Billy and Old Smoko

by Jack Lasenby

  That night, Billy’s dad and stepmother scoffed a roast leg of Merino wether between them, and he got a bit of raw potato peel for his tea.

  “Are you going to be all night, eating your lovely potato peel while we have to sit around till your royal highness is ready to read us the paper?” said his wicked stepmother, smiling deep into her reflection in the mirror.

  Billy shoved the potato peel off his plate with his fork, tipped it over the edge of the table, and caught it in his pocket. For just a moment, he thought of oil of wintergreen.

  “Poo! What’s that stink?” His wicked stepmother swung round, sniffing the air. Billy emptied his head and read the New Zealand Herald aloud, piggybacked the grownups to bed, and told them the old story of “The Travelling Musicians”.

  “I’d like to be the Robber Captain I’d give them Travelling Musicians what for with a big stick!” Billy’s stepmother said.

  Out in the kitchen, Old Smoko was frying some chops off a pig who’d given him cheek in the shelter-belt. Billy pulled the raw potato peel from his pocket, and threw it into the fire. “Mighty good chops!” he said.

  On Saturday morning, somebody galloped up to the cowshed on a heavily moustached horse that blew down its nostrils like Mr Strap. Old Smoko looked at the rider and thought of the Ragwort Inspector, Mrs Strap, and Billy’s beautiful wicked stepmother. “Clones,” he thought and emptied his head.

  “Did somebody call me a clown?”

  Old Smoko shook his head, and Billy said, “I didn’t say a word.”

  The clone wore a cap with a skull and crossbones badge that said “Thistle Inspector”. She threw a rope over one of the rafters of the cowshed roof, swung on it, and said, “Just to see if it’ll take your weight.” She looked at Old Smoko’s neck meaningfully and tied a hangman’s noose. “If I find so much as a single thistle I’ll hang draw and quarter the pair of you!”

  When she couldn’t find a single thistle in the front paddock, she galloped down to the house, and Billy and Old Smoko saw the telescope flash in the sun, but this time they didn’t talk to each other.

  On the way to school, Monday morning, Billy told everyone that oil of wintergreen was for external application only. “So we can’t go giving our stepmothers a dose in their tea. Can anybody think of some other way of using it on them?” The others stared back and shook their heads. Only Johnny Bryce still said, “Drench them!”

  Mr Strap taught everyone blanket-stitching that morning, so they could hem the aprons they were making out of bleached sugarbags. “When you’ve finished your blanket-stitching, I’ll show you how to embroider your names,” he promised.

  Teaching embroidery always put Mr Strap into a good mood, so they were allowed to listen to “Broadcast to Schools” on the wireless. In the middle of a talk on gold mining in the 1860s, the announcer came on and said, “This is the National Broadcasting Service transmitting through Stations 1YA Auckland, 2YA Wellington, 3YA Christchurch, and 4YA Dunedin. We now bring you a special message from the Prime Minister.”

  “Calling all schools! Calling all schools! Sit up straight! Hands on heads! Pay attention at once! I won’t warn you a second time.” The prime minister always started her speeches that way.

  “There’s something funny going on out the back of Waharoa,” she said in her stern voice. “I’ve had reports from my School Inspector that the real mums are running away, and all the dads are turning lackadaisical. If I find any runaway mums or lackadaisical dads, I’ll fix them!”

  “She’ll fix them!” everyone said.

  “Hooray!” said Mr Strap. They all looked at him.

  “Did your real mummy run away, too?” asked the little boy from out Soldiers Settlement.

  But before he could reply, the new Mrs Strap leapt in the door, fixed them all with her green-eyed stare, and switched off the wireless. “You get on with learning your tables,” she told the kids who all thought she was their stepmother, and she led Mr Strap out into the corridor where she gave him six whacks on each hand.

  Mr Strap came back in wincing, tucking his hands under his armpits, bending over, and pretending not to cry. “Put away your embroidery,” he said. “We’ve all got to do algebra till home-time.”

  That night, as the Bryce kids slid off his back, Old Smoko said, “It sounds as if the Prime Minister is on our side.”

  “I seen her snap in the Auckland Weekly, and she looks a bit like one of them clones,” said Johnny Bryce.

  “She hasn’t got green eyes,” Billy told him.

  “No, but she’s got black hair and a white face!”

  “And sharp teeth!” said Lynda, and she and Johnny ran bawling up their drive.

  When they went to bring the cows in for milking, Billy and Smoko had a look at the hole in the ground, the one they’d filled with ragwort and thistles.

  “They’ve all disappeared,” said Billy, and his voice echoed out of the hole, “We’ve all disappeared.”

  Billy laughed, but Old Smoko stared at the empty hole, both his ears forward.

  “What did you say before?” he whispered.

  “I said, ‘They’ve all disappeared.’”

  “And what did the echo say?”

  “It said …” Billy thought for a moment. “It said, ‘We’ve all disappeared.’” He felt a bit dizzy as he leaned forward, looked into the hole, and said loudly, “I wonder where they’ve all gone?”

  “… where we’ve all gone,” said the echo.

  “It’s not quite right,” said Billy.

  “That’s right,” said the echo.

  “How extraordinary!” said Old Smoko. “Are you scared?” Billy nodded. “So am I,” Old Smoko told him.

  “I’m scared, too,” said the hole in the ground.

  They backed away. “It can’t be just an echo,” Billy said, as they walked down to the shed, driving the cows ahead.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  What Echoes are Supposed to Do, and Harrietta’s Ancient Story About the the Narcissistic Queen, Her Mirror, and Snow White’s Lungs and Liver.

  “What do you mean: ‘It can’t be an echo?’” Old Smoko asked Billy.

  “You heard it. You asked, ‘Are you scared?’ and I nodded. And you said, ‘So am I,’ and the echo said, ‘I’m scared, too.’ And when I said, ‘It’s not quite right,’ it said, ‘That’s right!’

  “Echoes,” Billy said, “are supposed to echo, not to reply with something else.”

  Old Smoko tried to sound comforting. “I suppose even echoes get things a bit mixed up sometimes.” He cleared his throat. “I think we’d better get going on the milking.”

  The following morning, they went back to the front paddock, looked down the empty hole again, and Old Smoko nodded. Billy tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. “Talking to a hole in the ground!” he said. “I feel like a bit of a galah.”

  “You sound like a bit of a galah, too,” the hole said back at him.

  “I’ve been thinking about the oil of wintergreen,” Billy told it.

  “Oil of wintergreen,” said the echo.

  “Oil of wintergreen, oil of wintergreen, oil of wintergreen,” Billy said very fast.

  “Oil of wintergreen, oil of wintergreen, oil of wintergreen,” the echo replied.

  “Oil of wintergreen, oil of wintergreen, oil of wintergreen,” Billy said even faster. “Oil of wintergreen, oily wintergreen, oily wintergrin, oily windscreen.”

  “Oil of wintergreen, oil of wintergreen, oil of wintergreen,” the echo said back. “Oil of wintergreen, oily wintergreen, oily wintergrin, oily windscreen, oily windscreen wiper.”

  Billy looked at Old Smoko who nodded back. Billy said, “But an echo should be like a mirror.”

  “… should be mirror-like,” said the echo.

  “Mirror-like, mirror-like –” Billy said, fast.

  “Mirror-like, mirror-lake, mirror-look,” said the echo. “Look in the mirror on the wall.”

  “Aha!”said Old Smoko. One hand behind
his ear, he leaned over the hole, listening and nodding as it said, “Aha! Aha!” Billy went to speak, but Old Smoko put his finger to his lips.

  “Look in the mirror on the wall,” he repeated down the hole.

  “Look in the mirror on the oil,” the echo replied out of the hole.

  “Look in the mirror on the oil,” Old Smoko said back.

  “Oil the mirror on the wall!” said the echo. It sounded excited. “Oil the mirror on the wall!” it shouted. “Oil the mirror, down she’ll fall!”

  “Is it trying to tell us something?” Billy asked Old Smoko.

  “Think of something,” said the echo.

  Old Smoko led Billy away. “What did it say?” he asked.

  “Think of something.”

  “No, before that.”

  “It said, ‘Oil the mirror, down she’ll fall.’”

  “I wonder if it’s trying to say –” Old Smoko looked down at the house, dropped his head and started grazing. Billy didn’t need to be told why. He peered at the ground as if searching, kicked the grass, pretended to pick up an object, put it in his pocket, rode Old Smoko back down to the house, and left him tied to the fence.

  “What were you doing up in the front paddock did I see you talking to that horse you’re running late with the milk,” said his wicked stepmother.

  “We took the milk down before,” Billy told her. “I lost my pocket-knife while we were burning the thistles, so I went up to find it. And I forgot to do my homework last night, so I said my seven and nine times tables while I was looking for it.”

  “You’ve got an answer for everything you watch out that horse doesn’t start thinking he can do arithmetic isn’t it time you got going if you’re not going to be late for school?”

  It was as he was getting on Old Smoko that Billy had his idea. “Shivers!” he said. “Did the echo mean her mirror?”

  “Shhh,” Old Smoko murmured. Billy emptied his head of ideas, glanced back and saw his stepmother’s white face staring through the window, both her ears turned forward. He waved. “The river looks like a mirror!” he called, and rode on down.

  The river had been low when they took the cans down that morning, but it rose now so Old Smoko had to swim hard. Wind flogged them with sand as they climbed out the other side. Neither Billy nor Old Smoko spoke till they were out of sight of the farm.

  “Oil the mirror, down she’ll fall,” Billy said.

  “I know,” said Old Smoko. “Oil the mirror, down she’ll fall.”

  “It reminds me of something.”

  “Me, too, but I can’t bring it to mind.” Old Smoko stopped to pick up Johnny Bryce and his little sister, Lynda, then the kids at the Te Aroha corner. At the Wardville turnoff, the kids from the pa and out Soldiers Settlement were waiting.

  Old Smoko shook himself, cropped a mouthful of grass, and sat down under the yellow A.A. sign which said “Morrinsville 20 miles” on one arm, and “Wardville 3 miles” on the other. The kids already on his back slid to the ground, and everyone ate the roast pork sandwiches Billy handed around.

  One of the Ellery twins asked, “Why’s Old Smoko so quiet?”

  “He’s thinking about something we heard: ‘Oil the mirror, down she’ll fall.’”

  Nobody spoke.

  “It reminded us both of something,” said Billy. “But we can’t bring it to mind.”

  “I can!” said Harrietta Wilson.

  “What does it remind you of?”

  Harrietta looked at Johnny Bryce and Phil Ellery. “Youse jokers’ll only laugh.”

  “No we won’t.” “We promise!” “We won’t laugh!”

  “It’s something in an old Maori story,” said Harrietta.

  “One of them!” Phil Ellery jeered.

  “Heh! Heh! Heh!” Johnny Bryce laughed.

  “What’d I say?”

  “If anyone else laughs, I shall wring his neck.” Old Smoko stared at Phil Ellery and at Johnny Bryce, and they looked very serious. Old Smoko patted the ground, and everyone sat around Harrietta under the A.A. sign.

  “Once upon a time,” said Harrietta, “there was a narcissistic queen who never tired of looking at herself in the mirror and asking it,

  ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall

  Who is most beautiful of all?’”

  “Just like my stepmother!” said Lynda Bryce, and everyone else growled, “Mine, too!” and “Ours, too!”

  “What’s narcissistic?” asked the little boy from out Soldiers Settlement.

  “Narcissus was a Greek boy who saw his reflection in the water and died for love of it,” said Maggie Rawiri who was a mine of information about the Greek myths.

  “Why did he die? Did he fall in and drown?”

  “You might say that,” Maggie told the little boy. “He was what you call a mirror-kisser.”

  But Billy was staring hard at Harrietta, remembering what his mother had written in his book about using the lid of the milkpowder tin to look at his stepmother’s reflection in the mirror. “Go on!” he told her.

  Harrietta nodded. “Whenever the queen asked the mirror her question, it always replied:

  ‘You are the most beautiful of all.’

  “It had to say that because the queen had chopped off the heads of all the other beautiful women in the kingdom, so only the ugly ones were left. She was very beautiful, but she was very vain.” Harrietta glanced at Maggie. “She was a narcissist,” Harrietta said.

  “One winter’s day, the queen was sitting sewing a new robe to make herself look more beautiful, when flakes of white snow fell on the ebony windowsill. She went to close the window, pricked her finger with the needle, and three drops of blood fell red on the white snow on the black windowsill.

  “‘If only I had a little baby girl as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony!’ said the queen. ‘She would make me look even more beautiful!’”

  “Is this story going to be all about babies?” asked Johnny Bryce.

  Old Smoko blew down his nostrils, Phil Ellery put his hand over his mouth, and Harrietta continued.

  “The queen gave birth to a baby princess as white as snow, as red as blood, and with hair as black as ebony. ‘I name you Snow White,’ said the queen. The baby princess gurgled. ‘Just remember,’ said her vain mother, ‘you are not allowed to be as beautiful as me!’

  “‘Gurgle, gurgle!’ said Snow White.

  “‘Because,’ screeched the wicked queen, ‘if you do, I’ll eat your lungs and liver!’

  “‘Gurgle, gurgle!’ said the baby princess.

  “Snow White grew up to be a most beautiful young princess. On her seventh birthday, her mother, the wicked queen, said to her mirror:

  ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall

  Who is most beautiful of all?’

  “And the mirror said back to her,

  ‘The princess is the most beautiful of all.’

  “Mad with jealous rage, the queen sent for the royal huntsman. ‘Take the princess well into the bush, right back into the wop wops,’ she ordered him. ‘Kill her, cut out her liver and lungs, and bring them to me.’”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Why Everybody Shut Up at What Peggy Said; Why the Dogs Bounced, Barked, Got Scared and Gave In; and Snow White’s Unfortunate Voice and Taste in Music.

  Everyone gasped. “She couldn’t do that!” said Johnny Bryce. “Not to her own daughter! They wouldn’t let her.”

  “They wouldn’t let her,” Phil Ellery echoed Johnny. “She was the princess’s own mother! Course she couldn’t do that!”

  “To her own little girl?” said Maggie Rawiri. “Nobody’s mother could do that!”

  “Some mothers could,” said Peggy Turia, and everybody remembered that she loved her real stepmother. They all knew there was some story or other about her real mother being cruel to Peggy when she was a baby, then running away and leaving her behind. Everyone looked at each other and shut up.

  “What about the royal huntsman?” asked Johnny Bryc
e. “Did he hool the pigs around with his dogs?”

  “You’re forgetting the beautiful little baby princess!” said Maggie.

  “Come off it!” Johnny told her. “She’s not a baby; she’s seven. Harrietta said!”

  Harrietta waited till all the voices died down and everyone looked at her. “The huntsman let off his best pig dogs,” she said, and Johnny Bryce looked at Phil Ellery and grinned.

  “The dogs bounced around barking, then followed as the huntsman took the princess by the hand and led her well into the bush, right back into the wop-wops. They climbed to a saddle in a ridge, stood on the watershed, and looked down a hookgrass gully at some pongas below.

  “‘Run that way,’ the huntsman pointed down the gully, ‘till you come to the pongas, and you’ll find a trickle of water. Follow it and you’ll come to a creek. Follow it and you’ll come to a stream. Whatever you do, keep following the stream down, and never come back to the castle again, or your wicked mother will kill you – and me.’ And he sooled his dogs on to Snow White, just to hurry her along, so she ran through the hookgrass, down the gully, under the pongas, and down the creek.

  “The huntsman whistled his dogs off. On the way back through the bush to the castle, his finders bailed a pig, and he sent in his holders and stuck it – a good-sized Captain Cooker.

  “The huntsman cut out its lungs and liver and took them back to the queen who boiled and ate them with salt and pepper and lots of rauriki, and smiled at her reflection in the mirror.”

  “Eugh!” said June Williams. “Why’d she want to eat Snow White’s lungs and liver?”

  “To make sure.”

  “But it wasn’t really Snow White’s lungs and liver?” asked the little boy from out Soldiers Settlement.

  Harrietta shook her head. “Just the pig’s.

  “Through the bush, Snow White followed the creek till it became a stream, and followed the stream till it became a river, and followed the river till she came to a clearing with a ponga log hut. Inside, she found a table with seven plates, cups, and knives and forks. She ate a little from the food on each plate, and drank a little from each cup. Then she felt tired and saw seven bunks around the walls. She tried them all.