Extract— ‘The Burst Pipe’ from Te Awa o Kupu
Editors:
Vaughan Rapatahana and Kiri Piahana-Wong
Publisher:
Penguin New Zealand
ISBN:
9780143777953
Date published:
29 August 2023
Pages:
416
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$37
All books bought via this link help us to review more books from Aotearoa — thank you for supporting local books and authors
Te Awa o Kupu is a stunning new collection of poetry and stories by contemporary Māori writers. It is one of two volumes in a series and is edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and Kiri Piahana-Wong (series editor: Vaughan Rapatahana).
The Burst Pipe by Michael O’Leary
‘Won’t your boss be annoyed that you didn’t
go in today, Hone?’ ‘No, he knows you’re here.
He’ll understand. He’ll be pleased I’ve got a man
like you to start work tomorrow’ as we drank
ourselves into companionship on the way to
oblivion, laughing and smoking and filling in
the spaces of our past few years since we last met.
Then, suddenly, with drink and remembrance
Hone’s mood went angry. ‘My father was in
the Māori Battalion in the desert war,’ said Hone.
‘He used to tell me that despite the whole
terrible time of the war, the years of fighting
and deprivation, the dead comrades,
the worst thing he ever experienced,
far worse than anything fucking Rommel dished up,
occurred on the ship on the way back, eh.
When the troop ship called into South Africa
on the way back from war the Pākehā soldiers
all went on shore leave. But the Māori Battalion
was not allowed on the fucking shore ’cos of
the colour of their skin. He hated the Pākehā
more than the Germans.’ When Hone woke
him in the morning with ‘Haere mai ki te mahi,’
Paul was glad to be going to work,
even though he had a terrible hangover from
the night before. As the bus pulled
into the Britomart Station it started to pour down.
‘Won’t be doin’ much today,’ said Hone.
‘Sorry boys,’ said the boss, ‘but we’ve got an urgent job,
a burst water pipe over by Dominion Road.
The Council boys have got their hands full
so they gave me a call to see if we could do it.
‘Of course, I thought we’d have a full gang,
but if I give a hand I’m sure we’ll get it done!
It won’t be for nothing either, you’ll get a bit extra —
Rua, give me the names of those who didn’t turn up!
‘I think they’ll be collecting their final pay tomorrow.
Stupid bastards, all it means is they have to go
back to Mt Eden to finish their sentences instead
of the freedom of the pre-release work . . .’
The burst pipe was really flooding the whole area,
and a couple of properties were threatened. Hone
& Paul got the job of digging around the break in order
to clear any blockage that was in the pipe.
It was really pissing down, and they got to work
to dig a channel in order to clear the excess water
that was building up behind a stone retaining wall:
half an hour later they had the water running
off down a local road and they had all but cleared
the blockage of clay and mud, and for the first time
caught a glimpse of the broken pipe, they had to
replace about a metre of pipe — can’t just cap that.
They got the generator going, went up to the concrete mixer.
It was dangerous using one of these in this weather
even with a transformer, but it had to be done . . . . . . . . . . .
Extracted from Te Awa o Kupu, edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and Kiri Piahana-Wong, companion volume to Ngā Kupu Wero, series edited by Vaughan Rapatahana. Published by Penguin Random House NZ, 2023.
Michael O’Leary was born in Auckland in 1950 and is from Te Arawa and Irish ancestors. He is a novelist, poet, artist, and publisher, having published over 200 titles of Aotearoa New Zealand literary works.
His own writing includes six novels, most recently Apocrypha Scripta, in 2021, and ten volumes of poetry, most recently The Ballad of the Triple Track with HeadworX in 2022. His writing has been published in anthologies and his artwork has been shown in galleries. He has a BA in English from the University of Otago, and an MA in English from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington for which he wrote a thesis on Alternative Small Press Publishing in New Zealand, which was published as a book by Steele Roberts in 2002. O’Leary has owned several bookshops, the latest of which is Kakariki Books, situated at the Paekakariki Railway Station. He lives in Paekakariki, for which town he has written six books of local history, the latest published in 2023.
