A spade and a copy of Jehovah’s Witness magazine The Watchtower were in a corrugated iron shelter in the grounds of the cemetery. Grave markings blamed the Waikato River, which flowed past the town: George Sellwood drowned at Mercer, 1900; Roy Carter drowned, aged 27, in 1920: ‘Sometime we’ll understand’.
The sky was almost black, and the dark outline of a man could be seen through the windows of his three-bedroom house. Paul Whitelaw, 53, had sat down for a cup of tea. He was a new face. He’d moved in exactly two weeks ago, packed a suitcase of clothes and shifted from Whitianga to run sheep and beef on an 1,100-acre farm. ‘I worked up north as a carpenter building homes,’ he said. ‘We did well. The boys are still hard-out. They’re busy on a three-million-dollar home not due to be finished ’til November.’
He was trying to knock his own house into shape, had torn up the floorboards and lowered the ceiling. He touched the new ceiling. ‘What d’you reckon – bit bright?’ He’d bought very white ten-millimetre ply for $15 a sheet. ‘The house was rat-infested,’ he said, and pointed to a black rubbish bag in the kitchen. ‘Full of droppings. When I pulled down the ceiling, paper and nests came spilling out. The smell! Took days to get rid of it.’
He had no family, was on his own. Moving to Mercer marked a return to farming in the district where he was born. ‘I’m excited about it but it’s not been the greatest of seasons to kick off, and I’m just praying it’s not going to get cold.’ He was thinking about his thousand ewes.
Peter Black, whom he’d known since school, called in to see if he needed a hand. Black, a drain-laying contractor, employed eight people. ‘Mercer’s good,’ he said. What did he like about it? ‘It’s quiet. And it’s got the rowing club. All my kids have rowed for Mercer.’
Paul started up an electric saw. Peter shouted, ‘Mercer used to have an IGA, a Four Square, a butcher shop. Twenty-six truck and trailers used to be based here. They’d take sand to Hamilton and Auckland when they dredged the river.’ What did he make of the modern Mercer Food Junction Service Centre? All day, every day, traffic on the State Highway One Waikato Expressway turns on to an off-ramp, crosses an overbridge and stops for gas, for coffee, for the familiar happy stench of McDonald’s. Peter said, ‘I never go there.’ The history of Mercer was still on his mind. ‘Go and see Terry Carr,’ he said. ‘Lived here all his life. Retired now. Fit as a trout. He’s down the road, waiting for his dog to die.’
The houses of Mercer nestle in a foothill above the river. Terry was at home with his wife Dorrie. She said, ‘It’s not a very happy home today.’ She looked at Terry. He met her eye, then put his hands in his pockets and sat down in the dining room next to the brightly painted kitchen.
Dorrie put on the kettle. The sky had turned darker; midday had the pall of five p.m. Terry said, ‘Just buried the dog.’ What was its name? Terry said, ‘Lucky.’ And then he brightened. ‘He was lucky to be alive! Lived like a king. Never slept in his kennel. He’d back in and decide it wasn’t for him. He always slept in the shed. But he was going blind and deaf and… We took him to the vet this morning.’ Back home, Terry had put on his gumboots and got to work with a shovel in the front garden in the rain. ‘That’s where he is now, old Lucky.’
The sudden absence of his fourteen-year-old border collie made the house feel empty. ‘I guess I’ll move now,’ Terry said. ‘The dog was the stumbling block. He would have hated it.’ He meant Pukekohe, ten minutes’ drive north, where Dorrie had lived while Terry stayed in the family home, waiting for Lucky to die. ‘The new house had nowhere for him to run around. It’s one of those places where you can hand a cup of tea through the window to the person next door.’
Dorrie said, ‘No, it isn’t.’ She admitted their home in Mercer was on a larger section, which included a vast magnolia tree. ‘It’s not in great shape,’ Dorrie said, ‘because someone’s not looking after it.’
She looked at Terry. They both smiled. She said she was seventy. Terry said, ‘I’m seventy-seven. No, seventy-eight?’ Dorrie said, ‘Think again. You’re seventy-six.’ Terry said, ‘You’re the boss.’ They shared another fond and private smile.
They had lived apart for two and a half years. Dorrie stayed over on Saturday nights, after a round of golf at nearby Te Kauwhata. The rest of the time Terry looked after himself, cooked his own meals. ‘Spuds and vegies. Sausages. Steak once in a while.’ Dorrie smiled again. ‘Bachelor’s heaven.’
Did he shop at the service centre? ‘No.’ He gave a brief history lesson. There used to be shipping on the river. There used to be railway station tearooms (they inspired poet Rex Fairburn’s quality pun ‘The squalid tea of Mercer is not strained’). There used to be a wine bottling plant. There also used to be a tennis court: it was on their property, abandoned now, netless. They had laid the court in 1971 for their two kids, as well as everyone in Mercer, to enjoy. ‘We ran Housie down the pub to pay for it,’ Dorrie said. There used to be a pub.
Soon, too, Terry would be part of Mercer’s past. Pukekohe had a doctor and a supermarket: ‘We’re just waiting for a Farmers, then we’ll have everything we need.’ Terry looked out the kitchen window towards the front garden with its freshly dug grave. He said, ‘I’ve got no excuse now.’
A big blue roadside sign decorated with a knife and fork beckons motorists to the Mercer Food Junction
