Old Drumble (17 page)

Jack tried to think of the roads without Andy driving sheep and cattle along them, without Old Drumble trotting ahead, tail waving like a black and white flag. “If there isn’t going to be any droving, then Old Drumble can become a pisshead,” he said. “It won’t matter, so long as he’s not on the road. Andy told me.”

“You might say that to me,” said his father, “but I’d shy off saying it to your mother; I certainly wouldn’t go saying ‘pisshead’ in her hearing. Andy and Old
Drumble wouldn’t want you getting into trouble on their account.”

“I suppose not,” Jack agreed.

He shifted his behind on the bar, and remembered not to grab at the handlebars. “Are we coming out to cut firewood next weekend?”

“I hope to,” said his father. “Maybe we can get a lift both ways with Bob Murdoch, then Harry could come along, too. He’d be company for you.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Jack. “It’d be good if we could have Andy and Old Drumble for company, too, and Mum, of course. She’s company, even if she does strong-eye me sometimes and makes me tell her all Andy’s stories about Old Drumble and Nosy.

“I don’t suppose Minnie Mitchell would want to come cutting firewood,” Jack said. “Girls aren’t interested in learning how to use a cross-cut and split with the grain, things like that.”

“It’s not the sort of thing girls do.”

“Mum can. She reckons it’s just as well she knows how to use an axe,” Jack told his father. “When I forget to chop the kindling, or break up a butter box for her to burn under the copper, she says it’s quicker to do it herself than wait for me to remember. That’s when she says, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.’”

“I’ve heard her say that on occasion.”

They came round the Wardville turn-off on to the
main road, and the dairy factory was in sight. Jack looked for the top of the brick chimney sticking above the roofs at the far end.

“And she says, ‘If I waited for you and your father to keep me in kindling wood, I’d still be waiting in another hundred years.’”

“Your mother’s a redoubtable woman, but don’t go telling her I said that.” Mr Jackman grunted and shoved on the pedals. “I didn’t know there was a hill here.” They came up the slight rise past Caseys’ place, where Jack looked at the big trees.

“I like walnuts,” he said.

“It’ll be months before they’re ripe. Almost home now.”

Around the church corner, past Harry’s and Minnie’s, past the pig-fern and the bamboo, up the top end of Ward Street, and in the gate.

“Mum!” Jack yelled. “We’re home! Did you know Old Drumble’s going to give up droving and become a pisshead?”

“Are my ears deceiving me?” said his mother.

“I
TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP
about that,” Jack’s father muttered, then gabbled: “Hello, dear! We got a good lot of firewood sawn and split, and the boy was a great help. By Jove, he’s getting to be a weight, doubling him on the bike.”

“My behind’s sore.” Jack felt for his father’s foot, slid off the bar, and rubbed himself.

“It’s going to be a sight sorer, if I hear you using language like that, my boy—oh, that’ll be the telephone! Answer it for me. Why it always chooses to ring, just when I’m about to put tea on the table…”

Jack pushed the stool to the wall, stood on it so he could reach to speak into the mouthpiece, and held the receiver on its cord to his ear.

“Nine K!”

“Is your dad there?”

“Dad, it’s for you.”

“Are you there? Oh, it’s you, Bob…Why, what’s up?”

Mrs Jackman stopped whisking the mashed potatoes around with a fork and turned and stared at Jack’s father.

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Mr Jackman said into the telephone and listened. “I’ll be ready by the time you get here. See you.” He hung up the earpiece and turned the little handle to ring off.

“What’s happened?” asked Mrs Jackman.

Jack felt uneasy at the way his mother was standing, at the way she and his father were looking at each other. Had he done something wrong?

“Old Andy. They found his horse out at the Gordon, on the shingle downstream of the bridge.”

“Nosy,” said Jack.

“No sign of him. Steers up and down the river-bed and all over the road. We’re going to give a hand to search the river. The trouble is all those willows.”

“You get some food inside you before you go.”

“Give me something I can eat in my hand.” Mr Jackman was already chewing a chop as he talked, shoving his boots back on, helping himself to a mouthful of mashed potato, another chop, doing up his laces. Mrs Jackman was pouring boiling water from the kettle on the stove into the teapot and saying, “Jack, pop out and ask Mr Murdoch to come in and have a cup of tea, while your father has a bite to eat.

“You can’t go back all the way out there, searching
into the night, with nothing in your stomach. And you see you take care among those willows. Treacherous things. I don’t know why the County Council doesn’t get rid of them, growing their roots into the river, causing floods.

“It’s quite all right, Jack, you sit down and get on with your tea. Hello, Mr Murdoch. Here’s a sad thing, by the sound of it.”

Again, it was something not just in their voices, but in the silences between them, their glances.

“What’s wrong?” Jack’s own voice was uncertain.

“Nothing’s wrong. Well, nothing that we know of yet. You just get on with your tea.” His mother pushed him down into his chair. “Take care now. It’ll be dark before you know where you are,” and she was standing at the door, bunching her apron in her left hand, holding the teapot in her right, watching his father and Mr Murdoch go out to the lorry, listening to it drive away towards the bottom end of Ward Street.

“What’s happened to Andy, Mum?”

“Far too old to be droving still, a man of his years!”

“Is he all right?”

“Nobody knows anything yet. It could all be a false alarm. We’ll find out soon enough.”

Jack would have liked to chew his chop in his hand, too, but he cut around the meat on the inside of the bone, cut a small slice off that, and jabbed his fork into
it. “What about Old Drumble?” he asked.

“Oh, the dog’ll look after himself. A sight better than a man in the river.”

“Did Andy fall in the river?”

“I told you we don’t know. It looks as if he might have come off his horse. Now, you just get on and eat up your tea.”

“We saw Andy and Old Drumble, this morning, Mum. They were heading out to pick up a mob of steers off Brooks’s place, out under the Kaimais.”

“Did you speak to them?”

“They were too far away to hear, but I climbed on a stump and waved till they went out of sight.”

“I’m sure he’ll be all right. Your father’ll tell us everything when he gets home. Typical man. I wish he’d had time to eat a proper meal, and look—he didn’t even take a mouthful out of his cup of tea.”

“What’s the trouble with willows, Mum?”

“Some people say they hold the banks together, but a lot of others say they cause floods. I’ve never liked them. Untidy things, the way they take over…

“Come on now, eat up your tea while it’s hot. There’s another chop, if you’ve got room for it. And plenty of potato. And I made you a golden syrup pudding because that’s your favourite. And your father’s. Although he does like a suet pudding, what he will call a plum duff. I’ll hot it up for him, when he comes home. And I’ll put his plate
into the oven, though I’m afraid it’ll be dried up by the time he gets back.”

Jack had stopped chewing and was staring at his mother, as she plumped into his father’s chair, her fingers pleating her apron, smiling at him, tears spilling and running down her cheeks.

“There’s no need to worry. Everything’s going to be all right. Oh, those blessed rivers! I’ve never trusted them. And the horses. You never know when they’re going to shy at a bird flying up, or a leaf blowing across the road.”

“Old Drumble’s there,” said Jack. “He’ll look after Andy. He’ll drag him out on the floating island.”

“The floating island! What on earth is the boy talking about now?” His mother’s voice had changed because the telephone had rung again, and she was answering it.

“No, not a thing. Yes, they were just coming in the door, and the telephone rang, and it was Mr Murdoch, and the next thing he was here; that’d be when you saw him driving past. And my hubby rushed out the door, gulping at something in his hand as he went—

“Goodness only knows. Look, I’m just giving the boy his tea, but I’ll ring you the moment I hear anything. Yes. Yes. Goodbye. Goodbye.

“Trust her. Not a movement around the village, but she’s awake to it. I should have known she’d be listening in, on the party line.” His mother was talking to herself, but Jack
knew by her voice whom it had been on the telephone.

“Now, what’s all this nonsense about a floating island?”

Jack stared back at his mother and remembered his father’s warning. “It’s just a story Andy told me, about a floating island in the Waihou River.”

“Yes, well he’s got stories enough to fill a book, if anyone had the energy to write them down, let alone the time to read them. Would you like some cream with your pudding? There’s plenty. Oh, there it goes ringing again. Here, help yourself.”

Much later, Jack woke, and it was dark. There were voices in the kitchen, light shining under the door. He heard his father’s voice, and his mother. And that was Mr Murdoch. But that was somebody else, another man. More noises, feet tramping. A lorry door slammed, then a second time, harder, so he knew it was Mr Murdoch’s. His bedroom door opened, and his mother appeared against the light. “Are you asleep?”

He closed his eyes, lay still, and said nothing. His mother paused. “Everything’ll be all right,” she said, but her voice was funny, and he knew as she stooped and kissed him that things were not all right, that they were never going to be the same again. Then the light went out, the door closed, and he must have slept.

“W
E COULD PLAY DROVERS
,” said Harry Jitters to Jack Jackman one afternoon after school. They were sitting with their backs to the mouth of the tunnel into the pig-fern at the corner of Whites’ Road and Ward Street.

The week before, Mr Strap had opened the school door and rung the bell at nine o’clock, and the long holidays were over. The only time for play now was after hometime at three o’clock.

“We could play drovers,” Harry said again.

“Who wants to do that? Walking along behind smelly sheep all day.” Neither of them had heard Minnie Mitchell coming back from the shops. She stood, looking down at them.

“Playing drovers!” said Minnie, and Jack felt his mouth water, as she tore a flakey bit from the end of the loaf in her basket and licked it off her fingers with a pink tongue like a cat’s. “Some day they’re going to take the stock route around behind Waharoa, so they don’t come along the residential end of Ward Street.”

“I get a hiding if I eat the kissing bread,” said Harry.

“I’m allowed.” Minnie tore off a bit more, and Jack
swallowed. “Anyway,” she said to him, “I don’t know any old drovers; you’re the one who knew him.”

“Knew who?”

“That old drover.”

“I don’t know any old drover!”

“You do so, Jack Jackman. You knew the one who got drowned with his dog, out in the river at the Gordon.”

“I know where old drovers and their dogs go when they die,” said Jack.

“They buried him down the cemetery,” said Harry. “My father went to the funeral, and he said your dad helped carry the coffin, and your mother was there, and she was crying.”

“She was not,” said Jack.

“She was so.”

“She was not!”

“You weren’t allowed to go to the funeral, so how would you know, Jack Jackman?” said Minnie.

Harry nodded. “My father said, after they filled in the grave, they’d heap up the dirt this high, and cover it with the wreaths of flowers. I wonder why they heap up the dirt so high, on top of a grave?”

“That’s because there wasn’t anything inside Andy’s coffin,” said Jack. “It was empty, so when the coffin collapses, the dirt’ll settle down.” He sounded quite certain. “That wasn’t Andy and Old Drumble, in the coffin; not really.”

“Aw! Where are they then?”

“On the floating island where old drovers and their dogs go when they die. And their horses. They don’t have to drive sheep and cattle any more; they just hunt pigs all day, and all night they sit round the campfire, singing and drinking and telling yarns.

“And when the drovers get half-cut, they do the knife and steel dance, and they jump through the flames with the tips of their skinning knives balanced on their noses. Andy told me.”

“You made that up!”

“And because they’re pissed, the flames don’t burn them.”

“Oooh! Jack Jackman, you swore.”

“And the dog that tells the best bullshit story gets a barrel of whisky, and he drinks it empty and sleeps in it for a kennel.”

“I’m telling my mother on you, Jack Jackman.”