Dreamboat Dad (21 page)

THE FRAMED DEGREE ON THE
wall, declaring graduation Bachelor of Laws
with honours at Canterbury University in 1953, was like some proclamation
of the man's higher status to Henry Takahe. The floor to ceiling law
books on two walls, several paintings, a piece of metal and stone sculpture,
wide desk that made definitive separation between lawyer and client.
The ceramic pen holder, leather-cornered ink blotter, a paperweight of a
bronze bull, another of cut glass weighing open a thick legal file. Framed
photographs of his two rather pretty daughters, two fine-looking sons, in
a way more approachable than the man himself. Proud sire of a brood of
four who had — he'd tell each client as if in intimacy — all graduated,
two in law, another in commerce, the fourth in accounting. James, Sarah,
Jonathan, Annabel.

And there his wife, in colour, as if a breeze blew under her carefully
cut and groomed locks, brunette, straight white teeth, married to this man
who had his life his destiny and every client's fate under control. With
a bad news update to give Henry Takahe about his tribe's petition to
government for the return of their seized acres.

Had no standing in law, he hoped Henry understood that.

When Henry didn't. Not with all the fees paid out to this point and
Richard Upton still edging for the final account to be paid, asking of the
tribe's financial position. Henry's thoughts anyway wavered between Lena
leaving him and Upton, the man before him.

Henry stood up.

Richard, Henry said, a warrior tribe needs more robust legal
representation than what you are offering. We are ceasing all use of your
services forthwith. Goodbye.

Driving home he was back to thoughts of Lena. Smiled, rueful, to
think what in the past he would have done to unfaithful wife and lover:
glad he was past that stage. What did violence ever achieve except in
self-defence or to bring drunks under control as his job still occasionally
required? The war he'd fought in, that was justified. But not belting his
wife; slowly it had dawned on him this was wrong. Funny — it was
contact with American hotel guests whose values had rubbed off, their
horror of a man committing any act of violence against a female, that
started to change him.

Thinking of Americans, news had told of race riots in several
American cities, Negroes up in arms at yet another act of police violence.
He wondered how Yank was getting on. Not exactly feeling guilty but
certainly a man could have done a lot better than completely ignoring the
boy. That stupid pride thing again. Maybe a man could get to know him
in adult years. Henry hoped so. Though not holding out for making up
for those years.

As for the mother, that name slut seemed a prophecy, if he wanted
to take prophecy from it. She'd been sleeping with Barney, of all people.
The slut confirmed — till he calmed down. Understood his own love-making
efforts were selfish, for his own ends, that he had been a diligent
husband in that way if no other. Realised war had taken away his ability to
properly love a woman — any woman. Taken a lot of other things from
a man too.

But he was still here, wasn't he? Still standing, still doing right by his
community, as the elders had groomed him to do? Maybe the war had
taken Lena's ability to properly love too. Could be she kept seeking what
could never be found.

Still, a man couldn't dwell on stuff like that. Instead, he hoped young
Yank was getting on all right. It was a tough country and Mississippi, as the
world knew, one of the worst states with its prejudice against Negroes.

Kid was never a fighter, but he has got something courageous in him.
Won't deny him that. Takes guts to get up on stage and sing. People's
worst fear is public appearance. Must have taken guts to put up with my
attitude those years, too. Good on him. And good luck with meeting his
real father.

THE HOSTILE CROWD BECOMES A
gauntlet we must walk. Of white faces
in ugly contortions, citizens of this town yelling to go mind our own
town's business, swearing and cursing, spitting, eyes veined red with
hatred, glazed hard in the fires of bigotry. From children coached in
prejudice to unknowing elderly who never asked a question of themselves
in all their closed lives, they are screaming for our blood.

Cops are spaced in front of them with their own glares and sneers at
us.
Nigger shits,
nigger of every contemptuous name in the limited verbal
repertoire of a species who have beaten, shot, locked up and framed a
million times those of dark complexion and Negroid features.

The police FORCE. Big, strapping, paunch-bellied, muscle-swollen,
bristling with arms and hardwood and steel restraints, their badges showing
membership of a gang with special powers and a list of exemptions
from crimes they commit. Look at them: spilling over in frustration at
no excuse, yet, to inflict their force upon these violators of their fixed
assumptions.

As we march on.

My father has been dignified, all lifted head and set walking pace
saying hardly a word in our march from the town outskirts, holding up
placards demanding an end to every discriminating practice and act of
injustice, singing
We Shall Overcome
, symbolic songs of protest unknown
to me as likely the only foreigner.

The mad courage of this public protest by a hated minority in a town
infamous for being the bombing capital of the western world, a last bastion
of Ku Klux Klan who have blown up Negro churches and the houses of
civil rights protesters just like us, murdered Negroes at will, with the tacit
backing of city hall and police.

Like at Whitecave, I see church spires, crosses, constructions for folk
to gather and pay homage to God. I see His true believers, bulging eyed,
wanting unholy death for all of us who are not their own.

We pass within touching, spitting range of the Klansmen who my
father recognises and points out. They've got a certain look, he says,
forced by the din to speak in my ear. Mirrors of a community, men who
snarl and ooze hatred, women who spit venom and verbal missiles at us,
who scream like banshees, shriek like witches let loose from the Dark
Ages:
Die
,
neeggahs — Die!

Die, rot in he-ell, drown in your own sewers, burn in Satan's eternal
inferno, a plague be upon you, you're monkeys not humans. On and on
the insults and dire dark hopes spew forth, like some self-chosen exorcism
of evil, except to them it feels like goodness and deepest desire for racial
purity expressed.

I need not ask what I am doing here. It is simple: I am one of these
people, marching. They are of theirs, howling at us.

Like molasses down the centre of creamy, frothing white, we pour
into the town square. Our orderly column under instructions to remain
passive, surrounded by a maelstrom of yelling, screaming, spitting whites
closing in as if trying to crush us through greater mass and infinitely
greater fury. Like God's avenging angels soon to wipe us off the face of
His good earth.

Now an expectant hush upon the crowd as we arrive. Then a great
howling, cackling collective laughter breaks out, like let-loose patients of
an insane asylum.

And we on the inside soon see why: the statue of the confederate
soldier on a marble plinth has live guards — in striped uniforms. Toting
billy clubs. And black like near every one of us, excepting myself and a
handful of whites come down from the north to join the good fight.

Go on now, fight your own like y' always do, neegahs! Tear each other's throats
out! Save us the trouble! Y'all soon be joinin 'em, if you ain't in your graves!

Word races along to us that prisoners — Negro prisoners — have been
brought in from the notorious Parchman Farm Prison to guard the symbol
of white supremacy, that statue of proud Southern soldier fighting Negro
liberation, prepared to die rather than see slavery abolished back when
this country was torn in two over the issue. Knowing the marchers will
not turn against their own, least not prisoners, yet hoping to see us break
ranks, wage civil war against one another.

A police van arrives and cops with large dogs on leashes spill
out the back, changing the tone of the crowd to a throaty glee. Canines bark
and strain as pale-complexioned humans bellow for them to tear us to bits,
rip our throats out, gobble up our black balls, feast on nigger meat. As if
especially trained to attack only dark-skinned flesh, the dogs froth, mad-eyed
with want.

When my father asked if I wished to join in a protest march I was afraid, of
course I was. Not just afraid but embarrassed, at joining a cause when I'd
not earned my stripes — the kind you get from flailing by whips.

Marion Williams, the Piney Woods preacher's wife, started to sing up
front at the feet of the statue. A Negro spiritual, a Christian song in praise
of God, near drowned out and yet the singing could be discerned; I only
had to stay fixed on the figure of the big woman on the stone steps and
move my mouth to her silenced lips and know our voices were ringing
from great soaring mountaintops. That's how it felt.

How I felt, a Maori, here a white man in most folks' eyes. But son
of this man beside me, putting arm over a son's shoulders. His voice was
shouted down too, but I could feel the vibrations of his vocal cords enter
my body, strengthen me. Lift me.

They told me, too: this may be one of the last times, my son. So
make it a time of true courage. True love, for each other, for suffering
mankind.

My every instinct sensed this, though mind refused to give it words.

Not that we felt the mob would turn on us. Not with the national
press here, with the heavily armed National Guard in large numbers, and
supportive fellow whites down from the north acting at last on guilt and a
sense of duty to fellow American citizens. Still I sensed something of a final
process under way that, no different from any inevitable event, would take
place.

Might be why I had to keep wiping at my eyes, with no real reason to
shed tears, while the rest were still singing and smiling and rocking gladly
as they did.

I looked at my daddy and it was as though he had moved a distance,
even as he had got so close my arm reached partway round his waist.

Even when he smiled down on me, from his loftier stature born of
this Southern experience, by the war he fought for this nation, by the love
experience with my mother. That too, all of it pouring out of him, this
feeling of certainty he was saying goodbye. Not now, not this minute, nor
this day. But sometime, soon.

SHIT. THAT'S WHAT JESS SAYS
looking in the rear vision where he's kept
vigil from the first day we sat together in this car. Starts shaking his head.

Tells me, don't be turning around. Moments later he says, motherfuckers.
They trying to come alongside.

Turns the mirror back to my ownership as I'm driving, at his earlier
perplexing insistence. Here they drive on the opposite side to what I'm
used to.

Without being instructed, I speed up. The lights drop back, but not by
much and they surge back at us again. I'm wondering again why my father
has given me the wheel.

He says, son? I never wished so much not be a nigger in the South with
my only son not born and raised in this godforsaken state of Mississippi,
this peculiar nation of men who claim us the most free on God's earth,
when no black person is close to free.

I ask, is it that bad?

Jess says, worse than that. This is not a following, it's a mission.

Right outside my window the headlight glare becomes a vehicle as it
comes alongside. I see the outline of a person that turns into the face of
a man lit from their interior light, I guess deliberately. His features are a
white man's. Wearing expression only from the South. I know that already.
He could have been in that gauntlet today of Negro-hating white folk.

My father in urgent movement the other side, rustle of clothing, clack
of metal against metal. Can feel the energy coming off him like heat rays.

To my left the man looms up stabbing a finger, eyes bulging. Same as
we've seen in daylight today, made worse by the tiny glow of eerie light
in their vehicle. No sign of a gun — yet.

Putting distance between us for however long it takes them to surge
back at us, I get this thought: I am my mother's blood too: Maori. I am
Maori
. I am also
Scots
, a bit of
Irish
. They were warriors too. They knew
oppression. Since when did they stop being warriors?

You driving.

I sure am.

You driving.

What I'm doing.

Cross the centre line.

What?

Get into the other lane.

You what?

No one else but us and them on the road.

And you'll be doing — what?

You keep saying what. Please, just shift to the opposite lane.

You for real?

Please, Mark. Motherfucker rednecks not going to be popping off
at my son. We got to get you back in one piece, same state you arrived.
Your momma, son. The least I owe her is to get her son back alive. My
son too.

Just cross into the opposing lane?

Yeah.

And if someone's coming our way?

Got a mile of straight out front. Be all over by then.

What all over?

He looks across, repeats himself. You driving.

I accelerate and shift the wheel hard down to go other side of the road.
Different feeling entirely on the wrong side of the road.

Good. Now let them come again.

You fucken crazy?

Mark, we keep talking and my fear's going to take over. Let-them-come.
I ease off the speed. Jess is turned away, though I know he has a gun.

I had never seen a gun, not in anger, just hunters' rifles, till I came here.
Never even had a dream I shot someone. Done everything else: flew,
breathed and talked underwater, scaled tall buildings with bare hands, all
the heroic impossible. But guns never figured.

Suddenly my father disappears, diving over into the rear seat. Window
winder far side going down at speed, letting in engine roar, our own tyre
noise, the night, this life some have no choice but to lead.

My father says
fuckers!
Now you got the
man
to deal with. He speaks
it as wid. Adds, man and his
son.
Says it like the word sun. Like brightest
light of all, lighting our way on this dark night.

He utters other things, a stream of words in a language of here, his
own, not mine. I am what I was raised as. I don't have to understand it. I
am not Negro, coloured or black. I was raised a Maori.

If I am not myself first, I can never be of and for my father.

In the rear vision my father rises up like any ambusher. Like any
runaway slave turned the tables on his pursuing white masters. Your turn
now! Three hundred years long of waiting for this moment.

The Maori warrior in me screams from one thousand years long. I yell,
Klan motherfucker bitches!
Like an angry black man would. Like any man
with pride.

In then out of their flood-lighting headlights we go. Air pulses and
reverberates from the downed window where my father hunches looking
just over the sill.

Hit the brakes!

So I do: hard enough to make an abrupt slowing and bring our pursuers
into line with my father's readied weapon.

Shoot them! Cut off their heads! I scream. We'll cook and eat the
scum! The Maori warrior coming out.

Everything gets crystal clear. As if I'm gazing into our deepest Waiwera
boiling pool at every silica bump, like sponge growth in a boiling medium
meant to make life impossible.

As if the algae my mother says are miracles of life on the edges of
boiling water have found ways to survive right inside the monster.

That's where we are: inside a boiling hellhole still alive, still with intent
and cunning and our manhood still intact.

Gunshots, one-two-three.

In the mirror the headlights wobble, veer violently. More shots from
my father's gun. The vehicle shape lurches then disappears, headlights like
a rearing, careering wild animal going down.

Gun it!

Down the highway we go, beams spreading the night, insects like tiny
avengers sent to slow us, splattering the windscreen to make wet organic
mud. Silence upon us. My ears echo the shots.

Then the shaking starts. At the knees and spread up to my trembling
hands.

I think my daddy has just killed two men.

I say in a throat-catching voice, Pops? What now?

Don't know why I call him that, just can't say Dad or Daddy.

He gives ghost of a satisfied smile — no, a righteous smile. Heaves a
sigh with sob in it. My life — our lives — just changed. Soon be a wanted
man — men.

A wanted nigger, along with his nigger cohort father.

I think maybe hell does exist: the living version. Yet feels like heaven,
it surely does.