by Finn Bell
So for the next hour I try to piece together our meeting, and the Faso twins show a surprising demand for exact detail—even getting me to go inside and take them through the conversation I had with Black Albie in the living room, and showing them exactly what things we looked at. Which maps, which papers, and so on. Between us, in this repeat performance, there seems nothing that could point to why Black Albie would want to kill himself.
When they finally thank me and make their excuses to leave, I’m still too nonplussed to pick one of the many questions I have to ask and instead find myself next to Tai, waving them off on the porch before I know it.
“Come see,” Tai says, leading me back into the house as John and Lucas’s car is lost from sight.
“Tai, I’m sorry about this. Were you guys close?” I ask as I follow him inside.
“It’s how it is, bro. Uncle Albie and me, yeah, we come a long way. He was on odd one, but always good to me, you know? A lot of the family didn’t like how he did things but I knew he cared, cared about people in his own way, you know? He just needed to be by himself mostly, that’s all. It doesn’t mean he didn’t love them,” he says, and stops in the kitchen. I can’t help but wonder how much of what Tai and Albie had was because of Tai rather than Albie.
Like me and Tai.
As I pull up alongside him, my eye is drawn to the same thing he’s looking up at.
Because here, still marked out with crime scene tape and little pink stickers, you can just make out where the rope was slung over an exposed beam and Black Albie’s weight left grooves in the wood.
And directly below it, a large section of the linoleum floor has been cut out and taken away. Probably by the police for testing or evidence or whatever. And counting I see that yeah, there’s only three chairs by the table, so they must have taken the one, too.
And again I unwillingly imagine Black Albie talking to me in his animated fashion about the history of Riverton, interrupting himself with his own litany of nods and mhmmms, and I just can’t see that same person stepping off a chair in his kitchen shortly after.
“What are we doing here, Tai?” I ask when the silence stretches and Tai just sits there looking around.
“Lots of people kill themselves, bro, we’ve even had a few in the family. And although nobody said it openly, I don’t think any of us were too surprised, you know. When the news gets around, everybody says they’re shocked and go around asking each other how this could happen. But I think most of us know we’re just being polite, not wanting to hurt the feelings of the parents or partners and such. Most of us weren’t really that surprised. You hear it and you think, yeah, it figures. Some people just never seemed like they were going to work out, you know?” Tai says.
Yeah, dead lemons, Tai, I think, but I don’t say anything.
“I only saw Uncle Albie about once a month. I know it doesn’t sound like we were close, but that was more often than he saw almost anybody else. It was just his way,” Tai says with a sad smile.
“It bothered me a bit when I was younger and I asked him about it once. And do you know what he said to me? He said it was because he loved us all too much to take us for granted,” Tai answers his own question with a laugh.
“He said we were all too special and if he saw us every day, he’d stop seeing how special we are and take us for granted and not treat us well and he’d feel bad. And then he’d have to drink a lot like his dad did, just to feel better.
“I remember because he said we were opposites, me and him. He said every family has them. He said he could only keep the love in him alive if he was alone a lot and I couldn’t kill the love even if I was surrounded by the whole family every day.”
Tai’s looking up at the rope marks on the beam.
“You think he did this?” Tai asks me, not looking away from those rope marks.
“I don’t know, Tai. I’m sorry, I only met him the once, I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head.
“I don’t think he did. You know those people nobody is really surprised ends up killing themselves? Uncle Albie was a bit odd, but he wasn’t like that. Most of the family thought he was crazy but he was just sane in a different way. And he was good and happy. He found a way to be himself in the world and it worked, you know? It wasn’t what would have worked for other people and I know it sounds strange but he was happy. I won’t believe he did this,” Tai says.
We’re quiet for some time before Tai speaks again.
“And none of this seems right. He didn’t like being in the house. He was only ever here half the time. He was mostly out hunting or hiking somewhere in the wild, didn’t like to spend time here, even with his health problems. He only really came here to work on his history collection. He was always out somewhere, days, weeks at a time, just living off the land. He used to live out of a truck, didn’t even have a house.
“This was actually his dad’s house. Uncle Albie inherited it when he died. We were all surprised by that; the two of them never got on. We thought he’d not leave Uncle Albie anything. But then he was his only child; his mother died giving birth to him. It’s like they never got on right from the start. Now Big Albie, Albert Senior, him I wouldn’t have been surprised if he killed himself. He had a terrible temper on him, always either angry or drunk or both.
“But he died from liver cancer, and drinking yourself to death probably doesn’t count as real suicide. Maybe Uncle Albie was right about him not seeing people too often, about loving people too much to take them for granted. Maybe he would have turned out like Albert Senior if he did.
“And Albert Senior died in this house too, you know. Back when I was a kid. I remember Uncle Albie wouldn’t set foot in it for ages. He never really liked the place. I just can’t see him choosing to kill himself in here.”
Tai says it again, as if he’s arguing with himself. “And why hanging? He had a bunch of guns. Why do it this way?” Tai asks.
And, in what’s becoming the theme of the week, I don’t have any answers for him.
“I know I shouldn’t be asking you this, but do you think this has something to do with the Zoyls?” Tai asks without meeting my eye.
“Honestly, Tai, I’ve been asking myself that ever since I got here. But for real, I don’t know, and I’m not going to lie to you. I almost want them to be behind it. It would make it better than suicide somehow. But I don’t think so. I can’t see what the point would be. Black Albie lived way out here on his own. Didn’t bother anyone, wasn’t involved in anything. He didn’t care about things beyond his world here, by all accounts. If there is a connection, I don’t see it,” I finish, having to discount the Zoyls from possible involvement against my own irrational need to find them behind every bad thing in Riverton.
“Yeah, the cops, the family, everybody’s said the same thing. And for true, I can’t really see them involved in this either. It’s just not the Albie I knew, is all. Maybe I just don’t want to admit that I didn’t know him as well as I thought,” Tai says, and rolls back out of the kitchen into the lounge.
As I follow him out, back into the stacks of books and folders scattered everywhere, piles of Riverton history all around us, I begin to wonder now how many things Albie will take to his grave, how many stories and secrets will now finally never be heard.
As if Tai reads my thoughts he says, “He was going to write a book, you know, chronicle all the stories and bits of history. So much of it is just lost now. Too many things that only Albie still remembered, only he knew about, all gone.”
“What happens now?” I ask.
“I have to head back home. News is still getting around and the family needs to be together,” Tai answers. “You’ll come to the tangi?” he asks. Even my limited knowledge of Māori culture allows the understanding that a tangi is a Māori funeral service. It’s an extended affair that can take several days, and I’m touched.
“I’ll be there.”
CHAPTER 34
April 12, TWO MONTHS AGO . . .
The tangi
for Black Albie is a steady stream of people coming and going over three days of what seems like near-constant speeches and eating. I’m impressed by the amount of people who show up, having expected far less for such a reclusive man.
While much of what happens is in Māori, I soon figure out that many of the speeches are not the usual eulogies to the audience about the deceased, but rather conversations directly with Black Albie that are only being witnessed by the rest of us. Some are conversations, while some sound more like arguments. In many cases, the anger and sadness become intimate things, but on balance I gather that a lot of people were not too happy with Albie for how he did things.
At least it proves that people actually did care.
I’m part of a conversation in the parking lot outside, where much of the real proceedings of people dealing with dying take place, when I catch Patricia’s eye through the crowds and start rolling without a thought.
“Hey, you,” I say as I meet her halfway.
“Hey, Finn,” Patricia replies then says, “do you want to get out of here?”
I find that I’d already managed to say, “Yes, let’s go,” before any mature, principled part of my brain can intervene.
So we’re back in my car, driving along the coast, when I break the silence and ask, “Where to?”
“Just keep going,” she says, so I do.
It’s a funeral-appropriate cold and cloudy day as we speed along the mostly deserted highway. Patricia settles down, staring out the window, so I put on some rock music and we just drive, not saying anything. When I finally pull over we’ve gone all the way through my Counting Crows album and made it to Lake Manapouri at the start of the Fiordland National Park.
I kill the engine just as the sunset glitters its last protest across the vast, dark waters of the lake and glows against the Cathedral Mountains crowding the horizon.
It’s all ridiculously pretty.
“They shot the Lord of the Rings movies around here, you know. Some of the Hobbit ones too,” Patricia says, staring at the view, and as I look over at her, I realise that she’s been crying.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if real life was like the movies, Finn? I mean, we already live in a movie set. Wouldn’t it be great if everything worked like that too? Everybody is so clearly good or bad. All the dying has meaning. Everything makes sense, and you’re sure there’s going to be a happy ending,” she says, shifting herself around and pulling my seat lever so I’m unexpectedly pushed back. Then she gets over and straddles me as she pushes my seatback flat.
As she kisses me, I can feel her press her body hungrily into mine, somewhere between romance and assault. I’m suddenly, suffocatingly overwhelmed by her on every side. I’m tangled in her mouth and limbs and hair and breath until there’s nowhere to turn, no way to gain distance or safety or air. I’m not sure when it happens but at some point the glowing, aching desperation turns to sharp pain and slow, deep, wet rhythm inside her. This is sex and making love and fucking all in one building descent as we tear and trash and turn into each other.
It’s full-dark outside when we finally collapse into a gasping heap and I’m blissfully empty of thought and full-up drunk on the taste of her.
“You okay?” she asks by my ear as she reaches down and grasps the base of my penis and pushes my softening shaft deeper into her before settling her weight down on me and resting her head next to mine.
“Impossibly so, yes,” I say.
“I’m sorry. I know we decided not to do this, it’s just Uncle Albie’s dead, and the funeral, and all those people with their bullshit. I just needed to feel something real,” she says.
“You guys were close, too?” I ask.
“In a way, he got me. I think for all his strangeness, he actually got a lot of people, you know?” Patricia says. “But mostly it’s just how everybody gets, everyone talking over each other, saying things that don’t mean anything while we all know what’s really going on. What do you call that?”
“Family, I think,” I answer.
“Finn?” Patricia asks after a while.
“Mmm?” I respond.
“Was that your first time. Your first time since the accident?” Patricia asks.
“Yes,” I answer. In more ways than one, I think.
“Oh God, that makes it worse,” Patricia says with a slow, infectious chuckle. “Not only do I basically jump you without asking but it’s your first time, too.”
“Well, sometimes you want to be asked nicely, and sometimes you don’t want to be asked at all,” I say, making Patricia’s chuckle gallop into a full laugh. The shaking of her body around me stirs us so that soon we’re pulling at each other again.
It’s only on the road back that my annoying brain reasserts itself and asks, “So now what?”
“I don’t know,” Patricia replies.
“Out there. That wasn’t just me, was it?” I ask.
Patricia lays a hand on mine and says, “No, Finn, it wasn’t just you.”
But I realise as grounding and nakedly honest as it was, it doesn’t change anything. I’m still me, with the same problems I had before, and some of them include the Zoyls. And Patricia is still a single parent who doesn’t have the luxury of risking things.
And somewhere between learning Black Albie’s died and now, I think, I realised something else.
If the timings prove to be right, then someone nailed my cats to my front door and either on the same day or only a day or so later, Black Albie is hanged in his kitchen. I hadn’t thought there was any possible connection, but what if there is? Maybe things are more serious than I thought.
We still don’t know what the Zoyls were looking for in my house, either. Maybe it’s all related. Maybe it’s not good to be around me.
In the end, I always come back to not knowing enough to be sure of anything.
And that’s not the base you want to start a relationship on, is it?
But then it feels now like we’ve already started, despite ourselves.
“Let’s just take a few days and see what we come up with, okay?” Patricia says as I drop her off in the still full parking lot.
As she walks away, she’s halfway to her car before she turns back and smiles at me and I feel like I don’t need a few days.
But of course the world always demands a price for intimacy like that. No fierce spell of happiness can be free.
In my case, I guess the price is not sleeping again, because for the first time in a long time, my bed feels too empty with just me in it.
When I finally give up and go sit by the fire at around 2:00 a.m., I can think of little else but the two of us in the car earlier.
I find myself wondering about everything Betty’s said to me. About how we all need pain. How we need it to help us learn. How we can’t change if we try to only avoid pain. How people respond to pain. First you try to fix it, and if that doesn’t work, then you try to escape it, and if that doesn’t work, then you either accept it or kill yourself. The more you try to run from the pain the worse things get.
Somehow in a drowsy, sleep-deprived way, I end up mixing the lines of thought together and I wonder if things work like that with happiness, too. That’s what Father Ress said. We’re all of us—normal people and serial killers and everyone in between—we’re all just trying to get happy in our own ways.
The two things have to fit together somehow, don’t they? Like Betty always says—it’s all happening in the one head. Maybe that’s what happens to the screw-ups like me; we’re all running away from pain, thinking we’re running after happiness. The more it doesn’t work the faster we run until only running matters, and we don’t even know if we’re running to something or from something anymore. We’re never in the here and now, we’re either running from the past or towards the future. Then a woman gets on top of you in a car and knocks the wind out of you and you’re suddenly in the present and everything is simple.
CHAPTER 35
April 19, TWO MONTHS AGO . .
.
“There’s more in the back bedroom as well, a lot more. Seriously, I don’t even know what half of this stuff is,” I say as I roll back into the lounge with another box of oddities on my lap.
“It’s history, bro, it was his thing,” Tai replies as he opens out an ancient-looking rolled-up map in front of him.
It’s been a week since the funeral and yesterday, Tai called to let me know that Black Albie had left him the house and all its contents in his will. We headed over here shortly after dawn with the entire range of Rangi women from Becks to Mihi in tow.
Upon arrival, with unspoken agreement—like all people everywhere, always—we all immediately started poking around through everything, intent on unearthing whatever secrets were in the offing.
Albie’s house is a match more than equal to any amount of curiosity and nosey-ness. So much so that eventually some of the girls tire of the random searching and have headed outside, and Becks starts packing what can be salvaged from the kitchen into the van while we keep searching things.
And what we mostly find is, as Tai says, history.
“I see what you mean about him not really living here that much, Tai. You couldn’t live here full-time if you wanted to. Every room, the hallway, even the bathroom is like this. Stacks of papers and boxes. It’s like he just used this entire house as a storeroom for history,” I say.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Tai agrees. “The cops asked me if thought anything was missing or out of place, but there’s just no way to know, is there,” he says as he sweeps his arms out to indicate the clutter.
“But wait, there’s more . . .” Becks says in a pretty good imitation of a TV infomercial presenter as she comes back through the front door.
“Tai, your daughters have gotten Mihi stuck in a whale bone skeleton they found behind the shed. You’re up,” she says as she kisses him on the top of the head and walks through to the kitchen.
“How come it’s ‘my daughters’ all of a sudden?” Tai asks in mock upset.