Billy and Old Smoko

B
ILLY
wakes to find his father all lackadaisical, and a strange woman burning the porridge. She reckons his real mother ran away, and he must call her Mum now. But Billy isn’t stupid. With Old Smoko, a stately, talking horse whom he teaches to rad, Billy looks for his real mum under the Kaimais, out the back of Waharoa.

He learns the secret of Mount Te Aroha, hears the ancient Maori story of Snow White, and sees how Auckland got its electricity. He also goes pig hunting, plays footy, discovers roast pork and apple sauce sandwiches – and falls in love with the blue eyes of Harrietta.

Billy and Old Smoko
is a book for reading – and laughing – aloud to all children, even  those who never had to tuck their mums and dads into bed.

W
hen I was a little boy, my mother said, “You know what’ll happen if you let your imagination run away with you!”

I didn’t know what would happen, so I put a dog collar around my imagination’s neck and kept it on a chain. But, one day, it got off and ran away. Every night, I left out a saucer of milk and and a bone, and I called and called, but it never came home again.

As soon as I was old enough, I took off my own collar and chain, and ran away from home. I didn’t find my imagination, but met a lot of people like Billy and Old Smoko.

Whether their story is the result of my imagination running away from me, I don’t know. The older I get, the more I realise I don’t know much about anything. If this goes on, I’ll finish up knowing nothing at all, and Mr Strap will come and catch me and put me back in Primer One, and I’ll have to go through school all over again.

One thing I have learned – to trust the imagination. It doesn’t need a dog collar, and it’s much happier without a chain. And if mine should read this, I hope it’ll come home, because it gets lonely here without it.

                                        Hooray,

                                    
Jack Lasenby.

O
ut the back of Waharoa, on the farms under the Kaimai Ranges, the paddocks are so steep that the cows’ and farmers’ legs grow longer on the downhill side. The trees and houses all grow longer on the downhill side, too.

Out under the Kaimais, they call morning and afternoon tea smoko. The smoko tables have longer legs on the downhill side so the mugs and plates don’t slide off. The farmers sit around the tables, drink their tea, and tell stories that are taller on the downhill side, too.

Some people say that the farmers out under the Kaimais pull each other’s legs, but the real reason their legs are longer on one side is because the paddocks are so steep. It’s what scientists call an interesting natural phenomenon.

If you’re not interested in natural phenomena, you’d better skip this page and start on the next one. Whatever you do, don’t go and watch telly, or your brain will soon look like a potato that’s been boiled too long. And that’s an interesting natural phenomenon – if you can be bothered being interested.

Yours Respectfully and Disrespectfully Respectively,
Jack Lasenby.

B
illy lived with his mother and father on a farm out the back of Waharoa, under the Kaimai Ranges. Billy loved his mother; he loved his father, too, and wanted to grow up and be a man just like him – except in one way.

Billy's mother had bright blue eyes, an oval face, and curly brown hair, and she came from Waharoa which is pretty flat. “Since I married your father, and came out to live on the steep paddocks under the Kaimais,” she told Billy, “my downhill leg has grown about half an inch longer.”

Billy laughed when his mother told him things like that, because he thought she was pulling his leg. She used to get him down, tickle him helpless, and pull his downhill leg. Then she'd get her tape measure, measure his leg, and tell him it had stretched and was longer than the other, and Billy would laugh and laugh.

Billy's father's hair was black, his eyes were grey, and he could put down a pretty good hangi. He didn't laugh as much as Billy's mother, but he grinned a lot. He had lived
out there on the steep paddocks under the Kaimais all his life, so his downhill leg was quite a bit longer than the other.

“It means I can get around pretty fast on the steep paddocks,” he told Billy. “Of course, it makes me a bit slower walking on the flat but, most of the time, I'm up here under the Kaimais.”

Billy laughed when his father told him that, because he thought he was pulling his leg.

“How will I know when I'm a man?” Billy asked his father one day.

His father who was leaning on a cow said, “You'll know when you're a man, because you'll grow one leg longer than the other.” He grinned, looked up at the Kaimais, and whistled “Red Sails in the Sunset”. If Billy's father had a fault, it was that he was a bit lackadaisical and leaned on things, but he could whistle lots of tunes. He often whistled “Roll Along Covered Wagon”, “Po Kare Kare Ana”, and “Auld Lang Syne”.

When Billy looked in a mirror, he saw his own eyes were somewhere between grey and blue, and his hair was black like his father's and curly like his mother's, so he resembled both of them. The only way in which he didn't want to resemble his father was in being a bit lackadaisical.

B
illy got up one morning, went out to the kitchen, and found a strange woman burning the porridge. Being interested in natural phenomena, Billy noticed at once that she had black hair, green eyes, a white face, and red lips. He also noticed that the strange woman's legs were both the same length.

“Where's my mum?” asked Billy.

“She ran away I'm your stepmother you must call me Mum now she was never your real mum anyway,” the strange woman said without any punctuation, and shook her fist at Billy. Then she walked across the kitchen and smiled at herself in a mirror.

“That's curious,” Billy thought to himself. “There was no mirror in the kitchen before.” He caught a tiny glimpse of just a bit of his stepmother's reflection in the mirror, and was so scared at what he saw, his feet started turning to stone. Somehow, Billy lifted and turned his cold, heavy feet and
felt them begin to warm up.

His father was sitting with his mouth open, staring at the beautiful stranger with black hair, white face, and red lips. From where he sat, he couldn't see the mirror.

Billy called his stepmother Mum, not because he was scared of her fist, but because his real mum had said he must always be polite to grownups. Billy was pretty bright for his age, and he wasn't fooled. He knew the strange woman in the kitchen wasn't his real mum.

His real mum never burnt the porridge, she always used punctuation in her speech, and she would never have run away and left him and his dad. Billy had seen his real mother's reflection in the mirror in her bedroom, and it never started turning him to stone. It always showed her as what she was: pretty with bright blue eyes, an oval face, and curly brown hair.

Billy wanted to ask his father what had happened to his real mum, but he was eating his burnt porridge with cream, brown sugar, and gusto.

“Mighty good porridge!” he told Billy.

Billy knew at once that something was wrong. His father turned to smile at his stepmother, and Billy tipped his own burnt porridge on to his plate. His father ate it without noticing. “Sure is mighty good porridge!” He banged his spoon on the table to show he meant what he said, whistled “Home On the Range”, and leaned against the back of his chair lackadaisically.

“No whistling at the table sit up straight!”said Billy's stepmother.

“I wasn't whistling,” Billy started to say, but saw his father looking at him, so he changed it halfway and said, “I beg your pardon.” He put his spoon in his empty plate, sat up straight, pulled in his tummy, pulled back his shoulders, held up his head, and asked politely if he might leave the table.

As he walked outside, his feet felt lighter again.

O
utside where nobody could hear, Billy sat on a heap of stones, thought of the burnt porridge and said aloud, “Dad's gone more lackadaisical than ever.” Then he saw his stepmother watching through the window, lip-reading what he said.

“I was just saying that daddy longlegs are everywhere this weather,” he called to her.

She nodded grimly and threw up the window. “Take those stones and throw them in the river at once.”

“But they're Dad's hangi stones!” Billy explained.

“They make the place look untidy do as I say don't you dare answer me back!”

Billy spent the rest of the morning, dumping his dad's good hangi stones in the river.

They didn't have lunch that day because his stepmother was busy rearranging the knife and fork drawer and the linen cupboard the way she wanted them. Tea was half a hard-boiled spinach leaf, and Billy let his dad eat the whole of it because he'd been working, milking the cows.

“Mighty good spinach!” said his dad and leaned both elbows on the table.

Billy hadn't had any breakfast or lunch, but he wasn't hungry because he'd had a good go at the hot pollard mash he'd fed to the chooks – and he'd sucked a couple of their eggs and chewed a handful of their wheat, too.

That night Billy couldn't sleep because of a lump in his bed. He looked under the mattress and found a book, a pencil, a candle, a box of matches, a pocket knife, a balloon, and the shiny lid of a milkpowder tin. He opened the knife, felt the edge of the blade, and cut his initials in the side of his bed where nobody would see. He struck a match, lit the candle, opened the book and saw a message.

Billy was too young to know how to read, but he guessed who had written the message. The first thing he must do was to find out what it said. Although still young, Billy was pretty bright, and he taught himself to read. Quickly, he read:

Billy knew that the X's stood for kisses and the O's stood for hugs. He also knew that real men don't like kissing and don't cry much, specially not in front of other people. He looked around to make sure nobody was watching, hugged the book, gave it a quick kiss, and let two big tears run down his cheeks. He licked one and found it tasted salty. So did the other.

“That's curious!” said Billy.

He sharpened the pencil with his pocket knife, found some blank pages in the back of the book, and wrote a heading: “Natural Phenomena”. Under that he wrote, “My tears taste salty.” Young as he was, Billy already knew the importance of recording his observations. He also wrote the time and date because he knew that was important, too.

He blew out the candle, knelt, and hid everything back under his mattress. Still on his knees, he told the book in a whisper, “I only call her Mum because she said I have to, but I know she's not my real mum. My real mum's reflection wouldn't turn me to stone,” and he got back into bed. Then he remembered the shiny lid of the milk powder tin,
got up and put it in the back pocket of his shorts, and got back into bed for the last time that night.

Billy pulled the blankets over his head so nobody could hear him, and nobody could read his lips when he spoke. “I am going to look for my real mum,” he said, “and I'm going to find her!” He went to sleep with a smile on his face.