I thought to myself that Uncle Sam would have loved Muskegon and its history. He would have loved it now. Muskegon had become a popular tourist destination — Native American reservations, forests, parks, wetlands and picturesque villages dotted the shoreline. The fall was coming, and the leaves drifted across the landscape, red, yellow, purple, like dreams.
Indeed, I felt as if Uncle Sam was riding with me. Or as if I was Uncle Sam on my way to a rendezvous that was already thirty years overdue. Every now and then I came across marinas and gaps in the trees where the sun sparkled on the lake and pleasure boats etched the water with arrow patterns.
Beside me, I had opened the box containing Tunui a te Ika. The greenstone was lustrous with an inner light, as if it was bursting with happiness.
‘Almost there, little one. Almost there.’
I came to the lakeside village that the car rental receptionist had marked on the map. I stopped for more precise directions at a small shop near the jetty selling boating supplies. The proprietor was a grizzled old-timer and he pointed the way.
‘Go down the highway until you reach the left fork. The Harper place is on the second bend.’
Quarter of an hour later, I saw the letterbox:
BACK OF THE MOON
C. & W. HARPER
I turned in at the driveway. The road took me through natural pastureland and down into a broad shallow basin around the shores of the lake. I could imagine two brothers playing there, one signing to the other: I’ll race you, Johnny! There, among a scattering of trees, was the house. It was sturdy, two-storeyed, and its windows flashed in the sun. It looked as if it had been standing forever, having sprung from the ground hand-hewn and shaped by determined hands to keep generations safe through all the seasons — the kind of house that an Illinois country boy would grow up in.
I walked up the steps to the front door. The house had been recently painted. To one side was a garage and farm sheds. A ute was parked in the garage. I knocked. Knocked again. No answer. I walked around the back and rapped on the back door. A radio was playing inside. Somebody was at home.
From the lake, I heard dogs barking. I looked up, shading my eyes from the glare. Across the water and out of the sun came a man with two small dogs in a runabout. The man waved at me, and docked at the jetty. His dogs came bounding through the trees and up the slope to the house, barking. I knelt down and waited for their arrivaclass="underline"
‘Hello, boy! Hello, dog! How are you, fellas?’
My heart was beating in anticipation. I didn’t want to look up. I heard the man whistle and call his dogs off.
‘Hi there,’ he yelled. ‘I saw your car coming along our road. Can I help you?’
The sun was dazzling. All I could see was a shape — golden hair on fire with the light. All I could hear was a voice — light, friendly, but guarded. He put out a hand. Strong, firm, lightly filmed with sweat. And all the while, the dogs were barking, jumping at us both.
‘The name’s Cliff Harper,’ he said.
He stepped into my vision.
‘But people call me by my middle name, Sam, to distinguish me from my Dad, Cliff senior.’
The son, not the father. With the look of the father, made from the same clay. But where God had breathed divinity into the father, the son was more of a mortal. The ahua, the appearance was there, but the ihi, the energy that gave the body it’s own sense of self, was different. Or, perhaps, I had been living with the dream of Cliff Harper, the father, for too long. Had idealised him, made him charismatic, impossible to replicate. Yes, perhaps that was it. It was difficult not to feel disappointed.
‘I was hoping to speak to Mr Harper senior,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry, but Dad’s gone to Indiana,’ Sam Harper answered. ‘Both he and Mom are there to see Mom’s parents. Grandpop’s not too well.’
He looked at me curiously. Then his eyes narrowed, as if he was puzzling something out. He snapped his fingers.
‘That’s it,’ he said.
I doubt if Sam Harper even thought about what he was doing. He opened the back door and motioned me to follow him.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘There’s something I’d like you to see.’
The dogs tried to come inside with us but he ordered them out. He was on the run through the house and I didn’t get much of a chance to see what the interior was like. A hallway. A sitting room. Up the stairs. Past a bedroom. Another bedroom. A study.
‘This is where Dad does his paper work,’ Sam Harper said. ‘You know, all the bills, correspondence, his Vietnam Veterans’ stuff —’
Books. Deer horns mounted above the doorway. A huge trout and, underneath, a photograph of a father and son proudly holding the fish after they’d caught it. Other photographs in silver frames — a family portrait, a beautiful young woman, a photo of Cliff Harper himself.
Sam Harper was reaching for an album from his father’s book shelf. I couldn’t take my eyes off the photograph of Cliff Harper. He had grown older, but his looks were intact. Blond, clean cut, still devastatingly handsome. Although his unswerving gaze had lost its innocence, he still possessed his boyish grin and mysterious half smile.
Sam Harper clambered down and stood beside me. He flicked through the pages, then stopped. He looked at me and pointed to a photograph.
‘Do you know who this is?’ he asked.
The photograph was dated Vietnam, 1969. I knew it well. Uncle Sam and Cliff Harper look as if they’ve just come up from the beach after taking a swim. The photograph must have been taken when they were on leave at Vung Tau. Someone, I don’t know who —George maybe — had taken it. Cliff Harper is sitting on the sand. Uncle Sam is resting in the harbour of his arms. His upper body is strongly developed. Around his neck is a greenstone hei tiki. Tunui a te Ika.
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘That’s my uncle.’
I was trying to keep my emotions under control but it was so hard.
Once I had thought that the one who really drew your attention in the photograph was Cliff Harper. It was he who looked directly at the camera. Now, seeing the photograph again, I realised that while Cliff Harper was the looker, Uncle Sam was the one who eventually held your fascination. His eyes were looking somewhere else, at some point beyond the camera. His beauty was more subtle. It had less to do with the externals of high cheekbones and chiselled planes and more to do with a deep inner sadness. Uncle Sam was like the moon, veiled and evanescent.
‘I’m named after him, aren’t I?’ Sam Harper said.
His voice sounded breathless with wonder. For a moment I thought everything was going to be all right. Then:
‘You’re the guy who phoned Dad from New Zealand.’
‘Yes. You’re named after my Uncle Sam. And, yes, I phoned your father from New Zealand.’
‘And again from Ottawa? It was you, wasn’t it. You.’
Sam Harper’s voice had taken on an angry tone. When I looked at him I could see he had become afraid. He put the album back in its place and, arms folded, sat on his father’s desk.
‘What’s this all about? Why has Dad been acting the way he has?’
What could I tell him? That his father and my uncle had been lovers? No.
‘I shouldn’t have invited you in,’ Sam Harper said. ‘I want you to leave. Now.’
I saw him looking at a rifle leaning against Cliff Harper’s desk.