by Jack Lasenby
Table of Contents
Cover
A Bit About Me
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Glossary
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
A Bit About Me
Dear Reader,
I write my books up in the top of my house, where the rafters come to a sharp point. It takes about a year to write a book. That’s why my head has grown pointed, like an upside down V, with ears stuck on the sides.
A pointed head has two disadvantages. One is that I have trouble keeping a hat on.
The other disadvantage is that, working away with my head stuck up between the rafters under the roof, all my hair’s been rubbed off. I think that may be why my neighbour’s dog, Ya-Ya, barks when she sees me. It’s certainly the reason why I spend a fortune on furniture polish, keeping my bald head shiny.
I just thought you might like to read these bits about me. Most people I know are more interested in the author than his books. I think that’s daft, but then Ya-Ya must think I’m daft, or she wouldn’t bark at me.
Having a pointed head has two advantages. When I stand on my head, the point digs into the ground, so I can kick my legs around without falling over. It also comes in handy for making holes in the garden, when I’m planting vegies. I’ve tried but can’t think of any other advantage.
Yours Pointedly,
Jack Lasenby
Chapter One
Why Jack Jackman
Liked Living in Ward Street.
JACK JACKMAN LIKED LIVING in Ward Street because it was the stock route through Waharoa.
What he liked best was sitting on top of the gatepost and watching the mobs of sheep and cattle go past. Best of all was when the drovers and dogs came cracking whips, whistling, barking, and running a bad-tempered Jersey bull along Ward Street. That was so exciting, Jack once stood up and fell off the gatepost.
After that, he used to climb down and watch through the fence as the bull trundled past, rolling its little eye, and slavering dribble. Once, Jack poked out his tongue and was scared the bull had seen him. Another time, he heard a squelch from a bull’s insides, as it trotted past and, despite his terror, he thought it was crying and felt sorry for it.
“When I grow up, I’m going to be a drover,” he told his mother.
“We’ll see,” she told him.
“But I’m not going to chase the bulls till they cry.”
“They only push them through Waharoa, so they don’t have a chance to give any trouble. Once they’re out on the road again, away from the houses, they’ll take it easy.”
“Do you push me, so I don’t have a chance to give you any trouble?” Jack asked his mother.
“I do,” she said, “but once you get the other side of Waharoa, I’ll let you take it easy.”
“When will that be?”
“When you’ve grown up and can look after yourself,” his mother told him. She wasn’t grinning, but Jack wasn’t sure if she was having him on. He never could tell with his mother.
All that happened years ago, before Jack started school. His place was straight across Ward Street from the school, but when people said, “That’s handy for you. Do you like that?” he wasn’t sure.
The school doors, the windows, the gate in the hedge, even the big gate into the horse paddock were all shut for the long holidays. The place looked as good as dead, so Jack didn’t even glance at the school, the day he trotted past towards the other end of Ward Street.
Jack Jackman may not have been sure about living so close to the school, but he sure liked living in Ward Street. Ward Street was the stock route through Waharoa!
Chapter Two
Why Harry Jitters Said “I Am Not Snot!,”
Why Minnie Mitchell Looked at the
Toe of Her Shoe, and What She Told
Jack Jackman About Ward Street.
JACK’S MOTHER ALWAYS SAID theirs was the top end of Ward Street, but Harry Jitters who lived down the other end reckoned his was the top end.
“How do you know?” asked Jack.
“Because my mother says so,” said Harry Jitters. “Besides, when it rains, the water runs down your end, so that makes our end the top end of Ward Street.”
“It does not!” said Jack. “Does so!”
“Does not!”
“Does so!”
“Does snot!”
“I am not snot!”
“Who said you’re snot?”
“What’d you say?”
“Clean out your ears!” Jack roared.
They were chatting near Harry’s place, where Ward Street turns and goes down to the church corner, when Minnie Mitchell came home from doing the shopping for her mother. Minnie was skipping carefully so as not to get dust on her new red shoes, singing artlessly to herself, swinging her basket with the bread, the letters, and the paper. Even though they were the only other people on the street, and even though she skipped right between them, Minnie didn’t seem to see Jack and Harry until she had opened her gate.
“Oh!” she said, turning back, opening her eyes wide, and pointing the tip of one red shoe at the ground. “You scared me! You have no right sneaking up on people.” She tossed her carefully made curls.
Because he had grown up next door to Minnie, and knew better than to argue with her, Harry was silent. Jack, though, was annoyed.
“I did not sneak up!” he said.
Minnie ignored him and looked at Harry. “What were you two arguing about?” she asked.
Harry was eager to explain. “He reckons his end’s the top end of—” he started to say, but Minnie cut him off.
“You live down the bottom end of Ward Street, Jack Jackman,” she said crisply. Minnie could be very crisp. “Everybody knows that. So there!”
“Yeah!” said Harry. “Everybody knows that.”
“It’s nicer up the top end of Ward Street.” Minnie put down her basket, smiled at the toe of one new red shoe, and patted her curls. “My mother says they’re a better class of people up our end, the residential end.”
“Yeah!” said Harry. “You live down the school end.”
“You’d better go back down your end of the street, Jack Jackman,” said Minnie Mitchell. She screwed her head over her shoulder to look at the back of her shoes, the way she’d seen her mother checking the seams of her stockings before she went out. “We don’t want your sort up here: you belong down the bottom end. So there!”
Chapter Three
Why Mrs Mitchell Jumped Up and Down,
Why Harry Stood With His Head Tipped
Well Back, and How Jack’s Mother Knew
Everything He Was Up To.
“SOME DAY,” Minnie Mitchell told Jack Jackman crisply, “my mother says, some day they’r
e going to change the stock route through Waharoa. They’re going to stop the dirty old drovers and their dirty old dogs coming past our place, but they’ll still drive their smelly old cows and sheep along your end of the street. The bottom end. So there!”
“Yeah!” said Harry Jitters. “All them stinking old cow plops, and them stinking old sheep poops, too. Your end stinks!” And because Minnie Mitchell was there, he gave Jack Jackman a shove.
Later, Jack told his mother, “I just stuck out my hand to stop myself falling over. I didn’t mean to punch his nose.”
Harry Jitters felt his nose, saw the blood on his hand, and ran bawling for his mother.
“Look what you’ve done!” Minnie Mitchell screamed. “You killed poor Harry!” She clouted Jack Jackman with her basket. “You did that on purpose!”
Jack’s mother always told him boys don’t fight with girls, so he just stuck out his tongue at Minnie, pulled down the corners of his eyes with his second fingers, pulled up the corners of his mouth with his thumbs, waggled his ears with his index fingers, and growled, “Unga-Yunga!,” deep in his throat.
Minnie Mitchell screamed louder and threw her basket in the air so the bread, the paper, and the letters dropped out. “You made me do that, Jack Jackman!” Her face went ugly as she ran shrieking, “I’m telling my mother on you!”
Once before, Jack had tried pulling his face and making his “Unga-Yunga!” noise at Mrs Mitchell, but it didn’t work on her. He went for his life, and hid in the pig-fern around Mr Bryce’s overgrown tennis court on the corner where Whites’ Road cut across Ward Street.
Jack watched Mrs Mitchell come out her gate, grab the basket Minnie had dropped, the bread, the paper, and the letters, and jump up and down. He was too far away to hear, but he could guess what Mrs Mitchell was saying, so he dropped on his knees and crawled along one of his secret tunnels between the brown fern stems.
Safe in his secret possie, Jack stuck out his head through tight-curled fronds thick with brown dust, and took another look. He could see up Ward Street one way, and down it the other way, but he still couldn’t see whether one end was higher than the other. As he watched, Mrs Mitchell went inside, and Minnie Mitchell came out. Then Harry Jitters came out, holding his head well back.
Minnie waved her arms and popped back inside her gate, and so did Harry. Then Harry popped out again, and so did Minnie, and they both waved their arms. Jack thought they looked a bit like the little old man and woman who popped in and out of the tiny house on his mother’s mantelpiece and showed whether it was going to rain or shine.
Harry still stood with his head tipped well back, so he must have been looking at something in the sky, Jack thought, but Minnie stood in her usual way, admiring something about herself.
Jack Jackman jumped out of the pig-fern and shouted, “Unga-Yunga!” He stuck out his tongue, wagged his head, and did his puku dance in the middle of Ward Street. He could tell Minnie was screaming by the way she stood and pointed before running inside, and Harry was bolting for his gate, head still tipped well back.
Jack yelled, “Unga-Yunga!” again and trotted home, feeling pleased with himself.
“I thought I told you not to play in that dirty old fern!” his mother said.
Astonished, Jack asked, “How did you know I was playing in the fern?,” but his mother just smiled to herself.
“I’ve got eyes that can see through doors what you’re doing,” she said. “I’ve got ears that can hear what you’re going to say before you’ve even said it. And I’ve got a nose that can sniff you and tell what you’ve been up to! Don’t you go thinking you’ve got any secrets from me, Jack Jackman!”
Even though he had no secrets from his mother, even though she made him stand out on the back step and brush himself all over before she let him inside, it was good to be home. The only trouble was that Jack still didn’t know whether one end of Ward Street was higher than the other, nor which was up and which was down.
Chapter Four
Which Way the Water Runs,
Why Eating Smarter Pills Didn’t Do
Harry Jitters Any Good, and
Giving You Something to Think About
With the Back of My Hand.
IT RAINED THAT AFTERNOON, and Jack looked at the puddles. The water lay in them and didn’t run up the street; nor did it run down the street. Jack thought of what Harry Jitters had said about it and whispered, “Unga-Yunga!” quietly, in case his mother heard. She mightn’t like it any more than Mrs Mitchell.
As it went on raining, the puddles joined along both sides because the road was lower there. It rained on and on, and Jack noticed the puddles didn’t just join up and get longer: they got deeper and spread towards the middle of the road.
“If this is the bottom end of Ward Street,” Jack said aloud, “the water would run here from the other end. But it doesn’t run anywhere. It just gets deeper and spreads. Strike a light! Harry Jitters doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
To prove it, Jack waded through the deeper parts of the puddles along both sides of the road, and ran through the shallower parts where the puddles were spreading towards the middle. He tried kicking the water with his right foot, which made it shoot up in sheets. Then he tried kicking it with his left foot, but that didn’t work as well.
“Maybe that’s because I’m right-handed,” Jack said to himself. “I must be right-footed, too.” That made him wonder if he was also right-eyed. So he tried closing his left eye, standing on his left foot, pointing with his right hand at Harry Jitters’s end of Ward Street, and kicking with his right foot, all at once. It made a good splash.
Then he ran through the puddles again. He galloped through the shallow parts, but he had to slow down and wade through the deep parts. He stood on his right foot, pointed with his left hand, closed his right eye, and kicked with his left foot—all at the same time. It didn’t make much of a splash, so he tried kicking with both feet at once and sat down in the puddle.
Few cars or lorries came along Ward Street, so it was just a dirt road without any metal. If Jack’s friends Andy the Drover and Old Drumble had driven cattle along it, there were cow plops all over the place. If they’d driven sheep, there were thousands of little black bits of sheep dung like currants. Jack Jackman had once got Harry Jitters to eat a handful by telling him they were Smarter Pills. It was a story he’d heard his father tell Mr Murdoch, the carrier.
“You eat enough of them, and they’ll make you smarter,” Jack told Harry and pretended to swallow a handful himself.
Harry picked up a few, swallowed them, and looked thoughtful. “I don’t feel any different,” he complained.
“You’ve got to eat a decent handful for them to work.” Jack pretended to eat some more, and Harry had another go at them.
“I don’t think they’re Smarter Pills at all. I think they’re just sheep muck!” said Harry.
“Now you’re getting smarter!” Jack told him.
When he tried the Smarter Pills on Minnie Mitchell, she ran and told her mother. That was the time Jack tried pulling a face and saying “Unga-Yunga!” to Mrs Mitchell. And, soon after that, Mrs Dainty, from up the street past the hall, told Jack he was a dirty-minded little boy who would come to no good.
Every now and again, on Ward Street, there’d be the round balls of dung where Andy the Drover had led his horse, following the mobs. The dust, the plops, the dung, and the muck turned to liquid mud when it rained. Where Andy and Old Drumble had driven the last mob of cattle through, a week or so before, Jack could see the dirt poached with tracks, each now a little puddle of water.
Tramping and splashing along, putting his feet in their tracks, mooing, and shaking his head from side to side, swinging his horns, and swishing his tail, Jack tried being a cattle beast. When he stamped, the muddy water shot up between his toes. From under his heels, it shot right up the back of his knees. If he stamped really hard, the muddy water shot up the legs of his shorts and felt funny, so he did that
again. Again and again.
He was mooing, stamping, shaking his horns, and shooting the water right up the legs of his shorts, and wondering if he could get it to go so high that it would come out the neck of his shirt, when somebody swung him off his feet, ran him through his gate, inside the wash-house, stripped off his wet clothes, threw them to soak in one of the tubs, and told him to put on the dry clothes she had ready.
“And if I catch you thinking you’re a bull, mooing and stamping in those puddles again, my boy, I’ll give you something to moo about with the back of my hand,” his mother told him. “The idea! As if I haven’t enough to keep me busy, without having to soak your muddy clothes as well.”
Chapter Five
The Silly Sort of Question Your Father Likes,
Why Jack Stood on a Box and Nodded
and Winked and Clicked, and
Getting a Dub Home.
WARM IN DRY CLOTHES, Jack stood at the window. It had stopped raining and, because Waharoa had free-draining sand under the rich black soil on top, the puddles were already shrinking. Jack watched them getting smaller and said to his mother, “It’s a shame to waste them.”
“You keep out of those puddles,” said his mother, “or I’ll give you waste…”
“Mum,” said Jack. “If this is the top end of Ward Street, why doesn’t all the water run down the other end? If the other end’s the bottom end.”
“As if it’s not enough that I’ve got all this extra work you’ve made for me: traipsing water and mud all through the house! Do you think I’ve got time to worry about which way the water runs along Ward Street, and which end’s the bottom and which is the top? Ask your father, when he comes home. It’s just the silly sort of question he likes.”
While Jack waited for his father to come home, he looked out the window again to see if the puddles ran away. As far as he could see, they just lay there, getting smaller. Already, the middle of the road was clear of water when Mr Kennedy drove past in his flash Plymouth and gave Jack a nod. Mr Kennedy’s car had mud splashed up the side, so he must have come through some pretty big puddles up the Matamata road, Jack thought, as he nodded back.
