Old Drumble

J
ACK
J
ACKMAN LIKED LIVING
in Ward Street because it was the stock route through Waharoa.

What he liked best was sitting on top of the gatepost and watching the mobs of sheep and cattle go past. Best of all was when the drovers and dogs came cracking whips, whistling, barking, and running a bad-tempered Jersey bull along Ward Street. That was so exciting, Jack once stood up and fell off the gatepost.

After that, he used to climb down and watch through the fence as the bull trundled past, rolling its little eye, and slavering dribble. Once, Jack poked out his tongue and was scared the bull had seen him. Another time, he heard a squelch from a bull’s insides, as it trotted past and, despite his terror, he thought it was crying and felt sorry for it.

“When I grow up, I’m going to be a drover,” he told his mother.

“We’ll see,” she told him.

“But I’m not going to chase the bulls till they cry.”

“They only push them through Waharoa, so they don’t
have a chance to give any trouble. Once they’re out on the road again, away from the houses, they’ll take it easy.”

“Do you push me, so I don’t have a chance to give you any trouble?” Jack asked his mother.

“I do,” she said, “but once you get the other side of Waharoa, I’ll let you take it easy.”

“When will that be?”

“When you’ve grown up and can look after yourself,” his mother told him. She wasn’t grinning, but Jack wasn’t sure if she was having him on. He never could tell with his mother.

All that happened years ago, before Jack started school. His place was straight across Ward Street from the school, but when people said, “That’s handy for you. Do you like that?” he wasn’t sure.

The school doors, the windows, the gate in the hedge, even the big gate into the horse paddock were all shut for the long holidays. The place looked as good as dead, so Jack didn’t even glance at the school, the day he trotted past towards the other end of Ward Street.

Jack Jackman may not have been sure about living so close to the school, but he sure liked living in Ward Street. Ward Street was the stock route through Waharoa!

J
ACK’S MOTHER ALWAYS SAID
theirs was the top end of Ward Street, but Harry Jitters who lived down the other end reckoned his was the top end.

“How do you know?” asked Jack.

“Because my mother says so,” said Harry Jitters. “Besides, when it rains, the water runs down your end, so that makes our end the top end of Ward Street.”

“It does not!” said Jack. “Does so!”

“Does not!”

“Does so!”

“Does snot!”

“I am not snot!”

“Who said you’re snot?”

“What’d you say?”

“Clean out your ears!” Jack roared.

They were chatting near Harry’s place, where Ward Street turns and goes down to the church corner, when
Minnie Mitchell came home from doing the shopping for her mother. Minnie was skipping carefully so as not to get dust on her new red shoes, singing artlessly to herself, swinging her basket with the bread, the letters, and the paper. Even though they were the only other people on the street, and even though she skipped right between them, Minnie didn’t seem to see Jack and Harry until she had opened her gate.

“Oh!” she said, turning back, opening her eyes wide, and pointing the tip of one red shoe at the ground. “You scared me! You have no right sneaking up on people.” She tossed her carefully made curls.

Because he had grown up next door to Minnie, and knew better than to argue with her, Harry was silent. Jack, though, was annoyed.

“I did not sneak up!” he said.

Minnie ignored him and looked at Harry. “What were you two arguing about?” she asked.

Harry was eager to explain. “He reckons his end’s the top end of—” he started to say, but Minnie cut him off.

“You live down the bottom end of Ward Street, Jack Jackman,” she said crisply. Minnie could be very crisp. “Everybody knows that. So there!”

“Yeah!” said Harry. “Everybody knows that.”

“It’s nicer up the top end of Ward Street.” Minnie put down her basket, smiled at the toe of one new red shoe, and patted her curls. “My mother says they’re a better
class of people up our end, the residential end.”

“Yeah!” said Harry. “You live down the school end.”

“You’d better go back down your end of the street, Jack Jackman,” said Minnie Mitchell. She screwed her head over her shoulder to look at the back of her shoes, the way she’d seen her mother checking the seams of her stockings before she went out. “We don’t want your sort up here: you belong down the bottom end. So there!”

“S
OME DAY
,” Minnie Mitchell told Jack Jackman crisply, “my mother says, some day they’re going to change the stock route through Waharoa. They’re going to stop the dirty old drovers and their dirty old dogs coming past our place, but they’ll still drive their smelly old cows and sheep along your end of the street. The bottom end. So there!”

“Yeah!” said Harry Jitters. “All them stinking old cow plops, and them stinking old sheep poops, too. Your end stinks!” And because Minnie Mitchell was there, he gave Jack Jackman a shove.

Later, Jack told his mother, “I just stuck out my hand to stop myself falling over. I didn’t mean to punch his nose.”

Harry Jitters felt his nose, saw the blood on his hand, and ran bawling for his mother.

“Look what you’ve done!” Minnie Mitchell screamed. “You killed poor Harry!” She clouted Jack Jackman with
her basket. “You did that on purpose!”

Jack’s mother always told him boys don’t fight with girls, so he just stuck out his tongue at Minnie, pulled down the corners of his eyes with his second fingers, pulled up the corners of his mouth with his thumbs, waggled his ears with his index fingers, and growled, “Unga-Yunga!,” deep in his throat.

Minnie Mitchell screamed louder and threw her basket in the air so the bread, the paper, and the letters dropped out. “You made me do that, Jack Jackman!” Her face went ugly as she ran shrieking, “I’m telling my mother on you!”

Once before, Jack had tried pulling his face and making his “Unga-Yunga!” noise at Mrs Mitchell, but it didn’t work on her. He went for his life, and hid in the pig-fern around Mr Bryce’s overgrown tennis court on the corner where Whites’ Road cut across Ward Street.

Jack watched Mrs Mitchell come out her gate, grab the basket Minnie had dropped, the bread, the paper, and the letters, and jump up and down. He was too far away to hear, but he could guess what Mrs Mitchell was saying, so he dropped on his knees and crawled along one of his secret tunnels between the brown fern stems.

Safe in his secret possie, Jack stuck out his head through tight-curled fronds thick with brown dust, and took another look. He could see up Ward Street one way, and down it the other way, but he still couldn’t
see whether one end was higher than the other. As he watched, Mrs Mitchell went inside, and Minnie Mitchell came out. Then Harry Jitters came out, holding his head well back.

Minnie waved her arms and popped back inside her gate, and so did Harry. Then Harry popped out again, and so did Minnie, and they both waved their arms. Jack thought they looked a bit like the little old man and woman who popped in and out of the tiny house on his mother’s mantelpiece and showed whether it was going to rain or shine.

Harry still stood with his head tipped well back, so he must have been looking at something in the sky, Jack thought, but Minnie stood in her usual way, admiring something about herself.

Jack Jackman jumped out of the pig-fern and shouted, “Unga-Yunga!” He stuck out his tongue, wagged his head, and did his puku dance in the middle of Ward Street. He could tell Minnie was screaming by the way she stood and pointed before running inside, and Harry was bolting for his gate, head still tipped well back.

Jack yelled, “Unga-Yunga!” again and trotted home, feeling pleased with himself.

“I thought I told you not to play in that dirty old fern!” his mother said.

Astonished, Jack asked, “How did you know I was playing in the fern?,” but his mother just smiled to herself.

“I’ve got eyes that can see through doors what you’re doing,” she said. “I’ve got ears that can hear what you’re going to say before you’ve even said it. And I’ve got a nose that can sniff you and tell what you’ve been up to! Don’t you go thinking you’ve got any secrets from me, Jack Jackman!”

Even though he had no secrets from his mother, even though she made him stand out on the back step and brush himself all over before she let him inside, it was good to be home. The only trouble was that Jack still didn’t know whether one end of Ward Street was higher than the other, nor which was up and which was down.

I
T RAINED THAT AFTERNOON
, and Jack looked at the puddles. The water lay in them and didn’t run up the street; nor did it run down the street. Jack thought of what Harry Jitters had said about it and whispered, “Unga-Yunga!” quietly, in case his mother heard. She mightn’t like it any more than Mrs Mitchell.

As it went on raining, the puddles joined along both sides because the road was lower there. It rained on and on, and Jack noticed the puddles didn’t just join up and get longer: they got deeper and spread towards the middle of the road.

“If this is the bottom end of Ward Street,” Jack said aloud, “the water would run here from the other end. But it doesn’t run anywhere. It just gets deeper and spreads. Strike a light! Harry Jitters doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

To prove it, Jack waded through the deeper parts of
the puddles along both sides of the road, and ran through the shallower parts where the puddles were spreading towards the middle. He tried kicking the water with his right foot, which made it shoot up in sheets. Then he tried kicking it with his left foot, but that didn’t work as well.

“Maybe that’s because I’m right-handed,” Jack said to himself. “I must be right-footed, too.” That made him wonder if he was also right-eyed. So he tried closing his left eye, standing on his left foot, pointing with his right hand at Harry Jitters’s end of Ward Street, and kicking with his right foot, all at once. It made a good splash.