A LIGHT LEFT BURNING
Technically, Eketahuna lies in Tararua District, but the Wairarapa Times-Age still thuds onto driveways there; even Wikipedia concedes the town is “considered to be in northern Wairarapa”. Coming from the south, there is pasture and forest, then after a kink in the road you emerge to behold a concrete kiwi and a dozen or so shops, fewer than half now occupied. The bank went years ago but recently returned – like a man who’d left his hat at a party – to take its ATM, too.
Still, there are signs of life, even growth. The pub was renovated a few years back, and recently a new business opened – a reflection, the mayor told the paper, of how vibrant the town was. Tabu, this business was called, stockists of adult toys. Sex had come to Main St.
Death, however, remained discreet. The town’s two cemeteries lie well away from shops and homes, the oldest not even within the town boundary but on a hillside off the highway. It was there Bryan Petersen was buried in 1968, at the age of 21, one of the few New Zealand casualties of the Vietnam War (37 died on active service).
I was reading about New Zealand’s involvement in Vietnam when I first learnt about Petersen’s death, and added it to the things I knew about Eketahuna. It felt odd to hold those two disparate places within the same thought.
Linda was in her 60s, a mother
