Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

‘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 —’