Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

‘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.