“I’M NOT A SLAVE, Mrs Hoe. I like leading Clop. True. I don’t even have to tell him to giddup; he just knows when. And he never steps over the traces.”
“That doesn’t make it right, dear,” Mrs Hoe smiled, and Laura looked around and smiled and nodded, too. They were tipping out more tea from another billy, stirring in sugar.
“Give that man half a chance, and he’ll have you working like a dog. Leave it to him, and he would have had Laura going down to the shed, when she was no older than you.”
Laura smiled and nodded again.
“And who’s going to be doing the milking this afternoon, while he’s finishing off the stack, I’d like to know, with Sam and Jerry both out here?” Mrs Hoe was rattling plates together.
Mr Hoe ignored her. He and the men were talking, rolling smokes, lighting pipes. Laura refilled the billy under the stack with oatmeal water, and cut and squeezed in several lemons.
One or two of the men walked out of sight, over behind the hawthorn hedge. Not like Clop. Jerry had taken off his collar and led him across to the trough. He drank and drank and then just peed where he stood, gushing like a hose. And then he chewed away at some grass beside the hedge. He didn’t even sniff at the hay.
“At Home, they built the stack by hand to about a man’s height,” Mr Hoe was saying to Mr Tiddy. “Rammed the shafts of a flat-bed dray into the side, and forked the hay up on to it, and from there up to the crow.
“No sweeps in them days. Carried the hay in on carts and sledges, or forked it into a heap, and dragged it in with a couple of ropes behind a horse. Us boys stood on the bottom rope at the back, held the top one in place, and rode the heaps in, yahooing. We’d skylark and pull each other off.”
I looked at Mr Hoe’s red face and wondered about him being just a boy, skylarking and riding a heap of hay.
“Every wisp of hay forked by hand umpteen times before it got into its place on the stack. You never heard of a pitchfork in our district. It was alway a prong.
“Think times are tough here? A sight harder in the Old Country. My first job was scaring birds off the crops. A boy this high and alone in a gurt-great field all day. Then the stone-picking. The women and girls helped with that, too.
“They did the tedding and the raking by hand, coming behind the men with the scythes, but it’s all different out here. When Ellerys first got this stacker and hired it out, it speeded things up. The horse rakes and sweeps came along before that, of course, and then the tedder. And now this auto-sweep on the front of your lorry. It’s made a difference today.”
“Some chap Butler down in Taranaki makes them,” said Mr Tiddy. “He’s got a name for inventing things.” Mr Tiddy wore glasses, which he took off, huffed on, and rubbed clean on his shirt.
“It makes it easier, no question of that,” said Mr Hoe.
“It’ll go on a tractor, too,” said Jerry.
“The machines,” Mr Hoe said, putting his back to Jerry, “they’re taking all the skill out of it, as well as the hard work. Any fool can drive a tractor. I tell you, the horseman was somebody on a farm in the old days.”
Jerry tried to say something, but his father took no notice.
“The horse might be slower, but the grass came away better, once your hay was in. I’ve yet to see the tractor that drops dung. A tractor drop dung?” Mr Hoe laughed. “Ha!” He still didn’t look at Jerry, took a swig at his tea, and was quiet again. Dad had told me the Hoes came from some place in England, and that’s why their voices sounded the way they did.
“The cockies out Mowbray Road,” said Jerry, “they all dibbed in to buy one of those grab stackers between them.” I leaned against the stack, sniffed the hay, and thought Laura had her mother’s voice, but Jerry didn’t sound like his father at all.
“Out Soldiers’ Settlement, they’ve bought one, too,” Jerry said and jerked his head backwards at the red stacker. Suddenly it looked like the gate sweep, old and sorry for itself. “The grab’ll drop its load just where you want it. Makes it a lot easier, if you’re crowing.”
“Ellery’s old stacker will do me,” Mr Hoe told Mr Tiddy. “It’s built every stack on this farm for years, and on a lot of others around the district. It’ll still be building stacks when those new-fangled grab stackers have fallen to bits. All that weight hanging off a steel pole and jib not much thicker than a length of water piping. What about this one that collapsed out at Te Poi, and injured Claude Petch’s oldest boy?”
“They had the stays wrong,” Jerry said. “One went slack, and nobody did nothing about it.”
Still looking at Mr Tiddy, Jerry’s father shook his head. “And this accident out at Wardville today, Stan Peters hooked by a grab, ripped his arm open. It wouldn’t happen with Ellery’s stacker. Pity about losing the others: we’ll be doing well to get it all in by dark.”
“You’ll have to manage without this one,” said Mrs Hoe’s voice. “I’m taking her over to the house. You come along with me, Maggie. Look at the state of your feet, child.”
“We’ll miss you sore, lass,” said Mr Hoe frowning at me. Suddenly his broad red face split open in a smile that made me smile back at him.
“All of us who hire the old sweep stacker, we could buy a grab between us,” said Jerry, “and get rid of the horse.”
His brother, Sam, grinned but said nothing.
“Pull the grab up and down with a rope behind the car,” said Jerry. “You can build round stacks with the grab easier.”
“I’ve always built a barn stack,” said Mr Hoe. “That’s where the old sweep stacker suits me.”
“Everyone’s getting grabs. We’ll be the laughing-stock of the district, still building old-fashioned stacks.”
I was helping Laura and Mrs Hoe load the empty plates and baskets and billies into the car, but saw several of the men look at each other and grin as Jerry said that.
“You jump in the middle, Maggie,” said Laura, getting behind the wheel. I slid on to the wide seat, got one leg under the gear lever, and heard Mr Hoe saying, “The old ways are the best ways.
“Thanks for your help, Maggie,” he called. “You did a man’s job this morning, lassie.”
“Huh!” Mrs Hoe told him, and she got in, squashing me against Laura. “He hasn’t heard the end of this,” she said, and smiled at me.
After the dazzle of the hay paddock, the friendly farmhouse kitchen was so dark, I stood a moment till my eyes could see. Mr Hoe’s red face laughed at me, then I saw it was a jug shaped like a man’s head on the big dresser along one wall.
The stove was going, and Laura was putting something into the oven to bake, yet it seemed cool in there with the windows and doors open. Air moved on my hot face.
“You’re going to have a lie-down,” Mrs Hoe told me in her busy, comfortable voice. “Doing a man’s job, indeed.”
“I like leading Clop, Mrs Hoe.”
“All the same. Here, let me wipe your face and hands.” I turned up my face, and Mrs Hoe ran a wet cloth over it, smooth and cool. It felt good, having somebody do that.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk! As I expected, seeds all through it. Bring me a brush, Laura. You’re a lucky girl, Maggie: you’ve got your mother’s hair, such a headful of curls she had, poor pretty creature that she was.” She wiped my hands and dried them. “Stand on the mat, while I brush out the bits of hay.”
“I’ll dry,” I said. Laura was busy washing the dishes.
“You’ve done enough for the meantime. Come out here.” Mrs Hoe helped me up into a canvas cot that swung from the verandah roof by ropes. “Just close your eyes, and have a little lie-down. You can lead Clop again later, if you want to, my dear, but you’re to have a rest now.”
I closed my eyes, heard the clink of dishes and voices from the kitchen, the oven door saying “Clunk!” just like ours, and I must have slept. Then I heard the telephone ring, two longs and a short, and Laura’s voice, excited. I blinked, still a bit sleepy, and stretched. A great marmalade cat lay on my feet.
“You’ve had a nice little rest,” said Mrs Hoe’s voice, “and now you’ll be needing to go to the lavvy.” She showed me down the path.