Friday Story — Hīnaki
I love Saturday morning and always wake up early for it. Today’s no different. The house is filled with light and it’s quiet. It’s only me that gets to enjoy it, which I like. I walk through carpeted halls, use the toilet, though don’t flush. It’s a number one, so I leave it. Pops always tells me the world wastes too much water. Besides, I like the silence, having it all to myself. Last night I dreamt I could fly. We have a large backyard covered with grass. There was a super moon in the sky. I pressed myself hard up against the back fence, my toes dug into the dirt. I burst out of the blocks like that Jamaican guy who always holds his arms up like a bow and arrow when he wins. There’s a glasshouse at the other end that I need to make it over. That’s the part that scares me the most. I jump, glide, then point my toes to make sure I don’t hit it as I climb. I’m airborne.
My arms have to move like those swimmers you see on the Queens games doing breast-stroke, they dig deep though move quickly, keeping me afloat. I push through the air. I can see the neighbours house below me, their orange tree barren of the fruit I got caught stealing the year before, now I see the street, then my school. I fly over an empty BMX track with its clay camel humps, over large industrial buildings I’ve snuck into as a kid, over parks, a friends home, before I see it all laid out in front of me. The streets of Papakura are almost empty. I’m tempted to call out to people I see, though don’t. Why give up my secret? I follow a thin stream of cars high above the motorway into the city, their tail lights like beady red eyes that can’t look up to see me. I circle the Sky Tower, slingshot across the harbour bridge, before turning east to fly over the hidden forts my parents took me to when I was younger. I fly towards Rangitoto before my equipment starts to fail. You’ve caught up. My adventure came to a rapid halt, the toilet was beckoning.
My older brother’s asleep, so I wake him by sitting on his head. He hates that. It makes me laugh to think that the first thing he sees in the new day is my backside. The TV goes on as we eat cereal from white bowls balanced on crossed legs. It’s Frosties today with that big orange and white tiger, its stripes like arrowheads smiling at me from the front of its oversized-blue box. We watch a repeat of RTR’s top 40 music videos while our parents sleep in. I lie on my back, staring through the skylight windows and can’t see a cloud. I hear the toilet flush. They must be number two’s. Pops is up. I can hear the weight of his footsteps in the hall. He barely makes it in the door and I’m on him, my arms wrapped around his waist, walking forwards backwards while standing on his toes.
Two hours later and I’ve juggled a football long enough to bore my brother. My count is higher, though I do it with two knees and a single leg which he laughs at. I don’t care, I win. It’s hot. Mum’s on the deck covered in coconut oil surrounded by magazines that lie face down like paper butterflies. My brother and I agree to head for the creek. My father has an old broom handle that he’s bent a steel prong around and encircled with wire. It’s like an oversized fork with a missing tooth. He has a wire Hīnaki and a green bucket that we take with us. We wear black gumboots with red bands at the top. They make us look like those country folk you see on TV that goes hunting for birds that are hard to pronounce.
We’re looking for eels. We’ve gotten lucky before. Pops has a white concrete brick smoker that we cook them in. The eels are split, covered in brown sugar and hung by metal hooks at the top of the chimney. Who knows what we’ll get today? It’s a few kilometres away. We cut through the school, the new subdivision and the BMX track. It’s full now, with Diamondbacks and Mongoose BMX’s that fly past us. We ignore them all and punch on through. You can do that with a dodgy spear and a Hīnaki. We reach the end of the gravel road and duck into the shadow of a large concrete tunnel. Water trickles through the middle of it. We walk with our legs spread, our boots on either side of it. It stinks in here. It gets smellier as it darkens, though it’s nice to escape the heat outside. There’s a light from a manhole at a junction we reach. We peel sideways and exit through a side tunnel on the left. The water deepens.
The water is cleaner outside, though only just. Steep banks lead to the back of worksites. We can hear workers lifting and moving things we can’t see. Thick clumps of pūhā run up the side of its banks. I have uncles that would eat it once cooked, though there are rainbow-coloured oil slicks on the waters’ surface that convince me to leave it where it is. The red bands at the top of my boots are almost underwater. A water rat launches itself from its cover and scuttles across plants and weeds, sending me backwards. I’m not scared or anything. There’s just something about them, their ugly twitching faces and poisonous teeth that I hate.
We’re sunburnt, thirsty and hungry though happy. We’ve seen two eels and have succeeded in missing both with a now twice-broken broom handle. A squashed Hīnaki glistens in the sun. We failed to scare anything in its direction before I stepped on it. My left gumboot now leaks. It’s drying beside it in the sun. Everything stops as we see a monster eel. It’s half my size and thicker than both our arms. We know because we used them to flip it on to the bank. We succeeded, though only half of it made it out of the water before it slid back in. We’re screaming, eyes wide, me with a clear vision of Pops’s face when he sees us arrive home with it. We chase it towards a long concrete pipe that sits on the bottom of the creek. We think we have it trapped though didn’t actually see it go in. We’re laughing at each other, though it’s nervous laughter. Neither of us is fooled by what could happen. We choose an end, bend our knees to the creek’s surface and slowly put a hand inside it. My hand closes on a thick slimy tail which makes me smile. I look up to see my brothers face move from concentration, to pain. He’s screaming and running for the nearest muddy bank, holding his right hand. The oversized eel pushes its way out of the concrete pipe and into deeper darker water. It looks like its smiling before it disappears. I’m left with the squashed Hīnaki, wet boots, a broken spear and a tale to tell.
