Machete and the Ghost

by Griffin, James; Kightley, Oscar;

  M: I know you’re not really meant to laugh when one of your teammates gets smashed, but the way the palagi kid just kinda waded over Calvin was choice. Of course, the smile left my face when I realised he was now heading towards me, ball in hand, and I had the chance to smash him all over again. So I lowered my head and charged and . . .

  Thin air.

  I don’t think I even touched him as I shot past. Where he was meant to be suddenly wasn’t where he was. When I looked back, he was loping downfield, like a giraffe.

  G: Once you know the train is coming, it’s not that hard to avoid the train.

  M: And this happened, like, the next three or four times I tried to tackle him. I’d line him up and go in for the tackle and suddenly he wasn’t there any more. It was some real freaky shit.

  G: Yeah, it was fun making Machete look like a fool every time he flew past me, grasping at thin air, but the thing about getting smashed by someone is that the only true revenge is to smash them back.

  Of course, by now — and we’re not even at halftime yet — I’ve pretty much given up on playing lock and I’m spending all my time between set pieces seagulling out in the backline. My coach is yelling at me all the time but I don’t care, ’cause I’m all about the payback now.

  M: Even back then Ghost’s biggest weakness was his head. Not the bit of it that kept getting concussed — though that didn’t help — but the bit where he starts thinking about something in the middle of a game and that’s it, he’s gone. Brains can be a real problem when it comes to rugby.

  Like that day, the day that we first met, it didn’t matter to Ghost that we were blitzing them on the scoreboard, all he wanted to do was smash me.

  G: Like I’ve explained to Machete many times over the years, there are games within games, and sometimes the game within the game is bigger than the game.

  M: That still makes no sense to me. But that’s cool, as long as he’s happy.

  G: Late in the first half and I see my opportunity. By now the little first-five is passing everything he gets, as quickly as possible, and he shovels a ball on to the Machete that is too high, so he has to reach up to gather it in, exposing his ribs in the process. I am in there like a shot, hitting him with every ounce of power I can generate out of my skinny 12-year-old body.

  And it is like hitting concrete. Even back then, when Machete wasn’t actually built like the proverbial brick shit-house, he sure had the ‘brick’ part going for him.

  But at least honours were now even. I didn’t even mind when I realised that in the process of being flattened by me Machete had somehow managed to offload the ball to his centre, who was now far away, heading for our goal-line.

  M: Ghost would probably say something stupid like: ‘When you see the train coming, unload the precious cargo.’ I just did then (and for all my career) what I learnt at the hands of Purity in our backyard where she told me that one of the rules (I think the only rule) of our game where she smashed me after she threw me the rugby ball was: ‘You don’t get rucked over so bad afterwards if you can get rid of the ball in the tackle.’

  G: So I’m lying there, kinda on top of him, wondering how the hell he moved that ball on so fast, when this weird Machete kid grins at me and says, ‘Ghost. I’m gonna call you The Ghost.’ Then he gets up and runs off to join his teammates as they celebrate the try.

  M: Ghost, the ghost I know now, loves romantic comedy movies. Up until the moment, just now, where I put it in this book, this has been one of his deepest, darkest secrets that he has managed to keep from the world. Hugh Grant is the man Ghost wants to be.

  Anyways, in romantic comedy theory, my knowledgeable friend Ghost tells me, the first time the hero and the heroine (or other hero in this case) meet, under weird circumstances, is called the ‘cute first meet’. I guess the Under-13 game — or the half game Ghost played — was our cute first meet.

  G: I got subbed off at halftime for not playing to our game plan. I pointed out to the coach that the game plan currently involved us being down by 30 points and was I responsible for all those points? The answer seemed to be ‘yes’.

  So, it wasn’t until after the game, when I was sitting in the carpark outside Eden Park, and Machete and his family pulled up in their Bongo van, that I got to ask him the question.

  M: Dad was just pulling out of the carpark when I saw Ghost sitting there, with his gear bag, looking all sad-arse. So, I got Dad to pull over, and I leaned out the window. ‘Hey, Ghost, are you looking all sad-arse because we kicked your arses today?’

  G: ‘Why do you call me Ghost?’

  M: ’Cause when I went to tackle you, suddenly you weren’t there any more, like I was trying to tackle a ghost. Also ’cause you’re real white. You need to get out in the sun more.’

  G: To this day, I don’t know why I started lying. It just seemed the right thing to do, I guess, to make me cooler in the eyes of Machete and his family as they looked at me. ‘They don’t let us outside at the orphanage much,’ I said.

  M: And we started talking and he told me a whole bunch of what turned out to be bullshit, about how he lived at this orphanage and he had to run away every time he wanted to play rugby and now he was going to have to walk back to the orphanage where they would beat him for running away. Man was he a good liar — even Dad and Purity bought it, which is why we asked him if he wanted to come with us, back to our place, and we’d sort out a better life for him.

  G: As it turned out, my parents were late picking me up because the commune had been raided and they were being interviewed by the police. But for me, that Bongo van was a chance to escape the freaky commune and maybe have a real life with my new friend Machete.

  So I got in the van.

  Part Two: ‘Stuff You, Machete!’

  G: For me, looking back on those two carefree days me and Machete had in Te Atatu when we were 12, going on 13, going on becoming men, the past truly is a foreign country, where we did things differently. Sure, it was all built on a series of lies, but they were good lies and they built a good thing, until we built that shit raft and the whole charade fell apart.

  M: If I’d known, at the time, how messed up Ghost’s family life truly was, at the freaky commune, I probably would have asked Dad to keep driving, that day we picked him up outside of Eden Park. But it wasn’t until later, when I realised that Ghost was looking at my messed-up family like they were the most normal family in the world, that it started to sink in.

  G: It is true to say that, yes, I never wanted to leave. In fact, I wanted Machete’s mum and dad to adopt me. And I think they would have been open to that idea if the chance had ever arisen.

  M: After the match, when we got back to Te Atatu, Dad went off to the pub to tell all my uncles how good I had played. Meanwhile, Mum launched into one of her speeches about how we’d brought home this kid when we already had too many mouths to feed. Then this amazing thing happened, right before my very eyes.

  G: Having worked in the kitchens a lot at the freaky commune in Glenfield, I knew a thing about making food go a long way. So I started sharing some of my knowledge with Faye. And then she shared her knowledge of Samoan cuisine with me and before long we’re cooking together. To this day, some of the taro recipes I still cook for Machete come from that night in the kitchen.

  M: So suddenly Mum, who never lets anyone in her kitchen while she’s cooking, is chopping onions alongside this skinny palagi kid, telling him all the taro recipes I love to this very day. And then, miracle upon miracles, Purity starts hanging round the kitchen, actually wanting to help out and set the table and stuff like that. It was like my whole world had been turned upside down and I had gone to an opposite place.

  I realise now that this was the first time I ever saw the insidious influence Ghost has over women. By doing things like paying attention to them and actually listening to what they’re saying and then asking them insightf
ul questions and valuing their answers, Ghost has this uncanny ability to make women fall in love with him. Later on, through the years, I saw him use this power many times — and not just on the models/actors/fitness instructors he was trying to get into bed, but also on people like airline check-in staff to get upgrades; lady cops when we were about to get arrested; and the mothers of the models/actors/fitness instructors he had bedded to get them not to be angry at him for deflowering their daughters.

  It makes me glad, looking back on that night, that Ghost was too young and naïve to be aware of his power and wasn’t using it to get my mum into bed, because then this book would definitely be a whole different book and I would probably be writing it from my prison cell.

  G: Even to this very day, the meal that night was one of the best I have ever had and it made me a lifelong fan of palusami. I loved sitting at the table, listening as Mr Leilei Senior regaled me with stories of when he was the Destroyer of Men. ‘This is what family life should be like,’ I thought. Then, afterwards, me and Machete and Purity went outside and tossed a rugby ball round until long after dark. This, to me, was the perfect end to a perfect day, even though my rugby team had got smashed that very afternoon.

  M: Okay, I have to be honest and say that by the time we went outside I was starting to think that maybe bringing Ghost into my home was not a great idea. Yes, if I’m totally honest, I was jealous of the way everyone had suddenly fallen in love with this palagi kid with the puppy-dog eyes.

  Outside, after dinner, what I really wanted was for Purity to smash him, the way she’d smashed me a thousand times before. So I tossed him the football and Purity went in for the kill. But then he did his ghost thing and sidestepped her attack and she ran straight into the fence. The sound of Purity giggling like a girl, as Ghost helped her get her head out from where it was stuck between the palings, still keeps me awake at night.

  G: When we came back in from outside Faye asked me if it was time to go back to the orphanage. I said I’d better call them and see. Then I dialled some random number and pretended to have a conversation in which they told me there had been a fire at the orphanage and if I could stay away for a few more days that would actually be helpful.

  M: It was during the phone call that I first became suspicious that Ghost wasn’t entirely telling the truth here. This was mainly because I was standing closest to him while he made the call and I could hear this dude’s voice on the other end of the line saying things like ‘What?’ and ‘Who are you and why are you calling here?’ and ‘Don’t f**king call this number again, weirdo!’ As I listened I realised I had to find out somehow what this guy’s true story was. As it turned out, that wasn’t actually a hard thing to do.

  G: That night I slept in Fatu’s bunk bed above Machete, because Fatu was away in Wellington being the Secretary-General of the National High School Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. I felt safe in such a warm and loving environment that I spilled my guts and told Machete the truth about everything — my whole life story thus far.

  M: On one hand it was better than Fatu holding me down under the covers and actually spilling his guts, but on a whole other level it was difficult for me, as a kid from a good Samoan family, to get my head round the general freakiness of the freaky cult.

  G: We talked for hours.

  M: He kept talking and I started to drift off to sleep.

  G: That was when we hatched the plan that we would be like Tom and Huck, building a raft and exploring the waterways round Auckland — and maybe I could take the raft and sail to freedom, away from the freaky cult.

  M: Blah blah something about some guys from some books I hadn’t read blah blah something about building a raft blah blah freedom blah blah. I think I may have said something like ‘cool’ about the raft thing just before I nodded off for the night. It turned out this was all the encouragement Ghost needed.

  G: The next morning I got up early and made everyone my legendary French toast for breakfast (except using Faye’s coconut bread instead, which just added to the perfection of the recipe). Then, after this hearty meal, me and Machete set about gathering what we needed for our raft — the raft that would be my life raft to a new life, I thought.

  M: Luckily this was Te Atatu and there’s always heaps of shit lying around everywhere so getting stuff to build the raft out of wasn’t actually a problem.

  G: We had drums and planks and old inner tubes and all sorts of stuff — this was going to be the best escape raft ever!

  M: And building the raft was actually kind of fun, if I’m honest. Even dragging the bastard thing all the way to the Harbour View Reserve was okay. It was only when we actually launched the raft and Ghost started paddling like a bastard in the direction of Point Chev that I started to think that this could go very very wrong, very very quickly.

  And it did.

  G: Looking back now, I’m glad that Machete and I went into professional rugby rather than boat-building. The raft started falling apart pretty much the moment we set off and by the time the outgoing tide had deposited us on the very tip of Meola Reef there wasn’t much of it left. And by the time the rescue boat got to us the raft, as an entity, was totally non-existent.

  M: Being rescued from the middle of the Waitemata Harbour was pretty shameful for me — but that was nothing compared to what waited for us when we got back to dry land.

  G: It turned out that, the day before, my mum had talked her way out of police custody to go to Eden Park to pick me up. Except she arrived just in time to see me getting into a Bongo van with a bunch of Islanders she didn’t recognise. So this time it was her who called the police. And what Machete and I had missed, as we were out constructing and launching our raft, was the police raid on the Leilei house, looking for the kidnapped palagi kid.

  M: I’m not proud of what happened next, but in my defence I have stated many times for the record that as a young Samoan man, when confronted with many authority figures looking at me sternly, I will fold like a poorly constructed house of cards (or a poorly constructed raft, in this case). So, as the rescue boat brought us in, when I saw my parents and Ghost’s parents and the police AOS squad standing there, like Easter Island statues, all looking at me, I immediately blamed Ghost for everything.

  G: I thought we were friends. I thought he was my uso. I thought we were Tom and Huck.

  M: Ghost said nothing, just looked at me through his puppy-dog eyes of pain, until they put him in the car to drive him away. Then what he said cut me to my very soul.

  G: ‘Stuff you, Machete!’

  M: I was stuffed, alright, like a turkey, stuffed with a guilt stuffing with added shame.

  G: And, at the time, I meant every word.

  A Bling’s Boy

  by Machete

  [NB: for legal reasons, mainly a scary letter from a flash lawyer, the names of some schools in this chapter have been changed. Any similarities in the names we made up to replace the names of those schools to the names of actual schools are purely coincidental.]

  ‘Stuff you, Machete!!!’

  Those were the last words I heard from my supposed new best friend Ghost as he was driven away by his angry, freaky parents. His face was so angry, I’m glad I couldn’t hear the other swearing words that were probably coming out of his upset mouth, as the car receded into the distance and my own parents herded me towards home, as the AOS packed away their high-powered rifles.

  I also didn’t know that it would be the last time for years that I would see Ghost. It’s like I was Captain Scott and all his boys who died in that freezing-ass hut — and he was Captain Oates. But instead of walking into the Antarctic blizzard, Ghost walked into a late-model Japanese station wagon which took him across the bridge, back to Glenfield. I know it’s not quite the same thing, but I’m sure you get the comparison I’m trying to make.

  Was I guilty about what had happened? Not really, because all I d
id was invite someone to come back to my place for tea after a game of footie. Everything else that had happened — the lies, the raft, the rescue — they were all down to Ghost. Was I guilty because I blamed everything on him and therefore broke the sacred code between boys? Yeah. For sure. Heaps.

  Did I deal with this guilt well? Only if you think dealing with things well is by becoming a juvenile idiot with a penchant for getting into trouble. By the end of that year I was just a confused 13-year-old looking for trouble in all the wrong places. From stealing money from my mum’s purse to riding around on my bike, glaring at people, I was only one step away from joining the street gang my sister Purity had started, the Te Atatu Tribe (named after her favourite TV show). The only thing stopping me was that it was an all-girl gang. Rugby, at this time, was the last thing on my mind, but it was summer so that didn’t really matter.

  Eventually things spiralled out of control to the point where I would spend all day riding round on my bike, glaring at people. Then one day I glared at the wrong people — some cops as they came out of the dairy with ice creams. They didn’t like the look of my look and they put my bike in the boot of their car and took me straight home.

  There I was expecting the mother of all hidings from my mum. From Year 8 Social Studies I knew that if the hiding that was coming was a budget, it would be that one that Ruth Richardson did in 1991 that gutted all the benefits and helped create a permanent underclass.

  But as soon as the police dropped me off, had an earnest discussion with my parents and then drove away, Mum just stood rock still. Confused at the lack of a beating, I started crying and was begging her forgiveness for making her worry that I had gone off the rails. But Mum didn’t do anything but wait until about an hour later, when I finally ran out of energy and tears. Then she told me that glaring at cops as they were trying to eat their ice creams was the last straw of a collection of straws that had started with the Ghost/raft incident. I knew then, because she told me, that this instance of me getting into trouble was one too many and that now something radical would have to be done before I burnt down the church.