The Haystack

by Jack Lasenby

  He fell for it again. “Who’s the Morepork Gang?”

  “A robber-band of swaggers dressed like moreporks. You listen tonight, you’ll hear them hooting their secret signal. They’ve been cutting people’s throats all round the district ever since Christmas.”

  You can tell when Freddy’s scared because his eyes go shifty. He felt his throat and swallowed.

  “Mrs Dainty says the police are at their wits’ end, trying to catch the Morepork Gang.”

  “Garn!”

  I made my eyes round like a morepork’s, and stared into Freddy’s.

  “A boy might go to bed and think he’s safe, but there’s a young man in the Morepork Gang who will climb in that boy’s window, tear out his heart and liver, and roast and eat them.”

  Dad had been reading me another of my mother’s old books, and I pinched that bit about the hungry young man. Aggie and Milly were properly scared, the night Dad read it aloud to us, and it worked a treat on Freddy Jones. His eyes went all over the place.

  “If the Morepork Gang scratch their secret mark on a boy’s gate post, he’s doomed. Specially after the young man’s torn out his heart and liver, and roasted and eaten them.”

  Freddy ran whimpering around the corner, and climbed through the hole in their hedge. I waited till he was halfway through and gave a couple of hoots “Morepork! Morepork!”, and he got stuck and shrieked. Even when he tore himself free, he yelped all the way inside the house.

  Jean Carter stood by the gate staring at the scratches. “It’s all right,” I told her. “It’s Freddy Jones’s heart and liver they’re going to tear out, not yours.” But Jean ran sobbing after Ken, and the pair of them looked back at me and went for their lives.

  Inside, I rubbed soap on the stain, and put my dress to soak in cold water; my old shorts and shirt would do to run down to the shops. But first I told Aggie and Milly why I’d written on Freddy Jones’s gate post, and how he’d torn his shirt getting stuck in the hedge.

  “Freddy Jones is in trouble. Specially when the young man roasts and eats his liver. You know what Freddy’s like. Very brave in broad daylight but, when it’s dark and he’s in bed, he remembers everything you tell him. Mark my words,” I told Aggie, and she stared at me. “Mark my words,” I repeated, “Freddy Jones is going to have a real bonzer of a nightmare tonight.”

  I wore my blue dress with the puffed sleeves next day, and Freddy kept well away and didn’t try giving cheek, but I told him after school, “You wait, Freddy Jones. You’re going to be sorry.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The Captain of the Morepork Gang told me.”

  “Huh! Who’s he when he’s at home?”

  I whispered so Freddy had to lean towards me: “He’s a one-legged swagger called Long John Silver.”

  “Garn! Long John Silver was in that book Mr Strap read to us.”

  “Long John Silver is real. He climbed out of the book, ran away, and became a swagger. Now he’s Captain of the Morepork Gang, he’s got a glass eye as well as a wooden leg, and instead of hands he’s got hooks.”

  Freddy whimpered.

  “The Morepork Gang all got the sack because of the Depression, so they disguise themselves as swaggers during the day, and turn back into moreporks after dark.”

  “Huh!”

  “That’s why you never hear a morepork hooting in daylight.”

  “I often hear them.”

  “You forgot to cross your fingers. Now you’ll be punished for telling a lie. One of these nights, you’ll have to go to the dunny after it’s dark. You’ll hear a morepork hoot and try to get out, but Long John Silver will hook the door closed while the Morepork Gang set fire to it. There’s just one way you might save your life before you’re burned to death.”

  “What?”

  “Jump down the hole.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  What I Heard Coming Down the Path in the Dark, Why Mr Bluenose Ran Away From Home, and Why It All Seemed Ages Ago.

  THAT NIGHT, I was afraid Mrs Jones would come along and complain to Dad. Then I was busy playing with Milly and trying on Aggie’s new dress. The gathers worked so it fitted her nicely in front.

  “Bedtime,” Dad said.

  “I need to go to the lav.”

  I didn’t light the candle, but sat with the door open, counting the stars as they came out. For ages, there was just one, then two, and three, and then so many I lost count. That was when I heard: Thump! Thump!—Long John Silver’s wooden leg coming down the path.

  “Dad!”

  “I’ve told you never to run in the dark,” Dad picked me up, carried me inside, and rubbed my knee. “I think you’ll recover, but the wheelbarrow will never be the same again.”

  “I heard a morepork.”

  “He’d have got a bigger fright than you,” Dad laughed, and I snuffled and cried and laughed, too.

  I did my practice and went over for piano lessons with Laura, and afternoon tea with Mrs Hoe. The kitchen turned friendly again, and Billy the marmalade cat sat on the gate post and waited for me to walk across from the stile.

  I ran down to the orchard once, and Mr Bluenose was rolling some pumpkins into the tunnel under the macrocarpas.

  “They have been sitting in the sun,” he said “hardening their skins. That makes them keep better, and I think of the bright orange soup they will make on grey winter days.”

  I told Mr Bluenose about school: how Colleen Porter’s limp was almost better, and about skipping, and how Maisie said we’d start basketball next week; and how the boys were playing marbles under the chestnut trees, and swapping cigarette cards.

  “The chestnuts are getting bigger. Mr Strap says they’ll be ripe before long, and he says just let him catch anyone knocking them down with their shanghais. ‘I’ll give you shanghais…’ he told the boys, and he stared hard at the drawer where he keeps his strap.

  “Freddy Jones is still scared to use his own dunny,” I told Mr Bluenose.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the Morepork Gang are going to lock him inside and burn it down. That’s why he saves it up till he gets to school and runs down and uses the boys’.”

  “The Morepork Gang?”

  “A robber-band of swaggers. Led by Long John Silver. Have you read Treasure Island, Mr Bluenose?”

  “I read it on my first ship. When I was a boy, I ran away to sea.”

  “You told me.”

  “I did not tell you why.”

  “You can tell me now.”

  “It is an embarrassing story.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I blew up my father’s letterbox.” Mr Bluenose looked so serious, I tried not to laugh.

  “How did you blow it up?”

  “Another boy showed me how to make gunpowder, and we put it in a tin with a long fuse sticking out.”

  “What’s a fuse?”

  “Like the wick you light on crackers. The spark runs along it and sets off the gunpowder. We put it in the letterbox, lit the fuse and went for our lives. Boom! It blew the letterbox to bits, and some letters inside caught fire and burned.

  “My father said we might have blown up the postman. He gave me such a hiding, I never wanted to see gunpowder again.”

  Mr Bluenose emptied a kerosene tin filled with weeds into the wheelbarrow.

  “Everyone in our little village laughed at me.”

  “Did people tease you?”

  “They went on and on, so I ran away to sea as a ship’s boy, and never went home again.”

  “That’s a terrible story, Mr Bluenose. Nobody remembers I burnt down our dunny now, not even Freddy Jones.”

  Mr Bluenose tipped the wheelbarrow on to a compost heap and stood it against the wall of his sorting shed.

  “When you ran away, Mr Bluenose, did you write to your father and mother?”

  “From every port around the world, I wrote so they would know where I was and that I missed them.”

  �
�What happened to the other boy, the one who made the gunpowder?”

  “When my ship got to Hong Kong, there was a letter waiting from my mother. She said that boy had blown himself up, playing with gunpowder. They had to pick up the pieces and put them together before they could bury him.”

  “Did your mother and father love you?”

  “Very much,” said Mr Bluenose.

  “Did you ever see them again?”

  Mr Bluenose shook his head and stood the kerosene tin upside down.

  “I wanted them to come and live here on the orchard in Waharoa with me, but they were too old.”

  I looked at Mr Bluenose’s red face, the lines on it, at his blue eyes, at the cracks in his hands that he got from fishing as a boy, and I thought of how old his mother and father must have been.

  “I’m glad I didn’t run away to sea, after I burnt down our dunny. Dad would miss me.”

  “And Milly and Aggie would miss you as well. And you would not have learned to play the piano, nor how to use your mother’s sewing machine.”

  “It seems ages ago, Mr Bluenose, the day we made the hay. And the time the stack caught fire, and Mr Rust died. Why do people have to die?”

  “Even the year grows old and dies, Maggie. It is autumn now, the fruit trees are losing their leaves, and the reliable Bagheera is catching the rats that try to sneak inside, out of the cold.”

  “Dad says Milly’s a reliable cat. He can rely on finding her asleep on the foot of my bed, and he can rely on her waking up in time for her tucker, but he can’t rely on her for anything else. He reckons he’s going to borrow her for the foot of his bed, when the frosts start, but I said that’s not fair.

  “Mr Bluenose, when I walk across the paddock for my piano lesson, where Clop and I wore out the grass and made a deep track, there’s no sign of it.

  “Isn’t it funny, Mr Bluenose? Sometimes it seems it was only last week, the day we made the hay. Then I think how our track’s disappeared, and how grey the haystack looks now, and it all seems ages ago.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Why the Three of Us Had to Think of Sucking Sour Lemons.

  THAT NIGHT, I TOLD DAD why Mr Bluenose ran away from home. “I didn’t run away after I burnt down our dunny.”

  “Better not run away without telling me first,” said Dad. “Most people just laughed and forgot about it.”

  “Everyone but Freddy Jones and Mrs Dainty. Dad?”

  “What?”

  “Dad, are you going to die? Like Mummy did?”

  “No. What made you think of that?”

  “Just something. That boy in Mummy’s old book, his mother and father both died. Right at the beginning it said they were dead, and all his little brothers with their hands in their pockets. Are you going to read us some more?”

  Dad read some more of Mummy’s old book about the boy who didn’t have his heart and liver torn out and roasted and eaten after all. Milly yawned, curled up her tongue, closed her eyes, and pretended not to listen. Aggie smiled at me with her blue forget-me-not eyes and listened, too.

  I woke in the morning and they were both looking at me. “You’d better not run away,” I told them. “Not without telling me first.

  “Mrs Hoe’s going to show me how to turn a heel this morning. And Laura’s showing me how to make a rhubarb crumble, and I’m going to make one for Dad, and you can both have some. I like Mrs Hoe and Laura.

  “Laura says she’s never seen anyone pick up the piano so fast, and she’s going to teach me how to play ‘Chopsticks’ using both hands, and she’ll soon be coming to me to show her how to use the machine. She and Des don’t want a long engagement, but Mr Hoe’s still not too happy about Des being an R.C., not really. Are you listening? Or am I just talking to thin air?”

  Milly didn’t answer, but Aggie smiled to show she was listening to every word.

  “You and me,” I told her, “we haven’t got time to run away. There just aren’t enough hours in the day; that’s what Mrs Harsant always says, but Mrs Hoe says there’s time for everything, if you work at it.”

  The blind jerked out of my hand and, instead of rolling neat and tight, flew around and around—“Hullabaloo! Hullabaloo!”—and flopped dead across the top of the window.

  The chooks heard it and started squawking for their breakfast. The two lemons in the middle of the tree outside were as big as pale yellow footballs.

  Somebody moaned in Dad’s room. “Hurgle?”

  Milly and Aggie looked at me. I laid my finger on my lips, and the three of us giggled until we turned red in the face and had to think of sucking sour lemons, or burst out laughing.

  Glossary

  Art Union A lottery that was replaced by the Golden Kiwi, then by Lotto.

  Auckland Weekly News A red-covered photo-illustrated magazine, published 1863—1971; much used for wallpaper.

  benzine Petrol.

  biddy An unpleasant woman.

  blinkers Little screens on a bridle to stop the horse seeing anything to the side.

  bloomers Large, loose knickers gathered with elastic.

  blue To rinse clothes blue; to waste something.

  bob A shilling in the old money.

  boiled lolly A hard sweet of boiled sugar.

  bonzer First-rate, excellent.

  bowser A petrol pump.

  bottled fruit Jars of fruit preserved for winter.

  butterfat The fatty part of milk.

  casting off Taking finished knitting off the needles and binding it so it doesn’t come undone.

  chook A grown chicken.

  “Chopsticks” A tune you can play with only two fingers on the piano.

  Christmas Carol, A The wonderful Christmas story by Charles Dickens. Read it! Whatever you do, don’t watch the DVD, or your brains will leak out of your ears.

  cigarette cards Illustrated cards that came in cigarette packets.

  clucky What you call a broody hen that clucks and wants to hatch eggs.

  cockies Farmers.

  collar The harness that takes the load off the horse’s neck and windpipe and puts it on the shoulders.

  comb The fleshy red crest on a chook’s head.

  cookers Cooking apples such as Granny Smith.

  copper A big copper pot used for boiling laundry before washing machines became common.

  County, the The Matamata County Council.

  crow The worker on a haystack who forks hay out to the builder and gets all the straw and seeds down his neck.

  cut-down Model A An old Ford car cut down to make a light truck.

  damper An air control on a stove.

  Depression, the The 1930s when many people did not have jobs or money.

  dib in To put money in together to buy something.

  Dominion The Colony of New Zealand became the Dominion of New Zealand in 1907.

  Donegal A grey Irish tweed with bright flecks.

  dory, dories A small, strong fishing dinghy.

  double To give a lift on the bar of a bike

  dray A heavy horse cart.

  dub To double somebody on the bar of a bike.

  eiderdown A bed covering stuffed with feathers.

  feeding out Giving cows hay in winter.

  fibber A liar who tells fibs.

  French knitting Knitting over four nails in a cotton reel to make a rat’s tail, which was then made into tea cosies and little mats.

  galore Lots.

  Golden Delicious A gold-green eating apple.

  Goosman, Stan 1890-1969 Contractor, carrier, owner of a fleet of milk lorries. He became a member of parliament, Minister of Railways and Public Works, and was knighted.

  Granny Smith A green-skinned cooking apple.

  gurt Great, in Yorkshire dialect.

  ha’penny An old copper coin worth half a penny.

  half-crown An old silver coin worth two shillings and sixpence.

  halter Headgear used for leading a horse.

  hard stuff Whisky or o
ther spirits.

  health camps Dr Elizabeth Gunn opened the first camp in 1919. They grew in the 1930s Depression, with more children needing good food, rest, and open-air holidays.

  Home What many New Zealanders still called Britain in the 1930s.

  horseman The British term for the ploughman or carter who worked with horses.

  infantile, infantile paralysis Polio or poliomyelitis, a crippling and sometimes fatal disease.

  Kaiser The German king or emperor.

  kerosene tin A four-gallon (eighteen-litre) tin, used for buckets and containers. Flattened for roofing and walls.

  Kingsford Smith First to fly the Tasman from Australia to New Zealand, 1928.

  kissing bread The tasty, flaky bread where a double loaf is broken in two.

  lav, lavvy, lavatory Toilet.

  lawn Fine cotton material.

  lawsoniana A common hedge tree on farms.

  Long John Silver A wicked, one-legged pirate in Robert Louis Stevenson’s exciting book Treasure Island.

  lugs Ears.

  mash A mixture of pollard, kitchen scraps, and hot water for feeding chooks in winter.

  metalling Putting metal (crushed stone) on the road.

  Micky Doolan A Catholic, usually Irish.

  minx A cheeky girl.

  morepork New Zealand owl, ruru. Both words, morepork and ruru, are like the sound of its call.

  O. B. rimu “Ordinary builder’s” timber from the less valuable outer wood of the tree.

  Old Country, the Like “Home”, a term for England or Britain.

  on tick Putting something on the bill, to be paid some time.

  peggy squares Knitted or crocheted blanket squares first made popular by Peggy Huse, a little girl at Haywards, Hutt Valley, Wellington, 1930.

  penny An old coin. Twelve made a shilling.

  pig-fern Bracken fern.

  pikau A cheap backpack made out of a sugarbag, popular in the 1930s Depression.

  pirau Rotten.

  plum-duff A rich boiled flour and suet pudding with dried fruit.

  pollard A coarse wheat bran fed to chooks.

  poorman’s orange Grapefruit.

  pound A banknote worth twenty shillings in the old money.

  primers The Year One and Two classes at school.