Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

She gave me the key to Sam’s room.

‘I wish we’d brought a radio,’ she shivered. ‘If we had, I would have put it on the loudest rock ‘n’ roll radio station I could find.’

I walked along the corridor to Uncle Sam’s bedroom and unlocked the door. The room was absolutely bare. No bed, no bedside furniture. Just four walls, a curtained window and a linoleum floor. Any suggestion that anybody had ever slept in here had been stripped away. Except, that is, for the wardrobe, which had been built in and could not be dismantled.

I went to the sitting room, got a chair, and took it back to Uncle Sam’s room. Perhaps I might find something on the top of the wardrobe — some letter, something that might have been overlooked in the clean sweep of the room. No luck. I opened the wardrobe and tested the flooring, knocking at it with my knuckles. Hello, hello, two of the boards were loose and the reverberations from my knuckles indicated an empty space beneath them. Just the kind of space where a young boy would put special things — a pocketknife, a treasured Western comic, a blue bird’s egg. Or, as a teenager, his stash of X-rated magazines. Or, as a young man, his birth certificate, Army discharge documents, letters from a lover, photographs —

Nothing.

I heard weeping. At first I thought it was the wind. My blood ran cold as I wondered whether I had disturbed Uncle Sam’s spirit. But the weeping wasn’t coming from his room. I followed the sound down the corridor to Grandfather Arapeta’s study.

Auntie Pat was slumped in an old chair. She looked like a golden moth trapped within the aureole of candelight.

‘This was a bad idea,’ she said.

In her hands was the old family Bible where family births and deaths were registered. The page where Uncle Sam’s name should have appeared was ripped out. On a fresh page, Auntie Pat’s name and Dad’s had been re-inscribed. Immediately following were mine and my sister’s.

I took the Bible from Auntie Pat’s hands.

‘Why don’t you go and make us a cup of tea?’ I asked. ‘I’ll finish this.’

When she had gone I looked everywhere — for a letter Sam may have written from Vietnam. Newspaper clippings. Photos. Anything.

I found nothing.

I went to join Auntie Pat.

‘It was worth the try,’ she said.

I thought of the barn. I went along the road. The stables were deserted. The door to the barn was swinging in the wind. I went in. Saw the ladder to the loft. Thought of Uncle Sam and Cliff together, and Cliff laughing:

Well, what do you expect? I’m, a healthy mid-Western boy —

‘I can’t find him, Uncle Sam. I’m so sorry —’

The next morning, the alarm went at dawn. Auntie Pat, reverting to childhood, had bunked down in the bedroom she had slept in as a child. When I went to find her, there was only a note pinned to her door:

GOOD MORNING, SLEEPYHEAD. BREAKFAST IS ON THE TABLE. AFTER YOU’VE EATEN, SADDLE UP ONE OF THE HORSES AND COME TO THE EAST PADDOCK.

I grabbed some toast and coffee, changed quickly and went down to the stable. I saddled a grey and, a few minutes later, hit the track which took me diagonally across the flatland and into the valley leading to the river. This was where Uncle Sam loved to hold a boulder and jump in. I could almost imagine him sitting there, looking up at me as I passed, smiling to himself that I didn’t know he was there.

I crossed the river, remembering the wild mustangs that Cliff had headed off, and took the trail up the ravine and into the hills that formed the rugged eastern boundary of the farm. The ride took just on half an hour and, by the time I had crested the hills, the grey was panting with the exertion. The land was mainly covered with pines and scrub. It was the worst land on the farm.

I looked up to the skyline. Auntie Pat was silhouetted against the sky, waving to me. When I reached her I saw she had a chainsaw tied to her horse.

‘See that pine tree, Michael? Saw it down, please.’

I did so, and the tree toppled. The space opened the bottom of the slope to the light.

‘See that patch down there?’

Tears were running down Auntie Pat’s face. She pointed to a spot which must once have been shadowed by the fallen tree. It was marked by a small cairn that had been piled by hand.

‘That’s your Uncle Sam.’

She resumed her story.

‘After Sam was killed,’ Auntie Pat began, ‘and the coroner had finished his investigation, Sam’s body was brought back to us. You’d think Dad would have relented of his anger, but he was such an unforgiving man. The local people wanted Sam to rest on the marae but Dad said “No”. The local people assumed that Dad would bury Sam in our family graveyard. Again, Dad said “No”. He and Mum argued. She had tried to stand up for Sam in life. She tried again in death. She said to Dad, “All right then, I will take Sam back to my own people and he can rest in our graveyard.” Before she could do it, Dad lashed Sam’s coffin to the sledge and brought him here. He told all of us to stay behind, and the last we saw of our brother was Dad taking him off across the farm. But Mum said to me, “Patty, darling, you go and follow your father and see where he buries my son. Don’t let him see you though.”’

It was as if Auntie Pat had forgotten I was there — it was Sam she talked to now.

‘Fancy our own father, Sam, doing this to you. Bringing you here as if you were a murderer. Putting you in this unconsecrated ground, in this dark place, and leaving you here. But he didn’t know I had followed him, did he? He didn’t know that I watched from up there, among the trees, as he dug this grave for you.’

Auntie Pat grabbed my shoulders, and her fingers were like claws digging into me. She was trembling all over and her eyes were wide and staring.

I tried to calm her down.

‘Auntie Pat —’

She looked at me, puzzled, and I knew that she had gone, gone, gone into her memories. Then she gasped and hugged me.

I knew that I had become Sam.

‘Dad never even saw me,’ she said in a girlish voice. ‘Wasn’t I clever? I followed the sledge on foot all the way! I kept parallel with Dad, hiding in the bushes. Maybe he suspected I was there. Sometimes he stopped and looked in my direction. “Patty, I can see yoouuuuuu —”’

Auntie Pat giggled conspiratorially.

‘You would have been proud of me, Sam. I made myself small. I blended into the landscape the way you wrote you used to when you were on patrol. Dad crossed the river, and I slipped in, swimming underwater after him. Did you know I even swam under the sledge, and he didn’t know I was there? I re-surfaced over by some rocks and, when Dad went up the ravine, I followed. My dress was cold and clammy from the water … my hair was wet … I was so tired by the time Dad reached this place … yes, just as the sun was going down … and he took out his spade … and began digging … and …

‘Auntie Pat … Auntie Pat .’

Auntie Pat began to scream and scream. She stood up and looked down at the cairn. ‘Why did you do it, Daddy? Why did you have to bring Sam here? I saw what you did … the way you buried Sam … the way you placed him on the side of the hole … and then … you pushed him in with your foot … and he went tumbling in …’

Please, not eternal darkness.

‘Why, Daddy, why …’

I don’t know how long Auntie Pat and I stayed up there, on the side of the hill, looking at Uncle Sam’s grave. It took me a long time to quieten her down. Then, without a word, she stood up and went to a saddlebag and took out some flowers she’d brought with her. She went down to the cairn and started to place them on the grave. I joined her.