‘By the way I’m Cliff Harper.’
‘You can call me Sam.’
Harper gave Sam the ball. Before he could even draw breath Sam spun the ball over to George, George passed to Turei in the D who twisted, jumped and slam dunked the ball through the hoop.
‘What the fuck?’ Harper gasped.
‘Two points to us,’ Sam winked at him. ‘Takes us up to 14. You’re still to score. Your ball.’
Harper looked at Sam, stunned. ‘So you don’t play much basketball where you come from? Who taught you guys?’
‘Mormon elders from Brigham Young University.’
‘And I suppose you small town boys never played professionally?’ Harper asked, getting the picture.
‘Had you asked I would have told you,’ Sam answered. ‘We were in our rep team. Can’t you cut the talk and get on with the game?’
Harper roared with laughter. ‘Oh, you sly piece of shit,’ he said.
The game resumed. Harper passed to Seymour but Turei stole the ball from him. Turei was blocked by Fox who passed to Harper who was, Sam had to concede, not a bad player for a Yankee boy. Harper ran the ball into the D. Sam tried to block, there was some jostling —
‘Aren’t you getting a bit too close and personal?’ Harper teased.
Sam stepped back, startled, and Harper pushed past, lifted, and drifted in the ball without touching the hoop.
‘Nothing but net,’ Harper said to Sam. ‘Fourteen to you, two to us.’
The game began again. Sam signed to George and Turei to go man on man. When they scored the next two points, Harper looked at Sam with delight.
‘Hey, guys,’ he called to his team mates. ‘There is a God. At last worthy competition.’
Harper hunkered down. It was getting hot, so he pulled off his T-shirt. Sweat was pouring across his pectorals. He pointed at Sam.
‘I’m gonna make it rain on you all day. You are my bitch.’
The game got serious and had it not been for Harper’s schedule, Sam guessed his side would eventually have been outclassed by the Americans. The heat was ferocious and Turei fumbled, letting the Americans even the score.
Sam changed the strategy. He had always been good at long shots at the hoop. Instead of going for the D he kept on lifting, sighting the ball from outside the D and lobbing it in.
‘Look at that fucker!’ Harper said to Seymour in admiration.
Twenty minutes later, Sam’s team was only just ahead. Harper looked at his watch. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’ He signalled to Fox and Seymour.
‘We gotta go,’ he said to Sam. ‘I’ll save you for another day. Be very afraid.’
Sam grinned and they joined the others at the tap, splashing the water over their bodies and rinsing out their mouths.
‘So what other games do you play?’ Harper asked.
The question was innocent enough but somehow Sam couldn’t resist teasing: ‘American football.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘Don’t you know? American football, that’s a traditional Maori sport.’
With a roar of laughter, Harper lunged for Sam and all of a sudden they were sparring, ducking and weaving just out of each other’s reach but sometimes connecting — the warmth of the sun-dried skin grazing the other. Then Sam put up his hands and went to the tap and dashed cold water onto his face. When he turned he saw that Harper had picked up the greenstone pendant.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a hei tiki. My father gave it to me before I left home. It’s been in my family for years. It’s supposed to protect me.’
The hei tiki was in the shape of a man. The sun refracted through the whorls and spirals, lit up the face with its wide eyes and protruding tongue.
‘A hay teekee?’ Harper asked. ‘I can even see the veins.’
When Arapeta had placed it around Sam’s neck, the hei tiki had come alive with his body heat and found a place on his chest where it could settle.
Harper pointed to the penis, curving around the left thigh.
‘And what’s this? And these?’
There were pale spots in the greenstone spurting from the head of the penis to the hei tiki’s shoulders.
‘The name of the hei tiki is Tunui a te Ika. The name commemorates Halley’s Comet. When people saw it in the sky it reminded them of a man’s orgasm when he is making love. As for the pale spots, they’re um, stars …’
Harper looked at Sam to see if he was kidding or not.
‘You’re having me on.’
‘No, it’s true,’ Sam said. He tried to keep his face as straight as possible but, in the end, he couldn’t help it. He doubled up with laughter, and Harper gave in. Turei, George and the others watched, perplexed. Then:
‘I have to go,’ Sam said.
He flicked the cord of the hei tiki over his neck. Felt the hei tiki find its home. Extended his hand to Harper.
‘Thanks for the game.’
Harper’s handshake was firm. ‘Affirmative,’ he grinned. ‘The base is small. Maybe we’ll bump into each other again. You owe me a re-match.’
It was a fair enough expectation but it never happened. Then, a week later, Victory Company was given leave in Vung Tau.
Chapter Six
‘Time to party,’ Turei crowed, rubbing his hands together.
It was four in the afternoon, and Victor Company had just settled into their quarters in Vung Tau. The one thing on everybody’s mind was sex and booze — not Captain Fellowes wasting his time with his cautionary briefing:
‘I know this will go in one ear and out the other, but don’t go anywhere alone, don’t spend all your money, stay out of areas that look dangerous, if you want to have sex with the bar girls wear a condom, and get back before curfew.’
Ha. When Sam, George and Turei formed a threesome and headed into town, staying together was the only piece of advice they intended to keep. As for the rest, well, rules were made to be broken, mate, and surely Captain Fellowes knew that Maori never wore condoms.
By five o’clock the three boys from Waituhi hit the shantytown of bars near the port. George was leading and he suggested a shortcut which found then lost in a maze of narrow passageways between bustling market stalls.
‘You’re supposed to be a scout,’ Turei grumbled, ‘but you can’t even find your way to a fuck.’
The market was filled with flowers for temple offerings, and fruits like pineapples, green papayas, rambutans, mangoes, lychees, breadfruit, guavas, passionfruit, bush limes, custard apples and avocados. Hawkers sold rice, fresh noodles and bean curd. A vendor offered eggs of all kinds: quail eggs, chicken and duck eggs, and preserved eggs covered in a sooty mixture of ash, lime and salt. In another area of the market were baskets crammed with tiny chicks and ducklings, cheeping, wriggling and climbing over each other. Indoors, under a corrugated-iron roof, were fresh fish and meat markets. Fish wriggled and flopped in shallow metal trays. Lobsters with royal blue claws and iridescent purple carapaces lay in heaps. White geese with yellow beaks sat tethered next to black geese with red beaks. There were song birds for sale inside bamboo cages. Clouds of flies rose as customers browsed through lumps of meat. Some looked suspiciously like dog or rat.
George gave a horrified yell as he blundered into a snake pit. The snakes had bright green eyes and shiny green skin. A wizened old man was skinning them. They hissed and struck as he grabbed them and slit them open.
Sam took over the lead as soon as they were through the jumble of stalls. They reached the other marketplace where sex in all its infinite varieties was waiting — a jumble of streets with red-light bars filled with bar girls, pimps and touts. Already trade was brisk, and Sam, George and Turei were just three in a big stream of Yank, Aussie and other soldiers walking through the streets. Girls with big smiles tugged and pulled and called out to them as they passed by.