Chapter 30 Wake
wake
To stir to life
Death.
I didn’t expect to wake up to it.
I stare down at the body on the floor. So much smaller than I thought.
A hand thumps on my back. “What’re we staring at?” Grandpa says.
And I rear back, arms held high, in time for Trent’s entrance into the kitchen. “I didn’t do it.” I’m saying it too emphatically, trembling. The tremor in my hands isn’t really about the chicken; it comes with a deep exhale. Relief. I didn’t do it.
Trent raises a gentle brow. His gaze shifts from me to a suddenly wailing Grandpa, to the chicken, sprawled on the tiles.
Kitchen light pools over the feathers. One sticks to the edge of my foot.
Grandpa drops to his knees and checks the chicken, double checks. He utters, “You’re really gone.” And then, in a pitch that wakes through me, “You’ve left far too young.”
Trent is on his knees beside Grandpa, pulling him into a hug, and I stand behind them still trembling as my gaze shifts to the wall of postcards. Too young, like Ika and like Beth. Taken. To whatever came next. Nothingness, probably.
Or maybe they became true ghosts. Maybe the two of them even met.
Maybe they even hit it off. What a tragic meetcute.
They bond over their shared misfortune, and then roam together, watching us.
Grimacing and laughing in turns at Trent and me.
Our antics. We’re gone, Ika, but look at them. They have to live with it.
I slap a palm over my mouth to push back a giggle. It really wants to get through though. Grandpa’s chicken just died. I should have some respect! At the very least I should be quiet. And yet . . .
The giggle churns up in my stomach and I slap another horrified hand over my mouth. Trent and Grandpa pause and turn their heads and I shake mine. So sorry, sorry. I can’t . . .
The laugh bubbles out.
Grandpa stares, and then looks at himself and Trent in their dramatic embrace, and then eyes the chicken. He starts laughing too. And like it’s something contagious I’ve spread, Trent’s shaking his head with a small smile.
After the laughter eases, Trent says, “Let’s scoop her up—”
“Let’s take her to the farm,” Grandpa says. Gently. Like he’s softening the idea of her death the way parents tell their child after a beloved pet passes. “We’ll take her to the big, peaceful farm in the country.”
Where her spirit can roam freely.
“We can hold a wake,” Trent murmurs.
Grandpa nods. “We’ll need a coffin.”
A strange, cool shiver curls down my spine.
I’ve never been to a wake before.
I don’t know . . . what to do. But I feel, desperately, that it’s something important. This ritual to lay her to rest. This moment to say goodbye.
“Grandpa, I saw a shoebox in your luggage, could we repurpose—”
“Not that,” Grandpa and Trent say at the same time.
They trade a look and quickly avert their eyes. I rock on my heels. Trent shifts slowly to his feet, not looking back. “I have another box.”
I frown.
Grandpa holds up a hand. “Help me up?”
I grab his hand, his elbow, and steer him—groaning—to his feet. He pats my shoulder. “Come. Let’s get music and think about food.”
“Food for the wake?” I say. But yes, food offers comfort in times of grief, can encourage conversation. What would be most comforting for Grandpa? That we could have at the farm . . .
I straighten. “I—I’ll organise the food. I know exactly what to get.”
Grandpa leans in, curious.
I better not say it aloud, or Trent might veto. “It’s a surprise. Trust me?”
Grandpa gestures for his cane, and I give it to him. He leans on it and looks at me. “You’re a good kid. I trust you always mean well.”
His voice has a sincere rumble to it that has something light rising in me, and on a hop I get the farm address from Trent, then head outside.
The service takes my order and then, “Name?”
I glimpse Grandpa lurking nearby. “Ah, Ika.”
“We’ll see you there at noon.”
“What’s at noon?” Trent murmurs, carrying a shoebox carefully, in a way that says the chicken’s laid inside it.
“You’ll see,” I say. “I’ll grab the luggage.”
Half an hour later, Trent and Grandpa are sitting in the front of the truck. I’m in the back next to the shoe-boxed chicken, a hand on its lid. The truck smells of petrol and damp earth. The road hums beneath us, the box thudding gently at each bend.
It’s a strange ride up to the farm. Grandpa has me texting all the oldies to prepare for a wake, and then he’s going through all his favourite tunes, trying to find the ultimate Chicken send-off.
“A-ha!” he says finally. “I’ve got it.” But he doesn’t play his epiphany. We’re to wait for it.
Trent glances at me in the rearview mirror. His eyes have kept searching for mine the entire drive up the winding Rimutakas. Like he’s nervous for me. Like he’s checking I’m still okay. That I’m still there.
I tilt him a small smile.
His fingers stretch and readjust on the wheel, the same slow, careful motion that just yesterday curled around my hip.
My breath catches and I quickly look away, out towards the deep valley of bush, my hand suctioning onto the shoebox lid. We haven’t spoken about it. There were words after, but safe ones. Are you comfortable? Would you like another pillow? Your toes are freezing! Curl in, I’ll keep you warm.
What’s next? What does this mean? Has temptation been sated?
Could we continue, quietly, keeping it hidden?
Why do you keep swallowing suddenly, like you’re stuck on a confession? What are you afraid to tell me?
Am I still Ika?
Those words stay buried.
I shift my hand on the shoebox. How topsy turvy. What should be buried, and what unearthed.
“The oldie van!” Grandpa calls out. “They’re overtaking us!”
And they’re doing it with cheek. John’s practically pressed to the side window, laughing.
“Step on it,” Grandpa yelps.
“Not one to hoon,” Trent says.
The word smacks into me. Hoon.
That damn word that stuck in my mind the day Trent first came to collect me. Hoon. I’d snickered, imagining that word ever coming from his mouth. He was too measured for it, too calmy spoken. But he just said it.
This silly word. Hoon.
Appearances aren’t always the truth.
Between us, appearances aren’t the truth at all.
We arrive at the farm at the same time as the van. Lush paddocks, trees lining them, a hill in the distance, and a long driveway to the house just past a rustic-looking barn.
We pile out of the vehicles and creak our hips into the house. “Two to a room,” Trent calls, and the oldies shuffle over carpeted floors to claim their spots.
Trent claims the furthest room from the facilities for us. No bunk beds here—a double and a single bed. I wait for him to claim a bed first. If he chooses the single, I’ll know what he means. The double becomes more ambiguous.
The double, he chooses.
My heart skids a little. I tell myself not to hold my breath. It’s simply the bed closest to the door. Still, I stand there wavering between hoisting my things onto the other side, or restraint. I stiffly drop my bag next to the wardrobe. “I left the chicken in the car.”
I hurry out to collect the shoe box.
Keep it together.
Today is about the chicken.
Today we’re holding a wake.
I hear footsteps behind me, slow, matching mine.
I cradle the box and take a turn about the farm, traipsing from one paddock to another behind the barn until I find myself before the frondy leaves of a nīkau palm that’s just starting to form a trunk. There’s a bench beside it and I take a seat.
“You found our tree.”
I glance over. Trent’s here. But I knew that. I felt him follow me.
I watch his slow approach. “Then shouldn’t you water it?” With your dreams? Your moemoeā?
He sinks his hands into his shorts’ pockets. “Your eyes are dancing too hard.”
“What were some of Trenty’s dreams when he was growing up?”
He hangs his head, groaning. I set the box to the side, reach over, and tug him to the seat. He sits a foot apart; far enough for anyone looking our way. My hand hesitates around his wrist and pulls back slowly.
His fingers chase mine, brief and unsure, then lock them down against the bench slats, like he’s afraid I might float off.
The air tastes extra fresh out here.
“I really wanted to invent a machine that did chores for you.”
I look at him, lips twitching. “Do you realise you turned into that machine? You’re a domestic god.”
He flushes.
The sight goes straight through me, too quick for a man who keeps so much bottled up.
He averts his eyes to the tree. “Then I wanted to build a theme park for pets. The sheep used the slide too. Albeit accidentally.”
I squeeze his hand.
“Later, I dreamed of kissing boys.”
The air stills. The nīkau fronds whisper above us. I can’t look at him right away, I’m too aware of how near his knee has shifted to mine.
“Wow, what a tree,” I murmur on an almost hiccup. “All your dreams came true.”
His knee presses my knee for a long beat. “You better start dreaming then.”
I gnaw on my lip as I stare at the tree. “Okay, sure. Done.”
Trent leans in, nose a tickle in my hair as he murmurs, “Is it the same dream as mine?”
My breath catches. Trent draws back slowly. Our gazes hold.
“There you are!” comes Grandpa’s distant call.
And I snap my hands to the box, picking it up, standing on shaky feet.
Trent rises after me, slower, surer. “It’s okay,” he murmurs.
But my heart is still thudding in my throat.
No matter how good I am at sleight of hand, I’m playing with death if I drop the coin.
I feel Trent reaching out to touch my stiffened shoulder and I lurch towards Grandpa and the oldies following behind.
“Stay there,” Grandpa calls. “We’re bringing the wake to you.” He hits the screen of his phone and music blasts. “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead.”
“Sing it with me folks!” Grandpa calls, and they all shuffle over the grass, ailing bodies and big voices, coming together on the line “Wake up, you sleepy head.”
I hold the shoebox close to a sudden bizarrely bright feeling in my chest. Like opening my eyes to sunshine. So much of it, I really . . . need to blink.