Land of Milk & Honey

by William Taylor

  Jake interrupted. ‘No. I think you’ve got some more thinking to do. It’s not OK to have a bit of fun with a dumb calf. That poor little calf got it worse than I did. I’m not soft. I don’t care if calves get turned into meat or shoes or whatever…so long as they don’t get treated bad before it happens. There’s no need to be cruel to them.’

  ‘You think so?’ Miller sounded surprised. ‘Never thought like that before.’

  ‘And I don’t think you are sorry for what you did. You’re sorry for yourself, with no one talking to you and everyone thinking you’re disgusting.’

  ‘If that’s what you think,’ Gary stood. ‘I had to come and say it. I’m very sorry.’ He turned to leave and began walking away.

  Jake got to his feet. ‘Hey!

  Miller stopped, turned. ‘What?’

  ‘You can come back,’ said Jake. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ll never forget what you and that bugger did to me. I know you weren’t the main one but you were happy to follow what he started.’ He sighed again. ‘You’re sorry now but I know you weren’t sorry back then. You enjoyed it. You thought what you did to me was funny.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Gary. ‘Can I stay and just talk? Nuthin’ else to do.’

  ‘I can’t stop you.’

  ‘See, Darce is me mate. I’ll be there for him when he comes out of prison, but I’ll tell him all this, too. I will. I tried to write him a letter, but it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘What do you mean, it wouldn’t work?’

  ‘Couldn’t get the words down, so I never done it, really. But I was gonna say in it what I just said to you.’ He stuck out his right hand. ‘Shake?’ he asked.

  Jake’s palm sweated. With all his heart and soul he wanted to say no. He rubbed his sweating palm on his shorts and breathed very hard. ‘All right,’ he said reluctantly and stuck out his hand. It was a strange sensation.

  Jake wanted Gary Miller to be gone, but the other sat down again, lit another cigarette and relaxed. ‘It’s nice here. You sure as hell lucky old Mac likes you. Doesn’t like too many people. Never liked me.’

  Jake was pleased to hear that. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Dunno. That your cat I heard about?’

  Suddenly Jake tensed again as Little Black Sambo strolled towards them. ‘Yes,’ he said, shortly.

  ‘Ugly bugger,’ said Gary, pleasantly.

  ‘No he’s not,’ said Jake.

  ‘Yes he is. Here kitty, kitty,’ and Gary Miller extended a hand.

  ‘You keep your…’ and then Jake relaxed as Little Black Sambo ignored him completely, walked straight to Gary, purred loudly and enjoyed being stroked. ‘Hell’s bells!’ said Jake. ‘You’re the first person other than me he’s ever gone to. Now I know he’s mad.’

  ‘He trusts me,’ said Gary, pleased with himself.

  ‘Then he’s one dumb cat,’ said Jake.

  ‘I don’t knock off every cat I come across. Well, only some. This one’s OK, except for the way he looks,’ Gary picked up the kitten. ‘You better get old Mac to whip the nuts off him soon. You want me to do it?’ he offered. ‘I think I just about know how.’ He scrutinised Little Black Sambo’s private parts.

  ‘No thank you,’ Jake said. ‘I’ll have one of your smokes.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Gary. ‘Then you can tell me about the war and what it was like and them bombs comin’ down. See any dead people?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jake sighed. ‘Everywhere, and bombs all the time.’

  ‘You mean real piles of ‘em?’

  ‘Yeah. Couldn’t walk down the street, not that there was much of a street left, what with the bombs, and the bits that were left, well, you couldn’t see them, either, because of all the dead bodies.’

  ‘Aw, great. Bloody great,’ said Gary, beaming broadly. ‘Tell me some more. I got plenty more smokes. Did ya see some Nazis or a Gestapo? See them buggers get strung up on telephone poles?’

  Jake sighed, and settled down. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Up and down our street. All the time.’

  ‘D’you ever get to see old Hitler?’

  ‘No,’ said Jake. ‘He didn’t come round our way.’

  VIII

  Jake wrote home.

  My dear Dad,

  This is just to tell you that I am well and I have not heard from you for a very long time. I hope this finds you fit and well and hopping around like a bee in a bottle. It is summer here and it seems to be summer forever. It is so hot you wouldn’t believe.

  I am keeping busy with everything I have to do like the lawns and they are as big as any park at home and I have helped Molly the housekeeper bottle nearly a hundred bottles of peaches for eating in the winter. Dr Mac says I work too bloody hard. Those are his words. He pays me well and I am saving. I got a bank account now at the Post Office in town and a little book that shows how much I save. I will soon be a millionaire ha ha. Well it might take a million years ha ha.

  My big news is I can now drive a car. It has not been easy and I am sad to say that Dr Mac is not a good teacher. He is the worst teacher of anything I have ever had and you should just hear him and what he says when I get it wrong. It is not made easy with me not being too tall and it’s a bit hard to see out the front window of the car. I don’t know why he wants me to drive him around if I am such a bad driver (he says) and give him fatal heart attacks. (I don’t. It is all in his mind.) He wants me to be the driver if he has calls to go to because of his arthritis. This is a big problem for Dr Mac, his arthritis. He says driving the big car is just too much for his hands and wrists. Nurse Barbara also drives him but I will do the weekends and after school when school starts. The car is a Buick and it is dark blue. It is certainly a big bugger (Dr Mac’s word for it). It is the biggest car in this town. I get to keep it clean and polished but my friend Robert says he will polish if I pay him two bob. Ha ha he is not getting my money.

  This is a long letter.

  I have to have a cushion to sit on to see out the front window. I don’t need a licence, not yet, but I will get one soon. It is all right for the driving if Dr Mac is in the car with me. I might as well go on because Dr Mac says if he sees me doing any more work today he will boot my backside. He would have to catch me first ha ha.

  I wish I knew what happened to our Janice. I had some times when I couldn’t think much about her but I do now and I wonder where she is. Dr Mac says we are going to go to Wellington and see the authorities. I think she must be all right. I hope she’s not on a farm but I don’t think she would be because she’s a bit little to be much use.

  I hope you are pleased to know that I can swim now. My friend Robert taught me that and he is a better teacher than Dr Mac. I have told him I will teach him to drive the car when Dr Mac’s not looking. We swim in a river out by his uncle’s farm which is a good long (hot) bike ride. It’s good fun and we shoot rabbits him and me out on that farm. There are thousands of the buggers (Robert’s word) out there and are a big pest. It is a pity I think rabbits are quite nice but I tell myself they are just pretty rats with fluffy tails and then shoot. I am a good shot and they fall stone dead most of the time. We don’t eat them much out here not like at home. I think it is because there are so many sheep and we eat them instead. We are always eating sheep in New Zealand and we eat meat every day, I think because there are so many to eat. We would never get through them all ha ha.

  By the time you get this I will be back at school. It is a worry for me because I don’t think I will like that but I have got to go because I am not fifteen for a while yet.

  I have just looked at all of what I have written to you. It is so long that I have used some swear words under my breath but I won’t write them because I don’t want to shock you ha ha.

  With love from your son,

  Jacob Neill.

  ‘Ah, this the little pommie feller of yours, Mac? The one I’ve heard so much about,’ said George Gibbons, headmaster.

  ‘Still got you in harness, George? Isn’
t it time they put you out to pasture?’

  ‘Told ‘em that seven years back when they dragged me out of happy retirement. First crop of young blood coming through now; these rehab blokes they’ve been training. None seem to want to come here. Too many took off who never came back.’

  Jacob John Neill was enrolled—and then sent home for a few weeks when an outbreak of polio closed all schools.

  ‘What d’you make of old Baldy?’ Robert asked Jake.

  ‘He was OK. He talked to Dr Mac all the time. Mac says I’ve got to stop working so much and just do the lawns so I’ve got time to read and do some writing.’

  ‘If you don’t have to do so much work for old Mac, you’n me can go out to the farm more often, swim and shoot rabbits. You’re a crook swimmer but you’re quite a good shot.’

  ‘I’ll do the reading,’ said Jake. ‘Mr Gibbons says I might have some catching up to do. He’s going to put me in the fourth form because of all the changes I’ve had.’

  ‘Old Baldy Brass-arse wouldn’t know the time of day,’ said Robert. ‘Most of the time he sits in his office with the door locked, drinking whisky.’

  ‘If the door’s locked, how d’you know?’

  ‘Climbed up and spied on him through the window one day when I was in the third form. Whew, he whacked me that day!’ Robert rubbed his backside.

  ‘I never know when you’re telling the truth and when you’re not,’ said Jake.

  ‘God help me, but I am the most truthful person you’ll ever meet,’ Robert grinned.

  ‘Then God help me,’ Jake grinned back at him.

  Jake went unwillingly to school. Molly Henderson turned up early to send him off on his first day. She checked his uniform, navy-blue and new, set his cap straight on his sun-bleached fair head, made him pull up the socks that prickled in the sweltering heat of early autumn, made sure he had his cut lunch. Neither she nor James McGregor could get a smile onto his face. He’d eaten breakfast and vomited the lot down the lavatory bowl. Empty of stomach, and almost empty of hope, he biked off.

  Feeling several hundred percent better he biked home again at the end of the day.

  ‘So?’ Molly Henderson waited on the veranda.

  Jake smiled broadly. ‘I don’t know what I was worried about.’

  ‘I told you so.’

  ‘And I’m in the fifth form—with Robert.’

  ‘Told George Gibbons you would be. No problems?’ she queried.

  He knew what she meant. ‘No. One or two funny looks when I first got there, but that could’ve been for anything.’

  ‘Oh ye of little faith,’ the old woman smiled at him. ‘Come on. There’s a nice cuppa just brewed and Mac’ll be finished presently and want to hear about it all. Let me tell you, he was as worried as you this morning. You should have heard him after you’d gone. He was all for taking off and dragging you back!’

  Like a duck to water, Jake Neill took to school. There was really very little not to take to! Robert had been absolutely right—there were only fifty in the secondary department. Indeed Jake was the fiftieth. There were twenty-six in the third form, nineteen in the fourth, five, including Jake, in the fifth and one lonely sixth former.

  By the end of the first day he’d discovered who controlled the school in all ways other than academic; his mate, Robert Te Huia. Robert’s control was absolute and neither Lance, the lonely sixth-former, nor the four teachers who ran the place seemed to have any problem with this.

  ‘I’ve got you down for the First XI. Well, it’s the only XI. You can bowl?’

  ‘I don’t think I want to play cricket,’ said Jake.

  ‘Well, you will. Come winter you’ll be in the First XV. You have to. It’s either you or Maisie, she’s the big one in our class, and she could pass for a bloke any day.’

  ‘What’s the First XV?’

  ‘What?’ Robert was amazed, ‘Footie.’

  ‘Soccer? Fifteen?’

  Robert’s mirth knew no bounds and he rolled around on the grass before putting Jake right. ‘And because of your first-hand experience, you’ll be the sergeant when we do cadets on Fridays.’

  Jake was rather confused. ‘What is cadets and what first-hand experience?’

  ‘We gotta make the most of you. You’re the only one in the whole school, apart from Brass-arse, with first-hand experience of real war and I think Mum told me his one was the Crimean with Florence Nightingale. I think old Florence might have been his first girlfriend. All the boys gotta do cadets. We get dressed up and march about like soldiers and once a month we go shooting with old rifles—303s.’

  ‘What? Shooting what?’

  ‘Targets, thick head. Though I’m hoping old Baldy’ll pop up in front of one of them this year. Bang! Bull’s-eye! He’s the big boss of cadets.’

  Jake looked at him, ‘Do we get any time for work? School work?’

  ‘Oh that. Sure do. You’n me and Maisie, Clare and Delma, we all do the same. Baldy teaches us English, history and geography. Dunno who’ll be doing French, science and maths. If we’re good enough we’re allowed to sit School Cert this year instead of next year. Because I want to get out of this place before I’m an old man I’m sure as hell gonna be good enough this year,’ said Robert.

  ‘You want to get out of this place? Seems to me like you’re the boss here.’

  ‘Yeah, I am. But I’m ready for bigger things. Oh, one other thing.’

  ‘What? You going to put me in the school choir, too?’

  ‘We don’t have one,’ said Robert. ‘Thank God. No. If we wanna smoke, and you need to if you go to this school, we go down by the river. It’ll just be you and me, all the fourth form boys and one or two thirds who think they’re grown up.’

  ‘We could get caught.’

  ‘Never. Look, mate, you seen our teachers. Most of ‘em come to school in wheelchairs!’

  ‘What about Lance?’

  ‘Lance doesn’t smoke but he sometimes comes down for a break. Not often. He’s a genius, Lance. He lives for his maths and science and stuff and doesn’t have a social life but he’s OK. You can’t blame him, his dad’s the Presbyterian minister.’

  ‘Have you put him in your cricket team?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Yep,’ said Robert. ‘He’s one of the wickets.’

  ‘Gibbons tells me you’re doing rather well, lad,’ James McGregor sipped his nightly whisky. ‘You get on all right with the old codger?’

  ‘Yes, when he’s there. I think we teach ourselves most of the time.’

  ‘Probably nothing too wrong with that, either.’ He gave Jake a shrewd look. ‘Tells me you’ve quite a brain. Maybe time to start giving a bit of thought to what might be done with it in the not too distant future.’ He changed tack. ‘Not a bad bowling arm, either, I hear. Better do my bit and come up and see the latter the next time you’re in action. You’ve come a long way in, what is it? Nigh on a year?’

  ‘Twelve thousand miles, Dr Mac.’ Jake returned the smile.

  ‘Don’t get smart with me, laddie, I mean since you’ve been here with me. Put another log on the fire and pour yourself a wee dram.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Jake obeyed both instructions.

  ‘Look at you. You’ve shot up a good half-head and filled out…’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Jake. ‘Between us we eat about a sheep a week!’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that, either. And there’s more to it than that. You’re a good boy in spite of the company you keep.’

  ‘Well, I know what they all say about you Dr Mac, but, to be honest, no one else has offered me a good home—and a sheep a week!’

  James McGregor gave a full belly laugh. ‘Quite a sly sense of humour, haven’t we? Think I said that in my last note to your dad.’

  ‘You write to my father?’

  ‘Yes, boy. Once in while.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I don’t tell lies, boy. Well, not too often.’

  ‘I never knew.’
r />   ‘Knew what? That I don’t often tell lies or that I write to your old man?’

  ‘I know about the lies. Didn’t know about the other. D’you want a bit more whisky?’

  ‘Thank you. And that’s not an invitation for you to have another! It’s getting a bit parky. Winter coming on far too quick.’

  ‘Far too quickly, Dr Mac. Does my old man write back?’ Jake was slightly defensive. ‘He’s not too good with words.’

  ‘Bless you, boy. He does well enough. Now, a couple of things, laddie. I’ve business in Wellington in a couple of weeks. Thought I’d take you down so you can see the place. You’ll miss a day or so of school but old Gibbons says that’s neither here nor there. What d’you say?’

  ‘It’s a long way for me to drive,’ said Jake, smiling.’

  ‘Little devil. We’ll catch the night train. Stay at the Midland, always put up there. I’ll have Molly do me a list and we can get you kitted out a bit better.’

  ‘It’s about time I wrote to Dad again,’ said Jake. ‘May I have another whisky? To celebrate? Dear Dad, your son Jake, the young gentleman, is going to visit the capital of his new country.’ He smiled broadly.

  ‘You do me a world of good, boy, when you smile. Yes. Pour yourself the smallest of tots because now I’m afraid I’ve got to wipe that smile off your face.’

  ‘What?’ Apprehensive. ‘What do you have to tell me?’ No smile now.

  ‘Pearson is out of borstal,’ the doctor said. There was moment of silence. ‘It was as well you knew.’ Another moment. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Jacob. You’ll be all right.’ He looked at the boy and got to his feet. ‘Come here. Come on. Come here,’ and as Jake allowed himself to be comforted, the old man went on speaking. ‘You’ll like as not never see him. He’ll keep his distance, you mark my words. If he knows what’s good for him, that bastard will be keeping his nose clean.’

  Jake was less certain.

  As he lay in bed that night, sleep not coming, tossing, turning, muttering, ‘Sooner or later, sooner or later, sooner or later,’ half under his breath. ‘Sooner or later he’ll get me. Sooner or later, sooner or later…’ He turned on his bedside lamp, but the glow brought no comfort. ‘Sooner or later he’ll come for me. Then what? This time he’ll kill me…’ As darkness turned to the grey light of early dawn, he fell into a fitful and half-wakeful sleep infested by scraps of nightmare with a cast of two; Darcy Pearson and Jacob Neill. Vengeful Pearson, bloodlust in his eyes. Neill cowering, waiting for the blow to fall.