by Ted Dawe
“Had enough, gang?” Aunty Lorna yelled.
And yes we had.
“Come forward with your hands empty and I will allow you a truce.”
“What’s a truce?” asked Dougal.
“It means she will stop pelting our faces with rock-hard snow.”
He nodded and yelled, “Truce! Truce!” as he walked out into the open.
The rest of us followed. Enough was enough. She had made her point and my hands were now totally numb.
“No more warfare,” said Uncle Frank. “Time for something a bit more creative. We should make a snowman in the middle of the Landrover’s bonnet.”
He was good like that … managed to step in just before things went too far.
We made this figure that fitted neatly in the bonnet-mounted spare wheel. It was a big solid man with his hands on his hips. Uncle Frank showed us how to use sticks to reinforce the arms.
“Snow is the meat, the sticks are the bones. The same way as they make big buildings.”
He could never resist the chance to teach us something.
When it was all finished, Aunty Lorna decided to donate her last two snowballs to turn it into a woman.
“We will call her Boudicca. Heard of Boudicca, Sandy?”
“Should I have, Aunty?” I asked.
“She was a warrior woman from ancient days.” Then she added, “She had sword blades on her wheels. Used to chop up slow Romans.”
“She was probably the one who gave women drivers their bad name,” said Uncle Frank and the two older boys laughed.
Aunty Lorna gave him this dodgy look and I was sure she was going to plaster him but somehow she controlled herself.
Boudicca looked great, a bit like those figureheads on old sailing ships. Aunty Lorna put a sort of crown on her head made of pointy, dark-coloured leaves. By this time everyone was freezing, and a bit wet as well, so we made off down the mountain.
Boudicca survived most of the way down, with Uncle Frank peering around her to see where he was going. As we gathered speed, bits of her began to break off; first the arms and then the head hit the windscreen with a bit splat. Soon after we reached the end of the forested slopes, the Landrover conked out. One minute we were burning along, and the next there is this blrrrr noise and we rolled to a stop.
What was left of Boudicca was dumped on the side of the road while Uncle Frank climbed into the engine bay to find out what was wrong. We all stood around looking in while he worked his way through a number of tests. He pulled off a spark lead and got Aunty Lorna to turn the motor over. Then he pulled off the fuel line to see if the petrol pump was working. Finally he climbed down and stood next to the Landrover. I could tell he was stumped. Everyone was getting a bit edgy because we were cold and tired and I could tell that they were not used to Uncle Frank being beaten by a machine.
“It should go but won’t. It has spark. It has fuel. There must be something else, intangible stopping us.”
He looked at us as we stood around him waiting for the solution.
“What’s that in your hand?’ He said to me.
I looked down. It was my pyramid rock. I held it up.
“That’ll be it.” He said, “We are going to have to take it back.”
Everybody waited in the truck while he and I walked back up to the bush line.
“You should never have taken part of this mountain. It diminishes it.”
I looked at my little rock. “This rock would just be like a flea on an elephant,” I said. “It’s so small it would make no difference.”
“Ah, yes, but the mountain, huge as it is … is just made of many pieces of that size. There is a poet called John Donne, ever heard of him?”
I shook my head.
“What do they teach kids in schools these days?” he said, with a little grin on his face. Then he said, “Donne reminds us of how we are all connected. You and me … and Everyman. He says, ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls…’” then Uncle Frank stopped walking and stared at me meaningfully. “‘It tolls for thee.’”
I thought, “What the hell does that mean?”
Then Uncle Frank talked about how every clod of earth that was washed away depleted the continent.
“What’s that got to do with my stone?”
“Just this … that small actions are important. They add up. And that nothing is separate from anything else. The Maori know this. They would take a rock on a journey down a river, but return it to the river at the end. Seems a small thing, but all big things are just many small things.”
“So my stone is stopping the Landrover?”
“Who knows the mysteries of the combustion chamber? But a tiny grain of sand in the carburettor can shut the whole thing down. A pencil line on a spark plug can cause a short circuit.”
At last we reached a stream.
“Can I throw it in here, or do we have to walk all the way up and place it in exactly the same place I found it?”
He smiled. “Here will be fine.”
I tossed it into the stream bed and it bounced twice before it settled.
Uncle Frank turned to me, “I heard the mountain sigh.”
“I didn’t.”
“It was very soft and you were panting too much, but it sighed.”
I listened intently, hoping to hear another one, but there was nothing. Uncle Frank looked at me as if he knew what I was thinking, then he said, “We’d better hurry back. The others are waiting.” We jogged back all the way to the Landrover without stopping. The moment Uncle Frank turned the key it fired straight away and we were off.
Yes, I know.
That doesn’t prove anything and I don’t have anything else to say about it all except that if something works, then it works. I reckon there’s no need to know all the “whys” every time.
THE TRUE NATURE OF PIGS
AFTER being on the farm a while it was like I had begun to forget there was anywhere else in the world. I did this on purpose, to stop getting homesick. Stop waiting for that call to come. I had made my world shrink to the edge of the farm. When I first arrived I was always wanting to go into the crappy little village which the locals called a town. Or maybe, for a mega thrill, to NEW PLYMOUTH. (Wow! Jostled about by the teeming millions.)
I figured it was just old habits. I had always been pretty closely connected to big cities and malls. I wasn’t like those shopaholic females; I was just used to the routine of it all. Now, I never wanted to go into town any more. What was the point? Anyway, I’d rather hang around talking to Pimpernel. I even began to get into my farm chores.
Sounds weird I know but I really enjoyed chopping wood. When you hit a block of wood just on the right place, it flies apart with a little squeak, like you are freeing it. It is a really nice action bringing the sharp blade back slowly, up over your head and then whistling down on the block at great speed. Sometimes, especially when I was feeling a bit down, I would go out to the wood pile and split blocks until my arms were so weak I could no longer get the axe above my head. Then I would stack it up under the stand which held the rain water tank. Finally I’d wander back to the house all sweaty and throw myself on the couch in the sitting room, too tired to even take my jersey off.
Aunty Lorna would see my red face and bring me in a glass of cordial. Sometimes she would make some weak pun about how I was a chopaholic or did I fancy a chopping trip to the chopping centre. She was great. She knew it wasn’t just exercise, not even about wanting to do chores, it was the other thing, but she never said anything.
The other person I really admired was Pimpernel. Oops. Did I say person? I meant pig. That pig was sure smart. I reckon he could tell my moods. When I was feeling depressed (which was quite often to tell the truth), he would come over and stand next to me real close. I could feel his warm skin next to my leg. He would just stand there, snuffling and looking up at me every now and then.
Other times he liked to play. We had these games. My favourite was the pig push. I would try to p
ush him over and he’d try to stay on his feet. Everyone thinks that pigs are fat and lazy. You know how you say to slackers, “Get off ya bum you lazy fat pig!” Well okay, you might not have said this, but I admit I’ve often said it to people who got on my nerves. These days I know better. Now I would never say that about pigs because they aren’t lazy and they aren’t fat. Cows are lazy though, so I guess they will be my chosen animal of abuse from now on.
Pigs are cool.
THE AUCTION
ONE day Uncle Frank decided it was time to top up the stock numbers so he kept Iain and Jamie back from school and the four of us went to a stock auction. I had never been to an auction before so I didn’t have any idea what to expect. Even leaving the farm was by this time getting to be a strange new sensation. We drove for about an hour down narrow country roads where that springy brown grass grows along the margins and every second corner has a hawk feeding off a squashed rabbit lunch.
In this part of the world all the farms have high barberry hedges so you can’t see much, just a fleeting glimpse through gateways as you flash past. Sometimes there are loads of cows cramped in between the hedge and the road, chewing away behind electric fences. Farming the long acre, Uncle Frank calls it.
All the time we were racing along these country roads the snow-covered peak of Taranaki was rearing up on the right hand side. We lost it behind a hill for a moment or two and then “whammo!” it was there again, in the same place, keeping up with the Landrover, no matter how fast we went. That’s weird huh? The others didn’t even seem to notice it. When I pointed it out to Jamie he just nodded and started singing “She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain when She Comes.” The song went on for the rest of the journey. No one seemed to notice that either.
Finally we came to a big shed surrounded by a maze of wooden railed fences, all by itself, in the middle of nowhere. We had to park the Landrover quite a distance away and walk because every country Joe for miles around, not forgetting his two dogs, has got there before us. The place was loaded with red utes. Red utes must be the hot thing for farmers.
I imagine the scene at the ute shop. Man shambles in (wearing Swanndri, cords and gumboots). Man behind the counter (wearing Swanndri, cords and gumboots) comes out to serve him.
“Can I help you, Sir?”
“Errrm. Forgot what I came here for.”
“Would you like a ute, Sir?”
“Why yes. Kind of you to ask.”
“Any particular colour?”
“Red would be nice, if you’ve got it.”
“I’ll just take a look.”
Disappears for a moment, then returns, triumphant.
“You’re in luck: we just happen to have seventeen red ones parked out the back.”
“Oh grouse!” (Or some such rural expression.)
We wandered around a big corral on planks nailed to the tops of the posts. There were little herds of calves in each enclosure, quite a lot of noise and the rich smell of recent calf shit. Wouldn’t like to fall in there. Mind you there were about a hundred other guys doing the same thing, some of them real old dudes. They moved from pen to pen where the auctioneer, the guy with the mike, tried to set a new world record for fast talking.
Only problem is, you could hardly understand a word of it.
It went a bit like this:
“Now next up is lot thirty-nine. ThreeGallowaysnowwhooo’
sgunnagivemeeightyforstartersno…” A pause for breath. “thatseventydoIhearsixty?
YesIhavesixtyIhavesixtyIhavesixtydollars
Ihavesixtyheythere’ssixtyfive…”
Then the bids start coming in and he gets really excited and goes faster. I look around carefully to see who is doing all the bidding but no one seems to be doing anything. Every now and then someone raises an eyebrow or touches the brim of their hat but that’s about it. They sure play it close to the chest, these old farmer types.
Uncle Frank let us pick out the calves we liked. I chose a blue one. I never knew there were blue cows. It was white really but Uncle Frank pointed out that some of them had a blue tinge, and others were pink. Blue for a boy, he said.
Iain chose a black one with a white stripe around its waist. It was called a Belted Galloway because it looks like it had a big wide belt. It was a good name but quite a handle to carry around. The others were more like your regular barnyard cow, a sort of golden colour with a white flash on their nose. They are called Jerseys. I guess this is because they look like they are wearing a brown jersey. Who knows?
We got six calves in all, one for each of the kids and one for me.
Driving home, Uncle Frank met some other farmer going the other way and they stopped in the middle of the road for a natter. We were parked there, door to door. I kept looking around waiting for a car to come roaring up and smash into us.
The other farmer was an older guy who seemed to know the family. I was sure he wasn’t a New Jerusalem type; he was more of your standard issue Farmer Joe.
“Gidday there, Frank.”
“Gidday, Hec, off to the auction?”
“No, I’ve got plenty of stock. Hello, boys. Who’s your cobber?”
Iain answered. “Hi, Mr Gunderson, this is our cousin Sandy. He’s down from Auckland.”
“From the big smoke, boy?”
I nodded.
“Doesn’t matter, you can’t help that.” Then he laughed, I guess it was meant to be funny. He turned to Frank, “Giving the boys a day off school? Naughty, naughty …”
Uncle Frank’s mouth took on a sort of pinched look like he might have been angry. He slipped the stick into first gear and then said, “No. Not a day off school. Just a day at a different sort of school, Hec.”
“I reckon there’s only one sort of school around here.”
“Oh?”
“And I don’t think it’s a great idea to give kids extra holidays.”
“Do you not?” Uncle Frank paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “Well, Hec, that’s almost interesting. We’ll be off now. See ya.”
And then he powered off before the other farmer had a chance to get in another dig.
Iain said, “His son Ashley is the one the twins don’t like.”
“The name caller?”
“Yeah, ’specially Ewan, because he knows he won’t answer back.”
“Why don’t you have a word with him?”
“I have. So’s Jamie, but he only does it when we’re not around.”
“Or he denies it,” said Jamie.
“Well, now you see where he gets it from.”
“You should just smash him,” I said before I had a chance to hold it back.
The boys looked a bit embarrassed, as if they knew I was right.
Uncle Frank said, “We don’t deal with things that way, Sandy.”
I was sure that a lecture was on its way but I was wrong. Nothing else was said on the matter until we had driven on for a minute or so in silence.
“It’s a pity,” said Uncle Frank and we all laughed. He knew what boys were like.
One other funny thing happened on the trip. When we got near the farm he pulled the Landrover over to the side of the road and climbed out.
“What’s happening?” said Jamie, speaking for all of us, I guess.
“Sandy’s driving from here on home.”
I laughed. He insisted the other two got out of the way so I was behind the wheel, and then he squeezed in next to me.
“I can’t drive,” I said, like I was on the receiving end of some joke.
“How do you know? Ever tried?”
I reckon that’s about the dumbest question I ever heard. But then I thought, “Why not?” so I grabbed the wheel and looked all ready.
Doing the clutch and the accelerator thing was hard and I stalled a few times but on the third go we all jerked off down the road. At first I was really nervous and gripped the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles went white, but after a while I got the hang of it and I felt really cool. King
-of-the-worldish.
After a few more miles though I reckoned I had it sussed. I wondered why I hadn’t done this much earlier, especially with Dad being a car dealer and all. There’s a nice rhythm about driving: you sort of surge in and out of the corners.
Iain pointed out the honeycomb house in the distance. I was determined to finish with a piece of styly action. As I swooped into the gateway, I mistook the brake for the accelerator and there was a loud bang as I skidded into the gate at the last moment, knocking it off its hinges. Immediately all my pride and excitement escaped and I slumped on the seat feeling like a deflated balloon.
I was all ready for a slap or at least a telling off but Uncle Frank’s not like that. He just laughed and said, “Sandy, when we talk about breaking through the gates of perception, we don’t mean it literally.”
I knew it was one of W. Blake’s teachings he was laying on me and I didn’t have a clue what it meant but I will tell you this, any teaching that avoids a half hour ear bashing gets my vote. He’s cool that way, Uncle Frank: he sees things differently from everyone else.
THE NEWS
IT must have been nearly a month after I arrived in the country that I knew it was time to go back home. When I first arrived I struggled at everything, did everything wrong, but now I knew that I was on top of things. My stay on the farm had achieved its purpose. I was calmer, more grown up. I knew it was time for me to go back to school and I guess pick things up where I had left off. I even made certain mental preparations. I had worked out a cool farewell speech. Something along these lines. “Hey, it’s been great out here in the country. I can do lots, I’ve lost my angry streak, and yes I’ve learned heaps too. You have to understand that I’m looking forward to being in my own room with my own things. Have a bit of a chat with the dad figure. You don’t need to worry about me. Everything’s sorted. It’s all cool now.”
