THE POST OFFICE STEPS were the warmest in Waharoa, good for sitting on, so long as Mrs Dainty didn’t catch you. The Maoris from down the pa often sat there and talked. I felt the concrete warm on the backs of my legs.
In past the private boxes, rows and rows of tiny red doors, each with its own little keyhole and its number painted black. I tried sitting on the bench under them, but it felt cold. Inside the post office, everyone was winking and nodding and saying hello.
Dad was talking to somebody from the factory—about Mr Rust, I could tell. I rubbed my foot on the shiny brown lino, put my hand up on the tall counter, and Mr Barker stamped the date on it and gave me the strip of sticky paper off a page of stamps. We crossed the road and wandered back, saying good-day to Mr Whimble leading a horse through the big doors of his blacksmith shop, hello to Sammy Searle, the greengrocer, and to Mrs Doleman in the billiard saloon.
Everybody shook their heads and said something: “It’s not the first time, you know,” and “He didn’t give Alec Hoe much choice,” and “It’s a crying shame, that’s what it is.”
Mr Doleman was shaving someone in the barber’s shop, but he saw me in the mirror and winked and nodded and clicked his tongue all at once. His razor held a puff of lather that he wiped on a strip of newspaper. It was too far away to see the black specks of whisker, but I knew they’d be there because I often watched Dad shaving.
Mr Doleman shaved a bit more, and I wondered how he knew which was his left hand and which his right, then realised he wasn’t looking in the mirror: it was me. I turned around to tell Dad, but he wasn’t there.
He wasn’t in the baker’s, so I ran all the way to Mr Bryce’s store where Dad gave me the bread to hold while he found our paper in the stack over on the drapery counter.
“How was school?” asked the Kelly girl.
“Mr Strap says we have to work hard, to make up for all the time we had off while school was closed because of the infantile.”
“Work?” said the Kelly girl. “Wait till you get to high school. Miss Bell gives us that much homework.”
“If I hear anything, I’ll let you know,” Mr Bryce told Dad. “No stories lately?” he asked as I looked at the big jarful of boiled lollies.
“No stories, no boiled lollies.”
I looked sad, but Mr Bryce just laughed his cruel and heartless laugh, then the shop was full of farmers and their wives picking up sacks and boxes of groceries, others handing over their orders, coming and going.
“Two lorries, a car, a buggy, and a couple of gigs,” Dad said, heading home. “A rip-roaring place of a Saturday morning, Waharoa.”
“Don’t forget the cart and somebody’s horse under the trees over by the station,” I told him.
Dad glanced down. “I hope you’re not picking the end off that?”
“Just the kissing bread.”
“Give us a bit?”
“Fresh bread’s bad for you. Mrs Dainty said.”
“Aw, we’re supposed to share. I won’t give you the boiled lolly Mr Bryce gave me for you…Thanks.”
At the corner of Ward Street, Freddy Jones sat on the dirt path outside his gate, pretending not to see anyone. I stuck out my tongue and followed Dad along the track through the pig-fern and ran ahead so I could reach up and open the gate. I put the bread in the bin, the meat in the safe, and the basket on its hook.
Dad was shoving the kettle over the ring, rattling the poker in the grate, putting on coal. He was going to make a cup of tea, read the paper, and enjoy his morning off. I ran back along the street.
“I knew that’s what you were doing.”
Freddy Jones kept his head down. “If you’re so smart, why’d you have to take a look?”
“Just because. What do you call it?”
“A climbing tractor. I invented it. It can climb up a wall.” As he spoke, Freddy’s cotton-reel tractor tried to climb over his finger, got halfway, and tipped. The pencil at one end whizzed around, the rubber ring came undone, and it lay dead like my blind—only it hadn’t shouted “Hullabaloo!”
“You should have seen it before. It climbed over my hand good-oh, and it climbed up my arm, round the back of my neck, and down the other arm.”
I said nothing.
“All on its own.” Freddy wound the rubber band again, turning the pencil against the stub of candle at one end of the reel.
“You’re a big fibber, Freddy Jones. You made that up. Anyway, it’s a cotton-reel tractor. Everyone knows that.”
His tractor went all right across the path, but got stuck where the dirt was churned up by bikes.
“Not much of a tractor,” I said to give him something to think about, and ran home.
“Have we got any old cotton reels?”
“Look in the sewing basket. There’s bread and honey and a glass of milk on the bench. Gulp it down the way you did that luncheon sausage, and you’ll do yourself a harm. I’m not sure I should be giving you fresh bread. Some people say it’s not good for little stomachs.”
“Why is it good for big stomachs, Dad?”
Crackle! Crackle! He turned a page. “Who said I’ve got a puku? I’m older than you. That’s why it’s all right for me to eat fresh bread, hot from the oven, because there’s nobody to tell me off.”
“Is that why Mr Dainty ran away, because he wasn’t allowed to eat fresh bread?”
“I told you to keep quiet about that. What’s Freddy up to?”
“Playing with a cotton-reel tractor. He reckons it climbed up one arm, round the back of his neck, and down the other arm. And he reckons he invented it. I’m going to make a better one.”
“Don’t you think it might be an idea if just for once you let Freddy be better at something?”
I didn’t see why, I told Dad, and he laughed, folded his paper neatly, and put it on the table.
“I’m going to dig the last of the spuds before the frosts come.”
I ran out, climbed into the wheelbarrow, hung on to the wooden sides, and shut my eyes. I heard him sit on the back steps, put on his boots and do them up, felt him pick up the handles. I screamed, as he shouted to scare me and rushed the barrow around the house. Cutting the corner, we skidded. I shot out, rolled over, and skinned my elbow.
“It makes me shiver,” Dad said, “when I see you bleed.” He washed and patted my elbow dry, put on some ointment, and bandaged it. It felt good, having him at home.
“I don’t shiver when you cut yourself.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my job to look after you, not the other way round. Maybe you’re getting a bit big for the wheelbarrow.”
“Oooh!”
We’d been eating new potatoes, but the ones Dad dug now were bigger and their skin didn’t rub off. He drove in the fork, leaned back on the handle, and they burst out of the soil. That’s why I like digging spuds, helping them escape out of the ground. I followed Dad with the sack. You mustn’t leave potatoes in the sun; they go green and that means they’re poisonous.
“I counted twenty-eight on that plant, with all the little ones.”
“Do you want to go along the row again?” Dad gave me the fork. “There’s always some you miss, the first time.”
The fork was pretty big, but the dirt was soft and broken now.
“Why don’t you spear them when you do it?”
“You learn to dig outside and under the plant.” Dad pulled the two I’d speared off the tines of the fork. “Put them aside for tonight.”