Page 76 of Just Say Christmas
Ander said, “They’re all right, eh.”
Marko would have answered, but Koti came into the shed. Marko went over, exchanged a couple back slaps and shoulder grips, and told his dad, “You’ve met Koti after some test match or other, I think. My dad, Ander Sendoa.”
A handshake, and then Koti told Marko, “Mate. It’s three o’clock. You’re getting married at four. You’re still in gumboots. I won’t even mention how you smell.”
“Oh.” Marko exchanged a look with his dad. “How long is it meant to take me to shower and shave? Never tell me the girls are going to give me more than ten minutes in the bathroom before they’re banging on the door.”
“Go on,” Ander said, a smile tugging at the edge of his hard mouth. “Reckon I’d better do the same, or your mum’ll have something to say about it.” But when Marko headed to the door, his dad said, “Marko,” and he turned back.
Koti looked between them and said, “I’ll be up at the house. Everything’s looking good to go outside. We got some sun shades rigged up, and the food’s done, too, other than the kai moana Kors brought down. Took his sister along with him and their dad this morning and got the limit. Nine packhorse crays, if you can believe it. We’re going to be feasting tonight, and still eating tomorrow. There’s food in there for an army, not for thirty. And I need to get changed myself.” As he was in rugby shorts, that would probably be a good idea. Marko suspected that the photographer had got some shots of him already. Moving tables, maybe, that didn’t need to be moved, just to get some tattooed muscle in action.
He took off, and Marko turned his gaze back to his dad. Ander’s dark eyebrows were drawn together, his face nearly grim. Why?
A lurch of fear that twisted his intestines, followed by a conscious effort to get himself out of that mindset and back into the moment. Ready to listen. Ready to react out of a balanced place. It wasn’t easy.
He’d been called a hard man. If he was, he’d learned it from the best. His dad, and his grandad before him. Quiet men who got the job done without making a fuss about it no matter the weather, no matter the effort. Men who stood up for what was right, and weren’t afraid to put their weight behind it, and their fists, too, if need be. There was nothing in the world that mattered more to him than being that kind of man himself. Than living up to his name.
Which made the look on his dad’s face tough to see. He asked, “Yeh, Dad?”
Ander put a hand on his shoulder. Oh. This was serious. He said, “Just want you to know, before all this starts, that I’m . . .” He looked over Marko’s shoulder, then back into his eyes. They were the same height. “That I’m proud,” he said. “That you’ve made me proud.”
The relief of it nearly sent Marko to his knees, and his throat was closing up once again. “About . . .” he said.
“That you chose this today,” his dad said. “You and Nyree. Well done, mate.” He clapped him on the shoulder, then gathered him in his arms and held on tight for a second. It had never happened before, not since Marko was grown, and Marko held on tight himself, fierce with joy, or some other emotion. He couldn’t even have named it.
“Thanks,” he said when Ander took a step back. “If I can be the dad you were, the husband you were . . . that’d be good. That’d be something to shoot for, eh.”
“Nah, mate,” his dad said, the smile finally making it all the way out. “You’ll be better. You’ve got your mum in you. Means you talk.”
That made Marko laugh, and his dad grin. “Well, yeh,” Marko said. “To be fair, Nyree has something to do with that.”
They headed out of the shed and up the track to the house in their gumboots. The mountains rose, craggy and gray, in the distance, and the heather was blooming on the hills, giving them a purple tinge. The arbor they’d built together stood in front of a semicircle of chairs with an aisle in the middle, and it was decorated with red and green, looking like a tropical paradise. As out of place here in the austere, rugged beauty of the McKenzie District as a visit from some exotic bird, a totem of fertility. Like the color Nyree had brought to his black-and-white life.
His dad asked, “What was your card of the day?”
It took Marko a second. “I didn’t know Mum told you about that.”
“Course she does. Every night after dinner. She tells me about all of you, what she’s seen, what you said. If you said anything, which you usually don’t. Sometimes your sisters do, though.”
He’d walked by his parents’ door so many times as a kid, heard the murmur of his mum’s musical voice, the occasional low, gravelly interspersion of his dad’s. It had been, he realized, the sound of security, but he’d never known what they talked about once the bedroom door was shut.
“Six of Wands,” he said. “Means my hard work is coming to fruition, apparently. My strength is recognized and applauded. Nice to be me, I guess. Nyree’s was interesting, though,” he went on, because he didn’t want to stop sharing this moment.
“Yeh?” Ander said. “What was it?”
“The Sun.”
“Oh. That’s a good one.” When Marko must have looked surprised, Ander said, “Mate. She’s been reading them out to me for thirty-five years. I could do it myself by now. I’ll give it a go, shall I?”
His dad interpreting the Tarot. This day just kept on surprising. “Sure,” Marko said, and waited, half-touched and half-laughing, for what would come next.
“The power is in her,” Ander said. “Her energy. Her life force. Her gifts. She’s shining her light, giving those gifts to the world. And, your mum would say . . . to you.”
“Yeh.” The lump in his throat was more like a boulder. “That’s what her own Nan says.E whiti e.Shine your light. Trust what’s inside. Shine.”
“Well, mate,” Ander said. “Reckon she’s doing it.” They’d reached the garden now. The roses were blooming with that extra exuberance his mum brought out in living things, and the lavender, too. People were milling about, and Ander said, “Don’t get caught up here. Go in and clean up. Wedding day matters to a woman. Go make her proud, too. Show her it matters that much to you.”
* * *
