Old Drumble

by Jack Lasenby

  “Indeed!”

  Encouraged, Jack looked up, saw his mother was staring at him, and plunged on. “And he smoked his head off, Havelock Dark plug tobacco rolled in raupo leaves. A smoke with every beer, and a beer in every pub.

  “Andy says that’s the worst thing you can do to a dog’s bark, encourage him to take up smoking. Jeez! I wish I’d been there, with Old Drumble, doing his pub crawl…” Jack’s voice tailed off, as he felt his mother’s eye glitter cold.

  “What—did—you—say—John—Jackman?” Her voice was slow, each word separate from the next. “Taking the Lord’s name in vain! Are my ears deceiving me? Did I hear you aright, that you’ve taken up drinking and smoking?”

  “I was just telling you what Old Drumble did,” Jack squeaked.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Rolling Home Blaspheming, Swearing,

  and Reeking of Beer and Tobacco,

  Why Jack Glanced at the Kitchen Window,

  and Why His Mother Shook Her Apron

  and Laughed Helplessly.

  “THE IDEA! I let you and your father out of my sight for a few minutes and, in no time, the pair of you are rolling home blaspheming, swearing, and reeking of beer and tobacco!

  “Next thing, he’ll be taking you over to the billiard saloon, and teaching you to gamble with the bookie. What’s the world coming to, I’d like to know?”

  “It wasn’t Dad’s fault, Mum! It was Old Drumble who went on a pub crawl through the Thames.”

  “That’s right: blame it on an innocent dog. I think you’d better get out and mow the back lawn. And don’t you dare go thinking for a moment that you’re a dog who frequents billiard saloons, and swears, and drinks beer, and smokes tobacco!”

  “But, Mum—”

  “No buts! If I hear so much as a single bark, you’ll be in trouble. Copper Maoris, pub crawls, chewing tobacco. I suppose I should be grateful they haven’t taught you to spit!

  “And parting the river to get the sheep across…What sort of pagan rubbish is that old Andy going to come up with next?” demanded Mrs Jackman. “The idea of it!”

  “But—” Jack tried to say.

  “I thought I said ‘No buts’? Standing there with your mouth wide open, gawping at me like a ninny. I suppose you’re waiting for me to cut the grass for you? Hang up that tea towel properly, and get out there and start mowing that lawn, at once. And, if you know what’s good for you, Jack Jackman, you won’t even dare think of going near any of those dirty hotels! Thank heavens we live in a dry district.”

  The grass was long, the lawn mower a heavy pig of a thing to push. What made it even harder was that his mother came to the back door and called, “What’s the use of mowing the lawn if you don’t use the catcher?

  “I don’t want grass clippings tracked in all over my lino. You put the catcher on at once, and you can rake the bit you’ve already cut. Get the wheelbarrow, and make sure you put the clippings on your father’s compost—and don’t you dare bark at me, Jack Jackman!”

  “I wasn’t barking, Mum. True—”

  “I wouldn’t even think of it,” his mother warned. “Not if you value your life…”

  Jack raked up the grass, put it in the wheelbarrow, and tried to run it up a plank and tip it on top of the compost heap.

  It always looked good fun, when Dad did it, but Jack’s legs and arms weren’t long enough, so he tried running up the plank behind the wheelbarrow himself. The iron wheel slipped, the plank tipped sideways, and Jack fell off the compost heap. First, the clippings came down on top of him, then the heavy wooden wheelbarrow, then the plank.

  He got to his feet, spitting grass. “Pig!” he told the plank and propped it back in place. “Pig!” he told the wheelbarrow, and stood it up the right way. “Pig!” he told the clippings, as he raked them up and threw them on the compost heap. “Pig-swine!” he hissed at them all: the compost heap, the plank, the wheelbarrow, and the clippings.

  He hooked the wire eyes of the catcher over the lugs on the lawn mower, took up the handle and shoved. The catcher soon filled with grass, the mower was twice as heavy to push, then it stopped because of a cabbage tree leaf that got itself wound around the axle.

  “Pig-shit!” Jack told it, then felt all hot, and glanced at the kitchen window. Had the curtain moved? With her strong eye and ears, his mother could tell what he was thinking through the door; she’d have no trouble hearing him swear through the glass. And, just at that moment, Harry Jitters came swaggering, whistling, waving his arms, and driving an imaginary mob of sheep up Ward Street.

  Jack growled deep in his chest as Harry put his mob across the Turangaomoana Road—without even looking out for traffic. Clumsily, he drove them past the hall on to the grass, left them grazing under the eyes of his invisible dogs, and turned to walk back. Jack’s heart dropped as he realised that Harry was coming to stare and sneer, to chiack him like Andy’s yahoo at the Pipiroa ferry. For a moment, black despair filled his heart, then an idea came into his head.

  Jack dropped the lawn mower handle, stood back, and looked at the strip he’d just mown. He put his head on one side, pursed his lips, knelt down, and brushed his hand over the cut grass. He stood up, emptied the catcher, pushed the mower the length of the lawn, and went through the same act. It felt a bit silly, kneeling, brushing the grass, putting his head on one side, but he cut another strip, knelt, and put his head on one side a third time. When he stood up, he backed over towards the fence, looked at the cut lawn, and whistled in admiration at his own work. “Whew!”

  “We know what you’re up to, Jack Jackman,” said a loud voice behind him.

  “Where’d you spring from?” Jack didn’t wait for a reply, but crouched and studied the lawn again.

  “Haw! Haw! Haw!” Harry Jitters mocked. Jack ignored him.

  “We know what ya game is, Jack Jackman.”

  “Yeah?” Jack tried to sound nonchalant.

  “Yeah! Tryin’ to make it look like fun, mowin’ your lawn. An’ we know where you pinched the idea from, too.”

  “What idea?”

  “That idea. The one outta that book Mr Strap read to us.”

  “What book?”

  “The one about Tom Sawyer whitewashin’ his aunt’s fence. That’s where ya pinched the idea from.”

  “I did not!”

  “Haw! Haw! Haw! You don’t fool me, Jack Jackman. It’s hard work, pushin’ that heavy old mower of yours, specially with the catcher. And you’re not going to get me doin’ any mowin’, not even if you give me a bag of marbles, and an old rat and a string to swing it with. So there!”

  Jack ignored Harry, pushed the mower another length of the lawn, took off the catcher, and carried it across to dump the clippings on the compost heap. It was unfortunate that—just as Jack heaved up the catcher—Harry barked. Jack’s hands did something wrong, the catcher tipped too soon, and half the clippings went on the ground.

  The kitchen window popped open. “You pick up those clippings and put them on the compost heap at once,” said the voice of doom. Harry Jitters heard it, and kept still and silent.

  Jack picked up the clippings, and looked at how much still remained to be mown. He’d be there all day. “It’s not fair,” he said aloud. Harry Jitters heard it and couldn’t help himself. He stuck his head right through the fence, shoving hard to get his ears between the wires, and barked again but, this time, it was Harry’s rowdiest huntaway bark, loud and insistent—“Wow! Wow! Wow!”—his head jerked up and down. “Wow! Wow! Wow!”

  “I’ll teach you to come barking around my house!” Mrs Jackman burst out the front door, charged down the steps, flung open the gate, and nearly caught Harry, whose head was stuck between the wires. He jerked it free and ran, yelling with fright and pain, the backs of his ears scratched—“Ow! Ow! Ow!”—back down to his own end of Ward Street. Jack’s mother stood, shaking her apron after him, laughing helplessly.

  “Who said you could stop work?” she asked Jack, who’d run out
and stood beside her, barking after Harry. “A drunkard in the family. Smoking tobacco, blaspheming, swearing—and gambling, too, I’ve no doubt. You get on with your lawn.”

  But there was no anger in her voice, and she’d laughed at Harry. Jack just had to tell her the rest of the story.

  “And, Mum,” he said, “coming back, they were driving a mob of steers up to the sales in Auckland, and the Piako was in flood at Pipiroa, and Old Drumble blindfolded the steers and made them walk a tightrope across the river, holding their tails in each other’s mouths. And he had to blindfold Andy and stick the end of his tail in his mouth to get him across, too. And he got the steers up to Auckland in time to get the top price.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” said his mother. “Now, if you’re not cutting that grass by the time I’ve counted to ten, I’ll stick your tail in your mouth and give you the end of a rope around your legs, my boy. One, two, three…”

  Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! Jack shoved the lawn mower hard at a patch of rye grass that just bent and wouldn’t cut properly. He guessed now wasn’t the best time to ask his mother if he could help drive the next mob out on the Wardville road.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Why Harry Jitters Stopped and

  Barked from the Corner, Why Mrs Dainty

  Suddenly Felt Much Better, and How Mr Strap

  Said the Maoris Got Here from Hawaiki.

  LITTLE BY LITTLE, the continent of long grass shrunk to an island and, as it grew smaller, it took longer to cut, because Jack had forgotten what he was supposed to be doing.

  He’d begun by pushing the mower fast, but that was too hard, and it didn’t cut well. So he tried pushing it slow, but that didn’t cut well either. Specially not the rye grass, which just bent over whether he was pushing the mower fast or slow.

  Jack looked at the kitchen window and whispered, “Bloody old rye grass!” Slower and slower he pushed. Slower still. And still slower.

  If it was too far for Dad to pick him up on the bike, from out Griffiths’ corner, maybe he could get a lift back to Waharoa with one of the carriers, he thought to himself.

  After picking up the cream in the morning, the carriers spent the rest of the day carting bags of manure, rolls of barbed wire, and timber between the railway station and the farms. Andy would get one of them to give him a lift home.

  As Jack thought of that, the mower blades slowed till they stopped. He leaned against the handle as if still pushing, but his feet stopped moving, and he looked at the remaining long grass. There seemed to be more of it than ever. It wasn’t fair.

  “Looking at it won’t cut so much as a single blade of grass!” He leapt in the air. “You can just mow all that side again!” said his mother’s voice. “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Put some elbow grease into it!”

  “Mum?” Jack begged.

  “What do you want now?”

  “Mum, when you were a little girl, did your mother make you mow the lawns?”

  “When I was a little girl, we didn’t have a mower, so I had to learn to use a scythe. Children had it hard in those days. Don’t think you can go asking me questions and use that as an excuse to stop mowing. Get on with it, or the grass is going to need cutting again before you’ve finished.”

  Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! Jack had already found that pushing the mower fast meant it didn’t cut the rye grass. You had to push it just right, not too fast, not too slow and, even then, you were lucky if it cut properly. Jack’s gloom deepened.

  Harry Jitters sneaked back along Ward Street, grinning nervously, and hid in the bamboo patch. He was wondering if he dared tear past Jack’s place, barking as he ran. If he really went for it, he should be around the corner and out of sight before Jack’s mum came after him.

  Harry felt the scratches on the backs of his ears and thought of how she’d nearly caught him yelling and trying to get his head out of the fence. Mrs Jackman could move! It might be safer just to give a bark from behind the bamboos.

  Harry put up his head, barked once, thought he heard Mrs Jackman coming, and skedaddled whimpering, but at Whites’ corner, he saw Minnie Mitchell watching him from outside her gate. He looked over his shoulder, pulled up, turned himself into a huntaway, and gave a fair volley, “Wow! Wow! Wow!” towards the bottom end of Ward Street.

  Even if it was too far for Mrs Jackman to hear, it sounded pretty good; besides, when Minnie saw the blood on the backs of his ears, she’d know how brave he was.

  At the other end of Ward Street, Jack emptied the catcher for the last time, and sniffed the smells of fresh-cut grass and compost.

  “What’s that boy dreaming about now?” his mother said to herself and opened the window. “Put the mower away,” she called. “Hang up the catcher, and see you close the shed door. Then you can run along the street and play with Harry for a while, but see that you keep an eye out for your father, and come home with him.”

  Jack pulled his lips back off his teeth and growled as he ran down Ward Street to get his own back on Harry Jitters. He wasn’t going to be an eye dog this time, nor a huntaway: he was going to be a pig dog, a holder, with a bit of bully in him.

  Holders with a bit of bully in them hang on and don’t let go. They can’t even bark much because their nose is jammed hard up against the pig, where they’re hanging on to its cheek or ear. But they growl, deep in their chest. “Grrr!” Jack said.

  Teeth fastened in the gristle of its cheek, nose hard up against its jaw, laying his own body back along the boar’s side, so it couldn’t hook him with its tusks, Jack growled again, “Grrrr! Grrrr!” so that Mrs Dainty walking home from the shops with her basket said, “I hope you’re not making that noise at me, Jack Jackman!”

  “Hello, Mrs Dainty,” said the holder, turning himself into a boy.

  “I said, I hope you’re not making that noise at me.”

  “No, Mrs Dainty. I’m growling at Harry Jitters, because he barked at me.”

  “You mustn’t make up fibs, or I’ll tell your mother. Harry Jitters isn’t even here. I saw him running home, as I came round the corner from the butcher’s.”

  Jack stared back and was silent. It was never any use trying to explain to Mrs Dainty.

  “That’s how it always starts, with a little fib. Then whoppers. And the next thing is, you’re telling lies. And we all know where that leads. The gallows!”

  Mrs Dainty pursed her mouth. She’d been a bit down to it, that morning, not sure whether to go and collect her mail and do her bit of shopping, because she was afraid of being chased by a bull every time she put her nose outside her gate. It wasn’t right: all these mobs of wild animals being driven along the street. But now, suddenly, she felt much better. She swung her basket and walked on briskly.

  Jack growled under his breath, and made a quick Unga-Yunga face after her. He would have stuck out his tongue and tried his puku dance, but everyone knew Mrs Dainty always spun around, to try and catch you being rude behind her back.

  Mrs Dainty did spin around, but Jack was already trotting down Ward Street towards Harry and Minnie, who stood outside their gates, watching him coming. Harry moved over and stood closer to Minnie.

  “Your mother took the skin off the back of poor Harry’s ears,” Minnie told Jack.

  “She did not! He stuck his head through the fence, barking at me, and he couldn’t pull it out fast enough when Mum charged outside and nearly caught him, and then he got his ears tangled up in the wires. Serves him right for having such big lugs!”

  But Minnie Mitchell was not beaten easily. “Where were you going this morning?” she asked. “With that dirty old man, and that dirty old dog trotting in front, and all those dirty old sheep?”

  “Andy,” said Jack, “is the best drover, and Old Drumble’s the best leading dog in the southern hemisphere. We took the mob down through Waitoa and Ngatea, and had a bit of trouble getting them across the Piako River at the Pipiroa ferry.”

  Minnie was too smart to be caught, but Harry
fell for it. “Where’s the Pipiroa ferry?” he asked, touching the backs of his ears delicately and examining his fingertips for blood.

  “The creek behind the factory,” said Jack, “it runs down the back of Dickey’s place and the pig farm, behind the pa, under the road to Walton, and turns itself into the Waitoa River, and then it becomes the Piako and runs into the Firth of Thames and the Hauraki Gulf, and then it goes up the Pacific, over the equator and the North Pole and down the Atlantic, down over the equator and the South Atlantic and the South Pole and comes up and turns left and comes up the back of Waharoa again.” Jack took a breath. “Andy and Old Drumble, they’ve driven sheep that way lots of times. It’s the same way the Maoris came to New Zealand from Hawaiki in their Great Fleet.”

  “Aw…” Harry said, uncertainly.

  “You think you’re smart, don’t you, Jack Jackman!” said Minnie Mitchell. She wasn’t sure about the equator and the North and South Poles, but Mr Strap had told them about the Maoris coming to New Zealand from Hawaiki in a fleet of canoes, and there’d been something about it in the School Journal. She picked at the left shoulder of her dress with her right hand, so the puffed sleeve stood out as it was supposed to. “Anyway, how did they get the sheep over all that sea?”

  “Easy,” Jack said. “Old Drumble can do anything.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Where Old Drumble Tied the Ends

  of the Tightrope, Keeping Out of the Way

  of the Interfering Old Biddy, and

  Why Jack Yelped and Looked Across

  the Paddocks Towards Waharoa.

  JACK LOOKED SCORNFULLY at Minnie Mitchell and Harry Jitters. “How did Old Drumble get the sheep across the sea?” he repeated.

  “He made the sheep hold each other’s tails in their mouths, and blindfolded them, and led them along a tightrope. And Andy followed them with Old Nell and Young Nugget and Nosy holding each other’s tails in their mouths. All the way up the Pacific, over the North Pole, down the Atlantic, over the South Pole, and back up to Waharoa.” Jack took another breath.