by Ted Dawe
Iain had this talent though; he could make things out of that kind of old stuff. Just the junk he found lying around. They were really good things too. Give that boy a bit of copper pipe, half a metre of hose and a detergent bottle and he would come back with a lethal weapon. It’s true. He made guns that fired wattle seeds. The barrel was a piece of copper pipe from an old milk cooler: this was attached to a pistol grip he had cut out of the end of a wooden box with a coping saw. This looked a bit like a gun, but when he added the hose and plastic bottle and dropped a wattle seed down the spout, you really had something that could do damage. It might not seem like much but that very afternoon we were able to murder a rat that was feeding on Pimpernel’s food scraps.
Yeah I know, slaughtering a harmless rat going about its ratty business might seem a bit psycho but you have to understand that things are different in the country. They don’t see animals the same way we do. Every beast is a food unit, a servant or a thief. They don’t do pets like city folk do. I was brought up to speed with this a few nights after I arrived. We were all sitting around the big table eating dinner when I heard this sort of scraping noise on the roof. Next thing Uncle Frank springs to his feet with a hunk of cabbage hanging out of his mouth and lurches off into the bedroom. When he reappears he is holding a huge shot gun and a bunch of red ammo. As he is breaking the thing to load it up, the boys all pour outside, leaving Aunty Lorna at the table trying to restrain Wee Jock from joining them.
I follow my cabbage-munching uncle out onto the frosty lawn to where Iain stands with the others. In his hand is a powerful spotlight and on the roof is a cute furry creature. Just as I work out what it is there is an almighty boom right next to my ear. The possum disappears over the roofline in a hail of shot. All that remains in the torch beam is a little cloud of fluff. By the time we get to the far side of the house the possum, which is missing quite a few of its bits and pieces, drops to the ground in front of us. There is certainly no need for a second shot.
After it was dragged out to the kennels where it was hung up for dog tucker, we all wandered back inside. Everyone else got stuck into their dinners like there had been no more than a commercial break, but I couldn’t. Try as hard as I might, I couldn’t get a single piece of food down. I’d been quite hungry too but I lost my appetite. No one seemed to notice except Aunty Lorna, who came over to me later when we were clearing up and told me to come back just before we went to bed and she would do me some toast. I was pleased she said no more than that. I was struggling to fit in anyway, and then something like that happened. It’s really annoying when your body lets you down like that.
So anyway, during the down time we usually wandered around the farm, looking for things to shoot. I felt good with this pistol strapped to my leg. My blood was up, I was armed and dangerous. The only bad thing was that all the prey seemed to know this and they would keep their heads down. It was really frustrating. When you are not armed they seem to be everywhere, when you are carrying a weapon, the word goes out on the animal telegraph: those annoying little birds that always followed us around the farm, never coming closer than twenty metres, which was about the limit of our range. We were forced to shoot leaves and fence posts, stuff that didn’t move, or if we were really lucky, a moth that had found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Later, when I got really bored, I shot Iain in the bum as he was climbing a fence. It was only a soft one, bit of a joke really. He turned, smiled a really evil smile and shot me in the knee cap. I got this big pink ring with a bruise in the middle. It was the last time I pulled that stunt. Those guys were lethal. Smiling assassins.
But, I should say just so you know it wasn’t all killing in the country, we got to do creative things too. Sometimes especially on wet days, the five of us would go over to make huts in the hay shed. The bales were heavy but two of us could haul them up into place and before long we had built a series of little rooms with connecting passages and untold little nooks to hide in. We wriggled through the holes like rats and snuggled down in our musty caves waiting for someone else to find us. It was good down there, a bit sneezy maybe but it seemed there was an endless number of ways we could build so we would be constantly tearing it all down and rebuilding.
Another time we put on a stage show. Iain rigged up this curtain contraption on a wire across the barn with a big green tarpaulin and we all took turns doing acts. Iain and the twins did a series of gymnastic tricks. They were good too, especially Ewan. Handstands, cartwheels, somersaults and lastly a thing called The Tower of Strength. For this Iain had Dougal climb onto his shoulders and then Ewan climbed up on top of both of them. He was just about to swing off onto a rafter when one of Iain’s legs gave way and they all came down, taking the curtains with them.
I did my usual stand up comic routine, I’ve been doing this for a few years now so I know how to get ’em laughing and keep ’em laughing. It’s called “being on a roll”. Once you get you get them on a roll they will laugh at anything. Even things like this:
“What did the dog say when it sat on the sandpaper?”
Answer: “Rough!”
Jamie surprised me though. I had got used to the fact that he sort of sang continuously, only stopping when he was really concentrating or short of breath. On those occasions he would usually whistle. Bloody annoying really, so I didn’t rate him. Anyway he sang a Scottish song called ‘Johnnie Armstrong’. It was a really long song full of weird Scottie words.
“Some speak of lords, some speak of Lairds
And suchlike men of high degree…”
It told the story of a man who was a bit like Robin Hood except that he stole from the English and gave to the Scots. The King betrayed him in the end, invited him to dinner and then had him killed. Maybe it was because of the kind of story it was, maybe it was the way that he sang it, but I sort of disappeared into that song and for a while it was like I was wandering around in a world far from our own. It was like being put under a spell. Very hard to explain.
THE CRYSTAL POOL
WHEN the days were fine we would make the trek up into the bush. The farm went all the way to where the land rears up steeply into the foothills of Mount Taranaki. There was a little stream which flowed through the farm. Iain had speared a big eel there the previous summer. The boys were determined to show me the Crystal Pool, so we followed this stream into the deep bush. I always thought that I was quite fit but picking my way through the tangle of creepers that littered the stream bed was shattering. It was a slow, hard climb in the hot sun, squeezing through gaps and climbing over rocks as big as houses. I can tell you rocks that size are tricky to climb, especially in gumboots. After about twenty minutes we all stopped talking and just moved on doggedly, trying to save our energy. The only sounds were our panting gasps and Jamie singing softly to himself. I didn’t mind the singing here because it seemed to give us a walking rhythm.
Then, just like that, we were there. It’s completely hidden until you squeeze through the manuka and there’s a pool about the size of a tennis court with a waterfall at one side. It looks as if no one has ever been here before. It’s really quiet, all you can hear is a trickling noise, the wind doesn’t blow, it sort of passes over the top and the water is that green colour you see when you look at a piece of glass from the side.
It’s a perfect place. Everything is just where it should be. Placed with precision and care. I can’t imagine anything more beautiful. All I could do that day was sit on a rock nearby struggling to take it all in.
The others stripped off their clothes and jumped in. They’d been there before and knew what to expect. They must have forgotten what it felt like to see something like this for the first time. How you’re sort of winded by beauty.
All I wanted to do was stare at it. Let it pour into me, and fill every part with its perfection. I wished I could memorise every stone, every fern leaf, the soft green moss I sat on. Part of me knew there was something in this place. Something would make me stronger
. Not my muscles, but on the inside where things were not good. Maybe feed the things that were shrivelled or dying.
I could have easily sat there all afternoon but the boys kept calling for me to come. I stood up slowly, my legs stiff from the climb, took my clothes off and jumped in. The water was breathtakingly cold. It shocked me like a punch to the heart. So cold in fact, that I couldn’t speak: now that’s real cold, I can tell you.
Amazingly enough, after a while my body got used to it and soon I was diving to the bottom with the best of them. Jamie and Iain showed me a trick they do. You put a boulder on your lap and sit on the bottom. Then you can enjoy the underwater world without constantly struggling to stay down. At one stage there were three of us all sitting around, like we’re having a conversation: with huge globs of bubbles coming out of our mouths, hair floating above our heads, and all the while, we were nursing these big rocks like babies. From where we were seated you could look around the whole pool from side to side. I watched one of the twins dog-paddling his way across the silver surface.
Later, when we were all beginning to look a bit blue around our straggly bits we stretched out on the huge boulders at the waterfall end. No one had brought a towel so we dried out just lying there.
“What’s your greatest dream, Sandy?” asked Dougal.
I couldn’t think of one. “I dunno, what’s yours, Iain?”
“We often play this, it’s Mum’s game really. When I was younger I had this ambition to drive a road train across Australia.”
“Road train, what’s that?”
“It’s a truck they have out there, a truck with six trailers. Now I think I would like to climb this mountain in Hawai’i and look into its crater. There’s a lake in it, full of molten rock.”
I’m sure he had the wrong place, Hawai’i is big waves and hula girls but Iain insisted he’s read about it in the National Geographics at school so that’s good enough for me.
“How about you, Jamie?”
He looked sort of thoughtful. “I’m not sure any more. I don’t seem to have those big dreams so much. I suppose getting to sing in a big concert would be kind of cool but I s’pose that’s not the sort of thing you mean. Okay, the concert would be a free concert and it would be in the Sydney Opera House. Yeah, that’ll do.” He looked quite pleased that he’d been able to add a few details.
“Okay little dudes,” I said, “What’ll it be for youse?”
They put their heads together and all you could hear was mumbling for a while and then one said, “No, no, no, that’s not it,” and then they carried on again.
“Right, we’ve got it.”
“Well, what is it?”
“I would like a girlfriend,” said Dougal, like it was a bar of chocolate.
Iain gives a surprised laugh and says, “Why’s that?”
“I want a girl to kiss.”
Well, everyone laughed at that, it just came out of the blue. I like the way little kids say this stuff without worrying about what people will think. Really cracks me up. I wish I was like that.
“How about Ewan?” I ask. I was curious to see if he would be tempted to talk.
But he wasn’t. It was Dougal who piped up again. “He wants to go to the zoo and talk to the animals.”
I see Jamie nodding like it’s the most normal thing in the world. You would have got murdered for that at my school.
“So?” says Jamie.
“So what?”
“So you’ve heard ours, now what’s yours?”
My dream was hovering just above my head, I could almost say it but I didn’t. It was about Mum you see, all the danger lights were flashing. Part of me wanted to say it so much but there was another part, a stronger part that said, “Don’t you dare, that stuff stays here.”
They all stared at me wondering what was going on. Like, what’s the big deal? Finally I said, “I would like to go up Mount Taranaki. Play in the snow.”
They all laughed and I couldn’t stand it. I felt my face redden, I know things were bad so without saying a thing I stood up and dove straight into the deepest part of the pool. There I grabbed onto a rock and stayed under until my lungs were bursting. It is a safe place down there but I had to come up some time.
When I surfaced everything had changed. There was a cloud over the sun and the two older boys were putting on their clothes. Our pool time had finished. Something had gone. We made our way down the mountain hardly talking for the first half hour. I was doing my best to fix the good things that happened into my head. I wanted to keep them there for my black days when everything seems wrong. Seems hopeless.
When we left the bush and clambered over the fence onto the first farm paddock, Jamie started to whistle again and I sensed that maybe things were better after all.
THE NEW JERUSALEM LEAGUE
DURING the week the boys went off to school on the bus. Sometimes in the mornings I would go and wait with them at the gate. Uncle Frank suggested that I might like to go in with them, see what country schools were like. I couldn’t see the point. Sure it was a bit boring when the others had all gone, but then it wasn’t like I was staying much longer, was it? Before long Dad would be on the blower and I would be back at my own school, picking up where I left off.
At the end of the first week something special happened. On Sunday night there was a meeting of the New Jerusalem League. It was made up of maybe ten other families. Most of the ‘Leaguers’ lived around the mountain and would drop in from time to time, but others came from as far away as Foxton, so we only got to see them at these gatherings.
When everyone had arrived there were maybe forty people altogether. I noticed that quite a few of the men had beards like Uncle Frank, and the women dressed in sort of hippie clothes like Aunty Lorna. Some of them seemed really poor though, like they were wearing clothes from the charity shop.
The adults had this sort of routine, they would go around everyone else when they arrived, making sure they shook everyone’s hands, even the babies’ hands. This must have been some sort of New Jerusalem tradition. I remembered being impressed by it when I first arrived on the bus. After this they would wander over to the big veranda which wound its way all around the outside of the Palace of Wisdom. Uncle Frank had built seats there and everyone would sit around talking and waiting for the others to arrive.
Eventually, there would be a sort of roll call and when they were sure that everyone was accounted for, the adults would go inside. At times during the afternoon I peeped in through the door to see what was going on. There was a circle of seats and they seemed to take turns standing up and talking to the others. As well as the talking there seemed to be plenty of laughing, and a fair bit of singing and reciting poetry.
Meanwhile us kids chased each other around the lawn, just being like kids anywhere I guess. Specially kids who haven’t got television.
Eventually we tired of this and went off to the barn to show the others our huts in the hay bales. Because there were many of us now we had to make a big one which could hold everyone. It was surprising how quick and easy it was when everyone was working together. We had really struggled building the little huts. After a while we had a new hut built and guess what? It was six-sided. I don’t know how or why that happened but I suspect it was Iain’s design. There were twelve of us and we all sat in a circle with our backs against the walls and our feet in towards the middle. We had to leave the top open because the room was too big to be spanned by a roof.
One of the kids was a girl about my age, called Lara. She suggested that we have a story telling contest. I figured it was because she had a big story she wanted to tell and I was right. Wouldn’t you know it, there was a magic kingdom called the Land of Doppi, where people walked round just below the surface of the earth like shadows, the soles of their feet touching our own. They did everything in a way that was the opposite of how we do things. She seemed to go on for ever about how the Doppis cried when they were happy and laughed when they were sad, and how
their mothers did all the heavy work because they were so strong and how their fathers just seemed to bake cakes and look after the kids all day.
There was only so much of this I could take because it was all about details. Not enough happened. Too much about feelings and relationships, which as everyone knows, is girl territory. I started jiggling around and she got grumpy. I got the feeling that she had been told that this was a crash hot story and had been listened to for hours.
“If you’re so brilliant, you make one up,” she said.
So I did.
I made up this story about three superheroes who are a bit like Jamie, Iain and me. Their names are Justin Case, Tony Footsore, and the me-one who’s known as Bolt Upright, Secret Agent. We have to perform a number of difficult feats to save our tribe from Certain Doom, who is the ruler of the neighbouring kingdom. We each have special powers and we use them in brilliant ways. Justin Case can invent things out of ordinary objects, he’s like part inventor, part super-handyman; and Tony Footsore is able to use his voice to mellow people out: just the story when you are being chased by angry cannibals or giant bees. Bolt Upright seems to only have one talent and that is for getting into trouble, so it’s handy to have these other two around. I’m really getting into it when the gong goes for lunch and all the others make me promise to complete it later. The twins were hanging out for more about those giant bees. I could see Lara’s face in the gloom across the circle: it looked real pouty.
