Uncle's Story

Chapter Twelve

Tuia i runga, tuia i raro.

The world was being constructed again.

Tuia i roto, tuia i waho.

The top and bottom bound together by the light.

Tuia i te here tangata ka rongo te Ao.

Now the outer framework and inner framework. Fixed firmly, the knots soldered by the shafts of the sun.

The promise of life, the impulse of history, was reborn.

I made a cup of coffee and watched the dawn rising. Impishly I decided to ring Auntie Pat.

‘You’re lucky some of us don’t need our beauty sleep,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve seen George and I’ve finished reading the diary.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ve never liked this conspiracy of silence, this secret about Sam. I was too much of a coward to do anything about it while Dad was alive. Monty and I kept the secret by remaining silent. It’s a great weight off my conscience knowing that you are now aware of him.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me I looked like him?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘George remarked on it. You can see it in the photograph.’

Auntie Pat thought about that for a moment.

‘Yes, I suppose I can understand why George would think that. He always had a sentimental streak and would have wanted to see Sam in you. But Sam was much handsomer.’

‘Gee, thanks, Auntie.’

‘So I guess you’ll be wanting to know what happened when Cliff Harper came to New Zealand. You know I don’t really want to talk about him, don’t you? But I suppose I have to. Are you still making a lot of money? Fly up and see me at the end of the week. You can stay at my house in Gisborne. Don’t worry, I won’t let your folks know you’re coming. We’ll talk then. Can you do it? You’re not otherwise occupied?’

‘If you’re asking if Jason and I are back together, no.’

‘No other boyfriend? Goodness, that must mean you’re still celibate. You better watch out. Your gears might rust up.’

‘Do you want me to come or don’t you!’

‘Yes of course I do, Nephew. I’ll see you soon then.’

All that week I was working at Toi Maori finishing off another commission for Roimata. Two days before leaving for Gisborne, Roimata came in waving a fax and smiling with satisfaction.

‘This is it!’ she said. ‘This is the official invitation for you and me to go to Canada! They want us there next month, all expenses paid. So who’s a clever girl?’

I grinned at her. ‘That’s abso-bloody-lutely fantastic.’

The idea of getting out of the country and away from all the stuff I was dealing with sounded wonderful.

Roimata took a deep breath and then said lightly, in a way that made me suspicious, ‘Let’s go out and celebrate. I have a cousin in town. I told him I’d meet him at Jordan’s bar.’

‘If this is one of your schemes to hitch me up with somebody, I’ve already met Long Dong Silver.’

‘No, it’s not him. It’s somebody else and, anyway, you owe me for the night out with Auntie Pat.’

‘Look, I can find my own dates. I don’t need you to pimp for me.’

Roimata grabbed my arm and pulled me after her into the street.

‘Tane’s nothing like that,’ she said, laughing.

As it happened the cousin wasn’t a blind date, and he was somebody I had long admired but never met. His real name was Tane Mahuta, but a national magazine had profiled him with the headline ‘The Noble Savage’, and the nickname stuck.

‘Kia ora, Michael. Roimata’s told me a lot about you,’ Tane said as we shook hands. He turned to Roimata: ‘Listen, cousin, I can’t stay long, but —’

I watched as Tane and Roimata continued their conversation. In the 1980s Tane had been a popular male prostitute. He’d become politicised when, during the Great Epidemic, all the health funding went to Pakeha organisations for the simple reason that there weren’t any Maori ones. Maori themselves, with their heads in the flax, pretended there wasn’t a problem because Maori gay men didn’t exist — except for transvestites like Carmen and they weren’t men — and there were no Maori gay leaders in the community. But Tane knew Maori were dying of Aids in Auckland, the largest Polynesian city in the world. Every month more Polynesians became statistics, crawling into holes like animals to give their last gasp rather than to go home and shame parents who would have hidden them away anyway. The job chose him, and so Tane left his beat on Karangahape Road. He came out publicly, was vilified for it, but an extraordinary thing happened. He was one person standing up, and the next moment, others started to join him. Te Waka Awhina Tane, the first gay organisation to support the needs of Maori and Polynesian young gay men, was born.

‘You know,’ Tane said, ‘the funny thing was that our Maori people felt it was bad enough my working the streets, but when I came out as a gay leader that was far worse. You know how our people are.’

Tane’s eyes were glowing and his smile was as bright as the sun. In his emerald-coloured pareu, and with a whalebone neckpiece against his bronzed skin, he looked as if he had been born with the dawn.

‘You’ve just come out, right?’ he asked.

‘Yes. It hasn’t been easy.’

‘You may think it’s the end of your life, but it isn’t. It’s just the beginning. It takes guts. Too many people associate being gay with being weak. It isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘What brings you to Wellington?’

Roimata answered for Tane, and he looked at her with amusement. ‘Tane’s setting up a branch of Te Waka Awhina Tane down here. Gay men and women are strong, but we need to be stronger. We need to become more visible. You know, the problem is that our lives are controlled by the white heterosexual culture —’

Tane looked at me — and interrupted Roimata with a laugh.

‘Does she do this to you too?’ he asked me.

‘All the time,’ I said, sighing, and Roimata poked me crossly.

‘You guys need me,’ she said, ‘and don’t you forget it.’

Tane hugged her and then looked at his watch. Roimata gave him a glance and he nodded and turned to me.

‘Perhaps next time I’m in Wellington we could have a talk about how you can get involved with what we’re doing down here. As well, Roimata had hoped there’d be time for me to ask you about —’

Roimata didn’t think I saw her give him a quick kick on the shin.

‘Yes, well, we will leave it for next time. Obviously I need to be properly briefed.’

He kissed Roimata and shook my hand.

‘And now I really have to go. Ma te Atua koe e manaaki.’

Friday came around and it was time to fly to Gisborne to see Auntie Pat. Another week had gone by — and still no sign of Jason. Every evening I arrived home full of hope that he’d rung. I sometimes imagined him waiting for me, saying, ‘Forgive me, I’m sorry.’ I saw myself kissing him and replying, ‘No, it was my fault.’ And all the while we were pulling off each other’s clothes because, God, it had been such a long time since we had made love. There were never any messages and Jason was never waiting. I couldn’t go on living with all this indecision. I telephoned him at work — and he answered.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. His voice was cold, dismissive.

‘Can you spare me half an hour?’ I asked. ’I’d really like to see you,’

‘Yes, it’s time we talked. The Angel Bar in an hour? Good.’

I took a seat by the window and watched Jason as he approached the bar. As soon as I saw him I knew this was a different Jason. You know how it is — you live with someone, you love someone, you get to know everything about him — and then one day, you see him on the street and it’s not him any longer. Sure, it looks like him, talks like him, but it isn’t him at all. He’s gone, and another person has slipped like a thief into the place where he once used to be.

‘Do you want a beer?’ I asked.

Jason nodded. There was no smile as he took the seat opposite me.

‘How much time are you able to give me?’ he asked, scarcely able to hide his sarcasm.

‘I can take a later flight,’ I answered.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t want you to do that,’ he mocked. ‘Anyhow, the shorter our conversation the better.’

I tried to look into Jason’s eyes. Once, I’d been able to see straight into his heart. Now there was a mirror there, and it deflected everything.

Jason’s beer arrived and he took a couple of gulps. Then:

‘I’ve made my decision about us,’ he said. ‘I’m calling it quits. I’m leaving you for good.’

I felt a deep sense of loss. No longer would I have this wonderful companion. A sudden memory flashed in front of me — of tussling for the Sunday paper in bed while we had breakfast — and tears welled into my eyes. But damned if I was going to let him see them.

‘So all this stuff about wanting me to be there for you when you get back. You don’t want that, is that what you’re saying?’

Jason spoke his words like spears.

‘I know I said that, but I was only saying what I thought you wanted to hear, not what I really wanted to say. You forced me to say it. Well, it’s all very clear to me now. I know now from my sessions with Margo that you haven’t been feeding me.’

The accusation flared across the table, and I flinched. I thought to myself how much I would miss making love to him. I had once assumed that in any relationship it was the top partner who held the power. Jason had never been the active partner but there was no doubt that he held the power now. Perhaps there was potency in vulnerability after all.

But where was he getting all this stuff from? Of course I had ‘fed’ him! Sometimes love that is thwarted never plays fair. I went on the offensive.

‘So who’s feeding you then?’ I asked. ‘Margo? Graham?’

Jason coloured. ‘Who told you about Graham?’

One look at Jason and I knew that Graham had become Jason’s new lover. The minder who had been conveniently provided him by Margo’s encounter classes had become the shoulder to cry on and the new fuck. My head began to spin with anger and Jason saw the signs. He put down his glass and took a few steps back.

‘I always did what you wanted me to do,’ Jason said. ‘I never did what I wanted to do. Well, now I’m going out and doing it — and Graham is helping me to explore who I am. I never really liked having sex with you, Michael. And you have to pay for what you’ve done to me.’

It sounded like a threat. It was a threat.

‘Pay? For what! For loving you? If you want to play hardball, Jason, you’re on the wrong court.’

He stood his ground.

‘I once said to you that what I’m going through had nothing to do with you. But it does. I do have to deal with you, Michael. You’ve got to be made to face up to what you’ve done to me. And you do have to pay.’

I was still very angry when I checked in for my flight. I was angry with Jason, I was angry with Margo and I was angry with Graham. Somehow I had the feeling that all this stuff with Jason had been cooked up secretly behind my back. There’s nothing worse than thinking you look like a fool. Everybody had been in on the secret that Jason was leaving me — ‘Come on, Jason, you can do it’ — and no doubt there’d be hugs and congratulations from his cheerleading team at his next therapy session.

As for me, I was left sitting in a locker room by myself. Who was on my team?

As I handed over my ticket at the check-in counter, I saw Carlos’s business card. So Jason wanted to play hardball, did he? Well, two could play the same game — and I’d already gone long enough without having sex. My brain began to fill with images of Jason and Graham together — and I was quivering with rage by the time I rang Carlos’s number. When he answered I got straight down to it:

‘How about a date?’

‘Now let me just see,’ he teased. ‘Wow, wouldn’t you know it, I’ve just had somebody ring in a cancellation! How about Saturday night?’

‘Sorry, I’m on my way to Gisborne. How about when I get back?’

He sounded disappointed. ‘I can do Tuesday —’

‘Not Monday?’

‘Okay,’ he laughed. ‘I’ll have to shift a few things around, so you better take me somewhere really good!’

A quarter of an hour into the flight to Gisborne, I was still trying to calm myself. How could I have been such a stupid fool as to hope that Jason would come back? Why hadn’t I read the signs? Ah well, so it was over. Where to from here? I settled into the seat and tried to read a magazine. But that wasn’t helping me. My eyes flicked over to a young high school boy just a few rows in front. I noticed that there were other boys with him and that they all came from my old school, Gisborne Boys’ High. And I remembered that I must have been about their age when I made my own first trip to Wellington during a similar school visit. New Zealand from the air had looked amazing. The country riffed with thousands of jagged valleys, ziggurats spilling from the backbone of the fish that Maui pulled from the sea. His brothers, growing hungry, had attacked the fish, tearing its flesh and stuffing their ravenous mouths.

On that first visit the plane flew through a rainbow, the symbol of our tribe’s protective deity, Kahukura. On the other side was Wellington, a place wrapped around with squalls and a strange luminosity compounded out of sleet and wintry light. In those days I saw Wellington as a place in another land. I saw Waituhi as some country left behind in the past.

Since that time I had flown backwards and forwards countless times. I went to Wellington to play sport. I did my university degree there, escaping the constraints of Waituhi for the seductive pleasures the city had to offer. Although I grew up in Waituhi I became a man in Wellington. I worked hard, played hard, partied hard, and had lots of sex. The longer I stayed, the more I exulted in the freedom. And Wellington offered other infinite possibilities.

Like my life.

Looking out of the plane window some ten years later, I was conscious yet again of going back, of returning through the rainbow to Waituhi. It was a transition not only from city back to country but also from present to the past where the land of being Maori was. That Maori land was the land of boyhood. Once upon a time I had been happy there. I had belonged. My valley was called the Waituhi. At one end there was a palisaded fort. In the middle stood the meeting house, Rongopai, surrounded by the villagers of Te Whanau A Kai. At the other end of the valley was Maunga Haumia, the sacred mountain. A river called the Waipaoa ran through the valley.

Once I was lucky enough to have a people and a valley to come home to.

But that was then, when I had been a dutiful son. This was now.

The flight arrived on the icy wing of a southerly. The passengers ran into the air terminal. Auntie Pat was wearing a hat, a thick overcoat with the collar turned up, a hat and, somewhat out of place, huge dark glasses that covered most of her face.

‘Are you expecting sunshine?’ I asked her.

She pushed the glasses down her nose and, looking over their rims, said, ‘I thought I’d better dress incognito, just in case somebody sees me with you.’

She laughed, took me by the arm and hurried me out to the car. ‘Dinner’s already on and we have to get back because it might be burnt.’

I put my overnight bag into the boot and, out of habit, walked around to the driver’s side.

‘I like it when you’re masterful,’ Auntie Pat sighed, giving me the keys.

We drove through the suburbs of Gisborne City. The main shopping centre had been turned into an obstacle course, thanks to all the palm trees and other so-called visual improvements by which Gisborne had been accessorised for the Millennium celebrations. But the streets were deserted except for the occasional shell-shocked Swedish backpacker looking vainly for something that spelt either entertainment or food. Through the first set of lights we went, past the hideous bicentennial memorial, across Kaiti Bridge and around the harbour to Auntie Pat’s house in Crawford Road. All I could think of was that I had foregone a night out in Wellington for this?

Auntie Pat went ahead of me, hurrying into the kitchen to check the stove. Habit made me head for the bedroom where I slept whenever I visited. I threw my bag on the bed and then went to join her.

‘Can you open a bottle of wine for us?’ Auntie Pat asked. ‘We could drink one of your father’s if you like.’

‘Might as well,’ I answered. ‘Looks like I’ll be buying my own from now on.’

‘You and me. He’s hated me bringing up Sam after all these years. When I mentioned to him I had given you Sam’s diary, he hit the roof. He hadn’t wanted you to know. And he hadn’t known that I had Sam’s diary. He thought everything of Sam’s had been burnt in the fire.’

‘So there was a fire?’

Auntie Pat paused and shivered.

‘Yes, but we’ll talk about that later. Meantime, why don’t you go into the dining room? I’ll bring our dinner in soon. It’s pork bones and puha.’

As it turned out, dinner was actually a mussel bisque, followed by swordfish steaks broiled with olivada and rouille. Dessert was poached apples with gorgonzola. As well as being a fan of Hollywood movies of the 1940s, Auntie Pat loved cooking. She always made light of her culinary accomplishment, as if Maori weren’t supposed to know how to cook à la cordon bleu.

‘Those were the best pork bones I’ve ever had, ‘ I said.

‘It was nothing,’ she answered. ‘They only took me a few minutes.’

With dinner over, we moved to the comfort of the living room. Auntie Pat had lit the fire. I couldn’t remember when I had ever been so relaxed with her. At least that was a plus of coming out. It had brought me and my spinster Aunt closer together.

‘Anything happening between you and Jason?’ Auntie Pat asked.

‘I saw him just before I came up,’ I said. ‘We’re finished. I only wish I didn’t love him, but I do. If you were ever in love, then you’ll know how I feel.’

I kicked myself as soon as I said it.

‘No, it’s okay, Nephew,’ Auntie Pat smiled. ‘After all, you’ve only known me as your spinster Auntie and I’ve never made a habit of talking about myself. But there were boyfriends, nothing serious, and—’

Auntie Pat paused, choosing her words carefully.

‘Yes, there was a man I loved but, at the time, he belonged to somebody else. The usual story. So, yes, I think I do know what you mean about love. And I wasn’t always like this —’

She stood up and went to her dressing table. When she came back she had a photograph album in her hand. She flicked through the pages.

‘Here we are,’ Auntie Pat said. ‘This is me with Mum and Dad when I was twelve. It was taken just before Sam went to Vietnam. Probably at Poho o Rawiri marae, from the look of the surroundings. I hated it when he left.’

‘You were twelve? I always thought of you as being much younger.’

‘I guess you get that idea from Sam’s diary,’ Auntie Pat nodded. ‘Sam always thought of me as being his little kid sister. I think he preferred it that way. When he was in Vietnam I used to write to him every week, did you know that? Even after he returned to Waituhi he never saw me as I really was —’

Auntie Pat paused at a page in the photograph album.

‘This is what I was looking for,’ she said. ‘I was fifteen.’

I had forgotten how pretty Auntie Pat had been. If photographs tell the truth, three years had changed the young skinny kid, tightly holding her mother’s hand, into a young vivacious girl with long curly hair and a wide flirtatious grin.

‘This was my boyfriend Charlie,’ Auntie Pat said, pointing to the boy with her. ‘Look at what we wore in those days! If you saw Charlie now you wouldn’t believe that he’d ever managed to fit into those pants. As for me, well, I was trying to be so California.’

Auntie Pat and her boyfriend Charlie were mugging for the camera. Charlie was pretending to be like Fabian or James Darren. Not to be outdone, Auntie Pat was posing like a Hollywood ingenue, one arm behind her head, mouth pursed in a kiss, and the other hand on her hips. She had a beautiful bust and small waist, and was wearing a white blouse and hip hugging blue jeans.

‘Whatever happened to you, Auntie Pat?’ I wondered. The physical person was still there, but it was almost as if someone else was now in that body. Some person or some event had altered the destiny that seemed to be ahead of that laughing young girl who posed one sunny day long ago with a boy named Charlie. The girl in the photograph looked as if she had all the world at her feet and loved being touched. The woman next to me disliked the idea of physical contact, and lived hermetically sealed away from life in a small house surrounded by old movies and cordon bleu cooking. Who did it? What was it —

All of a sudden a gust of wind came down the chimney and Auntie Pat leaned back from the momentary increase of heat. She looked at me with terror and made as if to get up, to take a runner from the story she knew she had to tell. But the flames, fuelled by the burst of oxygen, leapt like tongues and began to talk to her.

Tell him, Patty. Before you change your mind, tell him. Now.

Auntie Pat sighed. She traced the photograph of herself tenderly, almost caressing it as if the girl in the photograph was a living person.

‘I was this age, fifteen, when Cliff Harper came to New Zealand. All that Sam had ever told us about him was that he was his American friend. I went with Sam to the bus station in Gisborne to wait for Cliff. I loved my brother and, because he was happy that his friend was coming, I was happy too. More than that I was just happy to be with Sam. We were so close. Sometimes people used to take us for boyfriend and girlfriend because we were always kidding around. I loved it when he put his arm over my shoulders to pull me into him.

‘Anyway, the bus was late, it always was. It was the early afternoon bus and it finally got in at three o’clock. At last all the passengers got off, and there was no Cliff. I said to Sam, “Maybe he’ll be on the next bus.” I mean, I didn’t care! But I could see that my brother was disappointed so I put my arms around him to make him feel better. I had my face tight against his chest and I felt and heard his heart beating. Incredible, really, to remember that after all these years. It was going der der der der der der, and it was like a little bird beating its wings in there. Then all of a sudden the heartbeat changed. It went der der der der der der. That’s when I heard somebody laughing behind me and felt Sam push me away. When I turned around to see who it was, a man was standing on the step of the bus in an American airforce uniform. “Looking for me?”

‘The next moment Cliff jumped down and he and Sam were slapping each other on the back and laughing. They kept turning and turning and Cliff’s hands were on the skin of Sam’s neck. I felt closed out and jealous and angry, and Cliff must have noticed because he broke the embrace with Sam.

‘“So you’re little Patty —”’

Auntie Pat gave a nervous laugh.

‘Well that made me feel even angrier, being called “Little Patty”. Cliff followed it up by hugging me and I was so shocked at being hugged like that by somebody I didn’t know. I turned to Sam for help. He was busy hoisting Cliff’s flight bag over his shoulder and didn’t realise I needed him to rescue me. Then it was over, and I was gasping for breath. I was angry and afraid, and then we were walking to the car and Cliff’s right arm was around my waist. When we reached the car Cliff assumed that I was sitting in the back. I looked at Sam, because he knew I always sat up front with him. But when Cliff opened the passenger door and stepped in, all Sam said was: “You’ll be all right in the back, won’t you, Patty?”’

Auntie Pat’s words were on fire, so I tried to stop her mounting anger.

‘Did Harper look like his photograph, Auntie Pat?’

She stared at me. She seemed to be struggling against her reply. When it came it was like a release. An admission.

‘I know that beauty is not a word you normally associate with men,’ she said, ‘but when I saw Cliff Harper I thought he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.’

Chapter Thirteen

Der der der der der der.

Sam’s heart was beating fast. After all this time and, at last, Cliff had arrived. And the feeling was still there.

Cliff gave a devastating wink.

You and me against the world, right?

Cliff saw that Patty was glowering at them both.

Uh oh, he signed, your little sister is not very happy.

In an attempt to make her feel comfortable, Cliff put his arm around her shoulder as they walked towards the car.

‘You’re travelling light,’ Sam said. ‘Only the Army bag?’

‘I’ve left my stuff up in Auckland at the airport,’ Cliff answered. ‘I didn’t think I’d be wearing much.’

He grinned and let Sam figure that one out.

‘Okay,’ Sam said as he started the car. ‘Are you all right back there, Patty? Then let’s go.’ He turned to Cliff. ‘I’m sorry, Sir, but the guided tour of Gisborne and the district has been postponed —’

‘Can I have my money back?’

Sam laughed. ‘Dad wants me at the farm as soon as possible,’ he explained. ‘He’s gathered some of the other farmers together for a cull of wild mustangs up in the hills. Every spare man is needed to help get them across the Waipaoa River.’

The car reached the outskirts of Gisborne. Ahead, the mountains were rising fast. Sam put his foot on the accelerator. Soon they were at the Matawhero crossroads.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Sam asked Cliff. ‘I thought I’d drop you at home where Mum and Patty can look after you?’

‘No way,’ Cliff answered, shaking his head. ‘I came all this way to spend time with you. You said you needed every man.’

‘Can you ride a horse?’

‘I’m an Illinois country boy. I was born in the saddle.’

‘There’s the river to ford and you can’t swim.’

‘In that case, you’d better give me a horse that can do freestyle,’ Cliff said. ‘Or breaststroke. As long as it floats.’

Half an hour later, they arrived at the farm. Florence was waiting on the verandah.

‘You’d better hurry, son. Your father will be at the river soon.’

Sam nodded. ‘This is Cliff,’ he said. ‘He’s coming with me.’

Florence only had time to shake Cliff’s hand.

‘Okay, Illinois boy,’ Sam continued. ‘No time to talk. Let’s go.’

Patty joined her mother on the verandah and watched as Sam and Cliff headed to the barn. Florence became aware of Patty’s silence.

‘What’s wrong, Patty?’

‘Nothing.’

Sam and Cliff left the farm at a gallop, following the contours of the land. For a while they rode abreast as Sam checked out Cliff’s equestrian skills.

‘How long has it been since you were in the saddle?’ Sam asked.

‘Give me a break,’ Cliff answered. ‘I’m still used to helicopters.’

‘Well,’ Sam grinned, ‘this should be easier. You kick to go and you pull on the reins to stop.’ Then he looked at his watch. ‘We’ve got no time to waste.’

Sam urged his stallion, Czar, ahead, and cracked on the pace. When he came to the foothills, he broke left up a small river tributary. Cliff, on Honcho, had lagged behind, but he waved him on.

‘I’ll catch up. You go ahead —’

Sam spurred Czar onward. Soon, he heard the sound of the rushing river. The bush opened up and he was there, at the T-junction where the tributary forked from the river. Two of the local wranglers, Jake and Jimbo, were waiting on the sandspit at the junction.

‘You made it just in time,’ Jake said. ‘They’re on the way down.’

Jake pointed up the river valley. Sam looked ahead. At the bend of the river was a track winding down from a steep ravine. His eyes followed the track to the top. The sun dazzled. Dust swirled against the sky. He could hear voices, whistles, shouting.

Cliff arrived. ‘I want my helicopter back,’ he said.

Sam introduced Cliff to Jake and Jimbo.

‘I’m glad you brought a mate,’ Jake said. ‘There’s no way we could have set up the block with just the three of us, and I don’t know what side of the river they’ll come down. How about splitting the difference? Two of us on this side and two on the other? As long as we head them off, force them into the tributary and down to the lowlands. Who’s going to get wet?’

‘Heads you and Jimbo go to the other side,’ Sam answered. ‘Tails we go.’

The coin flipped and flashed in the air.

‘Tails,’ Jake said. ‘Enjoy the swim, boys.’

Sam saw Cliff’s face blanch at the thought of riding through all that rushing water. Before he could protest Sam had taken his bullwhip from the pommel and stung Cliff’s horse on the flank. Honcho, bawling with surprise, leapt into the water — and Cliff gave an unearthly scream.

‘Ride him, Cliff!’ Sam yelled.

He put the spurs into Czar and plunged in after Cliff. The water rushed against Czar, and Sam was surprised it was so strong. He’d crossed nearly to halfway before drawing abreast of Cliff.

‘How you doing?’

‘Remind me to kill you when we get to the other side,’ Cliff spluttered.

He had stopped screaming and yelling, and was actually enjoying himself. The water had soaked his shirt so that it was plastered tight against his skin. His hair, slicked back by the currents, had become dark brown, the curls tightening on his scalp. He grinned at Sam and made a thumbs-up sign. Honcho, then Czar, found the bottom, and with a clattering on the river stones they heaved themselves up and out of the water.

Sam and Cliff had positioned themselves none too soon. Down the track came a lone rider. ‘They’re on their way —’

The rider was Bully, who came splashing along and reined in beside Sam. ‘That father of yours,’ Bully said admiringly. ‘There’s about eighty head coming down —’

‘Eighty —’

‘He wouldn’t leave any behind. He told me to come ahead to give you the numbers and to help turn them when they arrive. Here they come!’

From far up the river valley came the thunder of hooves. The high whinnying of the wild mustangs. The crack of the bullwhips as the wranglers chased the herd down. The thunder bounced down the valley and, when it reached the five horsemen waiting there, sounded like an advancing avalanche. All of a sudden Honcho was up on his hind legs and Cliff had to fight the reins to keep him from bolting.

Sam saw the first mustang. He was a beauty, as black as sin, and he was leading the herd, coming down their side of the river. The herd was moving too fast. At this pace, they would overrun the three men. Sam signed to Bully to follow him.

‘We can’t wait here. We’ve got to try to turn them before they reach this T-junction.’ He turned to Cliff: ‘Stay here.’

Sam and Bully were off, advancing on the approaching herd, swinging their bullwhips and making the air sing with the lash.

With a shrill whinny the black mustang reared, its hooves flashing. Sam pulled Czar away just in time — but Czar was from wild horse stock himself and turned back to face the black mustang. The two horses began fighting, bawling their rage at each other.

‘Get back!’ Sam yelled. ‘Get back, you black bastard!’

The mustang herd milled around the two fighting horses in confusion. Next moment Sam was able to crack the black mustang across the shoulders with his bullwhip — and it turned from its attack and leapt into the river. The herd followed, and Bully whooped in elation.

‘We’ve done it!’

But the black mustang saw Jake and Jimbo on the other side. Bully’s cry of triumph turned to a groan when it turned away from the shore and set its course midstream, swimming strongly through the block.

‘What the hell,’ Arapeta reigned in beside Sam. ‘You haven’t done your job, son. Dammit, it’ll take us hours to get the herd back here again.’

‘I did my best, Dad,’ Sam answered.

‘Well it wasn’t good enough.’

That’s when Bully gave a laugh, interrupting the argument.

‘Hey, Sam, who’s your mate?’

Sam’s heart stopped. Cliff had taken to the water on Honcho, arrowing into mid-stream. He was trying to head off the black mustang.

‘Crazy Yankee son of a bitch —’

Kicking his horse into action, Sam galloped back along the river.

‘Give it up, Cliff,’ he shouted. ‘Let them go.’

But Cliff was yelling at the black mustang, whistling and waving his hands. Then the mustang was on top of Honcho, biting, slashing, fighting. Whether by luck or by accident, Honcho managed to get his forefeet on the mustang’s back. Half out of the air, Cliff teetered and fell.

Immediately, Sam urged Czar into the river.

‘Hang on, Cliff! Hang on —’

He saw that Jake and Jimbo had also swum their horses out to help. The black mustang saw them and turned. Made for the shore. Ascended onto the sandspit. For one suspenseful moment, the mustang halted. Sniffed the air. Shook itself dry of the water. Then it turned down the tributary — and the rest of the herd followed.

‘Well, if that doesn’t beat everything,’ Arapeta laughed.

He reined up beside Sam as he pulled Cliff out of the water. He looked down at Cliff and put out his hand. Cliff’s eyes looked straight into his.

‘Kia ora, Pakeha. So you’re Sam’s friend. Welcome —’

A firm handshake. A puzzled look on Arapeta’s face.

‘This boy is without fear,’ Arapeta thought. ‘I do not intimidate him.’

Cliff’s eyes blazed in the sun and Arapeta, blinded, put up an arm as if to protect himself. He turned to the other horsemen and jerked his head after the herd:

‘Let’s get after them, boys.’

It took another two hours before the herd was coralled. Patty and Monty came down to the yards to watch the wranglers at their work. Patty’s gaze kept shifting between Sam and Cliff Harper. Love for her brother kept bursting inside her as, following Arapeta’s directions, Sam separated the herd, the older horses from the younger colts. Sam’s work was so fluid. A slight pressure on Czar’s flank, and Czar would neatly sidestep between two mustangs. With a quick flick of the reins, Sam would make another separation. It was so beautiful to watch, and the wranglers, standing against the rails, murmured their approval.

‘Nice work, Sam. Watch the piebald! Watch the black. Get in between there, Sam! Good —’

By the time the work was over, the day was cooling and the sun was going down.

‘Hot work,’ Sam said. ‘Time to cool off and get rid of the dust, eh, boys?’ He turned to Cliff. His hair and skin were brown with dust. ‘How about it, Yank? Feel like getting wet again?’

‘I’d better,’ Cliff answered. ‘Somewhere there’s a white boy under all this.’

The men laughed, and Sam was pleased at how quickly Cliff had been accepted by them. He saw Patty staring with hooded eyes at Cliff.

‘What’s up with her?’ he wondered. Then Dad interrupted his thoughts.

‘You boys go down to the river,’ Arapeta said. ‘A shower will do me.’

He walked up the steps, past Florence on the verandah and into the house. Quickly, Patty seized the opportunity.

‘Can me and Monty go for a swim too?’ she asked Florence.

‘Sure,’ Sam intervened. ‘There’s bound to be some of the girls swimming further upstream.’

‘Yeah,’ Monty said. ‘Patty can go up with the girls and I can stay downstream with the men.’

With a laugh Cliff picked up Monty.

‘So you’re a man, right?’

‘Dinner will be at nine,’ Florence said.

The men started to scramble for their trucks. Cliff, with Monty on his shoulders, followed Sam to the car.

‘Do you have something for me to swim in? Don’t we need towels?’

‘You won’t need either,’ Sam said.

‘So I do what the natives do, is that it?’

‘Yes,’ Sam answered.

Ten minutes later, Sam parked the car on a small bluff overlooking the swimming hole on the Waipaoa River.

‘Popular place,’ Cliff said when he saw other cars and trucks parked along the roadside.

‘They must have known you were coming,’ Sam answered dryly.

He led Cliff along a dirt track through willows where it forked, one track going upstream and one going downstream. From there they could hear the giggles of women bathing upstream.

‘Goodbye Patty,’ Cliff said gently.

With a flounce, Patty was running through the dappled sunlight. Meantime, Monty was off running in the opposite direction with Sam in hot pursuit. Cliff trailed. Even as they were running Sam and Monty were throwing off their clothes so that by the time they arrived at the bluff they were both completely naked. Then both of them jumped —

Cliff reached the jumping point just in time to see Sam and Monty let go of the ropes that were dangling from the branches of the overhanging willows.

‘Bombs away!’ Monty said.

Below, Jake, Jimbo, Bully and other men were trying to swim out of the way. Next minute, the water erupted as Sam and Monty belly-flopped into it. Sam swam to the surface, spouting the water from his mouth. The sun-stars rippled around him. He waved Cliff to come and join them.

‘Come on, Cliff. Come and get wet!’

Cliff shrugged his shoulders, took off his clothes, disappeared down the track to make his run for the rope and, next moment, was a shape blurring through the sky.

‘Yee-haa!’ Cliff leapt for a rope, swinging back and forth as if afraid to let go, and everybody started to laugh and —

‘Oh shit,’ Sam yelled, remembering. ‘He can’t swim!’

Sam watched Cliff plummet down into the water. With quick strokes he made his way to the middle of the swimming hole and dived. All around him other men were diving. Beneath the surface Sam saw a trail of bubbles and felt the pulse of disturbed water. He saw an underwater world of sunken logs and then a flash of sunlight against something spectral white in the luminous green of the river.

Cliff, sitting there, at the bottom of the river.

Hello. Fancy meeting you here.

Cliff’s hair was flowing around his face. The sunlight rippled across his body, dappling it with extraordinary sensuality. Sam signed to him.

What are you doing, you stupid Yank?

Cliff shrugged his shoulders.

Waiting for you. I think this is called drowning.

All of a sudden Cliff belched and the air that he had taken into his lungs ascended in a huge glassy bubble. Quickly, Sam grabbed Cliff, propelled himself from the river bottom and shot them both to the surface. When Cliff broached the surface his first intake of breath gulped in the entire air of the universe.

Sam pushed Cliff to the bank of the river. All around, Jake, Jimbo, Bully and the other men were laughing.

‘From now on,’ Sam said, ‘you stay here and paddle in the shallows.’

Sam was half lying on Cliff, wagging his finger in Cliff’s face as if he were a naughty boy.

He started to slide back into the water. He heard Cliff gasp.

Unseen by the other men, Cliff’s penis was stirring. Helpless, he looked into Sam’s eyes.

‘God dammit.’

With a smile, Sam pulled Cliff a little further down from the bank to where the water covered him from the waist.

‘Try not to frighten the fish,’ he said.

Then he broke away to clamber up the bank, run at the rope and swing out again into mid-river. There, just as the sun flamed across the water, he let go and was suddenly made molten as he arrowed into a crucible of gold.

With the sun off the river, the night began to cool. Some of the men, led by Bully, snuck off to have another look at the women upriver. The rest stopped swimming and sat on the riverbank, quizzing Cliff about being a helicopter pilot. Sam could hear the skill in Cliff’s responses. He gave them what they wanted to hear, the stories of bravery that would affirm the experience. Nobody wanted to know about the darkness and terror that was at the heart of every soldier’s experience in Vietnam.

‘I’ll tell you what, though,’ Cliff said, ‘you guys were fortunate to have such good camaraderie between Maoris and whites.’

‘Yeah, well, whites are almost as good as us,’ Sam quipped.

‘No, seriously, in the American Army, it wasn’t the same for American blacks. They often fought a different war. Do you think the racial discrimination stopped because we were fighting on the same side? I heard talk that blacks were regarded as cannon fodder and often pushed to the front of American attacks on the enemy — and they knew it.’

Cliff was interrupted by the return of Bully and his raiding party — and they were chortling with glee. They’d come across some of the women’s clothing and stolen it. They sat waiting for the fireworks, and sure enough an outraged voice boomed out from upstream:

‘Okay, Bully. We know it was you who pinched our clothes. You just give them back!’

‘Who, me?’ Bully yelled back, all innocent. He was showing the boys a bra. ‘It must be Anita’s,’ he said.

‘No, Anita has bigger tits,’ Jimbo replied loudly. ‘I think it’s Kara’s’.

A furious squeal came from Kara, because the bra concerned was, well, of ample dimensions.

‘I heard that, Jimbo! How dare you go looking through Anita’s window at night!’

Jimbo flushed, and the men ribbed him — and because the conversation had taken something of a sexual turn, he coughed and asked Sam:

‘Ah, Sam, what did you say your mate’s nickname was?’

‘You should ask him yourself.’

‘Hey, Yank, why do they call you Woody?’

‘All the guys have nicknames.’

Cliff was noncommittal, but the telltale crimsoning of his neck gave him away.

‘Do you have a cartoon character by the name of Woody Woodpecker down here?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m named after him.’

Jimbo looked at Sam and grinned. ‘I reckon it’s also got something to do with that,’ he whispered, motioning to Cliff’s penis. ‘That is some pecker, huh, Woody?’

Until that moment, Sam had not made any sexual connection. When he did, he couldn’t help it. He lifted his throat and:

‘Ha-ha-ha, ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha, ha-ha! That’s the Woody Woodpecker song!’

While Sam was singing, Cliff stood up and began to make mock poses, flexing his biceps, sucking in his stomach and making all the men laugh. He was right in the middle of the routine when Anita and Kara, supported by Patty and a few other women, marched up to get their clothes back. What they saw was a buck naked American boy with green eyes like the river whose hair had been set on fire by the sun and whose pellucid body was jewelled from the water. They saw it all — and there was a lot to see.

Sam heard the girls scream with laughter. Patty seemed totally shocked. Next moment, cowpats and clumps of mud rained around Cliff and the men. Kara, arms akimbo, yelled to Bully:

‘You know very well that wasn’t my bra!’

Sam turned to his mates. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ He dived for cover back into the river, and the others followed.

‘What about me?’ Cliff called to Sam.

‘You’re on your own,’ Sam called as he saw Cliff run for shelter behind some bushes.

‘That’s not going to do you any good,’ Anita shouted after him. ‘You need trees!’

Kara nodded in agreement. ‘Lots and lots of trees!’

Gales of laughter rang across the swimming hole. The sun winked out.

Sam was nervous at family dinner that evening. He wanted everything to be right. He wanted his family to like Cliff; he wanted Cliff to like his family. Just before sitting down he whispered to Cliff:

‘Look, Dad likes dinner to be formal. He’ll say grace —’

‘I’m accustomed to that.’

Cliff had changed into a red-checked lumberjacket shirt and rolled up jeans.

‘And I’m on to your father. Head of the household, right?’

‘Mum’s been worried all day about whether you’ll like the food —’

Cliff’s eyes crinkled into a grin. ‘They’re worried? Hell, I’m the one who’s worried!’

For the first quarter of an hour, everybody was on their best behaviour. The men seated themselves and Arapeta said grace. He gave the briefest nod to Florence and Patty, as if they were personal kitchen staff. Immediately, the two women began to bring the meat, potatoes and vegetables to the table, serving the men before they sat down. Arapeta picked up his knife and fork and at this signal the family followed suit.

‘What about some wine for our guest?’ Arapeta asked.

‘I’ll do that,’ Sam said.

‘No,’ Arapeta answered. ‘Let your mother do it.’

Florence was rising from her chair when Arapeta turned to Cliff:

‘Are your lamb chops all right? Not overdone? And the kumara?’

Sam saw Mum give Cliff a stricken look. Sometimes, Dad’s questions often sounded like a death sentence.

‘They’re the best I’ve ever had,’ Cliff said.

He turned to Florence and made a gesture to the table. It was overbrimming with farm fare: bowls of peas and beans, dumplings, pork chops as well as lamb chops and bread freshly baked from the oven.

‘You are a fine cook, ma’am, and I congratulate you on the beautiful meal we’re having here.’

Florence blushed at the compliment. She went to the scullery and returned with a bottle of wine.

‘I’ve only just begun to make wine,’ Arapeta said. ‘I hope this chardonnay will be to your liking.’ He raised his glass. ‘Welcome, Sir,’ he said to Cliff. ‘The hospitalities of the house are yours. Nothing is good enough for the man who saved my son’s life and —’ Arapeta’s eyes twinkled ‘— was bold enough to stop my horses going down that river!’

Cliff made a gesture with his hands. He returned to the food.

‘Well, it’s certainly a pleasure to have some real home cooking. Beats the Army Mess at Nui Dat doesn’t it, Sam?’

Sam smiled a silent thanks to Cliff for diverting attention from his mother and on to the middle ground of man-to-man talk. He saw that Florence had noticed Cliff’s skill. A look of tenderness came over her. The evening progressed and, following a second bottle of wine, Arapeta relaxed. Sam knew that his father always prided himself on being a generous host; having a guest in the house brought out the best in him. Even better, Cliff kept asking the kinds of questions which played to his vanity, allowing him to recall story after story about his exploits during the Second World War.

‘The desert campaign? Yes, I was there when Kippenburger decided to use the Maori Battalion at Munassib. That was in August 1942, and he wanted us to take a pre-emptive strike and thwart an anticipated German attack. “Go in with bayonets,” he said, “and take prisoners and not scalps.” He also ordered Reta Keiha and Ngati Porou’s C Company to throw a screen across the front of the entire battalion. Although we struck opposition we continued to attack. Ben Porter was with A Company. Pita Awatere was with D Company. After the withdrawal had been ordered, and the body count taken, it was reckoned that 500 enemy soldiers had been killed. Later, Rommel accused us of massacring prisoners and the wounded because very few prisoners or wounded were found.’

Arapeta chopped the air with his left hand to make his point.

‘All the combat was hand to hand,’ he said. ‘Little quarter was asked. Little quarter was given.’

‘Were you also at Monte Cassino?’ Cliff asked.

‘Yes,’ Arapeta answered. ‘That was two years later, in January 1944. The Germans had a garrison there, the Fourteenth Panzer Corps of the Tenth Army, and they brought the American Second Corps to a standstill. Your 36th Texan Division lost more than 1500 men on their assault but you gained a foothold on the mountain. That’s when the Maori Battalion was ordered forward to help you out. We were assigned to assault across the Rapido River, along the railway line, and to capture the railway station. The plan was that we would use the station to launch a further assault on Cassino. The Germans threw everything they had at us. Then on 15 February the monastery was bombed. Three days later we attacked.’

Sam stole a glance across the table at Cliff and tapped out a message on his fingers.

God, you’re a charmer, you Illinois boy, you!

Without breaking his attention to Arapeta, Cliff signed back.

I love your Dad’s stories. And I love the fact that I’m with you in your house and —

Suddenly, Cliff stopped signing. Momentarily, he paled. Sam waited for Cliff to resume signing. He saw Cliff make a pointing motion:

Someone’s eavesdropping.

Sam was immediately alert. What was Cliff on about? He looked around the table. He looked at Patty. He caught a quick glance from Cliff.

No. Your mother —

Mum had been in the kitchen preparing pudding. She was standing behind Arapeta, waiting for him to finish his story before she put the plates on the table. Her eyes had caught the silent conversation between Sam and Cliff. She was frowning. She glanced at Sam. She glanced at Cliff. She gave a small intake of breath. Her eyes dilated.

‘I was with Colonel Awatere in that attack,’ Arapeta continued. ‘Men began to fall to the fire and the mines. B Company lost 128 men on their attack on the railway station —’

What do we do? Cliff signed.

Florence was trembling, almost spilling the plates. She was trying to hold herself together.

I think she’s guessed about us, Sam answered.

He was panicking. Quickly, he got up from his chair and walked towards Mum.

‘But on the next attack on the station,’ Arapeta said, ‘we did not fail. We hunted the Germans through the rubble and debris of Cassino until every one of them was down.’

‘Utu,’ Cliff murmured.

But his eyes were on Sam as he approached Florence.

‘Can I help you, Mum?’ Sam asked.

Florence looked into his eyes. Her face trembled. Then she smiled, a deep sad smile.

‘No, I’ll be all right, son. You go and sit down.’

Sam knew that smile well. It was one that Mum always used whenever she was sorry for herself. It was as if she knew her son and this American were in love with each other. But she recognised it only because it was something she had never had.

Meantime, ‘You know about utu?’ Arapeta asked Cliff.

He saw Florence putting the pudding plates onto the table.

‘But here I’ve been talking all night! Let’s finish dinner and then — is our guest’s bed made up, Florence?’

‘Yes.’ Florence nodded at Cliff. Be careful of my husband.

‘Good,’ Arapeta continued. ‘We have a busy day ahead. Sam’s got his work to do in the morning before he goes into Gisborne to get the rental car —’

‘Rental car?’ Cliff enquired.

His heart was thudding as he watched Florence, eyes downcast, resume her seat.

‘I forgot to tell you,’ Sam said. ‘You’re coming with us to a wedding. It’s at Tolaga Bay, about three hours’ drive away. Did you bring a tux? The family’s staying there for the night, but Dad wants me to come back to look after the horses. That’s why the rental car. Would you mind coming back with me?’

Cliff’s eyes danced, ‘Sure.’

He looked again at Florence. She was deadly still. The game of double conversation was not over.

It was time for bed.

‘It’s been a great day, Sam. Thank you.’

Sam and Cliff stood close together on the verandah. The sky was spilling over with stars. Dad had retired and Mum and Patty were doing the dishes.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Sam said. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t have any time alone today. Perhaps tomorrow.’

The two men stood like that for a long time. A star fell.

‘I have your greenstone pendant. I brought it back to you,’ Cliff said.

‘You should keep wearing it until you leave,’ Sam answered. ‘There’s time enough to return it.’

He wanted to stay out here forever with Cliff. He wondered how he would get through the night, knowing that Cliff was only down the corridor. He needed him.

‘So what do we do about your mother?’ Cliff said.

‘I don’t know,’ Sam began.

For some reason he remembered an old Maori myth. At the very beginning, all the gods were male. Desiring to have offspring, Tane went to his mother, Papatuanuku, and asked her advice. She told him to make a woman from the red earth which he would find on her mount. Tane did this, fashioning Hine ahu one, but when he wanted to enter her, he didn’t know which orifice to use. He tried her mouth, her nose, her armpits, her ears, her eyes and even her anus, and this is why all humans have secretions from these places. Finally, he found her female opening and sanctified it with the full inward thrust of his penis. Some variations of the myth told that it wasn’t only Tane who did this but all his brothers also.

As Sam remembered this he shivered. The male was high and sanctified. Woman was low and common. How much lower were men who loved men —

Sam turned to Cliff. He put his hand up to touch his face, to draw him closer. But he heard a noise, turned, and saw Patty shadowed in the doorway. She had come to show Cliff to his bedroom.

‘You’d better go,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

For a while Sam stood there, and a pang of loneliness hit him. He looked at the night sky, the Southern Cross turning on its axis, and its immensity surrounded him.

‘Where does love come from? Why has this happened?’

He felt someone slipping an arm around his waist. For a moment he thought Cliff had returned. It was Patty, and she was trying to nestle in under his shoulders, pulling his arms around her.

‘Are you cold?’ he asked.

Patty nodded her head. Then, ‘I love you, Sam,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Sam answered. ‘Do you like Cliff?’

‘I think so. I’m not sure. I know he’s your best friend.’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘But I’m afraid —’ Patty burrowed in further.

‘Of Cliff?’ Sam asked, surprised.

‘No,’ she began. Then, ‘Yes,’ and she nodded. But she was still unsure. ‘I don’t know,’ she concluded. Patty sounded as if she was lost somewhere in a black hole in space. She was shivering, uncertain. Then she whirled out of Sam’s embrace and ran into the house.

Chapter Fourteen

Sam was up with the dawn. He opened his window, and he laughed with surprise when he saw the mackerel sky. The clouds were tinged with red, stretching to the end of forever. For a moment he stood there, his elbows on the window sill, watching the mackerel as they swirled and teemed around the rising sun. As if they sensed some disturbance, the mackerel were jumping, splitting into shoals, showering the sky with silver.

Quickly, Sam dressed. There was a lot to do today before leaving for the wedding. He looked in on Cliff, but he was still sleeping. The rest of the house was quiet as he tiptoed out, put on his boots and strode down to the barn. There, the wranglers had divided the mustangs between them, leaving twenty to Dad. The horses were still spooked. It was the black mustang who was doing it, so Sam decided to isolate him with five or six others in an enclosure — and let the rest of the herd out into a larger paddock with some of the farm horses. He saddled Czar and, surprisingly, it was easier than he had expected to back the black mustang and some mares into a special corral. Before he let the others loose, he decided to check the paddock fencing. He rode out along the fencelines. On his way back in he saw a figure waving to him from the barn.

‘Mum!’

‘Do you want me to open the gate?’ she asked.

‘Okay,’ he answered.

Florence undid the latch and the herd sprang through. Watching, the black mustang put on a show of anger, snorting and kicking.

Sam dismounted. ‘Is Cliff up yet?’

‘Yes. He wanted to come down to help you, but your father told him you’d be back soon. I left them talking on the verandah.’

Sam slapped Czar’s haunches. With a whinny he was off, streaking through the sunlight.

‘We’d better get back to the house,’ Sam said.

‘No, not yet,’ Florence said, putting a hand out to restrain him. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

Immediately, Sam was wary. If Mum asked him about Cliff, what should he say? He looked at Florence and saw she was biting her bottom lip. When she started to speak, however, it wasn’t about Sam and Cliff at all.

‘I want to tell you about me and your father,’ she began. ‘And why you must be careful.’

‘About Dad?’

Florence nodded. She leaned against the railings.

‘How much do you know about how I came to marry your father?’

‘I know some,’ Sam answered.

‘Did you know he was actually supposed to marry my older sister? Madeleine was the beauty of the family, and the plan was that she marry Arapeta after his return from the war. But she met another man, your Uncle Pera, and before anybody could stop them they eloped. To salvage your father’s pride, and his mana — his prestige — I was offered to Arapeta. All of the negotiations were done around me. I had no say. Your father and I never even courted. They sent him a photograph of me while he was still in Europe, he said ‘Yes’, and the first time I laid eyes on him was when I walked down the aisle and saw him waiting for me.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Mum?’

Sam saw that his mother’s eyes were wide open and staring, as if she was walking in her sleep.

‘So that you can forgive me for not defending you against your father,’ she said.

Sam went to embrace Florence but she moved away.

‘As soon as I saw him I knew there would never be any love between us. I lifted the veil from my eyes, expecting to see a man who would be thankful for my sacrifice. But for him I was utu, payment. Something owed him in lieu of something that had been promised. I was good for only one thing — to bear him a son. All those months I was pregnant I feared you might be a girl. My life would have been worth nothing if that had happened. When you were born I cried with relief. After you were born I was nothing to him. I never did the things he was used to getting. He found me unimaginative. I was glad when he turned from me to you.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean —’

‘Your father lives for you and through you. He expects a lot of you, more than anybody can humanly be expected to fulfil. That’s why he rides you so hard. He has never forgiven you any weakness, any failing in the past. So do not expect him to forgive you for any weakness or failing now or in the future. If he discovers your secret, his rage will know no bounds.’

Sam’s heart stopped. He looked at Florence. Behind her he could see a huge spider’s web, shivering in the rain.

‘You know my secret?’

‘Every mother knows her son’s secrets and his desires. If your father finds out what they are, he will be unforgiving. He will consider you an unworthy vessel for his hopes and his ambitions. You are his eldest son. You’re supposed to succeed him tribally and personally. If you deny him this he will give you no quarter.’

Florence began to cry.

‘The reason why I am telling you this is because you must not expect me to help you. Where your father is concerned, I am a weak person. I can’t stand pain. I hate being shouted at and told I am useless. All I can do is warn you. Be careful of him. Don’t let him in. Otherwise he’ll sneak like a thief through your bloodstream, and enter your soul and your heart. And if he does that, he will indeed find out your secret.’

There was a noise in the trees. Florence looked into the shadows, startled. Sam had seen that look so many times. It was the look his mother gave whenever Dad came through the door.

‘We’d better get back. Forgive me, Sam, for being a coward. I like your friend Cliff, but if anything happens, I will not be able to intervene against your father. You will be on your own.’

‘Come on, everybody, move. Florence, what’s taking everyone so long?’

By mid-morning everyone was rushing. Arapeta was in command and Mum was hastily packing two suitcases for the overnight stay: formal clothes for Arapeta, herself and the children, and bedding for the meeting house. Sam and Cliff were well out of the way, ready and waiting at the car.

‘Is your father always like this?’ Cliff asked as yet another outburst came from the house:

‘Don’t forget my medals, Florence! This is not just a wedding. All the Maori Battalion will be there and General Collinson from the Army in Wellington. I won’t allow him to upstage me.’

At last the family came hurrying out.

‘It’ll be a bit of a squeeze, but you won’t mind, will you?’ Sam asked Cliff.

‘Not at all,’ Cliff answered as they all piled into the car. Monty was sitting on Florence in the front, and Patty was in the back between Sam and Cliff. Whatever had been bothering Patty was apparently over. She was animated and bright-eyed. Sam had never seen her looking so pretty, especially with her hair now curly instead of straight. How long it would last was anyone’s guess.

‘She’s got a boyfriend,’ Sam told Cliff. ‘What’s his name, Patty? Frankie, Harry? Blackie?’

‘You know very well his name’s Charlie.’

She turned to Cliff with stars in her eyes.

‘He isn’t my boyfriend. He was my boyfriend or at least he thought he was my boyfriend but —’

Mum laughed. ‘Goodness me, Patty, all this chatter! What on earth has got into you this morning?’ She turned to Cliff apologetically. ‘She’s not usually like this. She’s normally very quiet.’

Patty coloured and cuddled into Sam. He exchanged a glance with Cliff who said to Patty:

‘Hey, that’s okay, babe.’

At the word ‘babe’, Patty blushed even redder. Sam sighed — sometimes you could never tell what to say or do with Patty. She was silent for a while, and then she looked at Cliff and gave a gasp.

‘I’ve been trying to think who you remind me of,’ she squealed, ‘and now I remember!’

Patty leaned forward and tapped Florence on the shoulder.

‘You remember that old movie you took me to, Mummy? The one about a young soldier who comes back from World War Two? Don’t you think Cliff looks like Guy Madison?’

Sam caught Mum’s face in the mirror. Mum was laughing.

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘There’s a scene where he returns home on the bus and —’ Patty’s eyes were shining as she turned to Cliff. ‘Do you know any movie stars, Cliff?’ Patty was off, asking question after question. Sam relaxed. By the time they arrived in Gisborne it looked as if she liked Cliff after all.

‘Don’t forget,’ Dad said as Sam and Cliff got out, ‘the wedding starts on the dot of 1500 hours.’

He made it sound like a military manoeuvre.

‘Seeing as you’re the best man,’ Mum reminded Sam, ‘you’d better not be too late. No sightseeing on the way.’

Then Patty started up.

‘Can I come up with you and Cliff in your car, Sam?’

‘No,’ Mum said. ‘You’ll just be a nuisance.’

Cliff leaned against the window. ‘Tell you what, babe, let’s have a dance tonight, how’s that?’

Patty was still thinking how to reply when Arapeta spun the car out into the traffic and away.

‘You Yankee sweet-talker,’ Sam said. ‘Calling my sister a babe when she’s only a kid.’

‘A kid? You’d better open your eyes. Patty’s dynamite. You don’t know it and it’s just as well she doesn’t.’

Sam signed for the rental car and took Cliff to the menswear shop where he’d previously been measured for a hired black tux. While Sam paid, Cliff wandered around looking at the clothes.

‘Who’s the blond bombshell?’ the menswear assistant asked. He had been staring at Cliff from the moment he had walked into the shop.

‘He’s a friend from America,’ Sam said, trying not to laugh. ‘We need a tux for him too. Do you have one?’

‘We’ve had a run on our formal wear this weekend,’ the assistant said, ‘but I think I can rustle up something.’ He fussed around Cliff with his measuring tape, and by the time he was finished was positively salivating. ‘You just wait right here. I think I’ve got just the thing.’

He went into the dressing room and, in a mirror, Sam saw him opening up a box marked THE ROBERTSON-CARLISLE WEDDING and taking out a white dinner jacket. He crooked his finger at Cliff.

‘Would you come into the dressing room, Sir?’

Cliff looked uneasily at Sam. ‘Will you come with me?’

‘You survived enemy fire in Vietnam,’ Sam laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re frightened of a menswear assistant. Go on, be brave — and give him a thrill!’

Two minutes later, after a lot of oohing and aahing, Cliff reappeared. The effect of white jacket and blond good looks was devastating. Cliff was pleased.

‘Give me a pink carnation, and I’ll be all dressed up for the prom. All I need now is a date.’

The menswear assistant looked at Sam

‘If you get a cold and can’t go, I’ll take him.’

Half an hour later, when they were on the Coast Road to Tolaga Bay, Sam and Cliff were still poking fun at the menswear assistant.

‘What was he doing with you in the dressing room?’ Sam joked.

‘Measuring and stuff —’

‘And stuff?’ Sam arched an eyebrow.

‘Waal,’ Cliff drawled, ‘he wanted to take some measurements of my thighs and, even though we were only there to get a jacket, I let him!’

‘Do you think he knew about us?’ Sam asked.

‘Yes. I told him.’

The openness of Cliff’s admission took Sam’s breath away. Here was a man who was setting the pace. Prepared to tell strangers. And when Cliff put his arm around Sam’s shoulders as he drove, all Sam could think of was the rightness of it all. It didn’t matter where they were going as long as it was together.

‘Another person knows,’ Sam said. ‘Mum. But I think it’s okay with her. She’s had a hard time with Dad. I’m pretty sure all she wants is for me to be happy.’

‘I’m glad she knows,’ Cliff answered.

Ahead on the road Sam saw a beat-up truck with a Maori family on the back deck. It was going very slowly — and Cliff said:

‘If this was Vietnam, we’d have the right of way.’

It all happened so quickly. All of a sudden the landscape changed, and Sam was back in Phuoc Tuy province. The sun was a malevolent eye over a red landscape wasted by military strikes and defoliants. In the air, helicopter gunships buzzed like hungry bottleflies. Vietnam villagers ran like tiny insects trying to find some place to hide. One of them, an old woman with her entrails pulsing in the red dust, smiled at Sam:

You were a boy. You were hungry like all boys. You had to eat.

Then somebody with a flame thrower was burning her to a crisp. She fell into a nest of flame-charred bodies, huddling to protect each other. And a flying owl was screeching out of a virulent sky, and Turei —

Before he knew what was happening, Sam was wrenching the wheel, trying to avoid the memories. The car swerved across the highway and careered into the sand dunes. Sam was out of the car, leaning forward, balancing on his feet and punching the air as if he wanted to take the whole world on.

‘Oh, God. Oh, God —’

Sam looked at Cliff, his eyes wide open: and when Sam started to weep, a sea of pain and guilt spilling out of him, Cliff opened his arms and took Sam into them. He held Sam close, feeling tears on his neck, and love overwhelmed him for the vulnerability of this man who was sobbing on his shoulders.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Sam said. ‘That hasn’t happened for a while. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Vietnam’s not something you can leave behind. Its memories can come on you at any time of the day or night. I still wake up screaming sometimes.’

Sam wandered down the beach, with Cliff following him.

‘Were we right, Cliff?’ Sam asked. ‘Or were we wrong to be there in Vietnam? I know that when I went I thought God was on our side.’

‘God and the American flag.’

‘But what did we achieve, Cliff? We fucked the people up so bad that it’s going to take them years to recover. We napalmed the shit out of that country. We went there, did our war thing and then got out scot free. But they had to stay there and live in the shit we left behind. Were we right, or were we wrong?’

Cliff looked confused for a moment. When he looked at Sam he was frightened.

‘You know, when I was drafted I went to fight in something called the Vietnam War. But do you know what the Vietnamese called it? They called it the American War. So I guess your question depends on which side you were on.’

Cliff walked down to the sea, as if hoping that the surging waves would help him to give Sam his answer.

‘All I know is that war is war and those kind of questions about whether we were right or wrong get suspended when you’re there, in the middle of it all. I’m an American boy through and through. I believe in my country and I would fight to the death for it. But, in my heart of hearts, I think we were wrong to be in Vietnam. Knowing it doesn’t make it any better for my conscience to cope with. But pretending that those moral issues shouldn’t be dealt with is condoning what happened.’

Sam sighed, and relaxed against Cliff.

‘Thank you for saying it wasn’t right. And for telling me the truth.’

‘The truth?’ Cliff answered. ‘The truth is, I’m scared too. I’ve come through a war and now I have to find my way through peace. I thought that after Vietnam I’d go back to the States, meet a nice girl, settle down and get married. I thought I was regular like the other guys: I fucked girls and they loved it. Then you happened to me. Maybe the war does this to people. Changes them. But when I was in that bar in Vung Tau, surrounded by all those girls and soldiers, I was so weary. I thought of my brother and started to sign —’

‘God, Johnny, I’m so bored,’ Sam remembered.

‘When I saw you signing back to me, it was like I wasn’t alone any longer — that there was somebody in the world who could hear me.’

The sea was rolling in. The waves were sucking at the hot sand.

‘Love happened to me in Vietnam, Sam, and I wasn’t expecting it — but it was the only good thing to come out of my war and I’m going to trust in it.

‘Sometimes I feel shit scared about what has happened to us. What is happening to us. I know it’s the same with you and we’re both terrified of where we go from here. I never ever wanted a complicated life. I think I’m still basically heterosexual, but that’s had to go on hold too. Since that first night in Vung Tau we’ve avoided talking about the physical stuff. But one of these days we’re going to have to bite on that bullet —’

‘It might explode in our faces —’

‘We’ve got to take the risk,’ Cliff said. ‘If we don’t, we’ll never know.’

‘What happens if it doesn’t work out?’

‘You go back to your life and I go back to mine.’

Sam turned and looked at Cliff. ‘And if it does work out?’

Cliff’s eyes crinkled into a grin. He was looking sexy as hell.

‘What do you mean if !’

By the time Sam and Cliff got to Tolaga Bay they were really running close to time — and the town was packed to the gills.

‘Holy Hone Hika,’ Sam said as he negotiated the traffic and sped towards the marae. There, cars were packed in like sardines.

‘This must be some wedding,’ Cliff said.

‘Yes, it’s a special one. My father always puts on a good show. He’s made sure everybody has pulled out all the stops. A lot of important people are coming.’

Sam grabbed up his gear and led Cliff into the meeting house where wedding guests were changing into their flash clothes. Until Sam and Cliff’s arrival everybody had been carrying on as if they were in the changing sheds at the public baths. Old kuia were putting dresses over slips. Men were hitching up pants over longjohns.

‘Hey, Milly! You better stop feeding your man! Jumping Jack’s getting so fat he can’t keep up his pants anymore.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about him, Whina. It gives Jack his excuse to flash.’

‘Flash? What? I didn’t see a thing, Milly! Did any of you other girls see anything?’

The other ‘girls’ looked at each other blankly.

‘Us? No, it must have happened when we were looking!’

When Sam walked in with Cliff, everyone went silent. As Sam made the introductions he could see the women coyly reaching for sheets under which to continue dressing. And did their language change? Did it what.

‘Oh, Whina, dear, do you happen to have a spare comb?’

‘No, Milly, darling, but I think I have a hairbrush! Yes, here it is.’

‘Oh, thank you, Whina.’

Sam smiled at Cliff and shrugged his shoulders.

‘They’re embarrassed because you’re a Pakeha.’

‘So I should do as the natives do?’ Cliff asked.

With that he dropped his trousers. There was a gasp — and a groan of disappointment as everyone realised Cliff was wearing underpants. An old woman’s voice floated across the meeting house:

‘Now I know I saw nothing, but give me that any day to Jumping Jack’s flash.’

Everybody roared with laughter and normal misbehaviour resumed. Across the room, Sam saw Patty waving furiously — she had already linked up with Kara and Anita — and Florence pointing at her watch.

‘Hurry up and get to the hotel! Your father’s already gone to collect the bride. You better get George down to the church quick and smart.’

‘George?’ Cliff asked. ‘Your mate in Vietnam?’

‘Yes.’

Five minutes later, Sam and Cliff were running into the hotel where George was waiting with his two groomsmen, Red Fleming and Zel Flanagan.

‘Hey! Woody!’ Red called. ‘I didn’t know you were in town.’

Cliff made the rounds. Meanwhile, Sam was trying to put George at ease. He was pale and sweating with nervousness.

‘Gee, Sam, I was hoping you wouldn’t arrive so that the wedding could be called off. Couldn’t you have had a little acc-i-dent?’

The two friends gripped each other tightly. When Cliff came up to shake George’s hand, George couldn’t let go.

‘This is worse than Vietnam, mate,’ George moaned. ‘The whole thing’s turned into a circus. Do you know how many guests at last count? Over eight hundred. At least in Vietnam the only thing I had to worry about was a battalion of Vietcong. Here, it’s the whole of the East Coast and Sam’s father!’ He turned to Sam. ‘Can you remember when you, Turei and I were being farewelled from Poho o Rawiri and how we wanted to get the hell out of there and leave you and your Dad to it?’

‘The man needs another beer,’ Zel Flanagan said.

‘No,’ Sam said, ‘we want him to walk to his wedding, not to be carried to it.’

‘What about you, Woody!’ George said. ‘Maybe you could rescue me! Is your chopper handy? Feel like doing a medevac?’

‘Listen, George,’ Sam said, taking him to one side. ‘There’s still time to get out of this. If you’re really serious we can still get a message to Emma. Call the whole thing off —’

‘No, I have to go through with it. First of all, your father would hound me forever if I didn’t. More important, I owe it to Turei.’

‘Owe him? By marrying his sister?’

‘He was my mate, Sam. The owl was supposed to come for me. Emma is a fine woman. That kid of hers could be mine. She says it is.’

‘But do you love her?’

George shrugged his shoulders.

‘Does everything have to be done for love?’

‘Okay, two up.’

Sam gave a patrol movement order and the boys, all except George, laughed. They pushed George down to the car and were soon on their way to the church. As they sped along the highway a shadow settled.

‘What’s that?’ George asked.

It was General Collinson flying in from Wellington in an Army helicopter.

‘Oh no,’ George agonised. ‘This was supposed to be a small wedding.’

The helicopter clattered across Tolaga Bay, making it a war zone, and little boys came out of their houses, pretending to fire at it with water pistols and ray guns.

‘Here we are,’ Sam said at last. Ahead, he saw the General and his entourage shaking the vicar’s hand. A guard of honour, made up of returned veterans including Jock Johanssen and Mandy Manderson, saluted the General as he went into the church.

A huge crowd had gathered. Arapeta had made sure of that. The guest list read like a Who’s Who of the East Coast district, and especially of the East Coast military families. Still, despite the high tone of the occasion, there were still some cheeky buggers around. As George stepped out of the car one of them called out:

‘Still time to cut and run, George!’

George shrugged his shoulders helplessly as he took in the crowd.

‘Trust your father to want to make a circus of all this,’ he said, turning to Sam. ‘Why couldn’t he wait until you got married? Why did he have to pick on me?’

‘You know what Dad’s like. He told you it was going to be the wedding of the year and he meant it.’

The guard of honour snapped George a salute. George paused as he went past Mandy Manderson:

‘I’d much rather be on platoon, mate. It’s good to see you and Jock.’

The vicar, looking harassed, greeted him at the doorway.

‘I suggest we go straight in. The bride is due any moment.’

Sam, Cliff, George and the groomsmen walked into the church. Sam saw Florence, Patty and Monty sitting in the pews on the bride’s side, and he took Cliff across to them before rejoining the boys at the altar. George looked as if he was having a heart attack.

‘Oh, Jeez,’ George said. ‘Tell me, Sarge, tell me what I should do —’

Not Sam. Sarge.

It was too late. Sam was watching the door and, outside the church, Emma had arrived. She was radiant. When she stepped out of the car, on the arm of Arapeta, who was giving her away on behalf of the family, even those who had known her as Big Emma were made speechless by her beauty. Moved by the occasion, some of the old women began to call Emma into the church.

‘Haramai, e hine, haramai, haramai, haramai —’

Emma’s mother, Lilly, who had once seen her son Turei go off to war, replied on her daughter’s behalf. She who had taken the axe to her son’s coffin lifted her face to the sun and cried out:

‘Karanga mai ra koutou ki a matou —’

Call us in, you who wait, call my daughter and let it be the call of love, oh let it be the call of man to woman.

Sam stole a quick glance at Cliff to see that he was all right. Cliff’s face was like a pale star, and Sam knew he was feeling the emotion of the moment. He saw Patty come to the rescue and take Cliff’s hand in hers. Throughout the church wedding guests were sighing, remembering Turei.

All of a sudden, Sam heard George moan. Sam looked at him questioningly, and George recovered.

‘It’s all right, Sarge. I know I’m doing the right thing —’

Sam pressed George’s shoulders reassuringly. Yes, something was being put right today. Some attempt was being made to close the gap where once a laughing soldier had been. Out of this marriage would come a son — not Turei’s own, but he would be of Turei’s spirit, coming out of his proxy, his good friend, George.

‘She’s almost here,’ Sam said.

He saw a blur of white and the scent of a bridal bouquet as Emma moved down the aisle on Arapeta’s arm. A gleam as sun glowed on Arapeta’s medals. The organ was playing and the old women were still calling, calling, calling.

‘Come forth, come forward, beloved, and come to your husband.’

Then Arapeta and Emma were beside George. Arapeta was so splendid and handsome in his military regalia, and everybody knew what a father he had been to Emma after her own Dad had died. Sam, watching it all, felt again the formidable nature of his father’s charisma, and the force of his authority. You think that the guests had come just for George and Emma? No, they had also come because Arapeta, their leader, had called them. Godlike, he was, in all respects, invincible, and Sam remembered Mum’s words:

‘If anything happens, Son, I will not be able to intervene. You will be on your own.’

Arapeta snapped a salute at George, and there was a murmur of laughter as he whispered in George’s ear, no doubt to give him manly advice. Then Arapeta turned to the audience. His eyes skimmed above General Collinson and the Army brass, as if they weren’t there.

‘Cheeky old bastard,’ General Collinson muttered.

Instead, Arapeta sought the faces of his old Battalion mates, Claude, Kepa and Hemi among them. With great dignity he saluted them before taking his place beside Emma’s mother. Florence, watching, felt herself trembling as she remembered her own wedding day. Something strong and good had died in her that day, and later, that night, when Arapeta had abusively thrust his penis into her every opening as if she was made of dirt.

Sam smiled at Emma. George was trembling so violently that Sam thought he would crack apart. Emma slipped her right hand into George’s. For a moment, George’s hand remained open. Hesitantly, as if unsure, it closed on Emma’s. Then George stopped shivering and his fingers interlocked with hers.

‘Haramai ki te kai.’

The call came from the dining room for the guests to come and eat. Sam was relaxed now that he’d managed to get George through the ceremony. On his part, once he’d said ‘Yes’, George had seemed happier. Sam tried to persuade himself that his friend’s whole problem had been simply last-minute nerves. He made a silent prayer that the marriage would be happy. He set about looking for Cliff.

‘I wouldn’t worry too much about your mate,’ Arapeta said, amused. ‘Ever since he got here he’s been surrounded!’

Indeed, Sam saw that Cliff’s presence was causing a sensation among the teenage girls — not to mention some of the older women, unattached and attached. He was American, he was drop-dead gorgeous and he’d been a heroic chopper pilot to boot. Not only that, but Anita and Kara had been gossiping about the manly attributes they had glimpsed down at the waterhole. The consequence was that girls were bumping into Cliff accidentally on purpose from all directions.

‘I think you need rescuing,’ Sam said. ‘What is this power you have over women?’

He pointed to yet another group of starstruck girls who were hanging out with Patty, quizzing her on Cliff.

‘I’ve never understood it,’ Cliff answered, pretending wide-eyed innocence. ‘Sometimes it gets so bad that girls all over the place are walking into lamp posts.’

Laughing, Sam shepherded Cliff to the back of the cookhouse. There, Jake, Jimbo and Bully were drinking beer with other local boys while waiting for the hangi to cook.

‘You’d better watch out,’ Bully winked at Cliff. ‘Maori women are sweet loving women. If they want you they’ll get you. Before you know it you’ll have a kid on the way and you won’t be needing that airline ticket back to the States.’

‘Gee, guys,’ Cliff responded. ‘I better radio a chopper team to pull me out.’

‘You think you’ll get away that easily?’ Jimbo asked. ‘If there’s any blond kids born here nine months from now, there’ll be a war party coming over to the States to bring you back.’

‘Er,’ Cliff said. ‘Is that dead or alive?’

The boys roared with laughter and slapped Cliff on the back. He was like one of them, all right, a real good bloke.

‘Hey, Cliff! Come and sit by us!’

As soon as Cliff walked into the dining room girls were calling him.

‘You’re on your own, Illinois boy,’ Sam said. ‘I’m compére as well as George’s best man. I have to sit at the top table with the wedding party.’

‘Can’t I come with you?’

‘Tell you what,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll sit you next to the prettiest girl here.’ He plonked Cliff in the seat beside Grand-Auntie Annie, eighty if she was a day, and browned to perfection by the sun.

‘Yeth,’ Auntie Annie said because she hadn’t any teeth, ‘you thit right nextht to me and I’ll look after you.’

Sam made his way towards the top table. Mum, Dad, Lilly and General Collinson were already at their seats. Sam got a nod from the boy at the door. He took the microphone.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the bride and groom.’

George and Emma entered with Emma’s son. The boy’s presence caused one wag to whisper in a loud voice: ‘Boy, that was quick.’

Sam signed to the vicar, who stood up and began to intone the prayer for grace: ‘Whakapaingia enei kai —’

Before the pastor could draw another breath —

‘Amen,’ someone said.

The serious business of eating began. The kitchen doors burst open and in came the servers with bowls of seafood — crayfish, paua, mussels, oysters, all the bounty of the sea. At Arapeta’s command, the boys of the village had been diving for two days to bring such a rich harvest to the wedding. General Collinson’s mouth dropped open in amazement.

Sam couldn’t stop himself. He took the microphone again.

‘Hey! All you people, send your oysters over here! George will need all he can get. I understand that Emma has certain plans about what to do with his manly body tonight.’

George fixed Sam with a steely grin. Emma pretended to be virginal.

And what was this? Pots of kina swimming in cream were coming out of the kitchen. The guests began to hoe in.

‘I’m sure glad I’m not sleeping in the meeting house tonight,’ Sam said. ‘And don’t say I didn’t warn you. Tonight you’d better make sure the windows and doors are wide open —’

Everybody started to guffaw. Kina are an epicurean delight, but have one unfortunate side-effect. Before long, your bowels are ballooning with the foulest stench on earth.

‘In fact,’ Sam continued, ‘if any of you other guys want to seduce Emma, send your kina over to George as well! If he eats enough she’s bound to kick him out of bed and you can sneak in just like Kahungunu, our revered ancestor, when he wanted to sleep with the beautiful chieftainess Rongomai wahine.’

‘But she was beautiful,’ somebody yelled out. ‘And Kahungunu was biiiigg!’

Everybody laughed again. Sam took his seat. He leaned over to George. ‘So how are you feeling?’

‘I think I need some oysters,’ George answered. Emma’s fingers were already wandering south. ‘Lots and lots of oysters.’

The feasting and drinking, hard talking and laughing continued for a long time. Occasionally Sam searched out Patty, and he frowned as he saw her drinking with Kara and Anita. She was too young to be drinking beer. He also sought out Cliff. It was hard to avoid him in that sea of beautiful brown faces.

Kia ora, Illinois boy. How’re you doing with Auntie Annie?

She’s a great gal. I’m having the time of my life. And Sam —

Yes?

You’re the best looking guy here, you know that?

The feast was abating when Arapeta, with a cough, rose from his chair. Immediately people stopped eating and talking, and Sam wondered again at the strength of his father’s personal mana. Unlike Joshua at the battle of Jericho, Dad wouldn’t need rams’ horns to bring those walls down. All he’d need to do was to cough.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Arapeta began, ‘and distinguished guests —’ He nodded to General Collinson. ‘When a man takes a woman to be his wife he is re-enacting a tradition that goes back to the very first woman, Hine ahu one, she who was made from red earth. Through his woman, a man achieves his immortality. He has a son —’ A son. Not a daughter. ‘And in this manner he conquers the formidable Goddess of Death herself. This is the achievement of George tonight.’

Around the dining hall came murmurs of approval.

‘Ka tika,’ some of the men said. ‘Yes, that is right.’

‘I made a promise to Turei’s mother,’ Arapeta said. ‘I told her that her son, my son and George would all come back from Vietnam. I said that my son would ensure this.’

He turned to Lilly. ‘Lilly, if I could, I would trade my son for your son, and it would be my son who would have gone to Death and your son who was alive today.’

Sam knew his father’s words were rhetorical, ritual. But God, it hurt to hear them hurled at him.

Some in the audience began to weep. Others grew silent. None of it had anything to do with Sam. They were simply remembering Turei as he had been. The hardcase, always ready with a joke, the lovely boy who had once lived among them. Alone among them, only Cliff saw the impact on Sam and he began to sign across the room.

Sam, can you hear me?

‘However, we cannot change the past,’ Arapeta went on. ‘We must continue with living, and tonight we can begin again with this marriage of Turei’s sister, Emma, to Turei’s best friend, George.’

The dining room burst with thunderous applause. Arapeta took up a glass and called for a waiter to fill it. Everyone was standing and raising their glasses.

Sam, I’m here for you, Sam.

‘George,’ Arapeta said, ‘I drink a toast to you and I congratulate you. You have brought Turei back to us.’

Arapeta lifted his glass and quaffed the wine in a single gulp. He put the glass down and, with great deliberation, saluted George. All eyes were turned to the bridegroom — and, at that moment Sam looked across at Cliff. He was gasping with sorrow.

Just keep your eyes on me, Sam. The rest of the world doesn’t matter. I’m here for you, Sam.

Sam tried to smile. Slowly he replied.

You’ll rescue me and take me away from here?

With guns blazing. Against all comers.

Throughout the dining hall old men were standing and saluting. They were jostling against Cliff and making it difficult for him to keep his line of sight on Sam. Desperately, Cliff moved to one side. Saw Sam looking for him.

‘Ka mate, ka mate!’ Arapeta roared. ‘It is death, it is death!’

Sam, look at me, Sam.

All around, old men were joining in the haka. Eyes bulging. Spittle flying. Crouched into a semi-fighting stance. Slapping at their haunches.

Across that sea of faces two stars lifted.

I’ve never left anybody behind, Sam. Never.

By early evening the feast was over and the wedding guests were making their way in the dark down to the War Memorial Hall. The celebration dance was in full disco swing. Up on the marae, however, the official wedding party and local elders had been detained farewelling General Collinson and his aides.

‘Until we meet next time,’ Arapeta said.

The dislike was palpable between him and General Collinson. All those old wounds, from a time long ago when Pakeha commanded and Maori took the orders, had never healed, never closed.

‘Yes, until next time,’ General Collinson replied.

The universe shattered to pieces as his helicopter lifted off, circled the marae and, red lights winking, headed north across Tolaga Bay township for Wellington. For a moment there was silence, as if the party was waiting for Arapeta to give the movement order.

‘Now that he’s gone,’ Arapeta said, ‘let’s go down to the hall and really let our hair down.’

He turned to Sam. Saw the haunted look in his son’s face. Remembered what he had said in his speech.

‘You know why I had to say what I did in the dining hall, son.’

‘I know, Dad.’

‘I had to appease everyone and to finally make it right. For Lilly. For George. For all those who loved Turei. So that everyone could put the past behind them and get on with life.’

‘I know.’

But all the way to the hall, Sam felt himself dying inside. He remembered the golden palomino and how Dad had suddenly lifted his rifle and shot it. The palomino was still alive when Sam ran to it. He looked into the golden iris and saw himself reflected there — and then the golden light began to go out.

The wedding party arrived at the doorway to the hall. Inside, the guests had cleared a space in front of the band to welcome them:

‘Karangatia ra! Karangatia ra! Powhiritia ra!

Nga iwi o te motu, kei runga te marae,

Haere mai —’

The music was so joyous, but all Sam wanted to do was to find Cliff. It was peace time, but he felt he was still living in a war zone. He searched the hall for Cliff but it was so crowded and filled with cigarette smoke. Meantime, the women were swinging their hips, the men were stamping their feet with the pleasure of living. Eyes were wide and bright, and emotions were open as the group poured out their aroha to the bride and groom.

‘You have called us and we have come,

all the people of Aotearoa to this marae,

where we celebrate with you —’

Somebody bumped into Sam. It was Patty with Anita, Kara and a gaggle of other girls. Patty giggled and swooned over him:

‘Hullo, Sam —’

Sam smelled the beer on her breath.

‘What’s got into you, Patty? No more drinking, you hear?’

Patty giggled and gave a mock salute. Anita gave a small scream and pointed across the floor — and the girls were off to where Cliff was standing with Bully and Jimbo. For a moment, Sam remembered Madame Godzilla’s bar. He caught Cliff’s attention and signed to him:

Haven’t we met before?

Cliff grinned back.

Are you coming on to me? If you are, I warn you, I never kiss on a first date.

The action song ended and there was loud applause. Sam realised that all attention was on Arapeta as he turned to George:

‘May I have your leave to have the first dance with your wife?’

Arapeta bowed to Emma and took her hand. He led her into the middle of the floor. The band began to play the ‘Fascination’ waltz, and, with a dignified gesture, Arapeta put his arms around Emma and swept her around the room. Immediately there was scattered applause, and Cliff was able to escape from Patty and the girls to join Sam. Together they watched Arapeta, medals resplendent, as much in command on the dance floor as he was in battle. Sam heard Cliff say to him:

‘Are you and your Dad okay?’

‘Yes. He didn’t really mean what he said back there in the dining hall.’

Cliff paused. Then:

‘Whether he did or not, Sam, I don’t like what he said — and I don’t like him. He uses fear to make people do what he wants. You, your mother, your whole family. Even though he’s your father, I’ll fight him if I have to. He’s a bully.’

‘Let’s not talk about Dad,’ Sam answered. His face was set with determination. ‘Let’s think about us —’

The waltz was over. Arapeta took Emma back to George, and with a sigh of relief the band started up again: this time, a hot rock ’n’ roll number. The women were kicking off their high heels, tucking their dresses into their pants and taking to the floor. Sam’s eyes were turbulent, smouldering.

‘Will you be ready to leave in, say, five minutes?’ he asked Cliff.

‘Leave?’ Cliff was trying not to swallow.

‘Yes,’ Sam said. ‘It’s time —’

Cliff stared at Sam.

‘Yahoo!’

But Patty was there, screaming above the melee.

‘Come and dance with me, Cliff! You promised me a dance —’

Cliff gestured helplessly at Sam.

‘Don’t you move! I’ll be back!’

He followed Patty onto the dance floor. He was in such a mood of elation that he couldn’t help it — from out of nowhere he conjured up a spin that made everyone yell with surprise.

‘Look at that Pakeha boy move!’

Next minute, Cliff was dancing so cool that everybody moved aside to watch him. Patty was obviously way drunk but Cliff made her look as if she was the greatest dancer on the floor. He spun her, controlled her and made her into a star. At the end of the bracket there were whistles and shouts, and Patty was over the moon with excitement.

‘Wow,’ Sam laughed when Cliff returned. ‘Who taught you to dance like that?’

Cliff exaggerated a yawn.

‘Mormon elders from Brigham Young University — and you’ve had your five minutes, so let’s get out of here.’

It was too late. Without Sam and Cliff knowing, Patty had run to the bandleader and whispered something in his ear. He took up the microphone.

‘Okay, everybody, we’re going to have a change of programme. Instead of another boring action song for George and Emma —’

People in the hall laughed and pretended to be insulted.

‘We’re going to have an item from our special guest from America. Put your hands together for Mr Cliff Harper!’

‘Oh, no,’ Cliff groaned. ‘What can I do?’

‘Can you sing a song? “Yankee Doodle Dandy” or something? How about the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Anything!’

All around the hall people were chanting, ‘Cliff, Cliff, we want Cliff!’

A gleam came into Cliff’s eyes. ‘Okay, I’ve remembered something I worked up at Junior College. Can you wait a few more minutes?’

‘I might start without you —’

Cliff was shy and handsome and he knew he couldn’t get out of it. He gave a gesture of good humour, walked over to the band and started to talk to them. The bandleader nodded and began to instruct his drummer and lead guitarist. Cliff took the floor.

‘You know, I’d much rather be flying a helicopter than doing something for you all,’ he began. ‘Flying a helicopter is something I know how to do well. However, seeing as I’m forced to do something, and thank you, Patty —’ Patty blushed and giggled ‘— there is a traditional American folk song that we like to sing at home in the States, something nice and slow. Lucky for me the band knows it, so —’

Cliff gave the nod to the lead guitarist who strummed a mean chord. With a sudden gesture, Cliff ran his fingers through his hair, releasing crackles and sparks of golden light. Then, with a hip-swivelling motion that sent everybody rolling as if they were skittles, he began:

‘Since my baby left me —’

Whop. Swivel. Hold that pose.

‘I found a new place to dwell —’

Bump. Grind. Swivel. Smile.

‘Down the end of Lonely Street

at Heartbreak Hotel —’

And all of a sudden the girls were screaming and the older generation were watching, mouths open, as Cliff swung into a routine that would have left Elvis for dead.

‘I’m so lonely, buh-huh-by —’

Crouch, shake, rattle, hiccup, rock.

‘I’m so loh-honh-nely —’

Playing up to Auntie Annie, pulling her onto the floor. Auntie Annie pretended to faint in his arms.

‘I’m so loh-honh-nely, I could die —’

Stunned, Sam watched as Cliff suddenly unbuttoned his white jacket and began to swing it in the air. When he let go of the coat it flew toward Patty and her friends — but it was Anita who caught it in a swoon. Winking at Sam, Cliff started taking off his bowtie, teasing the girls with it, and then throwing it at Patty — but this time Kara caught it. Slowly he began to unbutton his shirt.

‘Oh shit,’ Sam thought. He closed his eyes. ‘He’s not going to strip, is he?’

Sam peeked through his fingers. What a relief. It seemed Cliff had decided to unbutton only to the navel. He put his knees together, splayed his feet out as far as they could go, and was hip-hopping his way across to where Sam was.

‘Although it’s always crowded —’

Cliff’s voice was mean, raunchy and filled with sex. He was teasing Sam, playing with him.

‘You still can find some room —’

He spun away towards Florence and Arapeta, who were laughing at Cliff’s antics.

Suddenly, Arapeta’s face froze.

He saw a cord around Cliff’s neck. He caught a glimpse of something attached to it. The boy was wearing —

‘For broken-hearted lovers

to cry there in the gloom —’

Arapeta looked at Florence to ask if she had seen the hei tiki. Her eyes were wide with terror and she stepped back from him. Without thinking, she glanced across at Sam, as if to warn him.

‘Oh, you fool, Sam. You fool —’

In that single glance, Arapeta saw Sam’s secret.

‘They’re so lonely buh-huh-by, so lonely —’

Sam roared with the crowd as Cliff, with a run, went down on his knees and slid all the way back across the floor to Patty, pretending to sob. Sam saw his mother’s face and it was wan and frightened. She was making pointing movements and, when he followed them, he saw Dad moving through the crowd as if he was stalking something. Or somebody.

‘So loh-honh-nely, they could die —’

The band went into an orchestral riff. All around, people were screaming and laughing. God, that was a white boy out there and he could sure sing!

Sam saw Dad pushing to the front, to where Patty was. Arapeta’s eyes were bulging, and the veins were standing out from his neck. Sam didn’t know what was happening — that Arapeta had seen a hei tiki ablaze on Cliff’s chest:

‘Yes, it was Tunui a te Ika. What was it doing around this American boy’s neck?’

Arapeta looked at Sam. Disarmed by love, Sam was defenceless. Arapeta saw into his soul.

George turned to Sam: ‘Did you know he could do this?’

‘No,’ Sam answered. His face was alight. He watched as Cliff wound his act to full lift-off and pulled Patty squealing onto the floor.

‘So if your baby leaves you —’

He had her in his arms. Leaning over her. Dropping her to the floor. He didn’t see Arapeta trying to push through to him.

‘And you’ve got a tale to tell —’

Now it was Anita’s turn. Clutch, pelvic grind, lay her down, yeah, baby. Arapeta was closed out behind a wall of cheering onlookers.

‘Just take a walk down Lonely Street

to Heartbreak Hotel —’

Cliff signed to Sam:

Meet me at the doorway and let’s get out of here.

Grinning, Sam signed back:

You betcha, Illinois boy.

He started to move towards the door. At that moment Arapeta forced his way to the front of the crowd, grabbed for Cliff — and missed.

Cliff made an exit to bring the house down. He pulled out all the stops. Sam had lit the fuse and Cliff exploded.

‘And you’ll be so lonely buh-huh-by —’

Sam waved to George and indicated to Florence that they were going now.

‘So loh-honh-nely —’

One last swivel and a groan of desire. The girls yelled out to him, ‘Don’t go, Cliff, don’t go!’ But a sneer, a bop and a pelvic thrust, and he left them crying for more.

‘You’ll be so lonely you could die!’

And Sam and Cliff were away, running out of there, making for the car. Patty and the girls crowded the door, yelling ‘Cliff!’, and Patty stumbled after him. Cliff slipped in the dark and Sam, laughing, found himself rolling down a small bank. Cliff embraced him, and wouldn’t let go, drawing him into a kiss that took Sam’s breath away. Then they were up and off again, into the car. Roaring away.

Arapeta reached the doorway of the hall just as the car turned out of the gateway. His blood was pounding with anger and fear. The girls were waving. He heard somebody vomiting in the bushes and saw that it was Patty. The beer had finally got the better of her. Her eyes were red, and she moaned as she brushed past her father and went back into the hall. He held her and wouldn’t let her get away.

Far in the distance, Arapeta saw the lights of Sam’s car as it braked at the corner.

‘Go and get your mother,’ Arapeta said to Patty.

He had bitten into his lip and blood was welling from it.

‘We’re going back to the farm. Tonight.’

Sam sped fast through Tolaga Bay. Soon they were on the coast road back to Gisborne. The road was a ribbon of moonlight curving through shadowed valleys. They were still laughing hysterically when, all of a sudden, something swooped, beating its wings against the windscreen. Sam caught a glimpse of hooded eyes and velvet wings and —

‘Sam, watch out!’ Cliff yelled.

Sam wrenched the wheel to the left, as if trying to avoid something. He slammed on the brakes and, next moment, was out of the car, staring into the sky, into the trees. He was on the balls of his feet, leaning forward with clenched fists.

This should have been the happiest night of his life. But on the branch of a tree was a visitor. It glared at Sam, extended its pinions and called out a name — but the name was indistinct.

‘Which one have you come for?’ Sam yelled. ‘Call the name again. Say it —’

Cliff joined Sam on the roadside. ‘What’s up?’

Above him, in the trees, an owl screeched, lifted, and disappeared into the night.

Sam put his hands up to his head, trying to figure it out. He was reeling about, terrified.

It was happening. The owl that George had seen in Vietnam had followed him home. Why? He should have known he couldn’t spit in the face of the gods and get away with it. He was to be punished, and all those around him were being punished too.

Sam turned to Cliff to explain. But what could he say? He saw that Cliff’s shirt was unbuttoned and Tunui a te Ika was against his chest — and something else clicked in:

Mum, pointing at Dad, and Dad moving through the crowd as if he was stalking something. Dad must have seen the hei tiki and —

‘You okay, Sam?’ Cliff asked.

Sam tried to get a hold on himself. He looked back down the road towards the marae and the War Memorial Hall. It wouldn’t be long before Dad came after them. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it,’ he thought. ‘Nothing. Whatever is going to happen will happen.’ Sam turned to Cliff and smiled. With great defiance, he sought Cliff’s mouth. When he broke the kiss, he looked across Cliff’s shoulder at nothing — and everything.

‘We haven’t much time,’ he said.

Ninety minutes later, the car sped through Gisborne. In another thirty minutes they would be home.

And it seemed to Sam that he was racing against Time. The clouds were storming through the night sky, shredding the moon, ripping it to pieces. But the faster he sped, the slower Time became. The clock ticked past the minutes, but every minute became an hour. The closer they came to the farm, the further away it seemed. By the time they reached the homestead, Sam’s heart was thundering with desire and fear.

Then Cliff turned to him with a moan and Sam realised that Fate had closed the door behind him. There was no going back. He had to keep on going forward and hope against hope that there was a way of escape from whatever destiny lay in front of him. And, if there wasn’t —

‘Come with me,’ Sam said.

He took Cliff’s hand and led him away from the homestead. His senses were magnified. He seemed to be both inside and outside his body. Inside was molten carnality. Outside, he could see himself stumbling with Cliff down the track towards the barn. The strong wind eddied among the trees, causing branches and leaves to fall around them. Far off, the wild horses were whinnying. They were uneasy, stamping the ground, trying to find a way out of their enclosure.

The barn door was swinging in the wind. Sam went to close it, to buy them more time, but Cliff couldn’t wait. He was following behind Sam, pulling at Sam’s clothes, ripping them off. By the time Sam reached the ladder into the hayloft his shirt was half off his shoulders. He was climbing the ladder when Cliff reached around his waist and unbuckled his belt.

‘Don’t move,’ Cliff hissed.

Sam groaned and arched and stretched both arms, reaching for the rung above his head. Standing behind him, one rung below, Cliff stared mesmerised with wonder as Sam’s shoulder muscles rippled with light. Sam turned, as if to escape, and Cliff saw that dark nipples spiked the hair of his chest. The light showered like a waterfall into his groin.

Pinned there, Sam felt Cliff’s lips on his neck. Cliff’s hands were around his waist and one of them was sliding under the waistband of Sam’s pants and underpants. Whimpering, Sam felt his trousers falling to his knees.

‘No,’ Sam said.

He clenched his buttocks. Tried to push Cliff away but it was too late. Cliff was undressing on the ladder. His shirt fell away, and Sam gasped at the feel of Cliff’s chest against his back. He made one last attempt to get away, lifting his right leg onto the next highest rung, but Cliff held him tight.

‘God, Sam, your skin is so soft.’

And Sam was gone, gone, gone beyond the point of no return.

With his free hand, Cliff released his belt and Sam felt the rough fabric rasping his skin as Cliff’s trousers and boxers fell to his boots. Cliff’s cock, strong and smooth, jabbing blindly against his inner thighs, trying to find a way in. Cliff’s hands joined his on the rung above Sam’s head, fingers interlocking. Pressed up hard against Sam’s back, Cliff was whimpering with need.

‘Open your legs, Sam,’ Cliff pleaded. ‘Oh, please —’

Sam obeyed, arched his back and let the breath hiss out between his teeth. Cliff hung over Sam like a God. He positioned himself, saw his cock glistening with lubrication. Let it slide between Sam’s buttocks, stilled, and lifted.

‘Oh, God —’ The pain, he hadn’t known about the pain.

Sam felt beads of sweat pop on his brow. He tried to wrest free of Cliff but Cliff was too far along to be stopped. Cliff was holding Sam tight, keeping up the pressure, easing in, sliding in until he was up to the hilt.

‘No,’ Sam said. ‘Wait —’

Cliff had his teeth in Sam’s shoulder and he was growling with lust. He began to move, thrusting, thrusting, twisting this way and that way, up and down, side to side, up and down. Every thrust was so painful, but Cliff was oblivious as Sam began to cry out. Sam was breathing short and fast, flexing his muscles and biting back on the sheer agony of the act. He closed his eyes. Vertigo overwhelmed him.

And he was tumbling through Te Po, The Night, and falling through Te Kore, The Void. He felt himself nearing unconsciousness. Took a deep breath.

Please, not eternal darkness.

A thousand years passed. Then, across the Void, a pinpoint of light. Something began to build in Sam, something made up of Cliff’s rhythmic movements. He opened his eyes and saw that Time had stretched and expanded. Go fast, the old man motioned, before the rains come. In front of him was a temple, and voices were calling, Haramai, Sam. His heart was thundering, almost breaking out of his chest.

‘Oh, Sam —’

Harper was lunging now. Going deeper.

Sam saw something sliding down the pillars of the temple, coiling wet and glistening. You and me, cobra, let us enjoy our brief moment in the sun. A saffron-robed monk was kneeling before Sam and suddenly Sam began to feel a sun exploding within him, showering Te Kore with light.

Cliff was in orgasm, his body shuddering and spilling over. The shock of it forced Sam to breathe out, let go — and he reached a kind of understanding. A moment of revelation. He opened himself up, made himself vulnerable. With a groan he too was pulsing a river.

‘Sam, yes —’

They were both laughing and crying at the same time. Nothing else mattered, past, present or future. All there was, was now.

This was the secret embrace at the end of the day.

And they had found it.

Chapter Fifteen

Auntie Pat gave a deep groan. She grasped the arms of the chair, leant forward, her eyes staring into the past.

‘Sam!’ she cried. ‘Daddy’s coming —’

Then she closed her eyes and, exhausted, seemed to fall into unconsciousness.

‘Auntie Pat,’ I whispered.

I was concerned for her but I also knew I might not get another chance to hear her story about Uncle Sam. It was coming at a cost. At every disclosure she was diminished, as if the telling was draining her of life.

My mind went to Uncle Sam, and I thought of him with Cliff holding him after they had made love. I thought of him in surrender, in all his vulnerability. I was above him and Cliff, looking down at them. I imagined him wide-eyed, his face drawn and enigmatic. I conjured up a single tear, welling up and out from his left eye, glistening in the moonlight. I willed him to look into my eyes and share his silent grief with me.

In the old world of the Greeks, a man was still considered a man when he was the active partner. He remained himself, maintaining his masculinity. He could shower, put on his clothes and walk away, back into his own life. But it was different if you were the passive partner. There was no going back. Having a man inside you changed you. It was as if the penetration reached not only some physical centre but also some small room within which your identity lay. The masculine identity of the man inside the room had been constructed by his society. His very being had been imprinted with codes which guided him and said, ‘This is what a man does and this is what a man does not do.’

Being made love to by a man was, I knew from my own first experience, a kind of crucifixion of all those hopes and dreams of living as others live. Whoever you were, it shattered your room like an eggshell. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could never put you together again.

Auntie Pat began to stir. As she moved, my attention was drawn to the movie poster just behind her — of the old RKO movie called Till The End of Time, the one with Guy Madison in it. When I was younger, and Auntie Pat was my reluctant babysitter, her idea of entertaining me was to take me to the matinee where they showed such movies at the Majestic. While other boys played rugby with their friends, I spent my afternoons with Auntie Pat, eating popcorn and licking a chocolate cone upstairs in the balcony. When I grew up and blamed my own taste in movies on her, she confessed to me that it was the only way she knew of to keep me occupied without having to do anything or to talk. When I was much older, and had my first sex in the balcony with Jimmy Whelan, I kept thinking of Auntie Pat and whether she knew how much more exciting going to the movies could be.

‘I hate it when people watch me while I’m asleep,’ Auntie Pat said.

She stared at me and there was such hostility in her glance. I knew she was always so careful about how she presented herself, and it suddenly struck me that I really had no idea which was the real Auntie Pat and which was the false. I suspected I didn’t know her at all, just as she hadn’t known the real Michael either.

‘I didn’t know George’s first wife was Turei’s sister,’ I said.

‘It didn’t work out,’ Auntie Pat answered. ‘Those marriages that are made because of sentimental obligation, never do. As I said, George was always a sentimental person. Don’t be taken in by him.’

Auntie Pat lapsed into silence.

‘Do you want to go on?’ I asked.

She nodded. Then:

‘Sam and Cliff didn’t have long together,’ she said. ‘Perhaps an hour at the most. Sam looked up and, through the window where the hay bales were pulled by winch, he saw our headlights. He heard the warning cry of the wild horses. He knew we had arrived.’

‘Cliff, wake up.’

The headlights swung, dazzling, through the window of the barn. Cliff was still sleeping. Sam wanted to memorise the smell, taste and touch of him. He breathed Cliff in. He held Cliff forehead to forehead, mourning and keening over all that they had been to each other.

Cliff started awake. He looked at Sam, his eyes trying to focus, and almost fell off the ladder. He remembered where he was and, with a sexy smile, he began to nuzzle Sam’s neck, his lust rising again.

‘Well, what do you expect?’ he said cheekily. ‘After all, I’m a healthy mid-Western boy —’

Sam quivered with emotion.

‘We have to get dressed,’ he said. ‘My father’s coming.’

Arapeta was out of the car and snapping his orders.

‘Florence? You, Patty and Monty stay in the house.’

Florence went up the steps without looking backward. She could have gathered Patty and Monty with her, but she didn’t have enough strength for them or for Sam. They would have to fend for themselves. All she wanted to do was get as far away as she could from Arapeta and what he was going to do. Humming to herself, her eyes glazing over, she entered the house. It was better to go into the bedroom, shut the door and wait until it was all over.

Patty took Monty’s hand. Her heart was overflowing with regret, and she turned to Arapeta.

‘Daddy, please don’t hurt Sam.’

‘Go inside, Patty. Now.’

Patty began to scream and scream, as if wanting to warn Sam.

‘What’s that?’ Cliff asked. Something was wailing in the wind. Then, nearer at hand, the wild horses were panicking in their enclosure.

Sam switched on the outside lights. The black mustang, seeking a way out, had come with the wild horses to the gate. It reared up, battering its hooves against the gate. All of a sudden it was down, bawling in pain, its right foreleg caught between two bars.

‘You wait here,’ Sam said to Cliff.

In an instant, he was running past the stables towards the fallen horse. As he approached, the animal began to struggle, its eyes wide with fear, its mouth filled with foam.

‘Easy, boy, easy.’

Back at the barn, Cliff saw someone approaching.

Arapeta.

And Auntie Pat was gripping the arms of the chair so hard that her knuckles showed white. She was staring into her memories, trying to break the constraints holding her to the present and to go, willingly, into the past.

‘Dad had ordered me to stay in the house but I couldn’t. I waited until Mum and Monty were inside and then I ran. I ran as fast as I could. All I could think of was my brother and Cliff, and I was afraid of what Dad would do to them. I loved my brother. When he’d been away in Vietnam I wrote to him every day. I kept calling his name, “Sam, Sam, Sam,” hoping he would hear me and get away. I came to the barn and I saw Dad. I saw Cliff. But Sam wasn’t there. I crouched down in the dark and looked between two bars of the fence, and I heard Dad talking to Cliff Harper —’

Across the yard, Patty saw Arapeta closing in on Cliff. Arapeta feinted to the left. He feinted to the right. At each feint Arapeta was watching, trying to search out any weakness in Cliff’s defence. It came to him again that this boy was fearless, and he nodded in acknowledgement. He laughed in a humourless fashion.

‘Mr Harper, when Germany finally surrendered, I was with Colonel Awatere’s staff. I was there at the Allied action which took Ravenscrag, Hitler’s secret mountain command post. I was there at the kill.’

Two men looking at each other. One the father. The other the lover.

‘Colonel Awatere was there with other generals of the Allied forces. You know what he did? He unbuttoned his fly and began to urinate on the carpet. Others tried to physically restrain him and some of the generals cried out, “You can’t do that.” Colonel Awatere answered, “Watch me.” When he was finished he said, “When a Maori goes into battle all he has in mind as the final outcome is that he will be able to eat his enemy’s head. If he is unable to be found, then what I have done is an alternative expression of the sweetness we feel, the contempt we feel for the enemy we have conquered.”’

The full force of Arapeta’s words, veiled though they were, hit Cliff in the solar plexus. He stood his ground.

‘You’re not afraid?’ Arapeta asked. ‘You should be. You have been my guest, Sir, and you have betrayed the hospitality of my house. Before this night is done I will eat your head.’

Auntie Pat put an arm up to her mouth. She was oscillating between past and present, the terror of her memories shaking her apart. Her eyes were wide, blinking rapidly, as she tried to recapture that night for me in the way she wished to remember it.

‘They began to fight, Michael. And although Cliff was the younger, I don’t think he realised how strong Dad was. When Dad came out on the balls of his feet and made his first jab, his second with his left fist, and then followed through with his right fist, only then did Cliff realise Dad’s boxing skills. He put up his left elbow, blocking the punch. Before Dad could get under his guard, he had moved out of range. They were circling each other, taunting each other —’

Cliff moved away from Arapeta, averting his face, moving lightly and balancing on his toes. His arms were up and he was moving constantly, his eyes on Arapeta. He saw Arapeta’s nostrils flare, signalling a second sequence of jabs. He blocked them all, and with a quick flurry of his own — one, two, three —caught Arapeta on the chin. Rocked off his heels, Arapeta fell back.

‘Your threats don’t bother me,’ Cliff said. ‘I don’t care if you’re Sam’s father, you’re only a man as far as I’m concerned.’

Cliff saw that he had drawn first blood and Arapeta, surprised, tasted blood on his lips. He closed quickly again with Cliff, weaving fast, feinting, jabbing, trying to get past Cliff’s defences. Cliff laughed at him.

‘Not only are you just a man,’ Cliff taunted. ‘You’re an old man. You’re so up yourself you can’t really see me. All you think you see is weakness because I am a man who is in love with your son. But you’ve lost the advantage. I was trained by bigger men than you’ll ever be. You think becoming a helicopter pilot is something that just happens? I earned it, Arapeta, and my training, boxing included, has put me beyond your understanding. You can’t cut it with me, Arapeta. You’ve been boss for so long, you think you’re invincible. Well you’re not, you son of a fucken bitch. You’re a tyrant, and a bully. You’ll eat my head? Your time’s over, old man.’

With that, Cliff moved the fight from the defensive to the offensive. Leading with his left he established a rhythm. One and two and punch. One and two and guard. He saw an opening, took Arapeta off guard and let fly with a straight left. The blow caught Arapeta on his right cheekbone and cracked against his nose.

Arapeta staggered back. Shock showed in his eyes. All his life he had been the king, he had been the man, and he had laid claim to the title by virtue of his physical prowess.

Cliff felt a moment of regret. But this had to be done. Arapeta, the patriarch, had to be knocked off his perch. He had to be shown up for what he was. It was the only way to free Sam. Then all the mind games Arapeta had played with Sam would be over.

Cliff closed again on the old man, ready this time to knock him senseless and blow all he represented to kingdom come.

At that moment, with a quick wrench of the fence bars, Sam set the black mustang free. It leapt to its feet and crashed through the gate. The herd followed, running past Sam and towards Arapeta and Cliff. Before Arapeta could get away the mustang was upon him, up on its hind legs, and he had to twist aside to escape its hooves. The mustang slammed past Arapeta, and he fell to the ground.

‘All I could think of,’ Auntie Pat said, ‘was that my father was lying on the ground. I ran across to him, screaming. Cliff was standing there and I can still feel now what I felt then. I hated him. I hated him so much. I hated him for coming and destroying our lives. I hated him for what he had done to Sam —’

With alarm, Sam saw Patty running out of the shadows towards his father. She bent down to Arapeta and then, fiercely, leapt to her feet and started to push Cliff Harper back. When Sam, on the run, reached them, Arapeta spoke one word:

‘Son —’

‘Sam, it’s over for you here,’ Cliff cut in. ‘You belong with me now.’

Blood was spilling out of Arapeta’s lips, and his face was bruised and swollen, and Patty was screaming:

‘Don’t listen to him, Sam. We love you, you can’t leave us.’

Patty was up and throwing her hands against Cliff.

Arapeta spoke again:

‘I am your father, Sam.’

Cliff watched Sam struggling, trying to choose between him and Arapeta. It seemed that a thousand years went past before Sam finally sighed and began to stroke his father’s head.

‘No, Sam —’

But all his life Sam had been obedient. All his life the one thing he had wanted was for his father to love him. No matter what his father was like, the template of his authority could not be broken. No matter what his people were like, he was, after all, Maori.

And Cliff saw that he and Sam were in Te Po, tumbling through the darkness. He heard Sam cry out, You must go back. Let go, damn you. Ahead was the entrance to Te Kore, The Void. It was a black hole and stars were showering into it. And Sam was calling to any gods who were listening: The price is mine alone to pay. If there is any sacrifice to be made, then I will make it. With one quick surge of strength he kicked at Cliff and sent him spinning away — and passed alone through the gateway.

And Cliff knew that he had lost.

‘I want you to leave,’ Sam said.

‘Don’t listen to Arapeta,’ Cliff answered. ‘He’s fucked you in the head. He’s playing mind games with you.’

Sam knew he had to give Cliff permission to leave:

Hey, Harper! Do you know what haere ra means?

Cliff remembered the chopper rescue, when Sam was down on the ground with Gonzalez and the Vietcong were closing in. He had seesawed back and forth across the treetops, moving through the upper foliage. All he had wanted to do was to see Sam.

‘Take the rental car. Go,’ Sam said.

Cliff made one last effort.

‘You can’t ask that of me. You know I’ve never left anybody behind. Never. I’ll carry you out of here, Sam. Please come with me. Now.’

‘I’ll follow as soon as I can.’

Sam tried to put as much conviction into his words as he could. He had to get Cliff to go.

‘You’ll follow?’

Cliff’s face was blanched with doubt and fear.

‘I can’t leave Dad like this,’ Sam answered.

He tried to make it sound plausible, to work on an Illinois boy’s sense of duty, of the right thing to do. Why did Cliff always have to be so stubborn?

‘Okay, Sam. I’m leaving Auckland on Friday, two days from now. I have to check in at the airport at 8.30. My flight leaves at ten. I’ll wait for you, and you better be there, you hear me? You hear me?’

Cliff’s words were wild with passion, stormy with frustration. His eyes were glowing with rage and helplessness and, all of a sudden, he was punching at the air, punching at himself, whirling like a cornered animal, punching at whoever or whatever was out there in the darkness.

‘Oh Jesus —’

Across the light he made a gesture of longing, of yearning.

Sam knew he had to be strong. He began talking to Cliff.

Please don’t cry, Cliff. We’ve got the rest of our days to be together. Just let me sort things out here and I’ll be on my way to you.

Cliff’s fingers were a whirl of movement. He still wasn’t convinced.

I don’t believe you, you bastard.

You have to believe me. You have to believe what I want to say to you now.

Sam put all his heart into his words.

I love you, Cliff.

Cliff looked at Sam. His hair was spun with gold.

You love me?

Sam began to comfort him.

From the first moment I saw you I loved you. I love all there is about you. Yours eyes, your laughter, your sexiness, the way you care for me, the way you are, everything. We’ve come too far together to let anything stop us now.

Cliff began to sigh and nod his head. He wiped at his tears with his left sleeve. Looked in his pockets for a handkerchief. Couldn’t find one, so blew his nose on the tail of his shirt. Looked at Sam again.

I want you to promise me that you’ll come to me.

His finger movements were stubborn, insistent.

Okay, damn you, I promise. But don’t you understand? You’re in my heart and nobody will be able to take you out. You’re there forever.

Still Cliff wasn’t budging. With frustration, Sam began picking up stones from the roadway, hurling them at Cliff.

‘Go, you stubborn Yankee arsehole.’

Cliff began to back away, shocked. He made an angry gesture of acceptance. With a cry he reached his hands around his neck and broke the cord from Tunui a te Ika. He threw the greenstone towards Sam. It twisted and tumbled, catching fire and turning into a flaming bird.

Sam caught the pounamu. He looked dully at it.

‘Bring it back to me, Sam,’ Cliff ordered. ‘You son of a bitch, you bring it back to me. You hear? Bring it back.’

He pointed at Sam. You.

The sound of a helicopter gunship hovering.

Cliff pointed at himself. Me.

The rotors slicing at the sun.

Cliff put his two thumbs together, thumbs up. Love you.

Then he saluted and was gone.

Auntie Pat sighed and closed her eyes.

‘Cliff was right, of course. Sam should have gone with him right then. But after the fight with Dad, I think Sam made up his mind not to join him.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘It all goes back to the question I asked you when I came to Wellington,’ Auntie Pat answered. ‘What matters most, Michael, being Maori or being gay?’

‘I can remember replying nobody should be made to choose —’

Auntie Pat pointed a finger at me.

‘But you did choose, Michael. You ran away. You went to Wellington. As for Sam, he stayed. By staying he elected to honour his father and his culture. I think it was only during the whipping that Sam began to change his mind —’

My blood ran cold. ‘The whipping?’

‘I told you once,’ Auntie Pat continued, angry that I had not picked up on the point, ‘that your grandfather was worse, much worse than your father. For him, everything was absolute. Either black or white. The truth or a lie. Right or wrong. And if you had done wrong, justice demanded that you be punished —’

The whipping began the day after Cliff left the farm. Throughout the day, Dad acted as if nothing had happened down at the barn — as if Cliff Harper had never been. He and Sam got up as usual in the morning and had breakfast. Jake, Jimbo and Bully came over to help brand the wild horses. With every hiss of the branding iron, Sam felt that Dad was as surely branding him as he was the mustangs. When night descended, so did Arapeta’s wrath.

Florence was clearing the table when Arapeta made his move. He motioned her to sit down. He looked across at Sam.

‘In traditional times, son, people like you never existed,’ Arapeta said. ‘They would have taken you outside, gutted you and left your head on a post for the birds to eat. Men like you abuse the sperm which is given to man for only one purpose. The very sperm that died inside my mates when they were killed on the battlefield. The sperm that is for the procreation of children. Don’t you know that the sperm is sacred?’

Sam bowed his head. It always started like this. Ever since he’d been a boy, Dad had always begun his punishments here, at the dinner table, in front of Mum, Patty and Monty.

Arapeta banged on the table with so much force that some of the glasses fell to the floor, and the cutlery and dinner plates cracked against each other. Mum gave a small cry as Dad stood up and jabbed his finger at Sam.

‘You are an affront to your iwi. You are an affront to all that I and my Maori Battalion mates fought for.’

His hurled accusations were like blows to Sam’s head.

‘Your ancestors are crying in their graves. Can you hear them, son? You are supposed to be a warrior. Instead, you are a woman. You deny yourself the rights, the mana, the sacredness of man. You also deny yourself all those privileges that come to a son born of rank. I am ashamed of you. I am disgusted with you.’

His spittle sprayed through the air. Yes, it always started like this. First the abusive words. And then —

Arapeta came around the table and jerked Sam’s chair from beneath him. Sam fell. Arapeta pulled him up, made him stand straight — and kissed him.

‘I love you, son, but I have to give you your punishment.’

Sam had been expecting to be punished. Now that the prospect was here, he was relieved — as long as it was done quickly. It was easier all round to get it over and done with. Then everything could get back to normal.

Sam walked out of the house and onto the verandah. He waited for Dad to tell Mum to stay in the house and then to follow him.

But this time it was different.

‘Florence, I want you and the kids to come with me,’ Dad said.

Mum began to plead, ‘No.’

‘They don’t need to see this,’ Sam said. ‘It’s always been just between you and me.’

Dad shook his head. That’s when Sam felt a surge of rebellion.

The family walked down to the barn. The dogs began to bark and, in the paddock, the mustang herd started up a soft whinnying like the wind. The moon was bloated, full.

Dad stopped at the yards where, earlier that day, the horses had been broken in.

‘Haramai e tama,’ he said.

Sam stepped forward.

‘Strip to the waist.’

Sam took off his shirt. His skin gleamed with the moon. Dad pushed him towards the gate. Made him turn. His back to the gate. His face looking forward. Sam’s heart began to race with anxiety because this, again, was different. In the past, Dad always positioned him with his back to the whip. Before he could protest, Dad had tied ropes to his wrists and splayed him across the gate.

‘What are you going to do, Daddy?’ Patty cried out.

‘Sam has been bad,’ Florence said.

She watched as Arapeta went into the shed to get the bullwhip.

Sam shouted at them both. ‘Mum, go now, take the kids with you. Mum?’ But it was too late, because Dad was back.

With desperation, Sam called out again.

‘Mum, all of you, turn around so you won’t see. Put your hands over your eyes, okay? Dad, this has got nothing to do with them. Let them go.’

Dad’s voice came out of some dark hole in space. ‘They must stay.’

All of a sudden, Sam began to fight. When Arapeta came up to him and whispered into his left ear, ‘Have you asked God’s forgiveness?’ Sam answered:

‘Look, Dad, I chose to stay because you’re my father. I choose to stay because I realise I have obligations to you and the iwi. Do what you have to do, but don’t bring God into this.’

‘So you don’t want his forgiveness?’

‘I’ve done what I’ve done, and you can punish me for that. But as for how I feel about what I’ve done —’ The words slipped out so freely that they surprised Sam. ‘How can I ask God’s forgiveness for something that doesn’t feel wrong?’

‘It was a sin, son,’ Dad answered. ‘You feel no remorse? No shame?’

With a gasp of wonder, Sam realised that no, he didn’t feel sorry. He didn’t feel ashamed.

‘But I haven’t sinned,’ he said.

It was the first time he had stood up for who he was and for what he had become — and he began to laugh. He was still laughing while Dad was laying out the whip, tracking its length across the ground. A snake, ready to strike.

‘So you will not repent of your sin?’ Arapeta asked.

Arapeta’s eyes were popping with rage. He felt that Sam was not only laughing at God, but also at him.

‘If there is one thing I will do tonight, it will be to whip that laughter out of you and teach you obedience.’

Once started, Arapeta could never be stopped. Once begun, whatever he had decided to do was done until it was over. Despite Sam’s protestations he sent the lash to flick diagonally across Sam’s chest. He sent it again to curl around Sam’s neck like a lover’s embrace. Once more he sent it, and Sam hissed as he felt its cool touch across his stomach.

‘I am to be punished,’ Sam realised, ‘regardless of whether I am right or wrong, guilty or innocent.’

He called out to Arapeta.

‘Dad, can’t you see that I’ve stayed? I’ve stayed out of love for you —’

With a cry, Arapeta drew back his whip hand, and the whip began to sing its song.

‘You say you love me when you have abused everything that I have given you? Your manhood, your tribe, your history? You disgust me, Son, you make me wish you had never been born.’

The whip arced through the air and sliced the moon in half. The second cut criss-crossed the night, pulling in meteors. The third added the upper horizon, shredding the night and letting the blood of Heaven spill out. At the fourth cut, the blood was trickling like crimson comets. By the fifth, it was running across the moon like a river.

‘Oh, Holy Hone Hika …’

The whip opened Sam’s skin and the pain arrested his body with shock. Florence was wailing. Patty and Monty were watching with horror.

Ten lashes — and at every lash, the rebellion in Sam rose until all he felt was a seething rage against Arapeta and all he represented. Then Arapeta put the whip down and Sam thought the punishment was over. Patty brought some water from the pump, and Mum began to untie the ropes.

‘Leave him there,’ Arapeta ordered. ‘He still hasn’t asked God’s forgiveness.’

Mum began to wail.

‘Sam, tell your father you’re sorry. Tell him, and all this will be over. Lie if you have to.’

Sam smiled at her.

‘I can’t, Mum, I can’t. Dad won’t ever let me be who I want to be, I realise that now.’

He looked across the distance and held Arapeta’s glance.

‘I should have gone with Cliff.’

‘You turn away from me, your own father? You still won’t repent. So be it.’

No quarter asked. No quarter given. Ten more lashes. In the paddock the horses were racing in circles. The dogs had stopped barking and were whimpering, pulling at their chains, trying to huddle in the furthest corner of their kennels. As he was wavering between consciousness and unconsciousness, Sam remembered a story from his days at Bible Class. It was about the great battle in Heaven between God and the Archangel Satan. God’s angels had won the battle and, at the peace talks, God said to Satan, ‘If you will bow down to me, I will forgive you and you may stay. But if you will not, you will be banished to Hell —’

Arapeta was there once more.

‘Will you give me obedience, Son. Will you repent?’

Sam shook his head. He had his answer ready.

‘I won’t bow down to you,’ he said. ‘I would rather rule in Hell than serve you in Heaven.’

He fainted. For how long, he didn’t know. But through the haze of pain and sadness, he heard Mum shouting:

‘No, Arapeta. No more. No more.’

‘Get out of the way, Florence. You too, Patty —’

‘No,’ Mum said again. ‘You’ll have to kill me first —’

Sam saw Mum fighting with Dad. But he must have been imagining it because Mum never ever fought with …

Sam felt something like soft warm rain splashing on his face. He sighed because it must all be over, and it was so warm, so warm.

But Mum was still screaming and Sam realised something was terribly wrong. He shook himself awake and put his left arm to shield himself against the rain to see what was happening. He started to shiver with grief.

This can’t be happening. Please let it be just a dream.

Dad was standing above him. He had unbuttoned his trousers. With a cry of horror, Sam was rolling out from beneath the arc of Arapeta’s piss.

‘You animal,’ Florence said to Arapeta.

Her eyes were filled with loathing.

Disbelievingly, Sam wiped his face clean. The world had tipped over into insanity.

‘Dad, what have you done to me?’

Arapeta buttoned up his trousers.

‘You are no longer my son or a man,’ he said. ‘It should have been you, not Turei, who came back in that lead-lined coffin.’

He sighed and, in a moment of tenderness, kissed Sam on both cheeks.

‘Go now, Sam. May God have mercy —’

Auntie Pat’s mouth was open in a soundless scream.

‘For thirty years,’ she said, ‘I have lived with that night on my conscience. When Dad did that to Sam he exiled him, banished him forever. Sam was moaning, almost driven mad. We took him back to the house and bathed him and put ointment on his wounds. But the punishment had gone far deeper than skin. Sam said to us, ‘I have to go, Mum, I have to go, Patty. Dad’s left me without a country. I haven’t a place here anymore. I’m going to meet up with Cliff.’

‘It was Mum who organised everything. On the day that Cliff was due to leave Auckland she rang George and told him to lend Sam his car. She took Sam into town to collect it. As he left I flung my arms around him and told him I loved him.’

Auntie Pat’s eyes were streaming with tears.

‘I think it happened about five in the evening. Sam was two hours out of Auckland. He had almost reached the intersection where the Tauranga highway connects with Highway One at the bottom of the Bombay Hills. It was Friday night and traffic was heavy — people wanting to get home, big trucks from the port of Tauranga trying to get to Auckland during the rush hour. There was an accident involving a truck and another car — and Sam. A really bad pile-up. And Sam … Sam … was killed.’

Auntie Pat has always disliked close physical contact. But she was crying so much that I had to put my arms around her. She started screaming and screaming.

‘Leave me alone. It wasn’t my fault, I didn’t mean to do it —’

Over and over again.

That evening, sleeping at Auntie Pat’s, I dreamed the dream that always had me waking up screaming. But something was different about it. I was an onlooker and not involved in the dream. I saw a young man stumbling along a never-ending road. There was a thrumming sound. Something was coming from out of the darkness behind him. The young man stopped. He looked back down the road. I knew what it was. I cried out to the young man:

Run.

You know what it’s like in recurring nightmares. The adrenalin starts to pump. The fear turns your blood to ice. You moan and thresh. Did you really think that the nightmare had ended? Foolish, oh you were so foolish! Yet again the nightmare has pounced on you when you were least expecting it.

The young man began to run but he could only move in slow motion. I tried to help him, crying out to him, Come on, come on. Faster. Faster. I heard myself moaning with helplessness, my pores popping with explosions of fear.

I saw the stallion. Eyes of fire. Hooves arcing showers of sparks like flints. Then it was no longer coming down the road but circling him with tight rings of flame like a noose being tightened. Thrum, thrum, thrum. Suddenly it was there, in front of the young man. It reared on its hind legs and plunged down on him.

Only it wasn’t the stallion. It was a truck speeding through the night.

I woke up crying out the young man’s name:

‘Uncle Sam, no.’

The next morning, Auntie Pat took me to Gisborne Airport to catch my plane back to Wellington. Her face was calm and I thought I had never seen her look so beautiful. In telling Uncle Sam’s story, she had delivered herself of thirty years of guilt, denial and pain.

The boarding call was made. I kissed Auntie Pat on the cheek. She smiled at me.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you do look like him.’

It was then that I decided:

‘Auntie, I’m going to Canada soon. I think I’ll stop off in Chicago —’

‘You’ll try to find Cliff Harper?’

‘Yes.’

Auntie Pat flung herself into my arms.

‘Thank you, Michael,’ she said. ‘That’s the final thing to do, isn’t it? Find Cliff, find him. Even after all these years you know what still haunts me? That Cliff didn’t know Sam was on his way to the airport. We must make up for what happened to Sam and set everything right.’

I walked to the plane. I heard Auntie Pat calling to me.

‘Cliff has to know. Find him. Tell him.’