“Every boy becomes his father: ever repeating and reliving the same miserable fate. They know it and still they venture forth with hope in their hearts, believing each new horizon and its promises. No misstep, mistake or misdeed can steal them from their hope. Like lovers they marry; for better or for worse. ‘Every boy becomes his father,’ read their vows. ‘But not I.’”
These were the first lines I wrote for The Bone Tree, a beginning that remained iteration after iteration but was ultimately cut as the story underneath revealed itself to me.
The story was originally about a boy and his father, about a boy’s resentment of his old man and his struggle not to be just like him. Every man I’ve ever spoken to has felt this feeling in one way or another. Some loathed their dads and warred against every like-minded instinct they discovered inside themselves. Others, in absolute admiration of their fathers, exhausted themselves trying not to be subsumed by their old man’s shadow. Some men I’ve spoken to believe they’ve succeeded in these efforts, but most confess they failed in sometimes surprising ways – ways not all of them were unhappy about. Good, bad or ugly, it seems fathers always find a way to stow inside their son’s skin.
My own old man is a legend in Pātea, a small town in Taranaki, famous for the Pātea Māori Club. This is where my siblings and I were born and raised, as were my father’s and his father’s and so our whakapapa stretches back, as the story goes, even before the people of Aotea waka settled here. Dad’s reputation carries into every corner of the place, rippling across generations. For his efforts as an iwi historian, he is renowned as a scholar, a man unmatched in his recollection of the old world, of ancient pā and long-forgotten battles. For his skill in combat, he’s renowned as a warrior. Like many warriors in rural Aotearoa without a righteous fight to fight, he’d more often than not exhibit this talent in pubs and on street corners in the weekends.
On weekdays, Dad trained our whānau and many other whānau in Pātea in the ways of the warrior. Kickboxing, wrestling, self-defence. I recall one time someone from out of town dropped in to train with us. The man was young, mid-20s perhaps, tall and well built. Dad must’ve been going on 40 and I was only 10. The young man, being a young man and ignorant of Dad’s reputation, found himself unable to mind the tikanga of these training grounds – a small hall beside a seedy skatepark – running his mouth about this thing and that thing, exhibiting his arrogance and making out like he knew it all. Sooner rather than later, Dad, politely, took the man outside and onto the street. A minute passed and the young man, his face covered in blood, returned to the hall alongside Dad, who hadn’t even broken a sweat. The young man bowed his head and apologised for his rudeness, quick to make his exit upon his final word. While I still don’t know exactly what happened outside, I suspect this display of remorse was how the man bargained his way out of a much worse bashing.
You might assume that I belonged to the group of men who loathed their fathers, who were afraid of them, but the opposite is closer to the truth. In moments like these, I admired him. All of us inside the hall were Daniel behind the chainlink fence and he was Mr Miyagi defending us from Cobra Kai – the outsiders, the invaders. Dad followed the young man’s apology with a lecture about the importance of respect and so the rest of the training session continued as if nothing had happened, the only change in the room the ferocity with which the other boys and I applied ourselves.
As important to my sense of the world as these instances of battle, blood and glory were, the excitement was short-lived. When the drama died down the reality outside the hall was a life of abject poverty, almost every whānau in Pātea with just enough resources to ensure the lights stayed on and we kids did not have to miss a meal – most of us, most of the time anyway. If poverty was the tide, every one of our parents and grandparents was swimming as hard as they could to ensure we young ones were not going to be swept away. They were an omnipresent threat, these rogue waves, the proximity of disaster a tsunami warning that always rings and is always believed and is never grown deaf to.
The Bone Tree was originally about a boy and his father, an exploration of the complexities of that relationship, but somewhere along the way, the book took over. My own desires faded into the background and the story imposed itself onto the page. And so, while elements of my original intention are important, what is paramount is not what I intended to write, but what I have come to believe was meant to be written.
The Bone Tree asks what might have happened to us, to my whānau and all the whānau in Pātea, if the wrong wave did strike at the right time – because for some it did. What might have happened if our parents disappeared into the tide?
This is how the story starts for Black and Kauri, the two brothers at its heart, their mum moving on and their dad dying and the boys doing as best as they can with what little they have.
Like many have come to know, these stories seldom go well. Instead, the services and institutions that promise to protect our most vulnerable prey on them. The systems that pledge to shelter our most vulnerable instead become wicked witches to these lost little Hemis and Gretels.
Although The Bone Tree is not the archetypal autobiography disguised as a debut novel, the story borrows heavily from my life and so many of the peers with whom I grew up and alongside. It is my story and it is their story and it is the story of so many others who grew up in the underclass of Aotearoa.
Though this legend may not be as rough, rugged and raw as Dad once was, this is a story about a different kind of warrior. Two brothers committed to each other through thick and thin, for better or for worse.