Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

George paused. Leaned forward. Took a sip of his beer.

‘I think, in the end, that’s why Sam joined up. I think he realised if he didn’t get away from his dad and make his own way in life, Arapeta would break him as surely as if he was one of his horses. Arapeta would have a stallion on the end of a rope and in his other hand he held the bullwhip. Every now and then he cracked the whip over the stallion’s head. It was his way of showing who was the master. Well, you can do that to horses, but it shouldn’t be done to a man.

‘Throughout Sam’s teens, his father was always cracking the whip at him. Letting it sing just above his head, when Sam was least expecting it. Just to make him remember who was boss.

‘Well, we were all in the Upper Sixth at high school when Sam started to talk about joining the Army. The next year we went out shearing in the Mahana Number Two gang. The following May, 1967, the news came that a rifle company of 121 from the First Battalion in Malaysia was going to Vietnam. Sam was sick of shearing, and he told us he was going into Gisborne to sign up. I decided to join him, and so did Turei. Our mothers, especially Turei’s Mum, Lilly, hated the idea but by that time it was too late. We went to Burnham Camp for basic all arms training, then we were shipped off to Malaysia for further training. From there we went with Victor Company to Nui Dat.’

George’s voice drifted into silence. He looked at me to provide another cue. I confronted him with Harper.

‘Can you tell me anything about the guy who’s with Uncle Sam?’

George lifted the photograph to the light. I watched his eyes crinkle and clear with recognition. His gaze went right through me.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘His name. Anything.’

George didn’t even blink.

‘Are you playing with me, son?’ he asked gently. ‘You know who he is — Woody Woodpecker, the American chopper pilot at Nui Dat.’

It was obvious George didn’t want to say more, but I pressed on.

‘I’m not playing with you. I’m just trying to understand their story. How they became —’

George’s eyes narrowed. The question hung in the air and I thought I had blown it.

‘Well, I guess it must have happened straight after Operation Bucephalus while we were on our second leave in Vung Tau —’

And suddenly the blades of a gunship were slapping the air hard, pop, pop, pop. It was late evening. Three young men were watching a helicopter making its way northwards across the town towards the dark Vietnam horizon.

‘Go, cowboys, go!’

The chopper convoy was wheeling through the air. In the street below, soldiers and civilians were cheering and waving. The noise was shattering as the convoy lifted up and over and away into the night. Sam was aware of the heat again. Yes, it had kept its promise:

‘I’m in every breath you take. You’ll never escape me. Never.’

Sam looked across at George and Turei, and grinned. They’d started at a popular Steam and Clean massage parlour where the girls had been playful and sexy — and when Sam had climaxed, his laughter following the release of tension had ricocheted through the walls setting everybody else off. From there they’d gone on to the LOVE FOR YOU HERE BAR where George had avoided the steak but had shouted Sam and Turei another round of sex; hey, that was the great thing about Vietnam. Sex was easy. All you had to do was pass over your money and you got laid. Now they were on their way to another bar where Turei had been told the action was supposed to be hot and the beer the coldest in Vung Tau. After half an hour’s searching, however, they still hadn’t found it.

‘Are you sure you got the name right?’ Sam asked.

‘I tell you,’ Turei insisted, ‘the bar’s called The Cock Door. We’re supposed to look for a sign of a naked woman. It must be around here somewhere.’

When at last they found the place, Sam let out a sigh of amused exasperation.

‘God, you’re dumb,’ he said to Turei. ’Not only did you get the sign wrong. You got the language wrong too.’

The bar was called Le Coq D’or and the sign was a golden rooster.

‘C’mon,’ George said. ‘We’ve already wasted good boozing time.’

Inside, the bar looked like a packing crate. The walls were framed with whatever wood the proprietor had been able to scrounge, and covered with large sheets of the thin metal that beer cans were stamped from. Thousands of Carling and Falstaff labels on top of the sheets gave the place a certain atmosphere.

‘Hey, Kiwis!’ The patrons were full of drunken exhilaration, shooting the bull, excited and happy to be alive and having a good time. The Vietnamese scrambled to service the orders of beer. The barmaids and whores cracked the air with shrill laughter.

‘There’s sure a lot of Aussies here,’ Sam said.

He jerked his head at a tableful of Australian soldiers. One of them was the red-haired bastard from the base and, as usual, he was eyeballing Turei.

‘Good,’ Turei said, staring back. ‘I feel like getting physical. I’ve had some sex, some drink, and now all that’s left to do is take out a certain red-headed cunt.’

He called for some beer. He paid the barman 50 piastres extra to spin the bottles on ice to get them really cold. Then, wiping the top of the bottle — not to mention the rust on the bottle rim — Turei offered a toast in the direction of the soldier.

‘Fuck all Aussies.’

To be fair, the baiting between the sides had started long before Sam, George and Turei arrived. There’d been some pushing and jostling, beer guzzling contests, and lots of macho crushing of empty beer cans. An Aussie and Kiwi soldier had done the Dance of the Flaming Arseholes standing butt-arse naked on a table, with two-metre lengths of toilet paper trailing from their bums. Bets had been taken as to who would do the dance first, someone had tossed a coin and, to much groaning from the Aussie side, the Kiwi soldier won first opportunity to set his competitor’s toilet roll on fire. But you can never trust the Aussies to play by the rules — when nobody was looking, someone in the crowd lit the toilet roll of the Kiwi soldier halfway along the roll.

Now there was no doubting the mood among the Kiwis — ‘Let’s get the bastards’. So that when the red-haired Aussie started to hassle Turei, everybody was primed.

There was deadly quiet as the bar patrons collected into three groups. The Aussies. The Kiwis. Everybody Else.

‘No, no!’ the bar owner remonstrated. ‘No fighting! No fighting!’

Turei patted him on the head and smiled benignly.

‘Okay, chief,’ he said. ‘How’s about another bet instead?’

‘What the bet? No more fire in arsehole. Something else.’

Turei turned to the red-haired Aussie.

‘Feel like taking me on, cobber? The guy who pisses the farthest wins.’

‘Not in bar! Not in bar!’ the bar owner yelled frantically.

But it was too late. The Aussie had jumped on the table, chugged as many jugs as he could, burped and pulled down his trou. Around him odds were being laid and bets exchanged. The bar girls giggled as they caught sight of the Aussie’s red bush and bloated pink dick.

‘Oh, he win for sure!’ they laughed. ‘And after you win, cobber boy, you spend money on us, we show you good time-ah?’

The Aussie soldier burped again, winked and nodded. He pointed himself towards the open door.

‘Clear the way,’ he called.

Everyone scattered.

‘On the count of five! One! Two! Three! Four —’

‘Five!’ the patrons in the bar roared.

For a moment nothing happened. Then something began to dribble from the end of the Aussie’s dick. Gradually the stream thickened and arched upward. Very soon it was fountaining higher, flowing and splashing across the floor. As it did so, everyone began to cheer. Onward and upward went the stream of piss — right to the threshold of the door.