Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

‘You pay! You pay for pissing on floor of bar!’ the bar owner cried.

Shaking himself dry, the red-haired Aussie jumped down from the table.

‘All yours, Hori,’ he said to Turei.

Bad move that, calling Turei a Hori . Turei masked his anger and stepped nonchalantly on the table. He was always a showman and he knew how to play the crowd. He knelt down, as if making mental calculations: if x equals urine and y equals volume and you added z to represent distance then —

‘Come on, Kiwi,’ the red-haired soldier called. ‘You’re wasting time.’

‘Patience!’ Turei smiled as he wet a finger and put it in the air as if to test which way the wind was blowing. He shook his head sadly at the audience, and winked at Sam.

‘I’m going to have to up the stakes to make this all worth while,’ he said. ‘See that door? And the road outside? And the other side of the road? It’s double or nothing that I can piss that far.’

The audience cheered wildly. The Kiwis looked at each other nervously. There was no way Turei could do it.

‘You’re on!’ the red-haired Aussie called.

‘Okay,’ Turei answered. ‘In that case, you and your mates can go out there to make sure I reach the kerb and, by the time you’re there, I’ll be ready.’

With that, Turei asked Sam and George to get him some jugs. He downed the lot. Then, he pretended to do a strip on the table and dropped his jungle utilities.

‘Holy Hone Hika,’ Sam thought as Turei mooned everybody with a very dark and pimply set of buns.

The bar girls shrieked with laughter.

‘It’s not what you see that counts,’ Turei said, offended. ‘It’s what you do with it.’

He turned toward the door. Far beyond it was the red-haired Aussie and his mates. Then Turei showed everybody his cannon — and the Kiwis in the crowd groaned because, compared to the Aussie’s dick, Turei’s was short, stubby and uncircumcised. What they didn’t know, however, was that Turei’s was a grower not a shower.

Turei applied himself to a quiet and fierce concentration. He chug-a-lugged several more beers as he scoped out the problem, finalising his mathematical assumptions about the arc of fire and the velocity needed to piss across the road.

‘You really think you can do it, bro?’ Sam asked.

Turei nodded. He had finally concluded he was ready. ‘Stay right where you are, cobbers,’ he yelled to the Australians. Then he turned to Sam: ‘When you’re ready, my good man.’

Sam waved for silence:

‘Ready!’ he called.

Turei massaged his dick a few times, and it began to grow. He pinched his uncircumcised foreskin closed with his fingers. He began to piss and piss and piss . A gasp went up in the room as Turei’s foreskin ballooned outward.

‘Aim!’

With a loud grunt and strain, Turei sighted through the doorway of the bar. He put all the force of muscle into his thighs, elevated onto his toes, brought his balls and dick into a 90-degree position, let go his foreskin, flexed —

‘Fire!’

With a huge monstrous fart, which sent everyone coughing for fresh air, Turei sent a big yellow water ball of piss sailing through the bar. It was an astonishing and beautiful sight as it rose to the ceiling and over the heads of the patrons. On it went, reaching its zenith — and then it began its downward trajectory. Everybody — except the red-haired Aussie and his mates — fled for shelter.

This couldn’t be happening! This wasn’t possible!

Oh yes it was. Splash. The ball of piss hit the target.

The whole bar erupted into whoops of astonishment and laughter. Turei rolled his eyes as if there’d been nothing to it. George began to collect on the bet.

‘How he do that?’ the bar owner asked.

‘Mormon elders taught us applied science,’ Sam said.

A beer bottle came flying through the air. With a roar, the red-haired Aussie launched himself at Turei.

‘You black bastard —’ If there was another word that Turei disliked it was bastard .

‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to swear?’

With the sound like a crack of a bat hitting home, Turei let fly with his fists. Next minute the fight was on . Beer cans, Ba Muoi Ba bottles and other assorted articles rained across the room.

‘No fight! No fight!’ the bar owner cried.

But this was what life was all about, wasn’t it? Kiwis against the Aussies. The sheer exhilaration of physical contact. Even the bar girls got into the act, head butting and groin kicking for all they were worth. And right in the middle of it were Sam and George, laughing their heads off and drinking a toast to Turei.

‘Oh, you are one truly foul dude,’ Sam called.

The riot rolled into the alley, attracting more and more people.

‘Hey, boys! Fight! Fight!’

Within minutes, soldiers were leaping into the battle and it didn’t matter which side you were on. Then there were whistles as the Military Police arrived to break everything up, but they only made matters worse because they were White Mice — South Vietnamese police in white helmets, gloves and shirts — and, man, they were so clean.

Not for long. ‘Enjoying yourself?’ George asked Sam.

‘Yup,’ Sam laughed. ‘It’s just like Saturday night at home.’

More whistles sounded, and this time American Military Police arrived in jeeps from all directions.

‘Time to bail out,’ Sam yelled.

‘Damn,’ Turei said, and he smiled at the red-haired Aussie. ‘I’m going to have to make this short.’ With that, he let fly with an upper cut, and the Aussie was down for the count.

Sam grabbed George and Turei and they were out the door and running together with the rest of the crowd down the street. Next moment Sam tripped and took a dive. When he picked himself up, his mates were gone, not realising he was not following them. Panting, he saw blood on his hand and gingerly inspected his forehead: ouch . He must have been grazed during the fight. He pushed through the crowd and, as he passed an alley, he saw the sea, just on the other side of a strand of beach. He headed for the waves, where at least he could wash off the blood. He took off his boots and socks, and started to laugh when he thought of Turei’s pissing act.

By chance, Sam looked up and saw three other soldiers staggering about further along the beach. Two of them were trying to get the third to stand. Sam was about to leave but blood was still dripping from his forehead. He was splashing his face with sea water, the salt stinging the wound. He looked again at the three soldiers and he took in the situation for what it really was.

Only one of the three men was a soldier. The other two were local Vietnamese, probably friendly to the enemy, and they were beating the soldier up.

‘Hey —’

Immediately Sam was up and running, running along the beach to the rescue. One of the attackers turned. A knife flashed in his hand. Sam kicked , the knife went spinning, and the attacker went down. The other attacker whirled into the fight, leaping at Sam neck. Sam blocked, stepped to one side, brought his elbow up into the attacker’s face, and kicked again. Next moment, the two assailants were fleeing the beach.

Sam knelt beside the soldier, who was spitting and coughing and nursing his jaw. ‘Are you all right?’

The soldier looked up. He was paralytically drunk and his attackers had found it easy to lure him to the beach. His eyes were unfocussed.

It was Cliff Harper.

Harper gave Sam a shove that sent him sprawling.

‘Leave me alone, willya, just leave me alone.’

Next minute, disorientated, he was up and stumbling into the sea, wading, falling, advancing further and further in. Sam waded in after him, tackled and brought him down. They were chest deep in the water and, immediately, they were fighting.