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  They crept down the slope, watching where they placed their feet, always keeping the stag in sight. Then Donny blew a beautiful roar, adding a little bursting snort at the end that almost had George giggling. The stag replied. A few more steps down the slope, Donny roared again, and the response sounded closer this time.

  ‘We got him!’ breathed Donny, but George shook his head and pointed down the hill. He wanted to take the shot lower down.

  A little further, in a small clearing, they found a wallow, freshly used. Surely this belonged to their stag. Not far below they could just make out the cut of an old forestry road, fresh green growth sprouting all along it — perfect grazing for a hungry stag in season. Donny blew again, and back came the roar of the stag. It was closing in. Now they waited to one side of the wallow, and George signed to load. Donny lifted his granddad’s beautiful old two-two-three and sighted through the scope. And there it was, pushing down through the bush, its spreading antlers sending little shivers through the foliage. You could smell its musty rankness. It paused, sensing something.

  ‘Easy,’ breathed George. He lined up the shot, ready as back-up, but hoping Donny could manage. Which he did, the single shot dropping the stag immediately. Down it slumped, feet jerking, down into the wallow.

  ‘Whoo hoo!’ Donny whispered, awed at his good luck.

  George hadn’t seen him so lit up for months. He clapped the boy on the shoulder. ‘You’re going to win, man! A brute like that. He’s a rare one.’

  They slit its throat quickly, and then removed the head and cape and carried it down to the track, taking care not to break any tines. There, in the more open ground, they examined the set: the three lower points — brow, bez and tez — all intact, and then three perfect top points which would hold a glass of whisky, so they say! A royal! The antlers with black pearling and white tips. Neither could believe such good luck. A beaut twelve-pointer in perfect condition. Surely it would win the Douglas Score. They returned for the carcass. George cut three saplings and lashed them together so they could sledge their catch down to the leafy old road.

  ‘Wait here, Donny boy, while I get the ute.’ George was already on his way but called back quietly, ‘Keep your head down and your big mouth shut.’

  Back in Ohakune, the stag was tagged with Donny’s number and hung up on the back of the truck, ready for the weigh-in. Plenty of back-slapping and admiration. George left Donny in town — he had carrot fields to hoe. They’d have to wait until the end of the day to see if anyone could do better.

  Luke Masefield, home from the seminary, his brother, Ethan, and Tama Price were hunting as a team — Hot Shots — for the trifecta: heaviest deer, boar and fish. With fish and boar already weighed, they were trailing a couple of other teams, so needed a really heavy stag to win, but by Sunday midday Ethan, who was doing the deer leg of the trifecta, had not shown.

  Donny showed off his trophy to the other two.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Luke Masefield, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke into Donny’s face, ‘but bet you five dollars we’ll do better.’ He winked at Tama. And off they drove, whooping and whistling at the girls, their souped-up Camino roaring off down the road. How that Masefield boy could have ended up in a seminary was a much-discussed wonder to the people of Ohakune. Donny stayed, drinking beer, having a go at the Pig Run, no one much taking notice of him. It all seemed a bit of a let-down after the excitement in the bush.

  When the Masefields returned, with only one hour of the hunt remaining, everything came unstuck for Donny. Sure enough they had a big red stag, a twin, almost, of Donny’s, but not quite as heavy, Donny reckoned. Looked like the trifecta would not go to the Masefields after all. He grinned at Ethan, gave him the thumbs-down. Ethan’s narrow face scowled; he called his team mates close and whispered instructions.

  For a few minutes — crucial ones — just before the weighing, everyone’s attention was diverted to a wildly screaming woman. Dressed in the height of Remuera country fashion — immaculate camel-hair coat, possum-fur hat, designer gumboots — she had received a dead possum full in the face. Splat. The finals of the children’s event, Throw the Possum, was in its last round. A young finalist had whirled his possum by the tail too enthusiastically above his head, then, losing his grip, had hurled it into the crowd. The hilarity of the onlookers only added fuel to the woman’s horror.

  After the excitement had died down, Luke Masefield, standing on the tray of the truck displaying stags, whistled loudly for attention.

  ‘Hey! Come over here! Look at this!’

  When a small crowd had gathered, he pointed to the stag which bore Donny’s tag. ‘That’s a farmed deer. That’s off Entwhistle’s farm up Horopito.’ He pointed to a scrape down the flank. ‘Bet you that scraped patch would have had the Entwhistle brand. Donny Mac’s a bloody cheat.’

  The event judge climbed up on to the truck. Inspected the beast. Gave Luke a hard look. ‘How would you know that it came off Entwhistle’s then?’

  Luke shrugged his shoulders. ‘Looks like farmed deer, eh. Too fat.’

  By now people in the crowd were murmuring. There’d been a bout of cheating last year, losses from deer farms reported. No one wanted a return of that sort of behaviour. Donny, standing at the back of the crowd, beer can in hand, was jostled, subjected to a bit of abuse.

  ‘I never did!’ roared Donny, angry and frightened by this turn of events. ‘I shot him out in the bush!’ He pushed forward, climbed up on the truck with the judge and Luke.

  ‘Cheat!’ yelled Luke into his face.

  Donny looked at his tag; looked at Luke’s. He knew what had happened but, what with the beer and his natural slowness, couldn’t get the words out. Enraged, he lashed out at Luke, and hit the judge, who stumbled against the hanging carcasses and set them swinging as if in a mad chorus dance. Down fell the judge, down amongst deer, slipping on blood and ending up awkwardly, painfully, against the truck’s canopy. Donny, bellowing that he was not a cheat, went for Luke again, smashing at the sneer and the cruel words, breaking Luke’s teeth and nose, and sending him crashing off the flat-top into the crowd below.

  Donny was charged and then bailed by Bull. In the weeks before his trial the boy tried hard to hold onto his job and keep away from trouble, but he was lonely, afraid, sometimes the butt of cruel jokes. He often ended up in the pub, drinking with people who were not truly his friends, Nightshade Holloway among these. Meantime Di Masefield gathered evidence against him.

  It turned out Bert Entwhistle had lost a stag and identified the one with Donny’s tag. At the trial, George Kingi gave evidence that Donny’s animal had been caught properly and that someone must have switched tags. Everyone in Ohakune knew who that would be. Those Masefield boys were trouble in the town. But the trial was in Whanganui. Di Masefield, respectable and known for her position on the council, appeared for the police, giving a poisonous character reference against Donny. She claimed that this was the third time Donny had been drunk and violent; that her son and other boys in town were being led astray; that poor Luke had to endure hours of painful dental reconstruction; that Donny was a danger to the community.

  The judge ruled that the matter of who shot the Entwhistle stag was a separate matter. Donny was being tried for grievous bodily harm. As well as the damage done to Luke, the Hunt judge had suffered a broken arm. A custodial sentence was handed down and an anger management course recommended.

  Donny’s friends in Manawa — Bull Howie and Vera, the Kingis, his rugby mates — lacked the money or influence to fight the decision. They had kept an eye on him, though, during his months in prison, and welcomed him back.

  On the evening of Donny’s return, the Virgin Tracey waits until Vera has rattled on down Hohepa and turned into Railway Row. The Virgin’s head turns right and left, watching for other intruders. One hand rocks the little sheeting hammock that holds her sleeping daughter, the other kneads a lump of dirt. Then, standing, she lobs it expertly across the road and one door down onto D
onny’s roof. She can just hear the rumble as it rolls down the corrugated iron. She grins. ‘Possums on the roof, what a shit. Gonna keep you up all night.’ She lobs another.

  Later she creeps over in the dark to stand under Donny’s kitchen window. The curtains are only half drawn. She can see Donny’s broad back; he’s standing at the stove, stirring something — eggs it looks like — while that lazy slut lies on the couch, drinking.

  ‘Bitch,’ whispers the Virgin. ‘Can’t you even cook the man a meal?’

  She watches for a while, hoping for explosions, but the scene inside is disappointing. Donny seems easier than she remembers, happy even. She tramps back over the road, kicking stones, unhooks the hammock and goes inside.

  The size and remoteness of Manawa suit the Virgin’s needs. Three streets parallel to the railway line, each named after the timber trees that once made the town prosperous; three roads crossing these at right angles, pointing towards the mountain, each named after the men who cut and milled the trees. A simple grid along whose lines most houses are empty or destroyed. The Virgin Tracey has lived in Manawa for maybe a year. It’s always hard to nail her for sure, the way she moves from squat to squat, hiding signs of habitation and then sneaking into another one of Manawa’s several owners-unknown derelict homes. When she first trudged into the settlement, Vera thought she looked like that waif on the poster for Les Misérables. Her hair, once peroxide, stuck out untidily from her head like dry grass. Legs and arms angular as a spider’s. Vera watched from her garden as the Virgin clumped along in heavy lace-up boots. They seemed to anchor her to the ground like magnets. The way she walked — arms flailing, knees at all angry angles, cursing into the wind — might jet-propel her into space, if it weren’t for the boots.

  ‘Here’s trouble,’ muttered Vera back then, but was not entirely right. So far, the Virgin has avoided brushes with the law and antagonised the locals only spasmodically.

  Her limbs are always tightly clad in black. Over this unchanging skin she wears a tatty petticoat. There are several of these, all satin, all with lace, in mauves, pale pinks and dirty cream, stretched almost obscenely over her belly when she was pregnant — any stranger could have watched the baby kick. Now the garments hang loose.

  She might be beautiful; how could you tell, with the black mascara and black lipstick? And the lack of flesh? Not to mention the rings in her nose.

  The Virgin has always insisted that the baby, little Sky, has no father. ‘There wasn’t a father, end of story,’ she would snarl if someone at the pub or at Hoppy’s Takeaways asked. Back then, she worked a few hours at both those places. Vera asked once, partly out of concern for their welfare, but there was no reply, just a hard stare and a rude face. The Virgin Tracey likes to poke her tongue out like a child. Since the baby’s birth, she has avoided everyone, pretty much. The nickname’s a black joke: virginal is definitely not Tracey’s style.

  She lives in the only habitable room of number 16 Hohepa Street. The front of the house has given in to the weather — once a window or two are broken, it’s all downhill in this harsh climate. But the back kitchen is still snug enough and the old coal range will throw off a feeble warmth. In one corner is a large plastic bucket which the Virgin keeps filled with water stolen from other houses’ tanks. The guttering on this ramshackle place droops in sad rusty swathes, depositing precious rainwater to the ground where it runs under the house and rots the piles. Anyway, the old water tank is holed in too many places for repair.

  The truth — which Tracey tells no one — is that she’s in hiding from her own parents. When Tracey — her name back then was Marion but she has ditched that along with the rest of her past — when she was ten, her father started coming into her bed maybe two or three times a week. At first he just touched her casually between her legs while he sat on the bed reading her the goodnight story. He would stop reading for a bit at some stage in the touching, breathe hard, then go on reading. After a while, the reading was abandoned. The Rev — her father was a Presbyterian minister always referred to as ‘The Rev’ by her mother — climbed in with her, rubbed up against her until he made a mess. Tracey — the old Marion — hated this and told her mother. The mother, a quiet, sad woman who always wore a faded apron and spent most of her day sitting reading magazines, told her not to make up wicked stories. When Tracey was fourteen, she began to fight back. She would kick her father and struggle. Once, when she was really ripping in to him, he put a hand over her mouth, held her down and entered her. This hurt and shocked her terribly. She told her father he was wicked, and threatened to tell her teacher. Her father smiled and said no one would believe such a silly little liar. It was true that she had a reputation at school for making up stories against other children who annoyed her. Marion understood that her father might be right, especially as he came to school to conduct Bible lessons and was popular. After that time, she found it easier not to struggle. It hurt less and was over more quickly.

  At fifteen she ran away from home, changed her name and found work at Hoppy’s Takeaways in Ohakune. She knew her parents were looking for her because there was a piece in the paper showing her mother and father looking sad, the hypocrites. Or maybe they were sad for all the wrong reasons. Tracey disguised her face with heavy mascara and black lipstick, had her long hair cut short and dyed blonde. She was five months’ pregnant before she realised what was happening to her body. Her boss had to suggest it, and even then Tracey vehemently denied the possibility. But when the baby was born, the Virgin Tracey found that she loved the little thing, despite that hateful past. The baby, Sky, had no father, that was the end of it. Or so she hoped.

  Still she took no chances. She worked up until a fortnight before the baby was due, saving almost all of the money she earned, keeping it locked in an ammunition box she’d found in one of the derelict houses. At the hospital she gave her place of residence as an empty house in Ohakune. She used a fictitious surname and lied about her age. Lied also about there being someone to take care of her at home in the first months. Fortunately, the birth had been easy; the Virgin walked out of the hospital, caught the bus to Ohakune, then trudged the five kilometres to Manawa, Sky tied against her breast with an old piece of sheet. The Virgin knew that sooner or later she’d have to go back to work, but meantime she ‘lived off the land’, occasionally hitch-hiking into Ohakune for any bare essentials which the townie houses could not supply.

  Tracey lays the bundle that is little Sky on the tattered old couch by the stove. She stuffs a pillowcase with what she needs for her evening foray. Tonight she has targeted the nice old villa down Rimu Street. It belongs to townies who have not visited for several months. If they’re coming up over Easter they won’t arrive this late — or so the Virgin hopes. Long ago she found where they hide their key. She keeps one of the villa’s back windows — easy to climb through and hidden by a large japonica bush — permanently unlocked. If someone should arrive unexpectedly, she can make a quick and silent exit. Earlier she has slipped in and turned on the hot water. Now she picks up Sky and her pillowcase, and walks, easy and quiet as a passing cat, into the dark.

  There’s no car outside the villa — sure sign that it’s unoccupied. First Tracey locates the pump in the shed and switches it on. There’s a faint throb as the water flows through the pipes and into the house, but the houses on each side are also townie houses, so no one will hear. Little Sky sleeps on as the Virgin eases her through the window, lowers her gently to the floor, and then climbs after her.

  Five minutes later, mother and daughter are immersed together in a warm bath, shampoo courtesy of the owners filling the room with steamy incense. While the sleepy baby floats and kicks and Tracey hums to her, a load of washing is chugging through the machine. Half an hour later, the bathwater is drained, bathroom wiped dry, baby encased in a bizarre collection of woollens, and the wet washing stuffed back into the pillowcase. Tracey, dressed only in her black leggings and skivvy, is a silent shadow as she turns off the hot wat
er, climbs out the window, switches off the pump and swings on home, scenting the night air with Pantene shampoo and laundry soap. Four or five days later, it’ll be a different townie house. She has four on her list of places for ablution.

  She plunders the Kingis’ carrot fields carefully and regularly; Vera’s chook house yields one egg every three days; Fitz never notices the depletions from his haphazard vege garden. Nothing from Bull Howie. He would notice. Even if she tiptoed in on a dark night and stole nothing, he would notice. But her favourite for food and water, until that bitch moved in, was Donny’s. Donny’s place is close, easily invaded and nicely familiar with its collection of mismatched op-shop furniture, its rugby posters and, best of all, a functioning TV. The Virgin had plans for when Donny returned — plans which in no way involved that out-of-her-tree wildcat, Nightshade.

  When that bitch from hell suddenly turned up at Donny’s, bringing a suitcase of clothes and settling in as if she owned the place, the Virgin watched for two days and then made her move. Leaving Sky safely asleep at home, and wielding a gardening fork, she marched over the road and banged on the door. After a few minutes, the door was wrenched open and the bitch stood there, weaving slightly. Drunk. In the middle of the day — and pregnant.

  She was a big woman, broad-shouldered, her jeans gaping, baby-belly bare in the gap.

  ‘Yeah?’ she said, not pleasant, not even faintly neighbourly.

  The Virgin swallowed. ‘This is Donny’s place,’ she said, her voice not as belligerent as she had planned. ‘You can’t stay here.’

  ‘Sez who?’

  ‘Donny Mac wouldn’t like it.’ The Virgin summoned a fearsome face and felt stronger. ‘Who the hell are you anyway? You’re trespassing.’