The recruits said ‘Go hard’ and ‘Sir’. They had straight backs and were learning about service, tradition, self-respect. Also, they were having the time of their lives. ‘Today,’ said Steve Devantier, ‘I got to go out and throw some grenades.’
Was he encouraged to join by his father? ‘I haven’t seen him since I was ten or something. Dunno where he is.’ Teahu Peters, 18, said, ‘I joined up just to change my life and that.’ When asked for his name, he gave his full name, complete with three middle names. It was as though he were giving an interview to the police. He said, ‘I had a bit of a record.’ What offences? It was as though he were reading from a charge sheet: ‘Unlawfully taking a motor vehicle.’ He was very serious, very alert. Lieutenant Macpherson said, ‘He’s one of my star pupils.’
Boys from broken homes, boys who had been ‘wayward’ – were these the typical recruits the army took in and sorted out? Who else in New Zealand would volunteer for army life? ‘I was a Honda consultant,’ Oosa Tuala said.
Everything about Oosa was surprising. For a start, he was twenty-nine. He said, ‘I’ve always wanted to serve New Zealand.’ He had nearly applied to join the army in 2000 but decided against it because he had a young family. He had three children: two daughters, aged five and seven, and a son aged fourteen. ‘Yes, fourteen,’ he said. ‘I was a fourth-form dad.’ He had left school at the end of that year and found work at KFC. ‘I worked as many shifts as I could to raise my family.’ He got other, better jobs. He was responsible, mature, level-headed, warm; also, he was articulate, spoke intelligently and well. He gave credit to his teachers at St Mary’s Catholic Primary School in Papakura. And then he said, ‘You can tell where a person is from by their slang. There’s North Shore slang, Māngere slang, Ōtara slang. I’ve never talked in slang. I’m glad I don’t.’
It was approaching 1730 hours: time for dinner. The recruits’ menu was a choice of sirloin steak or braised sausages with roast potatoes, peas, cauliflower and carrots, and a hot pudding. The tables were set with cartons of Primo. Up on the seventh-floor dining room of the nearly deserted officers’ mess, conversation was as stiff and carefully folded as the red napkins. Life, loud and beery, was outside the camp, at the Oasis pub, where there was a fire in the wood burner and country music on the jukebox. As the night wore on and the good times rolled, Hector the eel seemed to smile behind his glass case.
Don McLaren, a small, neatly dressed carpenter, explained how he had fished up in Waiōuru. He was living in Central Otago when he saw an advertisement in The Dominion for contract work. He put in a tender and won. He phoned up the employer. ‘I said, “Well, whereabouts in Wellington is the job? Is it the Hutt Valley or in town?” Because what was I supposed to think? The advertisement’s in a Wellington paper, for Christ’s sake. The employer said, “It’s in Waiōuru.” I got the shock of my life when I ended up here.’ And when was that? ‘Eleven years ago.’
Friday night in Waiōuru, in the middle of winter, and the wind didn’t whistle – it wailed, the loudest ghost you ever heard, haunting the small dark frontier town. I looked at my watch. It was midnight at the Oasis. Seven drinkers were still on their feet. They ordered jugs, smoked on the front step, gossiped and laughed. They talked about snow, how appealing it was for visitors and how unappealing it was to live with it. They talked about how cold it got. The water mains constantly froze – one time, concrete in the mixer turned black. They talked about firewood and coal and chimney-sweeping. From the brochure for new residents: ‘Fire ashes are collected in winter on Tuesday mornings. Ash will only be collected if in a metal container with handles, e.g. an ammunition box.’
They had to drive to Palmerston North or Taupō for groceries. They always missed Waiōuru whenever they left. Always wanted to get back. It had a hold on them. They said, ‘The mountain.’ What mountain? I took their word for it. Nothing was visible in the dark night or the grey murky day.
The next morning, the sky once again grey and murky, Don made big hot steaming mugs of instant coffee in the house he shared with his mate Bill Cupples, a house-painter from Ireland. The two codgers – Don was 54, Bill 66 – lived on a street of ghosts: 300 houses, considered surplus to army requirements, had been put up for tender and taken away by truck. The driveways had been grassed over. In the 1970s, when it operated at its peak, Waiōuru had a population of 7,000; now it felt as reduced as the restaurant in the officers’ mess.
Don and Bill were showing me around their ghost street when the cloud lifted. ‘Look,’ said Don. ‘Aha,’ said Bill. There it was, magnificent and brazen, creamy. With its sides of luscious white snow, the mountain looked as if it were glowing. It was like a power source, energising the town, giving some of its power to the army. It burned in the sky and blossomed out of the ground: Mount Ruapehu, the desert rose.
St Bathans
Wind
Everywhere, wind. Not whistling, not howling, no music or drama to it at all, just something always pushing and shoving, lunging. It got up early. It
