The Haystack (7 page)

D
AD LOWERED THE COCKEREL
till the white-feathered neck lay across the chopping block.

“Want to hold it for me?”

I shook my head.

He swapped hands so his left held the cockerel’s feet; he took the axe in his right hand and raised it. The cockerel, its eye like a bright bead, twisted its head to look. Its neck drooped back across the block.

I wanted to tell it, “Hold up your head.”

The sun shone; the blued sheets dazzled white. I blinked. Chop! Eyes closed, the head lay on the block beside the axe, the beak still wide open, and Dad was holding the body so the blood didn’t go everywhere. It jerked a bit.

“Freddy Jones reckons he killed one, and it ran around without its head for a couple of days. And it was still squawking.”

“They flap around a few seconds, if you put them down, but dirt sticks all over the neck because of the blood.”

“I’m glad Milly didn’t see it. I think she’d be scared.” I was glad I hadn’t given the cockerel a name, not like the wicked old white rooster. Dad laid it in the mouth of a sack and started plucking.

“Have a go. You’ll find those feathers on the breast easier.” He was stripping off handfuls, and I tried to copy him.

“They come out easy for you.”

“There’s a bit of a knack to it. Plucking them warm helps, and young birds are easy. The old rooster, he’d be a job to pluck, and he’d be like chewing old boots.” Dad was stuffing the feathers into the sack, as he worked, so I did, too.

“Saves them blowing all over the garden. Try not to tear the skin, if you can help it. These wing feathers are the hardest, and the ones on the end can be the very devil.”

“Why can they be the very devil?”

“Nothing to get hold of. With old boilers, you need pliers to pull out the wing feathers.”

“What about all those little bits?”

“Pin-feathers. Hand us that newspaper?” Dad patted his pocket and took out his matches. “We’ll light it over on the path.”

“Why does it have pin-feathers?”

“I think they’re the little growing feathers that come away after chooks moult.”

It wasn’t a cockerel any longer, just a pale lemon body that had taken off its clothes. Dad screwed up the newspaper, lit it, and turned the pale body in the flames so all the little pin-feathers charred. I rubbed my hands over it, feeling the tiny black bits crunch and brush off. The skin was warm from the flames, and I liked the exciting smell.

“That didn’t take long.” Dad brushed burnt hairs off the back of one hand. “Newspaper flares up so fast, you’ve got to go lickety-split to turn the chook and burn all the pin-feathers.”

I stared at his hand.

“They’ll grow again. But that’s why you’ve got to be careful with long hair—never bend your head near a candle or a fire. Your hair can swing into the flame, and it just explodes.

“Do you want to cut it open?”

“Next time,” I looked at his hand and shivered. “Maybe.”

Dad ran the knife from the breastbone down to what he called the vent.

“The vent?”

“Polite for its bum. See how I’m cutting through the skin, but not into the guts.”

“Why?”

“They smell something pirau. You slip your hand inside, feel around, make sure you’ve got the lot, and pull it out in one go.” He dropped the guts among the feathers, slipped his hand back in.

“The heart.” He pointed. “The liver, kidneys, gizzard.” His finger had blood on it.

“What’s the gizzard?”

“Where it grinds up its food. See, it’s full of tiny little bits of stone, grit.”

“Why does it grind it up?”

“Cause chooks don’t have teeth. We wash out the gizzard, like everything else, and it’s good eating. All those bits, they’re the giblets.”

I looked at the hole. There wasn’t much blood. “Can I put my hand in?”

“Feel the windpipe?”

“There’s something.”

“Try pulling it out.”

“I can’t get hold of it.”

Dad yanked it out,

“Have I got one of those?”

“You’d have trouble breathing if you didn’t.”

He cut off the yellow legs and pulled the white strings called tendons, so the claws opened and closed. “You could chase Freddy Jones with them.”

“Milly wouldn’t like them.”

Dad threw in the head, and tipped the sack into a hole in the garden. I shovelled in the dirt. One scaly yellow leg was the last thing to disappear.

“That gets rid of the evidence. Now, we turn the sack inside out, sling it on top of the chook house, and give the rain a chance to clean it. And we give our hands a good scrub to get rid of the smell, or Milly might try eating us.”

“Do the other cockerels know we’re going to eat them?”

“They’ll come running for their tucker tonight.”

“Will they have forgotten this one?”

“Probably.”

“That’s not very nice of them.”

“It’s the way chooks are.”

“What about sheep and cows?”

“It might take them a bit longer, but they seem to forget.”

“I wouldn’t forget if somebody came and chopped off your head, and plucked, and ate you. I’d remember you, Dad.”

“Nobody’s going to do that, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

“It doesn’t seem fair on the cockerels though.” I rubbed on plenty of soap, so Milly wouldn’t eat me.

“It’s the way the world is. We only keep chooks for their eggs. And we only raise the cockerels to eat them.
They cost a few bob for their feed; and they’re a fair bit of trouble.”

“Milly’s more trouble than the chooks,” I said, “and we feed her, too, but we’re not going to chop off her head and eat her…”

“Cats are different.”

“I told Mr Cleaver about the giant rat in the wheat bin, and everyone in the shop laughed. And I told Mr Bryce, too.”

“Here, give your nails a good scrub. You didn’t tell them I said the rat stood up and shook his fist and wanted to fight me?”

I scrubbed and nodded.

“You’ll get me put away in the Wow.” Dad rolled his eyes up and grinned. “Pick us some parsley?”

“Can I just have a look at Milly first?”

Dad had left the door open into the front room, and she was sitting on the hearth in front of the open fireplace, licking her paw, wiping it over the top of her head, flattening one ear with it, licking her paw and wiping it over the top of her head again. Each time she wiped her ear, it buckled and sprang up.

“You’ve been up the chimney getting cobwebby. If you’re up there when Dad lights the open fire, you’ll get cooked, and that’ll be a shame because we don’t eat cats.”

Milly stood, back arched, tail straight up, and galloped out to the kitchen.

“She’ll trip me. Purring and rubbing against me because she can smell the chook. Put her out in your room, till we get it into the safe.”

“Wait for me. I want to help with the stuffing.”

“Don’t be too long.”

I tore back in with the parsley. While Dad adjusted the dampers, I ripped up bits of bread and chopped the parsley. He cut an onion in half, sliced one half, then cut it the other way, and then the other way, so it finished in tiny square bits. All very neat—except for our eyes watering.

“Some day, I’ll go through this drawer, throw everything out, and start all over again.” Dad was looking for the little tin of sage. “That’s where you were hiding from me.”

I mixed the bread, onion, and parsley, Dad sprinkled the sage, salt, and pepper, poured in some milk, and I stirred everything.

“You can put in baking powder,” Dad said, “to make it lighter, but I like the stuffing a bit on the stodgy side.”

“Me, too.”

I shoved in handfuls of stuffing till the chook’s stomach bulged.

“Can I do it?”

The big needle was ready, threaded with string and stuck in the pin cushion on the wall.

“Just enough stitches to hold it, that’s all. Now, we’ll
put it in the safe, and you can let Milly out.”

“The sun’s gone behind a cloud.”

“I told you I had a feeling in my funny bone.” Dad rubbed the side of his nose and tried to look wise. “By the time we’ve brought in the washing, and got the vegies ready, the oven will be hot enough to pop the chook in.”

He paused, and I waited because I knew what he was going to say, what he said every Sunday about this time.

“We’ve done next to nothing, and our Sunday morning’s half over. I don’t know where the time goes.”

I grinned and let Milly out of my room. “You’ve got teeth,” I told her, “so you don’t need a gizzard.”

M
ILLY JUMPED INTO THE BASKET
.

“Our clean sheets!” I told her.

“Give me a hand to fold them.”

“Dad, why don’t we iron the sheets?”

“I haven’t got the time. Any damp’ll dry out in the hot water cupboard. There’s a lot of stuff doesn’t need ironing, not if it’s dried and aired. Singlets, underpants, socks, towels, face cloths.”

He tried to snap the end of the sheet out of my hands, but I was ready for him.

“Ha, ha!” I hung on tight to the other sheets, and Dad tried it with each one.

“When I was a boy, everything got ironed. Socks, tea towels, even the newspaper.”

“The newspaper?” “The ink came off on your hands, so people ironed the paper, to dry it. My mother said her father liked his
paper ironed because it made it crisp and crackly.”

“Ironing the paper? But ours is crackly already.”

“The paper train takes hours from Auckland, so the ink’s dried. When we lived there, our paper was delivered first thing in the morning, before we were up.”

“What’s it like, living in Auckland?”

“Not as much to do as there is in Waharoa. Now all that’s put away, we’ll leave the shirts and hankies to be ironed, and the chook can go in the oven. In they go: spuds, pumpkin, kumaras, parsnips, onions.”

I gulped, and wrote “Parsnip!” on the roof of my mouth with the tip of my tongue.

“Now, the fat.” Dad dug the knife in the dripping tin, daubed wodges of fat on the chook’s back, and smeared more on the vegies tucked around it in the roasting dish. “Salt,” he said.

I stuck my finger into the bottom of the tin, licked the dark dripping, and shuddered. “Why do we put in fat?”

“To stop the chook drying out, and it helps brown the spuds and make the gravy. That cockerel’s in good nick, so we don’t need much. Well, you saw the fat where you sewed him up.”

I took the sugarbag oven cloth I’d sewn with big red woollen stitches at school, and lifted the handle on the oven door. Dad slid in the roasting dish. “Clunk!” said the door. “Clonk!” said the latch.

“What’s the time?”

“Let me look! It says nineteen—no, eighteen—eighteen minutes to eleven.”

“Past cup-of-tea-time. I’ll have one and, if it isn’t raining by then, I might do a bit of digging, and our dinner will be ready.”

I ran down the street before Sunday school came out. In front of Freddy Jones’s, I smoothed the dirt on the footpath and dented a row of giant tiger footprints with my heel, like Milly’s only much bigger, and with deep cuts for the claws. It took ages, because they had to look real. Freddy would see them and be too scared to go in his gate.

The sky darkened, as I ran home. Red and yellow, two bright leaves off the cherry tree blew across the front lawn. I thought of the swaggers and wondered what they did when it was going to rain. Around the side of the house I scratched away the dirt with a stick till the yellow scaly foot stuck out.

“You wait,” I told it.

I collected the two cherry leaves, took them inside, and showed Milly. “You’ll go outside and chase them in the wind,” I told her. “You’ll be more interested then.” She sniffed my hands.

“Give your hands a wash,” Dad called. “Do you want a wing?”

“Please.” Roast chook with stuffing and brown gravy was one of my favourites. I found the wishbone in the white meat on my plate, and pulled it with Dad.

“What did you wish?”

“You’re not supposed to ask.”

“You can tell me.”

“That you’d read us some more about Mowgli tonight.”

“I was going to do that anyway, so you can have another wish. Best keep it secret this time.”

I thought and wished silently. “Can I whisper it to Milly?”

“Make her promise she won’t tell it to anyone first.”

After dinner, Dad sat in his comfortable chair with Saturday’s paper, and Milly slept. I went along the street, and Freddy Jones was looking out through the bars on his gate.

“You look like a wild animal in a cage. You should try roaring.”

“You made those tracks. My mother says there isn’t any old tiger anyway. She says if she catches you roaring under my window, she’ll give you such a wallop. Anyway, Mrs Dainty wanted to know where you were—at Sunday school.”

“I had to look after my new kitten.”

“What do you think you’re staring at?”

“You looked away, Freddy Jones. You’re just a jungle animal.”

“I am not a—what you said.”

“Even Bagheera must look away when I stare at him.”

“Who’s Bagheera when he’s at home?”

“And I singed Shere Khan’s whiskers with the Red Flower, and he had to look away from my eyes, too. That’s why he was roaring last night, looking for you. Tigers and black panthers don’t eat girls.”

“Huh! I’m not scared of any old tiger.”

“You’re just lucky his head’s too big to get in your window. But you’ve got to come out to go to school tomorrow, Freddy Jones, and Shere Khan will be waiting for you—in the dark under the lawsonianas. Grrroar!”

I whipped the chook’s yellow foot out of my pocket, pulled the white tendons so the claws opened and closed in his face, and Freddy hissed and went for his life.

I gave a couple more roars and ran, because I felt a few spits of rain. Mrs Dainty wouldn’t be hanging out her washing tomorrow morning.

“I think it’s cold enough,” Dad said, and lit the open fire in the front room. Since we’d had dinner midday, he put up the green-topped card table, and we ate tea in front of the fire: cold chook, lettuce, tomatoes, bread, and cheese.

Milly loved the bits of chook skin I gave her, but didn’t even try the lettuce. “You’ve got to eat your greens,” I told her.

“Who didn’t eat their parsnip today?”

“I ate my pumpkin, but Milly didn’t even sniff at her lettuce.”

“It’s funny,” Dad said. “A dog will have a go at just about anything, but cats are choosy. How would you
like a scone with strawberry jam?”

“And cream off the scalded milk?”

Dad nodded. “Get stuck into it while you can. We won’t have to bother scalding the milk after today. This rain’s got a cold wind with it.”

The yellow cream was thick and hard. I liked having tea in front of the open fire, one of Mummy’s embroidered cloths spread on the card table, watching the flames, eating Dad’s scones with our own strawberry jam and dollops of cream.

“We should have jam and cream for breakfast, too. Are you going to read us some Mowgli?”

“I’ll clean up; there’s only a few dishes. Jump into your pyjamas, and we’ll see.”

Dad turned off the light and held the book so he could read by the flames. I sat between his feet, and Milly lay between me and the fire, tummy bulging towards the heat. She yawned and stretched her paws above her head.

“‘Kaa’s Hunting’,” said Dad’s voice above us.

“Who’s Kaa?”

Dad made a terrible noise between a hiss and a huff, and read about the time when Mowgli was learning the Law of the Jungle from Baloo, and how the old bear cuffed him for not paying attention, and Bagheera told Baloo not to hit Mowgli too hard.

When Dad read about Mowgli’s new monkey friends, the Bandar-log, I laughed and stroked Milly, but Baloo
was angry, and warned Mowgli against the monkeys. Then the Bandar-log stole Mowgli, and carried him away through the trees.

I held my breath in case they dropped him: the Monkey-People are very careless. As they swung him through the tree tops, Mowgli called up the sky to Chil, the Kite, “We be of one blood, thou and I!” and asked him to tell Baloo and Bagheera where he was.

“We be of one blood, thou and I,” I told Milly. And when Baloo cried, “Put dead bats on my head! Give me black bones to eat!…I am the most miserable of bears!” I cuddled her, in case she cried.

Then Baloo and Bagheera went to get help from Kaa, who was a huge Rock Snake thirty feet long. Dad made that terrible noise again, so I pushed my back against his legs. And then I heard why the monkeys’ tails turned cold at the sound of Kaa’s name.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Feeling to see if I’ve got a tail.”

Dad hissed and read on.

“You’re safe though,” I whispered to Milly as we sat tucked between Dad’s legs and the fire while the flames lifted and fell in the chimney, and the walls of our front room lurched in and out of the shadows like friendly elephants.