Nature of Ash, The

by Hager, Mandy

  The old man offers me his hand, clasping mine between both of his own. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he says. ‘Your father was a good, good man.’

  ‘I want Dad,’ Mikey says, his bottom jaw angled at its most stubborn thrust.

  Mr Prakeesh ignores him and meets my gaze. ‘I had a brother like yours once,’ he says. ‘He had a great capacity for understanding many things, so long as they were tangible. Best friend I ever had.’

  I don’t know what to say. Right now my own brother is mangling my hand.

  The nurse explains that if we put on sterile gowns and gloves, Mr Prakeesh will supervise a closer look. ‘Though you mustn’t disturb anything, you understand?’ She looks straight at Mikey. ‘You promise you’ll do as you’re told?’

  Mikey nods solemnly.

  The kindness and understanding of these people is unexpected — especially when it’s clear they’re breaking all the rules. I’m grateful for it — though, honestly, the thought of getting any closer to Dad’s shredded body gives me the shits. I’m terrified I’ll cry again. I’m terrified that one of us, or both, will freak and go berserk.

  We kit up and the nurse draws back the grille. Then Mr Prakeesh takes Mikey’s gloved hand in his own and leads him over to the bench where Dad’s body lies. I’m holding Mikey’s other hand and now it’s him who’s towing me. Every step feels like I’m balancing on a shaking tightrope — and any second I could fall.

  The first thing that strikes me is the metallic stench. I don’t know if I’ve ever registered the smell of blood before, but straight away I’m sure that’s what this is. It’s thick and cloying, settling like glue inside my nostrils and on the roof of my mouth.

  ‘Dad, it’s me,’ says Mikey. ‘Who hurt your face?’

  He reaches out to touch Dad and I step forward to stop him, but Mr Prakeesh shakes his head.

  ‘Let him touch, so he can understand.’ He takes Mikey’s hand and guides it to Dad’s pitted forehead. ‘Gently,’ he warns, as Mikey’s fingers flit like butterflies around its rifts and valleys.

  ‘Cold.’ Mikey frowns. ‘Get another blanket.’

  ‘Unfortunately, young man, a blanket will not help. Once the heart has stopped pumping the blood around, the body cools.’ He directs Mikey to touch Dad’s chest, over his heart.

  The sight of Mikey’s squat gloved hand searching for movement nearly does me in. He’s so damn delicate, as if he’s scared of hurting him.

  ‘Not working,’ Mikey says, shaking his head.

  ‘I know,’ Mr Prakeesh replies. ‘We tried our hardest, but sometimes that’s not enough. I’m sorry, son, but now it’s best you say goodbye.’

  Mikey’s so calm I can’t believe it; it’s like the old man’s caught him in a spell. He leans right over Dad’s horrendous face and kisses the only undamaged scrap of skin — a tiny patch on his left temple. Then his arms snake around Dad to embrace him, body-bag and all. He starts to croon, his tone just like a mother soothing a sick child. ‘Poor Dad. Poor, poor Dad. Not working any more.’ He glances up, his face serene. ‘Dad’s dead, Ashy,’ he says, as though I’m the one who doesn’t comprehend. ‘You say goodbye.’ He tenderly folds himself around Dad’s corpse again, murmuring in the same comforting tone. ‘Poor, poor Dad.’

  As I stand transfixed some strange alchemy takes place before my eyes. Mikey’s embrace somehow makes Dad real. He’s our father again and not just an appalling lump of flesh. I can feel the grief welling up inside me, starting as a spasm in my gut, then rolling up my entire body. I start to cry tears of deep sorrow — not just shock or anger — and wrap myself over the top of Mikey to embrace them both. No longer horrified, just needing to be near.

  God only knows how long we stay like this, my crying setting Mikey off, but at some stage he slips out from under me and I’m left holding Dad. ‘I promise I’ll always look after him,’ I whisper. ‘I promise I’ll make you proud.’

  Eventually I straighten up and reach towards the welt left by the greenstone pendant, tracing it with my finger through the glove. All I can hope is that there is some kind of afterlife — that somewhere, out in the unknown, our ancestors are greeting Dad.

  I clutch on to Mikey and we stand together, looking down at him while I prepare to say my last goodbyes. I’m conscious of the nurse and the old man at my back now, embarrassment creeping in as I frame my final words. ‘I love you, Dad. I always will.’ It sounds so trite, so clichéd, but it’s really true. He’s not just Mikey’s rock, he’s mine as well.

  Mikey repeats my words, then we strip off the gowns and gloves. Mr Prakeesh and I shake hands, me bumbling out thanks. He shakes Mikey’s hand with real warmth, and Mikey gives him one of his suffocating hugs. He knows the good guys, Mikey does. Can sense it with unerring accuracy every time.

  We’re silent on the bus ride home. There’s nothing we can say. Yet I feel calmer: that one good cry has washed away some of the bitterness — at least for now. I reckon if heaven and hell do exist (which is a very long shot, as far as I’m concerned), it’s more likely Dad’s gone off to heaven while Mum’s being punished down in hell. Not that anyone’s ever confirmed she killed herself, but I figure that’s the way it was. I was about twelve when I finally worked it out and, if I’m honest, it’s put me off her ever since. You’ve got to be pretty damn selfish to leave your husband with a four-year-old and a disabled newborn. No wonder poor old Grandma eventually flipped her lid.

  Back at the apartment the answerphone is chock full of messages about Dad. There’s three calls from the media, one from a funeral director, and the rest are from his friends and work colleagues. I can’t face calling back. Instead, I take advantage of Mikey’s unusual compliance to head down to the community garden to do an hour’s weeding so we can earn some free veges. His massive appetite is more predictable than the weather — the only death I reckon would curb it would be his own. God forbid.

  We score a pumpkin, cabbage, broccoli, salad greens and silverbeet, though a quick check of Dad’s cupboards makes it clear this won’t be enough to keep us going for long. So we walk over to the supermarket, where there’s been a rush to stock up on basics. The few items on the shelves have doubled in price since last time I shopped down south. I end up blowing nearly a hundred bucks of the money Dad deposited into my account. All this buys is bread, rice, flour, porridge, milk, loo paper, soap and a dozen eggs. Quite how I’m going to keep on feeding Mikey’s voracious appetite, I’m not sure. If prices keep on rising at this rate I’ll have to use the food bank till I know how much Dad’s worth. Unless he’s got some money stashed away, we’re really screwed.

  I cook us up some porridge to fill our guts, then set up Mikey on the game console again while I try to get my head around what happens next. First I call back the funeral director, who tells me that a simple funeral will cost twelve grand. Jeezus. I hedge, saying I need to contact Dad’s lawyer, and hang up fast. Twelve grand? The chances of us finding that sort of money are zilch, I’d have thought, but I’m going to have to get hold of the lawyer anyway, so may as well do it now. And that means finding contact details.

  Dad’s study is his sacred place: the one room we’re banned from if Dad’s not here. It’s in a mess, papers spilling right across his desk and others stacked in piles on the floor. I start to sort each stack to separate out his private papers from his work, amazed at how he held all these different projects in his head. At the bottom of the final pile I find four envelopes addressed to Dad, each one numbered and dated on the outside in his distinctive scrawl. I open up the first to find a sheet of paper filled with cut-out letters forming words. An icy charge shoots up my spine as I line up the four sheets in order on the desk.

  TRAITOR.

  WE KNOW WHERE YOU WORK.

  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

  BYE BYE. BOOM!

  They prove he bloody knew all right — the last is date-marked Thursday, the day before the bomb. But why in hell are these notes here, not with the cops? I feel sick. Who did Dad t
hink he was? Bloody Superman?

  I dial Jeannie’s number again but get her answer-phone, so leave a message asking her to call right back. Maybe if they do forensics on the paper they’ll catch the pricks red handed. Then, by god, they’d better bloody slam them into jail to rot. Perhaps a little torture too? Yeah, definitely. Enough to make them regret their actions till their dying days.

  I force myself to keep on searching through more of Dad’s stuff. Eventually I find the section in his filing cabinet where he keeps his private papers, rifling through all sorts of shit. Now I find a letter from a lawyer confirming that she’s just received his latest will. It’s dated only four weeks back, the day after threat number two. Surely this proves he took them seriously — so why, oh why, has it ended up like this?

  I ring the number on the letterhead but it’s an after-hours service. When I explain who I am, the operator assures me he’ll contact this lawyer named Lucinda Lasch. She calls straight back and sounds okay, sympathetic but not too gushy (despite her porn-star name), and asks if I can meet her first thing Monday to talk things through. I tell her about the twelve grand quoted for the funeral. She reassures me Dad has made provisions in his will. Thank god: skimping on his last farewell would truly suck.

  I’m trying to find Dad’s bank statements when I hear Mikey holler from the living room. ‘Ashy! Come!’

  The little shit has switched over from his game to the TV, and there’s Dad’s picture plastered all over the screen as the newsreader rattles through his life and times: ‘… longstanding supporter of human rights. Born in Motueka, son of noted immigration lawyer, the late Dennis McCarthy, he graduated from Otago University with an MA in political science …’

  Mikey edges right up to the screen and presses his index finger to the picture of Dad’s face. ‘Look, Ashy, no sores.’

  I bite back an impatient explanation. What does it matter if he thinks Dad’s face has been restored? If it helps him to forget what he’s just seen, then so be it. I wish to god I could do the same. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘No sores.’

  But now they’re showing a picture of Mum.

  ‘… together through many student protests until her unexplained disappearance in two-thousand and—’

  What the fuck?

  ‘Despite rigorous searching, Grace McCarthy was never found, declared officially dead seven years later — though it was rumoured she’d gone underground after the cyber attack of the Government Communication Security Bureau, commonly attributed to radical separatists Muru …’

  Are they allowed to broadcast bullshit like this? Surely this can’t be for real? They’re saying Mum could still be alive? That she deserted us? Just walked away? The idea that she’d topped herself was bad enough, but this?

  My knees give out from under me and I have to hang on to the sofa or else I’ll drop. It’s all too much. Why would Dad lie to us for all these years? Hold on, hold on … get real, the media is doing one of its outrageous spins. Of course! Okay, so maybe Mum did walk away, but chances are she topped herself somewhere remote, that’s why they never found her … yes, that must be it. Poor Dad. No wonder he was cagey when I used to bring it up. Imagine what he must’ve gone through in those first few days, then months, then years …

  While I’m waiting for my pulse to slow, not helped by trying to fob off confused questions from Mr Please Explain, the ‘breaking news’ music blares out.

  ‘The UPR just confirmed several attacks have been carried out on its New Zealand-based factories and farms,’ the newsreader intones as pictures of fenced dairy farms dissolve into a live feed from some spokesman in the military get-up of the UPR.

  ‘We believe the New Zealand SAS are working under orders from the Western Alliance to attack our assets,’ this man says. ‘As far as the UPR government is concerned, this is an outright act of war.’ He sure as hell looks like he means it: the veins on his neck nearly pop out through his skin. He says their military have cordoned off all their facilities, including both of the country’s major UPR-owned ports. They’ve brought in extra ‘security’ — from now on no one will get in or out. Bloody hell. This means access to most of our food and mineral resources will be cut.

  Our PM Bill Chandler’s face flashes on the screen. ‘Such unsubstantiated claims are dangerous at this time. I urge the United People’s Republic to call off their unwarranted aggression towards New Zealand and our trading partners—’

  I snatch the remote away from Mikey. Kill the TV. Throw the bloody remote across the lounge.

  ‘Want to watch!’ Mikey yells. ‘Bad Ashy. Mean.’ He scrabbles over to reclaim the remote, but there’s no way I’m going to let him turn the bloody TV back on. I need some goddamned quiet time to think.

  Mikey thumps me in the chest. I’m so pissed off I thump him back. And then we’re fighting for real, all our screwed-up emotions spilling out. He elbows me in the cheek, which hurts like hell. Rolls so he’s got the whole force of his humungous weight on top of me, and starts bouncing to drive out all my air. I claw up at his face, trying to mash his eyes, knowing full well he’s unbeatable once he’s mad. He head-butts me between the eyes, and a bright burst of light explodes behind my temples as I try to pull him off me by his hair.

  ‘I want my dad!’ he screams. ‘You bring him back!’

  ‘He’s bloody d—’

  He whops me in the mouth with his shoulder. ‘Go away,’ he shrieks. ‘Want Jow Jow.’ He rolls off me and curls into a foetal ball. He’s crying hard out now, still slapping at me until I crawl out of his lethal range.

  I hurt all over, but it’s his heartbroken sobs that finally do me in. I’m swept by the most unbearable exhaustion. ‘I’m sorry, mate.’ I drag myself on to all fours and wrap myself around him. ‘It’s going to be all right.’ I hope like hell he can’t hear the lie. It feels like nothing will ever be all right again.

  He tries to shrug me off but, damn it, I need to hug him just as much as he needs a hug from me. If we’re going to survive, we’ll need to stick together. And I’m going to have to step up to the mark to protect him. I have no choice … because while our little world has just been blown to bits, outside our door the bigger world is now imploding too.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BY FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON I’m feeling so knacker ed I can hardly stand. I’ve managed to stop Mikey from spazzing out, but now he’s stuck on the sofa, wittering on that I should contact Jiao. I’m buggered if I will: since when has some stranger mattered to him more than me? Besides, the UPR is threatening our whole existence and I’m not prepared to hear her try to justify it — no bloody way.

  To make things worse, the internet has crashed so I can’t check out all the bullshit about Mum. Those four god-awful letters are prickling at my nerves, and Jeannie still hasn’t called me back. Could the cops already know about them? If so, what does it mean? That they don’t care? That Dad was left to handle sicko death threats on his own?

  There has, however, been a constant stream of other calls: people I hardly know saying they’d like to help. I end each call as quickly as I can. ‘Yes, I’ve come home to help Mikey’ … ‘Yes, I know Dad was a great, inspiring man’ … ‘Thanks for calling but I really have to go.’ For god’s sake, can’t they leave me be? I understand that people need to express their own shock and grief but the last thing I need right now is other people’s shit heaped on my already over-flowing stack.

  To rouse Mikey out of his mood, and to divert my brain, I start to bake a cake, using up the one last browning apple in the fridge. I’ve always been the family baker, from the time Grandma taught me when I was six. And I’m bloody good at it, though I’d never admit this to my new mates down south. I give Mikey the bowl and spatula to lick once the mixture’s in the oven, and he takes them away without a word. I’ve seen him sulk before — god knows, he’s master of the silent treatment — but this is very different, as if the joyful part of him that’s always bubbling just below the surface has leaked away.

  I’m half
way through washing up my mess when the phone rings again. I daren’t ignore it, in case it’s Jeannie, so dredge my hands out of the water to answer the call.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Jiao.’ Jeezus, is she psychic? But I don’t respond, and hear her struggling to swallow before she presses on. ‘May I speak to Mikey please?’

  I hold the receiver out as soapsuds dribble down my arm. ‘Mikey, it’s your girlfriend.’ I know I’m being a total arsehole but I don’t care.

  He’s off the sofa in a flash, bounding across the room with his hands outstretched towards the phone. ‘Jow Jow,’ he says, his face splitting into his trademark grin. ‘Come now.’

  The smile disintegrates as he listens to her reply. ‘No. Don’t care. You come.’ He’s giving me the hairy-eyeball treatment and, when he sees I’m watching, does the fingers and sticks out his tongue. Usually this makes me laugh (I’m the one who taught him, after all) but, honestly, right now it riles me up — and hurts. We’re supposed to stick together, not fight on different sides.

  He holds the receiver out to me. ‘Make Jow Jow come.’ There’s steel in his voice, and when I don’t take it from him straight away he throws it, forcing me to catch.

  I clear my throat. ‘Um, hello again.’

  ‘How is he coping?’ she asks. It strikes me she’s the first person who’s asked about Mikey in such a direct way.

  ‘Struggling,’ I say. ‘I took him to see Dad.’

  I hear her intake of breath. If she gives me shit for this, I’ll cut the call. ‘Poor Mikey,’ she says, and then, very quietly, ‘What about you?’

  I snort. ‘Just fine and dandy.’ Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit but it’s a useful ploy.