Chapter 10: A Good Keen Man

About halfway through the winter term, we had a visit from a (moderately) famous author, Barry Crump. I don’t know whether Mr Smythe had really met him in the pub (as Crump claimed), or why Mr Smythe had invited him to address our English class. Sure, he had written ‘A Good Keen Man’, a phenomenally successful book outlining his adventures as a hunter paid by the NZ govt to kill deer in the NZ back country, but he hardly fitted the conventional stereotype of a literary figure. This was well before the ‘wild game recovery’ boom that later saw helicopters harrying herds of deer on the alpine tussock above the treeline of NZ’s mountain ranges, with ‘shooters’ in the co-pilots seats of choppers with their doors removed using semi automatic rifles to kill half a dozen deer at a time, and then jumping off the hovering chopper’s skids to lash the carcases together in a bundle by their feet, hook them onto a line, and jump aboard again for a flight down to a waiting chiller truck at the road end five or six thousand feet below.

Barry Crump’s hunting had been down in the bush, and his ‘tall tales’ were told with energy and verve, and had just enough verisimilitude (I looked it up for my essay), to fuel every New Zealand male’s fantasies of being a bushman, hunter, and ‘hard case’. Some women too, but that came later in the story.

Crump’s visit caused something of a sensation at the school. We were the only class he visited, but the story of his visit spread like wildfire. We turned up to English after lunch one Tuesday about halfway through the term, to find Crump perched on the edge of Mr Smythe’s desk, holding forth to him about seducing women as we filed in. l don’t know if Crump was ‘in costume’, but he was certainly dressed for the bush rather than in conventional ‘town attire’. Floppy felt hat, black wool singlet, plaid shirt, moleskin trousers, and boots rather than shoes. He carried a ‘Swandri’ waterproofed wool anorak, and was smoking a hand rolled cigarette.

He stopped talking long enough for Mr Smythe to introduce him, then addressed us. “I met Bob in the pub. He seems like an okay guy, likes a good straight fuck, and he asked if I would come and talk to ya.”

The was a collective intake of breath, and a few stifled giggles, but Crump took a drag on his smoke and went on. “So here I am – so whaddya wanna know?”

Mr Smythe stepped in. “Perhaps you could tell us how you became a writer?”

“When you’re alone in a back country hut there’s fuck all else to do, except pull yourself, and after two or three times, that’s it for the night!”

This time, the gasps and giggles were clearly audible, but Mr Smythe was equal to the situation. “So you wrote in longhand?”

“Shit yeah! No way I was lugging a fucken typewriter ten miles in and then ten miles out again!” He took another drag, and wound his persona back a couple of notches. “I had a school exercise book. I used to write down the things that happened, or sometimes things that nearly happened or might have happened. In some of the blocks there were four of us in the hut, and we used to tell yarns. I wrote them down too.”

Duncan Hamilton was, as usual, bravest or most outspoken. When I mused about that to Pauline, she suggested that his status as ‘smartest in the class’ gave him a level of immunity from censure and punishment for pushing the envelope. “You mean that some of the things you wrote weren’t true?”

Crump grinned at him. “Would I lie to you? Just to get in your pants?” There was another collective intake of breath and Hamilton blushed scarlet. Crump laughed. “Don’t worry – I don’t go that way – even in the bush!”

Mr Smythe was again equal to the occasion. “Were you good at English at school?”

Crump’s laugh had a tiny bit of bitterness. “Nah. School is a fucken waste of time.” He thought for a second. “At least for me. It might be different for you smart pricks.” He paused again, took another drag, and for a second or two looked quite sad, then had another thought and grinned again. “For me, the only thing good about school was the sheilas. Most of them didn’t want to know, but the ones who did were easy!”

Bill Simpson stepped up. “So you left school early?”

“Yup. Fifteen and out the door. Down to the Forest Service. Lied about my age and experience, and a week later was off to a ‘training block’.”

Duncan Hamilton had another go. “Why do you think your book has been so successful? Is it about the “Man Alone’ thing?”

Crump curled his lip. “Jesus! You’re starting early. Some prick at the University asked me that. Then he raved on about man against nature, taming the country, self reliance – all that shit.”

And so it went. Eventually, Mr Smythe got Crump to read from ‘A Good Keen Man’ and he wound his persona down another couple of notches and let his work speak for itself. I was impressed. Until Mr Smythe announced that he expected a thousand words on Crump’s visit by the following Tuesday.

At the end of the period, Barry Crump departed from our classroom, though not from the New Zealand cultural landscape. He wrote a series of popular books in the same genre, ‘yarns’ on the original sense of the word, and parlayed his image as a ‘hard case’ through a succession of ventures and relationships with women who he beat, abused and abandoned. But that’s another story.

Forty five minutes with Barry Crump had some small effect on me, but reading ‘A Good Keen Man’ for my essay had a lot more. I had been on a hunting and fishing trip with Frank and some mates a few years before, but although I had been interested in the male anatomy of the stag I had helped to dress, at that stage I had had no interest in learning to hunt myself.

Crump’s story changed that. Looking back, I’d like to think it had nothing to do with romantic notions of the ‘hard case’ alone in the back country, self reliant, tough, taciturn (Crump certainly was not), but there was definitely some attraction in the idea of going into the bush and coming back with meat for the family. I became interested in learning to hunt.

So did Pauline. She picked up my copy of the book from beside my bed during our post orgasmic rest one afternoon, and got hooked, so for her next few visits, we either read together, or competed for it. She was generally able to offer a compelling reason to let her have it, at least until I was ‘ready to go again’.

We talked to Frank. He had a .22 for rabbits, possums, and hares, and a 30-06 for deer, goats, and pigs, but he hadn’t been hunting anything since he had bought the Newmarket house. He was willing to lend us his .22, but insisted that at least one of us should have a Firearms License.

“They’re tightening up. If there’s a problem and you get picked up by the cops for some reason, and I’ve loaned you a rifle and you haven’t got a license, it will come back on me.”

So the following Wednesday, Pauline and I both went to a ‘Firearms Training Course’ at the Central Police Station. We walked downtown after tea, and were directed to a ‘training room’, where a bored volunteer from the local Deerstalkers Association lectured us about firearm safety and storage of firearms and ammunition for two hours and then administered a multiple choice test that we both found ridiculously easy. It wasn’t hard to choose between “When you take them out of storage.”; “When you put them in your vehicle.”; When confronting an intruder.”; and “When you have identified your target.” As the correct answer to a question about when to load your firearm.

We each paid the requisite seven shillings and sixpence, and received our Firearm User’s License. New Zealand was a very different and much more law-abiding place in 1960. The last shooting involving more than one person was nearly twenty years before, the Police were hardly ever armed, and there was a rifle behind the kitchen door of nearly every farmhouse in the country.

Storage of rifles (there were no legal handguns and the precious few illegal ones were almost exclusively ‘war souvenirs’) was theoretically with their bolts removed, separate from their ammunition, and under lock and key in a separate designated area, but this was honoured more in the breach than the observance. Frank was actually breaking the law. He had a locked box for his two weapons, but their bolts were with them, and so was the ammo. He was nevertheless insistent that we go with him to the Deerstalkers Association range one evening to learn and demonstrate some practical skill. That was fun So Pauline and I had licenses and access to an old bolt action Remington with iron sights. But what were we going to hunt? The obvious answer was rabbits, since at that time in NZ very few people ate possums, and neither of us had any idea how good they can taste. But where and when? There was no shortage of rabbits on the newly accessible North Shore, and that was little more than twenty minutes from Newmarket over the recently opened Harbour Bridge. When was a bit more difficult, since Pauline had a Drama rehearsal every Saturday morning after our usual Friday night together.

We eventually decided to borrow Frank’s van, set an alarm, and plan to be ten miles north of the bridge by dawn, hunting the edge of the forestry blocks and old orchards and (now uneconomic, landbanked, and soon to be swallowed by suburbia) small farms. Whether we got lucky or not, we could be back at Newmarket in time to clean up and get Pauline to her rehearsal before 9am, and then I could go back to pick Frank up for our usual Saturday’s work.

We made preparations the night before, taking the rifle and ammo and the keys to Frank’s van out of his room so we wouldn’t have to disturb him and Emma in the morning, and stashing a couple of newspapers to wrap any unlucky rabbits (no plastic bags in those days!), and a hessian sugarbag to carry them home in.

Even though it was almost 1am by the time we got to bed, the prospect of a hunt made Pauline super horny, and we licked and sucked for a long while before she slipped a tablet between her tiny thin labia, slotted me to push it in fully, and rode me cowgirl before we drifted off together. Our 6am alarm seemed to sound very quickly.

I was certainly excited, but Pauline was in a state we would later come to call ‘dancing off her tits’ in anticipation of the hunt. She couldn’t sit still, squirming around in the front seat of the van, and drawing a sympathetic look from the attendant who took our 2 shilling bridge toll.

“There’s a public toilet in the admin building over there.”

She had the grace to blush. “I’m all right thanks, just excited about going hunting rabbits.”

We got to the edge of the plantation just as the sky in the east was showing pale, and argued briefly about who would carry the rifle first. I gave way, and we counted together as she loaded five rounds into the tubular magazine beneath the Remington’s barrel. Then she led off down the road.