Billy lived with his mother and father on a farm out the back of Waharoa, under the Kaimai Ranges. Billy loved his mother; he loved his father, too, and wanted to grow up and be a man just like him – except in one way.
Billy’s mother had bright blue eyes, an oval face, and curly brown hair, and she came from Waharoa which is pretty flat. “Since I married your father, and came out to live on the steep paddocks under the Kaimais,” she told Billy, “my downhill leg has grown about half an inch longer.”
Billy laughed when his mother told him things like that, because he thought she was pulling his leg. She used to get him down, tickle him helpless, and pull his downhill leg. Then she’d get her tape measure, measure his leg, and tell him it had stretched and was longer than the other, and Billy would laugh and laugh.
Billy’s father’s hair was black, his eyes were grey, and he could put down a pretty good hangi. He didn’t laugh as much as Billy’s mother, but he grinned a lot. He had lived out there on the steep paddocks under the Kaimais all his life, so his downhill leg was quite a bit longer than the other.
“It means I can get around pretty fast on the steep paddocks,” he told Billy. “Of course, it makes me a bit slower walking on the flat but, most of the time, I’m up here under the Kaimais.”
Billy laughed when his father told him that, because he thought he was pulling his leg.
“How will I know when I’m a man?” Billy asked his father one day.
His father who was leaning on a cow said, “You’ll know when you’re a man, because you’ll grow one leg longer than the other.” He grinned, looked up at the Kaimais, and whistled “Red Sails in the Sunset”. If Billy’s father had a fault, it was that he was a bit lackadaisical and leaned on things, but he could whistle lots of tunes. He often whistled “Roll Along Covered Wagon”, “Po Kare Kare Ana”, and “Auld Lang Syne”.
When Billy looked in a mirror, he saw his own eyes were somewhere between grey and blue, and his hair was black like his father’s and curly like his mother’s, so he resembled both of them. The only way in which he didn’t want to resemble his father was in being a bit lackadaisical.