The Thumb Song Sing-along

The Darran days done. 

Simon and I hitch out on Saturday beneath blue skies.  Chester and Carl head back into the hills.   

Roadside.  Simon and I wait roadside.  With a pack apiece and our thumbs outstretched.  Learn to speak the lingo.  Learn to sing the transient song.   

We wait roadside for an hour and a half before Ligar picks us up.  Ligar a Swiss photo-enthusiast with a self-proclaimed predilection to “getting smashed.”  North from the head of the Gertrude Valley to Te Anu to stop for two cups of cappuccino at a cafe and a slice of chocolate cake.  Then crowd back into the yellow hatch-back rental and blare techno all the way to Queenstown.  Stopping for Ligar to snap photos all the vistas.  Vista after vista.

All the way to Queenstown where Simon and I say goodbye and hustle down the street to stuff ourselves with a world famous Fergburger.  To give up a ride for a slab of beef on bun.  And well worth it.

We head back up the hill after fashioning a cut-out cardboard sign.  Thumbs out.  Half smiles.  And the cars go streaming by.  Two couples come walking past, the men handsome ogres, the women beautiful.  Trophies.  “Good on ya, boys,” says the smiling Alfa male.  “Keep it up young guns,” as they pass.  And over his shoulder, “But Geraldine’s quite far away.” 

We know.   

A twenty minute ride with three Maori boys in a jalopy.  They just come from the rugby match.  Drinking warm Tui beer out of bottles in the backseat with the speakers rattling fuzz into our eardrums.  And they drop us off in Frankton, which is really just the outskirts of Queenstown.  Not even twenty minutes.  But they’re “good cunts” nonetheless.  Finish the beers and throw away bottles and get back onto the road.

Another string of cars.  The yellow hatchback with Ligar behind the wheel.  He pretends not to see us.  Tactful. 

But before too long we are picked up by the Alfa male and his girlfriend.  They come cruising by in a flash car.  And the taillights blink.  And they do the side swerve.  And we realize once we’re inside that it’s one of the couples we saw on the sidewalk. 

“We’re only going to Cromwell,” says the man, “but we’ll get you that far.”  He slides his seat forward to accommodate Simon.  “A little farther on the way to Geraldine.”  And all of a sudden he is scrunched.  Like a freckled clown.  Huge.  Hunched in the driver’s seat.  His hulking frame too much, his knees jabbing into the dash.  Into the console on the one side, the door panel on the other.  Bending the shape of the car.  Genes, I think to myself, he’s got giant genes.

And as we chat.  And chat.  It comes out that he, too, is from Rotorua.  He graduated with Carl Fischer’s big brother.  The elder fish.  So he and Simon--common ground established--shoot the shit.  And after a while Simon says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name.”  And the man responds, “Tom Donnelley.”  And a silence falls.  And after another while Simon says, “I’m sorry, I’m a bit out of the loop, but don’t you play for the All Blacks?”  And the man responds, “Yep, yep.  I play a bit.”

A starting lock for the best rugby team in the world, and yet he’s modest as a mouse.  Down the road to Cromwell.  Chit-chatting about rock climbing and other “extreme sports.”  And after they drop us off in Cromwell, waving goodbye out of the sunroof, Simon says, “Well, you’ve just taken a ride with one of New Zealand’s premier sportsman.”  What a good cunt.

Then a ride from a milky-eyed man who may or may not have been three sheets to the wind.  A ride from scruffy Bruce and his mangy dog.  All the windows down, and a child lock employed.  I can’t hear a bit of the conversation from where I sit in the backseat.  So I pet the dog and wait.  And Bruce drops us off in the middle of nowhere.

No shoulder.  Few cars.  But nowhere, after all, is somewhere.  And as the clock tics toward seven in the evening we catch our fifth and final ride from a fellow traveler.  A German girl who is on her way to Christchurch.  On her way to the big city to sell her car and get out of the country.  The first female flagged down, and she plays Sufian Stevens as we cruise toward Geraldine.

She stays with us at the Sentinies’.  In the always welcome arms of Anna’s parents.  Yogurt and fresh fruit as a nighttime snack.  And a comfortable conversation with Ad before bed.

Wake up early and cruise to Christchurch.  To 312 Greers where Marky lounges shirtless and shoeless in the driveway.  Smoking.  Waiting on Paddy and a car to take him to Castle Hill (Sir Lancelot the Mitsubishi Lancer having exploded over Marky’s holiday break).  And I’m fiending to climb.  I’m ready to go.  Itchy fingers and the driveway pacing.

But Paddy arrives with a full ride.  And I’m forced to hitch to the hill.  No problem. 

By now a master: practiced and skilled in his art.  The thumb hung out in the afternoon sun.  And soon a ride with a young couple.  They sweating out alcohol from the revelry of the previous evening.  On their way to a late holiday celebration with a hospital-bound relative.  “We’re not too excited about it,” the boy behind the wheel says, blinking into the sun.  “Shit, I’m still drunk,” says the girl. 

And this is the way it goes.

Back to Castle Hill for a session in the sunshine.  The distant triangles of hang-gliders swooping through the hills surrounding.  A collection of multi-colored cut-outs, construction paper cutting through the blue.  But it is hot, and before long the sweating sun forces us from the field.

Marky and I bid farewell to Paddy and the rest of the posse and wait roadside, thumbs loose.  We hitch to the Springfield pub via a family of three.  And, after a jug and a cigarette each, back to Christchurch via one of the hang-gliders from the basin.

Back to Christchurch and the familiar faces.  Simon and Anna and Marky.  Carl and Chester due back by Tuesday.  Back to the comfortable couch in the living room.  Toasties cooking in the toasty machine, and a movie cued on the laptop.

The promise of good weather and trips to the basin.

The thumb song of the last two days echoing with the voices of helpful strangers.