Pa Wars.

Grace, Patricia

PETINA BUMPED INTO Raycharles at Pa Wars, headed right into his soft stomach as she was coming up from the bottom field after the first game of touch.

She was bent almost double when she butted him, after having toed her way up the bank with her backpack on her back and holding her water bottle, puffed out and with sweat running into her eyes; but she thought later that the main reason for the collision was that she had been preoccupied regarding the matter of signs.

For his part Raycharles wasn't good at getting out of the way. He huffed and sat down. Petina stumbled and dropped herself beside him, took a drink from her bottle, then squirted some of the water over her head, fingering it back through her hair. Her face was burning like that sun up there.

"Not enough female subs," she said, "so I ended up playing a whole game. With all those teenagers. And I'm knackered."

"Thirty-two degrees," Raycharles said.

"The opposition was much better organized. They've got their own printed T-shirts and you can tell they've had a few practices. Dorry said they had a couple of reps in their team, so no wonder they gave us a hiding."

But Raycharles hadn't heard the last part of what she was saying. The spot where they were sitting was right in front of the main sound system and there were announcements coming over: that basketball games were about to begin in the gymnasium, that more entries were needed for the fifty-meter freestyle over at the pool, and that the karaoke competition was getting under way in the courtyard.

"You going in the basketball comps?" she asked.

"Nah."

A silly question. Raycharles wasn't a mover, didn't even have the energy to shift out of his own way most of the time and usually couldn't even open his mouth wide enough to utter a full sentence. That's what she remembered about him. But she remembered also that he wasn't a bad freestyler.

"Swimming?" she asked.

"Nah."

A bit of a slob, Raycharles, a bit of an idiot, but he was a good mate all the same.

"Darts," he said.

"Ah, darts? Who're you playing for?"

"Paratai Marae."

"From out your way? Blue and white T-shirts?"

"That's the one."

"The ones just beat us at touch?"

"Yes, them."

Well, "idiot" was being hard on him. Raycharles wasn't thick--no trouble with schoolwork and she remembered he had a mathematical brain. It was just that he was inactive, always had a kind of sleepiness about him. Sports were not in his line, though he used to hang around the playing fields when they were all at school, scorekeeping and handing out oranges. In those days he lived with his grandmother.

"You know I work in town now" she said.

"I heard."

"Teaching at the college. I got tired of the big city so thought I'd come back this way. I bought a house. It's on a rise overlooking the water. An old place. All native timber. I've modernized the kitchen and put in new windows."

Here she was blabbing away to Raycharles as if she had something to prove, and at the moment having to raise her voice above further announcements to do with wood chops, trivial pursuits, and the baby show. Even if he had heard, what would he care? Nevertheless she was pleased to have someone to tell.

How much should she tell?

"It's what I've been up to these past five years, teaching and doing up my house. It's on a big section with a creek running through. I've been planting trees." It was as though she needed to give her credentials; a waste of breath anyway, Raycharles being so gormless. Twenty years ago, all the playground gossip about who was doing what, to or with whom, had never brought an opinion or even a change of expression out of him.

"My parents are giving up the farm and Nani and John are taking it over," she said. "Mum and Dad are coming to live with me. There's plenty of room you know, at my new place. They're quite rapt about it. So am I."

Raycharles lay back, his hands under his head, his eyes shut.

"There's only one thing ... just one thing." She knew she could say anything she liked to Raycharles and he wouldn't flap an eyebrow.

"I've been thinking, working out what to do about it, and trying to get it sorted ... but I've been waiting, you know, hoping ... for a sign."

Which was ridiculous rubbish. She didn't even believe in signs. Or only to the extent of needing to make them up, being prepared to take anything--like seeing six dolphins out at sea, feeling her neck prickling, dreaming of crayfish, finding five dollars--as a sign. Because sometimes a sign was what she needed before she could give herself permission to do what it was that she really wanted to do, had already made up her mind to do. She just needed a sign sometimes, or something she was prepared to take as a sign, so that she wouldn't think she was bringing bad luck on herself by taking a certain step.

Over the past few years she had redecorated the whole house, leaving one bedroom until last. That was the kid's bedroom.

But as yet there was no kid.

Couldn't get a kid out of her mind, and now she was about to tell that to Raycharles flopped and comatose on the ground beside her. It was more than a year now since she had completed the decoration of that last room. She had created a rainbow in that one room, planning that by the time she had finished there would be a baby to occupy it. This is what was on her mind now. The sun was boiling around up there and Raycharles was probably asleep.

Every week she had bought something for the room--a cot, a set of drawers, an item of furniture, a baby swing, a pram, a mobile, a book. When in town she had spent time in the baby shop fingering the gowns and outfits, the towels and blankets, examining front pouches and baby backpacks. She read books, could hold conversations with the most knowledgeable of parents on brain development in infants, educational toys and videos, nutrition, water birthing, baby sign language and the cognitive advantages of being able to speak three languages, motor skills in infants, breast-feeding and the importance of the extended family in the life of a child.

"I need a father for my baby," she said.

"Didn't know you wiz having one," Raycharles said in his sleep.

"I'm not yet, but I want to."

"You should then."

"They don't grow on trees, Raycharles."

"Mmm."

"I need a temporary man, a man temporarily."

"Aah."

"So I made this plan. A kind of plan ... well, I had these ideas but you can't just ... I mean I was married once, for three years but it didn't work out and I never wanted to try that again. Had different relationships after that--but it's not my thing. I'm no good at relationships, too bossy maybe, expect too much maybe, no tolerance or something. Having a man around is just not me. I'm all right on my own--working my section or renovating my house--because ... because ... everything's got to be done my way. And I like to do stuff--scuba diving, sailing when I get a chance, tramping in the hills. A man thinks you'll give all that up for him. He takes up all your time. But in the meantime I'm missing out on a baby. 1 could give time to a baby. I could commit to a kid, reckon I've got something to offer children. It's all I think about these days.

"I thought of adoption, but that would depend on a niece having a bump in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would be like waiting around like a ghoul for someone to make a mistake, and after that hoping they would agree to give the baby over. Small chance. Anyway, they're all being careful these days. And I'm not about to adopt from strangers because I'm fussy about whakapapa. If the baby's not going to come out of me, then at least it has to have the same ancestry.

"Anyway, they won't allow you to adopt if you're solo. Not that I'm going to be solo, not with Mum and Dad living with me. I mean that's all part of it. part of the plan, having Mum and Dad. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. One kid, one parent just isn't good enough--not as I see it anyway. But the authorities, well, they have a different way of looking at things. If you don't have a husband you won't be considered as an official adoptive parent."

"That leaves me out," Raycharles said.

She waited while the next announcements came over, wished she and Raycharles were somewhere quieter. But now that she'd started talking she had to keep on going and didn't want the interruption that moving might cause.

"I mean there have been these men, different ones. Each time I thought this might be the one who would be a father to my children, even though I knew the relationship wouldn't last. I got pretty desperate, thought of just going unsafe with one of them, and then if it all happened, if I became pregnant, I'd let him go without telling him.

"But in the end it's not really an option. A man would have a right to know. A kid would have a right to know."

And it all sounded too far-fetched now that she had said it out loud. These ideas that she'd had while she planted and painted, these plans that she'd made, these dreams that had kept her awake at night for so long now, all seemed to be crumbling about her as she told them into Raycharles's lazy ears.

"I even looked into anonymous donor fathers, but it wouldn't be right. A kid would want to know where he or she came from, have contact. Not my style. I'd need to know too. I know I'm a greedy pig, wanting everything. But I'm getting on to thirty-seven, you and me both, Raycharles, and feel as though time's running out on me.

"July thirteenth, you," he said.

When they were kids he always remembered things like that--birthday dates and phone numbers--but it wasn't something anyone would expect a grown man to do. She would've thought he'd be over all that by now, have something more useful to fill his head with. She recalled that he'd had a good job with an accountancy firm after he left school, one that would have seen him through his studies, but he left there before qualifying, went back to live with his grandmother and probably hadn't had a decent job since. Here he was, late thirties, and as far as she knew he was pumping petrol down at the village garage and selling Fanta, peppermints, and Moro bars over the oily counter.

The sound system was cracking and spitting and ready to blast again.

"We should shift," she said, but Raycharles didn't budge, and whether Raycharles could hear or not, whether he was listening or not, at least she was putting thoughts into words--examining dreams under a sun that was standing above them breathing monster fire.

"Me one month later, fifteenth August," he said when the announcements had finished.

"So I decided I would do something about it these holidays," she said, and now that she'd gone this far she might as well tell it all. "Listen to this, Raycharles. I reckoned on finding an old friend, someone who would understand ... I mean we were all good mates ... we had such a great time when we were kids, didn't we? To me there's been nothing like those days, nothing like those friendships. I even made a list, you know, of attributes for a potential father, did quite a lot of homework. I wanted him to be someone who I'd known a long time, someone whose family checked out OK. He would have to be unattached, at least for the present, and he'd have to be good-looking, intelligent, good-natured, and healthy, not too young, not too old, have some ambitions in life and no addictions. Well, why not be choosy? That's family planning, isn't it? This is my kid I was thinking about.

"The only candidates I came up with were Rufus and Hanikopa. I know they've moved on, know they have families and ex-wives, but either of them would do fine. I was counting on seeing them, counting on them being back home for New Year and here today for Pa Wars. And I was going to put it to one of them, or both.

"But now ... well, now that it has come to the crunch I realize I can't just rush up to a man, even if he is a mate, and say to him,'How about us producing a kid together and you won't even have to be around ... just keep in contact, you know, for the kid's sake?' I mean it wasn't as if I was going to suggest jumping into bed with a mate for what might seem like a whim, or for any other reason. You can do that with strangers maybe, but ... t mates, not ... not ... I was really thinking the 'known donor' option. Well, I was kind of waiting for a sign ... to make it all right, to tell me it was OK to go ahead to ... you know, ask."

Not even a grunt from Raycharles.

"And now that I'm putting it into words, well ... I mean, imagine Rufus. He'd just think it was a big laugh. He'd tell the world, make a huge joke of it ... but then you never know, he might agree. The cars wouldn't matter. He wasn't born with those ears, they're just from playing front-row forward for too long. Anyway, thinking about it now, I couldn't. A kid isn't a joke after all. I must've been off my head.

"And Hanikopa, well ... he wouldn't. Or maybe he would but then he'd want more. He'd be all intense about it. Dumb idea. Anyway, I couldn't imagine someone like Hani taking kindly to having a health check, HIV, all that. I mean it's a baby I want, not a disease. I'd have the same tests myself of course. But I'm nuts I suppose. This baby business is really getting to me. What do you reckon, Raycharles?"

"They're both all right."

"Who?"

"Rufus and Hani."

"But me, am I doolally, or what?"

"They both got a car."

There was an announcement coming over about the commencement of the standing chop and log-sawing doubles, another that the darts competition was getting under way in classroom five.

So now Raycharles was leaving, rolling himself, standing, dragging off his T-shirt, shaking the leaves and dry grass off it, pulling it on again, walking off in the direction of the classrooms. She wanted to go after him, grasp a handful of shirt, demand words from him, shake something out of him, make him rattle, but instead she joined the crowd making its way to the wood-chop ring.

Petina knew most of the men waiting beside their blocks in preparation for the standing chop. Rufus was among them, wearing a green singlet loosely over big arms and shoulders. He was thick around the middle, and big in the legs--a good physique for an ax man, though she knew Rufus wasn't a regular in the wood-chop circuit. She recognized some of the older men too, ex-champions like Robert Lundy, Patariki Baker, and Norm Hakaraia. Among them were some younger ones, probably forestry workers just getting into the game. The logs, nailed to the stands, were marked out for the first upstrokes and downstrokes, the markings giving each log a wide-open mouth. The men were shuffling their boots into the ground to gain footholds, and every so often, in a thoughtful and tender way, scraping the balls of their thumbs over the hard-smile edges of their ax blades. They began warming into their tasks with practice swings, under and over in slow arcs. The sun was moving on its slow arc too, white hot and sharp.

Beige chips and wedges were falling from under the blows of the earliest handicappers, the count continuing until all axes were swinging. Sweat drops, spraying out, circled the heads of the men like halos as the barracking from the crowd heightened and as first one, then another of the men completed the V into the tonsils of the mouth of the log, leapt round, and began hacking into the other side. One by one the heads toppled.

"Out of condition," Rufus said, coming across after the chop, hugging and sweating all over her. "How are you, sis? How's our Miss Perfect?"

"That's what a desk job does for you, eh, brother?" Sylvie said as she joined them, and Hani, giving out bottles of water from a crate, said, "Sooner you than me, bro. I don't mind being just the water carrier"

The four went to sit with their backs to the boundary fence, waiting for the arena to be set up for the next chopping event, utilizing the scrap of shade that it provided. It was time for them to tell each other about ...

Jobs.
Who died, who lives.
Full-time and part-time kids.
Christmas.
Kids.
Your new lady, your old lady, your old man.
Your new baby.
Moving to Aussie.
Who split up, who got together.
Ailments and operations.
Kids, kids, kids.
Her job, her house, her trees.
The government, the Maori Party, the tsunami.
Kids.

"But where are they, the rest of the gang? Dorry, Heck, Raycharles?" someone asked.

"Ray's up playing darts. I think I'll go and have a look," Petina said. It was a good excuse to get away because she had nothing more she could tell. There was nothing more she could listen to. "We'll catch up some more," she said.

"Come down the local later, for a get together," Hanikopa called. "We'll put the word around."

"I'll be there," she said, though didn't think she could face a night out with the old gang. There was distance now--drift, severance, fallout, wounds, unraveling, kids--lives that could not be disrupted by her dreams.

Raycharles was like one of those slow lizards, slow arm lifting, slow wrist dropping back, bandy legs, slouched body, slow push of darts from loose fingers to strike triples and bull's eyes, lips pushed forward as though it could be his mouth doing the throwing.

Raycharles was cleaning everyone up.

Petina was saying goodbye to her baby.

"What's up?" Raycharles asked when the game had finished.

"All down the tubes," she said. "It was a crazy idea anyway. I gotta let it go."

"You better help me take Gran her coffee," he said, and although Petina couldn't think why he would need help to take his grandmother a cup of coffee, she followed him out.

"I didn't know ... didn't realize the old lady was still around," she said. She had to make talk, have a chance to pick herself up, reassess.

"Over in classroom two playing euchre," Raycharles said. He was ordering eight coffees at the food caravan, putting sugar and milk in all of them, and gathering up sandwiches and sausage rolls which Maggie, at the open hatch, put into a plastic bag for him.

Going on forty and still living with his grandmother.

"We'll give you a tray for the coffees, Raycharles," Maggie said."Bring it back when vanished."

"Eighty-nine last November."

Petina carried the food while Raycharles walked ahead of her with the tray. She thought she might cut her holiday short. Maybe she should pay more attention to her career, have a look in the gazette for a deputy principal's job and go for promotion.

The room was dull with the weight of heated air but there was a clatter of voices that brightened it. And there were roars, grunts, croaks, hoots, whistles, warbles, howls, and bellows of laughter, which made it seem that among the card players there had come a variety of birds and animals. But the sounds cheered her. She had to lift herself, make an effort, get over disappointment, for now at least. After all, there were other reasons she had for coming back home. Seeing all these faces was one of them. She decided she should just hang loose, let herself down slowly. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Hey, yo," Raycharles said, putting the tray down in a space on the table where his grandmother and her gang of card sharps were clearing away after the last round of euchre.

"Raycharles?"

"Raycharles, darling, what you got there?"

"This nanny of yours, Raycharles, she can see through the back of the cards, beat the pants off us."

"Petina," he said, by way of introducing her.

"Course it is. We know Petina. We know Babe and Monty. Come here, darling."

"We heard Babe and Monty giving up the farm, going to live in town."

"Sausage rolls, darling, and my tongue been hanging out for this coffee?

"With you Petina. Your mum and dad, living with you?"

"Before winter," she said.

"You married anyone else yet?"

"No, Aunt, and there's no one on horseback appearing over the horizon."

"Any kids then?"

"No kids."

"Moumou, darling. It's a waste."

"Cheese and onion, lettuce and tomato, luncheon and pickle, but you have to get the Glad Wrap off first. If you can."

"Like him, like Raycharles. A waste. All that dangle and he don't know what to do with it. How can he ever become a grandfather?"

"Yeh, Raycharles, when you going to get the kango hammer going, find out what it's for?"

"When you going to get it up, Raycharles?"

"When you come on a date with me, e kui," Raycharles said.

"Ah."

"Ha, ha."

"Ha, ha, ha."

"Ha, you Raycharles, name the day then."

"Is that why you gave up that accountancy job?" Petina asked as they walked back to the caravan to return the tray. "So you could come back and live with your grandmother?"

"That job? It was nothing. It was just work. Nothing."

And if she made a career move it would take her out of the classroom. It would be what Raycharles was talking about. Nothing, just work. The classroom suited her, interacting with kids was what she did best, what she liked best.

"With the garage, well, there's people coming in all the time," he said. "There's their tanks, their tires, their windscreens, their milk, their newspapers."

It was a long string of words to have come from Raycharles.

"And I do all the books--garage and workshop. Been manager there for the past three years."

Not all Fanta and Moro bars. But why did she have to think like that anyway? Why was she such a snob? Raycharles was still Raycharles. He was good enough for her to spout all her crazy ideas to earlier on. He had always been good enough for that.

Raycharles delivered the tray and they walked together by the food caravans, past a stall selling Porou Town caps and T-shirts, continuing on past information stands for Hau Ora Health, Smokefree, and the Maori Party, on to the first aid tent and the mobile diabetes-check van, down the bank to the scorched field where running races were now taking place.

"And I do go out, do have a social life. I mean ..."

Letting her know he did know what to do with his hammer. He must have a reason for wanting her to know all this, she thought. What he was telling her must be important somehow. He must believe she needed the information, otherwise he'd never be spouting so many words, and he still hadn't finished.

"But ... I'll never leave her. She can't live on her own. Even after she's gone I'll never leave there. I like it. It suits me. And any way ... any way ... I never wanted a wife."

He was scratching a heel in the dirt, scraping a groove while he was telling it all to her. Because? Because maybe he was choosing himself, giving her an opportunity, even though she would never have given him a passing thought. She was sure he knew that she'd never once considered him.

Raycharles stopped pawing the ground, looked hard at her and laughed.

"And I got a car as well."

She laughed too, but the laugh should be on her, she thought.

"If what you're saying," she said, but couldn't go on. After what she'd been thinking about him it wouldn't be fair to take advantage, as she remembered they all had done in the past--but they were kids then. Had to stop. Had to let him off the hook.

"The more I talked about it "she said," the more I realized I couldn't. And being with them, the old gang ... well, it was embarrassing. I had to get away from them. Felt, well ... so whakama. They're all so on-track with their lives. Hani's off to Oz. Ruf's starting up a new business, and so involved with the kids he's got already. I mean what would they think, the kids?"

"Signs," he said. "Signs are good things. I believe in those." But she couldn't let him continue.

"No, you don't, Raycharles. The only signs you believe in are plus and minus, multiply, divide."

"It comes from living with a granny," he said. "An old mate comes and head-butts you fair in the stomach and knocks you down, well, it's got to mean something."

"It means she wasn't looking where she was going. You can't call that a sign."

"This mate starts spouting all these hopes and plans into your ears, just like usual, just like she always did. Well, then you got to understand it's you she's telling all this to. While you're slinging your darts you're thinking about it. You're thinking, she's not telling this to Rufus or Hani. The words are meant for you, not for Rufus or Hani ..."

"No, no. It's not fair. I had these thoughts all the time I was telling you, thoughts about you--but you know this already. You know me. You know what I'm like--hypercritical, a bitch from way back. I never considered you, not at all. You, well, you ... you were a convenient ear."

"I was top of your list," he said. "I was the only one you told." He laughed again. "But I won't hold you to it."

"You don't need to be taken in by my hard luck stories, don't have to get involved in my problems, just because you're soft. And that ... that head-butt in the puku ... well, you can't call that a sign."

"Yes I can. A sign can be whatever you want, and you can back it up any way you like. It comes from living with a granny. Like, there I am, playing darts and I'm thinking about these gumboots standing just inside the door at home, a little pair of gumboots left there by some kid, but we couldn't figure out who, which kid. They were there for so long they wouldn't fit that same kid anymore, so I went to put them out in the shed. Gran Mary said, "Leave them, don't you see they're waiting for someone to step in?" So I left them. Then today I'm up there biffing darts and I'm saying to myself, if I hit the bull's-eye three times in a row, it's a sign. It's a backup to the gum-boots and the head-butt in the stomach, and that means I tell Petina, talk to Petina. If I miss I keep my mouth shut. But ... I already knew I could hit three in a row."

They made their way over to the swimming pool where the presence of a body of water made it seem it would be cooler there, but the sun, gawping red-eyed down onto white concrete and the water's surface made an oven of the enclosure. In it, people urging the swimmers, their voices rising as the contests ended, were steam cooking. Some were removing their shirts, dunking them in the pool, and putting them on again.

"No Raycharles, it's me ... it's one of my way-out ideas," she said. "All that stuff, all I've been thinking, dreaming about over these past months I see now was just pie in the sky. I feel gutted really. I always thought that my ideas and my solutions to my problems were pragmatic, pie in the hand."

"Suits me," he said as they left the steam oven.

"What does?" she asked, but she knew by now what he was getting at, knew he was offering to be a father--which was just Raycharles being Raycharles, wanting to do a mate a favor, inventing reasons so that she, who didn't deserve it, could feel OK about what he seemed to be saying. Even though a "favor" was all she had wanted anyway--a friend who "wouldn't mind"--she couldn't let Raycharles answer the question she had just asked.

"You can't, you don't just make up signs to suit," she said, even though she knew that was what she always did.

"Why not? That's how it works," Raycharles said. "And anyway, like they said, like what they always say, Gran Mary and them up at the cards, What chance of me becoming a grandfather?"

His own reason?

"What other chance for me, Petina?"

Now everything was changing under the blistering sun.

She would never have thought of Raycharles having his own reason, having a desire, maybe a strong desire, perhaps one equal to her own? The sun was exploding, biffing out hangi stones in an abandoned kind of way. Voices were exploding over the microphones and, as the two made their way across to the courtyard, a karaoke finalist was easing words," Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone," out over the assemblage. "Pretend that we're together, all alone."

So what if ... ? What if ... ?

"Otherwise it would have been someone else standing up there on the bank for you to bang into, Petina."

And why not? He was good-looking enough underneath it all. Greasy fingernails and dingy teeth weren't inheritable, and the scarred neck that dragged on one side of his jaw was from when he blew himself up one Guy Fawkes night.

She had to stop this line of thought. Just stop it.

Really it was the day after Guy Fawkes when they'd gone out and shaken all the remnants of powder from the dead firecrackers onto a heap and given the matches to Raycharles.

Coming up to the microphone was Ruf's sister, Derena. Rufus and the others were at the far side of the crowd waving them over. So it was unavoidable. They had to make their way in that direction even though there was more to talk about with Raycharles. If she did ... she and Raycharles, if they decided to go ahead with "known donor" ... ? But if it didn't work, if the known donor option couldn't be arranged, then ... could she ... ?

"Cut-and-paste would be all right," Raycharles said from behind her as they stepped in and out among the people.

And what under the blistering sun was that supposed to mean? That she was too bossy, too yappy, too fault-finding, too whatever-it-was, for him to sleep with? But continuing that line of thought took her places she didn't like to go--a place where she knew scars, fingernails, a round of flab, and neglected teeth to be superficial, and where the only true defect was within herself.

Yet, if she was so bad, so untouchable, so undeserving she should just turn and walk away, go home and apply for a nothing job.

But she knew she had to stop that line of thought too. She'd been through it all with herself so many times, and if she didn't stop it now she'd be walking out on her baby, putting a pillow over its face, or drowning it.

Derena's good voice, smoky and rasping, dragged up from somewhere deep, spread over them.

"What're you two cooking up?" Hanikopa asked.

"All day with your heads together," Dorry said as they all joined in the applause at the conclusion of the item. Derena left the mic and made her way down towards them while the next announcement was made and the music started up again.

Stop it now. She had to. This was her chance. She had to do her best, the best she could for her baby. Her baby ... her baby ... who could have the most laid-back of fathers. A kid, who in the future, could have such a mellowed-out grandfather. Her chance was now.

"Otherwise it would have been someone else coming up the bank to knock you down, Raycharles," she said.

He laughed, punching his fists onto hips, bending and straightening himself.

"They're cooking up something," Dorry said as Derena joined them and they reorganized themselves to watch the remaining competitors.

There were angled shadows in the courtyard where they were all gathered, a roil of heated air as heavy as risen dough. But everything was all right. Raycharles's eyebrows, Petina could see, were dragging his face sky-high.

By the time the finalists were announced the sun was already backing down behind the hills, flame-throwing across the whole sky. Raycharles's eyes were bulbed and lit, seeing, she thought, small, fat-topped feet, toes like two rows of peas, stuffing into maybe pink, maybe blue, gumboots.

She asked what color they were.

"Red," he said.

NOTE: "Pa" means fortified village. In present times the word is sometimes loosely used to refer to a Maori community but is derogatory. However, the word as used in "Pa Wars" has been reclaimed somewhat to indicate the competition between different community groups.