Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

Gotta Henry and the Telephone

“The Waikato used to sound different: larks singing their heads off away up in the sky, the creek splashing, wind in the long grass. Today a man can't hear himself think for the chug-chug of milking machines, electricity whining in the wires, people shouting at the tops of their voices down the telephones – where did they get the idea they have to shout?” Uncle Trev took off his hat, held it to one ear, and clapped it on again.

“It was a letter in the
Herald
started it: somebody saying every farmer should have a telephone. Gotta Henry reckoned it wasn't a bad idea.

“
‘
That young joker over in the King Country, Trev, the one who chopped his leg off, if he'd had a telephone in his whare, he'd be alive today.'

“
‘
The Herald said he was clearfelling on his own, away up the back of his block,' I told Old Gotta. ‘A score of telephones wouldn't have made any difference.'

“But Old Gotta had a bee in his bonnet. ‘We should have some way of letting each other know we're in trouble, Trev. What about a flag?'

“Next thing I know, the old coot's got a sugarbag flapping from the top of the cabbage tree behind his house. I went over to see what was going on. He didn't answer the door, so I was about to have a look up the farm when I heard a groan and found Old Gotta lying half-stunned under the cabbage tree. He'd rigged it up for a flagpole, but his sugarbag had got wrapped around itself, so he'd shinned up the cabbage tree again. Can you imagine it? All he could think about was untangling his flag, so the old ninny let go with both hands.

“
‘
It just – oh, me back – it just goes to show that a cocky needs a telephone,' Old Gotta said as I took him by the feet and dragged him inside.

“
‘
A cocky needs enough brains not to let go when he's up a tree,' I told him.

“I couldn't leave the old dunderhead on his own,” said Uncle Trev. “By the time he was on his feet again, I'd put out my own back, sleeping on his kitchen floor.

“Just to show how grateful he was, Old Gotta climbed the young kaik by my back door and rigged it as a flagpole for me, so I could fly a sugarbag to let him know if I needed help. It was just bad luck, he reckoned, that he fell and ricked his back again. Unfortunately, he'd taken the axe up to top the tree, and it came down and clonked him a beaut.

“I was up the back of the farm, saw the sugarbag flying from the kahikatea beside my house, galloped Old Toot down, and found Gotta lying with a lump the size of your fist on his head. It took about six weeks for his back to come right and, all that time, I had to sleep on the kitchen floor, 'cause I put him in my bed. It didn't do my own back any good, I can tell you.”

“Did he go to the doctor?”

“Old Gotta's not too keen on doctors. He'd heard about somebody over in Morrinsville who went in with a boil on his behind, and the doctor turned out to be a woman. It put Old Gotta off quacks for life.

“The day his back came right, I took him home on the konaki, and the moment I left he ran up his flag again. I took Old Toot out of the konaki and galloped back, but there was nothing wrong. Old Gotta was that embarrassed at forgetting what the signal meant, he pulled the flag down, but it stuck and he shinned up the cabbage tree again. He was only halfway up this time when he yelled at me to shove the kettle over the ring and make a cup of tea. He pointed at the back door but forgot where he was and let go with both hands.”

Uncle Trev shook his head. “I had to sleep on his kitchen floor for another six weeks. If I walk a bit sideways today, it's because of that hard wooden floor.

“Then it blew a gale, and the ropes came off both his cabbage tree and my young kaik. I told him to leave them alone: I wasn't going to sleep another six weeks on the floor of anybody's kitchen. But that's when he came up with another daft idea.

“
‘
We don't need a flag,' Old Gotta told me. ‘I read in the
Boy's Own Paper
about how to make a telephone out of two empty cocoa tins. Your voice travels along a length of string, the same way it comes down the wire on a telephone.'

“It happened I had two tins of cocoa in my store cupboard, so he borrowed them and got stuck into drinking cocoa all day, instead of tea – to get two empty tins.”

I nodded.

“Next thing,” said Uncle Trev, “his skin changed colour because of all that cocoa.”

“Brown?”

Uncle Trev shook his head. “Bright yellow. Then his hair fell out and his skull turned blue. He was such a fearsome sight, Old Tip wouldn't let him come near the place. I had to put him on the chain, or he would have taken a piece out of Old Gotta. You couldn't blame the dog.

“One of those door-to-door salesmen had sold me
The Encyclopaedia of Common Illnesses in Farm Animals,
and I went through it from cover to cover. ‘It looks to me,' I told Old Gotta, ‘like you've got horse leprosy.' ”

“What's horse leprosy?”

Uncle Trev looked a bit uncomfortable. “I just made that up to keep Old Gotta amused while his hair grew back. I said I'd get a bell, and a notice to hang around his neck. ‘You're supposed to ring your bell and shout, “Unclean, Unclean,”' I told him.”

“Poor Mr Henry,” I said.

“Old Gotta quite liked the idea, but before I could go into Matamata and buy a bell, his skin cleared up and his hair grew back thicker than before. That's why today Old Gotta reckons if you rub cocoa on your head, it'll cure baldness.”

“What about the cocoa-tin telephone?”

“I'm coming to that. Old Gotta rigged up his cocoa tins with a string tied between them, and he shouted into one while I stuck my ear to the other.

“
‘
What'd I say?' he asked me.

“
‘
Cocoa cures baldness.'

“
‘
It worked,' Old Gotta yelled. ‘Now you say something, Trev, and I'll listen.'

“
‘
You'd hear me anyway,' I said into my cocoa tin. ‘I'm only two feet away.'

“So he tied all his old balls of string together, hooked it up on a couple of trees and the fence, and we tried talking to each other across the paddocks between our two places. It was no good inside, but when I went outside I could hear him bellowing at the top of his voice.

“Things quietened down in the afternoon, so I saddled Old Toot and rode over. Old Gotta stood pointing at his throat: he'd shouted into that cocoa tin so hard, he couldn't even croak. It took weeks for his voice to come back, and he had to write everything down, which was a bit of a problem since he can't write all that good. Besides, he had trouble working his dog because he'd never bothered to teach him how to read.

“Then they brought the telegraph poles up our road, and connected us to the exchange in Waharoa. The only trouble was we were on a party line, and everybody down the road listened in. That's why Old Gotta started whispering, so they couldn't hear, but that meant I couldn't hear him either.

“I tried shouting, but it just scared Old Gotta, so he hung up. Then he'd ring my number again: I'd hear long-short-long, and answer it. ‘Nine K,' I'd say.

“
‘
Is that you, Trev?' Old Gotta'd say.

“
‘
Who else did you think it'd be?' I'd ask him.

“But you never ask Old Gotta a question on the phone, because it always stumps him. He'd stand there the rest of the day, the ear-piece clamped to the side of his head. Nobody else down our road could ring up, because his phone was off the hook. The postmaster in Waharoa said Old Gotta just wasn't cut out to use the telephone.”

“What'd you do?”

“The next thing was that Old Gotta started getting lumbago in both feet from the electricity coming down the wires. I told him he was imagining things, but then he heard about somebody who got electrocuted because he answered his phone during a lightning storm, and all they found was his burnt boots standing on the floor. That was it. Old Gotta tore out his telephone and chucked it into the swamp.”

“How does he manage when he wants to ring somebody?”

“What do you think? He comes over and says, ‘Gotta phone, Trev?' ”

Uncle Trev looked at me. “I cured Old Gotta of the whispering, but now he thinks he has to shout to be heard. If he's ringing somebody down our road, he's bad enough, but if it's a Waharoa number he thinks he has to shriek to make his voice carry. A toll call all the way to Matamata, and I clear out of the house. I don't know what I'd do if he ever rang Auckland. No wonder a man can't hear himself think today. The countryside used to sound different: larks singing their heads off away up in the sky, the creek splashing, wind in the long grass…”

Chapter Twenty-three

Gotta Henry and the Pot of Gold

Wrapped in a blanket and keeping myself warm in front of the stove, I reached down and crinkled Old Tip's ears between my fingers.

“He likes that,” said Uncle Trev. “You know animals can hear things long before us?”

“Like Mum. She's got remarkable ears.”

Uncle Trev looked uneasy, as if Mum was going to pop out of nowhere and send him off home. “The other day,” he said, “I was riding Old Toot up the back paddock, and Old Tip was trotting in front of us when he stopped, pricked his ears, and looked up to get my attention. Old Toot stopped and swivelled his ears around, too. I listened, but for the life of me I couldn't hear a thing.”

“Old Tip and Old Toot are just like Mum.”

Uncle Trev looked over his shoulder. “I don't know that I'd go comparing your mother with a dog and a horse. You could land me in trouble.” He poured the tea out of his cup into the saucer, took a gulp, and smacked his lips. “You're sure you don't want one of these gems?”

“Mum says she doesn't know why she bothers to make them. She says she's sick of lugging the heavy old gem-iron out of the cupboard and over to the stove.”

“I'm very partial to them,” said Uncle Trev. He split another gem and buttered it. “Squeaker Watson's missus bakes a good gem, but nothing to match your mother's. Just look at the colour, will you?”

“Does Mrs Watson let Mr Watson drink his tea out of his saucer?”

“Women don't like a man drinking out of the saucer, but they all do it themselves when they think nobody's watching.”

“Not Mum.”

“She's just too fly to let you catch her doing it.”

“What about Mr Henry?”

“Old Gotta's drunk his tea out of the saucer all his life, except when he's drinking it straight out of the billy. Somebody once gave him a teapot, and he poured the hot tea straight out of the spout and down his gullet. Next thing, he's clamping his mouth around the cold tap. ‘Me tongue,' he said, when he could speak again. Ever since then, he puts the milk into the teapot and pours his tea straight into the saucer.”

“Doesn't he pour it into the cup first?”

“He worked out how long it takes to wash a cup, multiplied that by the number of cups of tea he drinks in a day, and reckoned, if he lives to ninety, he'd save himself about five hundred hours by pouring it straight into the saucer.”

“Gosh.”

“I told him there must be something wrong with his arithmetic, but Old Gotta insisted his figures were right, so I tried putting the milk into my own teapot and pouring it straight into the saucer. But it's a funny thing: I don't really enjoy drinking out of the saucer out at the farm; I only do it when I come in to Waharoa, to annoy your mother.”

Uncle Trev could be very brave when Mum wasn't home. Here he was taking the polish off her lino with his boots, wearing his hat inside, drinking tea out his saucer, and gobbling one gem after another. Worst of all, he'd brought Old Tip inside.

“What did you and Old Toot hear in the back paddock that day?” I asked Old Tip, but he looked at Uncle Trev.

“I heard a skylark singing away up out of sight,” said Uncle Trev, “and Old Satan gave a bellow, but that wasn't what the pair of them were listening to. I giddupped Old Toot, and we hadn't gone more than a chain when I heard something myself.”

“What?”

“A spooky noise like, ‘OOO-ooo-OOO-ooo!' Old Tip trotted over and stood close to Old Toot and me. He's a bit of a coward.”

Old Tip barked as Uncle Trev said his name.

“Mum'll hear that when she gets home, and she'll know you brought him inside.”

“I'll open the window and let out the echo. There.” Uncle Trev sat again. “I giddupped Old Toot, and he took a few steps, stuck his head down, and I shot forward over his neck and landed on top of Old Gotta, who was lying on his back in the long grass, counting out aloud the number of thistle seeds he could see floating up in the sky. That was the strange noise Old Tip and Old Toot had heard.

“
‘
Trev,' Old Gotta says, ‘some of them thistle seeds are drifting this way, and some are drifting that way, and some are drifting another way altogether.'

“
‘
Everyone knows that,' I told him. I lay down and counted thistle seeds, too, and Old Tip lay down and pretended to have a go, but he can't count more than about a hundred before he gets lost and has to start all over again. I tell him if he'd only learn his times tables, he'd be much better at arithmetic, but he won't listen to me. Anyway,” said Uncle Trev, “I was telling you about Old Gotta.

“
‘
How can the wind blow in different directions at the same time?' he asked.

“I started to tell him, but saw he had one eye on a harrier hawk circling up the hill.

“
‘
I was watching that old hawk going round and round till I got dizzy and fell down,' Old Gotta said. ‘That's when I started counting thistle seeds and saw the clouds. Why don't hawks get dizzy and fall down, Trev?'

“
‘
They're built so they can circle without getting dizzy. There'll be something dead up the hill. A rabbit maybe.'

“
‘
He'd have landed and eaten a rabbit ages ago. No, there's something else that's got him interested, and I think I know what it is.'

“
‘
What?' I asked, but Old Gotta shut up, and several times after that I saw him lying in the grass, watching the old hawk circle in the same spot over the hill. ‘There's a swag of rabbits up there,' I said to myself, but one day it clicked. A few weeks before, we'd both seen a big rainbow that came down and finished on the side of that hill. Old Gotta reckoned it was the brightest rainbow he'd ever seen. Now I realised he was looking for the pot of gold, and he thought the hawk had got on to it.”

“What pot of gold?”

“You must know about the pot of gold that's always buried at the foot of the rainbow?”

“I suppose so.”

“Course you do. Everybody does. Well, Old Gotta came over one morning after milking and asked, ‘Gotta shovel, Trev?' I didn't let on I knew what he was up to, but shinned up into the top of my big macrocarpa and watched him sneak up towards the hill with the shovel.

“He spun round a couple of times, as if he felt he was being watched, so I slid down the macrocarpa, ran up the back paddock, climbed the other side of the hill, crawled to the edge, and peeped over. Sure enough, Old Gotta was digging below me, where the hawk had been circling. I snuck right down almost on top of him.

“
‘
You're after that pot of gold, aren't you?' I says.

“
‘
Yeek!' Old Gotta leapt twenty feet in the air. When he came down, he babbled some yarn or other about digging up rabbit burrows. I just grinned and spelled him with the shovel, and we dug a hole about ten foot deep and several yards across.

“
‘
You might have got the wrong place,' I told Old Gotta.

“
‘
That hawk hasn't been circling up here for nothing, Trev.'

“
‘
He's circling because of the rabbits,' I said. ‘Next time we see a rainbow, we'll stick in some pegs and take proper bearings on it where it touches the ground. That way we won't have to dig up half the farm.' ”

“Did you find the pot of gold?” I asked.

Uncle Trev shook his head. “We're still waiting for a rainbow. Look at Old Tip's ears. He can hear your mother coming.”

When Mum came in, she sent me to bed and threw the windows and doors open to get the smell of Uncle Trev and his dirty old dog out of her kitchen. She noticed at once that he'd eaten the gems, and she asked if he'd taken off his hat and his boots.

“I think so.”

“He'd better,” Mum said, “or I'll straighten him out. What did he have to say for himself?”

“He and Mr Henry tried to dig up the pot of gold at the foot of a rainbow.”

“What sort of nonsense is that?”

“You told me about it when I was little.”

“I wasn't talking to a couple of grown men. Looking for the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow, indeed. Next thing you'll be telling me they've been lying on their backs in the paddock, looking up in the sky and counting thistle seeds.”

Even though Uncle Trev had opened the window to let out the echoes, Mum's remarkable ears must have heard everything he'd said. I lay still and held my breath, crossed my toes, and wondered when she was going to say Old Tip had been barking in her kitchen.