride and a wait for daylight, Chappy found Piki in the railyards shovelling coal and asked to be put on the train, which he could see was already pulling in. With no time for questions, Piki led Chappy through the crowd of people rushing for the refreshment counter, to the luggage van, where he told the guard his brother-in-law and his bike needed a ride home. The guard shuffled Chappy and his bike in with the luggage, pleased to do this favour because he knew that at the end of the day Piki would leave a good bucketful of best-lump coal on his doorstep.

Piki went to the food counter and came back with a cup of tea and a hot pie, which the guard passed in to his stowed passenger. Funny-looking brother-in-law.

If the guard was surprised that his passenger was still on board four hours later when it was time for him to swap trains for the journey home, he asked no questions. None of his beeswax.

‘You better hide,’ he said, and when he saw that Chappy hadn’t understood what he was saying he gave him a shove. ‘Dumb cluck. Get in behind your bike.’ He pushed Chappy to the floor and rolled him into a dark corner where, as the train pulled out and the new guard clicked his way through the carriages, he went to sleep.

‘He’s gone, he’s gone, without even a goodbye,’ I said to Paa. ‘He’s afraid he’ll be put away like Harry Krauss. He thinks they’ll take our daughters. Give me the horse. He won’t be far.’ I went into the house and changed into a pair of overalls. The little girls, coming from their beds and seeing my fright and hurry, shaped their mouths like two bantam eggs and howled.

‘Stay here with Paa,’ I said, ‘he’ll cook you an egg. No money, no clothes, no roof, not a word of English.’

I rode off, returning at dusk without finding any sign of Chappy. No tyre marks in the dust. No one I asked had seen him.

When Chappy woke it was to the sound of the van being unloaded. The luggage handlers may have been surprised when he hurried past them wheeling his bike. But maybe they weren’t surprised. What the guards got up to, what backhanders were delivered to them, was none of their bizniz. One of them Chows, wheeling.

Chappy went on his way as night was falling. He soon realised that the train had not brought him to the big city of Auckland which he had heard about and where he thought he might be safe. This was not the end of the line. The roads were unsealed, no different from the ones he’d left behind.

The train continued on as he turned into a side road where he found himself in flat country. He could smell earth. Turned dirt.

He realised he was thirsty and decided to return to the railway station for water. His light had gone out.

The platform was empty and the drinking fountain out of order, but at the end of a row of shops opposite the station was a public lavatory and a water tap. In a rubbish bin on a lamp-post, he found an empty whisky bottle, which he filled before finding his way back to the dark side road and the smell of earth. He found a sheltered spot, spread the canvas and lay down thinking about what he had left behind, sure that he’d done the right thing. At least now he’d have a chance of avoiding capture, but most important of all was that the little girls would be safe.

Would they?

There were children alone in streets they had rampaged through, crying, dead, shot, blood streams. Screams. Dreams.

All through the warm night, he lay awake until one by one the birds blinked, voiced, rustled in the few low trees that had begun to be outlined against a sky becoming plum-coloured. There were sounds in the distance – of roosters, hooves and a chain rattling.

Comforted by the familiar noises, he fell asleep.

What woke him later in the morning was the sound of voices, a word here and there, in a language he’d heard before. He covered his head with his hands and rolled himself into the undergrowth.

Bullets. The sabre. Bodies. Fire.

That language, of the China Man.

He opened his eyes. He could see them now, close by, making their way along the ploughed rows – men of China, women of China with their children of China, stooping, gathering handfuls of potatoes and putting them in sling bags which dragged their necks down. Beyond them, in jagged lines, were others in a shambling march, stooping and picking. He waited, trembling and hidden, until the potato pickers had gone from that part of the extensive field. He went on his way.

Gradually his fear left him as he realised he was in a market-garden area. Perhaps he’d be able to find work.

At about the same time as Chappy woke that morning, Paa leaned from his horse to knock on Gary Couper’s window.

‘Look here, Gary Couper,’ he said when the policeman came to the door. Gary opened his mouth but nothing came out of it. He shut it again. ‘Chus letting you know Chappy Star gone. My son, Chappy Star. So don’t you go saying a word. Was you put Harry Krauss’s pot on.’

‘I never –’

‘Anyone come snooping round asking about my son, you keep your mouth shut.’ Paa clicked his horse and rode off.

Later that day Chappy, wheeling his bike, walked into one of the packing sheds and showed the boss his hands, which he guessed would be language to show he wanted work.

‘You want a job?’ the boss shouted. He knew homelessness and hunger when he saw it and thought this could be to his advantage. He gave Chappy work sewing the tops of full sacks, making it clear he wouldn’t get paid. ‘Food,’ the man shouted, ‘and a place to sleep.’

Chappy got the idea. Though he feared the Chinese workers at first, they behaved as though he didn’t exist. All they wanted was to work and be paid. Whether he was believed to be an enemy of China or not, he was invisible to them.

At the end of each day, by way of food promised, Chappy was allowed to help himself to discarded vegetables before the pig man came. He was allowed to sleep among the sacks and boxes. In the hour before dark, he would ride his bike to the bridge, dismount and wheel it along the river bank to a sheltered spot where he would wash before riding back to his sleeping place.

It was this riding back and forth that first caught the attention of the people of the town. Already uncomfortable with the seasonal workers who came into the district from all over the place, they were now disturbed to discover there was one hanging about making a nuisance of himself. Children were told they weren’t to go playing down by the bridge, instructions which only served to encourage the kids to go and find out what the problem might be. When they’d finished their spying, chanted their Ching Chong Chinaman rhymes, thrown stones and run off without waiting to see if any of the stones hit their target, the kids went home and said they’d seen the man by the river taking off his clothes. He had cockabullies sticking out of his mouth.

Chappy decided to leave. It wasn’t the stones that bothered him, most of which were well off target. It was being noticed. The eyes of the town were on him, and anyway the harvest season was coming to an end.

(To be continued)