Wantok

Himson often dreamed of going home. Twenty years had passed since he lived in his village, but Ranuata was always there for hm. A vision persisted, behind the present moment, of woven sago and people sitting on the swept earth. He took off his heavy police boots, intending to remain at his desk and think about village life. Tattered manila folders, documents, padlocks, he ignored. The other men worked, writing, making phonecalls. Outside, the air was perfectly still, and the sun was hot. Coconut palms stood tall and motionless beside a glassy sea. A chicken clucked. Children shouted on the beach.

The young Tolai bloke came in from the duty room. He had copper skin and a baby face with fuzzy eyelashes. Himson warmed to his ready smile. Himson was Tolai too, so this was his wantok or clansman. He had even once looked somewhat the same, when he was fit and young. His workmates called him Midnight Fox and had stuck a comic book drawing on the wall behind his seat of a gaunt fox silhouetted by the moon. But nowadays this was a joke against his fat neck and pot belly. He smiled back at his young counterpart.

‘Bloody, fucking Bougainville,’ the young man said as he presented some routine problem.

Himson did not like their current posting either and accepted the tone of the remark, though he would not have spoken in the same way himself. He accepted too that the young bloke wore a dirty t-shirt despite being on duty. Young blokes should be allowed to do things the modern way, he thought, even if the modern way was a bit slovenly. He accepted that everything was a bit slovenly now. The longer we go from getting independence the more slovenly we become in New Guinea, he knew and accepted. He gave the young bloke some information and the keys to a police vehicle, and then tried to think of his home again.

This Bougainville posting was bad luck, he thought instead. Too many of his postings felt like bad luck. You might expect that as a new recruit, since police force policy determined that younger men should not work close to home. They should discharge their duties without clan-related bias. But Himson was not new and was still getting moved from one foreign district to another. It puzzled him to have so little power over his life, how other men got promotions and privileges. People moved so freely around New Guinea nowadays that he found wantoks everywhere anyway. He went out of his way to favour them, just to thwart the system. Not that it gave him much satisfaction. He discharged his duties with increasing carelessness, as so many of his colleagues did. At least he still had his mother’s land at Ranuata to go back to, and his sister’s children there. He had savings too, but he was getting tired. 

He was tired of unfamiliar men and their unfamiliar women and children. These men and women would not look him in the eye when they spoke to him and pretended not to understand his reply. In particular he was tired of men he did not care for, shouting in their own language and stinking of alcohol.

He heard shouting now. A fellow policeman was making heavy weather of a conversation on the phone. There was a fight at a road block on the Arawa Road, the man finally announced. Furthermore he was not going to the incident as there were guns involved. Then everyone decided to go.

 No use thinking about home now. Himson pulled on his boots again and made his way to Security to get fresh incident forms. As usual he thought of his money there, well hidden in one of the Security files. On a whim, while everyone was preoccupied elsewhere, he took it and locked it in the drawer of his desk instead, before going out to the cars.

The Army manned the road block to which they had been summoned, and of course there were guns involved for this reason. The war in Bougainville was supposed to be over, but you would not know it. Were policemen needed too? Then Himson noticed one police vehicle already there. It had been abandoned, blocked by a crowd of local people who stood sullenly on either side of the army barricade with their own vehicles laden, as usual, with market produce. None of them was doing much, but if anyone was out of control it was the soldiers, some of whom gesticulated wildly with anger or excitement.

‘Stupid bastards,’ the policemen said to each other. ‘And look at your wantok,’ one of them said to HImson.

The young Tolai policeman was on top of the cabin of an army truck, in the company of two Tolai soldiers. He had taken off his shirt and was sporting an army rifle. Himson felt humiliated on their behalf, by the blatancy of the racial get together. He had erred along these lines himself, but never so publicly. He had done worse, perhaps, but never so dangerously. In Moresby once he had stolen his boss’s car to visit his cousins, but afterwards had turned up at the boss’s house to drive his missus to market. That turned it into a great joke. He was handsome then, too, and the missus liked him. But this was no joke. No-one like to see these young Tolai blokes together with guns on the army truck roof.

It was impossible to reach them, or even attract their attention. The policemen watched events unfold from behind the crowd that blocked their way. Other soldiers were rough-handling two local men on the back of the same truck. The men kept breaking free and shouting to the impassive crowd, until a young woman carrying an infant came forward and attempted to talk to the soldiers. Then she tried to talk to the young ones on the truck roof. Then the young Tolai policemen on the roof fired his army rifle at her, striking her in the arm and narrowly missing her baby.

A great wail went up from the crowd. Himson wailed too, in shock. He and other policemen struggled on foot through the mass of people. The wailing was mixed with angry shouting now. Himson knew they had to get their young colleague away from here, before he was killed. They found him huddled behind the truck. Himson handcuffed him, and a group of them surrounded him and got him back to their car.

‘Let me take him to the station,’ Himson said.

The others agreed. ‘Your wantok,’ they said angrily.

‘Something no good,’ he said. ‘No good.’

They wanted to stay to see what the crowd would do next, while Himson and his prisoner left.

‘Something no good,’ Himson said again to his captive, on the drive back to the station, angry too. His mind struggled to grasp what had happened. They passed the airstrip on their way along the palm-fringed coast.

At the station they sat on either side of Himson’s desk, avoiding each other’s eyes. The young one, bare-chested, sullen, looked even more of a boy now.

‘What can we do?’ Himson asked him.

‘Bloody Bougainville,’ the boy said. ‘I want to go.’

‘Go where?’

‘I want to go home.’

Himson thought hard about this. He wanted to go home too, more than ever. Eventually he opened his desk drawer and took out the money. He unlocked his wantok’s handcuffs. Then he gave the young bloke his money.