Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

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.