Copyright © 1999, Green Mountains Review

http://greenmountainsreview.jsc.vsc.edu

Nominated for Pushcart Prize

After Elliot washed his face in the enameled Chinese basin, he rinsed his mouth, spit through the black palm floorboards of his leaf house, and walked across the Nagovisi village to eat breakfast with his friend Siro.  The sound of Solomon Islands women calling to each other while they split morning firewood usually pleased him, but this morning it was a reminder that breakfast would be boiled sweet potatoes.  Elliot had been eating at Siro’s for a week now, because he had run out of white people food, and bad weather had kept him from going to town for supplies.  Elliot didn’t like sweet potatoes for breakfast or any other meal.  He just didn’t like them, never mind that he spent most of his time studying how the Nagovisi grew them. When he neared the house, Siro’s dog Koria barked at him, as he had been doing for nearly two years.  Elliot held out his hand and clicked his fingers, but Koria slunk back under the house and lay there, watching him warily.  Siro was sitting in the cookhouse eating. 

“When’s Koria going to stop barking at me?” Elliot asked as he sat down across from Siro, “I’m tired of it.”

“When you stop being white, he’ll stop barking.”

“Or when he dies.”

“He might die soon, mono kakata, but he’ll bark at you until he does.”

Most Nagovisi called Elliot mono kakata -- White Body -- because his name was hard to pronounce, and a mispronounced name was an insult.  Elliot didn’t like being called masta, which in the Melanesian Pidgin spoken on Bougainville Island meant “white man.” Young men understood why, but old people didn’t see what the problem was.  When Elliot told Polanara that it came from the English “master,” and meant “boss,” or even “owner,” Polanara said, “They were our bosses.  They still are.  But if you don’t want me to call you masta, I won’t.”

Siro took a metal bowl and ladled out sweet potatoes and some greens.  He gave Elliot a large spoon, and they ate.  “It’s good we’re going to Buin today, because you’ve been eating sweet potatoes too long.  You’re lucky you haven’t gotten sick.”

Many Nagovisi thought that Elliot shouldn’t eat kanaka food, native food, that if he didn’t eat meat and white bread and white potatoes and tinned vegetables like the Australians, he would sicken.  They believed their food was no good for white people.  Once, when he had a bad flu, Polanara urged him to eat tinned meat and make himself well.  “That’s the right kind of food for a white man,” he said,  “You need it.  Your mother will be angry at us if you die.” 

Siro and Elliot ate in silence, then shared some betel nut, spitting red onto the hard packed earth.  Elliot chewed the husk into a brush and cleaned his teeth with it, as the Nagovisi had taught him to do, then took a cup of water from Siro’s water pot and washed his mouth.  Elliot loved chewing betel, but he didn’t do it around white people.  He didn’t want red lips today because it was a town day, which meant a white people day as well.  Elliot had never seen another white man chew betel.  He liked thinking it was because the macho Australians wouldn’t risk those red lips.

Elliot was careful around white people, but they never seemed to give a thought to their own behavior around him.  He knew they thought him exotic because he was long-haired American anthropologist who lived among the bushy Nagovisi, and never wore shoes, white shorts or long socks, but even so they claimed him as one of their own because he was an English speaker who ate white people food, drank South Pacific Lager, and was a scholar at a world-famous university.  In practice this meant that the whites, even the Chinese, latched onto him, wanting to take him away to their whites-only club, or into the back rooms of the stores where they lived, just as they would if he’d been a government official, a miner, a visiting businessman, or – maybe – even a missionary. 

Elliot could handle this when he was alone, but usually he came to town with Nagovisi, who certainly weren’t welcome in the club or the back rooms.

Elliot had his mandatory interview with the District Commissioner in Kieta on his way in.  “The Nagovisi are backward and stubborn,” the DC said, leaning back in his chair, “I don’t know that they’re worth studying.  They’re anti-Administration and anti-mining, too.”

“They’re planting cash crops and changing their subsistence system,” Elliot replied mildly, “I want to see how they adapt.”

“They’ll buggar it up.  You can count on that.  They’re anti-everything.  I doubt you’ll get much out of them, but give it a go.  Keep your nose out of politics.”

The Administration driver who took him up into Nagovisi, a Tolai from Rabaul, was more charitable.  “I like the Nagovisi, but they’re anarchists,” he said, carefully inserting the English word in his Pidgin sentence, “They get very cross when outsiders order them around.  They don’t even like to tell each other what to do.”

As Elliot and Siro headed out, Siro ducked into the village trade store to get his shopping list.  Every village had a tiny trade store, and all of them had a large hand-lettered signs reading Nogat Dinau, ‘No Credit,’ in Melanesian Pidgin.  But the signs were a sham.  They were really there for the shopkeeper to enforce if he wanted to.

Elliot and Siro had been sitting around in the store the day before, because it was too rainy to be out in the bush surveying gardens.  Siro cleared his throat and said he’d been thinking about something.  He wanted a better stocked store, but he didn’t have enough cash.  If he could buy a lot of rice, Ox & Palm tinned beef, Three Diamonds Mackerel, and maybe flour and kerosine, he could make a good money.  The cocoa was in flush and people who were too busy to garden properly needed to buy food.  Larger growers, who paid their casual workers the going rural rate – seventy cents a day – usually gave them a meal of imported food too.  So he could sell a lot of food if he had it in the store.

“You’re hiring One Eye Genenai’s tractor to go to Buin tomorrow to buy food for yourself,” he said, “You’re going to let Kobua put his store cargo on it.  I could go with you and help.  Then maybe you could buy what I need at Missus Lai Ken’s store, and I could pay you back after I sell it.”

Elliot played for time in the Nagovisi way, by pretending to have misunderstood.  He said he didn’t know whether he’d need help or not, because Missus Lai Ken’s workers would load the trailer, and that if it stayed dry, One Eye Genenai could drive the tractor right into the village and he wouldn’t have to pay people to carry anything from the road head. He poked around in Siro’s stock, opening and closing a kerosine lamp, admiring a Crocodile brand machete, while he thought about how to respond.  Siro was quiet.  Elliot depended on him, and thought of him as a friend, so he wasn’t going to ignore the request.  In fact he was tempted, because if he loaned Siro the money he’d have reason to ask Siro to see the store’s records.  Money was the last piece of the puzzle Elliot was trying to put together.  He understood sweet potato gardening and how much land they needed for it, and he knew how much land they’d set aside to grow cocoa for sale, but he didn’t know how much money they made from selling cocoa, and he didn’t know as much as he needed to about what they were doing with it. 

Nagovisi didn’t talk about money easily.  He knew they were buying imported food, and the store’s books, though casual, could show him how much.  But making a loan was too risky.  He put the machete down on the black palm counter, went over and sat on the steps with Siro, and told him the truth: he understood the problem, but that if he loaned him money the other Nagovisi would think they’d gone into business together, and wouldn’t talk with him about gardens and land any more.  And then he wouldn’t be able to complete his study. 

Siro agreed this might happen if it came out, but that it wouldn’t.  No one knew how much money Siro and his wife Torowai really had, so people wouldn’t know they’d used Elliot’s money.  Torowai wouldn’t tell.  “You know how women are,” Siro said, “they don’t drink, so they don’t blurt out secrets.”

“But you, you drink.”

“Even when I’m drunk I don’t tell secrets.”

Elliot said the Australians would hear about it somehow, for sure, and might throw him out of the Territory because he had signed a paper swearing he wouldn’t start a business or work for one.  He was only there as a student, he reminded Siro, there only to learn about their ways.  So it was nobody’s fault that it was impossible, but it was.  Siro looked disappointed, but not surprised. 

“But,” Elliot said, because he didn’t like refusing his friend, “But.  Tomorrow I can try talking to Missus Lai Ken’s manager Frank Williams.  Maybe if I tell him you can pay your bills he’ll give you credit.  Maybe he’ll believe me.  If he does, it’s what you want, because what you’re asking me is just like giving you credit.  It’s the same thing.”  Except, Elliot said to himself, Missus Lai Ken would come up here after you if you didn’t pay, and I’d probably let you off the hook.

“I suppose.  Maybe he’ll do it for you,” Siro said.  “You’re a white man.  He’ll never do it for me.”

Frank Williams, an Australian in his thirties, had traded cocoa on his own for a few years but then, unexpectedly, had been hired by Missus Lai Ken as her manager.  It made no sense to Elliot, because the overseas Chinese were notably clannish.  The Patrol Officer at Boku Patrol Post told Elliot that the real reason was that Williams was expected to marry Missus Lai Ken’s daughter so that the whole family could emigrate when independence came to Papua New Guinea and the place fell apart, as it was bound to.  “But they’ll have a flock of mixed-race kids before they ever do leave,” the PO said, “there’ll be no independence for this lot anytime soon.  Maybe not even in my life time.  In the New Guinea Highlands they’re just out of the bloody stone age, and Bougainville’s not much better.” 

In the next village, ten minutes’ walk away, Siro and Elliot collected Kamanai, a young man in his early twenties, and Narokasi, a young teenager who was cutting school for the day.  They walked through the cacao orchards and gardens, sometimes single-file, sometimes side by side, talking about the trip.

Near the Mission Elliot told Siro he’d heard that Father Flaherty had been criticizing the Australians and their copper mine in the mountains behind Nagovisi, and was worried that they might kick him off the island for it.   “In America we can criticize the government,” he said, “But here you can’t.  And neither can I.  If said what I think about the mine, they’d kick me out.”

“It’s not their island,” said Narokasi, loudly.  “It’s ours.”

“Who told you that, schoolboy?” asked Kamanai.  “Don’t believe it.  If it’s not theirs how could they put that mine up there in the mountains, take all the copper and gold and give us nothing?  The bloody Australians are our masters and they know it.  If we ever get independence we’ll kick them all out.”

At Lolo Village, near where they’d pick up the tractor, several barking dogs ran out into the road.  They ran away when Elliot stooped and pretended to pick up a stone.  He said, “I’m so tired of this.  When I write my book I’ll call Nagovisi ‘Place of Barking Dogs.’”

“It’s because of you.  They wouldn’t bark if it were just us.”

“You mean if you three walked down the road without me, the dogs wouldn’t bark?”

“Yes.”

“Liars,” said Elliot, raising his voice, “Liars.  Every place we go, the dogs bark.”

“It’s because of you.  Nagovisi dogs only bark at whites.”

“Koria barks at the mountain people when they walk through the village.” 

“That’s because you’re watching.  If you weren’t watching, he wouldn’t.”

“If a tree falls in the woods,” Elliot said, in English.

“What?”

“It means, ‘You’re all liars.’”  Elliot barked like a dog and gave Siro an elbow in the ribs.  He was feeling fine.  He could deal with whatever happened in Buin. 

Elliot had learned how to avoid being social with the whites.  The trip took six or eight hours each way, and there were seventeen fords.  So when the whites asked him to sit for tea or beer, he had a ready excuse: the tractor had to get back across the Hupai, the most dangerous of the rivers, before dark.  He couldn’t linger, because it might have rained in the Siwai mountains, even though it was clear in Buin, and the Hupai might be up.  They seemed to accept his nervousness, but it seemed wimpy to him.  Still, it worked.

He didn’t hide this from the Nagovisi.  They knew he didn’t like it in town because of the way the whites treated them, and worse, that the whites expected him to do the same.  Elliot didn’t like the way the whites used language, either.  They always spoke English to him, regardless of who was standing there, even though they could have used Pidgin and brought everyone into the conversation.  Elliot’s response was to talk English with the Australians when Nagovisi were there, and Nagovisi with the Nagovisi when Australians were there.  Linguistic symmetry.  If the Australians insisted on dragging him off into their linguistic bush, well, Elliot and the Nagovisi could disappear when it was their turn, because no Australian could speak Nagovisi at all.

One Eye Genenai was waiting for them, his blue Ford tractor idling on the muddy, rutted road that ran the seventy miles to Buin.  The bags of cocoa beans had already been loaded on the trailer.  Siro and Elliot climbed up and sat on bags next to each other.   Kamanai and Narokasi sprawled a few feet away, and they all settled in for the ride.  Kamanai lay back and closed his eyes but Narokasi, who was going to Buin for the first time, seemed excited. He opened and closed his black cloth Chinese umbrella, playing with it in the wind.

After a while, Siro shifted on his bag and told Elliot he’d been thinking about how white people fed their dogs, that he’d seen them give their dogs food that looked like Ox & Palm tinned beef.  “I don’t understand why white people give good food to dogs every day,” he said, “Dogs take care of themselves.  They find their own food.  You just have a dog, like you have an ax or a knife.”  Elliot said the food Siro had seen had probably been dog food, not human food.

“Some of that dog food I used to see in Rabaul looked like meat to me.”

“Dog food is meat.  Maybe beef, maybe pig, maybe horse.  Did you ever see a horse?”

“In Rabaul.  A donkey, too.  Father Richert had one after the war, when I was little.  I remember that it had an enormous penis.”

“Horses have even bigger penises than donkeys.”

“White people probably put them in dog food,” Siro said, laughing.  “Even a white dog doesn’t care what kind of meat it eats.”

“People in France eat horse,” Elliot said, “and they aren’t dogs.”

“Horse penises too?” asked Narokasi. 

“Never mind,” said Elliot,  “Your grandmother ate spiders.  It’s true.  I wonder why Nagovisi don’t eat dogs, the way people do in Tahiti?”

Siro made a gagging noise.  “Disgusting!  Revolting.”

“They do.  They don’t feed them meat, the ones they’re going to eat.  They feed them sweet potatoes and taro.  They’re supposed to be very tender.  Roasted in an earth oven.”

Siro spit and made a noise.  “Something is wrong with people who eat dogs.” 

“Filipinos eat dogs too,” said Elliot.  “Did you ever know any Filipinos?”

“I saw one once in Rabaul.  He didn’t look like any kind of man I’d seen before, so I went up to him and asked where he was from.  His Pidgin wasn’t very good but I could understand it.  If I’d known I was talking to a dog-eater I would have paid closer attention to him.  Kamanai!  Wake up!  Are there Filipinos up at the mine?”

“Let me think.  Yes.  One or two work in the office.”

“White Body is telling me they eat dogs.”

“Disgusting.  They chew betel like we do, though, so they must have some sense.”

After a while Elliot asked Siro why he’d been thinking about dog food, and Siro said he was going to have to kill Koria. “He’s killing chickens and I have to pay compensation.  Koria eats chicken, and I pay for it.  He’s made me a white man, buying food for him.”

Elliot grunted assent but said nothing.  He knew about the Koria problem; the whole village did.  They rode for a while without speaking.  Narokasi dragged a stick over the side until it caught on a stone and flew from his hand.  Kamanai had his eyes closed again, but seemed to be listening.  One Eye Genenai was singing Slim Dusty cowboy songs to himself.

“Why did you ask me about dog food, really,” Elliot said.

“Because I was thinking that before I kill Koria I’ll give him something good to eat for once.  He’s been a good dog.  Everybody will laugh at me if I give him human food, like Ox & Palm, but if I give him dog food they won’t.”

“Koria’s Last Supper,” said Kamanai, “We’ll get eleven Chicken Apostles.”

Everyone started laughing.  “Why not twelve?” asked Elliot, “There were twelve Apostles.”

“Because Judas Siro would make twelve.”

“Hard-On!  Why don’t you go fuck a dog instead of making fun of me?” Siro said to Kamanai, “Do you think I’m happy about this?”

Elliot thought he’d better change the subject, if he could.  “As long as we’re talking about religion, do you know that in English God is dog spelled backwards?”

“‘G-O-D, D-O-G,’” Siro spelled, “Is it a sin to do this?  It probably is.”

Kamanai sat up and began laughing loudly and drumming on the trailer’s side.  “I never thought of that.  What about ‘Jesus Christ, Our Lord?’  Does ‘S-U-S-E-J,’ susej, spell anything?  No?  D-R-O-L, drol?  What about ‘N-A-T-A-S,’ natas?

Elliot clapped his hands, delighted with what he’d started.  “No natas but there’s a word nates, that means balls, like ‘I got hit in the nates.’  And drol sounds like an English word that means ‘funny.’”

“How about ‘drof,’” One Eye Genenai called back. 

“You’re just pretending you can spell,” Narokasi said, “You’re looking at the tractor.”

“Can’t spell?  Was it you who filled out the shipping papers, schoolboy?  All you do in school is try to look up the teachers’ skirts.”

“Never mind dogs,” Kamanai said, “Let’s do more words.”

As the tractor pounded towards Buin they spelled Nagovisi, English, and Pidgin words backwards, yelling at each other, laughing, writing in the air. Words, Elliot thought, words are good.  God, dog, a droll Satan, nates.  Greens and browns slipped by, and the sun glinted off the clear water in the fords, all the way to Buin.

When One Eye Genenai pulled the trailer to the cocoa sheds and warehouse behind Missus Lai Ken’s store, a German Shepard ran out, barking.  Frank Williams came out, grabbed the dog by its collar and restrained it, then pushed it away and motioned for One Eye Genenai to come in with him.  The dog didn’t bark when Elliot climbed down out of the trailer, but when Frank and One Eye Genenai came back out it started again.

“I’ll hold him until you get back to the tractor,” Frank said in Pidgin.  “Take the cocoa to the other warehouse and my boys will unload it.”

“I have to talk to Fart Breath here,” Elliot said to One Eye Genenai in Nagovisi, “Why don’t you try to run over his barking dog.”

One Eye Genenai smiled and replied, “It just barks.  It’s never bitten me, even at the old place.  Fart Breath pretends he’s keeping the dog from biting me.”

“Well, I think it’s a bad thing,” said Elliot.

One Eye Genenai grinned.  “It’s nothing.  It’s just how it is.  Dogs bark.  Please yourself talking English.”

“I don’t know why you need to talk their kanaka language,” Frank said, “Pidgin’s good enough for me.  Or let ‘em learn English, that’s what I say.  Come inside and have some tea while your boys load the cargo?  I don’t see any clouds in the mountains, so you should be right with the Hupai.”

“I’m going inside to talk to Frank,” Elliot called to Siro, who gave him a knowing look and went around to the front. The dog barked at him until he was out of sight.

In the back of Missus Lai Ken’s store Frank pushed a chair out from a worktable and motioned for Elliot to sit.  “How about a beer?” he said, “You’ve got a long ride home.”

“No thanks,” said Elliot, “it’s too early in the day.”

Frank opened one for himself and got Elliot a Fanta.  “How are things up in Nagovisi?”

“Pretty good.  Cocoa money’s starting to come in.”

“It’s about time.  Siwai and Buin are way ahead of them.”

Elliot drank some Fanta.  “I was thinking about something, a business thing.”

Frank said nothing.

“Siro, you know him, he buys cargo here.  He came down with me.  I live in his village, so I know him pretty well.  He could do better with his store if he could get more stock, but he doesn’t have a lot of money.  I don’t know how you decide who gets credit, but I was thinking that he’d do all right for you if he had it.  Credit.  He could handle it.”

“I don’t know that I can do that on my own,” Frank said, “Missus Lai Ken’s up in Rabaul.”

“Well, I just thought I’d ask.  I didn’t think she would, but I wanted to ask,” Elliot said, not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed.  He’d done his duty to Siro, and had failed, as he thought he would.  But he took no satisfaction in having been right.  Siro was probably sitting on the steps, looking at his list and imagining Elliot’s success.  He’d be disappointed.  Siro expected Elliot to do the white man thing for him in town, if he could, and Elliot supposed he had, but he’d failed, too.  Maybe I’m not trying hard enough, Elliot thought.

Frank took a pull on his beer.  “Does he work for you?”

“Work?”  The question caught Elliot by surprise, but then he saw where Frank might be heading.  “Oh.  Uh, well I guess he does.  Yes.  I’m so used to having him around, and it’s his village after all, so I don’t think of it like that, but yes.  He does.  I pay him.”

“How much?”

“A dollar a day and extra for big jobs.” 

“So he works for you, then, he’s your houseboy, that’s right.”

Elliot played with his Fanta bottle and kept his mouth shut.  His stomach was tightening and he sensed his heart rate going up.  This wasn’t the way he’d thought it would go.

“And would you be guaranteeing his payments?”

Elliot thought about his bank balance.  He could probably cover everything Siro wanted, even if it went sour.  “Oh.  Well, yes. You can put it on my bill.  I’ll guarantee payment, all right.  So.  Post his cargo to my account and I’ll pay what he can’t.” 

Frank smiled.  “As long as I’m posting it to your account, I can make a copy of the invoices, so you’ll know what he buys.  You’d best know, since you’re responsible.  If he starts buying things he can’t sell up there, you can put it right.  You can make him return what he shouldn’t have bought.  They don’t understand it right away, these village shopkeepers.”

“I do wonder about the cocoa money,” Elliot said, keeping his voice expressionless.

“They all sell to us, because they can’t get their Co-Op working right.  It’ll be a bad day for Missus Lai Ken if they do.”  He hesitated.  “I reckon I could copy off the cocoa tickets, too.”

“That might be interesting.”  How can I be doing this? he thought, realizing that he’d just delivered himself into Frank’s power.  He’d have to count on Frank to keep his secret. 

“I don’t think Missus Lai Ken will want anybody to know about this until we see how he does,” Frank said, “They’d all be down here asking. Can we trust him not to tell?  You never know with Nagovisi.  They do what they like.”  He hesitated a moment. “They’re not loyal to us, you know.  They sided with the Japs during the war.”

“Well, not really.  They were looking after their own interests, the way I hear it.  Anyway, he won’t tell,” Elliot said, “He won’t, because the others would wonder why she favored him, what he gave up to get it.  They’d be suspicious.  Well.”  Elliot cleared his throat.   “I didn’t expect this.  Thanks very much.  Do you want me to sign anything?”

Frank nodded. “It’ll work,” he said. “Maybe even stir up more business.  They don’t know what we do for them, do they?”

Elliot made himself nod.  What had he gotten himself into?

The dog started barking again.  Frank said, “One of your boys must have walked out back to the warehouse.  The dog always barks at them.  He’s a great watchdog.”  Frank took a long pull at his beer.  “Did I ever tell you how I trained him?”

When Elliot walked around to the front of the store he was filled with a diffuse, unfocused anger.  Siro was sitting on the steps.  Narokasi and Kamanai were already up on the loaded trailer, and One Eye Genenai was in the driver’s seat, idling, waiting to go. 

“Haven’t you bought your cargo yet?” he said to Siro, loudly enough for the others to hear.

“I was waiting to see if there would be room on the trailer.”

“I don’t have anything more to load except more beer.  So buy your cargo.”

Inside the store, Elliot muttered, “He said, ‘Even a bush kanaka can try credit.’”

Siro’s face flashed surprise, and then pleasure.  “White Body...” he began.

“Never mind talking about it now,” Elliot said, more curtly than he meant to, “Later.  In the village.  And don’t tell anybody.  Get some rice and meat.  Get it loaded and we’ll shoot out of here before he changes his mind.”

“Yes, Masta,” Siro whispered, smiling, “A great thank you, Masta.”

“Dog’s husband!  Don’t masta me even for fun.  Bad enough Fart Breath made a masta of me.  Understand?”

“Am I a stranger here, White Body?”

“Let’s get some extra beer and Cheetos and get out of here.  I want to drink.”

On the trailer, Elliot busied himself with the papers in his bag and said nothing until they cleared the edge of town.  Then he said, “Time to drink,” pulled open one of the cases of South Pacific Lager, and started handing them out.  Elliot finished his first one quickly, grabbed another and drank it down.  “I’m thirsty,” he said when Siro widened his eyes at him.  “Whites drink beer like water, anyway.  And I like drinking it while it’s still cold.”

His stomach hurt and his biceps were tight.  He wanted the drink to float him out of this mess, to stop the anger and let him look down into himself.  It always happened this way when he’d done something he wasn’t sure he should have done – he walled off his insides in denial.  Don’t think about it.  Don’t examine it. 

But what was wrong with what he’d done?  Siro wanted some help, and Elliot had provided it.  It wasn’t Elliot’s fault that Frank had goddam assumed things: no white man lives in the bush without servants, Elliot lives in the bush, masta Elliot has servants.  Q.E.D.  Then again Elliot hadn’t protested, so that over beers at the Buin Club, if his name came up, Frank would probably say, “Well, he’s not altogether the native.  I hear he’s got a houseboy.”  Then again it wasn’t Siro’s fault that Frank told Elliot a story he hadn’t wanted to hear, and that Elliot had just sat there and listened, because Frank had done him a favor even though he’d asked for a different one.  Should he bite the hand that fed him, and Siro?  And then what Frank had on him now.  That didn’t bear thinking about at all.  Unable to settle the blame, Elliot let his anger ricochet around his head until Kamanai asked if he’d had a good time talking English with Frank.

“He talks funny,” Elliot answered.  “All Australians do.  Still, it was English.”

“What did you ask him?  You ask us about everything.”

“Nothing.  I didn’t come here to study Australians.”

“Nobody explains white people to us,” said Kamanai, “we figure them out for ourselves.  Did he ask you any questions?  He probably wants to know everything about you, because you’re not like the other whites.”

Elliot grunted.  “What would he ask?  He isn’t interested in me.  He just wants to make money buying your cocoa and selling you cargo.”  Elliot took a long pull at his SP and dropped the empty into the trailer next to the bags of rice and cases of Ox & Palm.

Tropical darkness swallowed them before they got out of Buin territory.  The tractor’s headlights illuminated the road but the dirt didn’t reflect much back to the trailer, and the forest absorbed whatever stray light there was.  They didn’t talk much in the darkness.  Elliot looked out into the blackness and tried to shake off the Bougainville he was living in by thinking about other times, but it didn’t help because he ended up thinking about Spaniards and their war dogs who had killed Solomon Islanders four centuries ago, looking for gold and not finding it.  Except it was up there all along, Elliot thought to himself, up there waiting.  The mastiffs left with blood on their muzzles and the Solomons dogs stayed and now another breed of dog has come and fallen on the Solomons.  I hope I haven’t helped them along with that Frank thing, Elliot thought.  And he hoped he hadn’t set them on himself, either.

As they hit Siwai, a nearly full moon appeared and talk started up again.  The beers were warm by now, but Elliot didn’t care because his muscles were finally loosening, and he had located himself again.  Still, Frank’s story was eating at Elliot, so he said, “Genenai!  How come you don’t mind that dog?”

“He just barks.  He never bit me.”

“Well, it’s not right,” Elliot said, “He should teach the dog not to bark at you. You go there all the time.  He could teach it not to bark at you.  Dogs can learn.”

“It doesn’t matter to me.”

“That’s a barking dog,” Siro said after a while.  “It’s European, too.  It’s not one of ours.”

“It’s a German Shepard,” Kamanai said, “The police had them at the riot in Arawa.”

“White dogs don’t have to be taught to bark at us,” Siro said.  “It’s their nature, because they’re European dogs.  Our dogs bark at you, your dogs bark at us.”

“It’s not my dog,” Elliot said.  “If I had a dog it wouldn’t bark at you.”

“It’s because we smell different,” said Kamanai.  “White people stink, but their dogs are used to it.  We don’t stink so they bark because we don’t smell like people to them.”

Siro said, “No, it’s because they’re European dogs.  Europeans treat us like dogs and so do their dogs, because they’re masta dogs.”

“Bullshit,” Elliot said, knowing the word had filtered down from the mine, “Bullshit.  If the whites treated you like dogs, they’d be good to you.  Food.  Like we were talking this morning.  Right?  They don’t treat you like they treat dogs.  They treat you like you treat dogs.”  And with that and the beer Elliot couldn’t contain Frank’s story any longer.  He had to let it, like a gigantic belch or fart he could no longer suppress.  He’d been trying not to, because the Nagovisi didn’t need reminding that white people didn’t like them.  But Frank’s dog had made boys out of his friends, and Frank had made a masta out of him.  Making a worse masta out of Frank would be a relief.  So he began. 

“I know why Frank’s dog barks at you. He told me.”

None of the Nagovisi said anything.

“Fart Breath said, ‘First you trick your dog into getting into a copra sack.  Then your boys close it up, beat on it with sticks, and yell in their kanaka language.  You make sure you’re gone, then the boys open the sack.  When the dog comes shooting out all he sees is boys and from then on he hates them and he’ll bark at them, but he won’t bark at white people.’  That’s what he told me.  It made me angry.  It’s not right.”

The Nagovisi shifted on their rice bags.  One Eye Genenai didn’t turn around.  There was some coughing and spitting, but no one said anything for a while except Narokasi, who said “Siro never put Koria in a sack for you to beat, White Body, and he always barks at you.”

Siro cleared his throat.  “What Frank said might be true.  But what Narokasi says about Koria is true, too.  Dogs are like people.  They don’t like different kinds.”  He laughed.  “Frank is stupid.  He didn’t need to do all that work.  What if his dog got hurt in the bag?”

No one responded.  Narokasi began singing to himself, and Kamanai drummed against the side of the trailer.  It seemed to Elliot that Siro was more concerned about Koria than Frank.  He opened the Cheetos and passed them around.  Kamanai opened one of the cases of Ox & Palm and took five tins out.  “Here,” he said, “Let’s eat some meat.  We can put it on the Pilot crackers.”

“That’s Kobua’s, for his store,” Elliot said, “He’ll be angry.  We should eat some of mine.”

“If we do you’ll run out and we’ll have to feed you sweet potatoes and you’ll get sick.  Kobua won’t mind if it’s you, White Body.  You hired the trailer, so he owes you some meat.  You can give some to us.”

“What, am I a plantation master feeding my boys?  If I were a real master you’d be bringing me cold beer, and in a glass, too.  You’d be saying, ‘Master Elliot, do you want another SP?’”

“Well, Master Elliot, do you?”

“Open one!  And tell the houseboy to make dinner.”

Even after eating crackers and Ox & Palm, Elliot was still angry at Frank.  He hadn’t liked the Nagovisi responses, either.  They hadn’t seemed annoyed enough.  Didn’t they understand how wicked the whites were?  But of course they did.  Maybe they just didn’t want hear it.  Maybe his attempt to distance himself from Frank had had the opposite effect, but the SP pushed him to try it again anyway.  So he said, “I wonder why we don’t go back, sneak up on Frank’s barking dog and kill it.  It would be different if you were thieves or rascals, but if a white dog barks only because you’re black, kill it.”

Siro was eating the cracker with Ox & Palm heaped on it that Kamanai had handed him.  He wiped his hands on his pants and picked up his beer bottle from between his feet.  “Are you going to kill Koria now?  He barks at you just because you’re white.  If you did, I wouldn’t have to.  Maybe you should,” he said, and belched.  “Somebody has to.” 

Elliot wondered whether Siro was serious.  Look what he’d gotten himself into already by trying to help Siro out.  Killing an Australian’s dog would be one thing, but a killing a Nagovisi dog was different.  He’d be making himself into a master.  Siro interrupted Elliot’s train of thought by saying, “I killed a white man’s dog once, just because I wanted to.”

Kamanai said, “Oh, the plantation dog.”

Siro said, “Don’t wreck my story.  Narokasi, you shut up too.  White Body, give me another one of your beers.  All right.  This is how it was.  We were on a plantation full of ignorant bush kanaka Highlanders.  We were line bosses but the master treated us as badly as the Highlanders.  The foreman had a dog named Skipper, who wanted to bite everybody, but he was chained.  Sometimes the bush kanakas got too close, and the dog would bite them.  It was funny.”

Elliot laughed along with the others, but he didn’t like trashing the Highlanders the way the Nagovisi did.  He understood why they did it, but he didn’t like joining in.  Highlanders had a reputation for violence, and the Nagovisi feared them.  Highlander leaders disgusted Elliot because they sucked up to the Australians and didn’t want independence, but he didn’t think they were inferior beings, the way the Nagovisi did. But he’d never been able to bring himself to lecture his friends on tolerance.  Goddam little of it came their way, for sure.

“Highlanders with their big beards are hairy like dogs anyway.”

“Narokasi!  Stop interrupting.  Look, this is how it was.  I wanted to get rid of the dog and frighten the Highlanders too, so I said I’d bewitch the dog.  The Highlanders believed me because they thought I was a sorcerer.”

Elliot shook his beer bottle at Siro. “Sorcerer?  You’re no sorcerer.”

“Now you’re interrupting me, too.  They believed I was a sorcerer because I killed a banana plant without ever touching it.”

“He did, too,” said Kamanai, “I was there.  It was clever.  Tell White Body how.”

“Nobody wants to let me tell my story!”  Siro drank more beer.  “This is how it was.  I told them I’d kill the banana with magic.  Every night when the Highlanders were asleep I boiled a kettle of water and I crept out to the banana and poured hot water on it.  After a week it died and all the bush kanakas were afraid of me.”

Everyone laughed.  Narokasi said  “Highlanders are so stupid and bushy they’ll believe anything!  Not like Nagovisi.  No one tricks us.”

“You thought the copper mine was ours,” said Siro, “so it looks like the Australians tricked you.  Never mind.  The way I killed the dog was clever, too.  I bought a lightbulb and a tin of Ox & Palm.  I opened the Ox & Palm and smashed the bulb, and mixed the glass into it.  I worked the whole thing into a ball about as big as my fist here, and I crept out and went down the road to Skipper’s place and when he came running out I tossed the Ox & Palm at him and when he started eating it I ran away.”

“Poison dog food!” shouted Narokasi.

“Truly.  In the morning I told the Highlanders, ‘In two or three days Skipper will die,’ and he did.  Yes.  After that the Highlanders were so frightened of me they would do anything I told them to.  They never gave me any trouble.  My master asked if I knew anything about how Skipper got poisoned, and I said, ‘No, Master.  Too bad.  I feel sorry for the dog.’  What a lie!”

When the laughter died down no one said anything.  Elliot slid off his rice bag and lay on his back on the trailer floor, looking up at the stars and wondering what made Siro tell his dog story.  He’s angry at me for talking to Frank.  No.  It’s normal to want to talk your own language.  He’s angry at me for telling Frank’s story.  No.  Not that simple.   He’s saying, if you think Frank’s cruel, I’m worse.  You talk drunk talk about maybe killing a barking dog, but I actually did it.  It probably is that simple.  Elliot sighed.  Let it lie.  He rolled over to the carton and got himself another beer, then shoved the carton in Siro and Kamanai’s direction.  “I’m tired of dog stories.  Drink.  Let’s talk about ghosts or pigs or something else.” 

Before much longer they were all completely drunk.  They sang cowboy songs, including Elliot’s favorite, I stepped in to a burning ring of fire.  Laughing, they stood up and pissed over the side of the trailer.  When they reached the Hupai, One Eye Genenai stopped the tractor in the water, and they stripped and washed off the road dust and sweat. 

“A white man hides under your shorts,” said Narokasi, pointing at Elliot, “Ours don’t hide anything.”

“If your trousers don’t hide anything, why don’t you go over to the school and pull them down for the teacher girls, Red Hard-On,” said Elliot.

“Go fuck a dog.”

“That’s your job.  That’s why your penis is red.  You should help Siro by fucking Koria to death!”

Everyone laughed and hooted.  Kamanai climbed up on a boulder and brandished his beer bottle.  “Highlanders do have red penises.  Highland women nurse pigs, too.  A baby sucking on one, a piglet on the other!”

Siro groaned and made disgusted noises.  “Highlanders are animals!  They’ll do anything!”

Kamanai began telling about a drunken Highlander who walked into a room at the mine where pornographic movies were running.  “He can’t believe what he’s seeing!  He’s hardly seen a white woman with clothes, and here’s a naked one with her legs spread.  He gets excited and runs towards the screen.  He trips over the projector, like this,” he imitated a man tripping, losing his balance, “and the whole thing falls down.  The whites yell and laugh.  Then there’s a fight, Highlanders against the Papuans.  People start throwing beer bottles. The whites grab the projector and run away.  I’m trying to get out the door too.  This other Highlander has a beer bottle and he comes crashing against me and I fall down like this....”

Narokasi yelled, “Throwing bottles!  Like this!” and pitched his bottle at Kamanai.  The bottle smashed on the boulder and Kamanai slid down onto it.

“Son of a bitch!” Kamanai screamed, in English, “You have cut me, you fucking bastard.”  He leaned against the boulder, standing on one leg, holding his cut foot out of the water, cursing in English.

Narokasi sat in the water and put his head in his hands.  “This is a bad thing,” he said, and threw up.  One Eye Genenai went over to make sure he wasn’t swept away.

Elliot and Siro waded over to Kamanai.  They draped him over their shoulders, carried him to the trailer and plopped him down on some rice bags.  Elliot got his flashlight.  It was a bad gash, bleeding steadily but not spurting.  At least not an artery, Elliot said to himself.  Siro and One Eye Genenai were up on the tractor, talking.  Siro came back and got into the trailer. 

“Genenai thinks we should get started now.”

“Come in the trailer, Narokasi,” Elliot said, and gave him a hand up.

One Eye Genenai slammed the tractor into gear, and pulled up out of the river.

“Drive faster,” Siro yelled to him,  “Kamanai’s really bleeding.”  He looked at Elliot.  “What should we do?”

“We shouldn’t worry too much because the blood isn’t spurting.”

“True, but it isn’t stopping.”

“Here, I’ll put my thumb on it,” said Kamanai, “Stop it myself.”  He brought his foot up and grabbed it, but in a moment blood began dripping through his fingers.   

One Eye Genenai called back.  “Have you got the bleeding stopped?  Because I can turn off into Siwai.  There’s an Aid Station not too far in.  It’s theirs but I know the orderly.  Or we could go to Boku.  What shall I do, Masta Elliot?  You tell me.”

Oh man, Elliot said to himself, why do I have to be the masta in charge?  Genenai knows what to do.  We’re not in Buin where it matters who’s white and who’s not.  We’re in the big bush and Kamanai’s bleeding and I can’t stop it.  And I’m blasted.

They knelt around Kamanai, who had been laid out on three bags of rice.

Narokasi said, “You’re getting Kobua’s rice all bloody.  He’ll be angry if it’s bloody.”

“Shut up, stupid,” said Siro, nervousness in his voice, “this is your fault.  Kamanai’s mother will be angrier if he dies.”

“Never mind, put him on my rice.  I don’t care.  He won’t die.  I’m no doctor, but he won’t die.  I’m worried, but he won’t die.  Put his leg up,” said Elliot, “the foot.  That’s good.  Put him on the floor and put the foot on two of my rice bags,” and it did seem to help. The flow decreased.

“It’s not far to the turn-off,” One Eye Genenai called back, “Shall I turn?”

“What are you going to do?” Siro asked Elliot, who by now realized he was probably going to have to do the white thing again. He’d remembered hearing that a Slovak doctor, the one

everyone called Dakta Bagarap, had been sent to Boku Patrol Post.  Sister Mary Joan said he was a fantastic bush doctor when sober and pretty good even when drunk.  He couldn’t survive at a town hospital, she said, because he was a bush doctor by temperament.  Elliot asked why they called him ‘Bagarap,’ and she said his English was bad, his Pidgin not too good, he muttered in Slovak, and he always gave the same diagnosis – ah, bagarap. It’s wrecked.

“Don’t turn!  Go on to Boku,” Elliot shouted to One Eye Genenai, “Dakta Bagarap is there.”

“But what if he’s gone patrolling?”

“There’s an Aid Post Orderly.”

“He might be patrolling too.”

“Never mind.  Go to Boku, Genenai,” Elliot said, and thought, look at me giving orders like every masta in the Territory.  But he was feeling a little better. A little clearer.

“You’ll have to wake him up and make him help,” Siro said.  “He won’t get up for kanakas.  The Orderly will, but Bagarap won’t.  He’ll just tell us to wait until morning.”

“If he does I’ll straighten it out. What’s the good of having a white man if he’s no help?”

Siro and Narokasi said nothing.  One Eye Genenai said, “It’s true.  I’m glad you’re with us.”

“I’m still bleeding,” Kamanai said.

“Never mind.  Keep your leg up.  Don’t move.  Boku isn’t far.”

Kamanai lay still with his eyes closed.

“I wish I had some betel,” Elliot said to Siro.  “I need to clear my head and my breath stinks from beer and Ox & Palm.”

“I have some left,” said Siro.  “I didn’t bring it out because we were drinking.  Here.”  Elliot quickly chewed, but he swallowed instead of spitting, to strengthen the rush and keep his lips from getting red.

  “Don’t wake Dakta Bagarap up,” Narokasi said, when they reached Boku.  “He’ll be angry.  Wait for morning.”

“Shut up, drunken boy.  Why are we here?” Siro said.

“Go to the hospital,” said Elliot, “Genenai!  Drive up to the hospital first.”

The hospital, a well-made leaf house with a tin roof and concrete foundation, was dark, but Elliot and Siro climbed down anyway.  Siro pounded on the door, shook and rattled it, and shouted  “Hey!  Anybody here?  Hey!  Wounded man,” but nobody answered and no light came on.

One Eye Genenai said, “The Orderly must be patrolling.  Dakta Bagarap sleeps at the Agricultural Officer’s house.  I know which one it is.”

Elliot shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the trailer’s side, disappointed.  The Orderly would have been easier.  Now he’d face a white person with bad English, probably drunk himself.  Forgetting to swallow, he spit betel forcefully and felt it splatter on his foot.  Couvade, he said quietly, I never thought I’d do one.

When he looked into the trailer, there was Kamanai’s foot, still bleeding.  “Kamanai,” Elliot said, “Kamanai!  Wake up!  How’s it going?”

“I’m all right.  Are we at Boku?  I haven’t died yet.  My foot really hurts.  I feel faint.  Are you getting Dakta Bagarap for me?  If he won’t, never mind.  We can go home.”

“You’re babbling.  I’m going to find him now.”

Elliot grabbed his shirt from the trailer, put it on, and started walking up the hill to the house One Eye Genenai had pointed out.  The tractor crept along behind him, its headlights throwing an indistinct black shadow on the wall of the unlit house.  The betel helped Elliot notice how his shadow sharpened and took on his shape as he neared the house.  He looked over his shoulder at the tractor, as if the Nagovisi would somehow release him from his task, but the headlights were in his eyes and he couldn’t see anything.  He shook the screen door and shouted, “Dakta Bagarap!  Hey!  Dakta Bagarap!”

No answer.

“Hello! Bagarap!”  He put his ear to the screen door.

He heard a noise inside, a grunt, the sound of a match striking.  The yellow light of a kerosine lamp appeared in the darkness behind the screen, and a voice began to mutter in a language he couldn’t understand. 

“Dakta Bagarap?”

“Yes, yes, yes” in English.  And then in Pidgin, “I’m coming.”

Elliot turned and shouted in Nagovisi, “It’s all right!  He’s coming!  Tell Kamanai!” and called inside in Pidgin, “One of my workers is cut and I can’t stop the bleeding.”

“Yes, yes.  Wait,” in Pidgin, “Don’t worry.  I’m coming.”

It came to Elliot in a rush that his posturing had masked his native language and since the harsh backlighting would darken his face at the door, Dakta Bagarap wouldn’t know what he was.  And he realized that what Sister Mary Joan had been telling him was that he wouldn’t care, either.

Bagarap held up the lamp and looked at Elliot through the screen door.  He wiped his mouth with his hand, looked at Elliot more closely, and grunted.  “You have problem?”“My friend has a bad cut, Doctor.”

Dakta Bagarap opened the door and stepped out past Elliot, the lantern swinging at his side.  “You must be masta lives Nagovisi.  Come.  We go to hospital.  I sew.”