UNCLE TED COOLS OFF

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 284, 1 December 1944, Page 18

UNCLE TED COOLS OFF

Written for "The Listener" by

RODERICK

FINLAYSON

FTER breakfast Uncle Ted, A fumbling for his tobacco, says, "Well, here’s Sunday again. What about church, Jake? Better wash yourself and get ready. Does a chap good to go to church -specially you young tykes." "Aw, couldn’t we go fishing instead?" says Jake. "Tide’s just right. We can go to church any other Sunday." "And we can fish any other day. Git ready," says Uncle Ted. The boy makes a show of getting ready. Uncle Ted potters about with the calves. Hours later neither of them’s any readier, About mid-morning, when it’s getting very hot, Uncle Ted says well, perhaps they mightn’t go to church to-day after all because he’s just remembered it’s the "conversion" preacher’s turn at the Tidal Creek Church Hall. "You know," he says, "all about hellfire for sinners, and for everyone /else, until people crowds up on to the platform in a fine fright and shouts that they’re saved." : "Oh, let’s go, Uncle Ted," says Jake. "J want to see that kind of church. Do they look very scared?" "Mustn’t make fun of such doings," says Uncle Ted, very solemn. "All the same," he adds, "I don’t hold with it. In fact, I can’t stand it. Not that it ever worries me, but ain’t fair to weakminded folk." A little later Uncle Ted scratches his chin and looks shut-eyed at the sun. "No," he says, "we'll take a bite of lunch and go to the old creek instead. Old Brown Sugar don’t get near enough exercise. Anyway, reckon God likes us outdoors best." ; "Well," says Jake, "a swim might be better." * ca * O Uncle Ted tells Jake to cut some bread and cheese and cold meat, and to put it into a kit with a big bottle of hop beer, while he gets into clean pants and shirt, takes his hat and a rope and goes off to catch the little brown pony in the corner of the back paddock. He leads the pony into the yard and spends a lot of time brushing him with a brush like a big stiff clothes-brush. The shinier and sleeker Sugar’s coat becomes, the dustier and grimier become Uncle Ted’s best clothes. "Bring him a bucket of water, Jake," says Uncle Ted, When the boy has fetched the water he holds the bucket as high as he can for the pony. Brown Sugar dips his nose into the cool water and seems to be thinking. Then he blows gently at the surface of the water, and ends up. by drinking nearly all. The boy pats the pony’s nose where the white hair ends in pink skin. He likes the feel of it, soft lt and warm and velvety.

Uncle Ted dresses the pony in his harness and holds up the shafts of the gig while he pushes Sugar back between them. Then he buckles him up properly and all the time little Brown Sugar is standing very quietly and looking very sleepy. "Don’t try to get in yet," says Uncle Ted, and he leads old Sugar out to the road. "Now," says Uncle Ted, holding Brown Sugar by the head. As soon as the boy has scrambled up, Uncle Ted hops nimbly aside, holding the reins tight and keeping an eye on Sugar’s head. With one stride of his long legs Uncle Ted is into the gig, but, before he can properly take his seat, Brown Sugar has shot forward with such a bound that the boy almost topples over the back of the seat. % * * [Ts lucky that the road leads uphill and gets steeper and steeper, But even the steepest part doesn’t seem to tire the little wiry brown pony. The boy feels the floorboards jump under his feet as Sugar takes the hill. The wind tears at his hair and sings in his ears, The pony’s hoofs thud hard and hollow on the sun-baked clay of the road. The boy can’t remember feeling such speed before. It’s not possible for there to be greater speed than this, he thinks, He hangs on tight, and laughs, and looks at Uncle Ted. Uncle Ted’s eyes shine, and his face is nice and red, and the perky way his red moustache sits over his mouth shows Jake that Uncle Ted feels just as happy as he does, When they come to the top of the hill where the track is level.and heavy with sand, Sugar slows down to a trot, and after a while he becomes lazy and he even needs a touch of the whip now and then. There are dark streaks of sweat down the pony’s sleek sides, and as they dawdle through cuttings where the air simmers above the sandy floor they feel their skins creeping and smarting as if they’re being cooked. Always just a little ahead of them shining pools seem to float above the dry hot sand, This makes Jake long for the cool water. The creek they’re going to isn’t Tidal Creek, where they would sink to the neck in mud trying to reach the channel, and where, anyway, the water would be salt and muddy-yellow and lukewarm, They are going to a little freshwater creek that comes down cold from the hills and winds through a flax swamp. At the place where they come to the creek there’s a bridge over it, with pebbly shallows at one side that used to be the crossing before the bridge was built, and a deep pool on the other side (continued on next page)

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of the bridge. Uncle Ted unharnesses Brown Sugar and tethers him with a long rope on a gfassy patch under a weeping willow tree. Then they undress. Jake doesn’t bother with a bathing-suit, but Uncle Ted puts his lanky white legs through two holes cut in a flour bag and ties the bag around his waist. It still has the miller’s trade-marks on it in pink and blye, washed rather feint. It’s lovely and cold at. first in the water, and then it’s not quite so cold, only nice and cool. Though if you stay in too long you feel the cold again in a different, shivery way. So they come out of the water and lie on the grass in the sun. The sun warms them right through to the middles of their banes, and then they find how hungry the cold water has made them. In the shade of the willow tree they unpack their bread and cheese and meat, and they eat enough and empty a mug of hop beer each, "Think of it, Jake," says Uncle Ted, tipping the last of the beer into his mug, "think of old Sims at the meetinghouse still pouring hell-fire down the poor blighters’ throats. All rot. Ain’t nothing on earth for a man to be afraid of," He stretches himself full length and begins to snore. When they wake up they splash into the creek again. x wi i NCLE TED is cutting capers, showing off. He goes up on to the bridge and jumps into the deep pool. Down he goes, holding his nose, and Jake begins to wonder when he’ll come up again. He surely can’t stay down that long-not unless he’s caught in the waterweeds and drowned. Just as the boy’s ready to cry with despair, up pops Uncle Ted’s head with his thin hair plastered to his skull in wet rat-tails. He looks something like a pleased pale-coloured walrus. While Uncle Ted is fooling about in the water like this, something heavy and lumbering rustles through the man-high blades of flax on the far side of the creek. "What’s that?" says Uncle Ted, turning in the water to look. Before they have time to be surprised the flax bushes are parted and out pokes a large bulgy red-flannel shirt topped by the head of a squat fat man with black hair that curls very stiff like little horns, and little twinkling piggy eyes, and a grin all over his brown fatty face. "Oho!" he chuckles, bending and making a -puddling noise with his hands dabbling in the water. . Uncle Ted and Jake just gape while he pulls in a green flax line that they hadn't noticed before. Soon up comes a dripping branch of tea-tree scrub, right from the spot where Uncle Ted had dived. It’s alive with twining, waving legs and claws. ’ "Oho!" the fat man chuckles again, and holding a big flax-kit, and nimbly avoiding the fierce nippers, he plucks crawling bodies from the scrub and pops them into the kit. He hauls in other lines. The writhing creepy things are everywhere. All about Uncle Ted their bodies plop back into the water and disappear. The fat brown man leers broadly over the water and makes a rude gesture with one hand at Uncle Ted. ~

"How you like, eh?" asks Fatty-face, swinging the full kit forward for Uncle Ted to see. Uncle Ted backs slowly toward the near-by bank. He almost trips in the waterweeds trying to get there without hurrying. "Never did cafe much for the taste of them beasts," he says. "Here, one for luck," says Fatty-face, flipping a beauty to Uncle Ted. It lands with a splash near his toes, or rather where his toes were. Uncle Ted’s out on the bank. Fatty-face gurgles merrily and plunges off with his haul through the flax. "If we got a net," says Jake, "we might scoop up a lot more funny things. Might be even water snakes." Uncle Ted is shivering in his flour bag. "They was only crawlers, mighty small fry," he says firmly. His teeth chatter. Suddenly he says they’d better go home. He says he wouldn’t wonder if the cold is going to give him the bellyzache. a ue ue "HEY tug their clothes on over their only half-dry bodies and hurry to hitch the pony. to the gig. Old Brown Sugar is staring at the place in the flax where Fatty-face vanished. He’s trembling a bit and he jumps at nothing at all. "Now see what the ugly devil’s done," says Uncle Ted. "Comes upsetting poor old Sugar and spoiling everything." He grips the reins, "Better hop in quick, Jake, he won’t wait twice to-day." Jakes manages to get in all right, but Uncle Ted has only one leg in when Brown Sugar lashes out and splinters the front-board. Then Uncle Ted gets the other leg in, and the pony kicks more. Each time he lashes out something seems to break. Jake wishes he hadn’t hopped in so quickly. But Uncle Ted takes the slack of the reins and leans right over the broken front-board and whacks Brown Sugar as hard as he can, and keeps on whacking him. The pony makes a bolt for it, and they’re hurtling over the rough track at a terrific bat. The splintered parts seem about to let the gig fall-té bits, and the broken harness looks as though it’s dropping off, The wheels bounce off rocks and go whizzing round terrifyingly. They surely can’t stick on the axles much longer. And Uncle Ted, all the while, roars lustily at the pony. Jake tries to promise God that if He saves him he’ll go to church another Sunday instead of swimming in the creek. But words won’t come. After a bit Uncle Ted quietens down, Jakes takes a quick glance at him. Uncle Ted’s jaw is set and his face jis redder. He has a grip of the reins and he’s sitting firm as a rock.,He looks as though he doesn’t mean to get killed. So the boy feels a lot better. And soon Brown Sugar slows up and stops dead. Uncle Ted gets out and fixes some bits of harness, and off they * again as nice as can be. "Where’ll we go next Sunday?" Jake asks as soon as he gets a chance, "By crikey, can’t you let a few days go by in peace?" says Uncle Ted. "You wait till next Sunday comes." "Are we going to church next Sunday?" says Jake. But Uncle Ted doesn’t seem to hear. And anyway the boy doesn’t care. The clip-clop of the pony’s hoofs make him drowsy, and the evening breeze is nice and cool. i