Old Drumble

by Jack Lasenby

  But Jack’s nod wasn’t the sort of nod Mr Kennedy had given him. When his father and Mr Kennedy and all the other men nodded, the top of their heads went one way, and their chins swung the other way. Sometimes, just as they finished the nod, they winked one eye, and sometimes they screwed up the corner of their mouths and made a click. Andy the Drover did it all the time.

  Jack had practised it in the bathroom mirror, but he couldn’t seem to get it right. When he did the nod, he forgot to close one eye, or his head went up and down instead of sideways. He went out to the wash-house now, stood on a box so he could look in the mirror over the hand basin, and nodded at himself. His eye didn’t close, and his chin didn’t seem to swing to one side, not the way Andy’s did. And he couldn’t get the click right. It didn’t sound like “Click!,” it didn’t come at the right time, and he thought he looked silly, so he poked out his tongue, tried to say, “Unga-Yunga!” to it, and bit it.

  He tried several more times and was just thinking he’d got it right, nodding his head, winking one eye, and clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, when his mother’s voice said, “What on earth are you up to now? Shaking your head, blinking into the mirror, and making that noise. Get off that box at once, and find yourself something useful to do.

  “Anyway, what are you doing inside, getting under my feet and upsetting my house? Why aren’t you outside, running around and making the most of it while the rain’s stopped?”

  Jack didn’t remind his mother that she’d ordered him to keep inside out of the puddles and mud. He shot out the door before she changed her mind again, galloped through the water that was left, and made channels in the mud with his heel so one puddle could run into the next along the side of the road and help him make up his mind which end of Ward Street was up and which was down. Away down the other end of Ward Street, Harry Jitters was doing the same thing, but it was too far for Jack to see whether he was still holding his head well back.

  Jack found he could get the water to run from one puddle into another, all right, but sometimes it emptied out of a puddle towards his end of Ward Street, and sometimes it emptied towards the other end. He was still trying to work out which was the top and which was the bottom when he heard the voice he’d been waiting for.

  “You’ll catch it from your mother, splashing around in the mud, getting your clothes wet. Here, jump up and I’ll give you a dub home.”

  Jack put one foot on top of his father’s boot on the pedal, climbed on the bar, rang the bell, and asked, “Dad, which is the top end of Ward Street?”

  His father whistled. “Now that’s an interesting question!” Jack thought of what his mother had said and grinned over the handlebars at the front mudguard. “We call this the top end, because we live up here,” said his father. “Down where Harry Jitters lives, that’s the other end to us, so we call it the bottom end.”

  “But Harry reckons his is the top end and ours is the bottom end.”

  “That’s how it looks to him,” said Jack’s father. “But from up our end, he’s down the bottom end. We go down to his end, but he comes up to our end.

  “When I think of it,” he told Jack, “I have to pedal to get up to our end, from down Harry’s end. But I have to pedal to get down his end from up our end as well. You realise what that means?”

  “Does it mean that Ward Street goes down in the middle?”

  “Maybe.” Jack felt his father shake his head as he pedalled in their gate, around the back of the house, and said, “I suppose you realise it could mean that Ward Street’s flat.”

  Chapter Six

  Why They Dug the Drains With a Fall in Them,

  Why You Don’t Want to Think About

  Making a Click When You Nod, and

  How Jack Knew His Mother

  Was Having Him On.

  JACK WASN’T SURE that he wanted Ward Street to be flat. He rang the bell again and said, “I thought if the puddles ran away down the street to Harry’s end, that would make our end the top end.”

  “And did they?”

  “They just ran into each other and soaked away.” With his big toe, Jack felt for his father’s boot, curved his foot to fit it, and slipped off the bar.

  “We’re on pretty free-draining soil, you know. And there’s the big drains all round Waharoa for the water to soak into. This district was all swamp in the old days, so they dug the drains and dried it out to turn it into farms, but the water still runs in the drains okay, because they were dug with a fall in them.” His father leaned his bike against the shed.

  “What’s a fall?”

  “They dug the drains deeper at one end than the other, with a fall, a slope, so the water runs along them. They all run into the creek that comes down through the Domain and winds through Mr Weeks’s bush and Mr Hawe’s, then out through Wardville and into the Waihou River downstream of the Gordon bridge.”

  “Has the Waihou got a fall in it?”

  “That’s why it runs downstream. And up near Okoroire, it’s got waterfalls in it as well!”

  Jack tried to follow the drains and creeks in his mind. It was like making a map inside his head, he thought. At the same time, he tried to think about falling all the way from Ward Street into the Waihou River, until he felt dizzy.

  “Has that boy been playing in the puddles again? Just look at the state of him! He’s had one change already this afternoon. Oh, what’s the use of trying to keep him presentable when he goes straight out and gets covered in mud again?”

  “It’s my fault, dear,” said Mr Jackman. “I rode through a puddle, and the mud and water shot up all over him. Still he saved me getting it all over my trousers.” He nodded at Jack, that peculiar shake of his head. The top of his head went one way, his chin went the other, one eye winked, his mouth screwed up and the corner of his mouth went “Click!”

  Jack tried to do it back, but his wink went wrong, both eyes closed, and he didn’t get a click.

  His father looked solemn. “People see things differently,” he told Jack. “From Harry’s place, we look down the bottom end, and from our place, he looks down the bottom end. It depends where you’re looking from.”

  “I thought I made it perfectly clear,” Jack’s mum told them both. “Ours is the top end of Ward Street. Now wash your hands and get yourselves ready for your tea, the pair of you.”

  “People see things differently,” Jack said to himself as he washed the mud off his legs and feet under the outside tap. He was nodding to himself and winking one eye when his mother called, “Will you stop wasting that water? The rain just filled the tanks, but they’ll be half empty by the time you’ve finished. Your tea’s on the table, and your father’s waiting to start his. Now come inside at once, or everything’ll be cold. I don’t know, what’s the point of going to all that trouble, heating the plates, when nobody can be bothered getting to the table on time?”

  “Dad?” said Jack, feeling the backs of his legs wet against the chair. “You know when you nod, how the top of your head sort of goes this way, and your chin goes that way, and you wink, and you screw up that corner of your mouth, and you make a click?”

  His father took a forkful of mashed potato, looked at Jack, and nodded straight up and down.

  “Well, do you make the click with the corner of your mouth, or do you make it with your tongue?”

  Jack’s dad nodded so the left top of his head went one way, his chin went the other, his left eye winked, and the right side of his mouth screwed up and went “Click!”

  “I think I clicked with the corner of my mouth,” he said. “Hold on, I’ll just swallow this mouthful of mashed potato and try it again.” He tried, but no click came this time. “It’s not the sort of thing you want to think about doing.”

  Jack stared.

  “Think about it and it doesn’t work.”

  “I had trouble, too!” Jack said. “I can’t get my eye to wink, and the click won’t come. I tried it with my tongue and with the corner of my mouth,
but it didn’t work either way.”

  “I’ll try nodding it to the other side,” said his father. He laid down his knife and fork and nodded the top of his head to the right and his chin to the left, and the left corner of his mouth screwed up and a click came out of it. A good one. “I don’t think I used my tongue at all,” he said. “Besides, there wasn’t any mashed potato to get in the way.”

  Jack tried to copy him. They tried nodding this way, and they tried nodding that way; and they both had trouble remembering to wink their eyes and make the clicks because they were thinking about it. Jack’s dad was better at it, but even he got mixed up sometimes, and Jack didn’t seem able to get the wink right at all. Not if he clicked. And he couldn’t get the click going if he winked.

  They were clicking and winking and nodding when Jack’s mum turned from the stove.

  “I thought so!” she said. “Pulling faces and winking at each other behind my back. That’s all the gratitude I get for spending the afternoon bent over a hot stove getting tea ready for the pair of you. All you can think to do is to make a mockery of me!” She slammed her plate down on the table, slumped into her chair, threw her apron over her head, and burst into tears.

  “Mum!” Jack shouted as he leapt up. “We weren’t making a mockery out of you! Honest!” But he sat down again when he saw his mother grinning under her apron. She was having him on.

  “Now get on with your tea, and we’ll have no more of this clicking and winking and nodding. As for you, you’d think a grown man would know better than to go teaching the boy a lot of silly nonsense when he should be eating his tea.” Without stopping for breath, his mother said, “Next time Andy the Drover comes through, why don’t you ask him to teach you how to nod and wink and click the corner of your mouth? He’s better at such things than your father. He’s been doing it twice as long.

  “Now, hurry up and finish your greens, I’ve got a nice golden syrup pudding for you. And after that I’ll make your father a cup of tea and you can give me a hand to get the dishes done, and then it’ll be time for you to get to bed. I wonder when Andy will be along? He promised to drop in a cutting off Mrs Charlie Ryan’s camellia, her white one.”

  “If Andy comes,” Jack said, “can I help him drive the sheep?”

  “Drive the sheep?”

  “Oh!” Jack whined with his voice going up. He thought of finishing with a click, but stopped just in time.

  “What will the boy be asking next?”

  “Just down the other end of Ward Street?”

  “We’ll see,” said Jack’s mother. “Mind you, I’m not promising anything.”

  Chapter Seven

  Why Jack Watched to See Andy

  Take Off His Hat, Just As Far As the

  Bottom of the Street and Not a Step Further,

  and What Reminded Jack of the

  Governor-General’s Plumed Hat.

  ANDY THE DROVER turned up on Tuesday morning, his mob of sheep left over the other side of the hall corner, where there was never any traffic and they had a bit of grass.

  “Where’s Old Drumble?” asked Jack.

  “Holding them.” Andy nodded back past the hall, and Jack saw Old Drumble standing, daring the sheep to move a foot nearer the corner. “Old Nell and Young Nugget, they’re back the other end of the mob,” said Andy.

  He was taking his reins, passing the bight through the fence wires, up and over the top of a post. Nosy, his old horse, was smart at opening gates. She’d never worked out how to get her reins off the fence yet, but set about it now, as Andy reached inside the split sack—what he called a pikau—over Nosy’s back, behind the saddle.

  “What would Nosy do if she got her reins undone?” Jack asked.

  “Mooch along the fence and munch the heads off your mother’s flowers. She wouldn’t like that—I mean your mother—I’d never hear the end of it. Or she might wander back and have a word with Old Drumble. She wouldn’t go far,” said Andy. “Those two stick together. They like each other’s company.” He pulled out a carefully packed sugarbag from inside the pikau.

  Andy’s voice was dry and creaky, from walking and riding in the dust behind a thousand mobs of sheep and cattle. His face was dry and creaky, too, with grooves worn by the wind and the rain, the sun, the frosts, the hot days and the cold days, springs and autumns, winters and summers through which he’d driven stock up and down, across and around the North Island.

  He slept on the ground, in a tent, in huts, under trees, in haystacks, in scrub, under bridges, in barns and sheds, in long grass, in short grass, on stones, on rocks, on logs, on sand, on thistles, on branches, on piles of leaves. “You name it, Jack, and I reckon I’ve slept on it,” Andy always said, and he walked with a slight crouch, as if his back hurt.

  Andy had a white scar on one arm where a scared horse had bitten him. He had a healed red tear in the right corner of his mouth where a cattle beast had caught its horn and ripped open his cheek. One of his fingers was bent where he had cut a tendon while dog-tuckering a sheep. His face and hands and arms and legs were a tangle of lines, grooves, and scars, each with its story.

  He wore a broad-brimmed hat against the rain and the sun. He wore a long oilskin coat in the wet, and rolled it in front of his saddle in the dry. Both his hat and his oilskins were dusty, lined, and grooved like his face and hands, and they were dry and creaky, too.

  He wore an old suit jacket that had once been black, but now was the colour of the roads he’d walked and ridden. Under his jacket he wore a waistcoat with umpteen pockets. It was the colour of the roads, like his saddle-tweed trousers and his hobnailed boots, which he called his Bill Masseys. They looked dry and creaked today because the road was dusty.

  Jack liked the look of Andy’s face, his hands and arms, his clothes, and his boots. He liked the dry, creaky sound of his voice. He liked his stories. Most of all, he liked Andy’s rich smell: the smell of cows and sheep and horses and dogs, smoke and dust, the smell of the drover, the smell of the road. It made Jack think of places he hadn’t seen, of places he wanted to see, places he didn’t even know about. When Andy mentioned the names of roads and rivers and districts far away from Waharoa, Jack listened and thought the words were like music, rare and strange.

  “Some day, I’m going to see all those places you talk about,” he’d say to Andy the Drover.

  “You’ll have a cup of tea?” Jack’s mother called from the door. “Don’t worry about your boots.” She’d filled the teapot and flung down a row of sacks so Andy could tramp inside and sit at the table without his hobnails taking the polish off the lino.

  Jack waited to see Andy take off his hat. His grooved and lined face was as brown as the back of his hands but, when he took off his old, dry, creaky hat, his skull from above his eyes to the back of his head was a startling colour, muddy white like a boiled suet pudding. Andy put his hat on the floor under his chair, winked at Jack’s stare, asked after his father, emptied a cup of tea, and opened the sugarbag.

  As Jack’s mother refilled his cup, Andy said, “There’s the last of Mrs Jenkins’s asparagus, and she won’t be at Institute this coming Wednesday because she’s going over to Cambridge with her sister, Biddy, to see their cousin, Ethel, the one who’s moving down Gisborne way to be near her parents. They must be getting on a bit.”

  “Going all that way!” said Jack’s mother. “It might as well be the other side of the world, for all Mrs Jenkins will see of her now.”

  “It’s where she grew up. There’s a few chops to keep you going,” said Andy, dumping a brown paper parcel on the table, “and there’s the comfrey root Mrs Burns said she’d let you have. ‘Keep it watered,’ she said, ‘it’ll take off, no trouble, and it doesn’t mind a bit of shade.’ She says just to scrape a bit of the root when you want a poultice; use the brown outside as well as the lighter-coloured inside. You can put it on hot or cold. Nothing to touch it for drawing a boil or a stone-bruise, so she reckons.

  “Oh, I nearly forgot, there�
��s a setting of eggs in that tin—Mrs McKenzie said you’ve got a clucky chook. They’re Rhode Island Reds, good layers and sensible chooks to have around. They lay a nice brown egg.

  “And here,” Andy said, “that camellia cutting Mrs Ryan’s been promising you for ages.” He took a clay pot from the bottom of the sugarbag.

  “That’s not a cutting—she’s struck it for me! Oh, I must let her have the jasmine she’s been wanting.” Jack’s mother nodded. “I’ll give you a loaf of bread, if you wouldn’t mind dropping it in to Mrs Kennedy. You’ll be passing her place. And there’s a jar of marmalade for yourself, and one for Mrs Feak. You can take a tin of ginger-nuts when you go, and I wonder if you’ve got room for a cake for old Mrs Gray? She does like a bit of fruit cake, and she’s not up to making them for herself these days. Her poor old hands, it’s the rheumatism, you know.”

  Andy nodded and drank his tea. He and Mum talked about how Mr Gaunt’s front paddock was closed up for hay, and how it had come on since that rain last week, how Arnolds’ big macrocarpa hedge up the Matamata road was needing clipping or it’d get out of hand, and how Eileen MacLean was coming back to take a job teaching at Hinuera School. Jack listened as the messages and gossip went to and fro.

  Then Andy was on his feet, fishing up his hat from under his chair, hiding his astonishing skull, carefully stowing the reloaded sugarbag in Nosy’s pikau, flipping his reins off the fence, whistling and waving to Old Drumble, Old Nell, and Young Nugget. Jack heard some barking and, Old Drumble leading, the sheep came pouring across the Turangaomoana Road and along Ward Street.

  “Can I give Andy and Old Drumble a hand, Mum?” Jack asked. “Just as far as the other end of the street? You promised, Mum!”

  “I never promised a thing!” Jack’s mother looked at his face. “Oh, I suppose so. But just as far as the bottom of the street,” she said, “and not a step further. You make sure you stop there, and come home at once.”