Free State Ward by Alan Duff Page B

Charlie. My best mate. Going to get in trouble for me. But George needs you, Charlie. Sick of kehua in dreams all the time telling me same thing, run, Hori, run. Trouble. Every time trouble. And soon I am fifteen. Then borstal, MrDavis say. Harder to run there. Sick of running anyway. Dreams make me crazy I hear them and can’t run. This time, Charlie, you come with me. Watch what I do. Then everything be all right — I hope.”
    “Ready when you are, George.”
    “Thank you, best friend. My koro Arawhiti, he tell me life not as long as young full a think. Tell me, Hori, only deeds a long time. Life deeds. No deeds, life short. My English, aeee … No good.”
    “It’ll do me, George.” Charlie’s heart singing. Just singing. And the smell of freedom in the air. And I’m only fourteen.
    Life, eh, like George was trying to say: it’s about deeds. Good deeds, Charlie guessed. Good deeds making for a longer life. Just like, Charlie got a sudden realisation, like being in the cellblock: seemed to take for ever, yet when it was passed it hardly seemed anything at all. Only what you took of it. And what, a boy figured, it took of you — if you let it.
    “Let’s go!” Charlie with spring in his step as he threw an arm round George’s muscle-hard shoulders. Not even wishing to ask just what his role would be in this plan of George’s.

 
     
    George had no plan, and Charlie was astonished.
    “We have to have a plan, George. Or we’ll get caught like you always have before.” But George said it didn’t work like that, not for him it didn’t; the Maori warrior with the tattooed face would just appear in his dreams, and no matter how hard George resisted, it always won.
    “Run, Hori. You got to run away.” But Charlie wasn’t joining him without a plan.
    First they need clothes. Outside clothes so they looked like anybody else out there walking the streets.
    “Where from?”
    “The laundry. Your mate Brownie works in the laundry, get him to get us some. Money, we’ll need money. But where to find that, other than try and steal some from an unattended housemaster’s jacket, but even then they took precautions where that was concerned. Not as if we’re training to be priests, eh, George?” Though George didn’t get Charlie’s humour with that one.
    “OK, if money is not much chance then how about a car? Can you drive, George?” Sure he could, he was driving a farm tractor at age nine. Good, because Charlie couldn’t drive.
    “Do you know how to convert a car then?”
    “No, can’t convert. Convert is bad, Charlie.”
    “Yeah, well so is escaping, George.”
    So Charlie came up with a plan — a wild plan that if it didn’t come off would be a disaster.
    Destination was known: Ruapotiki, George’s home ground. But he still wouldn’t say exactly why, other than it was to do with something he intended in an effort to end, he hoped, the makutu, Maori curse.
    That night, so George reported in the morning showers, the dream had grown so bad he didn’t think he’d last the day without leaping the fence by the rugby field and just going for it. But Charlie implored George to hang on just one more night, to give Charlie time to organise their escape. Charlie figured the first part would be the hardest, but once they were away the possibilities would spread, in keeping with the landscape Charlie had no trouble picturing, in his mind’s eye, his excited mind’s eye.
     
    Morning. No sleep the previous night. Not for Charlie, nor George. One because of excitement, the other to deny dream visitation. Outside trousers and shirt, organised by Brownie Timu, hidden in the bushes near the front main entrance. Oh, please don’t let me get all this timing wrong.
    Mr Dekka the duty housemaster in B Wing. Mr Wakefield (good old Mr Wakefield) Charlie feeling guilty about, knowing what he intended was going to destroy what relationship they had built up. But no matter. Too late to have doubts. Think of the cell,