The Haystack Read Free Page B

paper off a page of stamps. We crossed the road and wandered back, saying good-day to Mr Whimble leading a horse through the big doors of his blacksmith shop, hello to Sammy Searle, the greengrocer, and to Mrs Doleman in the billiard saloon.
    Everybody shook their heads and said something: “It’s not the first time, you know,” and “He didn’t give Alec Hoe much choice,” and “It’s a crying shame, that’s what it is.”
    Mr Doleman was shaving someone in the barber’s shop, but he saw me in the mirror and winked and nodded and clicked his tongue all at once. His razor held a puff of lather that he wiped on a strip of newspaper. It was too far away to see the black specks of whisker, but I knew they’d be there because I often watched Dad shaving.
    Mr Doleman shaved a bit more, and I wondered how he knew which was his left hand and which his right, then realised he wasn’t looking in the mirror: it was me. I turned around to tell Dad, but he wasn’t there.
    He wasn’t in the baker’s, so I ran all the way to Mr Bryce’s store where Dad gave me the bread to hold while he found our paper in the stack over on the drapery counter.
    “How was school?” asked the Kelly girl.
    “Mr Strap says we have to work hard, to make up for all the time we had off while school was closed because of the infantile.”
    “Work?” said the Kelly girl. “Wait till you get to high school. Miss Bell gives us that much homework.”
    “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know,” Mr Bryce told Dad. “No stories lately?” he asked as I looked at the big jarful of boiled lollies.
    “I’ve been going to school.”
    “No stories, no boiled lollies.”
    I looked sad, but Mr Bryce just laughed his cruel and heartless laugh, then the shop was full of farmers and their wives picking up sacks and boxes of groceries, others handing over their orders, coming and going.
    “Two lorries, a car, a buggy, and a couple of gigs,” Dad said, heading home. “A rip-roaring place of a Saturday morning, Waharoa.”
    “Don’t forget the cart and somebody’s horse under the trees over by the station,” I told him.
    Dad glanced down. “I hope you’re not picking the end off that?”
    “Just the kissing bread.”
    “Give us a bit?”
    “Fresh bread’s bad for you. Mrs Dainty said.”
    “Aw, we’re supposed to share. I won’t give you the boiled lolly Mr Bryce gave me for you…Thanks.”
    At the corner of Ward Street, Freddy Jones sat on the dirt path outside his gate, pretending not to see anyone. I stuck out my tongue and followed Dad along the track through the pig-fern and ran ahead so I could reach up and open the gate. I put the bread in the bin, the meat in the safe, and the basket on its hook.
    Dad was shoving the kettle over the ring, rattling the poker in the grate, putting on coal. He was going to make a cup of tea, read the paper, and enjoy his morningoff. I ran back along the street.
    “I knew that’s what you were doing.”
    Freddy Jones kept his head down. “If you’re so smart, why’d you have to take a look?”
    “Just because. What do you call it?”
    “A climbing tractor. I invented it. It can climb up a wall.” As he spoke, Freddy’s cotton-reel tractor tried to climb over his finger, got halfway, and tipped. The pencil at one end whizzed around, the rubber ring came undone, and it lay dead like my blind—only it hadn’t shouted “Hullabaloo!”
    “You should have seen it before. It climbed over my hand good-oh, and it climbed up my arm, round the back of my neck, and down the other arm.”
    I said nothing.
    “All on its own.” Freddy wound the rubber band again, turning the pencil against the stub of candle at one end of the reel.
    “You’re a big fibber, Freddy Jones. You made that up. Anyway, it’s a cotton-reel tractor. Everyone knows that.”
    His tractor went all right across the path, but got stuck where the dirt was churned up by bikes.
    “Not much of a tractor,” I said to give him