Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull

by Jack Lasenby

  “This time, he’d run the loaded wheelbarrow inside the house and get the fire going. Then he’d be too scared to put the wheelbarrow outside, so he’d ask Nellie for another story. By now, the little ones were so tired they climbed into the wheelbarrow in front of the fire and went to sleep, but Old Gotta’s father and mother, old Mr and Mrs Henry – they didn’t get a wink of sleep.”

  “What about Nellie?”

  “Like your mother, she wasn’t scared of the dark.” Uncle Trev nodded and looked over his shoulder again. “Of course, the rest of the family were rank superstitious. They believed all sorts of nonsense. Never bring wattle inside: it’s unlucky. If a fantail flies into a bedroom, somebody’s going to die. If a morepork looks in the window, you’re as good as dead. Never uncross knives somebody else has crossed. Never open an umbrella inside. If you see somebody cross-eyed, spit or they’ll spoil your luck. And you mustn’t get out of the wrong side of bed. They were full of superstitions.”

  “Mum often says I got out of the wrong side of my bed.”

  “I always stick my right foot out first,” said Uncle Trev. “And always put your sock on your right foot first.”

  “Mum says thirteen’s unlucky.”

  “That’s right. And never start a journey on a Friday.”

  “And she says never leave a house by a different door from the one you entered by.”

  “Unless,” said Uncle Trev, “you sit down. It’s all right then. And if you put on a cardigan inside out, it’s bad luck to take it off and put it on the right way. And if you break a mirror, you have to wait seven hours, then bury all the broken bits by moonlight.”

  “And something about an old clock that hasn’t worked for years…” I said.

  Uncle Trev nodded. “Sometimes you wake, and an old clock that hasn’t gone for years is striking midnight. If you hear it strike thirteen times, that means you’re dead.”

  “Can’t you do anything?”

  “Old Gotta’s father, old Mr Henry, had a grandfather clock that woke after twenty years’ silence and struck twelve times.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Stuck his fingers in his ears so he couldn’t hear it strike thirteen, built another house up the back of the farm, shifted the family, and burned down the old house.”

  “Did they take the grandfather clock with them?”

  “Old Gotta keeps it in his bedroom. It doesn’t go, but he reckons it always chimes when there’s going to be an earthquake. He reckons as long as it does that, his house won’t fall down.”

  “Is your house safe from earthquakes?”

  “Mostly. Although a mirror fell off the wall, the last shake we had.”

  “Did it break?”

  Uncle Trev nodded. “I waited seven hours, buried the bits by moonlight, and Old Tip put back his head and howled. Old Gotta heard Old Tip howling, and knew it meant somebody was going to die. He jumped out of the wrong side of bed, flattened his nose against the wall so it bled, barked his shin on a stool, and ran into the door end on and gave himself a black eye. He tore through the house, switching on all the lights. I saw them go on, and went over to make sure he was all right.

  “How was I to know the old coot had left a kerosene tin in the shadows outside his back door? It made a terrific bang when I tripped over it. I slung the kerosene tin on the roof, just to liven up Old Gotta. Clang. Clang. Clang.

  “Old Gotta shrieked, and ran into his old grandfather clock, which chimed thirteen times. I hooted like a morepork, gave a groan or two, sneaked home, and slept like a top.

  “You should have heard Old Gotta next day, about how the earthquake shook his grandfather clock and set it chiming. ‘You won’t believe this, Trev,’ he said to me, ‘but the shock sent a kerosene tin flying up on my roof.’

  “‘I thought I heard shrieking,’ I said.

  “‘Not from me,’ Old Gotta lied. ‘I thought I heard screaming coming from your place.’

  “‘Old Tip,’ I told him.

  “‘That’s funny,’ said Old Gotta. ‘I noticed the lights come on over at your place.’

  “‘Old Tip,’ I said. ‘He runs round turning on the light in every room when he gets scared of the dark.’

  “‘Huh!’ said Old Gotta. ‘The dark never worries me.’ ”

  “I’d like to hear some of Nellie’s ghost stories, Uncle Trev.”

  “What’s this?” demanded my mother’s voice. “As if it’s not bad enough having to have the light on all night, without any talk of ghost stories.” But before she’d finished, Uncle Trev had ducked past her and gone for his life.

  That night, I thought of him, and Old Tip, and Old Toot, and Old Satan, all of them barking because they were scared of the dark. And of Mr Henry waking up shrieking and getting out of the wrong side of his bed, and I snorted.

  “What’s that?” Mum called from her room.

  “I just barked,” I told her. “Uncle Trev said that shows you’re not scared of the dark.”

  “You close your eyes and get off to sleep,” said Mum’s voice, and I knew she was standing at her door. “And let’s have no more of this nonsense. I’ll give that uncle of yours barking, next time he comes in. Of all the crazy ideas…”

  “He and Mr Henry bark at the dark,” I told Mum.

  “They should think themselves lucky, the pair of them, that they’re not put away for their own good.”

  I nearly told her they’d have to put away Old Tip, and Old Toot, and Old Satan, too, but I must have gone to sleep. And when I woke in the morning, I thought it was probably best not to say anything more about barking at the dark.

  Chapter Six

  The Tree That Ate People

  “Are you going to tell me one of Nellie’s stories?” I asked Uncle Trev.

  “If your mother was to catch me telling you a ghost story…”

  “Aw, you said…”

  “It’d be as much as my life’s worth.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “She’d skin me alive.”

  “You said.”

  Uncle Trev looked nervous. “It’s all very well for you.”

  “She always slams the gate when she comes home and sees your lorry outside. Anyway, you can jump out the window.”

  “Last time I did that, she was waiting out there with her broom.”

  “You promised,” I whined.

  Uncle Trev looked sideways, took off his hat, wiped the top of his head, and swallowed. He went out to the kitchen and out the back door. I heard the gate click as he closed it to be safe. He came back out to my room, sat down, and closed his eyes.

  “Are you praying?”

  “Of course not.” Uncle Trev shook himself.

  “Old Gotta Henry was just a boy,” he said, “when his big sister Nellie told her little brothers and sisters a story that still wakes him screaming.”

  “What was it about?”

  “There was a kauri that grew up the top of Mill Creek behind Mercury Bay. The bushmen had dropped all the other big kauris up there, snigged and worked them down to the river with the bullocks, and there was just this enormous one they left.”

  “Why didn’t they chop it down?”

  “It was haunted.”

  “Haunted?”

  “The story went around that it ate people.”

  “How could a tree eat people?”

  “Listen, and you’ll find out. Every time anyone went near with an axe, the huge kauri groaned. If somebody raised his axe to start scarfing, it shrieked. Most jokers backed off at that, but there was one bushman who was determined to cut it down.”

  “What happened?”

  “He and his mate started clearing away the bookau.”

  “What’s bookau?”

  “I’ve told you before: all the twigs and bits of bark tha
t drop and build up around the bottom of the trunk. A big old kauri that’s been growing for hundreds and hundreds of years, he’ll have a heap of bookau up to ten or twelve feet deep. You clear it away so you can saw through the trunk lower down, or you’re wasting all that good timber.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, this bushman started clearing away the bookau, and the big kauri let out a few groans. That was enough for his mate: he dropped his axe and took off.”

  “What about the first man? Why wasn’t he scared by the groans?”

  “He was deaf as a post. He slashed away at the bookau, clearing the bottom of the trunk right down to ground level.”

  “What about his mate who ran away?”

  “He sneaked back and watched from behind the trunk of a kahikatea a couple of hundred yards off, his fingers stuffed in his ears so he couldn’t hear the groans. He could see the kauri was dropping its little hard, green pine cones on his mate’s head, warning him to clear off and leave it alone.

  “It was raining, and the deaf bushman was wearing a new oilskin sou-wester made of thick, stiff canvas, so he didn’t feel the cones. His mate ran closer and yelled a warning, but he was wasting his time. The deaf man was building a platform of ponga logs to give him somewhere flat to stand.

  “The big kauri shook itself, and lumps of gum fell out of the crotches where the branches started eighty feet up. They missed the deaf bushman, and he didn’t hear them hitting the ground. He finished his platform, swung his axe, drove it into the tree to start chopping out the scarf, and something red squirted.”

  “What?”

  “Blood! He might have been so deaf he couldn’t hear the shrieks and groans from the tree, but he could see and smell the blood from the cut he’d made.”

  I stared at Uncle Trev and felt a bit sick.

  “The deaf bushman dropped his axe and went for his life, but the giant kauri bent itself back, straightened up, and a slender top branch came off, a sailer. It came down through the air like a lance, skewered the bushman fair through the middle of his heart, and pinned him to the ground, kicking and flapping like a flounder on a spear.

  “You can still see his skeleton up the top of Mill Creek, out the back of Mercury Bay, with that sailer driven through the rib bones. Nobody’s been game to bury it, in case the tree flings another.”

  “Is the enormous kauri still there?”

  “Still there.”

  “What about the dead man’s mate?”

  “He reckoned the enormous kauri was hollow and there was a kehua inside it. That’s what did the shrieking and groaning, he thought. Everybody warned him to keep away, but something drove him to have a look inside the big hollow kauri, so he climbed it.”

  “What about the groans?”

  “He warmed a lump of kauri gum over a candle, worked it between his fingers till it was soft as putty, and stuffed it in his ears.”

  “How’d he climb the kauri?”

  “He buckled climbing irons on his boots, took his climbing hammers, one in each hand, and walked up the outside of the big kauri. As he drove in the sharp tips of the hammers, the kauri shrieked, and it bled as he kicked in the toe spikes of his climbing irons, but he’d stuffed his ears with gum, remember, and since he was looking straight up the trunk, he didn’t see the blood that squirted out. By the time he reached the first branches, about eighty feet up, that side of the big kauri was awash with blood.”

  My head felt dizzy and I wished I hadn’t asked for a ghost story.

  “The man lowered himself out of sight, down the hollow inside of the tree, and some terrible shrieks and screams came out.”

  “Who heard them?”

  “A couple of other bushmen were watching to see what happened, and when they heard the screams, they ran for their lives.”

  “What about the man inside the tree?”

  “Some people reckon the big kauri ate him, and that’s why nobody’s game to go near the tree, let alone chop it down, because it screams and bleeds real blood – from all the people it’s eaten. That’s what the old folk say.”

  I stared at Uncle Trev.

  “Now don’t you go mentioning that story to your mother.”

  I shook my head. “Did Nellie tell that story to her brothers and sisters?”

  “That’s how Gotta Henry heard it, when he was a little boy. And it still scares him. It scares me, just telling it to you. I’ll probably have to leave the light on tonight,” said Uncle Trev, “or I won’t sleep.”

  “I’m scared, too.”

  “Why are you scared?” my mother’s voice demanded. We hadn’t heard the gate click. “I hope you haven’t been telling ghost stories to the…Where do you think you’re going?”

  Uncle Trev jumped out the window, and his scream disappeared around the front of the house. Mum tore out the back door after him, but he’d cranked his engine and taken off too fast for her.

  “Can’t turn my back for a moment…Just what’s been going on?” Mum came back in, the broom in her hand.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Then why did you say you were scared?”

  “I was just saying to Uncle Trev that the thunder scares me when it’s really loud.”

  “Thunder? I’ll give thunder and lightning to that man next time he comes in.”

  “Poor Uncle Trev,” I said, and thought of the tree that ate people.

  “Poor Uncle Trev, indeed.”

  “Do you think you could leave my light on tonight?” I asked my mother.

  Chapter Seven

  What Gotta Henry Found in the Middle of His Swamp

  “Old Gotta Henry,” said Uncle Trev, “he never asks for something without first making sure I’ve got it, the cunning old swindler.”

  I wriggled in my bed. I liked Uncle Trev’s stories about Mr Henry.

  “Old Gotta came over one morning, trotting sideways like a young dog,” said Uncle Trev. “I took one look and knew he was after something, and sure enough he glances down at his feet and mumbles, ‘Gotta few staples, Trev?’

  “‘I might have,’ I say. I’m not going to make it easy for him.

  “‘There’s a couple of boxes of totara staples in your manure shed,’ says Old Gotta. ‘Gotta bit of wire, Trev?’

  “‘I’m not sure –’ I start to say, but he cuts me off.

  “‘Any amount of number eight wire in the shed,’ he says. ‘And the barbed wire’s under the sacks in the barn. Gotta few posts and battens, Trev?’ he asks.

  “‘One or two,’ I admitted. Old Gotta knew darned well that I split a heap of posts and battens out of a couple of totaras up the back of my place last winter. The posts should have been worth a few bob, but the price of butterfat slumped, and not a cocky in the district had sixpence to rub on a staple, so I just stacked and left them up there. ‘They’ll come in handy some day,’ I said to myself, but I’d reckoned without Old Gotta.

  “‘I was thinking of putting up a fence across the middle of my swamp,’ he says.

  “‘Now why on earth would you want to do that?’ I ask him.

  “‘A man could lose some stock in there,’ says Old Gotta. ‘The cows get bogged trying to hide their calves in the flax.’

  “I knew,” Uncle Trev said, “that Old Gotta kept his herd near the shed for calving, so there was no chance of them getting bogged in the swamp. But once Gotta’s made up his mind, there’s no stopping him.

  “‘I wouldn’t put my posts in too deep,’ I tell him. ‘You never know what you might find in your swamp.’

  “Old Gotta shakes his head. He knows what he’s doing.

  “‘How are you going to shift that wire and the staples?’ I ask him. ‘They weigh a ton.’

  “‘Gotta konaki, Trev?’ he asks at once. ‘It’s out under the big macrocarpa.’

  “I tell you wh
at,” Uncle Trev said to me, “you can’t beat Old Gotta when it comes to borrowing. He even borrowed Old Toot to pull the konaki, only I had to go over and bring them both home, otherwise I’d have been unable to do a hand’s turn around my own place.

  “Old Gotta came over a few days later, and I asked how he got on with the fence.

  “‘You won’t believe this, Trev,’ he says. ‘When I dug the post holes, I found an old fence buried in the swamp. I must have put it in years ago, but it had sunk out of sight and I’d forgotten it.’

  “‘What’d you do?’ I asked him.

  “‘Put the new posts in on top of the old ones. Reckon they should be okay, Trev?’

  “‘I’ll come over and have a look.’

  “My shovel, pliers, wire-strainer, half-empty box of staples, and a few posts and battens lay where he’d left them. But the wires of the fence he’d just built went down into the swamp and disappeared.

  “‘Me new fence,’ Old Gotta shouted. ‘It’s sunk out of sight, too.’

  “‘Looks like it,’ I told him.

  “‘All me hard work for nothing,’ Old Gotta moaned.

  “‘All my posts and battens,’ I said. ‘All my wire. All my staples. What a daft idea, anyway. Anyone in his right mind could have seen a fence would sink.’

  “‘Now you’re here, Trev,’ said Old Gotta, looking sideways, ‘I’ve got to tell you what I found out in the middle of the swamp.’

  “‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  “‘Out there –’ he nodded towards the deepest part of the swamp – ‘I saw an old hat sticking out of the mud. I didn’t remember losing a hat, so I picked it up. It didn’t come away that easy, because of the mud sucking it down, so I gave a yank and up she came.

  “‘Now you’re not going to believe this, Trev,’ said Old Gotta, ‘but that hat had been sitting on top of a skull.’

  “‘A skull, Gotta?’

  “‘A human skull, and under the skull was the skeleton of some old-timer who must have wandered into the swamp and got himself bogged down like a cattle beast.