Mr Bluenose

by Jack Lasenby

  When my father spoke like that, I knew it was no good trying to get him to listen. It was best just to eat my tea, and go to bed, and not say anything. I lay there very still, so I wouldn’t disturb the sheets and pillows. Out in the kitchen, Dad banged the pots as he put them away in the cupboard.

  “Bluenose!” I heard him say and laugh to himself. “Baloney!” He chuckled a couple of times, and then he came to my door and whispered, “Are you asleep yet?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It’s not a bad story you know!” Dad chuckled and put out the light, and I lay grinning in the dark.

  4

  Mrs Dainty’s Complaint, How Horse Got His Name, the Rat Who Liked Boiled Lollies, and the Trouble with False Teeth and Chewing Gum.

  When Dad was at work and there was nothing to do at home, I used to wander down to Mr Bluenose’s place and give him a hand in his orchard. Pruning, spraying, hoeing weeds under the trees, picking fruit, sorting it into boxes and barrels, feeding the rotten stuff to the pigs. Cutting the cabbages and cauliflowers, digging potatoes, cutting the barberry hedges around the orchard – there was always something to do at Mr Bluenose’s place.

  People reckoned he did everything by hand but, by the time I was growing up, he had an old horse who ploughed the potato patch for him. And he built a konaki that the old horse used to pull along between the trees. We’d pick apples into sugarbags hung round our necks, then roll them without bumping into a crate.

  The old horse didn’t need telling when it was time to drag the konaki up to the sorting shed. He’d start off on his own. And when we got there, he would have stopped just in the right place. Mr Bluenose would tell me to give him an apple, and I’d hold it on my palm with my fingers bent back so he didn’t eat them by mistake. He’d nuzzle my hand, take the apple, and crunch it up between his big teeth. Sometimes I saw juice squirt between his thick black lips.

  “What’s your horse’s name?” I asked Mr Bluenose one day.

  “Horse.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “That is his name. Horse!”

  “But you can’t just call him that.”

  “Why not? I once had a horse I called Prince, and it went to his head. He thought he was too important just to pull a konaki around the orchard.” Mr Bluenose looked at me. “That Prince used to stand with his head over the gate, looking down his nose at anyone passing.

  “Mrs Dainty complained about him putting on airs. ‘That horse of yours looks as if he thinks he’s too important to give me the time of day,’ she said. And she took to walking on the other side of the road, so she would not have to see Prince looking down his nose at her. She stopped buying her vegies from me. And it was not just her. All sorts of people stopped dropping in and buying their vegies, all because my horse got stuck up because he was called Prince.

  “In the end,” said Mr Bluenose, “I had to get rid of him and, to tell the truth, I was pleased to see him go. That is when I bought Horse. As soon as I got him home, I backed him up, hooked on the chains, and made him pull the konaki around the orchard a few times. Each time I told him to giddup or whoah, I told him his name. ‘Horse!’ I said to him. ‘Horse!’ I called him. He learned his name, and I have never had any trouble with him putting on airs.”

  On the way home, that afternoon, I found a beer bottle in the ditch the other side of the road from Mrs Doleman’s billiard saloon. And I found another a bit further along. I took them to Mr Bryce’s store, and he gave me two pennies, and I swapped them for some boiled lollies. I told him the story of how Mr Bluenose named his horse, and Mr Bryce laughed and gave me a packet of chewing gum.

  “That’s for the yarn,” he said. “But don’t go thinking you’re going to get something extra every time you come in here with a couple of empty beer bottles.” As I went out his door, I heard him telling the story to the Kelly girl who worked in the store after high school. Now the schools were closed, she was working full time.

  I sat under the hedge at the corner and chewed my chutty till it was worn out. It was still stretchy, but had lost all its flavour by the time I got home, so I told Dad he could have a boiled lolly.

  “But you’ve got to promise not to open your eyes.”

  “I promise.”

  “You haven’t closed them!”

  “You didn’t say I had to close them, just to not open them.”

  “Do you want a boiled lolly or not?”

  He closed them, and I ran and hid the rest of them on the ledge over the top of the door into the shed under the tankstand. The biggest lolly I kept to give to Dad, and I thought I’d give the next biggest one to Mr Bluenose tomorrow.

  “You can open your eyes now,” I told Dad, and gave him the biggest boiled lolly.

  “What did you do while my eyes were closed?” he asked, but I wouldn’t tell him. “I’ll find out,” he said.

  I looked next morning, after Dad had gone to work, but my boiled lollies had gone. I suspected my father. Then I remembered him saying there was a rat in one of the sheds, and I thought I’d better not say anything about it eating my lollies or Dad would ask why I hadn’t given him some more instead of hiding them, and he’d shake his head as he always did.

  I told Mr Bluenose that Mr Bryce gave me some chewing gum for his story about the horse’s name.

  “Did you keep a piece for me?” asked Mr Bluenose.

  “I tried to,” I whispered. “But I ate it all. Well, I chewed it.”

  “Never mind,” said Mr Bluenose. “It is not much use trying to chew gum with false teeth anyway. It sticks them together,” he explained.

  “I had some boiled lollies, and I tried to keep one for you, but the rat found where I hid them and ate the lot.”

  “Boiled lollies are different,” said Mr Bluenose. “It is not much use licking chewing gum but, even with false teeth, you can always lick a boiled lolly.”

  “I suppose so,” I said. “I wonder if the rat licked the ones he stole from me.”

  Mr Bluenose shook his head. “If I know anything about rats,” he said, “I think he would have crunched them up.”

  5

  Boys and Barberry Hedges, Apples and the Dark, and the Ghost in the Macrocarpa Tunnel.

  “Barberry hedges!” said Mr Bluenose. He shook the drops of blood off his scratched arm.

  “Why did you plant them?” I asked.

  “Boys!” said Mr Bluenose. “Boys can smell apples from up to twenty miles away. When my apples are getting ripe, boys from all over the Waikato follow their noses to my orchard and steal my apples. I grow apples to sell, but boys do not have any money because they spend it all on boiled lollies.” He looked at me, and I felt my face go red.

  “Boys are a bad lot,” said Mr Bluenose. “The first apples I grew, I went out to pick them, and the boys had beaten me.

  “The second year, I put up a scarecrow. When the boys found it did not chase them, they stuck a rotten apple in the scarecrow’s mouth, painted his nose blue, and ate every apple in my orchard. Then they came back in November, stole my scarecrow, and put him on their bonfire for Guy Fawkes.

  “The third year, I got a dog, but those boys fed him sausages, and things he liked to eat. Some of them even gave my dog boiled lollies. He wagged his tail and let them eat all my apples. When I sooled my dog on to the boys, instead of biting them, he played with them. He started thinking he was a boy himself. And then, because of all the boiled lollies, his teeth went rotten and fell out.”

  “It’s not fair, talking of boiled lollies all the time,” I told Mr Bluenose. “Just because I ate the one I was saving for you.”

  “I will try not to mention boiled lollies again. In the end, I planted a barberry hedge around my orchard. Even a boy cannot get through a barberry hedge.”

  “They can still climb your gate though.”

  “That is why I put the notice there.”

  I had read his notice. It was painted in big red letters and said, “Warning! Boys Shot On Sight!” S
ome of the paint had dribbled down like streaks of blood.

  “When it comes to boiled lollies, some boys are better than other boys,” said Mr Bluenose. “But you cannot trust any boy when it comes to apples.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t talk about boiled lollies again.”

  “I said I would try, that is all.”

  “You’ve got barberry around three sides of your orchard,” I said, “but what about the macrocarpas? Couldn’t boys get in that side?”

  “To reach the macrocarpas you have to come through the Domain, and Mr Lewis runs his bad-tempered Jersey bull in there, except when they are playing footy. If a boy managed to get past Mr Lewis’s terrible bull, he would still have to get across the big ditch, and it is always full of water. If he got across the big ditch without drowning, there is the barbed-wire fence. The wires are too close together even for a boy to get through, they squeak if anyone tries to climb over, and I sharpen the barbs with a file. Once over the fence, there is the double row of macrocarpas, and it is dark under there. Boys are scared of the dark. Come, and I will show you something.”

  High up in the dark tunnel made by the two rows of macrocarpa trees, Mr Bluenose showed me a length of wire running from one end to the other. From the wire hung an old coat hanger, and from the coat hanger dangled a torn old sheet. Mr Bluenose reached up into the dark, undid something, and put the end of a rope in my hand. “Pull!”

  I pulled, and the sheet came floating towards me out of the dark. The hook on the coat hanger shrieked along the wire, and somewhere a chain clanked. I ran. I don’t remember the gate, so I must have jumped it.

  I slowed down a bit as I got near the hall. There’d been a dance the night before, and I had a look in the ditch and the long grass where the cars had been parked. I found four beer bottles and took them to Mr Bryce’s.

  “You’re puffing,” he said, so I told him about Mr Bluenose’s ghost in the dark macrocarpa tunnel. Mr Bryce pushed his glasses on top of his head and laughed so much, he gave me twice as many boiled lollies as usual for the three pennies I gave him back. I put the fourth penny in my pocket, and he tried to get it off me for chewing gum. But I shook my head. I took the boiled lollies and sat under the hedge at the corner of our street and ate half of them.

  I gave Dad half of what were left and hid one boiled lolly in a tin in the shed under the tankstand. I hoped the old rat who lived there didn’t know how to unscrew the lid. Next time I went down to Mr Bluenose’s, I would take the boiled lolly. Maybe it would stop the ghost in the macrocarpa tunnel from chasing me.

  6

  How Mr Bluenose Ate a Fisherman, How He Was Seasick for Six Months, and How Dad and I Ate Blue Cod and Parsley Sauce.

  “When I was a boy,” said Mr Bluenose. “I ran away to become a sailor. I sailed around the world, getting seasick. At a fishing village in Nova Scotia, I stowed away on a bait schooner.”

  By now I knew not to ask what a bait schooner was. If I listened, Mr Bluenose’s stories explained most things later on.

  “We were two days out at sea before they found me,” said Mr Bluenose.

  “‘We’ll have to take him home,’ said the mate.

  “‘We’re not sailing home just for a boy,’ the skipper growled. ‘Throw him to the sharks!’

  “‘That would be a waste,’ said the mate. ‘Let’s give him to the cook to cook for our tea.’

  “‘Baked boy!’ said the skipper, and licked his lips. ‘Good idea, Mate!’

  “Fortunately for me,” said Mr Bluenose, “the cook did not have a recipe for baked boy. ‘You’re in luck!’ said the mate, and he gave me a pair of rubber sea boots and an oilskin apron.

  “The other fishermen laughed, and one said, ‘Those boots are so big you could float in them!’ Another said, ‘And you could use that apron for a spinnaker!’

  “I worked as a deck boy, cleaning up after the men caught the squid for bait to sell to the Portuguese cod schooners out on the Grand Banks. It was hard work, but I did not mind. The only trouble was that my sea boots and oilskin apron were so big, I kept tripping.

  “On the sixth day, I tripped and fell overboard. My rubber sea boots were so big, they floated well above water level – as long as I stood up straight. I undid my oilskin apron, held it above my head like a spinnaker, and the wind blew me along.

  “After sailing for a couple of days, I was picked up by a Newfoundland halibut schooner. ‘Boys are more trouble than they’re worth,’ grumbled the skipper. ‘Throw him back!’

  “‘That would be a waste,’ said the mate. ‘One of our fishermen just fell out of his dory and was eaten by a shark. His partner can’t fish on his own. Let’s put the boy in his dory.’

  “‘Good idea, Mate! But don’t think you can get up to any tricks!’ the skipper growled at me.

  “The fisherman and I set long trawls for halibut, and pulled them up on a reel set across the bows of our dory. As I pulled the line over the hurdy gurdy, the fisherman donged the halibut on the head. A storm blew up, it got dark, and we could not find our schooner.

  “We ate the halibut we had in the dory. There was no way of cooking them, so we ate them raw. Then we got so hungry, we looked at each other. The fisherman said, ‘I’m very sorry but I’m going to have to eat you tomorrow morning.’ I did not want to be eaten so, that night, while he was asleep, I ate him. He was so fast asleep, he did not feel a thing. Well,” said Mr Bluenose, and he looked at me, “if I had not eaten him first, he would have eaten me.”

  “Still,” I told him, “it’s not very nice.” I stood up, ready to run.

  “You do not need to worry,” said Mr Bluenose. “I have got plenty of apples to eat here. I will not have to eat you.”

  I sat down again.

  “Next day,” said Mr Bluenose, “I was picked up by a Portuguese cod schooner. The captain said, ‘Boys do nothing, and they eat too much. Throw him back, Mate!’

  “‘That would be a waste,’ said the mate. ‘Let’s use him for bait.’

  “‘Good idea, Mate!’ said the skipper. ‘We’ll chop him up and put him on the hooks when we run out of squid.’

  “‘Catch enough cod to fill the schooner, before the squid runs out,” the mate told me, ‘and we won’t use you for bait.’

  “I fished so hard that, after three months, we had filled the schooner with salted cod, and there was one squid left over. ‘You’re in luck,’ said the mate.

  “We set sail for Portugal. On the way, a grumpy old bull sperm whale hit us head-on and stove in the planks. The schooner sank, but I jumped on to the whale’s back, and pulled the mate to safety. We stuck our hands down the whale’s blowhole and hung on.

  “When a whale dives, he closes his blowhole first. If he did not, he would fill up with water and sink. That grumpy old bull whale could not close his blowhole, and he dare not dive. He tried to shake us off his back till I got seasick, but we hung on. When that did not work, he threatened what he was going to do to us.

  “‘Put us ashore in London!’ I told the whale, ‘and we’ll pull our hands out of your blowhole.’ He swam up the Thames and landed us at London Bridge where the mate ran away, and I was arrested by a Royal Navy press gang. They put me in a big sack with the other men they’d pressed, took us on board their warship, and tipped us out on the deck.

  “‘A boy!’ roared the captain. ‘Boys get into mischief! Fire him out of the cannon, Mate!’

  “‘That would be a waste. Besides, what if the newspapers get hold of the story?’ the mate asked the captain. ‘How about putting him in the crow’s nest? None of the sailors like it because they say it makes them seasick.’

  “The crow’s nest,” said Mr Bluenose, “was a barrel lashed on top of the mast. Each morning, the mate sent up a bucket with a bottle of rum and a couple of bananas. My job was to keep a lookout so we did not bump into icebergs, rocks, and whales.

  “The crow’s nest swayed twice as much as the rest of the ship, so I was seasick for six months. The warship
sailed into Auckland. I was so sick of being seasick, I climbed down, rowed ashore, put one oar over my shoulder, and walked inland. When somebody asked me what the oar was, I knew I was safe from seasickness, so I stayed.”

  “Thank you, Mr Bluenose,” I said. “I must go home now.”

  I couldn’t find any empty bottles, but I called in and told Mr Bryce the story of how Mr Bluenose ran away to sea and finished up in Waharoa. Mr Bryce said, “I could believe all of it except the way he stayed afloat in his gumboots.”

  “He said sea boots.”

  “Same thing,” said Mr Bryce, “long, rubber gumboots.”

  “He was just a little boy, and they were big men’s sea boots. Mr Bluenose wouldn’t make up a story that wasn’t true.”

  “What about being up in the crow’s nest all the way to New Zealand?” asked Mr Bryce. “How did he go to the lavatory?”

  “Remember, the mate sent up a bucket with a bottle of rum and a couple of bananas each morning?”

  Mr Bryce pushed his glasses on top of his head. “I suppose it’s possible. Here, hold out your hands. Both of them!” And he filled them with boiled lollies.

  “But –” I said. “But, I haven’t got any pennies.”

  “These are a present. For a rattling good story. I must say I liked the bit where he ate the other fisherman.” Mr Bryce looked around for his glasses, and I told him they were on top of his head.

  I gave Dad a boiled lolly, and he said he’d better keep it for after he’d had his tea or it would spoil his appetite. I told him Mr Bluenose’s story of how he’d run away to sea, and how I’d told it to Mr Bryce, and how he’d given me all those boiled lollies for free.