Old Drumble

by Jack Lasenby

  “Just a couple. Then I saw Mr Murdoch coming, and I turned and ran back to Griffiths’ corner.”

  “Griffiths’s corner. How often do I have to tell you? So that’s why you got a prickle in your foot, because you were disobedient and went past the corner! I’ve a mind to tell your father to leave that prickle in your foot as a punishment for disobedience. I thought I told you: not a step past the corner!”

  Jack hung his head. “Come on,” said his father.

  “You were lucky, my boy,” said Mrs Jackman, “that a cannibal swagger didn’t come along and eat you, for going past the corner.”

  Jack’s father said, “Give us your foot up here.”

  “If your father had any sense, he’d liven you up with that needle. Next time you want to go droving with Andy and Old Drumble, we’ll have to think about you going beyond the corner, against my instructions.”

  Mr Jackman squeezed, and held up the needle with the thistle on the end.

  “A tiny little prickle like that!” said Jack’s mother. “You should be ashamed of yourself, carrying on like a baby, all because of a thistle that’s so small I can hardly see it.”

  Jack put his foot on the floor and took a step, then a hop, and a jump. Mr Jackman gave him a grin and a nod.

  “Wash your hands, and get up to the table. And don’t throw the towel on the floor when you’ve finished with it, the pair of you. A couple of chains past the corner, indeed!”

  As they were doing the dishes, after lunch, Jack looked at his mother, and saw she had her eye on him. He swallowed, remembered his father’s warning, and said, “Andy told me a story.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “About the Southern Cross.” Jack wondered if it was safe to tell his mother.

  “Well, are you going to tell me the story or not?”

  “He told me how to find south by the Cross. And how he used to steer his mobs of cattle and horses by it, when he was driving them up all the way from Napier, and across the pumice country, the Kaingaroa Plain, south of Rotorua. Did you know Andy used to take a shortcut across the head of the Rangitaiki River, till old Earle Vaile fenced off Broadlands Station?”

  “Mr Vaile to you.”

  “Mr Vaile. The shortcut meant Andy used to head off across the Kaingaroa Plain from near the Rangitaiki boozer that used to be the Armed Constabulary fort during the Maori Wars, and he’d come out on the Rotorua road, getting towards the Waiotapu pub, the Taupo side of Rainbow Mountain. It saved them miles and miles, that shortcut, and he did it all by knowing how to find south by the Cross.”

  “We say ‘hotel’, not ‘boozer’, and I thought I told you to keep away from them?”

  “I haven’t been near the Rangitaiki pub, Mum. Nor the Waiotapu. Andy just told me about them. True! I don’t even know where they are. Not really.”

  “Just as well!” His mother allowed herself a grim smile. “When we were children, your grandfather showed us how to find south by the Cross,” she told Jack. “He always said he could tell the time by where those other two stars were, the ones he used to call the pointers.”

  “Andy said Old Drumble tells the time by the pointers, Mum, and, more often than not, he’ll get it right within a couple of minutes. He told me this ancient Maori story about the Southern Cross.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Thousands of years ago, there was a hero, a boy called Tai Taylor.”

  “Taylor? Funny name for an ancient Maori.”

  “It was a long time ago, and Andy said the language has probably changed a bit.”

  “I see,” said his mother. “Taylor still doesn’t sound like a very Maori name to me.”

  “It’s in the story, how he got his name changed. You’ll see it’s Maori once you hear it.”

  “Oh, yes?” Jack’s mother didn’t sound very sure.

  “Anyway,” Jack told his mother, “there was this wild bull rampaging up and down, scaring everyone in the Waikato—”

  “A bull in the Waikato! Thousands of years ago? Don’t you try to bamboozle me, my boy. I know what you’re up to. A bull in the Waikato? How many years ago did you say this was?”

  “Andy said it was thousands of years ago,” Jack told his mother. He put away a plate carefully, so he didn’t chip it, and took up another. “Andy said it’s one of those stories so old that it’s called a—a—” He stuck on the word, tried to make its shape with his lips, but couldn’t. His mother looked at him and held her mouth the same way he was holding his.

  “Myth?” she asked and Jack nodded.

  “How do you always know?”

  “That’s my secret,” his mother said mysteriously. “Get on with your story.”

  “Andy said it’s called an ancient Maori myth. Anyway, the bull was a bad-tempered Jersey. It chased everyone up trees, tossed their whares in the air, and knocked down the fences. Nobody could do anything about it. People began moving to Auckland to get away from the wild bull.”

  “I suppose there was a city up there, Auckland, all those thousands of years ago?”

  “Andy says so. In those days, this boy called Tai Taylor, lived up our end of Ward Street, in Waharoa. His house burned down a few thousand years ago, so you can’t see it, but Andy says there might be a few totara piles still standing under the pig-fern on the corner of Whites’ Road, if you threw a match into it and cleared it away.”

  “Has it occurred to you,” said his mother, “that the pig-fern on the corner burns down at least twice a year, that some larrikin or other always throws a match into it when it’s dry? Or that some wicked, disobedient little boy sets fire to the fern while sitting in it and smoking tobacco?” Mrs Jackman fixed Jack with her strong eye.

  “I never smoke tobacco!” Jack gabbled. “Harry Jitters smoked his father’s pipe once, and he was sick all over his feet. They stunk for ages. Everyone could smell them in school.”

  “Serves him right!” his mother declared and sniffed loudly. “I can smell tobacco on a small boy halfway down the street…

  “If there ever were any old totara piles on that corner, they’d have been ashes long ago,” she told Jack. “You know how totara burns.”

  Jack wanted his mother to forget about smoking tobacco. “One day,” he rattled on with his story, “the kids came out of school at three o’clock, and the bull was waiting for them outside the gate, frothing and bellowing. The girls all shrieked and ran back inside, and the boys climbed up in the chestnut trees, but Tai Taylor stood there, ’cause he was a hero and, when the bull charged, he waved his school bag in front of its nose and the bull tried to hook it with his horns.

  “Tai Taylor stepped aside, and the bull followed the school bag with its eyes, so its horns missed him. It was so angry, it spun round and had another go. Tai waved his school bag, the bull followed it with its eyes, and Tai knelt so the horns went over his head.

  “The third time, the bull hooked left and right and would have gored him, but Tai jumped so high the horns went under his feet. Before it could turn for another charge, Tai grabbed the bull’s tail and took a turn around the trunk of the nearest chestnut tree.”

  Jack felt his mother’s eye on him. He stopped gabbling, and blushed.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Why the Pointers Go Around the

  Southern Cross, Why Mum’s Mother Told Her

  Not to Follow Smoky Rawiri, and

  Why You Chip the Bark Off the Log First.

  JACK FELT HIS MOTHER’S EYE on him. “Bosh! You expect me to believe that sort of taradiddle, that a bull’s tail could go around one of those enormous old chestnuts?” she demanded.

  “They were just little trees, all those thousands of years ago,” Jack said quickly. “So the bull’s tail went right round the trunk, no trouble.”

  “That’d be so,” said his mother. Jack didn’t notice the tone of her voice and plunged deeper.

  “The bull was going so fast, it wound itself round the tree like a spring. When its nose was snubbed up hard against the
trunk, Tai let go the tail, and the bull came off the chestnut, spinning in the other direction like a spring coming undone.

  “It stood there, eyes crossed, groaning, shaking its head and horns, dizzy from all that spinning, and Tai Taylor took it by the end of its tail, swung it round and round his head, let go, and it shot bellowing up into the sky south of Waharoa.

  “Ever since then, you can see the bull charging across the sky each night, and sinking out of sight towards morning. It looks as if it’s hardly moving, but that’s because it’s so far out in the sky. Andy said so.”

  Jack’s mother said, “He did, did he?”

  “People think the Southern Cross is four stars, Mum, but it’s really the bull’s two eyes shining and lighting up the tips of its two horns, as it bellows and charges across the southern sky.”

  “And what about the two pointers? What cock-and-bull story has Andy got about them?”

  “They’re the two buckles on Tai’s Taylor’s school bag shining. When Tai swung the old bull around his head and threw him up in the sky, his horns caught the strap of Tai’s school bag, and took it with him.

  “That’s why the pointers move around the Southern Cross, ’cause they’re really the buckles shining as Tai’s school bag swings round and round the bull’s head like an hour hand on a clock. Andy told me how you find south by the Cross, but I can’t remember how he said to tell the time by the pointers.”

  “And he says it’s an ancient Maori myth, does he?”

  Jack nodded. “He reckons, when there’s a full moon and a heavy enough frost, you can hear the bull roaring away up there in the sky. With your strong ears, Mum, you’d be able to hear it.”

  Mrs Jackman pressed her lips together. “Go on,” she said in a low voice.

  “And that’s how Tai got his name as a Maori hero, in memory of the day he saved all the kids at Waharoa School from the mad bull. Only, the spelling got changed over the thousands of years, so it’s T-A-Y-L-O-R now instead of T-A-I-L-E-R. Andy said so.”

  “And where did he get that rubbish from, I’d like to know?”

  “Andy said Smoky Rawiri told him the story donkey’s years ago, when he was just a little boy and he ran away from home to be a drover.

  “Smoky taught him lots of other ancient Maori myths,” Jack told his mother. “How the waterfall out on the Kaimais was made from the tears of Roimata, the daughter of the taniwha who lives in the pool under the falls, how the Waikato River used to run through Waharoa, and how Captain Cook discovered the South Pole out in the middle of Lake Taupo.

  “Smoky told Andy how Mount Te Aroha was made out of a giant ogre dancing and eating an eel on top of the Kaimais. The sun came up and turned him to stone, and the eel, too. And that’s why Te Aroha sticks up above the rest of the range, and there’s a tall rock like an eel along from it.”

  “If I close my eyes and think hard, I can just remember Smoky Rawiri,” said Jack’s mother. “He was a very old man when I was a little girl, wrinkled and brown from droving. He had a lovely, soft voice, and he told stories galore.

  “My mother told me, ‘Don’t you dare listen to his stories, or you’ll follow Smoky Rawiri and never come home again.’”

  “Why?” Jack asked his mother.

  “Because she said that Old Smoky was like the Pied Piper: only, instead of playing a pipe, he told stories, and all the children used to follow him, wanting more. And he’d lead them away under the Kaimais, and they’d never come home.”

  “Can you remember any of his stories?”

  “I’ve got a house to keep clean, one that my wicked menfolk keep turning upside-down, tramping grass-cuttings through it as fast as I get it swept. Sometimes I think I might turn one of them to stone with my powerful eye.”

  Jack looked away from his mother’s stare. “I wonder if that’s what happened to Andy, when he was a little boy? Maybe he listened to Smoky Rawiri’s stories, and followed him under the Kaimais, and never came home again…

  “Mum, Andy says Smoky could tell the time by the Southern Cross, no trouble, but he’d been doing it for thousands of years. Andy said Smoky was so old, he came to New Zealand from Hawaiki in the fleet of big canoes. Maybe he was in the one that brought the mad bull. I like those old Maori stories, Mum.”

  “There’s plenty of wholesome Christian stories in the Bible without your needing to go listening to that rubbish. Peg that tea towel on the clothes-line. And don’t you dare go mentioning to Mrs Dainty that the Southern Cross is really a mad bull charging down the sky. She’s still getting over that one of Mr Lewis’s getting through her fence.

  “By the way—” his mother skewered him with her eye, “—what’s this that Mrs Dainty told me about you growling and pretending to be a pig, a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Not a pig, Mum! I was being a holding dog, grappling with a boar pig.”

  “Well, just grapple with that tea towel, and you can imagine you’re pegging out the stars in the sky, but don’t go telling Mrs Dainty I said so.”

  “Mum?” asked Jack, in a singsong voice. “Mu-um?”

  “What do you want now?” His mother wiped the bench, wrung out the dishcloth, and tossed it to him to peg out as well.

  “Mum, if you can smell tobacco on me from thirty feet away, does that mean you’ve got a strong nose like your strong ears and your strong eye? ”

  “John Jackman, if you’re not pegging out that tea towel and dishcloth by the time I’ve counted to three, you’ll feel the back of my strong hand. One! Two!—” But Jack was gone.

  He kept a watch for the next few days, but Andy didn’t come driving stock through Waharoa and, the following Saturday, Mr Murdoch gave Jack and his father a lift out to Mr Barker’s farm on the Wardville road.

  They took a billy, some tea leaves in an Edmonds Baking Powder tin, a couple of tin mugs, a bottle of milk, a jam jar filled with sugar, a newspaper-wrapped packet of sandwiches, and a couple of apples. They also took a sack with a couple of other sacks pushed into the bottom, some wedges, an axe, a maul, a length of stick polished by use, an oily rag, a round sharpening stone, a triangular file, and the big cross-cut saw. They put everything on the back of the lorry, and heaved up the bike as well.

  As they drove past Griffiths’s corner, Jack looked at the spabs’ nest in the big poplar and wondered if swaggers climbed trees and ate birds’ eggs. They drove past the turn-off, and he stared at the yellow A.A. sign that said: “Te Aroha”. At Mr Barker’s letter-box, they unloaded their gear. Mr Jackman put a pikau with the tucker on his back, balanced the heavy sack and the cross-cut on the bike and pushed it, and Jack carried the billy and the bottle of milk.

  Up the drive, they left the bike by a gate, and carried everything across to a shelter-belt where wind rolling back off the Kaimais had blown over two pines and a dead bluegum.

  “We’ll saw through the pine first, and get it split—before it gets too tough. Then we’ll get on to the gum; it’ll burn okay this winter. The pine’ll be best kept to dry for the winter after.”

  Jack tried to think of the winter after the next winter, and found he couldn’t manage it. “Will I be old by then?” he asked.

  “About a year and a bit older, that’s all. Grab that stick out of the sack and poke it through the other end of the cross-cut, and you can give me a hand.”

  Mr Jackman started chipping off the thick bark around the pine log. “It can clog up the teeth on the saw,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Splitting With the Grain, What the

  Oily Rag Was For, and the Story of the

  Floating Island That Drifts Up and Down

  the Waihou River.

  MR JACKMAN STOOD ONE SIDE of the log, Jack the other, the cross-cut balanced on its teeth in the nick taken out with the axe.

  “Let it run back and forwards,” his father told Jack a few minutes later, “so the saw does the cutting itself. If there’s a secret to using a cross-cut, that’s it.”

  Letting the saw cut
by itself was a hard lesson. They made a couple of cuts through the pine, then Jack was happy to take his handle out of the end of the cross-cut and let his father saw by himself, while he filled the billy at a trough.

  Jack took care not to get any water out of the trough into the billy, because you never knew what bugs there might be in that stuff. There was just room to get the billy under the dribble of water coming from the pipe at the ball cock. As he walked back across the paddock, the wire handle hurt him, and he looked and saw a raised blister on the palm of that hand, and one on the other. He pushed one, then the other, and they looked full of whitish watery stuff.

  He collected a few pine cones, and built a tiny stack of splinters from dry sticks he’d found under the shelter-belt. His father tossed him his tin of wax matches, and Jack scratched one on the bottom, got the splinters going, and fed twigs into the flames till they caught fire, and he could put on the cones. He couldn’t get a stick deep enough in the ground, so his father belted one in with the back of his axe, and Jack hung the billy off a notch.

  Mr Barker came across for a yarn, and had a mug of tea with them. His cattle dog sat and watched from a distance. Although Jack looked, it didn’t look back at him.

  “You can stack the pine along the fence; it’ll dry out good-oh,” Mr Barker said. “There’s always a draught under a shelter-belt. How are your hands?” he asked Jack.

  Jack showed him. “They say there’s only one thing to fix blisters,” Mr Barker said. “Keep sawing so they burst and form scabs. Once your hands are hard enough, you don’t get any more.”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “You bet! Some men piss on their hands, saying it stops the blisters. Some reckon that meths will harden your hands, too, but there’s always the danger you’ll start drinking it.” Mr Barker laughed and strode away, his dog slipping behind him.

  “I’ll finish this cut and do some splitting. How about filling a sack with cones? That won’t hurt your hands, and then you could have a look in the drain. You might spot an eel.”