In this extract from “The Bone Tree”, brothers Black and Kauri prepare to say their final farewell to their father.
The old man’s grave hung like a mist over the whole of the wops. The world was still and soundless. Even the owl that watches over this place had ceased to call its name. Ru-ru. And though it wasn’t cold, an eerie chill possessed us, our breath visible in the night’s light.
My hands shook, my vision blurred and I watched a silhouette of the old man smoke behind the bone tree. One last ciggy before the journey to the maunga – to that place that dead men go. Haere haere haere atu rā. I readied the tree for burning. It was dry and rife with deadwood, but we had to be sure. Using a hatchet and a bread knife, Black and I shredded the old man’s couch into long thin strips easy for burning. Then with boot and blade, we broke down its frame and rebuilt it as a tent at the base of the bone tree, packing it full of its own hay, cotton, kindling and shredded cloth. It looked a mess in the glow of the moon. Warped, contorted, twisted. It matched the old man almost perfectly.
The kid touched it with an open hand, pressing his palm flat against the barren tree’s bark, spreading his fingers wide. He bowed his head and closed his eyes and breathed long and deep, putting his eyes back on his hand only after the breath had long come to an end. It was as good a goodbye as I’d ever witnessed.
“Good to go?”
The kid ignored my question. “Reckon the old lady’s watching?”
“If she could be,” I said.
The hills and the house were silver and blue and the bone tree every shade of black, no inch of its frame lighter than the night behind it. It must’ve known its fate, I thought, watching the darkness fall over it. I left the kid and kneeled beneath the tree and with a flick and a pull set the cotton alight. The fire shot up, leaving me only enough time to skip one step backward. The couch bonfire leapt and retreated, its black and yellow and rosy flames lashing at the sky. Me and the bro watched with our mouths wide open as its heat ate away at the darkness, swallowed up the mist.
A gentle wave of colour rolled across the wops, illuminating the paddocks like the last hurrah of Mahuika, the whole of the earth alight with her passion. There were no farmers out tonight, no one at work on the land. Surely they had felt the change in the air and placed their own kind of rāhui. If this were true, there’d be no greater honour. Time itself might as well have stopped for the old man.
The grass at the feet of the fire withdrew, a burnt border reaching out from the base of the tree. Black stayed frozen and I inched away from the fire, wary that the old man might take one final swing at me, the couch spitting fire in my direction or the whole thing coming down on top of me. If visions of the dead could visit us and our ancestors see us in our dreams, who knew what Dad might do?
You want something to cry about, boy? the shadows said, imitating him. Hell, I’ll give you something to cry about.
It almost made me laugh. What a f...ken tribute. You better watch out, Whiro. Ain’t no trait the old man didn’t have you equalled in. Fella was just as mean, as stubborn, as cruel.
Man was so small he couldn’t even let his lover love him as much as he loved himself. Couldn’t let his kids hate him as much as he, in his lowest moments, must’ve hated himself.
The bone tree released the old man’s smoke like pollen, its petals opening, his stream of smoke catching the still breeze and floating skyward. A thousand embers escorted him, spinning and dancing upward and outward. In flight they glowed a dreamy glow, shading the silver earth in shadows red and orange. The bones of the tree, made black inside the blaze, crumbled and fell away. The might of the fire grew as that dying thing collapsed.
It was a wild final show. A display of colour unlike the old man had ever shown in his lifetime.
The Bone Tree by Airana Ngarewa is published by Moa Press, RRP $37.99.
