A LOT OF KIDS GO BAREFOOT all winter. On frosty mornings, Mr Strap says, “You look as if you need warming up,” and takes us outside. “Ready—Steady—Go!” The winner’s whoever gets round the school first. If you slide over on the corners, everyone piles on top: “Sacks on the mill. More on still.” You take the skin off your knees on the tarseal, and that hurts.
Some kids limp along; some don’t run, and Mr Strap doesn’t make them. The ones who look the coldest, a girl in my class and her brother in standard two, stand and watch the rest of us running and yelling. At lunch-time, they sit alone on the seats under the windows, a long way apart. They don’t even talk to each other. Dad says you should be kind to people like that, but it isn’t easy to be kind to Flora Guy.
On Monday, I showed her my cotton-reel tractor. “Look, it can climb up a book.”
“My father’s got a real tractor that climbs up hills,” said Flora Guy, “and it can go through water over its front wheels.”
As if it heard her, my cotton-reel tractor fell over, the long bit of kindling wood shot round and round as the rubber ring unwound, and the tractor looked silly lying on its side. I could tell what Flora Guy was thinking.
“Come on,” I put it in my pocket. “I’m going to do some skipping.” Flora Guy looked away and said nothing, so I ran and joined the others.
We took turns running in sideways, skipping once, and running out the other side; then we tried Double Dutch with two ropes, one swinging this way, one that, and we all got tangled and the big girls got mixed up with the ropes; then we saw how fast we could go with one rope, the big girls trying to catch our feet: “Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper!” and we all joined in and screamed and fell over in a big heap.
Flora Guy was still sitting over under the windows when the bell rang, and we ran to line up.
Dad wouldn’t be home till five o’clock, so I went down to Mr Bluenose’s after school. I wanted to ask him something. He was sorting cookers in his shed built out of flattened kerosene tins, but he gave me a ripe Golden Delicious and said he was pleased to see me. I told him about Flora Guy.
“When you are sick or miserable, you might want to blame everyone else for the way you feel,” Mr Bluenose said. “That may be why the girl is difficult and sits on her own.”
We took a kerosene tin of apples with bad in them up to the pigs, who stood on each other and squealed.
“They are pleased to see you. Always they are oinking, ‘When is Maggie coming to give us apples and scratch our backs?’ And, look who is standing with his head over the gate, waiting for you to say hello and give him an apple.”
“I kept the best one for you,” I told Horse, who snorted, nudged the apple off my hand, crunched it noisily, and dribbled a few bits.
“If I make a mess all down my front like that, Dad says he’ll put me down in the chook run,” I told Horse. “He says I can eat with them, and fly up and roost with them at night.”
Horse stuck his head down to be scratched.
“I told Dad I’d like to be a chook, and he wished he’d never mentioned it. You’d look a bit funny, perching in the middle of a row of chooks, Horse. Remember the time I taught you to push the wheelbarrow? And the time you pinched the apple and ate the boiled lolly, and my hanky, too?” But Horse just shook his head and whuffled through his big nostrils. He’s not all that good at remembering things when he doesn’t want to.
I ran between the rows of apple trees. Most had been picked, and the orchard was looking tired: yellow and brown leaves letting go of the branches, and slipping sideways to the ground.
“Soon winter will come,” said Mr Bluenose. “Much to be done: lifting the last potatoes and putting them into a clamp; turning the soil over, so the frost can break it up and kill all the bugs; pruning fruit trees; cutting hedges.”
“You’ve still got a lot of vegies growing.”
“Cabbages, caulis, carrots, parsnips, swedes, Brussel sprouts, silver beet, celery: there are some vegetables that will keep in the ground. People still have to eat.”
“I hate winter.”
“Sitting in front of the warm stove, eating your father’s good soups and stews and roast dinners?”
“Oh, I like all that. We roasted a leg of wether on Sunday, and we’re still eating it. Dad said we’d mince up what’s left and make a shepherd’s pie for tea. I love shepherd’s pie, Mr Bluenose.”
“Have you a cat, Maggie?”
“No.”
“Watching a cat will teach you how to enjoy winter.”
“What does Horse do in the cold?”
“He is growing his coat long, to keep him warm. He has plenty of hay. I will put on his cover and, when it is a very hard frost, he will go into his shed at night. Horse likes living in the orchard. He will be comfortable in winter.”
“Remember you told me about how you ran away to sea, Mr Bluenose? And then you were so seasick, you ran away from your ship in Auckland and tramped all the way to Waharoa.”
“So I did.”
“Were you a swagger, Mr Bluenose?”
“I tramped the roads, but I did not carry a swag.”
“What did you eat?”
“On farms, I worked a day here, a day there, and people fed me, and gave me a place to sleep in a shed. I was just a boy, and people were kind. One farmer gave me an old pair of boots, another an old coat. Why did you want to know, Maggie, if I was a swagger?”
“I thought of Mr Rust going on the swag. Where do swaggers sleep on cold nights, Mr Bluenose?”
“Mr Rust who works for Mr Hoe?”
“Mr Hoe gave him the sack for getting drunk and setting fire to his bed. Mr Cleaver told Dad somebody saw him carrying his swag up the stock road towards Matamata and gave him a ride to Te Poi.”
“Mr Rust drinks, not often, but once or twice a year, and Mr Hoe does not approve. But Mr Rust is such a good worker, and he has worked on the farm so long, Mr Hoe will be sorry to lose him.
“These are hard days for anyone without a job. No work, no money; no money, no food and nowhere to sleep.”
“But they must sleep somewhere. You just said Horse has his cover, and his shed.”
“I meant no bed to sleep in. Swaggers sleep where they can: in barns, under bridges. It is cold in winter, but it is dry.”
“Did you sleep under bridges when you walked from Auckland?”
“Yes, and one night under a haystack.”
“Under a haystack?”
“Under a haystack is warm. Sometimes prickly, but also soft and warm. Only you must not smoke, because hay catches fire and burns quickly. It is very hard to put out a fire once it is alight in its heart, the haystack. But yes, warm for sleeping, the hay.”
I liked the way Mr Bluenose’s voice said things differently to everyone else’s.
“Mr Rust’s mattress was smouldering when the Hoe boys pulled him outside.”
“The smoke could have killed him. There are many young men without jobs. That will make it harder for Mr Rust to get one. It is what they call the Depression, Maggie.”
As I ran home, I remembered I was going to ask Mr Bluenose if Horse lay down to sleep or if he stood up all night. Freddy Jones reckoned that horses sleep standing up, but I tried it and fell over when I closed my eyes. Dad said it might be different if you have four legs, but I still fell over. I stopped now and tried standing on one leg, but I thought Horse wouldn’t do that and ran on.