The Penguin New Zealand Anthology by 50 Stories for 50 Years in Aotearoa (retail) (epub)

Author:50 Stories for 50 Years in Aotearoa (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781776953783
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

On the road to Laetoli the figures appear with the new sun, even though there’s still a faint dust in the air. Traces of ash. An Australopithecus afarensis bloke and his son, their hair-covered bodies walking upright. Then another figure, an old man who’d ‘put in the time’ only to realise it could run out. Behind him a woman with black smudges at the edges of her eyes, who had a hundred kids on her wall. Then maybe another man and his son, both with multi-coloured beach baggies and boogie boards. All just out walking.

‘Sorry to hear about your father,’ said Lesley when she phoned.

‘Thanks.’

‘Will he be okay?’

‘I don’t know. He thinks it’ll be easy, or he says he does.’

I lowered my hand, let the phone lie against my chest for a moment, then raised it again. She said she had to go, but her voice sort of hung suspended.

‘If you ever just want to talk,’ she said.

‘You get a thousand phone calls,’ I said.

‘Well, a thousand and one wouldn’t hurt, then.’

I laughed.

‘Okay,’ she said.

‘Okay.’

The next Saturday I went to the coast, parked at the end of north Piha and headed towards Lion Rock. He was a long way off, that old lion, but I had the time.

A few million years ago a father and son took a walk across some cooling ash. Knowing yesterday there had been grass there, soil and roots. Flowers even. Before that, other grass, perhaps trees. Today it was just ash. But tomorrow maybe the wind would clear some of the loose ash, maybe by next year new grass would grow up through it. Sometimes stuff can begin again, if it tries. Even when you think maybe it can’t. It can.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.