Once Were Warriors

Three months later, Beth, Jake, and four of their children (Grace, Polly, Abe, and Hatua) are driving in a rented car to visit Boogie for the first time at the Boys Home. Beth is particularly happy and pleased with herself. She has not had alcohol for three months, and as a result, she saved enough money for their picnic and splurged on the food for it. The atmosphere is light in the car, though Grace is suspiciously quiet and never responds when Jake or Beth make a comment to the kids. They show off their rented car to their friends on the way, pass by Beth’s sister’s house, and spot a group of Brown Fist hopefuls at their headquarters. Among them is Nig. Jake slows the car, and Beth has to implore him not to engage, fearing that an altercation would derail their entire trip. Surprising Beth, he listens and drives on.

No sooner have they left the vacant land near Pine Block, however, Jake asks whether they should take a detour, which begins the day’s derailment. The children agree, and Jake assures Beth that it won’t take long and that they have plenty of time to meet with Boogie. Beth ascents and Jake drives them around the lakes, the good mood returning until Jake decides to visit Ainsbury Heights, a rich Pākeha neighborhood. Following Grace’s directions, they drive past large, wooded dwellings. The more they see, the more Beth can tell that Jake’s anger is rising. Where before he’d been proud of having a rented vehicle, seeing a house with three cars enrages him—though Beth doesn’t believe ownership of the car is the true cause of his anger. They keep driving, and although Jake shrugs off his attitude, the rest of his family is not convinced. The tension has everyone falling back on their trained behavior to mitigate his outbursts. They reach the area where Beth grew up, Wainui pa, a village that still observes Māori ways and traditions. Going down memory lane prompts Jake to reveal that his family did not have the same standing as Beth’s; in fact, he had an enslaved person as an ancestor who had been taken as a prisoner in tribe warfare. People ostracized and bullied Jake for having this ancestor, and Beth imagines that this is the “hurt” that fuels Jake’s rage. As Jake keeps driving, he does not bring them to Boogie but to McClutchy’s, where Jake promises that he’ll only drink one beer. After 30 minutes, Beth goes inside to find Jake two beers deep with his eyes glued to a horse race. After reminding him of the time, she goes back to the car and tries to talk to Grace, who ultimately pushes her and her concerns about her quietness away.

The narrative flashes forward a few hours later. Beth is in the bar with Jake and is drunk. She thinks about how well she’d done to organize the visit to see Boogie, only to spend the remainder of the day at the bar. It is now 4:50pm. She panics but eventually brushes it aside. Instead, she wants to boast about how well she’s done saving money and brings in the expensive picnic for which she saved. She gives money to her kids to find food, and Grace makes fun of her slurred pronunciation. When Beth comes back into the bar with the picnic, the people at the bar and Jake do not care for her efforts—they simply eat all the food within minutes, leaving Beth to cry in Mavis’s arms. Meanwhile, Boogie is still waiting for his family to visit, holding out hope that they’ll make it, even though it’s well beyond visiting hours.

The narrative moves to Grace’s perspective, hours after leaving her mother and father back at McClutchy’s. She is hanging out with Toot as he explains how to do glue. She asks Toot multiple times to let her try it, but he staunchly refuses. When she insists, he proposes a joint instead. Now high, Grace confides in Toot that the man has raped her again (possibly multiple times since that first time) and that, despite her despair, she can’t tell her mother about it. As for her father, she intimates that she believes that he’s her rapist. She calls him “the worst old man in the fuckin world, [and if] I had a gun I’d shoot him stone fucking dead” (109). She leaves Toot and heads for the Trambert estate, carrying rope with her. She watches the Trambert family have a nice, five-course dinner where they laugh with visiting friends and the daughter can speak with her parents as an equal. From her perch on a tree, she compares this scene with Pine Block, which she can glean through the tree leaves, and her misery grows. She ties the rope, testing its strength, then places it around her neck as she thinks about unrealized potentials. She jumps off the tree to her death.