Friday in Summer

I make no excuses for myself or my ancestors. Janice and Douglass had no idea what the long term consequences of going into the Valley were. They didn’t know about the way the Paradise Effect lessened each time you returned to this world from that. Physical healing continued to happen the same way each time you came in, but the healing wasn’t just physical: the emotional pain and disorders you carried with you were healed as well. On the first trip, you became the best person you could be. But when you tried to take that healing with you into this world, it didn’t happen. It was like emotional disorders were etched into the part of you that belonged to this world.

I could understand why (I hated to call him so) my ancestor would want to take a reminder of Paradise with him when he left. I can also understand why, being back here, the part of him that was base, used the second stone to barter his way into the rich man’s good graces. It was his taking the second stone that worried me. One stone would have been a memento. Two stones indicated that, even at his best, there was a part of him that was thinking of treachery.

I had exulted at the thought that my blood was that of the legendary James McKenzie, misrepresented New Zealand explorer. I did not want to think of how being descended from the corrupt Mossman would affect my father.

From the spring, I traversed to the gateway on the hill where I had first seen Janice and the Dodger arrive. It seemed longer than a day ago, but I knew how time here behaved less predictably than it did in the Overland. Looking around I saw that the clan had left for our world hurriedly. Baskets and clothes had been left where they fell. I kicked them aside. After I stripped my clothes off, I folded them and placed them behind a bush below the top of the knoll. Then Jasper arrived in a flash of light.

After we return to the Overland, I will stay with the stone. That is all the help I can be once I am returned to dumb dog. I spent a moment sympathising with an intelligent creature who lost so much in going from here to there.

‘You need not come. I have only to get the stone and return.’ He looked me in the eye. I saw a lot more understanding of the issues than either Janice or Dodger would have appreciated. ‘I’ll just tell my father that I ..’

Jasper growled so loudly that I hardly needed the translation. Do not tell your father. It is not his concern now. He has been too many times to the Valley.

‘Have you thought about what happens when we arrive at my house? You will be there before me.’

I will be disoriented for a short period. There is a residual effect. I will be unable to move for a short time. This is what my dam experienced.

The first indicator that I was back in the real world was Janice talking at the top of her voice from the street in front of my house. I tripped over a still and silent Jasper. I carried the dog around to the back of my house and locked him into the laundry, where I donned the clothes I had left before I went on my supposed ‘rescue mission’.

‘That you, Hamish?’ My dad called from the kitchen as I made my way through to my bedroom. ‘Just heard Coles’s tractor. He’ll be here with his cronies in a couple of minutes.’ I looked through the grime on my window. Janice and Douglass were walking up the drive. Dad came through the passageway and rested against the door frame. I busied myself, trying to recall what I had been doing when I saw the dog going up our driveway. My computer was on. I was in the middle of a conversation with Alice. ‘Don’t go out there until they’ve done their business.’

‘Right.’ I muttered as I sat at the computer, typing an all purpose ‘Yeah.’ into the dialogue with Alice. Dad was silent. I turned to look at him, as painful as I knew this would be.

People used to say we looked like brothers. But during the last three years, he had passed through looking like my father, and now gave the impression of being my grand-father. His face was tired and lined. His eyes had lost the startling blue we had shared and had faded to an opaque water colour. Because he worked outside on building sites, he kept his head shaven. This added to the ‘just finished a round of chemo’ look that had settled on him this last year. He held a can of beer in his hand. I glanced at it.

‘Want one?’

‘No thanks, Dad. I need to take the car out later.’

‘Right. Nil alcohol on your P licence. Bummer. Do you want me to get you a Pepsi then?’

‘Yeah, sure Dad.’ He went away, and I hurriedly finished the conversation with my girlfriend and opened a web browser. I googled ‘James McKenzie’ and added ‘nz’ before hitting return. I scrolled through the resulting references until I came to my favourite site, extracts from an early Encyclopedia of New Zealand. I had always liked this version of the story of James McKenzie. It brought the characters alive, reporting the actual words of the witnesses. I scrolled past the word for word accounts and came to the last piece on the site: a short article from a local newspaper from ten years after McKenzie was arrested; five years after he was sent back to Australia:

October 28 1865, page 3, Resident Magistrate’s Court
James McKenzie was brought up on remand from Thursday last, charged with stealing posts and rails from the Waimate Bush, the property of Messrs R. & G. Rhodes…

My dad returned quietly to lean against the door-frame. He handed me the can of drink. As I swiveled to look at him, I had to say it: ‘You know Dad, even if it was ten years after McKenzie had gone back to Australia, Rhodes would have remembered what McKenzie looked like after him having stolen his sheep. Don’t you think maybe this is another James McKenzie?’

He read what I had up on-screen. His face clouded even more. ‘Yeah. I wonder about that too.’ And that was all he said. He turned around and walked out. Soon I could hear the television going in the lounge. This did not quite succeed in drowning out the sounds of Coles and the others walking up the side of our house.

I was not who I thought I was. All my life, I had tried to live up to the story of the big strong Scotsman who went beyond what was known in his world and found a new and mystical land; who found country that he couldn’t own, but who was immortalized in the name of the land. Instead of this, I was the heir of a thief’s treachery. My famous ancestor was a two-bit (hah) thief and traitor on one side, and an anonymous petty ‘post and rail’ thief on the other. I know there is no shame in having convict forebears. In Australia we live in a colony founded on convict settlement. My mother’s Irish forebears came here in the first fleet, but that was not the ancestry I had thought I inherited from my father.

I stood and started pacing in the small space between my bed and the wall. I lost it then. I admit it. There is a space of time that I don’t remember. I don’t remember how I got the bruise on my forehead or the cut on my arm. When I came to myself, recalled by the barking from outside, my room was a shambles. Dad, I could hear, had turned up the sound on the television. I shook my head, and picked my way through the stuff on the floor. I had to get away. There was nothing here for me anymore. I decided with the only part of my brain that was working, that I would take my precious heirloom and throw it into the deepest pit I could find. Dad’s room was next door. I scooted in and without giving anything too much thought, took the box that held the thief’s stone in it. I walked outside to the garage, collecting my car-keys on the way.

The Dodger was waiting in the back yard. This was where time travel became confusing. He had put his own clothes on and carried Janice’s over his arm. Jasper’s lead and collar were in his other hand. ‘Where should I put these?’ He looked around the section, overgrown and untidy. Jasper started yowling from behind the laundry door. The Dodger looked at me properly. He stopped, put the clothes on the stoop. His eyes fastened on the box held carelessly in my right hand. ‘You’d be better to wear the stone once you’re in the Valley.’

‘Get out of here!’ I yelled. ‘I’m not going back. I’m not going to wear the bloody thing!’ I threw the box at him.

He caught it in one hand, then spoke quietly without raising his eyes from the box. ‘It’s your task. You have to return the stone.’ and held out the box, looking me in the eye.

Anger was still simmering inside my skull. This was McKenzie’s heir. This was who I should have been. I took the box with one hand and with the other punched him just below his left cheek-bone. The pain in my knuckles, more than the sight of Douglass sprawled on the grass in my back-yard brought me round. Douglass hadn’t even tried to avoid my fist. His glasses had been flung onto the concrete and smashed. Jasper, still locked in the laundry, set up a loud barking.

The Dodger pulled himself up from the grass, saying nothing. He came closer as I stood feeling the pain in my hand. I made no objection to him taking the box. He opened it and took out the string of plaited hemp with the polished green stone tied half way. The difference did not escape me. The thief’s stone was attached to string made from hemp grown in the Valley. Janice’s stone was attached to a chain made of gold from the Waitaki River. Douglass held out both hands to me: one with the empty box, the other with the stone.

‘It’s not mine to return. You have to free your family.’ This was my penance. I could stay angry. I could keep the gate open for the likes of Coles. I could keep returning to the Valley until it had no further effect on me. I could become my father, who had rejected his father’s use of the gateway, only to be manipulated by the Coleses of this world to exploit what should have been freely available to all. I could put an end to it all.

I took the stone out of his hand and began knotting the string behind my neck.

‘No!’ My father had become so absent to me, that I had forgotten that he could have an interest in the fate of the stone. He was more animated than I had seen him for a long time, as he came running towards us. I still had my elbows raised, tying the first knot as he grabbed one side of the string and pulled. The knot gave easily. He turned away from me as the Dodger and I both stood rooted to the spot. In a few quick steps he had reached the spot where the gateway connected our driveway with the Valley. It was at this point that the laundry door gave way and Jasper bounded after my father, catching him just as he disappeared in a flash of light.