Chapter Twenty-four
“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.