Just Come Over

by James, Rosalind

The words hung there between them, a young fella brought over the burgers and left again, and Te Rangi still didn’t speak.

  Rhys waited, and finally, his cousin said slowly, “He didn’t leave anything for her, then.”

  “No. And you should’ve told me, so I could’ve seen to it. Her mum wasn’t too well off. She died running across the street at night to get to work. They put Casey in foster care.”

  Te Rangi closed his eyes. “Shit,” he said quietly. “Sorry, mate.”

  The rage that had boiled up started to settle, and Rhys breathed some, picked up his burger, and said, “Never mind. I’ve got her now. But I need to know who you told.” He took a bite, and Te Rangi did the same. Sometimes, you needed a minute to regroup.

  “I didn’t tell anybody,” his cousin said when he’d finished chewing. “Dylan didn’t want you to know, and if I’d told anybody, you’d have known. Nobody’s going to keep a secret like that.”

  “Nobody but you.”

  “Could be I owe you.”

  Rhys nearly winced. “You don’t owe me.” The words came out rough. He couldn’t help it.

  “Cuz.” Te Rangi’s hand came out to grip his shoulder. “Yeh, I do. Made the tea enough times, didn’t you. Looked after us as well as you could. Set an example, too, you could say. My dad’s worthless, and yours wasn’t too flash. I’ve done better, and if you went to get Casey, seems to me that you have, too.”

  The burger was sticking in Rhys’s throat. Something about the tightness in his chest, maybe. He nodded and focused on swallowing. On getting it together, because he was dangerously near the edge. He didn’t go over that edge anymore, but he was very nearly doing it now.

  “Does Zora know?” Te Rangi asked.

  “Yeh. Isaiah doesn’t, and neither does Casey. I needed to make sure nobody else did, because otherwise, I’d need to tell both of them. Better it comes from me, eh.”

  “No worries. You don’t have to tell anybody, because I didn’t.”

  Rhys nodded.

  “You’re wondering why he used your name in the first place,” Te Rangi said. “Because of Zora, of course, even though you were about to be married yourself. I mentioned that, and he said, ‘It’s not going to come out. He’s never going to know.’ Hard to see how that could be true. I pointed that out. All the kid had to do was to look her dad’s name up, then look you up, and, bang, you’d know, and so would Victoria. What he didn’t say was that if you found out, you’d handle it, like you’ve handled everything else. Downside to being so bloody good at life, eh.” His face changed. “Hang on. What about Victoria?”

  “I saw her today,” Rhys said. “I told her.”

  Te Rangi laughed, and it was so unexpected, Rhys jumped. “Nah, cuz. It’s just—what a shit day, eh. You lose the game last night, and you’ve got to come down the next day in the pissing rain and tell your wife that you’ve got a kid you never mentioned? From a hookup you also never mentioned? Yeh, that’s a shit day.” He lifted the burger and saluted Rhys with it. “At least the kai’s good.”

  Some of the tension inside loosened, and Rhys had to laugh himself. It was the first time he’d done that today, for sure. “That wasn’t all I said. I also told her I was planning to marry Zora. That went over well.”

  The rain eased up some on the drive back to Nelson, at least.

  Rhys had always had an engine that wouldn’t quit. Now, though, it was sputtering. His arms and legs felt heavy, and his eyes strained against the grayness of the day.

  Back to the airport. An hour and a half to Auckland, and another half an hour’s drive when he got there. A few more hours, and nothing hard to do. Get home, that was all. Home to Zora’s, first, and then taking Casey home and putting her to bed. Reading the dinosaur book.

  Doing the job right.

  Nearly there, now. Past the school again, and the shops, and the businesses. The left turn onto Quarantine Road was barely a kilometer ahead when he took a right instead, onto Songer Street.

  It’ll take a few minutes, he thought, taking the quick left onto Seaview Road. His heart was beating faster now, his hands tensing on the wheel again, and he relaxed them with an effort. You can do a few minutes. One step at a time.

  The walk across the grass was wet, and the rain dampened his hair and ran in streaks down his face. He walked along a row and found the spot. Funny, he’d thought as a kid, that you had an address here. That you had neighbors.

  Three headstones in a row.

  Manaia Louise Fletcher

  Rest in peace

  His Nan. Gone too soon, probably from the stress of raising three kids, then four of her mokopuna as well. Not enough money, and not enough time. Nothing but doing her best. It hadn’t been as much as they’d all needed, maybe. It had still been her best.

  He crouched down and ran his hand over the rough edge at the top of the polished granite stone, barely big enough for her name and the dates. He rubbed it gently and remembered the gentle kiss of the sun, the sparkle on the wave tips and the vibrant green of the grass on the day they’d laid her here. Like the earth and sea were welcoming her home.

  He’d been eighteen that day, newly contracted to the Brisbane Broncos, thrown off whatever balance he’d had at the time by more money than he’d ever realized you could make. Drinking too much after every game, trying to run away from the gripping fear that all of this would vanish as suddenly as it had appeared, that he wouldn’t be enough after all, that he would fail.

  The next one, no bigger.

  Tane Hau Fletcher

  Do not go gentle into that good night

  Six years later, back here again, burying his dad. Flying with his body from Brisbane, his heart no lighter than the coffin. Bringing his father home to the whanau.

  Tane had brushed off the persistent cough with a “Nah, I’m fine,” until his back had begun to ache. Until the day when he’d fallen at work, his legs refusing to hold him up anymore. Even then, he’d fought, refusing to go down until the bitter end.

  He hadn’t been the best dad, and he hadn’t been a gentle one. But he’d been the hardest worker Rhys had ever seen.

  After the third day of his dad’s tangi, when the final haka had been performed and the sun had set, he’d gone to Mapua Wharf with Dylan and Te Rangi and some of the other cousins. They’d sat on the end of the pier, looking out over the dark water, and he’d tried to feel something. Anything. And hadn’t managed it. His dad was the one who’d died, but Rhys was the one whose soul seemed to be sputtering out, unable to find a resting place. A sea bird who had flown too long, whose wings were battered by the storm, whose muscles ached with the effort of holding himself up, with no land in sight. Nothing out there but towering swells and angry troughs of gray water that wanted to pull you down into the depths and drown you.

  “Never thought a tough old bugger like that could die that fast,” Te Rangi finally said.

  “Yeh,” Rhys said, and drank down half of his third beer at a go.

  “Good thing we don’t smoke, eh, Drago,” Dylan said. “Else we’d be worried. Course, nothing bad ever happens to you anyway. Probably be me. A charmed life, that’s you. Getting lucky in the lucky country.”

  There’d been a feverish quality to his brother that night. Nineteen, moving up himself, but laughing too loud, drinking too much, with not enough to hold onto, like a rice-paper kite that had caught fire, going too high.

  Rhys looked up at the stars above the dark water, listened to the voices, the laughter, and the lap of the waves against the pier, and thought, Time to see if I can still play Union, maybe. Time to see if I can come back. The Broncos had won the NRL Grand Final, the box was ticked, and Rhys’s star was on the rise. Professionally, at least. Personally? Not so much. A fresh start sounded good. Better for Dylan, and better for him, too.

  When the deal was signed and he rang his brother to tell him, Dylan was silent for so long, Rhys thought he’d lost the connection.

  “Still there, bro?” he asked.


  “Yeh,” Dylan said. “You could’ve told me before I moved to the Blues.”

  You didn’t have much choice, Rhys didn’t say. Dylan had had too mixed a season with the Crusaders. Brilliant one week, strangely absent the next, unable to string together more than two good games in a row. “Could be we both needed a change,” he decided to say. “Second chance can be good.”

  The third tombstone.

  Dylan Ihaka Fletcher

  Into the sunshine

  Ihaka. “He will laugh.” And Dylan had, always. Lighting up a room or a crowd as easily as turning on a lamp, like that rice-paper kite flying high. The skills that dazzled you, and the grin on his face when he’d scored a try. He’d inked Zora’s name on his left wristband, closest to his heart, before every game, and after every one of those brilliant tries, he’d kissed it.

  He’d fallen so frustratingly short so many times, or maybe it was something else. Maybe he’d never been able to grab hold of the best of himself for long enough, set it down firmly enough, to build on a solid foundation.

  Rhys had never understood him, but he’d loved him, and he’d protected him as best he could. Imperfectly, always. But he’d tried.

  This stone was larger, because it had finally dawned on Rhys that he could pay for better, and that it might be good for Zora and Isaiah if he did. Or maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe he’d needed to know that he’d done his best for his brother, this one last time.

  His hair was dripping with rain now, his trousers and shoes soaked, as he crouched at the head of the grave and traced the winding path of pebbles placed amidst the nearly white granite from the bottom on up to the top, Dylan’s rocky journey through his too-short, blazingly-bright life. He touched the albatross carved into the V-shaped cutout in the top of the stone, where that path ended, running his fingers over the bird’s body. It was soaring already, its great wings outstretched, held to the stone only by their tips. Leaving the stony path behind and flying free, where his feet wouldn’t be caught up by obstacles, where he could sail across the tryline with a smile on his face, could kiss the name on his wrist and know that he was home.

  Into the sunshine.

  Rhys had left his brother alone, the thing Dylan had feared most. And then he’d come back.

  Now, though? What was he doing now?

  Was he taking Dylan’s wife and son, or was he taking care of them? You could see it either way. A double-edged sword. Or like Tumatauenga, who was the god of war, but also the god of hunting, of fishing, of cooking. The provider, and the conqueror.

  You could only be the best of who you were. You couldn’t be somebody else.

  He hono tangata e kore e motu; ka pa he taura waka e motu.

  One can cut a canoe rope, but the bond between two hearts can never be severed.

  “Haere ra, bro,” he said, feeling the prick of tears behind his eyelids, then a few escaping, and not caring. Nobody to see, not out here. Nobody to know. “Ka kite ano.”

  Goodbye, brother. I’ll see you later.

  He was only ten minutes from the airport, but he wasn’t going to catch that plane. He’d get the next one instead.

  It was well after eight, and Rhys still wasn’t back. He’d said six-thirty, and then he’d texted that it would be later. Right now, Zora was reading Horton Hatches the Egg aloud on the couch. Casey was listening, and Isaiah was pretending he wasn’t. Zora had already given Casey her bath, and in another ten minutes, she was going to put her into Isaiah’s bottom bunk.

  She finished the book, and Casey sighed and said, “I like this book very much, because Horton was always faithful, one hundred percent. He kept his promise and sat on the egg, even though the baby bird wasn’t really his. And then at the end, it was, and he got to keep it.”

  Zora smoothed her hand over the girl’s hair, bent to kiss her head, and said, “He did keep his promise. Elephants never forget, that’s what they say. And elephant families stay together all their lives. A mother elephant stays with her daughters, and her daughters never forget her, even after she dies. If they go past another elephant’s bones, they stop and touch them gently with their trunks to say goodbye.”

  “Only the females stay, though,” Isaiah said. Not just playing with Legos, then. “The males go off on their own. That’s because you can’t mate with your family. Like, cousins can’t. Or brothers and sisters. It’s if you share blood. Which doesn’t mean real blood. It means your family.”

  “What’s ‘mate’?” Casey asked.

  “Having sex,” Isaiah said. “To make babies. You can’t make babies with your family. That’s why the males have to leave.”

  Well, that had escalated quickly.

  “True,” Zora said. She was about to say, “Well! Bedtime!” But Casey’s head had gone up, her entire body had gone still, and then she was running to the kitchen in her bare feet, flinging the door open.

  A car engine turning off, the slam of a car door. And Rhys’s deep voice.

  Elephants “heard” things through their feet that their ears couldn’t, and that was how Zora felt. Rhys’s voice seemed to come all the way through the soles of her feet and up her legs to lodge inside her. Belly deep.

  She was standing up when he came into the lounge. He had Casey wrapped around him, her head on his shoulder, and he looked . . .

  Exhausted.

  She’d never seen him look like that. It tilted her world on its axis, and she was having trouble catching her breath.

  “Hey,” she said softly, then went to him, wrapped her arms around him and Casey, and pressed her lips to the spot at the base of his throat where his pulse beat.

  He bent his head, kissed her mouth, and said, “Good to be back. Thanks for taking her.”

  He was wet. His trousers were damp, and so was his shirt. The skin of his arms, which was normally turned up a degree or two hotter than hers, felt cool under her hands. She said, “I think Casey should sleep here tonight.”

  “No,” Casey protested. “Because we need to shut up the bunnies.”

  “I’ll shut up the bunnies,” Rhys said. “Could be that Auntie Zora’s right. It’s late. I’ll come early in the morning, so you and Isaiah don’t have to wake up in the dark, how’s that? I’ll cook the brekkie, and bring you your uniform.”

  “But—” Casey started to say.

  “Your dad’s very tired, I think,” Zora said, keeping it calm. Nothing wrong with kids realizing that their parents had feelings, too. “Everybody needs to go to bed early tonight, including me, because I do have that five o’clock start tomorrow.”

  “I can get up and help you,” Isaiah said. “I always get up. I’m used to it.”

  She was about to say, No, love, sleep in this time. But there was too much intensity in his face. She wasn’t the only one who had too many emotions today. It was practically hanging in the air. She said, “You need some Mum time, maybe.”

  “Yes,” Isaiah said. “And I’m good at picking out flowers.”

  “You are. All right. Rhys can come over to stay with Casey, but you and I will go to the flower market.” She was going to have to carve out more one-on-one time with him, somehow. Another thing to juggle, but it had to be done, or they were going to have explosions.

  Surely, though, explosions were better than resentments held inside. You could move on from explosions, once you’d picked up the pieces. Resentments were like poison in the water supply. She was too tired to deal with this one tonight, but in the morning, they’d work something out.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Rhys said. “There’s one thing I need to do before bedtime, though.” He sat on the couch like he needed to, set Casey down beside him, and told Isaiah, “Come over here, mate.”

  Isaiah had been hovering slightly out of frame, like he wasn’t sure what his part was. Now, he came over to the couch and hesitated.

  “Come sit by me,” Rhys said. “You too, Zora. I’ve got something I need to say. Something I need to do.”

  She said, “Rhys. M
aybe tomorrow.”

  “No,” he said. “It needs to be tonight.” He might be more tired than she’d ever seen him, but his eyes were steady. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Another flax kete, but this time, he was pressing it into Isaiah’s hand. “I went to see your dad’s grave today,” he told him. “In Nelson, at Seaview Cemetery. Near the place he grew up, the place he went to school. It was peaceful. You can’t really see the sea, but you can see the grass and the trees and the sky, and you can feel how close the sea is. Your dad loved Nelson. His favorite place.”

  “I remember the cemetery,” Isaiah said. “We went last year, after they made his tombstone.”

  “That’s right,” Rhys said. “We both did. D’you remember what his tombstone has on it?”

  “A bird,” Isaiah said.

  “An albatross.” Another reach into his pocket, and Rhys was thumbing his phone, showing Isaiah the photo, and Zora, too. An image that still made her heart twist and the tears rise. The path of stones, and the white albatross spreading his wings. “A sea bird.”

  “I know,” Isaiah said. “It has the largest wingspan of any bird. It’s so big that it can fly for hours without even flapping its wings, and it hardly ever has to land.”

  “That’s right,” Rhys said. “I thought about that, about that bird flying forever, and about your dad, and then I went and found your pendant. Made of greenstone from Tasman Bay, like his was. Open it and see.”

  Isaiah worked the ties, and Zora helped him until he was tipping the thing into his hands.

  A long, narrow shape like a rounded, extended adze, carved of a vibrant, translucent piece of jade that shone with light.

  “Roimata,” Rhys said. “Tears of the albatross.”

  Isaiah held it tentatively. Doubtfully. “That sounds sad.”

  “Not sad. Healing and comfort and positive energy. Brings you strength and centering, that’s the idea, when things get noisy and it’s hard to concentrate. That’s what your dad will have called on when he ran out in a rugby game, because he knew that strength isn’t enough. It’s your focus that matters, and knowing where to put your strength. It’s a meditation stone. Any time you need to quiet your mind, when the world gets too loud and too busy, you can put your hand on this and go inside. You can remember that an albatross can fly for hours on a single flap of its wings, and that you can do that, too. It’s all in knowing how.”