Free Remember Me by Derek Hansen Page A

snapper from time to time and that got me talking to him about fishing. He would have been in his late fifties but he was as fit and as strong as an All Black. I clearly remember how his back, neck and the back of his head cut one clean vertical line. He had the kind of build rugby commentators described as ‘rawboned’ and ‘sinewy’. You’d swear his shoulders had been attached with set squares. He was also tall, a good few inches taller than my dad, who was six feet one. But as Anya wasted away Mack seemed to shrink. By the time she died Mack was a bent and skinny mockery of the man I’d originally met.
    The funeral service was held in the Church Army chapel. I wanted to go but Mum wouldn’t let me. She said funerals were no place for kids. She couldn’t stop me skipping school and standing outside, though. I remembered the times I used to sit in an old bentwood chair at the end of Anya’s bed so I could read my essays to her by the light coming in through the window. They used to make her smile. I remembered helping her carryher shopping home before she was confined to bed. And I remembered avoiding her once she got really sick because her sickness scared me.
    Half the Sunday congregation turned up and quite a few people I didn’t know. It wasn’t a big funeral and there weren’t masses of flowers. I stood outside and waved goodbye to the hearse as it drove off. Mack spotted me and nodded. It put a lump in my throat as big as a cricket ball. Only five cars with headlights on followed the hearse to the cemetery. I thought I was witnessing an ending. I thought it was all over. Anya had finally died and been buried with appropriate ceremony. I fully expected Mack to get back to his former self. He’d promised to take me out fishing with him again and I fully intended to remind him. I wanted to make sure I got the trip in before he returned to Great Barrier Island.
    But Mack failed to undergo any miraculous restoration. Instead he shut himself inside his house and hit the bottle. At first people were understanding but as time passed he dropped in everyone’s esteem. I heard customers in the shop say he only ever went out to replenish his supplies of booze, that he was a disgrace. Who knows how far Mack would’ve fallen if it hadn’t been for Captain Biggs. Once a week, first thing in the morning, Captain Biggs went around to Mack’s, dragged him out of bed, made him gather his fishing gear together and accompanied him on the trolley bus down to the Admiralty Steps. He sent Mack off fishing for the day ona boat called La Rita. How clever was that? The Captain must have known he’d never convince Mack to give up drinking, so did his best to rehabilitate him another way. I’m sure there were times when Captain Biggs paid the seventeen shillings and sixpence the trip cost. It was probably the only money Captain Biggs had. Mack had fishing mates who were also regulars on the La Rita. Between their support and Captain Biggs’s kindness Mack slowly pulled through. He came to terms with the loss of Anya, started attending church again and cut his drinking back to two or three quart bottles of beer a day.
    Then I had to go and read him my stupid essay.
    I’d left Mack with a fresh bottle of Dominion Bitter as I’d rushed out down the hallway but that wasn’t the last bottle he saw the bottom of that night. He drank the remaining four bottles in his cooler and a couple more from the shed. At some stage he must have decided to fry himself some sausages and fallen asleep with the gas on. The smell of burning fat alerted Mrs Bolger next door who raced in and turned off the cooker before the kitchen caught fire. It was fortunate Mack hadn’t followed me down the hall and slipped the catch on his door lock or Mrs Bolger wouldn’t have been able to get in.
    Hearing this, I was once again overwhelmed by shame on Mack’s behalf. It hurt to hear Mack being described as an alcoholic and a boozer, particularly as I knew