THE LAW OF THE TRIBE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 243, 18 February 1944, Page 10

THE LAW OF THE TRIBE

' "Written for "The Listener"

by

LEN DU CHATEAU

HE night before, Michael had arrived home from his holidays. He was twelve. He had gone to sleep, his brain filled with all the things he would do in the morning. Twisting away from his mother’s good-night kiss, he thought of that chaffinch’s nest in the big pine at the bottom of the section; there were four eggs splotched like blood alleys before he went away. Now there'd be young ones; he might even rear one. There was his fort too; he’d fill new sacks for a proper machine-gun nest and he must oil the cricket bat he’d got for Christmas; and the apples in the small orchard would be ready despite what Mum said. He had gone off to sleep thinking how he might pinch the wheels off the baby’s pram for a trolley.

-- Now it was all over. He had found the chaffinch’s nest empty; the residue of tiny white flakes at the bottom told him the young ones had fledged and feathered and gone. The Fort had changed too; it was half overgrown with cocksfoot and fennel and vicious scotch thistles, and in the lucid light of day his scheme about the baby’s pram seemed strongly impracticable. The apples had proved green and so bitter that even his adventurous palate had objected. HE sun beat down on his bleached fair hair, as dully he watched a slim, red wasp pull a spider across the path. He jabbed at the wasp with his freshoiled cricket bat. It lurched aside in a scrambling, awkward rage, wings uplifted, the yellow of its thorax showing clearly; the boy turned the bat and ground the wasp into the path. The spider lay big, fat, and helplessly anaesthetised. Idly the boy put his sandalled foot on it. He did it gently, increasing the pressure, listening for and savouring the small sound of its belly bursting. Then with a detached and deadly intensity he ground the rest of it into the yellow clay of the path. "Life," he muttered, "is H." He liked that phrase; his father used it often. Of course his father said "Hell," but Michael always used letters for swear words when he was alone. This was a sort of arrangement between Michael and God. God reckoned that it was all right to swear if you just used the first letter, Sometimes when he really wanted to astound and impress his friends, he actually used whole swear words, but he was always careful to apologise to God about that before he went to sleep. God, Michael felt, might be ignored by day, but after the light was out at night you needed Him on your side. Otherwise you had to creep into Mum’s bed before you could get rid of the things that leered at you out of the darkness. / And so life was H. To-morrow some of the boys in the street would be home. But that was to-morrow. The whole sunfilled vista of to-day stretched ahead in an utter desolation of loneliness. He mooched up towards the house, trailing his cricket bat. It was ten o’clock in the morning. A few cicadas were tuning up with sizzling

— frying-pan noises. A yellow-banded bumblebee boomed among the daintythroated gladioli. Michael saw a lizard flick from a brown grass patch into a hide-out under the pumpkin hill. He heard the crisp, quick, urgent "chip pit-pit-pit, chip pit-pit-pit" as the young grey-headed goldfinches pestered their crimson-faced parents. Yet, none of these -the sights and sounds of hot mid-sum-mer-could pull the boy out of his queer detachment. He had nothing to do... no one to play with. He shuffled miserably up the path... and then he saw her, HE might have been eleven, this snubnosed little girl in her red and white print dress. He noticed with a quick disgust that she was clean and carried a doll. She was in his place; trespassing; yet he passed her, not looking. "Girls," he thought, "girls’ and his misery focused and centred; he hated ’em all. Girls; particularly this girl. He tried to think of something withering to say. He had it: "Fat Face," That’s right, he’d say "Scram, Fat Face." He turned. He saw she too had stopped and was looking at him with that set, impassive look that only little girls can achieve. And then som@how he didn’t say "Fat Face." For, as he looked, something happened to Michael. He felt as though God had reached down and touched him. His blood whipped and sparkled. He looked away and an urge for action swept him. He reached for a stone and hurled it magnificently, far down the gully; he hurled another after it; he didn’t look at the girl. Then with a great casualness he turned two cartwheels. He flashed a glance at her; then, putting his hand on the handrail by the path, he vaulted over and back. If the little girl felt any surprise at such strange behaviour she gave no sign of it. She looked somehow as if she must have understood or sensed what this was all about. Then Michael whistled. He put two fingers in his mouth to do it, and dogs for a quarter mile around sat up in prickeared admiration. The little girl smiled at Michael. There was some queer power in that smile; he turned from it and ran to the big pine trees. He climbed swifter (continued on next page)

SHORT STORY

(continued from previous page) than he’d ever climbed; swinging himself up, regardless of scratches, two branches higher than he’d ever dared to go before. Precariously he clung to the now slender trunk and looked. She had moved from the path. For half a second he thought she had gone, then he saw she was standing under the tree looking up at him, Immediately he resumed his careless study of the horizon. Suddenly he spoke. He was careful to address his remark to a far hill, "You can," he announced, "see the sea from here." As this brought no response, he said to the far hill "You can come up and see if you like." The little girl at the foot of the tree said, "I’m not allowed to climb trees." Normally the remark would have sickened Michael, recalling to him all the incapacity and the disgusting weakness of the sex. Not to-day... to-day was magic, He said, still to the far hill, "Ever see a chaffinch’s nest?" "No," said the little girl, He pulled the nest free and swarmed down to her, red and breathless. "You can have it," he said, thrusting the nest at her. She took it without enthusiasm, looked at it and handed it back. "I don’t want it," she said. HAT rocked him. After all, it was a chaffinch’s nest, the second he had found-it was something to be prized, kept like stamps and marbles. His indecision lasted only a second. He flung the nest away. "It’s old," he said, "I get thousands"; then casually, "I wish I’d caught the young ones; I’d have wrung their necks." This was, of course, as Michael knew, a gross untruth, Michael caused many casualties among the young birds, but only with such frequent. doting over the nests that the scandalised parents deserted. But it was urgently important that this small girl be impressed; she must know he was tough. "I pulled hundreds of their necks on my holiday," he announced. This fiendishness moved the girl to neither dismay nor enthusiasm. "What’s your name?" she said. "What’s yours?" he countered. "Tell me yours first," she demanded. "Mike," he said shortly. "Mine’s Jean," she said, "and hers is Diana." It took him some seconds before he realised she was introducing him to her doll. "I call her Diana because it’s a pretty name, much prettier than Jean, isn’t it?" "T don’t know," said Michael; which was less than the truth because he’d just realised that Jean was the nicest girl’s name he’d ever heard. T was a swift, sweet eternity, that long summer’s day. An eternity of minutes whith only children can know. He showed her how to stalk and catch the lizards basking in the compost heap; he enjoyed her scream of half-simulated horror when a lizard deftly detached itself from its tail. For her he caught big, irritable cicadas and brilliant Red Admiral butterflies, that left stuff like coloured dust on your fingers. For her he produced and presented his picture album, heedless of the fact that its completion had cost him his pocket knife and six marbles, By lunchtime he was her slave. Slipping out to meet her after lunch, fear seized him. What would Bruce say; what would his gang think of him playing with a girl? Then she appeared, still clutching the doll. "Hullo, Mike," she

said; something sang deep down in him. Bruce and the gang faded. "Hullo," he said and reddened, "hello, Jean." They walked to the bottom of the section. Jean prim and careful, Michael slouching, kicking at stones. They talked. He learned she was on holiday. She was going home Saturday. The calamity of that reached him; she would go; he would never see her again. But that was Saturday, two days away. This was to-day. "Race you to the gate," he shouted. They played; new amazing make-be-lieve games these were; girls’ games, yet Michael found them wondrful. Sometimes he was the hero, sometimes the villain. Jean was always the heroine. At four o’clock they sat, resting, beside the fort which Michael had just stormed and taken, "Mike," she said, "I think you’re pretty." From a boy it would have been deadly; a withering, ghastly jibe. From her .. it reduced him to a red, tonguetied confusion. "No," he spluttered, "not me-you; you're pretty; you’re the prettiest girl I ever seen ... easily," he added. "You’re nice," she said. "Most boys aren’t nice, but you are; I like you. Do you like me?" Michael said "Yes." He knew it was inadequate but it was all he could say. He was, you know, only twelve. She looked at him shyly, then she seized her doll, calling "Catch me." HE tore after her; she could run, this small girl in her flying red print dress. He caught her, just where the path turned up to the front gate, caught and held her. The words came very clear and loud on the afternoon air. "Mike’s got a girl. She’s his tart." He released her quickly. She stooped to pick up the doll which had fallen to the ground. Two boys hung over the gate. Two of his gang back early from holiday. He looked at them. One said impassively, "You’ve got a tart." "Liar!" said Michael, "You was trying to kiss her," said the other. There was no emotion in either statement; the words were uttered tonelessly and with a terrible conviction. "We saw you," said the first boy. The blood surging from Michael’s heart was choking him; he felt tears smarting under his eyes. Instinctively he knew this was the trial, the testing, and he knew he wasn’t strong enough. "I was just kickin’ her out of my place," he said. _ For perhaps half-a-second the little girl looked at him wide-eyed. Then slowly her head sank a little; the arm which held the doll to her breast dropped. The doll trailed by the leg as she slowly started up the path. The two boys swung the gate open for her, eyeing her with cold disapproval. She didn’t look at them. She glanced back at Michael solemnly; "Good-bye," ‘she said. The two boys tensed, Michael saw they were watching him with stern suspicion. He knew what was expected | of him; it was the law. He looked hotly at a point six feet above her head. "Go on," he shouted, "go on, scram .. Fat Face." The two boys by the gate reaxed; the little girl moved away; impassive, not looking back, :