Whale Pot Bay by Des Hunt Read Free Book Online

increasingly concerned that there was no response to my apology: an apology doesn’t make you feel much better unless it’s accepted. All sorts of ideas were forming in my mind about how she’d reacted to my letter.
    A week after the first surf lesson, I arrived home from school to find a vehicle parked opposite our house—a black SUV with a guy sitting behind the wheel, smoking. It was the same vehicle I’d seen on the day the women had arrived.
    Instead of going over to find out what he wanted, I went straight to the mailbox to collect the mail—still nothing from Stephanie. Disappointed, I went inside, thinking that if the man wanted to see us he could come and knock on the door.
    A note on our kitchen whiteboard told me that Dad had gone to Masterton for some supplies. He’d be back about six with takeaways.
    I was just about ready to head off to Milt’s when the man finally came to our door. Although he was no longer smoking, the lingering smell of cigarettes was sickening.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I’m Stuart Weston from SoilSeek, and you must be Jake Wrightson.’
    I agreed that I was.
    ‘Good! Good!’ he said with a big smile. ‘I was hoping to find your dad in, but there seems to be nobody around.’
    I’ve been taught to be polite with strangers, but to treat them with suspicion until I’m sure that they’re OK. Tellinga stranger that Dad was in town was not the right thing to do, so I said, ‘He’ll be around somewhere. If you tell me what you want, I’ll pass it on.’
    ‘It’s about the soil testing on your land back there,’ he said, nodding towards the coast. ‘Your grandad wants it tested to see if it’s being looked after properly. I need to collect some samples.’
    I looked at him, digesting what he’d said. After a while, I asked, ‘Have I seen you around here before?’
    ‘Yeah, you might’ve. I’ve been doing quite a bit of work in this valley lately.’
    That sounded fair enough, but I still wasn’t going to let him into the house or onto the farm without checking with Grandad. Unfortunately, Grandad wasn’t home when I called—he was probably out having afternoon tea with Dad. Neither had a mobile phone, so contacting them was impossible. However, there was still something I could do: I could check out this SoilSeek company. I returned to the verandah and the man willingly handed over a business card.
    The telephone number of the card got a reply, but the woman who answered didn’t seem to know if they were SoilSeek or not. Then a man came to the telephone and apologized, saying that the office girl was new and didn’t yet know all of the people in the building. Yes, Stuart Weston did work for SoilSeek, and today he was doing some testing on the Wairarapa coast.
    What else could I do but accept that the man at the door was who he said he was? So I told him it was all right for him to go onto our land.
    ‘You couldn’t show me around, could you?’ he asked.
    ‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ I replied, ‘seeing I’m going that way anyway.’
    ‘Excellent!’ he responded. ‘I’ll just go and get my gear out of the car.’
    On his suggestion, I ended up taking him all the way to Whale Pot Bay. He said he would start taking samples there and walk back. After dropping him off at the end of our property, I headed over to Milt’s place.
    The surf was higher that day, and at first I was reluctant to go in. But Milt was so keen to try his new skills that we decided to give it a go. It was exciting, especially when I caught the perfect wave and stayed upright for what seemed like ages.
    Then Milt got one and rode it like a champ…until the wave crashed down, and he, along with the board, was thrown high into the air. While it looked spectacular, it was also dangerous, and I was worried he might have been hurt. I quickly body-boarded into the shore to find him lying in the spent waves with a huge grin on his face.
    ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
    ‘Mostly,’