A short story from a new anthology of Māori writing. Warning: contains hate speech.
The thing about weekends at a fire station, if you’re not actually putting out fires, is that they can be pretty cruisy. You can't leave the station, but you can mostly do what you like. I used to read a lot, train and work out in the gym we built ourselves, watch movies. I even put a backboard up against a balcony above the back carpark and could shoot hoops for hours. This particular weekend, the outgoing crews had told us the local skinheads had been rarking up lately: noisy parties, fights, cops, late night burn-outs and races through local streets. Something to look forward to.
We got through the Friday night shift without any trouble, although the cops were busy. Boydie, our station officer, used to keep a police scanner going all night, on a side table next to his bed. He’d listen to what the cops were dealing with, often waking us before the alarms went off in the station, because he heard the cops radioing back to their own control room for the fire brigade. If it was in our area, he knew we’d be going out. That’s what happened that Saturday night shift. About 1.30am, Boydie was banging on our doors. I jumped up, tugged on my trousers, thick socks tucked into each pocket and bounced down the stairwell to the engine room. I used to like getting there before the others if I could; it wasn’t done to have the crew waiting for you, a kind of pride thing to be dressed quick and ready to roll out the doors. Boydie was already in front, telling the driver we were going to Berhampore when the alarms went off, sending us to a car-versus-lamp-post in a street two minutes away.
Boydie was yelling over the truck engine that the cops had a pretty serious MVA, reckoned he’d even heard the car tyres screeching and the impact. He was a bit of an insomniac, plus the bloody scanner going all night meant he slept lightly. The emergency tender, or ET, with cutting gear was coming from city station too, he said. We were out of there in minutes, no siren, just the red rotating lights reflecting off the windows of the old homes and council flats in the neighbourhood.
As we rounded into the street behind the station, blue lights lit up an ugly scene. An old Ford Falcon, its front wheels still spinning, was impaled on a solid wooden lamp post. The force of the impact had lifted the front wheels off the ground, and the engine was where the windscreen used to be, the car hugging the post like a drunk. Boydie barked a series of instructions, but we were a fairly experienced unit – no one in the crew had under 15 years in the job, and we knew what we were doing. There’s a sequence to most emergency responses that after many years and exposure to similar situations becomes like second nature. The cops had the street cut off and were holding back people who had come out of their homes, woken by the impact and sirens. Hoses were run out, I was disconnecting the car’s battery, fuel was running everywhere, when Boydie appeared alongside me and asked if I could get a look at the driver. There was no one else in the car, he said, and the ambulance was still on its way. The cops had their hands full after a carload of skinheads showed up and were trying to get to the car, fighting and screaming abuse at anyone in their way.
I managed to lever the buckled driver’s door open enough to force an arm, then my head and shoulder into the place where the front seat would have been. Except now there was a face staring back at mine, one arm twisted over his head at a crazy angle and the rest of his body squashed into what would have been the footwell, now mostly inhabited by the firewall and the back of the car engine. I couldn't make out exactly where his body had disappeared to, but his face was inches from mine. His eyes, a bloodshot blue with hard, pinhole pupils, were staring wildly and, after he saw me, angrily. I’d taken my helmet off to crawl my way in, and he looked like he was trying to summon enough saliva in his mouth to spit in my face. His first words were, "Get away from me, you fucking nigger."
He was perhaps 10 years younger than me; could've been mid-twenties maybe: shaved dirty-blonde hair and a few days’ stubble. He smelled like chemicals.
"Boydie, this guy’s conscious. Get me some oxygen!" I shouted over my shoulder. "Take it easy, mate, the ambo’s on its way; be here real soon." I had one gloved hand sliding down what I could find of the rest of his body, trying to work out in my head how we could extract him, the other hand outside the door, palm up, waiting for the oxygen mask I knew was coming.
"Take your filthy nigger hands off me, you cunt!" He still looked like he was trying to summon enough spit to launch at me.
"Take it easy, mate. Just trying to help you out ... get you out of here."
His eyes rolled up. His head dipped then lifted again, eyes rolled back. Blinking, focused on me, still wide. "I don't need any fucking nigger's help. Fuck off!"
A siren in the distance: could be the ET or the ambos. "You'll be right, mate, just hang in there. Here come the ambos." I didn't get angry: not because I was trying to be professional; I just knew he was dying. I was probably going to be the last person he talked to; I could tell he was going to lose consciousness fast and stop breathing. The oxygen mask was slapped in my hand, and I pulled it into the space between us. The trailing tube snagged. I had to shout out to whoever was feeding it to me to free it up, never taking my eyes off him.
I was able to twist myself enough to get both forearms in, which meant I could get the mask and its elastic band over his head to cover his nose and mouth, the hissing oxygen blowing the sweat off his eyelashes.
"Fuck off, I told you." He was trying to shake his head; no other part of him could move. He was drifting in and out of consciousness now, and gulping the cool air while still trying to swear at me.
"Just breathe, mate; stay with me. Hey! Hey mate!" He was losing consciousness, and I knew I had to try and keep him awake and breathing. I also knew he was pretty fucked, and lucky to have survived this long. "Wake up, mate! You'll be okay. Hey!"
"Fucking nigg-rr …" His eyes closed and his head rolled forward. I pushed it back up to keep his airway open, and yelled out for help. A face and a green uniform appeared above me and asked to get in my place. I backed out and stood up, shaking cramp from every part of me, or so it felt. I could hear the sound of glass shattering; the skinheads had started throwing bottles at the cops. Boydie told me to get another hose reel from the other side of the truck in case we had to use it on them. As I came back from behind the truck, I saw the ambo officer stand up and shake his head at his colleague, slowly pulling his kit bag back from beside the wreck. The young guy’s pale blue eyes closing came to my mind then. What a waste of a life.
More cops arrived, a whole paddy wagon of them, and rounded up the skins, who must have been on some wicked drugs. They were raging, fearless and totally out of it – probably what kept that dude alive longer than he’d have lived if his body wasn't so wired. The ET arrived and dragged the car off the post, covering the windscreen and front of the car with a big canvas tarp. We left it to them. Back at the station, we sorted the truck out and sat down for a coffee. Amazed at what we had just witnessed: virtually a riot. I felt sorry for that young guy; still do. I wonder what went wrong in his life to have so much hate, even to his dying breath. I never told the other guys what he’d said to me: not sure why, didn’t seem to matter now. I went and had a shower, no use trying to go back to sleep. I read some book, and went home that morning to kiss my kids.
"The Skinhead" is taken from the new anthology Huia Short Stories 14 (Huia Publishers, $25), available in bookstores nationwide. The stories were selected by Emma Espiner, Carol Hirschfeld, Vincent Olsen-Reeder and Maiki Sherman; the authors will compete for the 2021 Pikihuia Awards for Māori writers, run by the Māori Literature Trust and Huia Publishers. The ceremony will be held on October 30.
