The Tongilava Pack at Rodney's Store: Roxanne, Denzel, Bette, and Jadzia
The Tongilava pack of four dogs and I set out at about 4pm for a walk around Fanga. Our progress was slow, not because my knees were especially painful, but because we met some friendly dogs along the way and so there was a lot of sniffing about. Roxanne was uncharacteristically calm. It was not unusual to have to pick her up and carry her past people because she was afraid of them, and often she would snap at other dogs even though the rest of the pack was happily sniffing and being sniffed, but today Roxanne the pariah was doing a good impersonation of a normal dog rather than being a head case.
My knees felt good enough for an extended walk, so at about 4:30pm at the intersection where we would normally turn right to go to Rodney Tu'inukuafe's liquor store, we turned left instead. We had taken no more than a few steps in that direction when a car horn honked and I heard my name called. I looked behind me and down the block near the liquor store was a black pickup truck stopped in the middle of the street. It looked like Rodney's truck, and the driver was motioning with his arm for me to come. I perceived a free beer in my immediate future, so the Tongilava pack and I reversed course.
As Rodney handed me a New Zealand Lager and we sat down on the cement step in front of his store, it seemed to me that he had already had a few, and that his friend Simon had already had more than a few. Simon, who looked ancient but might have been younger that I was, claimed that he had changed his name to Peter, which I took to be apocrypha, but as I got to know him better in the course of the next few hours, I had occasion to reflect on the appropriateness of his alleged name change; the guy was no smarter than a rock.
"I don't like you coming here with your dogs!"
"Why?"
"Because they make me afraid!"
"Why are you afraid of my dogs?"
"Because they might bite me!"
"Why do you think that? They have never bitten anyone."
"Why do you come here with your dogs all the time?"
"For my health. I need the exercise, and the dogs like to accompany me."
"Why don't you take your dogs somewhere else?"
"For several reasons. I live a few blocks from here, this is where I can rest for awhile and have a beer, and I have a legal right to walk my dogs here."
"No you don't! I am going to take you to court!"
"I look forward to that. I usually learn something new when I see the Tongan legal system in action. But before you take me to court, you might want to take a look at the Dogs Act, which I happen to have with me." I might leave behind my American Express card, but I never left home without a copy of the Dogs Act and the Pounds and Animals Act, such was the pervasive animus toward dogs.
"Where?"
"Right here in my pants." I pointed to my crotch. "I got yer Dogs Act right here." Then I produced the aforementioned legislation from my hip pocket and showed it to Rodney, who was sitting next to me and keeping me continuously supplied with beer.
By this time we had attracted a crowd of onlookers, all male, ranging in age from about ten to twenty years without possibility of parole. This was a real treat for them. The only time they got to hear dialog like this was while watching American films. Let the record also show that the Tongilava pack was quietly observing the situation, and at no time did they voice or motion a threat to anyone. I had their leashes wrapped several times around my left wrist to ensure that I had control.
"I don't care! I don't like you to come here with your dogs and make me afraid!"
"I don't believe you, I think you're just running your drunken mouth.
Ngutu lahi! (Big mouth!) How afraid could you possibly be? Here you are sitting on the cement right next to my dogs like the lamb with the lion." Tongans loved such Biblical references.
"They bark and bark, and I don't like the noise." He cupped his hands over his ears.
"My dogs are being quiet. You're the one who is barking."
"You go down the street with your dogs and they bark, and they make all the other dogs bark!"
"That's a testable proposition." I stood up. "Walk with me."
"Where?"
"Down the street. Let's see if my dogs bark at other dogs." It was a good thing that I didn't have Doobie Mapapalangi with me; she had zero tolerance for disrespect from other dogs, but I had a lot of confidence in the Tongilavas to act with restraint, especially since Roxanne was having a good day. With four leashes in my left hand and gesturing with an open can of New Zealand Lager in my right, I conducted Simon on a guided tour of the dogs of Fanga. "Over here in this yard on the right, there are three dogs, two of whom can jump the fence. Another dog lives in the next yard, and the gate is open. On the left are two dogs, mother and son." Since they saw us nearly every day, they were used to us. Small children sang "Who Let the Dogs Out?" as we passed. Farther down the street a dog passed us in the opposite direction without incident. Finally, at the end of the block, a dog barked at us from behind a chain link fence. The Tongilavas maintained silence. This particular dog always barked, It was the one dog in that yard who hadn't learned to accept cheese puff balls from me.
Simon pointed an accusing finger. "You see? That dog is barking at your dogs!"
"No, he's barking at you. He doesn't like you. I don't like you, either." (You just watch yourself....) I was once wanted in Arizona for disorderly conduct, a class 1 misdemeanor.
We returned to Rodney's store where Simon continued to rant with increasing incoherence. "You come here from America with your foolish American ideas! I tried to go to America, but they wouldn't give me a visa."
"Well, you're not going to get a green card with that attitude, pal."
"In America, people shoot each other and no one does anything about it! Not here!"
"But you're in Tonga. What do you care what happens in America? You've never even been there. You should worry about what happens right here. Why are you concerned about the mote in your neighbor's eye when you have a log in your own?" Ah, a grand gesture to the faithful in the pews. "Anyway, if you think Americans are so dangerous, why are you afraid of my dogs? You should be afraid of me."
"I want you and your dogs to go away!"
"Sorry to hear that, but I'm staying. So, are you going to do something about it or just stay in my face all afternoon?"
Simon staggered to his feet and muttered as he walked away. He returned a few minutes later with an 18-inch length of 1-inch-diameter lead pipe. One rarely sees lead pipe in Tonga; instead they use a lot of that cheap polyvinyl chloride crap. Of course, brandishing PVC pipe in a menacing manner would have been a less than credible threat, so lead was called for in this special circumstance. I leaned over to Rodney. "Are you ready to phone 922? You may be about to become a witness to a crime." He nodded. I remained seated, four dogs at the ready, while Simon stood with uncertain balance over me. Upon sufficient provocation, I would hurl myself at his knees, upending him so that his falling body would drive his head into the cement, and my dogs would probably do what came naturally to them as pack hunters.
"I'm going to kill your dogs!"
I shrugged, "The last time someone killed one of my dogs, the magistrate ordered him to pay two thousand pa'anga in restitution or go to Tolitoli for six months. I don't think you have that kind of money, I don't think you want to do the time, and there are a lot of witnesses here. Besides which, if you hit one dog, the other three will take you down. They haven't had dinner yet."
"Then the police will come and shoot them!"
"Then the police might also shoot the pieces of you that would be in their stomachs, but that wouldn't be a hell of a lot of help to you. But no, the police wouldn't shoot my dogs, because every animal has the right to defend itself."
"No it doesn't!"
"Sure it does. Every animal is born with an instinct for self-preservation, so it is a matter of natural law that every animal possesses the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense. A pack of dogs is a very tightly-knit collective, so an attack
against one member is considered as an attack against all members. In fact, since God created all of the animals with that instinct for self-preservation, it's God's law.
"What do you know about God's law?"
"Less than some, but probably more than you. More to the point, these dogs, being on short leashes right next to me, are legally in a state of confinement, so if you ill-treat them, you can be punished by up to three months confinement per count. Do the math: four dogs, three months each, for a total of twelve months in Tolitoli. That's Tongan law."
"I'll kill you!"
"I don't happen to have a copy of the Criminal Offences Act on my person, but that would be considerably more time in the joint. Once again, I advise you to consider the many witnesses who are present. In fact, verbally threatening me while holding that pipe probably constitutes common assault, which I believe is punishable by up to one year in prison."
Simon repeated, "I'll kill you!"
"Well, get on with it. I have to be somewhere. Are you going to use that pipe or bore me to death?"
"I will bury you!"
"I'm sorry. You'll have to stand in the queue for that one. Nikita Khrushchev has first crack at me. Tell you what, when Nikita is done you can dig me up and bury me again. How's that?"
At some point, Rodney persuaded Simon to give him the pipe. Having been diverted by Simon's entertainment and Rodney's libations, I noticed suddenly that darkness had descended. There are no lingering sunsets in the tropics. At higher latitudes the sun glides to the horizon at an angle, but near the equator it plummets pretty much straight down. I thanked Rodney for the beers and explained that for at least half an hour Marilyn had been wondering where I was. I said to the Tongilavas,
"'Alu ki 'api." (Let's) go home.
We returned to the house to find that Marilyn had phoned 922 because she was afraid that a gang of Tongans might have beaten me to a pulp. I am an American fighting man. My wife calls the police if I'm not home by 7pm.
"What were you thinking? As afraid as Tongans are of dogs, an escort of four of them is more than adequate protection."
Not that phoning the emergency line did any good. The policeman hung up on Marilyn because he couldn't understand English, which is one of the two official languages of Tonga. "To protect and to serve."
Thomas Gangale's Tales of Tonga
