The Haystack (2 page)

S
LIDING HIS BIG KNIFE
up and down on the steel, Mr Cleaver looked at my neck and winked.

“What’ll it be today?”

He chopped the right place each time; a quick slice-slice; and there was our scrag end with the neck chops sitting in a row on the block.

“So fresh,” said Mr Cleaver, “you can hear them baa.”

“I can’t hear anything.”

“Put your ear down there again, I’ll chop it off and mince it into sausages.”

I liked the way Mr Cleaver dropped the different knives back in the black leather box on his belt. He knew where each one was, and reached for it without looking. And when he’d sharpened a knife, he dropped the steel so it swung with a little clash from the chain on the other side of his belt.

“A leg of wether?” I leaned against Dad and waited.
“Whether the weather for wether.” Mr Cleaver always said that. He opened the thick wooden door on the chiller and dumped a side of mutton on the huge chopping block, thud! The dead meat didn’t look as if it had ever been a sheep.

Bang! The bone chopped through. Slice! Bang! The knuckle. Slice-slice! A couple of gristly old chunks of fat chucked into the basket under the scales: whack!

Rip off a length of brown paper. Weigh chops, leg, grab the pencil from behind his ear and write on the paper. Add up and tell Dad. Stick the pencil back. Wrap the meat. Neat, quick.

“You hear the news?”

Dad shook his head as Mr Cleaver tied the brown string around the parcel, spun the parcel, took the string around the other way, and knotted it.

“Old Peter Rust got on it again. The hard stuff. Knocked over his candle, or went to sleep with his pipe going. The Hoe boys saved his bacon, dragged him out, mattress smouldering. No damage to the whare, but he’d have bought it if they hadn’t smelled smoke over at the house. He went too far this time.

“I don’t know how often Alec Hoe’s let him off before. Well, you know about it. Anyway, this was once too often, and he gave Old Peter Rust the sack.”

“But he’s worked there since away back, well before the War…”

“What could Alec Hoe do? They won’t have a drop in the house themselves. It’s not as if he hadn’t had warning after warning. And with butterfat the way it is, the two boys working on the place now, and their sister still at home…it’s a lot for the farm to support.

“Another man on the swag, and not likely to pick up a job in a hurry, not at his age and with things the way they are.” Mr Cleaver held the parcel of meat. “A returned man, too. He lied about his age when he joined up, or the army would have said he was too old. Must be well into his sixties now.”

“Too old to be sleeping under haystacks, and winter coming on. I wish I’d known,” Dad said.

“One of Stan Goosman’s drivers saw him heading up the stock road to Matamata and gave him a lift to Te Poi.”

Dad shook his head. “He could be anywhere now. This Depression, it’s hurting people, and all the government can think of doing is to cut wages and put more and more of them out of jobs.”

I made tracks with my toes through the sawdust on the floor, but kept one eye on Mr Cleaver in case he tried to cut off my ear and make it into sausages.

He was that quick: he’d cut through the string, handed the parcel to Dad, and run his knife up and down the steel a couple of times. Shang! Shang! He let go the steel on its chain, and—without looking—dropped the
knife back into the leather box on his other side.

“Mr Bryce snaps the string with his finger.”

“Mr Bryce hasn’t got a sharp knife.” Mr Cleaver counted the change into my hand. “Six bob…” He gave me a half-crown. “Eight and six…” He added another shilling. “Nine and six…and another sixpence. There you are, Tea-tree Toes, ten bob!” I gave it to Dad.

“Back at school, eh?” Mr Cleaver winked over his big red sausage nose. “I hope Mr Strap’s keeping you busy.”

I grinned. I knew he was friendly, even if he did look at my ear.

“Something to keep the wolf from the door.”

I felt my grin turn into a smile, and bit the thick slice of luncheon sausage.

“What do you say?”

“Thank you, Mr Cleaver.” I tried to wink, but both eyes shut, and somebody else was coming in. Dad and Mr Cleaver looked at each other.

“Let’s know if you hear anything,” Dad said, then we were walking along for the mail.

Mr Gilbert was out the front of the garage, pumping benzine up into the two big glass bottles on top of the bowser. They filled, and he let the benzine run down the hose and into a drum on the back of a lorry. While Dad spoke to him, I watched the glass containers empty and gobbled my luncheon sausage before the stink of benzine got inside my mouth and spoiled it.

“Bad business,” Dad said to Mr Gilbert, and to me, “You haven’t crammed that down already? You gannet!”

I shook my head: if I spoke, I’d choke. And just then Mrs Dainty popped out of the baker’s. Whenever she appeared, I was always doing the wrong thing. I spluttered, and Mrs Dainty stared.

“Is there something the matter with that child? Shouldn’t she be in bed?”

“Bit of German sausage going down the wrong way,” Dad said, patting my back. “Lovely morning for the washing. Good drying day, Mrs Dainty.”

“I thought we stopped calling it German sausage during that wicked old Kaiser’s War,” Mrs Dainty sniffed. “And I do my washing on a Monday. As my mother did, and her mother before her.”

I wanted Dad to tell her why we’d done our washing today. I stared back, chewed the last of my luncheon sausage, and wiped the splutter from my lips with the back of my hand, as Mrs Dainty said, “I suppose you’ve heard about Mr Hoe’s labourer?”

Dad looked at her.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say; and not before time. And going on the swag!”

“Can’t say I’m pleased to hear of anyone losing his job,” Dad said. “Not with the Depression and so many out of work—” but Mrs Dainty was trotting off, head nodding backwards and forwards like a chook.

“Why’d you say German sausage, Dad?”

“That’s what they called it when I was a boy. Then the Great War came along in 1914, and somebody said it was unpatriotic; you must say Belgian sausage because the Belgians were our allies. Some coot even tried to make us call it Dominion sausage. Anyway, here it is the 1930s, and we say luncheon sausage.”

I looked at Dad. “You said German sausage to annoy Mrs Dainty.”

“I knew she’d have a go at me for doing my washing on a Saturday, so I got in first. You have to be quick to beat Mrs Dainty. And you can forget what I just said. Do you hear?”

I nodded. “You know when Mrs Dainty asked what was wrong with me, well, her nose looked like a hen going to peck.” I pecked the back of his hand, to show Dad.

“Henpecked. That’s what happened to Mr Dainty. There I go again. Why is it you’re always tricking me into saying things?”

“What’s going to happen to Mr Rust, Dad?”

“I wish I knew.”

“What’s ‘going on the swag’?”

“Tramping the road, looking for work, sleeping out in the cold and wet. No life for a dog, let alone a man who fought for his country.” Dad sounded angry. “And, like a lot of men, he didn’t touch a drop before he went
away; they learned their drinking in the army. Then they come back to this.”

I wasn’t sure what Dad meant, but I knew he wasn’t angry with me because he held my hand tight as we crossed the road towards the post office.

“By God,” he said to himself, “it’ll take a change of government to get us out of this Depression.” I looked around, in case Mrs Dainty had popped up again. Again, I didn’t know what Dad meant, but I knew it was better she didn’t hear.

T
HE POST OFFICE STEPS
were the warmest in Waharoa, good for sitting on, so long as Mrs Dainty didn’t catch you. The Maoris from down the pa often sat there and talked. I felt the concrete warm on the backs of my legs.

In past the private boxes, rows and rows of tiny red doors, each with its own little keyhole and its number painted black. I tried sitting on the bench under them, but it felt cold. Inside the post office, everyone was winking and nodding and saying hello.

Dad was talking to somebody from the factory—about Mr Rust, I could tell. I rubbed my foot on the shiny brown lino, put my hand up on the tall counter, and Mr Barker stamped the date on it and gave me the strip of sticky paper off a page of stamps. We crossed the road and wandered back, saying good-day to Mr Whimble leading a horse through the big doors of his blacksmith shop, hello to Sammy Searle, the greengrocer, and to Mrs Doleman in the billiard saloon.

Everybody shook their heads and said something: “It’s not the first time, you know,” and “He didn’t give Alec Hoe much choice,” and “It’s a crying shame, that’s what it is.”

Mr Doleman was shaving someone in the barber’s shop, but he saw me in the mirror and winked and nodded and clicked his tongue all at once. His razor held a puff of lather that he wiped on a strip of newspaper. It was too far away to see the black specks of whisker, but I knew they’d be there because I often watched Dad shaving.

Mr Doleman shaved a bit more, and I wondered how he knew which was his left hand and which his right, then realised he wasn’t looking in the mirror: it was me. I turned around to tell Dad, but he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t in the baker’s, so I ran all the way to Mr Bryce’s store where Dad gave me the bread to hold while he found our paper in the stack over on the drapery counter.

“How was school?” asked the Kelly girl.

“Mr Strap says we have to work hard, to make up for all the time we had off while school was closed because of the infantile.”

“Work?” said the Kelly girl. “Wait till you get to high school. Miss Bell gives us that much homework.”

“If I hear anything, I’ll let you know,” Mr Bryce told Dad. “No stories lately?” he asked as I looked at the big jarful of boiled lollies.

“I’ve been going to school.”

“No stories, no boiled lollies.”

I looked sad, but Mr Bryce just laughed his cruel and heartless laugh, then the shop was full of farmers and their wives picking up sacks and boxes of groceries, others handing over their orders, coming and going.

“Two lorries, a car, a buggy, and a couple of gigs,” Dad said, heading home. “A rip-roaring place of a Saturday morning, Waharoa.”

“Don’t forget the cart and somebody’s horse under the trees over by the station,” I told him.

Dad glanced down. “I hope you’re not picking the end off that?”

“Just the kissing bread.”

“Give us a bit?”

“Fresh bread’s bad for you. Mrs Dainty said.”

“Aw, we’re supposed to share. I won’t give you the boiled lolly Mr Bryce gave me for you…Thanks.”

At the corner of Ward Street, Freddy Jones sat on the dirt path outside his gate, pretending not to see anyone. I stuck out my tongue and followed Dad along the track through the pig-fern and ran ahead so I could reach up and open the gate. I put the bread in the bin, the meat in the safe, and the basket on its hook.

Dad was shoving the kettle over the ring, rattling the poker in the grate, putting on coal. He was going to make a cup of tea, read the paper, and enjoy his morning
off. I ran back along the street.

“I knew that’s what you were doing.”

Freddy Jones kept his head down. “If you’re so smart, why’d you have to take a look?”

“Just because. What do you call it?”

“A climbing tractor. I invented it. It can climb up a wall.” As he spoke, Freddy’s cotton-reel tractor tried to climb over his finger, got halfway, and tipped. The pencil at one end whizzed around, the rubber ring came undone, and it lay dead like my blind—only it hadn’t shouted “Hullabaloo!”

“You should have seen it before. It climbed over my hand good-oh, and it climbed up my arm, round the back of my neck, and down the other arm.”

I said nothing.

“All on its own.” Freddy wound the rubber band again, turning the pencil against the stub of candle at one end of the reel.

“You’re a big fibber, Freddy Jones. You made that up. Anyway, it’s a cotton-reel tractor. Everyone knows that.”

His tractor went all right across the path, but got stuck where the dirt was churned up by bikes.

“Not much of a tractor,” I said to give him something to think about, and ran home.

“Have we got any old cotton reels?”

“Look in the sewing basket. There’s bread and honey and a glass of milk on the bench. Gulp it down the way
you did that luncheon sausage, and you’ll do yourself a harm. I’m not sure I should be giving you fresh bread. Some people say it’s not good for little stomachs.”

“Why is it good for big stomachs, Dad?”

Crackle! Crackle! He turned a page. “Who said I’ve got a puku? I’m older than you. That’s why it’s all right for me to eat fresh bread, hot from the oven, because there’s nobody to tell me off.”

“Is that why Mr Dainty ran away, because he wasn’t allowed to eat fresh bread?”

“I told you to keep quiet about that. What’s Freddy up to?”

“Playing with a cotton-reel tractor. He reckons it climbed up one arm, round the back of his neck, and down the other arm. And he reckons he invented it. I’m going to make a better one.”

“Don’t you think it might be an idea if just for once you let Freddy be better at something?”

I didn’t see why, I told Dad, and he laughed, folded his paper neatly, and put it on the table.

“I’m going to dig the last of the spuds before the frosts come.”

I ran out, climbed into the wheelbarrow, hung on to the wooden sides, and shut my eyes. I heard him sit on the back steps, put on his boots and do them up, felt him pick up the handles. I screamed, as he shouted to scare me and rushed the barrow around the house.
Cutting the corner, we skidded. I shot out, rolled over, and skinned my elbow.

“It makes me shiver,” Dad said, “when I see you bleed.” He washed and patted my elbow dry, put on some ointment, and bandaged it. It felt good, having him at home.

“I don’t shiver when you cut yourself.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s my job to look after you, not the other way round. Maybe you’re getting a bit big for the wheelbarrow.”

“Oooh!”

We’d been eating new potatoes, but the ones Dad dug now were bigger and their skin didn’t rub off. He drove in the fork, leaned back on the handle, and they burst out of the soil. That’s why I like digging spuds, helping them escape out of the ground. I followed Dad with the sack. You mustn’t leave potatoes in the sun; they go green and that means they’re poisonous.

“I counted twenty-eight on that plant, with all the little ones.”

“Do you want to go along the row again?” Dad gave me the fork. “There’s always some you miss, the first time.”

The fork was pretty big, but the dirt was soft and broken now.

“Why don’t you spear them when you do it?”

“You learn to dig outside and under the plant.” Dad pulled the two I’d speared off the tines of the fork. “Put them aside for tonight.”