The Haystack

by Jack Lasenby

  He held the red inner tube while I got the scissors and cut a slice off the end. “It won’t be any use if it’s too strong. Try it anyway.”

  “Dad! You came inside in your boots. Tramping dirt all over my polished lino!”

  “I wiped them first. And I tiptoed.”

  “All the same, you know very well you’re not supposed to. Is that why Mr Cleaver’s nose looks like a sausage?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because he eats so many.”

  Dad grinned. “I think that nose comes out of a bottle.”

  Through the middle of the cotton reel, I poked the strong rubber ring till a loop stuck out the other end. A short splinter of kindling through the loop stopped it pulling back.

  The brass candlestick on the mantelpiece held a stub of candle. I bored a hole through it to take the other end of the ring. Just enough of the ring showed for me to poke a stump of pencil through. I wound the pencil and put my tractor on the table.

  It tipped over and scrabbled sideways, the pencil stump shot round, striking the table and shouting “Hullabaloo! Hullabaloo!”

  Dad had sneaked back inside, to see how I was getting on.

  “It sounded like my blind going up.”

  “That rubber band’s strong. What you need’s a full-length pencil, or a longer piece of wood.”

  “I used a splinter of kindling to hold the other end.”

  “Who wouldn’t light the copper because they’d have to split the kindling, and now she’s using the kindling her poor old father had to go and split—to make her tractor?”

  “I’ll chop some more tonight. Anyway, you’re wearing your boots inside again.”

  “You make sure you do. Using all my good kindling…That’s all it needed; look at it climb.”

  I ran along the street, but Freddy was hiding. Last time I asked if he could come out and play, Mrs Jones chased me, so I didn’t go in his gate. I wound up my tractor, and it drove itself across the footpath. When it came to the bike tracks, it stumbled, dug in its teeth, stood thinking to itself, then the powerful rubber band worked. My tractor shrugged and climbed the ridges up and down, up and down, no trouble.

  “We’ll show Freddy Jones.” I smoothed the dirt, drew a morepork with big eyes, claws, and a savage beak, and ran home.

  “Dad, Freddy Jones is hiding.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “I can’t beat him if he hides.”

  “He’s sick of getting beaten. Change the ring on your tractor for one of those we keep for holding the cellophane on the jam jars. Freddy will come out and play then because his tractor has some show of winning.”

  But I didn’t see why Freddy Jones’s tractor should beat mine. He could cut a ring off an old inner tube if he wanted. I ran back, rubbed out the morepork, and drew one twice as savage, with a screaming boy in its beak.

  “This’ll give him something to think about,” I said and wrote “F. J.”, with an arrow pointing at the screaming boy. Wandering home, pretending not to look around, I glanced sideways as I went in our gate. Freddy still hadn’t come out.

  “One of the chooks is clucky,” I told Dad.

  “You know what to do.”

  “Plook! Plook!” She didn’t like me lifting her off the china egg. “Plook! Plook!” She sat on the ground when I put the box over her, and she didn’t like it when I called her Freddy Jones and tipped the water over her.

  “It’s for your own good,” I told her. “It’ll give you something to think about, and it’ll take you off the cluck.”

  It’s no use trying to explain things to chooks. They don’t take any notice of anything I say, except when they’re hungry.

  After lunch, I’d put on my shoes and was walking round and round my room. Dad was still sitting at the table, and he could see me.

  “Those shoes look a bit tight.”

  “I’m practising limping.”

  “Why on earth…?”

  “Colleen Porter had the infantile, and she still limps. She’s nice, Colleen.”

  “Well, don’t let her see you doing it. Put your foot up here.” Dad pushed on the toes and poked his finger down the side of my shoes. “They’re not bad for room, but you’re going to need something a bit warmer for winter.”

  “We’re learning a poem—about buying new shoes.”

  “How does it go?”

  “I don’t think you’ll like it…”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  I stood up straight, as Mr Strap taught us when we were doing Choral Speaking, stretched my lips back and smiled, as Mr Strap taught us, and said, “‘Choosing Shoes’ by Frida Wolfe.

  “‘Choosing Shoes’ is the name of the poem, and Frida Wolfe’s the person who wrote it,” I told Dad. “We have to poke out our lips when we say ‘ch’ and ‘sh’.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr Strap says so.”

  “Go on.”

  I shut my eyes, thought of how to hold my lips, and recited:

  Choosing Shoes

  by Frida Wolfe

  New shoes, new shoes,

  Red and pink and blue shoes.

  Tell me, what would you choose,

  If they’d let us buy?

  Buckle shoes, bow shoes,

  Pretty pointy-toe shoes,

  Strappy, cappy low shoes;

  Let’s have some to try.

  Bright shoes, white shoes,

  Dandy-dance-by-night shoes,

  Perhaps-a-little-tight shoes,

  Like some? So would I.

  BUT

  Flat shoes, fat shoes,

  Stump-along-like-that shoes,

  Wipe-them-on-the-mat shoes,

  That’s the sort they’ll buy.

  Dad laughed till he dropped the paper and fell off his chair. I had to help him up.

  “I haven’t heard such a good poem for ages.” He wiped his eyes. “I like the way you push out your lips and make your mouth round. Why do you close your eyes?”

  “It helps me remember.”

  “Fancy Mr Strap teaching you that one.”

  “Do you know it?”

  “The girls had to learn it when I was at school, and the boys had to learn ‘Young Lochinvar’, but we didn’t know about pushing out our lips and making our mouths round. That poem’s given me an idea.”

  “Are you going to buy me some ‘pretty pointy-toe shoes’?”

  “Not on your Nelly. ‘Flat shoes, fat shoes, stump-along-like-that shoes.’”

  “‘Wipe-them-on-the-mat shoes,’” I said.

  “‘That’s the sort they’ll buy,’” we said together.

  Dad wiped his eyes again, and said, “We’ll see, next time we go up to Matamata.” I had to be satisfied with that.

  Chapter Eight

  Sacks on the Mill, Roosting with Chooks, and Why You Must Be Careful Sleeping Under a Haystack.

  A LOT OF KIDS GO BAREFOOT all winter. On frosty mornings, Mr Strap says, “You look as if you need warming up,” and takes us outside. “Ready—Steady—Go!” The winner’s whoever gets round the school first. If you slide over on the corners, everyone piles on top: “Sacks on the mill. More on still.” You take the skin off your knees on the tarseal, and that hurts.

  Some kids limp along; some don’t run, and Mr Strap doesn’t make them. The ones who look the coldest, a girl in my class and her brother in standard two, stand and watch the rest of us running and yelling. At lunch-time, they sit alone on the seats under the windows, a long way apart. They don’t even talk to each other. Dad says you should be kind to people like that, but it isn’t easy to be kind to Flora Guy.

  On Monday, I showed her my cotton-reel tractor. “Look, it can climb up a book.”

  “My father’s got a real tractor that climbs up hills,” said Flora Guy, “and it can go through water over its front wheels.”

  As if it heard her, my cotton-reel tractor fell over, the long bit of kindling wood shot round and round as the rubber ring unwound, and the tract
or looked silly lying on its side. I could tell what Flora Guy was thinking.

  “Come on,” I put it in my pocket. “I’m going to do some skipping.” Flora Guy looked away and said nothing, so I ran and joined the others.

  We took turns running in sideways, skipping once, and running out the other side; then we tried Double Dutch with two ropes, one swinging this way, one that, and we all got tangled and the big girls got mixed up with the ropes; then we saw how fast we could go with one rope, the big girls trying to catch our feet: “Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper!” and we all joined in and screamed and fell over in a big heap.

  Flora Guy was still sitting over under the windows when the bell rang, and we ran to line up.

  Dad wouldn’t be home till five o’clock, so I went down to Mr Bluenose’s after school. I wanted to ask him something. He was sorting cookers in his shed built out of flattened kerosene tins, but he gave me a ripe Golden Delicious and said he was pleased to see me. I told him about Flora Guy.

  “When you are sick or miserable, you might want to blame everyone else for the way you feel,” Mr Bluenose said. “That may be why the girl is difficult and sits on her own.”

  We took a kerosene tin of apples with bad in them up to the pigs, who stood on each other and squealed.

  “They are pleased to see you. Always they are oinking, ‘When is Maggie coming to give us apples and scratch our backs?’ And, look who is standing with his head over the gate, waiting for you to say hello and give him an apple.”

  “I kept the best one for you,” I told Horse, who snorted, nudged the apple off my hand, crunched it noisily, and dribbled a few bits.

  “If I make a mess all down my front like that, Dad says he’ll put me down in the chook run,” I told Horse. “He says I can eat with them, and fly up and roost with them at night.”

  Horse stuck his head down to be scratched.

  “I told Dad I’d like to be a chook, and he wished he’d never mentioned it. You’d look a bit funny, perching in the middle of a row of chooks, Horse. Remember the time I taught you to push the wheelbarrow? And the time you pinched the apple and ate the boiled lolly, and my hanky, too?” But Horse just shook his head and whuffled through his big nostrils. He’s not all that good at remembering things when he doesn’t want to.

  I ran between the rows of apple trees. Most had been picked, and the orchard was looking tired: yellow and brown leaves letting go of the branches, and slipping sideways to the ground.

  “Soon winter will come,” said Mr Bluenose. “Much to be done: lifting the last potatoes and putting them into a clamp; turning the soil over, so the frost can break it up and kill all the bugs; pruning fruit trees; cutting hedges.”

  “You’ve still got a lot of vegies growing.”

  “Cabbages, caulis, carrots, parsnips, swedes, Brussel sprouts, silver beet, celery: there are some vegetables that will keep in the ground. People still have to eat.”

  “I hate winter.”

  “Sitting in front of the warm stove, eating your father’s good soups and stews and roast dinners?”

  “Oh, I like all that. We roasted a leg of wether on Sunday, and we’re still eating it. Dad said we’d mince up what’s left and make a shepherd’s pie for tea. I love shepherd’s pie, Mr Bluenose.”

  “Have you a cat, Maggie?”

  “No.”

  “Watching a cat will teach you how to enjoy winter.”

  “What does Horse do in the cold?”

  “He is growing his coat long, to keep him warm. He has plenty of hay. I will put on his cover and, when it is a very hard frost, he will go into his shed at night. Horse likes living in the orchard. He will be comfortable in winter.”

  “Remember you told me about how you ran away to sea, Mr Bluenose? And then you were so seasick, you ran away from your ship in Auckland and tramped all the way to Waharoa.”

  “So I did.”

  “Were you a swagger, Mr Bluenose?”

  “I tramped the roads, but I did not carry a swag.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “On farms, I worked a day here, a day there, and people fed me, and gave me a place to sleep in a shed. I was just a boy, and people were kind. One farmer gave me an old pair of boots, another an old coat. Why did you want to know, Maggie, if I was a swagger?”

  “I thought of Mr Rust going on the swag. Where do swaggers sleep on cold nights, Mr Bluenose?”

  “Mr Rust who works for Mr Hoe?”

  “Mr Hoe gave him the sack for getting drunk and setting fire to his bed. Mr Cleaver told Dad somebody saw him carrying his swag up the stock road towards Matamata and gave him a ride to Te Poi.”

  “Mr Rust drinks, not often, but once or twice a year, and Mr Hoe does not approve. But Mr Rust is such a good worker, and he has worked on the farm so long, Mr Hoe will be sorry to lose him.

  “These are hard days for anyone without a job. No work, no money; no money, no food and nowhere to sleep.”

  “But they must sleep somewhere. You just said Horse has his cover, and his shed.”

  “I meant no bed to sleep in. Swaggers sleep where they can: in barns, under bridges. It is cold in winter, but it is dry.”

  “Did you sleep under bridges when you walked from Auckland?”

  “Yes, and one night under a haystack.”

  “Under a haystack?”

  “Under a haystack is warm. Sometimes prickly, but also soft and warm. Only you must not smoke, because hay catches fire and burns quickly. It is very hard to put out a fire once it is alight in its heart, the haystack. But yes, warm for sleeping, the hay.”

  I liked the way Mr Bluenose’s voice said things differently to everyone else’s.

  “Mr Rust’s mattress was smouldering when the Hoe boys pulled him outside.”

  “The smoke could have killed him. There are many young men without jobs. That will make it harder for Mr Rust to get one. It is what they call the Depression, Maggie.”

  As I ran home, I remembered I was going to ask Mr Bluenose if Horse lay down to sleep or if he stood up all night. Freddy Jones reckoned that horses sleep standing up, but I tried it and fell over when I closed my eyes. Dad said it might be different if you have four legs, but I still fell over. I stopped now and tried standing on one leg, but I thought Horse wouldn’t do that and ran on.

  Chapter Nine

  Careering Around Like a Wild Thing, Flapping the Tea Towel, and Why Elbows Hurt So Much.

  GOING PAST MRS DAINTY’S, I kept to the other side of the road, so she couldn’t pop out of her gate and go off at me. Mr Strap was cutting the hedge in front of the school house. Smoke came from the chimney where Mrs Strap must be cooking his tea. I’d get our stove going, make a cup of tea for when Dad got home, and we’d start mincing the mutton.

  “Careering around like a wild thing; not looking where you’re going; thinking only of yourself, as usual. Typical of the young today.” I’d nearly knocked over Mrs Dainty coming round the hall corner.

  “I’ve got to light the stove and heat the oven, Mrs Dainty. We’re making a shepherd’s pie for tea.”

  “You don’t mean to tell me you’re going to make a shepherd’s pie after your father gets home? At this time of night? What time do you think you’re going to eat, and when are you going to get to bed, I’d like to know? It’s not good enough, a man bringing up a daughter on his own. Running around knocking people over, staying up to all hours…”

  “I have to go home now.”

  Mrs Dainty called something that sounded like “Have you got a cat?”, but I kept running.

  The stove took ages to get going because I forgot to pull out the dampers. There was a gulp inside the firebox. “Pomp!” it said, grey puffs shot out of all the cracks, and the kitchen filled with smoke.

  “Cripes!” I opened the window and the back door, and ran up and down flapping the tea towel, put the matches back on the mantelpiece, filled the kettle, and pushed it over the ring to heat up fast. Then I remembered the kindling for tomo
rrow. The butter-box—thin boards of white pine—split easily, so that didn’t take long.

  “Sniff? Sniff?” I galloped around flapping the tea towel again. I’d filled the coal bucket, and the kettle was making its comfortable winding noise. There’d just be time to feed the chooks, and then Dad should be home.

  We’d put the mincer together, screw it on the side of the table, and he’d feed in the bits of cooked mutton while I turned the handle, and it’d come out the end, grey wriggles like chewed-up worms. I’d pinch a bit to eat, and Dad would say, “There’ll be nothing left to make a pie, if you don’t stop feeding your face.”

  The five o’clock whistle blew. Over at the factory, Dad was putting on his hat and his trouser clips, and getting on his bike. I closed the little gate from the paddock into the fowl-run. The chooks were eating, and they had plenty of water. I backed out, watching the rooster, but he was busy keeping one cruel eye on the cockerels, saying “Took! Took!” and lifting and dropping bits of maize for his favourite hens.

  “Have a good sleep,” I told them. The chooks fly up on to their roosts and go to sleep before I do. Once I forgot to feed them till it was late, and they’d all gone to sleep and only one or two woke and came down for their food.

  “They go off the lay, if you don’t feed them,” Dad said, so I was careful after that, besides I didn’t like anyone going to bed hungry and cold.

  “Bubble!” said the kettle, and “Hiss!” said the teapot as I filled it with boiling water. “Click!” said the gate, “Creak!” squeaked the chain as Dad’s bike went past the window. “Bump!” it grunted, as he leaned it against the back shed.

  “Corker! I’m dying for a cup of tea. We’ll get that shepherd’s pie into the oven, and it’ll be ready in no time.”

  “I’ll get the mincer.”

  “Have a look in the safe.”

  “Oh, you’ve made it already.”

  “That’s why I gave you your lunch to take to school this morning. I came home at midday, minced the mutton, boiled and mashed the potatoes, and cooked the carrots and peas. It’s all set to go into the oven.”