Billy and Old Smoko (16 page)

O
ld Smoko pulled the konaki with Billy and a couple of shovels up the front paddock, and called down the hole in the ground, “Stand clear! We’re going to dig you out.”

“Stand up, dear! They’re going to dig us out!” the echo replied.

The first person to climb out was Billy’s real mother. “You’ve grown taller!” she said, then she kissed him and asked if he’d been behaving himself while she’d been away, then cried and kissed him again and said, “Did you miss me?” Billy was scared she might pick him up and give him a cuddle. He wouldn’t have minded it, but not in front of Old Smoko.

“I started school and went up a couple of classes,” Billy said and felt his voice do something funny. “Heroes don’t cry!” he told himself, but he held his mother’s hand and rubbed his face against her and smelt her, and saw that she had one leg slightly longer than the other. “It is you!” His
voice wobbled again, and he looked around in case anyone was watching.

“That’s Old Smoko,” he said a little loudly to his mother. “He takes me to school.”

“I’m not deaf, dear. I remember Old Smoko. If I didn’t know I was imagining things, I’d say he was digging with that spade.”

“It’s not a spade,” said Billy. “It’s a shovel.”

“Thank goodness! For a moment, I thought he was digging.” Billy was so pleased to hear his real mother speaking with proper punctuation, he didn’t worry about what she meant.

As she hugged and squeezed him all over, making sure all his parts were there, Old Smoko helped Johnny and Lynda Bryce’s real mother out of the hole. Then came June Williams’s, then Harrietta’s, then Peggy Turia’s real stepmother, then the real mother of the little boy from out Soldiers Settlement, the Tarapipis’, the Ellerys’, the Rawiris’, and the rest of them.

Without even stopping to thank Old Smoko, they swam the Waihou and ran home. The last to climb out was the real Mrs Strap.

“If that husband of mine’s been dressing up in my old All Black jersey, I’ll give him what for!” She puffed smoke from her nostrils, did a racing dive across the river, and hurdled the fences towards Waharoa.

“Poor Mr Strap,” said Old Smoko, but he was talking to himself. Billy’s mother was already halfway down the paddock, piggybacking Billy home. “They might have waited
for me,” Old Smoko murmured and followed with the konaki. Behind him, the mad scientist stuck her head out of the hole, climbed out, swam the river, and ran towards Auckland crying, “Revenge! Revenge!”

By the time Old Smoko got down to the house, Billy’s dad had a dog collar around his neck and was chained to the kennel under the big macrocarpa. “And I don’t want to hear another word from you!” Billy’s mother was telling him.

Using vinegar and yellow soap, she scrubbed the kitchen from top to bottom. She dragged everything off her bed, threw it over the fence, doused it with kerosene, and threw a match on it. She emptied the wardrobe and flung all the clothes on the bonfire. Old Smoko looked out through the darkness, and saw twelve other bonfires burning across the district below.

Every now and again Billy’s real mum stuck her head out the door and screeched towards the dog kennel. “And I don’t ever want to hear that woman’s name mentioned in my house, or you’ll catch it!”

Old Smoko took inside a couple of fat sows he’d caught and singed, and Billy’s mother slashed the skin for crackling and popped them in the oven. Tea was pretty late, but both Billy and Old Smoko told Billy’s real mum it was the best roast pork and crackling with apple sauce they’d ever eaten.

She smiled and said, “If you’ve still got any room, there’s an apple pie and rhubarb crumble and golden syrup pudding with trifle, pavlova, and hundreds of thousands for afters.” They had it with fresh cream from that night’s milking and, since it was a special occasion, Billy’s real mum also
cooked some fried scones and poured golden syrup over them because Old Smoko said that was his favourite after roast pork.

When they couldn’t eat any more, Billy showed his real mum his list of interesting natural phenomena, and she read them aloud and said, “They’re real interesting, dear!” Then she said it was high time they were all in bed, and Billy asked if Old Smoko could sleep in his bed, too, and told her how he had helped him against the wicked stepmother.

His real mother cried when she heard that and said, “Of course, only you’ll have to top and tail or there won’t be room.” She piggybacked them both to bed, told them the story of “Bluebeard”, and put on his voice, and did all his fierce gestures and terrifying noises, too. And all with punctuation. Then she kissed Billy and tucked him in, and he made her kiss Old Smoko and tuck him in, too, and she blew out the candle, and they slept.

Both Billy and Old Smoko had nightmares, and woke up screaming, but whether it was from hearing “Bluebeard”, or from eating all that roast pork, crackling, apple sauce, apple pie, rhubarb crumble, golden syrup pudding, trifle, pavlova, hundreds and thousands, and fresh cream, and fried scones and golden syrup, nobody will ever know.

Old Smoko fell out of bed and slept curled up on the mat. He found it more comfortable, and Billy was relieved because getting kicked by a draught horse having a nightmare wasn’t much fun.

In the morning, Billy’s mum found them both still fast asleep, and smiled and closed the door so she wouldn’t wake
them with the noise she made giving her kitchen another good scrub from top to bottom.

When they woke, they had a look at the cloned witches standing in a long row across the Waikato from south to north: tall, four-legged, steel skeletons with their arms sticking straight out from their shoulders, and their hands hanging down. Already, the Electricity Department had run up long ladders and painted them silver, men were stringing cables between them, and people were saying, “They sure put up them power pylons mighty fast!”

Billy and Old Smoko would have been late for school, but Billy’s mother had told his father to do the milking himself. Pleased to be off the chain, he jumped around barking and wasn’t the least bit lackadaisical, but Billy’s mother put him back on as soon as he’d finished.

The other kids grinned, cheered, and waved their school bags filled with roast pork, crackling, and apple sauce sandwiches for Billy and Old Smoko who’d forgotten their lunches.

“How did you get on, pouring the oil of wintergreen?” asked Harrietta.

“Yeah!” said Johnny Bryce. “How’d it go?”

“Nonchalantly,” Billy said modestly.

“You are my hero!” Harrietta told him and smiled with her blue eyes until he felt himself turning all runny inside.

Mr Strap was in a good mood and taught embroidery the whole morning, and his wife came to show the kids some of her body building exercises. However, she struck an attitude and bulged so alarmingly between the bits of
her bikini, all the primer kids burst into tears, and she went home in a huff. “I’ll show you!” she told Mr Strap, and he cried louder than the primer kids.

In the afternoon, the School Inspector called in disguised as the Rawleighs Man and gave everyone a free bottle of oil of wintergreen. When Mrs Strap smelled it, she bounded over and took Mr Strap’s bottle off him, and they heard her slapping it on as she jogged back to the school house.

“That proves she’s not a Gorgon,” said Johnny Bryce.

“Did Mrs Strap really play for the All Blacks?” asked the little boy from out Soldiers Settlement.

“You saw her jersey, didn’t you?” everyone told him.

When Billy got home, his dad was doing the milking again but, as soon as he’d finished, Billy’s mother put him back on the chain. After tea – fried scones and golden syrup with roast pork, crackling, and apple sauce – Billy was allowed to give his father the lunches he and Old Smoko had forgotten to take to school. He also slipped him some pork bones which had lots of lovely gristle on them and, when his mum wasn’t looking, he gave his dad a quick pat and let him lean against his leg.

B
efore it got dark, Billy and Old Smoko explored the mad scientist’s underground laboratory and unlocked a door that led to a tunnel. At its eastern end, they heard voices and found the lost children who had vanished into the Kaimais, digging their way out the other side just north of Tauranga.

“You can come out now,” Old Smoko told them, and the lost children came out and sold their tunnel to the Minister of Railways who built the railway line through it from Waharoa to Tauranga.

When their cruel parents found out how much money their kids got for the tunnel, they advertised in the
Matamata County Mail
saying, “We love you! Come home and you can do the milking and all the hard work around the farm.”

But the lost children said, “No!” They bought their own farm on the steep hills under the Kaimais next to Billy’s, and built a house big enough to hold them all. They got themselves up in the morning, did the milking, made their
own breakfast, cut their own lunch, and rode to school on Old Smoko, too. And they all started growing one leg longer than the other – on the downhill side.

Billy’s mum was looking through his book, one day, and she saw the page on which he’d drawn a heart with his initials, and H.W., and an arrow sticking through it. “Who’s H.W?” asked his mum, but Billy was too embarrassed to say. “What’s this nonsense I hear about you and some little girl from down the pa? Look at me when I speak to you, Billy!”

Even though embarrassed, Billy knew he must tell the truth, especially to his mother. He wriggled nonchalantly, bent in a circle, tied himself in a bow knot, pulled himself undone, and said, “I suppose it must be Harrietta Wilson. She says she’s my girlfriend. That’s what the other kids reckon, anyway.”

“And do you say you’re her boyfriend?”

“I dunno. I suppose so.”

“We’ll see about that,” said his real mother with a little laugh.

It was that time of year when the marbles season stopped, and the boys started swapping cigarette cards. Harrietta reckoned it came earlier than usual because she’d won all the boys’ marbles off them. Anyway, it was that time of year when the girls stopped skipping and started hopscotch instead.

The boys swapped cigarette cards for about a month, then they swapped stamps, and then they swapped comics while the girls swapped
The Girls’ Crystal,
and then it was time for birdnesting, then time for cricket, and then time for acorn
fights, and then one day there was a smell of oil of wintergreen and they heard “Hi Yo, Sylvia!” and in galloped the Rawleighs Man – disguised as the School Inspector – with a new football from the prime minister, and it was time for footy, and basketball, and knocking chestnuts down out of the school trees with your shanghai, and daring the others to eat the sheets of ice off the puddles on the way to school, and pointing at them and saying, “Oooh! I saw a dog piddle in that puddle!”

And everybody else said, “Oooh!” and, if you’d just eaten the sheet of ice, you looked very thoughtful and ran home at playtime, and just before you got to the back door you rubbed your eyes to make them red, and you went in crying and told your real mummy that you didn’t feel very well.

The school nurse came one morning with her huge blunt needle and jabbed everyone in the arm which made them cry, Mr Strap loudest of all. And she told them never to eat the ice off the puddles because they didn’t know what was in it. That was probably why most of the primer kids went home crying that morning. Then suddenly there was no ice on the puddles in the morning any longer, and it was time for birdnesting, marbles, and skipping again.

The lackadaisical dads were still chained to their kennels but, one by one, they were allowed back inside. The first was Mr Rawiri, but he forgot himself and whistled “Home On the Range” in the bath. He hadn’t got to the end of the first line before Mrs Rawiri got him down and put the Octopus Clamp on him, and the next thing he knew he was back on the chain. Fortunately, Maggie felt sorry for him, and she
used to sit on top of the kennel and read Greek myths to him after school.

When blackberrying time came round again, Billy’s dad was the only one who still had to sleep in the dog kennel. Billy sneaked out after tea one night and gave him an extra sack because it looked like a frost.

“Can’t Dad come inside?” he said to his mother.

“Certainly not!” said his mother. “I can still smell something in my kitchen. It’s not dog, and it’s not roast pork, and it’s not oil of wintergreen – I think it’s that woman! He can stay on the chain a while longer.”

For helping the kids win against the wicked stepmothers, the prime minister gave the School Inspector an Austin Seven car, but the first time he parked it outside the school, Mr Farley’s cow jumped the fence and licked holes in the canvas roof. Mr Farley said it must have smelled of oil of wintergreen.

After that, the School Inspector went back to riding his horse. The kids thought it was more fun, anyway, because it always neighed, “Hi-Yo, Sylvia!” whenever it saw Mrs Strap striking attitudes, glistening with oil, and terrifying in her bikini on the front lawn of the school house.

The prime minister gave the Rawleighs Man a new buggy which he still drives out to the farms under the Kaimais and sells the farmers laxatives, liniment, and ointment for their piles, but nobody’s sure whether he’s a brother or a clone of the School Inspector. Most people have forgotten they ever wondered about it.

One day, Billy’s mother told him he could leave his father
off the chain after he’d finished milking. “Not for long, mind,” she said. “And while he’s off the chain tell him he can dig the potato paddock and when he’s finished that he can chop down that old pine tree out the back and cut it up for firewood.”

Next time she said he could be let off the chain for a while, Billy asked, “Can’t he come inside tonight?”

“Not on your Nelly!” said Billy’s mother but, when she saw his face, she said, “Well, perhaps he can sleep on the back doorstep. Only you make sure he lies on an old sack. We don’t want his hairs tramping all through the house. And if it rains, he can sleep on the back porch, but that’s as far as he’s coming inside till I’m sure he’s stopped being lackadaisical and whistling ‘Home On the Range’.

“The idea of him letting that woman into my kitchen. Not to mention the downright cheek of her, rearranging my linen cupboard, and altering the knives and forks around in their drawer.

“Just the thought of her makes me itch. You can give your father a thorough going-over with the kootie comb and, while you’re doing that, I’m going to give the whole house a good spring cleaning from top to bottom, and I’ll use caustic soda this time and see if that gets rid of the smell.

“I think you’re growing one leg longer than the other,” she said to Billy. “I noticed when you were climbing on Old Smoko this morning.”

“I have noticed, too,” said Old Smoko. “The boy is growing up.”

“Goodness, me!” said Billy’s real mum. “For a moment,
I thought Old Smoko said something!”

“Before you know where you are,” said Old Smoko, “the boy will have a girlfriend.”

“Oh, he’s far too young for that,” said Billy’s mother, and she took off her pinnie and flapped it at his father, who looked as if he was trying to sneak in the back door.