Uncle's Story

Chapter Eighteen

‘Oh, no,’ Roimata said.

Auckland International Airport on a Friday evening was absolute bedlam. Loud, noisy and full of people queueing at the check-in counters. The lines for United Economy in particular were very long, and that meant a full flight to Los Angeles. There was nothing for it but to try to be patient, shuffle forward in line and, once we’d finally made it to the desk, pass over our tickets and passports and wait for our seat assignments — right at the back next to the toilets.

‘At least we’ll be the last to die if the plane goes down,’ I said to Roimata.

She batted her eyelids. ‘And we’ll be together, up close and personal.’

Even so, I was puzzled at the length of time it was taking to check us in. I often wondered exactly what counter clerks tapped into their computers. I suspected that by the time each passenger had been processed, their names went out the window and were replaced by fifty-digit bar codes. Finally the clerk stopped tapping and smiled at us encouragingly:

‘Mr Mahana? Your upgrade has been confirmed. You and Miss Williams have seating in business class.’

‘Upgrade? There must be some mistake.’

‘No, Sir. It’s been arranged by Mr Carlos Poulsen. Best wishes at your international fisheries conference, and enjoy the flight.’

Roimata’s mouth dropped open. ‘That boy has class,’ she said as we beat a fast track through Customs and into the business lounge. There Roimata kicked off her shoes, helped herself to a drink and pretended to be a film star. I picked up the phone and dialled Wellington.

‘You’re full of surprises,’ I said to Carlos when he answered.

‘I’d much rather you were up front where you’ve got flight attendants to look after you than at the back with Roimata in the dark. You tell her to keep her red-painted fingernails to herself.’

I looked across at Roimata. ‘Carlos sends his love.’

‘I’ll bet,’ Roimata said. ‘Do tell him, however, that his attempts at bribery last only as long as the flight. All’s fair in love and war.’

‘I heard that,’ Carlos laughed. ‘You tell Roimata her privileges have just been revoked for the trip back. And as for you Michael, have a great trip, be a star, do what you have to do but don’t miss the plane back from your, er, fisheries conference, you hear?’

‘Okay, you’re the sheriff.’

I put down the telephone and, buoyed by my conversation with Carlos, excused myself from Roimata and went into the business room. I put my Mastercard in one of the telephones. Dialled the country code for the United States, the city code for Chicago and the number that Ada had faxed me.

There was a faint pause, a dial tone, then another. I counted each one. After the fourth I realised the call wasn’t going to click over to an answerphone. I waited another six rings, and was about to put the telephone down, when:

‘Hello?’

The voice was bright. Breathless. For a moment I simply held the phone, not knowing what to do. My mouth was dry.

‘Is this Cliff Harper?’

‘Yes. May I ask who’s calling?’

My heart pounded. I couldn’t go on. It seemed so ridiculously easy to be speaking with Cliff Harper after all the time it had taken trying to find him.

‘My name is Michael Mahana and I’m calling from New Zealand —’

‘New Zealand? Wow.’

I collected my thoughts.

‘Mr Harper, I was given your number by your American Vietnam Veterans’ Association and —’

‘Oh, wait up.’

Wait up? My breath caught in my throat.

‘You’re wanting my Dad,’ the voice said. ‘Cliff senior. I’ll see if he’s in.’

I heard Cliff junior leave the telephone and call:

‘Dad, are you downstairs? Mom, is Dad down there?’

Cliff Harper was married? Had a wife and a son — perhaps other sons and daughters?

I felt a sense of alarm, and then anger at myself. What should I have expected after thirty years? Some absurd romantic part of me had assumed that Cliff Harper was still single and had been waiting every day for this telephone call. I had never expected he would be married with a wife and children. I may have countenanced a relationship — but a male one with someone who would, surely, have looked like Uncle Sam.

Something told me to hang up. But it was too late.

‘I’m sorry, Dad’s just this minute left the house. Can I tell him you called? Is there a return number in New Zealand?’

My body flooded with both relief and disappointment.

‘Look,’ I answered. ‘Could you tell Mr Harper senior that my name is Michael Mahana and I am a nephew of Sam Mahana. I’m actually on my way to Canada via the United States tonight. I’m flying United —’

‘The Friendly Skies?’

‘I’ll be transiting Chicago on my way to Ottawa. If possible I am hoping to meet Mr Harper in Chicago. Please tell him I’ll call again during my stopover in Los Angeles to see whether a meeting can be arranged.’

‘I’ll give Dad the message. Wow, New Zealand!’

Two hours later, I was on my way. Roimata and I settled into our plush seats with champagne and nibbles. United’s signature tune, Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, was playing as the plane taxied out onto the runway. A roar, a sense of gliding and then we lifted into the air. Below us, Auckland fell away like a necklace whose clasp had broken. Still climbing steeply, we crossed the coastline, heading north-east across the dark night sea.

I have always loved long journeys. The act of leaving accustomed surroundings is a release from real time, real life. You can place that familiar life on hold, freeze it, secure in the awareness that it will be there waiting for you when you come back. The journey itself becomes an opportunity to explore parallel lives, those other optional lives which have always been there.

My trip with Roimata to Canada seemed ordinary enough. But something was closing behind me — the way I had been, the seemingly dutiful son leading a dutiful life — and a new Michael was emerging. Ahead, the main purpose of the trip was a conference in Ottawa — but there was also Cliff Harper in Illinois, a destination which was assuming as much importance as the conference. What had happened to him and Uncle Sam in the past would be put right in the present.

Somehow, I had the feeling that my trip would take me to another crossroad too. This wasn’t just about Uncle Sam. It was also about me. There, in Ottawa and Illinois, Uncle Sam’s story and mine would meet — and I had the suspicion that my own destiny would be forever changed by it. All the journeys I had taken through my life would find their answers in that encounter and help me to complete the decisions I was making. About Jason. About Carlos. About Roimata. About myself.

For the moment, I could relax, enjoy dinner with Roimata and toast the future with a fine glass or two of wine. Suspended between earth and sky, I could have my choice of twenty movies on my own personal console, and delay any decisions that needed to be made about Life.

Or could I? I wasn’t alone on the flight. Nor was I the only one with an appointment to keep with Cliff Harper. I had Tunui a te Ika in my hand luggage, and I had a promise to keep for an uncle I had never known — a promise passed to a nurse in a bloodied ball dress on a night road to Auckland thirty years ago.

As well there was Auntie Pat, also seeking an ending, a resolution, and motivated by love for her brother.

Roimata’s voice intruded on my thoughts. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Just before we left Auckland I telephoned Cliff Harper. He’s married. His son answered the phone. I didn’t expect him to be married.’

‘So you didn’t speak to him personally.’

‘No.’

Roimata took a sip of her wine. ‘How old would he be now?’

‘Uncle Sam was twenty-two or twenty-three when they were in Vietnam together. If Cliff Harper was the same age, he’d be in his early fifties.’

The thought caught me unawares and I laughed with surprise because, until that moment, I had never thought of Cliff Harper as being anything except the age he was in Uncle Sam’s diary, in the photograph and the conversations with Auntie Pat, George and Anne-Marie Davidson. What nonsense to think that he would look the same! Had life treated him kindly? Was he still as devastatingly handsome as he had been in his youth? Did he even remember Uncle Sam? Perhaps Sam had been only one of a number of lovers. Cliff Harper may have been the great romantic love of Uncle Sam’s life, but the reverse might not have been true.

‘He’ll have made another life,’ Roimata said. ‘He will have put all that stuff about him and Sam behind him. He may not want to see you.’

‘I never thought of that as a possibility. I never wanted to admit it, but now I’m not so sure —’

‘Speaking of which,’ Roimata continued, changing the subject, ‘I’ve a question about your Auntie Pat. She’s never married, has she? Do you think Auntie Pat might be —’

‘Might be? Might be what?’

‘You know …’

I knew exactly what Roimata was implying.

‘No way,’ I answered.

The force of my insistence surprised me. Even if Auntie Pat was lesbian, I didn’t want her to be. I didn’t want even to consider it possible.

‘Pity. She would make a great kuia for us.’

Roimata leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

‘I’d do more,’ she said, ‘but I’m mindful of Carlos’s embargo. Goodnight, Michael. Do you realise that this is the first night we’ve slept together?’

Two hours later, most of the passengers were asleep but I was still awake. I was relaxed and at peace with myself. I had already watched one movie on my console and clicked over to Laura, a 1940s film noir classic directed by Otto Preminger, on the movie classics channel. This was just the kind of old movie Auntie Pat loved.

A woman is found murdered in Laura’s apartment. Lieutenant Mark McPherson, played by Dana Andrews, interviews an intriguing set of ambivalent suspects and it is through their flashback stories that we — and McPherson — get to know Laura. She is played by Gene Tierney, one of the great beauties of Hollywood, and her scenes are filled with rich romantic music and camerawork. The visual centrepiece of the film is, in fact, a portrait of Laura in her apartment — and McPherson is constantly drawn to it.

A third of the way through the film came a scene filled with revelation. Watching it, a thunderbolt struck me, and I realised I could never escape from Uncle Sam’s story — or Cliff Harper.

It is a wet night. Late evening. McPherson visits Laura’s empty apartment for further clues about her murder. He looks at the portrait, and the soundtrack fills with haunting music. He takes out a cigarette and smokes it. He takes off his tie. He goes through the sitting room to an adjoining room where he switches on a desk light. He sits at the desk. He takes off his coat. He opens a drawer in the desk. He gets up and paces the room. He goes into the dead woman’s bedroom.

The scene becomes charged with suspense and an underlying sense of the erotic. McPherson’s visit is not all that it appears to be. In Laura’s bedroom, he opens her dresser. He picks up a white handkerchief and holds it to his nose. He opens a small bottle of her perfume and inhales the smell. He opens the door to her wardrobe and looks at her dresses. The wardrobe door has a mirror on it and, when it closes, McPherson sees his reflection like a voyeur.

At that moment, Waldo Lydecker, Laura’s mentor and elderly friend, enters. Cynically he asks McPherson whether he thinks he’s acting very strangely, coming to Laura’s apartment like a suitor with roses and a box of candy. He warns McPherson to watch it, or he’ll end up in a psychiatric ward, because he’s fallen in love with a woman who doesn’t exist.

I turned off the console. My heart was thudding. I looked out the window, trying to escape the thought that was swirling inside my head. In a panic I lifted the shutter on the window and looked out at the night sky. Instead I saw a reflection of somebody behind me — and I knew it was Uncle Sam. He looked like he did in the photograph, smiling shyly, and he reached out and touched my shoulder:

It’s okay, Nephew, he signed. It was only to be expected —

Then he was gone and it was only the moon, shining through my momentary lunacy, soothing my anxieties and calming me down.

‘Yes, Uncle Sam,’ I thought, ‘perhaps it was inevitable that seeing Cliff Harper through your diary, Auntie Pat, George and Anne-Marie Davidson, I would become you and, just as McPherson had done with Laura, fall in love with Cliff too.’

The dark swirled past. The moon silvered the clouds.

The following morning, the flight arrived at Los Angeles. Roimata and I went through Customs. There was just enough time before our onward flight to Chicago to make my second call to Cliff Harper.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Roimata said, and she hugged me reassuringly.

Instead of being easier the second call was harder. There was the usual dryness in my throat. The telephone kept on ringing and ringing. My palms began to sweat. Thirty years went by and still nobody was picking up the call and —

‘Hello?’

This time, a woman’s voice.

‘Is this the home of Mr Cliff Harper?’

‘Why, yes. Are you wanting my husband or Cliff junior?’

‘Mr Harper senior.’

‘I’ll go get him for you.’

The telephone went silent. Then:

‘This is Cliff Harper speaking. May I help you?’

Rich. Mellow. So this was what Cliff Harper’s voice sounded like. This was the man who had existed only as a photograph, the man written about in a diary and conveyed through the memories of three people who had known him. The voice breathed life into the shell of memory, filled out the physical frame and gave it substance.

‘Mr Harper? You don’t know me, but I am the nephew of a New Zealander you knew during the Vietnam War. His name was Sam Mahana and I am ringing to —’

There was a sharp intake of breath.

‘I’m sorry,’ Cliff Harper said, ‘you have the wrong number.’

‘Is this Chicago 7685 —’

Cliff Harper interrupted again.

‘I repeat, you have the wrong number. Please do not call this number again.’

The line went dead. I stood there, drained. But I couldn’t let it go. I hit the redial.

‘Mr Harper, I’m ringing from Los Angeles. My name is —’

‘Son, I told you not to call.’

‘Mr Harper, please don’t hang up. All I want to do is pass you a message from my Uncle Sam.’

I could feel my voice beginning to crack apart with emotion.

‘Sir, I’m travelling on United 51 and I get into Chicago this afternoon at 1450 hours. I go through Canadian Customs there before I catch my onward flight, Air Canada 762 for Ottawa. But I’ll be on the ground for a few hours. I’d like to give you the message if I can. Please —’

Cliff Harper’s voice interrupted me. He was gentle. Firm.

‘Son, I am not the person you are looking for.’

There was a click as the call was disconnected.

I sat silent for most of the trip to Chicago, and Roimata understood. She had been right to remind me that Cliff Harper might not want to see me. It’s funny though, how you keep hoping against hope. When the flight arrived at Chicago I told her to go on through Canadian Customs.

‘You sure you don’t want me to wait with you?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I answered.

If disappointment lay ahead, I wanted to face it alone.

I took Tunui a te Ika in my hands and prayed:

‘If you have any power, make him come so that I can put you in his hands.’

Tunui a te Ika was so hot, almost burning in my palms. It kicked and bucked, impatient to complete its journey. But the minutes kept ticking by and, after a while, it quietened. It knew. It knew Harper wasn’t coming.

To have come all this way after all these years —

I couldn’t wait any longer. I mourned with Tunui a te Ika and held the greenstone close to my heart.

I went through Customs and joined Roimata.

Chapter Nineteen

Darkness had fallen by the time Roimata and I arrived in Ottawa. We had come from the ends of the earth, and we were tired — by our calculations, we had been travelling for almost two days. It was therefore a relief to be met at the airport by a dapper middle-aged man holding up a card with our names misspelt. He introduced himself as Franklin Eaglen.

‘Is this your first time in Canada?’ he asked. ‘If so, welcome, and I hope you enjoy the visit.’

There’s a kind of recognition that happens when one gay man meets another. As soon as I saw Franklin I knew he was one of us. It was in the flicker of his eyes and the warmth of his voice. There was nothing sexual about it. Rather, there was a sense that we could start a friendship on a different kind of understanding.

‘The car’s just outside,’ Franklin said as he led the way to the luggage conveyor.

I picked up my bag. Roimata left Franklin to struggle after her with her suitcase — and the hatbox which went everywhere with her. It never had a hat in it, but was one of Roimata’s affectations — it was also good for taking the dirty washing back home in.

We walked out into the street, and when Roimata saw the car she screamed so loudly that Franklin almost dropped everything he was carrying.

‘Oh, my God —’

Parked at the kerb was a limousine, sparkling white and as long as a city block. It was the kind of car movie stars arrive in at the Academy Awards.

‘Quick,’ Roimata said, ‘we must get somebody to take a photograph of us with the car and the chauffeur.’

She gave a passerby her camera. She found a chauffeur’s hat on the front seat and commanded a rather startled Franklin to put it on. Then she draped herself across the bonnet, blew a kiss, and the photo was taken.

By comparison, our hotel was small.

‘Ah well,’ Roimata said. ‘It had to happen. Back to being just the executive officer of an organisation nobody ever heard of in a country at the bottom of the world.’

She showed Franklin where to put her bags in the room and offered him a tip.

‘That won’t be necessary, Madam,’ he said, smirking happily.

‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

‘Oh nothing,’ he said.

He opened the door to my room, which was about the size of a cupboard.

‘I do hope you enjoy Survival 2000. I am, and it hasn’t even started!’

The next morning, the telephone woke me up. I thought it would be Roimata wanting to go across to the conference venue for the opening ceremony.

‘Well?’ Auntie Pat asked, ‘have you spoken to Cliff Harper yet?’

‘Auntie, I’ve only just arrived.’

I tried to stall, thinking fast about what I should tell her and what I shouldn’t. But I knew in my heart the best thing to do was not to keep Auntie Pat’s hopes up. I hated the idea of her assuming a meeting might take place when, so far, all the signs were that it wouldn’t.

‘Cliff Harper didn’t show.’

‘What do you mean he didn’t show?’

She made it sound as if it was my fault.

‘The man I spoke to when I rang up from Los Angeles to arrange the meeting in Chicago didn’t show. He said he wasn’t the man I was looking for. He may be the wrong Cliff Harper.’

‘It’s him,’ Auntie Pat said. ‘I know it’s him.’

‘No, Auntie,’ I answered. ‘You only want it to be him.’ I took a deep breath. ‘If it is Cliff Harper, he’s married and has a son. He could have more children, for all I know. I can’t go barging into somebody’s life if they don’t want me to. I’ll ring him again and try to talk to him.’

There was silence at the other end of the telephone. For a moment I thought that Auntie Pat had hung up. Her voice came sliding down the line, striking me in the ear.

‘Michael, you are not to let this go. Do you hear me, Nephew? Do you hear me?’

‘Okay,’ Roimata asked me cheekily when she finally met me in the foyer, ‘are you ready to go?’

Roimata had decided to be totally glamorous. When she came down the stairs in her red dress and long greenstone earrings I couldn’t help doing an appreciative wolf whistle.

‘I’ll tell Carlos you did that,’ she said.

We took a taxi across the Alexandra Bridge to the Museum of Civilisation. The trees fringing the deep swirling Ottawa River were turning red and there was an invigorating bite to the wind. The museum appeared — and it was breathtaking. It seemed to have been layered into the land, long slabs of honey-coloured stone contoured to fit the slope down to the river.

There’s nothing like the first day of a conference. The foyer of the museum was packed with people registering, meeting and greeting, shouting and rushing from group to group. Of course, Roimata, with her flair for the dramatic, couldn’t just stand there unnoticed. As soon as she saw all those people — representatives of First Nations throughout the world — she was moved to karanga.

‘Tena koutou nga iwi o te Ao, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou —’

Her voice soared across the foyer, cutting through the hubbub. People turned to see where the spear of sound was coming from — and that is when we began to chant our way forward.

‘Well,’ I whispered to Roimata, ‘that’s one way to make an entrance.’

We may only have been two, but our people have always said that where there is one, there is a thousand, where there are two, there are two thousand. When we stand, we do not stand alone. We bring our culture with us.

From among the crowd came a familiar face. He smiled at me, and bowed to Roimata.

‘I see that the Maori delegation from New Zealand has arrived,’ Franklin said.

He took us in hand, introducing us to the organising committee and, in particular, its chairman.

There were very few people I’ve taken an instant dislike to, but Bertram Pine Hawk was one of them. He was young, handsome in an arrogant kind of way, and had that sense of well-oiled assurance that would one day make him an ideal candidate for State governor. Franklin went up in my estimation when I noticed that there was no love lost between him and Bertram either.

‘Would you mind,’ Franklin asked me, ‘if I introduce you and Roimata to some of the other delegates? They will look after you.’

Lang, Sterling and Wandisa were all around my age. Having grown up with Western movie images of Indians as tall, muscular and looking as if they could eat six white folks a day, I was surprised to find how small they were in stature and how unassuming in appearance. Certainly, I was not prepared for the sly irony of their wit and banter.

‘I’m Okanagan,’ Lang said.

‘And I’m Dakota,’ Sterling said. ‘Lang’s a mountain Indian, I’m a plains Indian. Plains Indians generally stay clear of those mountain people.’

‘If I was you,’ Wandisa said, eyes twinkling, ‘I would stay clear of them both and just stick with us Inuit.’

I couldn’t help laughing. ‘Sounds just like home.’

‘So how come you’re all friends?’ Roimata asked politely.

‘Us? Friends?’ Wandisa answered with mock horror. ‘Oh, no, we just happen to be standing together.’

At that moment a drum began to beat. A woman in ceremonial Indian dress appeared at the top of the escalator and began to call us to the First Peoples’ Hall. I saw an old man look across at Lang and frown.

‘That’s my grandfather,’ Lang said. ‘He’s the chief of my tribe. He doesn’t like me consorting with a plains Indian and an Inuit.’

‘The thing is,’ Sterling whispered conspiratorially, ‘the three of us all met at university and Lang’s grandfather thinks Wandisa and I are responsible for having made Lang, well, stray from the beaten track.’

The way Sterling said it made me wonder whether there were other meanings within his words.

‘Oh, Michael, look —’

Roimata was gasping as we went down the escalator.

We seemed to descend into the past. The First Peoples’ Hall opened before us, a spectacular row of totems, carvings, canoes and great houses commemorating the ancestral cultures of Canada’s West Coast: the Tlingit, Nishga, Gitksan, Tsimshian, Haida, Haisla, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk, Oowekeno, Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuuchahhnulth and Coast Salish. As we descended, the totems and great houses rose above us. I was unprepared for their scale, their sheer size and psychic impact.

‘We used to live in a world that must have looked like this,’ Lang said, taking Roimata under his wing. ‘It was inhabited by Beaver, Thunderbird, Lightning Snake and other supernatural beings, and they supplied us with all our needs. We fished the seas for whales, seals, sea lions, halibut and codfish. The spring rivers gave us shoals of oil-rich eulachon, and salmon returned to spawn in the streams where they were born. Seaweed and shellfish were gathered along the shore. We culled the tall dense forests for the massive cedar and yew to build our villages; we cultivated spruce roots for weaving, and salal, thimbleberry and huckleberry. Then Europeans arrived in the 1770s —’

I lagged behind with Sterling and Wandisa.

‘The reason Lang sounds like a textbook,’ Sterling said, ‘is because he took his degree in Art History. He hasn’t spoken like a real person since.’

We took our seats in the hall. People who had heard Roimata and I make our entrance came to shake our hands and to say hello. Over three hundred delegates were in attendance. The majority were representatives of all the Indian tribes of Turtle Island, the name they gave to North America — for them, the distinction between Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, the United States and Mexico was a colonial fiction. A few delegates, like Roimata and myself, had come from other countries: New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Iceland.

The noise in the hall receded. The organising committee took the stage. Roimata was surprised that Franklin was among them.

‘I’m getting a terrible feeling,’ she whispered. ‘Franklin was driving this huge limousine last night and —’

‘Franklin?’ Wandisa answered. ‘He’s one of the sponsors of the conference. He’s a millionaire, probably the richest Indian in this room. Of course, that’s because he’s an Inuit.’

Roimata’s jaw dropped.

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I thought he was a chauffeur. We had a photograph taken. I made him put on a cap. Oh, I could die.’

Before Roimata could do that, Bertram Pine Hawk motioned that the opening ceremony should begin. Two elderly women came out and, beating drums in a steady rhythm, offered prayers of thanksgiving and hope. They were joined by Lang’s grandfather, Albert Pentecost, who had similar status as a kaumatua in Maori proceedings.

Bertram Pine Hawk approached the rostrum. As he did so, a small fact stuck in my brain. Bertram, Franklin, Lang’s grandfather Mr Pentecost and the two women elders were First Nation, but they were outnumbered on the stage by European officials of the organising foundation.

‘On behalf of the Canadian Council for the Promotion of First Nation Arts,’ Bertram Pine Hawk began, ‘I am pleased to welcome you all to Survival 2000. The Council is funded by the Canadian Government and some of the members are on stage with me today. The Council wants you to know that they totally support the objectives of this conference and have asked me to announce that a fund of $2 million is to be established to further the arts of our people.’

Bertram Pine Hawk’s words were greeted with a murmur of pleasure, and he himself led the applause. He motioned to the members on the stage to receive the acclamation.

‘I am the First Nation representative on the Council,’ he continued, ‘and I want you to know that without the Council’s support this conference wouldn’t be happening today. Without their funding, we wouldn’t have distinguished guests from around the world to provide insight into how the indigenous arts are supported in their own countries.’

Roimata banged me with an elbow.

‘Hmmn,’ she said. ‘I hope he doesn’t think he’s bought us —’

Delegates from all over the hall were leaping to their feet to acknowledge Bertram Pine Hawk and the Council. With a theatrical flourish he opened his arms:

‘Let the conference begin!’

I looked at Roimata. She nodded to me and we stood to join the applauding crowd. We stood out of respect for our Indian hosts, but not for what had been said. We’d both seen this kind of thing before.

A puppet out front.

Behind, people pulling the strings.

The next morning Auntie Pat rang again. She was agitated and seemed to need reassurance.

‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ she said, ‘for always being on your case about Cliff Harper.’

‘You don’t need to be sorry, Auntie, I understand.’

‘I’ve been carrying Sam’s story around with me for so long. The burden of it has been so heavy. It’s been a burden I have carried with love, but I don’t know how much longer I can do it. I guess we’ll just have to keep on hoping, won’t we? Keep on going until it is resolved. And if it isn’t, well, we will have tried our best. You will try your best, won’t you, Michael?’

‘Yes, Auntie Pat. You know I will.’

I put the telephone down. It was too early to telephone Cliff Harper and try once more to talk to him. I resolved to do so that evening.

Depressed, I dressed for the day. I looked into the mirror, and I felt like shattering it with my fists. Who could I turn to for help? I couldn’t even pray to God, because why pray to a god who denied his kingdom to gay men? His prophets had established homosexuality as a sin. They had all denied gay men and women a place in the main narrative of the world — God, his prophets and his followers.

My grandfather had been such a follower. He had tried to remove Sam physically from the family and to obliterate all traces of him. How I hated him for that. I wanted to picture him collapsing beside the broken body of his son on that day he had taken Sam out to the burial place on the farm. I wanted the bastard to weep, ‘Sam! Oh, my son!’ — to weep so hard that after he’d used up all his tears he would begin weeping blood. I wanted to hear him wail as he pushed Sam’s body into the pit he’d dug for it. Throughout all the years afterwards I wanted his eyes to rot from the constant weeping.

Most of all, I wanted to curse the God that Arapeta believed in:

Yes, better indeed to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.

I hoped that when he died Arapeta had gone to a worse place than that to which he had consigned his son. I wanted crows to come out of the sky to take their retribution, to slash and claw and rip my grandfather, to spill his entrails open in some sacrifice for his unbending righteousness. I wanted him to be denied any possibility of redemption.

Grandfather Arapeta had consigned Uncle Sam to Te Kore, The Void. He had disconnected him from the umbilical cord of whakapapa, and sent him falling head over heels like a spaceman trailing his severed lifeline through a dark and hostile universe to oblivion.

This was how it was done to all gay men and women. But if we were lucky, oh if we were lucky, someone remembered who we were. Someone stopped us from becoming invisible. Expunged from memory. Deleted from the text.

Auntie Pat had, at the last moment, caught the lifeline:

‘I’m here, Sam. Hold on, brother.’

If we weren’t lucky, however, we were gone.

Forever.

I met Roimata and she was fury incarnate.

‘The whole conference is a jack-up,’ she said. ‘It’s been rigged and we’ve been hoodwinked into coming.’

When Roimata was angry, watch out. But we had a dilemma. The paper we had come to present, ‘The New Zealand Perspective: The Maori Experience’, was scheduled to take place in the afternoon. Immediately after the opening ceremony Bertram Pine Hawk himself had asked us to err on the side of the positive.

‘We must honour the millennial spirit,’ he said. ‘The theme must be on the achievements of indigenous peoples and on reconciliation. You understand, don’t you?’

To be fair, there was nothing wrong about celebrating indigenous achievement — and the concert after Bertram Pine Hawk’s address had been a spectacular showcase of indigenous dance, theatre, literature and music. Writers Lee Maracle, Thomson Highway, Jeannette Armstrong and Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm had shown that First Nation literature was in superb hands. The fantastic Chinook Winds dance company had brought the house down with their ‘From the Mayan to the Inuit’ production. But I knew when Roimata began to sing under her breath that she hadn’t been fooled one bit:

‘You’ve got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative —’

She looked over at Bertram Pine Hawk, who was laughing unawares.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I have news for you, Mister In-Between.’

‘Perhaps things will be different today,’ I said to Roimata, not very hopefully.

We hastened over to the museum, and mingled with the delegates in the foyer again. Such proud people — Inuit, Anishnaabe, Chippewa, Tutchone, Okanagan, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Mohawk, Inuvialuit, Cree, Ojibway, Metis, Cayuga, Teme-Augama, Seneca, Kwakiutl, Inuk, Maliseet, Dogrib, Dakota, Huron — should not be denied their sovereign right to speak out, speak against. Even if it destroyed the orchestrated harmony established by the Council.

Roimata decided we should split for the two plenary sessions on offer. On the way into her session she bumped into Lang, Sterling and Wandisa, who just happened to be standing next to each other again. They took her immediately under their wing.

I hurried to the other session but stopped when I heard a voice calling:

‘Michael, can you spare a moment?’

It was Franklin, looking shy and rather diffident.

‘I know this is short notice, but I wonder if I might ask you to accompany me this evening.’

‘Where to?’

‘The opera. A benefit. Everybody will be there and I am in the VIP party. Unfortunately, I have been let down by my partner —’ Franklin’s eyes flickered. ‘The opera is Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. But perhaps you’ve got other plans —’

Franklin sounded so sad and disconsolate that I felt I had to accept.

‘I’d be delighted to come with you,’ I answered.

Then it was lunchtime, and Roimata and I met in the cafeteria to exchange notes.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘we hoped that things would get better. Not in my session. The Council is playing the conference very close to its chest. All they want is to be supported in their programmes. They’re good programmes, mind you, but I will not bribed. So what happened at yours?’

‘It’s the same as at home,’ I said. ‘Everybody’s playing Happy Family. Nobody wants to bite on the bullet.’

‘Oh, well,’ Roimata said. ‘Bertram Pine Hawk and his organising committee, they are such dears, but it looks like we’ll have to do our usual Maori thing.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘I’m going back to the hotel to get dressed to kill. You and I will just have to hijack this conference and take it to the place it’s supposed to go.’

‘And where’s that?’ I asked, feeling very afraid.

‘To the cliff and over.’

Two hours later, we were on.

The location was the First Peoples’ Hall, and it was crowded. Roimata was looking radiant, but there was a cutting edge to her beauty. She had dressed entirely in black and had placed three white feathers in her hair. I was reminded that her mother was from Taranaki and that, by wearing the feathers, Roimata was acknowledging her ancestral links with Parihaka, the village which had been the great site of resistance during the Land Wars.

I felt a momentary lapse of confidence. In the front seats I saw Bertram Pine Hawk and some of the members of his committee. Lang’s grandfather, Albert Pentecost, was with them also, dignified and compelling in his authority. Further back, I saw Lang himself, Sterling and Wandisa.

‘Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?’ I asked Roimata.

‘Probably not,’ Roimata answered. ‘But we’re not here to be liked. We haven’t come all this way to say things that people expect to hear or because we want them to love us. We have to tell it the way we see it. The way our heart and our history wants us to say it.’

With that, and before we could be introduced, Roimata launched into a strong and passionate karanga. She took three steps forward, raised her hands, and began to call in the direction of the south. She asked the Gods of Maoridom to come to Canada and to help us deliver our korero.

‘Haramai nga Atua o Aotearoa ki tenei powhiri ki a koutou —’

Caught unawares, the delegates quickly took their seats. They heard the blazing passion in Roimata’s voice, the anger and the love. As for me, I had forgotten how powerful the karanga could be. With it, Maori women could say whatever they wished and go wherever they wished. The karanga was their song. It was their voice. It could soothe, it could defy, it could caress, it could kill.

‘E nga taonga, tu mai, tu mai, tu mai —’

Roimata turned to the great houses in the hall and the totems that were standing so tall, holding up the sky. She made our Maori greetings to them. She prayed for their forgiveness should she and I in any way offend them. Then she turned to me and passed the kaupapa, the purpose, from her heart into mine. The ihi, the wehi, the mana rushed into me. And I began:

‘Today Roimata and I are going to commit a crime. The crime is called aroha ki te iwi, love of the people. It is a crime of passion. In the past our ancestors were shot, killed, maimed, murdered and hanged for it. So were yours.

‘We are doing this against the grain of the conference which has looked so positively at all that is being achieved. But we have disliked from the very beginning the implication that the Canada Confederation of the Arts has been responsible for these achievements and should be congratulated. We cannot congratulate the oppressor, no matter how benign they might appear to be. We cannot congratulate a system which calls the shots on what should be funded and how much it should get. The $2 million announced for Indian arts at the beginning of this conference is terrific but we are suspicious of it. It looks like a bribe, it smells like a bribe and if we were you, we would not trust it.’

In the front row, Bertram Pine Hawk was crimsoning with anger. On stage, Roimata was performing the pukana, her fingers quivering in the movement of attack. Elsewhere, there was absolute silence.

‘In this murder, Roimata and I shall be calling in our defence on the burden of history. We wish to plead extenuating circumstances. Our kind has been hunted in Tasmania, moved onto reserve lands in Canada and the United States, assimilated in New Zealand. Although our retaliation is an indictable act, the real criminal, the one who should be in the dock is not us. It is the White man.’

There, it was out. It could not be taken back. The words took physical shape and fluttered on the wings of eagles above the crowd.

‘This is the case that Roimata and I put before you. We have been dispossessed. We have been marginalised. In many places our cultures, yours and mine, have been destroyed. We occupy the borderlands of White society. We live only by the White man’s leave within White structures that are White driven and White kept. Our jailers might be kindly, but they are still our jailers.’

I motioned Roimata forward. Her voice took over.

‘White mainstream policies do not honour the rights of indigenous people,’ she said. ‘The domination of the majority over the minority must be put to an end. This is why Michael and I have committed murder today. Not only that but, from our positions in the dock, we incite you to join us in this act. How can we, as indigenous people, grow under such oppression? We must regain our right to rehabilitate, reconstruct, reaffirm and re-establish our cultures. We must disconnect from the White umbilical.’

Roimata always had a flair for the dramatic. She threw the spear of her korero back to me to carry forward.

‘Our counsel has suggested that we should plead innocence,’ I said. ‘But we do not make such a plea. We are guilty of the crime we stand accused of. We admit our guilt also on behalf of all those who commit to indigenous causes. Although we are minority cultures in the eyes of the White world, we must all continue to dream majority dreams. We must be let through.’

I returned the korero to Roimata. She caught it and continued it in an unbroken line.

‘The past is not behind us,’ she said. ‘It is before us, a long line of ancestors to whom we are accountable and with whom we have an implicit contract. There is no future for indigenous people unless you obtain your sovereignty. This is the lesson we have learnt in our country. Maintain your sovereign goals, do not let go of your inspiration, hold to your strength. Remember your warrior spirit.’

Then for the final time she placed the korero in my hands. I looked to the south. I looked to the north. I looked to the west. I looked to the east. I looked at Albert Pentecost, hoping he would understand.

‘If you must bow your heads, let it be only to the highest mountain.’

For a moment there was silence. Then a moan which I first mistook for anger. But people were standing, and the applause was like the waves of the sea. Roimata came forward and took my hand. She was exhausted. It was true, what the old people said — in giving of your own life there was a corresponding diminution of it.

‘We’ve done our job,’ she said. ‘Now let’s get out of here.’

Immediately we were retreating with a haka.

‘Turuki turuki! Paneke paneke! Turuki turuki! Paneke paneke!

‘Tenei te tangata puhuruhuru nana i tiki mai whiti te ra!

‘A haupane, kaupane! Haupane, kaupane whiti te ra!’

Chapter Twenty

And after all that, Roimata and I weren’t tarred, feathered and run out of town. Bertram Pine Hawk suggested a recess and his Council retired to discuss what had occurred.

Meantime, the First Peoples’ Hall echoed with excitement.

‘All we had to do was light the fire,’ Roimata said. ‘Can’t you hear what everybody is talking about? They’re talking sovereignty. They’re talking tino rangatiratanga. Delegates have been going into the Council’s meeting to insist the agenda be changed. Everything’s moving so fast that you and I have been forgotten in the rush! That’s how it should be. This is their kaupapa, not ours.’

Half an hour later, the Council returned to the hall. Bertram Pine Hawk stood up to speak.

‘Well, ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘you have spoken and we, your Council, have heard and heeded your words. I want to applaud you all for allowing us to respect your wishes. That is what we are here for.’

He responded to the scattered applause with a shy smile.

‘So what we, your Council, want you to discuss today and tomorrow is —’

He paused, dramatically, and then pushed on, his voice ringing through the hall.

‘What do you want your Council to do? What is your action plan for the new millennium? This may be your last chance to get it right. Go, people —’

This time the applause was thunderous. As Bertram Pine Hawk received it, I felt a grudging admiration for the politician, the consummate diplomat.

‘Yes, Bertram Pine Hawk,’ I thought, ‘you will go a long way.’

He saw my look and inclined his head in acknowledgement. I may have put him in a tight spot, but he had negotiated his way out of it.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

The lid came off the conference. The lid came off other things too. That afternoon, Lang, Sterling and Wandisa told Roimata and I that they were gay. They didn’t exactly come right out and say it. They did it in a tangential way by taking Roimata and me to a club where a young man wearing nothing but a smile and a g-string was dancing on top of the bar. When he knelt in front of Roimata, inviting her to put some money in his pouch, she turned to me:

‘You do it, Michael. He’s more your kind of person than mine.’

Sterling screeched with excitement.

‘I told you,’ he said to Lang and Wandisa, ‘that they were people of two spirits!’

Roimata gave a sweet smile.

‘And you guys are more than just friends, right? Don’t give me any of that stuff about how you just happen to be standing together!’

‘Well,’ Wandisa said, ‘it is true that we went to university together, and it is true that Lang’s grandfather believes me and Sterling are a bad influence on him.’

‘But I’m not on with Lang,’ Sterling said. ‘He’s a mountain Indian.’

‘Nor am I on with Sterling,’ Lang continued. ‘He’s a plains Indian.’

Roimata and I listened, bewildered. Sometimes, Indian people could be so maddening. They talked not in a straight line but always in circles.

‘But we are gay,’ Wandisa confirmed, ‘although we prefer to use our own First Nations’ definition. We call ourselves people of two spirits.’

‘There are a few others at the conference,’ Lang said, ‘but they’re not out like we are. I think they would like to be but —’

‘I mean,’ Sterling asked us, ‘have you ever heard of a gay Indian? We’re not supposed to exist!’

The three friends began to squabble.

‘Excuse me, Sterling?’ Lang interjected, ‘Aren’t you forgetting the berdache tradition?’

Roimata was in the middle of her drink. She put it down, and her eyes gleamed with interest.

‘I’ve heard of that —’

‘Among my people,’ Lang explained, ‘they were holy people. Their two-spirit identity did not bring them disapproval or denial —’

‘On the contrary,’ Sterling said, ‘they held a respected position in tribal society. They were shamans, and they acted as intermediaries between man and the gods. Only they could go out onto the battlefield to collect the dead and carry them to the world after this one. They travelled in their dreams —’

‘They existed,’ Lang interrupted, ‘beyond the laws for men and women. In particular, twins —’

‘I’m a twin,’ I said. ‘I have a twin sister.’

‘There are two of you?’ Wandisa’s eyes widened. ‘Brother and sister?’

She exchanged looks with Lang and Sterling.

‘Twins, if one was male and other was female, were particularly favoured by the gods. The male twin especially, if he became a berdache, was destined —’

‘Destined?’

‘To lead the berdache tribe,’ she said.

I returned to the hotel to get ready for my date at the opera with Franklin. I thought back on Wandisa’s words.

Great, so now I was going to become a gay Maori Moses.

I looked at my watch. Time, first, to make the call to Cliff Harper. Make it third time lucky. I took a deep breath and dialled Chicago.

I heard the phone ringing. Once. Twice. Thrice. Part of me wanted somebody to pick it up. The other part of me didn’t. I felt the usual apprehension, the usual dread.

‘Hello?’

This time, Cliff Harper himself.

‘Mr Harper, please don’t hang up —’

‘It’s you again. Son, I asked you not to call.’

‘Mr Harper, all I want to do is give you a message but it’s not one I can give over the telephone. Sir, I am coming back through Chicago International Airport in two days’ time. Please, may I see you.’

‘There is nothing I can help you with, I’m sorry. Now I’m really going to have to spell it out loud and clear to you for the last time. I do not want you to continue to bother me in this way.’

‘All right, Mr Harper,’ I answered. ‘I hear what you’re saying. But I must ask you one question. Sir, did you know a New Zealand soldier named Sam Mahana? I have to know, because if you didn’t know my uncle I have to keep on trying to find the Cliff Harper who does. I can’t give up on this, Sir, I can’t. If you are that Cliff Harper and you still don’t want to see me, fine. That’s your call and your decision and I will respect it. Please don’t consign me to eternal darkness trying to find you.’

I don’t know why I said it like that — but at the other end of the telephone I heard a deep moan. It seemed to come out of Te Kore, The Void. Then somebody else was in the room with Cliff Harper, asking if he was okay, and he replied, ‘I’m fine, son. I’ll be down soon.’ Seconds passed. It was like waiting a thousand years.

‘Yes, I knew a soldier called Sam.’

My heart burst with relief. This was where Uncle Sam’s story would end, but at least I had taken it as far as Cliff Harper wished it to go.

‘Thank you Mr Harper,’ I said.

I don’t think Cliff Harper heard me. He was weeping. I hung on, hoping he might change his mind and say, ‘Yes, I’ll meet you at the airport,’ but he didn’t. I thought to myself that there was nothing worse than hearing a grown man cry. Gradually, Cliff Harper began to recover. I heard him sigh and blow his nose.

‘I have to go now, son.’

There was a click as he disconnected the call.

Was that it? Was that the end of Uncle Sam’s story? I stood there, motionless, disbelief working its way through my mind. I don’t know how long I stood like that. Then I finally realised — yes, that was it. The end. We could all leave the theatre now and go home.

I took a long hot shower. Afterwards, I towelled myself down and began to change for the opera. I was standing in front of the mirror trying to put on the bowtie when there was a knock at the door. It was Roimata, and Lang was with her.

‘Just in time,’ I said, waving the bowtie at her.

But I couldn’t keep up the pretense.

‘Cliff Harper doesn’t want to see me.’

Roimata tried to give me sympathy. She and Lang propped me up against the wall, and she began to knot my bowtie.

‘We knew this might happen. We win some, we lose some.’

‘I know,’ I sighed, ‘but I was so close —’

‘Perhaps I better go,’ Lang said.

‘No,’ Roimata answered.

She turned to me with a look of determination.

‘Listen, Michael,’ she said, ‘this may not be the right time to bring this up but there’s another matter we have to attend to. Our job isn’t over yet.’

‘What do you mean?’

I was suddenly aware that I was standing there just in white shirt, bowtie and underpants, and went to the closet to get my trousers. I saw Lang exchange a glance with Roimata.

‘We who are people of two spirits,’ Lang said, ‘want to make a stand. We want to introduce a resolution at the final session tomorrow, calling on the conference to recognise the contribution made by gay and lesbian men and women to our cultures.’

Lang’s words took my breath away.

‘Michael,’ Roimata continued, ‘the time has come to make a stand. We’ve got to start fighting all the homophobia. All the prejudice. It’s time we came out into the full light of day.’

‘But we need a leader,’ Lang said, looking at me.

‘This is something that you should do,’ I answered gently.

‘I can’t. My grandfather —’

I sat down. I tried to think it through. I finished dressing. I took my black jacket out of the wardrobe. A thought flicked through my head:

‘Yes, the time had come to start fighting. For all the Sams and Cliffs of the world —’

‘Oh what the hell,’ I said. ‘We’ve already lit one fire. Another won’t make a difference. I’ve grown accustomed to playing with matches.’

Then it was time to go to Tristan and Isolde. Franklin was waiting downstairs.

‘Thanks for helping me out,’ he said.

We walked out to the limousine. In the distance I saw spotlights circling in the sky.

The street outside the theatre was crowded with operagoers. When our car came up to the red carpet, flashlights popped all around us. I could just see my photograph in tomorrow’s newspaper and the caption:

‘Millionaire benefactor, Mr Franklin Eaglen, arrives at the opera with an opossum from New Zealand.’

We made it upstairs to the Green Room and Franklin smiled at me, amused.

‘You’re doing this to the manner born,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it.’

I caught sight of the upwardly mobile Bertram Pine Hawk.

‘Why, good evening, Franklin,’ Bertram said. ‘Mr Mahana, I wasn’t aware you loved the opera.’

‘Kiri Te Kanawa is my aunt,’ I lied, ‘and I go all the time.’

‘We must have our little talk, Franklin,’ Bertram continued. ‘Once the conference is over and we’re not so busy.’

He turned to me again, before gliding off.

‘Meanwhile, Mr Mahana, will you let me know before we cross swords again? I managed to get out from under this time, but —’

‘Thank God that’s behind us,’ Franklin said when Bertram had moved off.

He told me the full story. He had met Bertram five years ago, and they had lived together until six months ago, when Bertram went on to somebody older and better placed politically to provide him with more possibilities of advancement.

‘This is the first time I’ve been out for months,’ Franklin said. ‘I didn’t think I could bear the ridicule. But look at me now! Here I am, with the handsomest young man in the room and Bertram is seething. I’ve come out with a guy who’s prettier than him, who’s obviously got a gun in his pocket and isn’t a hairdresser.’

We took our seats and the curtain went up. On stage was a ship with sails billowing, cresting the wild sea from Ireland to Cornwall. A young sailor was singing a taunting song. Enraged, Isolde appeared, hair wild and long blood-red dress flowing in the wind.

‘Who dares to mock me?’

She called for her maid, Brangäne.

It happened just like that, almost as if Fate had snapped her fingers. Brangäne looked just like Auntie Pat, and I could not help but think again of the story of Uncle Sam and Cliff Harper. It was not just the plot that triggered the memory — the fatal love between Isolde, an Irish princess betrothed to King Marke, and Tristan, a knight in service to him. It was also the volcanic and propulsive nature of the music. I had never heard an orchestra surge and glow with such sound. Nor voices that could soar above the orchestra and deliver such glorious radiance. And before I knew it —

We haven’t much time, Sam said.

The lovers drink a love potion. Now arrived at Cornwall, they cannot stop their desire for each other.

Don’t move, Cliff hissed. Sam groaned and arched and, stretching both arms, reached for the rung above his head. The light showered around him like a waterfall.

In the distance, you can hear the retreating sound of hunting horns as King Marke leaves the castle. Tristan and Isolde take the reckless chance to be together. Night and darkness give a private world for the lovers. In it they can sink down into the miraculous realm of passion.

Oh, God, Sam. I thought this would never happen to me again.

The two lovers consummate their ardour to music of great romantic power. But there are already hints in the orchestra that their love is also associated with death.

Cliff’s voice was smoky with lust, and Sam realised there could be no going back. He had to keep on going forward with Cliff and hope that there was a way of escape from whatever destiny was lying in front of him. And he was gone, gone, gone beyond the point of no return.

While Tristan lies in Isolde’s arms, Brangäne keeps the watch. Her aria, known as Brangäne’s Warning, is full of beauty and yet underscored by a deep sense of tragedy:

‘Alone I watch in the night

Over you who laugh in your dreams

Listen to my warning for someone comes …

Sleepers, wake up! Take care!

Soon the night will pass —’

But the lovers are discovered. By the end of the opera, Tristan dies and Isolde sings her great Liebestod before she also dies of love in his arms.

‘Mild und leise wie er lachelt —’

The aria is like a sea, one great swelling of sound cascading after another, higher and higher to a magnificent climactic peak. In the final moments, though, the sea calms, smooths out, and Isolde’s voice is a star, shining over the waves.

I will always love you, Cliff. From the first moment I saw you I loved you. You’re in my heart and nobody will be able to take you out.

You’re there forever.

I stayed with Franklin for the reception after the opera, but I was impatient to be away. Moments of the opera kept coming back to me: the doomed lovers, the titanic love duet, Isolde’s final, incandescent aria.

In particular, I couldn’t get Brangäne’s Warning out of my mind.

Like Brangäne, Auntie Pat had kept watch over Sam and Cliff all these years. She had carried their story faithfully and against all odds. That it should all end like this, with a few telephone calls and Cliff Harper unwilling to let the story have its completion, was unbearable.

May God have mercy.

When Franklin and I finally left the reception and were driving back to the hotel, I told him about Uncle Sam and Cliff Harper.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said. ‘I think I need to make one more effort, one which Cliff Harper can’t turn away from. But the timing’s all wrong. He lives out at a place called ‘Back of the Moon’, maybe two hours drive from Chicago, near Muskegon Harbour on Lake Michigan. My stopover in Chicago will be too short. I can’t do it. I’ve run out of time.’

Just before I got out of the car Franklin embraced me and then patted me reassuringly on the shoulder.

‘Things have a habit of working out,’ he said.

I didn’t think any more about Franklin’s comment until the hotel receptionist woke me next morning with a message that an urgent delivery was waiting for me. It was an envelope with my name on it. Inside was an air ticket for Muskegon Harbour and a rental car voucher. With the envelope was a letter:

Dear Michael,

You need a fairy Godmother, and I hope you don’t mind if I cast myself in that role for you. My driver is waiting downstairs to take you to the airport to catch the 8.30 a.m. flight to Chicago. From there you have a short commuter flight to Muskegon County Airport. A rental car has been booked for you to pick up on arrival. I hope you can accomplish your task in time to return to Ottawa via Chicago for the final session of the conference. Please allow me to wave my wand. Your uncle’s story needs a happy ending.

Kind Regards,

Franklin

There was a knock on the door.

‘Franklin’s just rung me,’ Roimata said. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. Just make sure you’re back by the final session when we have to put the remit. So don’t just stand there! Go, Michael, go.’

And then the plane was swooping low over dazzling lakes and forests, turning onto its glide path into Muskegon County Airport. I had just on three hours before I needed to catch my flight back to Ottawa. Would I be able to accomplish my task in time?

‘Welcome to Muskegon,’ the bright, young receptionist at the car rental desk said. ‘Would you like me to trace your route on the map?’

Five minutes later, I was on the road heading for Cliff Harper’s place. The drive was incredibly beautiful, and surrounded me with the sense of history — of the times when Muskegon had been inhabited by the Ottawa and Pottawatomi tribes. First contact had come with the French during the 1600s, when trappers and hunters came to this land of tall trees and lakes. During the bustling adventurous 1800s, timber felling made Muskegon famous as the ‘Lumber Queen of the World’.

I thought to myself that Uncle Sam would have loved Muskegon and its history. He would have loved it now. Muskegon had become a popular tourist destination — Native American reservations, forests, parks, wetlands and picturesque villages dotted the shoreline. The fall was coming, and the leaves drifted across the landscape, red, yellow, purple, like dreams.

Indeed, I felt as if Uncle Sam was riding with me. Or as if I was Uncle Sam on my way to a rendezvous that was already thirty years overdue. Every now and then I came across marinas and gaps in the trees where the sun sparkled on the lake and pleasure boats etched the water with arrow patterns.

Beside me, I had opened the box containing Tunui a te Ika. The greenstone was lustrous with an inner light, as if it was bursting with happiness.

‘Almost there, little one. Almost there.’

I came to the lakeside village that the car rental receptionist had marked on the map. I stopped for more precise directions at a small shop near the jetty selling boating supplies. The proprietor was a grizzled old-timer and he pointed the way.

‘Go down the highway until you reach the left fork. The Harper place is on the second bend.’

Quarter of an hour later, I saw the letterbox:

BACK OF THE MOON

C. & W. HARPER

I turned in at the driveway. The road took me through natural pastureland and down into a broad shallow basin around the shores of the lake. I could imagine two brothers playing there, one signing to the other: I’ll race you, Johnny! There, among a scattering of trees, was the house. It was sturdy, two-storeyed, and its windows flashed in the sun. It looked as if it had been standing forever, having sprung from the ground hand-hewn and shaped by determined hands to keep generations safe through all the seasons — the kind of house that an Illinois country boy would grow up in.

I walked up the steps to the front door. The house had been recently painted. To one side was a garage and farm sheds. A ute was parked in the garage. I knocked. Knocked again. No answer. I walked around the back and rapped on the back door. A radio was playing inside. Somebody was at home.

From the lake, I heard dogs barking. I looked up, shading my eyes from the glare. Across the water and out of the sun came a man with two small dogs in a runabout. The man waved at me, and docked at the jetty. His dogs came bounding through the trees and up the slope to the house, barking. I knelt down and waited for their arrival:

‘Hello, boy! Hello, dog! How are you, fellas?’

My heart was beating in anticipation. I didn’t want to look up. I heard the man whistle and call his dogs off.

‘Hi there,’ he yelled. ‘I saw your car coming along our road. Can I help you?’

The sun was dazzling. All I could see was a shape — golden hair on fire with the light. All I could hear was a voice — light, friendly, but guarded. He put out a hand. Strong, firm, lightly filmed with sweat. And all the while, the dogs were barking, jumping at us both.

‘The name’s Cliff Harper,’ he said.

He stepped into my vision.

‘But people call me by my middle name, Sam, to distinguish me from my Dad, Cliff senior.’

The son, not the father. With the look of the father, made from the same clay. But where God had breathed divinity into the father, the son was more of a mortal. The ahua, the appearance was there, but the ihi, the energy that gave the body it’s own sense of self, was different. Or, perhaps, I had been living with the dream of Cliff Harper, the father, for too long. Had idealised him, made him charismatic, impossible to replicate. Yes, perhaps that was it. It was difficult not to feel disappointed.

‘I was hoping to speak to Mr Harper senior,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry, but Dad’s gone to Indiana,’ Sam Harper answered. ‘Both he and Mom are there to see Mom’s parents. Grandpop’s not too well.’

He looked at me curiously. Then his eyes narrowed, as if he was puzzling something out. He snapped his fingers.

‘That’s it,’ he said.

I doubt if Sam Harper even thought about what he was doing. He opened the back door and motioned me to follow him.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘There’s something I’d like you to see.’

The dogs tried to come inside with us but he ordered them out. He was on the run through the house and I didn’t get much of a chance to see what the interior was like. A hallway. A sitting room. Up the stairs. Past a bedroom. Another bedroom. A study.

‘This is where Dad does his paper work,’ Sam Harper said. ‘You know, all the bills, correspondence, his Vietnam Veterans’ stuff —’

Books. Deer horns mounted above the doorway. A huge trout and, underneath, a photograph of a father and son proudly holding the fish after they’d caught it. Other photographs in silver frames — a family portrait, a beautiful young woman, a photo of Cliff Harper himself.

Sam Harper was reaching for an album from his father’s book shelf. I couldn’t take my eyes off the photograph of Cliff Harper. He had grown older, but his looks were intact. Blond, clean cut, still devastatingly handsome. Although his unswerving gaze had lost its innocence, he still possessed his boyish grin and mysterious half smile.

Sam Harper clambered down and stood beside me. He flicked through the pages, then stopped. He looked at me and pointed to a photograph.

‘Do you know who this is?’ he asked.

The photograph was dated Vietnam, 1969. I knew it well. Uncle Sam and Cliff Harper look as if they’ve just come up from the beach after taking a swim. The photograph must have been taken when they were on leave at Vung Tau. Someone, I don’t know who —George maybe — had taken it. Cliff Harper is sitting on the sand. Uncle Sam is resting in the harbour of his arms. His upper body is strongly developed. Around his neck is a greenstone hei tiki. Tunui a te Ika.

‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘That’s my uncle.’

I was trying to keep my emotions under control but it was so hard.

Once I had thought that the one who really drew your attention in the photograph was Cliff Harper. It was he who looked directly at the camera. Now, seeing the photograph again, I realised that while Cliff Harper was the looker, Uncle Sam was the one who eventually held your fascination. His eyes were looking somewhere else, at some point beyond the camera. His beauty was more subtle. It had less to do with the externals of high cheekbones and chiselled planes and more to do with a deep inner sadness. Uncle Sam was like the moon, veiled and evanescent.

‘I’m named after him, aren’t I?’ Sam Harper said.

His voice sounded breathless with wonder. For a moment I thought everything was going to be all right. Then:

‘You’re the guy who phoned Dad from New Zealand.’

‘Yes. You’re named after my Uncle Sam. And, yes, I phoned your father from New Zealand.’

‘And again from Ottawa? It was you, wasn’t it. You.’

Sam Harper’s voice had taken on an angry tone. When I looked at him I could see he had become afraid. He put the album back in its place and, arms folded, sat on his father’s desk.

‘What’s this all about? Why has Dad been acting the way he has?’

What could I tell him? That his father and my uncle had been lovers? No.

‘I shouldn’t have invited you in,’ Sam Harper said. ‘I want you to leave. Now.’

I saw him looking at a rifle leaning against Cliff Harper’s desk.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said. ‘My business was with your father. If he isn’t here, of course I will go.’

It all happened so quickly. Even now I’m not too sure if I handled it right. Perhaps there was no way of handling it so that Sam Harper would feel comfortable. Even when we were outside and I was walking to the car I saw that he was still afraid. I smiled at him, trying to soothe his fears.

I reached through the window and picked up Tunui a te Ika.

‘I’d like to leave your father a gift. Would you give it to him when he returns?’

Tunui a te Ika bucked and twisted in my hands.

Bring it back to me, Sam. Bring it back.

I handed the greenstone to Sam Harper.

‘It’s beautiful. What is it?’

‘It’s something that Uncle Sam gave your father in Vietnam. It’s a long story. Your father returned it to Sam —’

‘He’s dead then? The man I’m named after?’

‘Yes. That’s why I came to see Mister Harper senior. To tell him and give him the greenstone.’

Sam Harper began to relax. He smiled cautiously.

‘Look, I’m sorry. If that’s all this is about I’ve reacted pretty badly, right? You feel like a coffee?’

I was feeling embarrassed now. ‘I’ve already presumed too long on your hospitality,’ I said, ‘but would you mind if I left a letter with the gift? It won’t take me long to write —’

‘Sure. Do you have pen and paper?’

‘Yes. It won’t take a moment.’

It had been foolish of me to come. What had I expected? Why hadn’t I understood why Cliff Harper had been so evasive and angry? He had built another life. He did not want to revisit the past. I hoped the letter would explain why I had come, even when he had not wanted me to:

Dear Mr Harper,

I am sorry if I have invaded your privacy and, as soon as I’ve written this letter I’ll be on my way and you will not hear from me again. I have not wanted to cause you stress by pursuing this matter but I am not only acting on my own behalf. I am also under instructions from my aunt, whom you knew as Patty, who wanted me to advise you that Sam was on his way to meet you at Auckland Airport on the evening you left New Zealand in 1971. He was killed in a car accident.

I realise it was a mistake to come here uninvited, but I had an obligation to fulfil. I am leaving with this letter the greenstone pendant, Tunui a te Ika. Uncle Sam wanted you to have it. Had he been able to, he would have brought it to you himself in Auckland.

I leave you and your family my best wishes,

Michael Mahana.

I gave the letter to Sam Harper. Tried to smile. Shook his hand.

‘Should you or any of your family ever come to New Zealand, please let us know. My aunt and I would be happy to extend to you all the hospitality we can.’

‘Listen,’ Sam Harper said. ‘Are you sure you don’t want that coffee? How about lunch?’

‘Thank you, but no. I’ve already stayed too long. I have to get back to Ottawa.’

‘You came from Ottawa for just a few hours?’

‘It was all the time I had available. Please tell Mr Harper senior I’m sorry I did not meet him personally. Goodbye.’

I stepped into the car. I saw Tunui a te Ika trying to leap the distance back into my hands, and I felt the onset of tears.

‘No, little one. Stay.’

I had to get away. I backed out of the drive and drove as fast as I could from the house. At the top of the rise I stopped and looked back.

Had Uncle Sam met up with Cliff Harper, perhaps this was where they would have ended. Together, in Muskegon County, on a small Illinois farm. A valley with a river running through it, or a place overlooking a lake, where they could last out all their days. A time when they could celebrate, every evening, the secret embrace that comes at the end of the day. But they had never found that safe place that is the right of every human being.

All of a sudden the wind came out of nowhere. The dust swirled high. The trees began to sigh and whisper, showering petals. At first they were like tears, but as they continued, I knew they were like a benediction.

No, Michael. Don’t grieve, Nephew. You’ve done your job. Thank you.

There was a flare of light and the sky became transformed into a sea of opalescent waves, tinged with red, stretching to the end of forever.

The mackerel sky —

From east to west stretched a broad band of cloud broken into long, thin, parallel masses, as if shoals of fish were teeming just below its surface. Everywhere silvered mackerel were leaping. They had been disturbed by a young boy on a wild palomino, urging his horse to the place where the hills cut sharply into the blue.

My eyes blurred with tears.

‘Yes, Uncle Sam, go. Go, dammit, go. Don’t look back, you’re free now —’

With a hoarse cry the boy kicked the stallion to jump into the sky. The mackerel shoal opened up and scattered, flash, flash, flash around him. The sky filled with a sparkling radiance like silver rain.

‘It’s done, Auntie Pat. It’s done.’

‘You’re back just in time,’ Roimata said.

The First Peoples’ Hall was crowded for the final session. It was time to light the second match.

‘I understand that we have a late remit,’ Bertram Pine Hawk said. ‘Mr Mahana, I see it’s you again.’

The conference murmured with laughter, but I was in no laughing mood. Even Roimata was anxious as I hugged her and made my way to the podium. All I could think of was Uncle Sam. I had reached the point of emotional exhaustion. When I put the motion which Lang, Sterling and Wandisa had prepared, I did it with too much anger.

‘In the beginning, our Maori legends tell us, Earth and Sky were lovers who embraced each other so tightly that there was no space between them. When they had children, who were gods, those children were squeezed within whatever cracks they could find. It was one of those gods, Tane, who conspired with some of his brother gods to separate Earth and Sky. When the Great Separation was achieved, that was the beginning of our legacy. The light came flooding in. We, the children, were able to walk upright upon the bright strand between.

‘Many people have seen, in this myth, a metaphor applicable to all kinds of situations. That independence does not come without sacrifice. That fighting for space and for light, the universal image for knowledge or enlightenment or freedom, is the continual challenge for all peoples who cannot see the sky. I would like to deploy this myth in another manner.

‘I am a gay man. Of all the children of the gods, my kind — gay, lesbian, transvestite and transsexual — inhabited the lowest and darkest cracks between the Primal Parents. We, now, also wish to walk upright upon this bright strand.

‘To do this, we must make a stand. For those of us who are First Peoples, this is not something to be done lightly nor without knowledge of risk. In my own country, my own Maori people are among the most homophobic in the world. They are a strong, wonderful people but their codes are so patriarchal as to disallow any inclusion of gay Maori men and women within the tribe. As long as we do not speak of our sin openly, we are accepted. But if we speak of it, if we stand up for it, we are cast out. My own uncle was cast out. I have been cast out. Many of us, in all our cultures, have been cast out. There is nowhere else for us to go except into the borderlands and there create our own tribe. But there is another way. Only you, however, can sanction it. This is why I am standing today.

‘The issue here is that for too long all of you who come from traditional cultures have profited by the efforts of those gay men and women who, for love of their nations, developed the songs, the poems, the dances, the arts of all of us. You need only to look in your hearts to know that what I say is true. You need only to look into each other’s eyes to know that all our genealogies are intertwined with people of two spirits. But they are people who, to do their work, had to pretend they did not exist. They had to deny themselves the right to walk proud among us. You knew they were two spirited. You knew that they were giving you gifts of their talents. You knew —’

I couldn’t carry on. I thought of Uncle Sam, and I wanted to tell him that what I was doing was for him as much as for anybody else.

It’s still a war zone, Uncle Sam.

I closed my eyes and began to weep. I didn’t give a damn that I was making a fool of myself. I was aware that Roimata had come to join me at the podium. Then Lang joined her with Sterling and Wandisa.

Oh, such a small tribe in that hall so filled with history.

Lang claimed the microphone.

‘Michael has been brave to bring this matter before us,’ he said. ‘But in this country it is our fight, not his. I ask this conference, in the name of all two-spirited people, to recognise the achievements of our two-spirit ancestors to all our traditions.’

There was a silence. Bertram Pine Hawk, without looking at us, got up and said:

‘A motion has been put to this plenary. I need two delegates to second the motion before I can put it to the vote. I ask for the first —’

There was a murmur and then a receding of noise into silence. I felt ashamed that I had pushed too strongly. Had I been more accommodating, I would not have alienated the audience from the remit.

‘You’ve all known I was a gay man,’ Franklin said. ‘I may as well come out now. I will support the motion.’

He was trembling, but then he lifted his head and seemed to grow in stature. Growing, growing like a tall tree of the forest.

‘I need a second person to support the remit,’ Bertram Pine Hawk persisted. ‘May I ask for a second?’

This time the silence was so deafening that I knew we had lost. My heart went out to my small gay tribe — Wandisa, head bowed to the floor. Sterling, unable to look anyone in the eye, and staring at his feet. Roimata and I, we were leaving Canada in the morning. But they lived here. For them there was no easy escape. For the rest of their lives they would be damned for standing up this day.

From the corner of my eye I saw Albert Pentecost whisper to Bertram Pine Hawk. The old man stood up, came forward, and I heard Lang groan in despair.

‘You all know me,’ Albert Pentecost began. ‘You all know my grandson. I apologise to you all, because it was wrong of him to stand up and to ask you to support and to vote on this thing which recognises people of two spirits. It was wrong.’

I thought the old man was disciplining us. I thought he was against us. Lang thought so too. He shaded his eyes and stepped into the arms of Sterling and Wandisa. But the old man’s voice changed. It was like the wind had turned and was blowing from another direction.

‘It was wrong of Lang because he was not the one who should have done this thing. It was I who should have done it. Me. I am his chief. It is my job to do these hard things and to make the hard decisions.’

The old man pointed at Lang.

‘Look at my grandson. He is just a boy. I am a man. This was a man’s job and a boy has done it. I am ashamed of myself but I am proud of him. He has shown more courage than many men in exposing himself in this battle. He and all who stand with him have exposed themselves to us. They have formed their war party and what are their weapons? Where are their bows and arrows? Where are their spears? Where are their other braves and warriors? They have brought only themselves to their battle. They are foolish, but I salute them for their courage. And I salute them for bringing to our attention something we have known for years.’

Albert Pentecost turned to Bertram Pine Hawk.

‘I join my co-committee member, Franklin Eaglen, in seconding the motion.’

Bertram Pine Hawk would not look at me. At us. He was one of us, but he would not look at us.

‘I will ask for the vote. All in favour, please raise your hands and say Aye.’

For a moment there was silence. Then from every part of the hall came scattered ‘Ayes.’ Surely the ‘Noes’ would outnumber us.

‘You don’t know First Nation people,’ Sterling whispered.

‘All those against, say No,’ Bertram Pine Hawk said.

There was silence.

In the end, it was as simple as that. No thunderous acclamation. No dancing around the totem pole. Change is not always telegraphed in big ways and with grand gestures. Sometimes it comes quietly from the silent places of the heart. Even so, I couldn’t believe it. I heard Bertram Pine Hawk turning to the next remit as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world to do.

‘Can you confirm for me,’ I asked Roimata. ‘Have we won?’

Roimata’s eyes were shining.

‘Yes, you dumb ox, we’ve won.’