The caravan

The first light of the newborn day was breathing through the camp as Wally Hohepa pushed back the inelegantly warped door of his caravan. The damp fog that crept in each night off the estuary had smothered the camp in a white woolly blanket, curled silently around the untidy rows of shacks and caravans and tangled with blue threads of smoke of a dozen makeshift iron downpipe chimneys that poked up into the morning sun. The old man sat on the step and watched quietly as the ground warmed with him. The fog blanket quietly gathered up its edges and began to sneak off into the hills. A few early risers were emerging to fetch water from the tap and forage for driftwood from the beach. One or two smiled a greeting as they walked past.

He scratched gently at the fold of soft hairy belly that hung over his belt and grimaced briefly as he tasted the dry morning scum on his teeth. A woman tottered down the muddy track towards him and he smiled self-consciously and raised his hand. She was dressed in a stained grey gabardine raincoat, holding the lapels together across her throat with one hand, struggling with a battered brown leather suitcase in the other. Wally had spoken to her a few times since she and, he supposed it was her husband, had arrived, just after Easter and he thought she had beautiful eyes. She usually just answered him briefly and carried on. He thought she looked sad.

“Going to town?” he asked. She nodded and lowered her eyes. “It’s early. You’ll be waiting for a while for a lift“.

She glanced at him briefly and hesitated. He thought she was going to say something but she seemed to think better of it.

“See you tonight then,” he said. She looked at him again and then, glancing nervously over her shoulder at the battered wheelless caravan she’d come from at the end of the row, she stumbled on down the path.

Wally shrugged as he watched her go. He was curious about the couple and thought he should make an effort to get to know them better, but they seemed to keep to themselves. Occasionally, late at night, he heard them arguing. Once he heard her crying and he thought he had heard glass breaking.

He heaved himself up with a grunt, pulled on his gumboots and stumped down to the beach to see what treasures had blown up on the tide. He could see the roof of the caravan over the top of the dunes. It stood slightly apart, silent and deserted. He wasn’t sure why, but it made him feel a bit queer, sort of nervous in the stomach. He carried on along the beach, kicking his boots through the soft sand, but when he turned at the end and looked back at the camp, there was still no movement around the caravan and his feeling of anxiety increased. He made a decision and headed back up the beach, puffing against the wind and cold. He called as he got near but there was no sound in response, except the whispering of the wind through the kikuyu grass, where it flowed around the empty axles of the caravan. He tentatively waited a few seconds and slowly pulled open the door. He was relieved to see the man standing with his back to him in the centre of the caravan. Wally opened his mouth to speak, but the greeting choked in his throat as the man pirouetted slowly round, his head angled impossibly by the length of electric cable embedded in his neck, pushing his head to the side as it tracked from the knot below his ear to the ceiling, where it was wound tightly round the light fitting. The eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. The mouth hung wide, lips swollen and pulled back in snarl, revealing toothless gums. His face was livid purple.

He backed out of the caravan, steadied himself, slowed his breathing and forced himself to walk slowly back to his own caravan. He felt calmer now. He slowly and deliberately turned over his pudding dish, took two weetbix out of their cardboard box and crushed them, before filling the dish with milk. He needed to get to his daughter’s place down the line, the sooner the better. He turned on his transistor and adjusted the tuning knob deftly to pick up the scratchings and the TAB odds . He found the stump of pencil on the shelf above the fridge and started tomark the races for the day in a folded copy of Best Bets. He’d put a bet on when he went through town.

 It would take his mind off things.