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gumboots — she had received a dead possum full in the face. Splat. The finals of the children’s event, Throw the Possum, was in its last round. A young finalist had whirled his possum by the tail too enthusiastically above his head, then, losing his grip, had hurled it into the crowd. The hilarity of the onlookers only added fuel to the woman’s horror.
    After the excitement had died down, Luke Masefield, standing on the tray of the truck displaying stags, whistled loudly for attention.
    ‘Hey! Come over here! Look at this!’
    When a small crowd had gathered, he pointed to the stag which bore Donny’s tag. ‘That’s a farmed deer. That’s off Entwhistle’s farm up Horopito.’ He pointed to a scrape down the flank. ‘Bet you that scraped patch would have had the Entwhistle brand. Donny Mac’s a bloody cheat.’
    The event judge climbed up on to the truck. Inspected the beast. Gave Luke a hard look. ‘How would you know that it came off Entwhistle’s then?’
    Luke shrugged his shoulders. ‘Looks like farmed deer, eh. Too fat.’
    By now people in the crowd were murmuring. There’d been a bout of cheating last year, losses from deer farms reported. No one wanted a return of that sort of behaviour. Donny, standing at the back of the crowd, beer can in hand, was jostled, subjected to a bit of abuse.
    ‘I never did!’ roared Donny, angry and frightened by this turn of events. ‘I shot him out in the bush!’ He pushed forward, climbed up on the truck with the judge and Luke.
    ‘Cheat!’ yelled Luke into his face.
    Donny looked at his tag; looked at Luke’s. He knew what had happened but, what with the beer and his natural slowness, couldn’t get the words out. Enraged, he lashed out at Luke, and hit the judge, who stumbled against the hanging carcasses and set them swinging as if in a mad chorus dance. Down fell the judge, down amongst deer, slipping on blood and ending up awkwardly, painfully, against the truck’s canopy. Donny, bellowing that he was not a cheat, went for Luke again, smashing at the sneer and the cruel words, breaking Luke’s teeth and nose, and sending him crashing off the flat-top into the crowd below.

    Donny was charged and then bailed by Bull. In the weeks before his trial the boy tried hard to hold onto his job and keep away from trouble, but he was lonely, afraid, sometimes the butt of cruel jokes. He often ended up in the pub, drinking with people who were not truly his friends, Nightshade Holloway among these. Meantime Di Masefield gathered evidence against him.
    It turned out Bert Entwhistle
had
lost a stag and identified the one with Donny’s tag. At the trial, George Kingi gave evidence that Donny’s animal had been caught properly and that someone must have switched tags. Everyone in Ohakune knew who that would be. Those Masefield boys were trouble in the town. But the trial was in Whanganui. Di Masefield,respectable and known for her position on the council, appeared for the police, giving a poisonous character reference against Donny. She claimed that this was the third time Donny had been drunk and violent; that her son and other boys in town were being led astray; that poor Luke had to endure hours of painful dental reconstruction; that Donny was a danger to the community.
    The judge ruled that the matter of who shot the Entwhistle stag was a separate matter. Donny was being tried for grievous bodily harm. As well as the damage done to Luke, the Hunt judge had suffered a broken arm. A custodial sentence was handed down and an anger management course recommended.
    Donny’s friends in Manawa — Bull Howie and Vera, the Kingis, his rugby mates — lacked the money or influence to fight the decision. They had kept an eye on him, though, during his months in prison, and welcomed him back.

The Virgin Tracey
    On the evening of Donny’s return, the Virgin Tracey waits until Vera has rattled on down Hohepa and turned into Railway Row. The Virgin’s head turns right and