Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

Why Gotta Henry Made Old Puckeroo

“Tell us some more about when you were living on boiled spuds and eggs and eels?” I asked Uncle Trev. “You know what you told me the other day.”

“You haven't mentioned it to your mother?”

“Course not.”

“That's okay, then.” Uncle Trev sat down by my bed, took off his hat and looked inside it. “Old Gotta and me, we were baching in our bell tent and living on new potatoes, eggs, and eels boiled in a kerosene tin.

“The rabbits started eating our young cabbages, so we threw up a netting fence around the garden, dug deep enough into the dirt so they couldn't burrow underneath, and we ate rabbits till Old Gotta reckoned he was growing a tail. Then the row of scarlet runner beans flowered, and we were made. Nothing tastes as good as scarlet runners and new potatoes.”

Uncle Trev put his hat back on. “The only trouble,” he said, “was that Old Gotta got gout.”

“Gout?”

“His big toe swelled up that red, you could feel the heat on your face. You only had to point at it, and Old Gotta would let out a shriek. I propped a chicken coop over the end of his camp bed so the netting stopped the blanket touching his toe. I tiptoed round the camp, shifted the chopping block down by the creek, and talked to Old Gotta in a whisper.

“Luckily, Squeaker Watson's wife down the road knew about gout. ‘My grandfather used to get it every summer from eating too many scarlet runners,' she told me. ‘Don't let Mr Henry eat any beans for a couple of weeks and he'll be okay.'

“
‘
I thought it was drinking port wine gave you the gout,' I said to her.

“
‘
My grandfather never tasted a drop of liquor in his life,' said Mrs Squeaker. ‘He signed the pledge in the old country when he was just a boy.' ”

“What was the pledge?” I asked Uncle Trev.

“An oath you swore – that you'd never drink alcohol. You became a teetotaller.”

“What's a teetotaller?”

“Teetotallers never touch the booze, not any kind.”

“Do they drink tea?”

“It's spelt t-e-e. T-e-e-t-o-t-a-l.”

“Whose idea was it?”

“Some wowser or other.” Uncle Trev shrugged. “I've always thought it was your mother came up with the idea, her and the Waharoa Women's Institute. It might have had something to do with the Sallies, too. They used to gather on the corner of Arawa Street in Matamata on a Friday night and sing,
Away, away with rum by gum, with rum by gum, with rum by gum
. And they'd blow their cornets. shake their tambourines, and beat on the big drum. I always thought it would have suited your mother down to a T, belting that big drum.

“All very well for those teetotallers, but it didn't do much for poor Old Gotta with his gouty big toe. He'd left the hard stuff alone ever since coming home from the war, but everyone in Waharoa heard about his gout and said he must be making moonshine out the back of his block.”

“What's moonshine?”

“Home-made whisky. Next thing, the police arrived, a couple of them from over Morrinsville in a Model T, and a mounted cop from Matamata, and they searched Old Gotta's scrub and found nothing, so they searched mine, too.”

“What were they looking for?”

“A still for making whisky. They took one look at Old Gotta lying in our bell tent – his foot hidden under the blanket I'd hung over the chicken coop – and thought they'd found it. They yanked off the blanket, tossed the coop aside, and one of the John Hops poked his swollen big toe with his finger. Old Gotta shrieked blue murder and jumped so high his head split the top of the bell tent.”

“Poor Mr Henry.”

“He thrashed around a fair bit. It took us a while to get his head out of the canvas, and even then I had a job quietening him down. The head sherang's face was as red as Old Gotta's toe, and just then Mrs Squeaker turned up with a basket of fresh-baked scones and a cabbage out of her garden.

“She was so angry at the police for upsetting Old Gotta, she donged the sergeant with the cabbage, and he went for his life. Ordered his offsider to crank his Model T, jumped into it, and the pair of them took off. Constable Murdstone, the mounted policeman, he was a bit more reasonable. He had a cup of tea and one of Mrs Squeaker's scones, and told us there'd been talk of moonshine whisky being made somewhere out the back of Waharoa, and they'd heard about Old Gotta's gout, so they put two and two together and came up with five.” Uncle Trev stopped and looked out into the kitchen to see if Mum had come in the back door while he was talking.

“Yes?” I said.

“I kept Old Gotta off the scarlet runners, and sure enough his toe got better.” Uncle Trev looked out into the kitchen again and said in a low voice, “As soon as he could get around on his foot, he put up a still in the scrub behind his swamp. ‘I'll teach them to say I got gout through drinking moonshine,' he told me. ‘I'll make some whisky myself!' ”

“Whisky?” I could feel my eyes sticking out.

“Keep your voice down. If your mother hears the word, it'll be the hinaki for the pair of us.”

“Real whisky?” I mouthed.

“Real whisky,” Uncle Trev whispered. “Old Gotta made it for donkey's years and nobody ever suspected. The police never found out, because he never sold a drop off the place. That's how you get caught, when you start dropping or sly-grogging.”

“Who drank it?”

“Just us, and a few mates we can trust. It's Old Gotta's whisky –” Uncle Trev nodded and kept his voice low. “Like I was saying, it's Old Gotta's whisky that keeps us so young and healthy.”

“What's its name?”

“Old Puckeroo.”

“Old Puckeroo,” I whispered.

“Old Gotta makes it in batches, enough to last us about ten years, then hides it in a hole in the ground so the cops won't find it. The only trouble is that half the time he can't remember where he buried it. By the time we find and dig it up, that Old Puckeroo's so old it's like drinking liquid gold. That's what Old Gotta reckons. Some of that whisky's been buried the better part of thirty years now. We've dug both farms over but can't find it. You'll know when we do because Old Gotta's bound to have gout.”

“Old Puckeroo,” I whispered again.

“Don't even think about it when your mother's around. With that nose of hers, she'd soon sniff it out.” Uncle Trev dropped his voice still lower. “And with those ears of hers, she'd pick up the word still echoing round inside her house.

“
frisky
,” he said in a big voice. “
frisky
.” He dropped his voice and whispered again. “You can tell her I said you're looking real frisky.”

I grinned and nodded.

“What's more,” said Uncle Trev, “you get better and go back to school, and I'll let you have a taste, just a lick of Old Puckeroo.”

He jammed on his hat, tiptoed out through Mum's kitchen, out the back door, and I heard him crank his engine and drive away. I lay there and grinned to myself and thought I wouldn't tell Mum about Gotta Henry's whisky, but I would tell her I was feeling much better, so much better I felt like going back to school at once. “Frisky,” I was going to say to her. “I feel really frisky.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

How It Was All Due to Old Tip and Old Puckeroo

“I don't believe it!” Mum said. “Mrs Burns told me your uncle's farm and that place belonging to his neighbour, that –”

“Mr Henry?”

“That's him. The one who traipsed into my house behind your uncle, the pair of them wearing their hobnailed boots, and without taking off their hats. I gave them a piece of my mind, I can tell you: all the way out the back door, down the path. And I gave your uncle's lorry such a swipe with my umbrella. They won't be marching uninvited back in here in a hurry, believe me.” Mum pressed her lips together. “Well, now Mrs Burns says their two farms have more grass than all the others down their road put together. How they do it, I've no idea, but they're up to something shady, I'll be bound.”

I told Uncle Trev what Mrs Burns had said to Mum.

“The feed's come away good-oh.” Uncle Trev nodded. “Thanks to Old Tip and Old Puckeroo.”

“Old Tip and Old Puckeroo?”

“It began last century,” said Uncle Trev, “when Old Joe Froth took up the land. Bought it off the Maoris, he reckoned, though what he paid for it nobody seems to know. He clearfelled, burnt off, and pitsawed the timber to build a homestead. Without the bush to stop it, the wind off the Kaimais shifted the house on its piles, so he planted a shelter-belt and an orchard.

“Joe Froth went bankrupt, trying to grow wheat of all things. The bank took over the land and put in managers who had a go at running sheep and dry stock, and the shelter-belt kept growing. After the Great War, the government bought some of the estate and cut it up for returned men, and the shelter-belt kept growing.

“By the time Old Gotta and I got on to our blocks, Joe Froth's shelter-belt was a tangle of eleagnus and grape vines sprawling over half the countryside, with a few poplars and macrocarpas poking their heads through. Nobody said anything to us about an old homestead.”

Uncle Trev looked at me and said, “You're tired.”

“I'm listening with my eyes closed.”

“We put up our bell tent near the shelter-belt. I told you how we used to boil up a kerosene tin full of spuds and eggs to save us washing dishes.”

“Yes.”

“One day, Old Gotta collected a sugarbag of eggs and dropped them in the trough to see if any floated. The lot of them were rotten, so he pushed deeper into the shelter-belt, looking for nests. That night, I asked him why we didn't have any boiled eggs to go with our spuds, and he rolled his eyes and told me, ‘I found a haunted house in the shelter-belt, Trev.'

“
‘
You've been been getting stuck into the Old Puckeroo again,' I said.

“Old Gotta shook his head. ‘I told you I buried the last two batches and can't remember where. No, I was hunting for chooks' nests in the shelter-belt today, and I got lost and saw the door of an old house with leaves heaped against it. I give a bit of a yell, the door creaked open, and something groaned. I dropped me sugarbag full of eggs and scarpered.'

“
‘
It'll be a bit of corrugated iron flapping in the wind, something like that,' I told him. ‘We'll have a look while it's still light.'

“We searched the shelter-belt, pushing through undergrowth, dead leaves falling down our necks, eleagnus tripping our feet, till we came across an old orchard buried under grape vines, and there in the gloom was a door.

“
‘
Hello, the house,' I yelled. The door creaked open, something groaned, and the two of us ran shrieking and didn't stop till we found ourselves out in the open again.

“
‘
You're a cowardly sort of a coot,' I told Old Gotta, and we took our long-handled slashers and started whacking a six-foot track through the shelter-belt.

“We were working away and I let out a big groan, and Old Gotta took off. Then I got scared and took off after him. It was about three days before we started work on the track again. When I heard a groan I ran, but this time it was Old Gotta having me on.

“We cut that track straight through the middle of the shelter-belt and came out the other side without finding any door. ‘You were imagining things,' I told Old Gotta. Then one day he was poking around on his own and he came shrieking out of the shelter-belt.

“
‘
I seen a ghost come out of that door, Trev. Moaning and dancing a jig.'

“I took my slasher and went back in to have another look. Old Gotta wouldn't step a foot inside the shelter-belt, but halfway along the track I found a whisky bottle – empty. I went back and told Old Gotta, ‘No wonder you saw a ghost. You were shickered.'

“He sniffed the bottle. ‘It's one of mine, all right,' he said. ‘There's the date I wrote in ink pencil on the cork. That's the first batch I couldn't find after I buried it. Somebody's getting stuck into our Old Puckeroo, Trev.'

“Old Gotta strode off along the track through that tangle. ‘It must be about here,' he said, and turned in to his right. A few yards and there was the door again. We gave a yell, there was a creak, and something in a dirty white sheet comes dancing out the door and groaning, ‘Whooo.'

“
‘
I know that voice,' says Gotta. He jumps up the steps and pulls the dirty white sheet off the whiskery head of Twilight Harry.”

“Twilight Harry?”

“An old-timer from way back, a swagger. He knew about Joe Froth's homestead in the shelter-belt and used to doss down in there whenever he was passing through.

“When he spotted Old Gotta burying his latest lot of Old Puckeroo, Twilight Harry dug it up and buried it somewhere else. Old Gotta couldn't find it when we were in need of a drink, so he boiled up another lot of Old Puckeroo and buried that. And Twilight Harry dug up that batch and buried it somewhere else. All this time, he was drinking the first lot, digging up a bottle at a time. He was on to such a good thing, he pulled a faded old horse cover over his head and pretended to be a ghost.”

“What happened to him?”

“Twilight Harry died a few years ago in the TB shelters over at Waikato Hospital, so they said, but I reckon he died of the dts.”

“What's dts?”

“Delirium tremens. It means having the shakes and seeing pink elephants from drinking too much. It was a lesson to Old Gotta and me.”

“Did you find where he'd hidden the rest of the Old Puckeroo?”

“Between digging for the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow, and digging for the Old Puckeroo that Twilight Harry dug up and buried again, we must have turned over half our farms. But there was more to it than that.

“You know how a dog watches you digging, and he thinks you must be burying some specially good bones so you can come back later, dig them up and have a chew at them? Well, Old Tip watched us doing all that digging, and decided he'd dig up our special bones and bury them somewhere else, much the same way Twilight Harry had dug up and reburied the Old Puckeroo. Old Tip got stuck in and dug up the other half of our two farms all on his own. Well, a dog's a natural digger, isn't he?

“Old Gotta and me, we never found the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow, nor the buried whisky. And Old Tip didn't find the bones he was looking for either, but thanks to his hard work we levelled most of our paddocks, got rid of the stumps, re-sowed with good-quality seed, and finished up with some of the best pasture in the district. That's why today we've got more feed than anyone else down our road. All due to Old Tip and Old Puckeroo.”

“Mrs Burns told Mum your farms are a credit to you and Mr Henry.”

Uncle Trev looked uneasy. “You'd better keep this under your hat, specially about the Old Puckeroo,” he said. “Your mother wouldn't approve of Old Tip doing all the work. Nor of Old Puckeroo.”

I nodded, tapped my nose, and winked one eye. Uncle Trev knew his secret was safe with me.