Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

Gotta Henry's Wings

“Gotta Henry's making himself a pair of wings.”

“Didn't he try flying before?” I asked Uncle Trev.

“I don't know how many times I've had to do his milking as well as my own. He sprained an ankle the time he jumped off his cowshed roof with the umbrella. Then he sewed a parachute out of flour bags and threw himself off the top of my big macrocarpa.”

“What happened?”

“The ripcord didn't work, and he came down across a branch that knocked the wind out of him and sprung his ribs. He was just coming right when he built a huge kite, strapped himself underneath, and borrowed Old Toot to tow him up the paddock.”

“Did he go up?”

“Straight up and straight down. The doctor strapped his ribs with sticking plaster and told him he was lucky not to break his neck.

“
‘
Just because my ribs are cracked, my ankle's a bit dodgy, and my nose is broken doesn't mean I'm an invalid,' he said, and built a glider out of flax sticks, with pages of the
Auckland Weekly
pasted on the wings.”

“How'd it go?”

“I towed him down our road behind Old Toot. The glider lifted good-oh, enough to clear the fence, but it rained suddenly, and the paste melted – well, it was only flour and water – and the pages started coming off the wings. Old Gotta crashed in Squeaker Watson's bull paddock, and the bull chased him over the gate – then put its horns through the glider and stamped it to bits. Squeaker's missus reckoned it was the best entertainment she'd had in years. She said Old Gotta cleared the top of the gate by about five feet.

“Then there was the hot-air balloon Old Gotta crashed in the swamp, and the other balloon he blew up with a bicycle pump. He got knocked around in both those crashes. And then there was his flying bicycle.”

“A flying bicycle?”

“Old Gotta reckoned if he filled enough balloons with helium gas and tied them to the handlebars of his old grid, it'd be lighter than air, and he could pedal it through the sky. It turned out he didn't have enough balloons to lift his bike off the ground, not with him on it, so he rode it over the side of the Gordon bridge and came down on the shingle in the riverbed with a terrible thump. ‘Me feet came off the pedals,' he groaned. Squeaker Watson and I did his milking till he could get around again.

“Then he bought an old horse-drawn grader that the County Council had been trying to get rid of for donkey's years. He thought he could put it together with one of those steam-driven traction engines and make it fly.

“
‘
I've taken off the grader blade and most of the wheels to lighten it,' he told me. ‘The rest of it's just the right shape for an aeroplane.'

“
‘
Except it still weighs about a couple of tons,' I said. ‘Besides, how are you going to carry all the coal and water for the steam engine?'

“
‘
I've still got to work that out,' said Old Gotta.” Uncle Trev shook his head.

“Where's the grader now?” I asked.

“In his swamp, like most of his crazy ideas. I told you the other day how I found him lying on his back watching the old harrier hawk circling? Well, he said to me, ‘You know, Trev, those hawks circle around half the day without having to flap their wings.'

“
‘
Yes?' I said to him.

“
‘
If a man made himself a pair of wings like an old harrier hawk,' Old Gotta said, ‘he'd only have to get himself in the air and he could circle around good-oh.'

“He started making some wings in his kitchen, but they got so big he had to take down one wall and move them out on the verandah. Then he shifted them into the barn; now he's working on them under the macrocarpas.”

“What's he making them out of?”

“He scoured every rubbish dump within cooee for old bikes, and stripped the spokes out of the wheels. Light and strong, he reckoned. I told him he'll never take off,” said Uncle Trev. “Even if he gets up, how's he going to flap those enormous wings? ‘You can't just circle around like a hawk all the time, Gotta,' I told him.”

“I saw a flock of sparrows chase a harrier hawk once,” I said.

“They do that, and the old hawk flaps along like a sugarbag gone mad.” Uncle Trev sat looking thoughtful. “I must get home,” he said.

He came in to see how I was doing a few days later.

“Did Mr Henry's wings work?” I asked.

“What's this about wings?” Mum stared at Uncle Trev.

“He was working on them,” said Uncle Trev, “and a flock of sparrows turned up. You said yourself they don't like hawks. It still beats me how they worked out Old Gotta was intending to fly like a hawk, but they did. They chirped till he was nearly deaf, then they mobbed him, pecking his ears and nose.”

I laughed.

“Old Gotta pulled a kerosene tin over his head and went for his life. The old coot couldn't see where he was going, ran slap-bang into the prop on his clothesline, and knocked himself half-silly. By the time he came to, crawled inside the house, and slammed all the windows shut, the sparrows were perched along the gutters, thousands of them, chirping, laughing, and clapping their wings together. You've never heard such a din.

“The kerosene tin was jammed on his head so hard, it took Old Gotta the rest of the day getting it off, and when he looked outside, the sparrows flew down and pecked his nose again. They've had him bailed up inside the house all week. I've been milking his cows and bringing his mail up from his letterbox. He gets a lot of letters, Old Gotta. And he takes that Popular Mechanics magazine. That's where he gets most of his ideas.”

Mum sniffed. “What's he going to cover these wings of his with, I'd like to know?”

“Old Gotta put a lot of time into working that out,” said Uncle Trev. “Nobody's plucked a chook in the district for the last six months, but Old Gotta collected the feathers. He had so many, he built a couple of stacks and covered them with tarpaulins.

“We had a big wind come down off the Kaimais last week. It ripped the covers off Old Gotta's stacks and blew his feathers to kingdom come. The big macrocarpa out the back looks like a gigantic chook with feathers stuck all over it. Old Tip's so covered in feathers, when he barks he sounds like he's trying to crow.”

“What about Old Toot?”

“Feathers stuck all through his coat, mane, and tail. And he's going clucky.”

“A horse!” Mum said. “Going clucky?”

Uncle Trev avoided her eyes. “It looks as if the paddocks are growing feathers. We had to teach the cows how to blow them away before they could get a mouthful of grass.”

“What'll happen?” I asked.

“I don't know,” said Uncle Trev, “but something's got to give.”

He came in the following week and said, “It blew off the Kaimais again, and rolled all those feathers into an enormous ball that bowled down the road and into the Waihou River. Old Gotta was pleased. Sooner or later, people were going to drop to who was responsible.” Uncle Trev felt the back of his head and pulled a little feather out of his hair. “There's still the odd one left here and there.”

“I wonder what he'll think of next?”

“I told you how Old Gotta takes that
Popular Mechanics
magazine. Well, it had a picture on the cover of a rocket big enough to carry a man, and now Old Gotta's talking of firing himself at the moon.”

“It's a pity the pair of you don't both fly to the moon,” Mum said. “There might be a bit of sense talked around here for a change.”

Uncle Trev stuck a hand down the front of his shirt and scratched his armpit. His hand came back into sight holding a feather. He looked at me and winked, and tapped the side of his nose, and I tapped mine back.

“I think you'd better get out to your farm,” Mum said. “I've had enough of crowing dogs, clucky horses, and feathers all over my kitchen. Off you go.” Uncle Trev was already out the back door, but he stuck his head in the kitchen window as he went past and said, “Cluck, cluck, cluck,” at Mum.

“How dare the man.” She reached for her broom, but his lorry backfired, and he was gone. “Don't you let me hear so much as a chirp out of you,” Mum said to me.

Chapter Twenty-five

Gotta Henry's Tablecloth

“Here, shake it outside.” My mother thrust the tablecloth into my hands. “And don't you dare drop so much as a single crumb on the floor.”

I shook it outside, folded the tablecloth, and laid it in the drawer beside our two serviettes, each neatly rolled and pushed through its ring.

“Who gave us the serviette rings, Mum?”

“Mine was your grandfather's. He had it from his father. Yours was your uncle's when he was a boy.”

I looked at my great-grandfather's initials cut into the broad silver band. “What does Uncle Trev use for a serviette ring now?”

“Oh, bless the child. As if that uncle of yours can be bothered with using a serviette, or a tablecloth, or anything else civilised if it comes to that. He and his friend, that Mr Henry, I doubt if there's a serviette or a tablecloth in either of their houses. Besides,” Mum glared at me, “it's called a napkin, a table napkin, not a serviette. That's what my mother always said, and she should have known.

“You'd better have a little lie-down. I'm just going to slip along to Mrs Macdonald's and borrow last week's
Auckland Weekly News
. If your uncle comes in, you can tell him from me that he's not to get you excited.”

Mum had done the dishes, wiped down the table and the bench top, swept the floor, and filled the kettle and put it on the stove while I was shaking the tablecloth out the back door. Before I could lie down, she'd brushed her hair, changed her dress, popped on her shoes, and was standing in the doorway shaking a finger at me. “None of his silly stories, mind,” she said, and was gone.

“That woman spins like a windmill,” said Uncle Trev's voice, and I opened my eyes.

“I didn't hear you come in. Mum's just popped along to Mrs Macdonald's.”

“I saw her, head down and spinning along like a windmill, as I said, and muttering something to herself. I nearly made the old lorry backfire, just to cheer her up, but remembered what she did last time.” Uncle Trev rubbed the back of his neck. “I told Old Tip to bark after her, but he wasn't game to have her on either. He's waiting for you to say hello.”

I looked. Old Tip stood laughing, with both paws on the windowsill.

“Better not open the window,” said Uncle Trev. “It might be a trap: we just let him jump inside, and your mother appears like an avenging angel and smites us with a flaming sword.”

So instead of opening the window I rubbed my nose on the glass, and Old Tip rubbed his nose back.

“Mum told me you and Mr Henry never use tablecloths.”

“Things can get a bit untidy when you're baching. I had a tablecloth, one of your grandmother's, but the last time I saw it might have been over at Old Gotta's.

“The trouble is, you start with a tablecloth, and next thing you've got serviettes, then it's rings for the serviettes, and then you need a drawer to hold the tablecloths and serviettes and rings. There's no time on a farm for all that carry-on, not unless you've got a wife and a big family of girls. Do you realise how much time it takes to wash and starch and iron a heavy damask tablecloth, let alone the serviettes? And all it takes is one drop of soup or beetroot, and they're soaking and bleaching and washing and starching and ironing the whole shebang all over again. It fair makes a man's head whirl.” Uncle Trev wobbled his head to show me how.

“My head whirls sometimes.”

“Not lately?”

“Dr Stirrup said I'm over it now. Not next week, but in a week or two, he said, I can go back to school. Did Mr Henry borrow your tablecloth?”

“I might have put you wrong about that. It just came back to me: I tore up your grandmother's tablecloth for bandages the time Old Gotta borrowed my axe and cut his foot. But he still borrows his tablecloths from me.”

“And does he soak and bleach and wash and dry and starch and damp and iron them?”

“Not quite that,” said Uncle Trev. “But no sooner is the old one dirty than he's got a clean one on the table. Come to think of it, I've never seen his table without a cloth on it.”

“That's not what Mum said.”

“She's never been near Old Gotta's house.”

“Where do all the tablecloths from?”

Uncle Trev grinned. “Every few weeks, Old Gotta trickles over to my place and I know by the cunning look on his face what he's up to. Sure enough, he sidles up to the stack of
Auckland Weeklies
by my chair where I can read them of an evening. He eyes them and says, ‘Gotta
Weekly News
, Trev?'

“
‘
Not the top one,' I tell him. ‘That's this week's. And not the one below it. I might want to look at it again. Help yourself to the one on the bottom,' I tell Old Gotta. ‘Give it a good tug so you don't go upsetting the rest of them.' I might as well save myself the bother. Next thing, there's
Auckland Weeklies
all over the kitchen floor, and Old Gotta's heading out the door with this week's copy.

“
‘
Not that one!' I take it off him and give him the oldest one that he should have grabbed to start with. ‘Here,' I say, and he takes it, grumbling something under his breath 'cause he really wanted this week's, to read with his breakfast.”

“I didn't think Mr Henry could read very well.”

“Old Gotta can read at least as good as Old Tip, not as fast perhaps, but he understands a lot more. I'm always telling Old Tip, if he'd only take a bit longer over reading the
Weekly
, he'd get a lot more out of it. ‘Sometimes,' I say to him, ‘sometimes I think you're only interested in looking at the pictures.' He doesn't like that, Old Tip, he doesn't take criticism too kindly.”

“What about Mr Henry and his tablecloth?”

“He heads home with the
Auckland Weekly
, opens it up, spreads it on his table, munches his tucker, guzzles his tea, and reads the
Weekly
. He's a messy eater, Old Gotta: drops egg yolk, spills his tea, and slops gravy everywhere. I give him a billyful of Old Furry from time to time, and he spills as much as he eats, specially when he's interested in something he's reading – the soup and porridge go flying in all directions.”

“It must be tough on his tablecloth,” I said.

“By the end of the day, when he's made such a mess he can't read that page of the Weekly any longer, he just tears it off and chucks it into the stove to light the fire next morning. That's how Old Gotta starts off every day with a clean tablecloth. I don't know that I'd go telling your mother, though. It's the sort of thing that gets her dander up.”

“Does Mr Henry use serviettes?”

“That's another story,” said Uncle Trev. “I'll tell it to you some time. Hooray.”

I sat up and waved to Old Tip, but all I saw was his tail disappearing around the side of the house. It was a few minutes before Mum came in, and the noise of cranking and backfiring and tooting and rattling off down Ward Street had died down.

“What's that man been telling you behind my back? Why didn't he stay and have a cup of tea like a civilised human being? There's a whole tinful of Louise cake in the cupboard; I only bake it because I know it's his favourite.”

“How was Mrs Macdonald?”

“She said to say hello, and she sent along some of her old
Weeklies
for you.”

“Uncle Trev takes the
Weekly
, and Mr Henry –” I pulled myself up before I said too much. “Mr Henry borrows it from time to time,” I told Mum.

“Borrows it for what? Everyone knows the man can't read a word to save himself.”

I stopped myself just in time. “He likes to look at the pictures,” I whispered.

“Well, if that's all he does with it, then we should be thankful for small mercies,” said my mother. “For a moment, I thought you were going to say he uses it as a tablecloth. Just the slovenly sort of trick those men get up to, baching on their own. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

I closed my eyes.

“That uncle of yours, he's tired you out, hasn't he?” Mum drew the blind, and tiptoed out to the kitchen. She pulled her chair up to the table, sat down, and I heard the rustle as she opened something, the
Auckland Weekly
by the sound of it.