'Wild@Heart' - story
Two ageing lovers put aside a portion of paradise, creating their own country while the planet rots -- though of course, nothing is easy. In fact, some things are life-or-death difficult...
Speculative literary fiction
by Michael Botur
It’s January, a sizzling Saturday. We’re wrestling rubbish out the side of a cliff above the glittering Pauanui marina where many of us have boats parked, handing black bags stuffed with nappies and Big Mac boxes in a human chain down to a skip, planting baby natives in each hole we pull trash out of. My bra strap trickles dusty sweat and there is spiderweb in our hair and we’re pestered by wasps, but the dirt feels good under my purple nails and we all know we’ll be back in our suits soon.
These businesspeople and I, we’re doing this litter clean-up for a Sunday photo op, keen to let anyone reading our companies’ annual reports know we’ve come to contribute Corporate Social Responsibility with big pretentious capital letters.
It is Richard Lu, the unimpressed-looking founder of K2Klothing, who has gathered us, emailing round the Exporters’ Association. Richard is equally revenue-focused as the rest of us – he just feels the guilt more.
Richard’s our leader this morning, dressed in a high-vis vest, sunhat, K2 boots. Muscles flex under his shorts as he straddles the slope. You’d think he would put on a flashy-smile display; instead, Richard looks down with a black glare from the steepest parts of the slope, impatience coming through in the speed with which he works, wiping his frowning fortysomething brow, grumpily planting kauri seedlings “the correct way,” muttering little critiques of our gardening gear. Richard has this tug-of-war thing with K2. He wants every item of outdoor gear his company sells to last 50 years into the future; his board wants items made in Macau to return profits today, and The Board always wins. Richard hates unethical goods and any people who sell them. This includes the Warehouse guy to my right, the BP lady, the Hallenstein brothers. My company’s on Richard’s shit list too. Fiordlandwear flies in textiles from Guangzhou for $20 a kilogram. Every kilo, we upsell for $450. The dyes that turn the Pearl River purple are not our problem. Like everyone here, I stuff toxic shit into a crowded world, collect a six-figure salary and buy the guilt away with occasional planting and volunteering.
At 11am, the K2Klothing Kommunity Kleenup™ is complete and the world is saved and Richard grumbles thanks, unsmiling. Fuck off back to your catamarans, his eyes say. The executives crick their spines and high-five and pose for the Herald and fetch their phones from big black cases.
Richard trudges to the bottom of the slope carrying one last baby puriri and shoves it into my chest. He opens a hole with his spade. I begin burying the sapling and he crouches, scooping soil, taking over.
Our knuckles touch.
‘That’s your penance,’ Richard says, snorting at his own little joke, lifting up his t-shirt and dabbing his brow. I spy his rocky stomach, hard and starving. ‘Go join the phonies. You don’t have to pretend to care.’
‘I’m not pretending.’
Richard’s eyes drill into me, then he trudges down the slope, glancing over his shoulder to see if I’ll follow.
‘Buy me a coffee then,’ he calls, ‘Convince me…. .’