Free Billy and Old Smoko by Jack Lasenby

the sow by the cheek. Billy whipped in, lifted the back feet, threw the pig on its back, and stuck it through the heart, as Old Smoko had shown him. “Take that, swine!” he grunted.
    â€œShe’s in good nick!” Old Smoko panted. “She’ll eat well!”
    â€œWhere did you learn to be a pig dog?” asked Billy.
    â€œI grew up at Ruatahuna in the Vast Untrodden Ureweras!” Old Smoko puffed. “At Huiarau Primary School, the first thing they taught us was how to find and bail. Now, Billy, we need a singeing fire with lots of damp smoke.”
    â€œWhat’s singeing?”
    â€œWatch and learn.” Old Smoko rubbed a kaikomako stick on a flat bit of mahoe till it smoked, then blew on the dust he’d made. It glowed and set aflame some dry tea-tree twigs.
    Together they built up a long, narrow fire, and Old Smoko threw on some green ponga fronds. They held the sow by its feet, turning it in the flames and damp smoke, singeing off the bristles. Then Old Smoko took the sticking knife, and Billy his pocket-knife, and they scraped the skin clean. Round the loins and the belly was trickiest, but the damp smoke seemed to lift the surface of the skin so it came clean.
    â€œThe air smells exciting,” said Billy. “It reminds me of thecrackling on Harrietta Wilson’s sandwiches.” Old Smoko just nodded and showed him how to gut the pig.
    â€œShe’s fat!” said Billy.
    â€œShe has been on the hinau.” Old Smoko opened the paunch and pointed with the knife. “See the half-digested berries. Tomorrow, Johnny Bryce can keep his old sandwich. Not only that,” said Old Smoko, “but he is going to have to eat his words.”
    Old Smoko got the fat sow on his back, Billy heaved Bert Brute’s enormous jaw over both shoulders, and they staggered down to the house.
    Billy’s lackadaisical father and his wicked stepmother were still in bed, snoring, as they dropped the carcass on the kitchen table. Old Smoko butchered it, slashed the skin for crackling, and put a shoulder and a leg into the oven to roast. Billy put some spuds, onions, kumaras, pumpkin, parsnips, and carrots in the baking dish, and he put a cabbage on to boil – hard.
    As they returned after the evening milking, there came to them the delicous smell of roasting pork and the sulphurous stink of hard-boiled cabbage. They ran for the back door.

Chapter Fifteen
Why Billy Had His History Book Open During Arithmetic, Why Pork Chops are Not Good for Growing Boys, and Does Masticating Do You Any Harm?
    I nside the kitchen, Old Smoko tapped the crackling. It crunched. “Done to perfection!”
    They were just finishing their enormous meal when “Fee-fi-fo-fum!” said a voice from the bedroom. Billy took in a couple of plates of crackling and vegetables, and his father and stepmother woke up long enough to crunch and munch before falling asleep again.
    “Staying in bed all day has made them like two fat spoiled children,” Billy said. “They ate all the crackling but didn’t even touch their hard-boiled cabbage.”
    “We want more crackling!” called his stepmother’s voice.
    “You can have some more when you eat up your lovely hard-boiled cabbage,” Billy called back.
    “But we hate hard-boiled cabbage,” said his father’s voice. “It stinks like Rotorua.”
    “No hard-boiled cabbage, no crackling.” His father cried,but Billy insisted. When they called out that their plates were clean, he looked and found the hard-boiled cabbage hidden under their pillows. Billy stood over them and made them eat every mouthful before letting them have more crackling and roast pork. Crunching, chewing, swallowing, wiping his mouth, and brushing the crackling crumbs off the sheets, his father asked, “How about telling us one of them stories. Say ‘The Babes in the Woods’?”
    “You shut up!” Billy’s beautiful stepmother told him. “I’m boss around here I want