Te Pou

The winning Sunday Star-Times short story by Andre Ngapo

Sunday Star Times

Pou (noun) pole, pillar, post, support, sustenance, expert, teacher. (verb)(-a) to stick in, erect, plunge in.

WOODEN POWER poles lined the roadsides of the Bronx, and Piri Paea held the record for initials carved into 162 of them. At first no one but us local kids cared about Piri's great big PPs carved from Esther Road to Ngata Place - the people of the Bronx weren't exactly your house-proud types.

Now, you know I'm not talking about the actual Bronx, ay? Just a rundown, mostly Maori neighbourhood in the Waikato that didn't even have concrete power poles. We'd roam the streets at night and joke that we still had the old wooden ones 'cause the workers were too scared to come into the Bronx to replace them.

We'd laugh at the totally cracked footpaths and blame each other for the rats that were everywhere. "Step on a crack, marry a rat." We figured that we'd all been accidently married at least a few dozen times, and we'd argue over the rats whenever we'd see them.

"That's your wife, that one Black!" "Not even ow, dick! That one's so ugly it must be Snotty's." We'd all laugh at Snotty.

"Ow, shut up ow Black. Look in the mirror."

The rest of us would roll around on the ground, laughing at Snotty and Black, until we were all throwing loose gravel stones at one another - the tiny kind that only hurt if you got hit in the eye. We would always stop if someone happened to spot Piri climbing another pole. Man, he could climb! Up he'd go with his knotted rope, his butterfly knife between his teeth. He'd check to see if we were watching. He liked it when we watched.

ME AND my mates started calling it the Bronx when we were around ten, to kinda make it sound staunch - wannabe tough guys really. Word spread and pretty soon everyone in town called it the Bronx. I even met people from other towns miles away and they'd heard of the Bronx, and our gang, "The Bronx Brotherhood Badness", aka the Triple Bs (we'd changed it from "The Bronx Bad Boys" when we hit twelve 'cos it sounded cooler).

In the "Bad Boy" days we'd meet at the paddock next to Ginga's house each afternoon at around four o'clock. We'd play bullrush until someone cried. We'd gather around whoever got hurt and give the other fulla the evils for head-high tackling, or for getting aggro and hitting one of the brothers too hard. Sometimes a punch would be thrown and a membership to the gang would be chucked in or revoked. But by 4 o'clock the next day it was usually sorted out. 

MOST OF us came to the Bronx when we were five or six. Our old neighbourhood on the other side of town was wrecked by the floods in '81. Aunty Nan would shake her head and tell us how the council office talked about the "good work" done to move the flood victims to higher ground, while our elders pointed out the "terrible state" of the houses we moved into in the "lowly neighbourhood". Half of the houses in my "new" street were rotting and abandoned; they were old state-railway houses, left empty, slowly wrecked by vandals after the railways shut down. For us kids (who didn't have a clue what "lowly neighbourhood" meant) moving to the Bronx with all those "haunted houses" was terrifying. When we got older those houses became the Triple B's favourite haunts.

GIS-A BLOODY puff ow runny nose!" complained Black. Snotty held on to the cigarette for just a bit longer than needed, a look of mischief on his face. Black, of course, went for him. Snotty biffed the cigarette into a corner of the empty house, and reached for Black's neck. Black got in a good blow to the kidneys. "Stop it you clowns!" I said. They did, instantly. None of the boys messed with me.

It had been months since I had received a decent challenge - not since Arthur had tried to take over the gang in the school holidays. I whipped him so hard that the boys still teased him about my sneaker marks being permanently printed on his arse. The boys were happy. They knew I was their best choice for leader - I was the toughest - and I made popular decisions which usually led us in the right direction. In the long term it looked like we were all heading for the local chapter of my older brother's gang, the Mighty Crew or MCs.

Now, somewhere in the scuffle between Snotty and Black, Tubz had recovered the cigarette from the rubble-strewn corner. He was casually blowing smoke rings. The boys were silent. We watched the floating halos spiral upwards, until they escaped beyond the rafters' cobwebs, blending into the distant clouds like angels returning to heaven. "Farrr, bro!" said Ginga. "Teach us that?" The boys spent the afternoon making pitiful imitations of Tubz's practice-perfect hoops.

OW LOOK - Piri's done another one." Sure enough, about four metres up from its base, two huge capital letter Ps could be seen, wrapping halfway around another of the Bronx's wooden power poles. "Three streets to go and he'll have done the whole Bronx," said Chong, who wasn't actually Asian but got his name 'cause his eyes slanted heavily downwards. Snotty and Ginga immediately teased Chong, calling him an Asian nerd.

"Shut up you fools," I said. "Chong's right. Piri's gonna get them all soon, so make sure no one messes with him or his marks." I had a soft spot for Piri. Once I caught some boys new to the Bronx teasing him, calling him a "freak". I gave them the biggest hiding the Bronx had ever seen.

Piri's grandmother, Aunty Nan, said the doctors had told her Piri was different because of a problem with the way his brain grew before he was born. She said he was like a butterfly - a purerehua - that couldn't quite break free from his cocoon. His beautiful wings lay half in, half out - trapped; unable to fly.

"But still able to flap, ay!" the elders chuckled. "Just look at him up those blimmin' pou!" Aunty Nan waved her walking stick at them, chuckling along also.

THE LAST remaining Pakeha family living in the Bronx had packed up their possessions ready to move out. "White flight," the elder spokesperson told the local newspaper. He said that the neighbourhood once had Maori and Pakeha living side by side in the old railway days. But now it had all really gone to "rack and ruin", overrun by drugs and intimidation.

We saw the white flight headline, and we heard the elders talking about it. The boys joked that it should be called "black fright" teasing Black that the Pakeha had all moved out 'cause he was too ugly.

The next week a Maori family new to town, with a girl around our age, moved in to the vacant house. For the first few weeks she stayed hidden inside, but after I walked her home from school one day she started to come out a bit more.

All the boys tried to impress her, trying not to look like clowns, which made her smile 'cause the boys tried so hard they did look like clowns. Her name was Ashley, and after a while her nicest smiles were saved for me. I let her hang with the Triple Bs, even though some of the boys complained. She was smart, and proved herself to be a handy climber during our shop burglaries and fruit-tree raiding missions. Her sharp tongue and quick knees put a few of the boys back into their place.

IT WAS Ashley that spotted them first. Two white vans were rolling down Gilbert Street towards us.

"Hey! Hey," Ginga shouted nervously, "are they Henchmen?" referring to the notorious gang from a nearby town.

Sometimes Henchmen would roll in to the Bronx to throw Molotov cocktails at Mighty Crew pads, or hit the local pubs in numbers looking to rumble, or worse.

The boys groaned. "Geez Ginga - Henchmen drive Valiants you idiot!" The vans drew closer. The men inside, most definitely not Henchmen, didn't look at us as they drove past, but our eyes took in every detail. Hard hats and overalls, cable, tools, paper and clipboard, official-like... We didn't see them again for a week.

NO ONE had ever used the "escape trapdoor" in the Triple B's headquarters, which we'd set up in the basement of an abandoned house. We'd made it so you could only get out, not in, and unless you knew, you'd barely notice it was there. But somehow it had now burst open, and after our eyes adjusted to the light streaming in, the panting silhouette hunched over in the emergency exit turned out to be Snotty.

He was so frantic that he easily popped the door with a crowbar we'd stashed outside with other weapons just in case we needed to grab them in a quick escape. He told us what he'd seen that'd spooked him, and we all ran as fast as we could. There they were - the white vans, with their workers streaming out on to the road - and parked beside them, a cargo truck and crane.

We all watched, unable to speak as the workers began preparing new footpaths, erasing with jackhammers the deep cracks we knew off by heart. We watched as they began boarding up the abandoned homes. And our mouths dropped open in disbelief as they began stockpiling, on an unused section, dozens of new concrete power poles.

WE ALL wondered what would happen to Piri if the wooden poles came down before he'd finished; he only had two streets to go. All the boys made a pact, spit handshaking that we'd help him to the very last. We knew it wouldn't be easy - Piri didn't really follow anyone's instructions, and he would only climb if, and when, he was ready.

The power workers would call to him to get down, and we'd throw heavy stones at their white vans. They'd try to block him from going up the poles, and we'd surround them, angry, until they backed off. We weren't the only ones angry.

The elders, who hadn't been informed of the work, told the workers to "send your blimmin' bosses up to let us know what's going on", eventually marching down to the council office to get to the bottom of it. And the elders were angry with us for getting tangled up in problems with the workers, the power board, and - to top it off - with the police.

Ashley wasn't allowed to hang with us anymore. Her dad got a job as a contractor with the power board and spotted us throwing stones at his van. The police were called in again and I was grounded by my mum and couldn't leave the house until the power board's work was done. Uncle Nes (an ex-Mighty Crew chapter leader, and born-again from up north) came to stay and make sure that I listened. Piri was sent to his cousin's on the outskirts of town. He had half a street to go.

A LOUD TAP on my window was what woke me. I saw him and couldn't believe it at first, but sure enough, there he was - Piri Paea, outside my house on Esther Road at two o'clock in the morning. I snuck out the back door, quickly tiptoeing up the boggy driveway. He was now at the top of a power pole, scraping away in the dead of night. As I looked up and down the road, I could see his enormous initials were etched into every pole, except two. And as I looked at him, wondering if I was dreaming, I could swear he smiled at me - he never smiled.

"Choice one Piri," I whispered, making sure not to wake Uncle Nes. "Now quick, only two left!" At that very moment a white van rolled on to Esther Road.

IT TURNS out they'd been working on a felled line across town, and had then been sent to check on a simple fault that saw power disconnected to a few streets in the Bronx. The two men in the van radioed through to their base to let the police know that Piri was in the neighbourhood. "Quick Piri," I called, louder now. He scrambled down the pole, sprinting to the next, his butterfly knife gripped tightly between his teeth. He climbed the pole quickly, gracefully. He set his knotted safety rope in place. He carved his initials with expert precision.

"Go Piri, go! Only one left!" He came down quickly - too quickly. He landed hard, winded, onto his back. He half groaned. I asked if he was okay - he had never talked to anyone, ever, and I didn't expect a reply now. But as I helped him up, I saw a look in his eyes that told me it would take more than a fall to stop him from scaling that pole. With his butterfly knife back in place between his teeth, he lunged forward.

"I'm afraid I can't let you go up there, mate," said the stocky power board worker, standing at the base of the pole. "No!" My head was pounding almost as hard as my heart. "Could I take him?" I felt ill at the thought of having to tackle the giant of a man.

"Like hell you can't let him go up there, Jack," said the other worker. It was Ashley's dad, Bill. The two men stood toe-to-toe at the bottom of the power pole. They were both shouting now, with Jack screaming, "Ahh, who cares if he's `special' Billy, that freak's been a bloody pain!" People began to stir in the nearby houses. It all happened so quickly. Piri started up the pole. He was going to make it! He was two metres up, three... but then Jack, who'd punched Bill hard in the guts, managed to grab hold of Piri's foot. Jack pulled down hard - the knotted rope dropping to the ground. I saw Piri's eyes flash like fire, burning wild. I saw him turn and look down at Jack. Uncle Nes was running towards us now, but he was just too far away. I saw Piri jump - saw him remove the butterfly knife from between his teeth in mid-flight, and, enraged, plunge it deep into Jack's neck.

THE NEWS travelled like lightning, and everyone in the Bronx was struck by it. Piri Paea had been taken away by the police. He had killed a power board worker and was found up a blood-stained power pole; his carved initials, PP, outlined in a muddy red were lit up in the late-August moonlight.

EVERYONE TOOK Piri's lockup hard. The elders said that Aunty Nan died so suddenly because "her heart was engulfed by a swollen torrent of sorrow" after she was told Piri would be held at an institution "indefinitely". Bill, Ashley's father, was swamped with guilt and after the enquiry he and his family quickly moved out of town. The Triple Bs were thrown into turmoil, the gang eventually torn apart by circumstance and doubt. The police questioned us intensely, looking for answers to Jack's death. Some of the boys, seeking protection, became patched into the MCs. Some moved back to the old neighbourhood on the north side which had been rebuilt once the stopbanks were complete. One way or another, the Triple Bs were lost. Our headquarters were infiltrated - its walls breached by the housing corporation and the council's "rebuilding" campaign. The mayor came to see the elders to offer his sympathy, and to talk about "the need for clearer communication channels between all stakeholders in the suburb". The elders accepted his invitation to talk.

WHEN THE first pole finally came down, I watched, alone, from behind the sheer curtain at the kitchen window. The wizened tohunga led the prayers, flanked by a group of around twenty elders. Solemnly, sincerely, they cleared the way for the councillors and contractors to begin the removals. They all stood silently, some two poles apart, and as the chants of the tohunga trailed off into silence, the elders, contractors and councillors all merged together.

The first of the 162 wooden power poles to be removed was loosened at the base by jackhammers, and then unceremoniously ripped out by the powerful crane. It opened a deep hole in the roadside. The elders wailed mournfully in memory of Jack, but especially for the loss of Piri. In the exact instant those long, sharp cries of sadness escaped the grief-stricken elders, it was as if something tore a deep hole straight through me to my heart. All the shock and the shame that I had held within came spewing forth, uncontrollably, on to the kitchen floor. All that I had been made, and made myself - my strong, staunch, semi-hardened core - was heaved out of me, hanging and broken like that blood-stained pou. I fell to my knees, the raw confusion and chaos within me laid bare. And I wept.

YEARS LATER, I still visit Piri, the beautiful butterfly, trapped. I talk of how he helped me break free of the Bronx, and of how I still go back to help the youth - how they remind me of Snotty, Black and the boys of the Triple Bs. I tell him all the stories wise Aunty Nan told me during my childhood; how she took me in during the dark days and nights when I was too scared to go home. And I tell him that whenever I come to visit I half expect to see his giant PPs carved into the wooden beams that line the hospital corridors. I swear he smiles.

* The accents and inflection marks of the original text have not been replicated in this version.

Top Writers: Runners-up in the open division were Ann-Marie Houng Lee, of Wanganui, and Jamie Standen, of Napier. The winner of the secondary schools division was Harris Williamson, of Papanui High School. Runners-up were Claire Sorrenson, Year 13 at Takapuna Grammar, and Monique Hodgkinson, Year 10 at Wellington High School.