‘As We Wind Down the Road’

Passing through the settlement just north of Kaikoura, Ted sees the moon lifting out of the ocean. He’s chosen a seat on the right side of the bus, like everyone does who knows the route, so that he can look out over the sea and spot the seals. The bus is half empty, a few sleepy tourists and a Māori woman knitting speedily in front of him. He pulls his fleece around him and shivers. He hasn’t seen any seals, though there is the odd black blob on a rock. That bastard doctor was right. The macular is doing its thing to his eyes. No more driving. But there are buses and he can’t miss his mate’s funeral.

He leans his head back against the headrest and thinks about a much earlier trip, same bus, same route. Another wintery evening.

‘If you look over there, on the right, you can see the moon just coming up.’ It was two and a half hours out from Christchurch and the light was leaving the sky. The bus driver’s voice had sounded hollow with exhaustion.

‘I’m cold. Why’s it so cold, Daddy?’ Danny had asked. It was about the tenth time he’d said it. Then, turning his head to the window, he had caught sight of the moon.

‘It’s so big! Daddy, it’s so big. Why’s it so big?’

Ted shifted the kid’s solid little body onto his other leg. Who knew the little tyke weighed so much? Who knew he asked so many questions?

Ted hadn’t got a clue. ‘It’s just coming up. Always bigger when it’s just come out of the sea, I guess.’

‘Does it stay in the sea all day? Under the water?’

He sighed. All those questions and no bloody answers.

‘Want another biscuit, Dan?’

The kid had eaten the biscuit and asked for a drink. (Why’s this lemon? Mummy always has orange?) and then, finally his head had flopped against Ted’s chest and he had started to make snuffly open-mouthed snores.

They were still by the ocean but about to head inland towards The Clarence. The sky was darkening and the moon, now smaller and brighter, was following, casting a long-lit pathway towards them, across the unusually still sea, a stairway to heaven.

Liz had gone up to Blenheim the day before in a mate’s car. She couldn’t face the bus trip on that wiggly road. Four months gone and still puking most days. Another baby. Oh well, these things happen.

‘Won’t hurt you to look after him, for once,’ she’d said. He thought that was a bit unfair but let it go because she had big black rings under her eyes, like a panda. Not a very friendly one either. They would meet up again at Ron’s mum’s that night. Ron’s wedding was the next day.

Bloody wedding. Who’d have thought Ron was the first to fall for that old trap? No way he and Liz were buying into all that shit. That wasn’t the Ron he knew, the ace guitarist, the mainstay of their band and the leader of their little bunch of rebels, evicted early from Marlborough Boys’ College and headed for international stardom. Well, not quite. The band had played a few gigs, and then, one by one, they had got jobs in shops or trained for a trade, or gone to work for their dads. Ted had met Liz at a nuclear protest in Christchurch and they had settled by the beach in New Brighton. They hadn’t sold out. They still knew what they stood for, really. But two babies. Shit.

The bus rattled like a box of bolts and stank of oil. No heating and no lights. He cuddled the little boy into him and tucked his coat around him. Danny opened his big brown eyes and looked up at him.

‘See, Dad, it’s still looking at us. The moon. Why’s it smaller now?’

Then, promptly, he had nodded off again. Ted looked down at the long, dark lashes against his son’s pale face. The little boy’s fingers were curled around a handful of Ted’s sleeve. His irritation evaporated. Such a bright little fella. His son. The way he looked at him, like he had all the answers. Even though he knew bugger-all.

Ted was kind of dreading the wedding. Meeting up with the old school pals.

‘What are you doing now, Ted?’ 

‘Mike’s gone into real estate. He got himself a lovely house out in Springlands.’ And so on.

He could picture their reactions when he said he was painting badges with marijuana leaves on them and selling them at New Brighton market. There were Liz’s wages from the café and the dole, of course. Living the dream. Lucky Liz shared those values with him. They didn’t want to be like their boring parents, always worrying about the future, saving for retirement and shit like that. At least, he didn’t. He thought Liz might have changed a bit since she got pregnant. It was the baby buggy. She was saving for a new one. She said she wanted better things for this baby. Not all that borrowed stuff Danny had managed with.

The wedding had been just what he expected. Too many questions.

‘What’s the plan, Ted?’ ‘Another baby on the way, you must be thinking about a proper job, eh?’

Ted sighs; funny that he can still hear all those questions, and how he knocked back the wine and the way it made him feel better. And then later not so good. First the relief and then the pain. Never learnt. He pulls his beanie down to cover his neck. It’s bloody freezing. He can feel the tightening in his shoulders and his knee is aching.

He’d got totally shit-faced at the reception and Ron’s dad had had to take him home. Liz had been dancing with Dave, who had a proper job, selling chemicals to farmers. Dodgy Dave the drug-dealer Ron had called him. But, by the time Summer was born, she had all the new baby stuff she could have dreamt of, and a new daddy as well.

Liz had quickly lost her tie-dyed T-shirts and beads and morphed into Blenheim Mum. A neat three-bed house in Redwoodtown, kids at the local play centre, nice part-time job as a receptionist at the opticians.

Ted never really got to know Summer. He’d tried to keep up with Danny, but with the distance, it hadn’t been easy. He knew that Dodgy Dave called him Hippie Ted in front of the kids. All those things they’d protested about; the rich people, the nukes, somehow tied up with the ‘free-love’ (ha!) and the weed, of course. Then, bloody Rogernomics crept up on them, when they were busy with babies, and they didn’t even fucking notice. Danny had asked him about it all on one of his rare visits south, for his school project on racism in sport. That Springbok tour, which divided the country nicely into us and them, he had liked being ‘us’. But some of the other stuff … what was it that he’d been thinking? He knew what he’d been feeling. Hope.

That was before Danny stopped talking to him. For a long time, it was only Christmas cards. Dan had landed a job with a big mining company in Western Ozzie digging up shit to make the world an even worse place. Weapons, phones, big technology.

‘Six-figure salary, Dad,’ he’d said, ‘not bad for a new grad, eh?’ Ted supposed he should have felt proud. A few years ago, Dan had offered to fly Ted over to see his flash new place in Perth, but it was just after the knee replacement and he couldn’t face it. After that, even the Christmas cards dried up.

The Māori woman in front of him is still knitting from four different balls of wool. She doesn’t seem to worry about the dark. At Kaikoura, she’d offered him a bit of potato bread, made, she said from a recipe from her ‘Great, great, great …’ Then she just laughed. When she hops off in Ward, the whole family are there to meet her.

‘Auntie!’ A little kid, about the same age as Danny had been on that bus trip, throws himself at her legs and clings on. Ted bets Auntie could tell him about why the moon is big and where it goes in the daytime.

He wishes he’d known stuff, lots of stuff, like what it all meant? He wishes he’d known that some of it was good enough how it was. Maybe. He wishes Ron was still alive to get drunk with and argue about who was the best guitarist, Jimmy Page or some other guy, whose name escapes him right now. It all went by so quick. He wonders what songs Ron has chosen for the funeral.

Glancing out of the window, Ted catches the eye of the intense yellow moon and hears a piercing little voice in his head, ‘See Dad, it’s still looking at us.’

Suddenly he sees himself as the moon does. An old guy, in a scruffy fleece, grey stubble, blurry eyes and throbbing knee. Sitting on a cold bus, thinking about all the things he didn’t learn. And now he never will. He wishes he could have that day back again and do it differently. He wishes he’d known that that trip with the little kid on his knee, looking at him like he did have some answers, that that was going to be the best day he would get.