Whatever else people say about Hamish Ogilvie, almost everyone admits he could’ve been a great halfback. Our old teacher Mr Reid once told me, Pound-for-pound, that brother of yours is one of the best players I’ve ever seen. He was a great stepper and could empty a yard glass in under two minutes. That’ll get you a pass on most things in Wanganui.
Wangas is a real small town and everyone has an opinion on Hamish. But I never bought the whole ‘Hamish Ogilvie’ thing, he was always just plain old Hame to me. Hame who’d skip out on the lawns to play rugby when we were kids. Hame with the same massive ears and eyes that me and Dad have. Hame who’d pretend not to hear Mum yell, Petal, you better do those lawns before your father gets home. Hame who wasn't phased by the belt and a sermon from Dad. An actual sermon, Bible and all.
I remember the first time I took you to meet Hame. It must’ve been, I dunno, eight or nine years ago now? We were sitting in bed at my mouldy flat on Campbell St, the one with the giant pit in the backyard. You were looking at me from across a steaming bowl of microwaved Weet-Bix and I remember you were blinking a lot but not saying anything. You put on yesterday’s dress and I hunted around on the floor for something clean. I gave my old Cannibal Corpse hoodie a sniff and threw it on. It was a cold-arse morning in June and it was Hame’s twenty-second or twenty-third birthday. I remember feeling scared cos I wasn’t sure if you’d meet ‘Hamish Ogilvie’ or ‘Johnno’s bro Hame’.
I pulled the front door closed and did the little jiggle thing to get the lock to stick. You leaned on Mike’s car to lace and buckle those ridiculous black boots you’d got up in Auckland. We headed towards the corner, the one with the second-hand bookstore that was always empty but never went out of business. The streets were busy with tradesmen driving white sign-written vans and kids riding to school.
Wanganui winters can go below zero. The cold’ll freeze your washing on the line if you leave it out overnight, but for some reason the river never freezes. I’ve always reckoned it's a dodgy river. People say it’s cleaner upriver but we take out the best water and just leave the muck. But nah, I reckon it’s only cleaner up there cos it runs over a bunch of dead rocks. Nobody takes the clean water, the water just gets dirty as it goes. Anyway, there I go getting all poetic again. You used to hate that about me. When we broke up, you told me straight to my face, You just talk fancy cos it’s easier to lie that way. That way you don’t have to face how things really are. I reckon there’s something in that.
We followed the railway tracks to Hame’s place, cutting through the back streets of Springvale with all their emptiness and gentle curves. There’s a lot of white crosses nailed to trees in that part of town. We stopped to look at some plastic flowers strapped to a pole at the Liverpool St crossing and I did my little rant. Disgusting things, those plastic flowers, no life and no death. They just become sad sun-bleached versions of real flowers. People prefer them cos they can’t die, and that’s comforting cos they don’t want their memories to die. But that’s not how life is. That’s fucking bullshit.
I remember walking down that same road with Hame when I was fifteen, heading down to the liquor store to con someone into buying us booze. Hame was useless when it came to this sort of stuff, he couldn’t help but look guilty. He’d do his shifty hunched-back walk and ask, Scuse me mate, hey, you couldn’t do us a favour, could ya?
I remember this one time, me and Mike were sitting on the grass next door while Hame was asking some regular-looking old guy. Mike pointed at Hame and said, Fucking look at him, would ya? Looks like he’s selling crack to kids. He can’t help himself, that brother of yours.
Yeah, aye. Can’t help himself.
Thirty seconds later, Hame throws his hood up and comes powerwalking back.
What happened?
Guy’s a fuckin off-duty cop. Your turn, cunty.
I never laughed so hard in all my life.
Twenty minutes later we’re sitting in the old polytech sharing this vodka and a couple of cops come round the corner. Hame had the bottle and they wanted us to hand it over. He gave them some lip so they took him away and called Mum and Dad. Hamish got in big trouble and had to go out to the shed with Dad. But that was the last time either of us did shed time. The next time Dad tried it on me, Hame got up in his face and said, Just you fuckin try it mate.
Anyway, after getting busted at the old polytech, Hame started getting real serious about things. He’d go all dark when he was drinking and he started disappearing from parties. One day he went off to a second hand bookshop and bought a bunch of textbooks on chemistry. He started hating on Wangas a lot and he reckoned he was gonna go to uni in a few years. He heard you can get in when you’re twenty, so he was done with Wangas as far as he was concerned.
You were nervous about meeting Hamish, I remember that. Hame’s place was out in Gonville, at the river end, so we kept following the tracks and talking. We hadn’t been dating long and that visit was a big step, I knew that. You knew how much I loved him and how complicated that love was. You knew how other people talked about him, people who didn’t know him, talking like he was some big bad monster.
For the third or fourth time, I told you the story of how Hame saved my life out at South Beach. Him and his mates had bought body-boards and a dozen and a joint. Afterwards we all went for a swim and I got caught in a rip. Hame was only metres away and I thought, How can he be touching the bottom when I can’t and I’m struggling to stay in one place? I tried to swim for the shallows but I just got real tired. I waited too late to yell out. I wanted to get to shore and be cool and pretend it never happened but my body kept pulling me down. I didn’t want to cause a fuss cos Hame and his mates didn’t want me there. I was fourteen.
I called out to him when my mouth and eyes and three fingers were the only things above water. My long hair floated around me like seaweed. It looked so peaceful, just drifting there. I remember thinking, Wouldn’t it be easier to just relax and slip under? It’ll be ok. It’ll be ok. It’ll be ok.
But he was coming to save me. When he grabbed me I felt this big pissed-off burst of energy and I climbed on top of him and pushed him under. We fought and he broke away. He yelled at me to inflate my lungs like a balloon and calm down. I kept trying to climb on him but my energy died and I started going under.
The rest is a blur. Laying across his stomach, floating. His mates with a body-board. Coming ashore unable to walk and falling on the black sand. A tiny piece of driftwood jabbing into my back. A man on a four-wheeler calling an ambulance. Hame saying, You’re right bro, just breathe, just breathe. Just relax and breathe, you’ll be right. And me thinking, I could’ve killed him, I could’ve killed us both.
I ruined their day at the beach but he didn’t even care. Hame saved me. He could’ve left me but he didn’t. He didn’t want me there and I tried to kill him but he saved me anyway. What kind of person risks their life going into a rip like that? Not a monster, that’s for sure.
I remember us coming off the railway tracks at Purnell St, by the racecourse and the empty lots. There’s a liquor store there now, where you can see the pride of Wanganui on a Saturday afternoon arguing whether to buy Codys or Woodys. I know it well. I saw you there this morning with your boyfriend and kid. We said an awkward hello in the parking lot before going our separate ways. Apart from Facebook and that one time, I haven’t seen you in years.
Years earlier, when that liquor store was just another overgrown and empty lot, me and you walked past the Purnell St cemetery. It’s a funny place, that cemetery. Every Boxing Day, half the town comes out to sit on the graves and smoke and drink and laugh and eat and swear and fight and watch motorbikes go round the Cemetery Circuit. Then afterwards we all stumble into pubs and listen to covers bands play sloppy versions of “Satisfaction” and “Under the Bridge”. I think that says a lot about Wangas people. Death and loss are right there under our arses, but we don’t give ‘em the time of day, we just have a drink and get on with it.
We came up on Hamish’s place. You opened the gate for me and we walked through the shambolic grass out front. You started to scan the names, but I took your hand and led you down the path to the right.
I remember the day they came for Hamish. I was sixteen. It was late one Saturday morning and I was still in bed with a baby hangover. I’d been out to a house party with you and your friends and had one too many cans of Bourbon and Coke. I heard Bobby Bish talking shit about Hamish so I snuck outside and sat on the concrete path. You followed me out and we talked down the side of the house. You hugged me and said, Fuck ‘em, it doesn’t matter aye, buncha dumb cunts anyway. I angry-cried while you rubbed my back. I started to talk about going in and smashing Bobby Bish but you turned my head and kissed me. I wanted to feel good, but the kissing and the anger and the booze was too much so I snuck home and went to sleep.
Next morning, I woke up to knocking at the front door. I heard Mum raising her voice and telling them, You lot always have an issue with Hamish, why don’t you just bloody leave him alone. Her calling for Dad and Dad coming. Dad arguing, but more with Mum than the cops. Mum going quiet and heavy footsteps to Hame’s room across the hall. The door. Me walking into Hame’s room wearing only a towel and seeing him with his books on the bedside table. Me asking him what’s happening and him looking scared and saying, Ah, no worries aye, they probably wanna pay me back for that vodka. The cops coming in and putting him in cuffs and doing their bullshit spiel. Me and Mum finally agreeing on something, and most of it being four letter words for the cops. Hame saying to me as they took him out, it’s all good bro, they’ve got nothing, I’ll see you later. Dad just sitting in his chair and muttering angrily and me not knowing if he’s praying or swearing. Me and Mum sitting all upset and not knowing what to do, not even knowing where to start.
Mid-afternoon we got a call from the police telling us that they’d left him unattended during the questioning. They told us they ran back and grabbed his legs and undid the belt but it was too late. They said a bunch of stuff about paperwork and gave us a number for grief counselling.
It was easy to find Hamish’s grave back then. As soon as you walked through the gate you could see the bright blue word Kiddyfucker, punching out of the cemetery greys and greens. I tried to scrub it off but the stone is cheap and the spray paint had soaked in and set.
You pretended not to notice the word as we sat in the long grass. There were still flowers, real flowers, from my last visit. Mum and Dad don’t visit, as far as I can tell. I haven’t spoken to them in seven or eight years.
You held my hand and nodded as I told you my dream. One day I’m gonna save some money and buy a new headstone, one that tells people that Hamish was a hero, one that can’t be stained with spray paint. One that matches the Hame I knew, the guy that played rugby with me in the backyard and pulled me out of a rip and saved me from Dad.
I don’t blame Hamish for not wanting to face things. I don’t blame the cops for turning their backs on an eighteen-year-old boy for five minutes. I don’t blame the kids for the allegations. Part of me doesn’t even blame Dad. It’s this town. It’s people. Things happen to us and we do those things to others. Well, not all of us do those things, but some of us do, and Hame did. It’s taken me a long time to accept that.
It was cold and I huddled into you, and I wasn’t so sad and angry. The wind picked up and you pulled your hoodie over your head and tugged your sleeves down over your hands. It felt good to hold you and half-admit that my bro was both Hame and the infamous Hamish Ogilvie. You’re the first person I ever admitted that to. I thought, I can’t stop you from telling people about Hamish Ogilvie, but please, just don’t.