Summary

The short story “Hemi’s Gift” by TJ Corrigan begins with the unnamed narrator waiting to board a bus. She is traveling through northern New Zealand from Auckland to her home city of Whāngarei for her father’s funeral. 

On the bus, she chooses to sit near the back, hoping to be alone during the ride. However, a disheveled Māori man sits in front of her and begins to strum his guitar and sing, which embarrasses and annoys the narrator. She tries to visibly express this, wanting to show the other passengers she is not associated with the man and to make the man stop.

The narrator takes out her laptop and remembers she has an unread email in her inbox. The e-mail is from her father, and the narrator chose not to read it the night she received it. She was later woken up by her tearful mother with news of her father’...