Fathers Page 7

  “Time to drop your daks, Rex!” Chirped Wiremu.

  “That’s right Rex, stand behind the blanket while Mr. Rasch and Wiremu hold it in front of you and take off your trousers, yes that’s right, don’t worry I promise I won’t look, now pass them to me so I can sew them for you, thank you, now then wrap yourself in the blanket while you wait, I shan’t be long,” said Betty cheerfully as she sat down and started sewing.

  There was a lot of small talk as they drank their tea and ate their cake and Betty sewed. The bell above the store front door jingled and Willie rose to go through and serve his customers. His jaw dropped as he walked through to the counter and saw who was there.

  “Vat do you boys’ vant? You better not be coming here to cause trouble!”

  “Course not Mr. Rasch just came to do a little bit of shopping and get warm. She’s getting pretty cold out there you know,” said Fat Frog Farley.

  “Yeah, she’s cold out there, Mr. Rasch,” said one of the twins. They were holding a horse’s saddle between them.

  Tu said nothing but ran his hand under his snotty nose and wiped the mucus onto the front of his trousers.

  “Tell me vat you vant and I’ll get it for you.”

  “What we vant Mr. Rasch, what we vant, is to buy some of your fine tobacco you have for sale,” said Farley with a grin. “’Silver Fern’ tobacco to be precise,” he added.

  “Ve vant tobacco, ve vant tobacco!” Chanted the twins.

  Tu pulled a moth out of his hair, briefly examined it and flicked it away.

  “You are much too young to be smoking so I vill not sell it to you! Anyvay it is hard to come by and I vill be saving it for my adult customers, not you. Now please leave my store!”

  Farley grabbed the saddle off the twins and approached the counter while the others wandered around the store picking up items like jars and tools and things, pretending to be interested in them, juggling them and then putting them back on the shelves. Farley hefted the saddle onto the counter.

  “Put zose zings down if you please, you vill break zem,” said Willie anxiously to the twins and Tu.

  Farley said, “Aw c’mon Mr. Rasch, a sale’s a sale right, I mean I won’t tell anyone if you won’t. Look I’m willing to swap you this second hand but still perfectly good saddle for just a couple of packets of tobacco and some papers. I mean that’s a deal, deal of the century I reckon. Now you can’t ask for better than that can you?”

  “No I am sorry Frog...I mean Farley, sorry I was not meaning to call you Frog, but I vill not sell any tobacco to you.”

  A jar of jam dropped on the floor and smashed.

  “Oops,” mumbled Tu staring at Willie and smiling.

  Farley’s face went red. “No one calls me Frog you Jewish kraut bastard!”

  The stack of buckets fell over knocking cans and jars and packets of things off the shelves. The twins stood near them sniggering.

  “Please leave my store as I am now getting angry!” Shouted Willie.

  “Why don’t you go back to your own land and live in a bomb crater you Nazi prick. ‘Cause that’s all that’s left of it now!” Yelled Farley

  “Yeah you Nazi prick!” Echoed one of the twins.

  “You ignorant stupid boy, if only you knew vat you have just said. Me? A Nazi of all zings?” Willie said as his face turned crimson and he shook his head.

  Betty came through the door and stood at the counter next to her husband, a baseball bat in her hand, casually slapping it into the palm of her other hand while she stared Farley in the eye. “Right! So who am I going to deal to first, hmm? The big fat one who looks like a bullfrog or perhaps the snivelling ginger idiots over in the corner. Or maybe the Maori boy with the zoo in his hair. Step right up ‘cause I ‘aint got all day and my bat is looking for some action!” She said in a not so ladylike voice.

  The smiles disappeared from the twins face as they quickly turned to look at each other and then back at Betty. Tu sniffed loudly, dragged a leaf from his hair and concentrated on pulling it to bits while he stared at the floor. Farley held her gaze for a while as the colour slowly drained from his cheeks, then he looked down and mumbled “I’d like to see ya try, ya fat bitch.”

  In a feat of amazing athleticism Betty leapt the counter and grabbed the front of Farley’s shirt and pulled him into her face so that their noses almost touched. “Excuse me frog face what did you say!” She screamed into his face.

  “Ah, um, ah, nnnothing, IIII...I’m sssorry Mmmissuss RRRRasche,” he stammered.

  Pushing him back so that he almost fell, Betty said, “Hell boy you really have got a bad stutter there, to tell ya the truth I’m a little worried for you. Perhaps you should get that looked at. Now I believe you owe us something for the damage you and your buddies have caused wouldn’t you say? Hmm, I think that saddle would suffice don’t you? My, I must say you’ve gone very quiet from what you were a few minutes ago. So, no arguments now? No objections? I take it from your silence that you agree with our trade? Good. Now get outta here, scram all of ya, before I use those pumpkins you call heads for batting practice!”

  And leaving the saddle behind the Cutters Gang bolted through the front door almost tripping over each other and the mess on the floor in their attempt to escape the wrath of Betty.

  “Zank you my dear, vonce again you have saved my bacon,” said Willie

  “No problem my little German sausage, it was surely a pleasure,” replied Betty.

  The boys who had been secretly watching all that was going on stumbled into the store.

  “Woohoo! That was great Mrs. Rasch. You really gave them what for!”Said Wiremu.

  “Too right! Did you see the look on Fat Frog Farley’s face, crikey that was something! I thought he was going to pee himself!” Said Jack.

  “Poo himself more like. You weally had him wowwied Mrs Wasch!” Said Rex.

  And they all laughed.

  “Thankyou boys I try my best. This ole baseball bat came in handy after all. Present from my Daddy you know. He was a mighty fine ball player and he taught me how to hit and catch when I was just a little girl. Didn’t have a son you see and had to settle for little ole me. Hey, you know that rhymes!” Betty giggled like a schoolgirl and batted her eyelids.

  “Zee only problem is zat zey vill probably be back and who knows vat damage zey may do. Anyway I need to be cleaning up zis mess. Vould you like to help me Jack and Viremu?” Said Willie.

  “Sure,” said the boys all at once. Then Jack said, “Hey that’s Rosie’s saddle! Those rat bags have taken that off my horse.”

  Betty said, “No problem Jack, come with me and well go and see if we can find your horse. Sorry Rex I’ll finish sewing your trousers when I get back. Won’t be long”.

  The shop was restored back to its regular chaos and clutter by the time Jack and Betty returned. Jack’s pony was found where he left it by the church, happily chewing on the lawn. After finishing their afternoon tea, the trousers sewn and the saddle refitted, the boys left and Jack and Wiremu walked Rex home before continuing home themselves. Fat Frog Farley and his gang were thankfully nowhere to be seen.

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  Around midnight a large rock was thrown through the front window of the store smashing the pane and knocking jars and cans off the shelves. Both the Rasch’s rushed outside but there was no one to be found. A crude swastika was painted in black on the front of the building. The police who were stationed in the larger town of Wakeford, some distance from Putumu and who rarely visited the smaller town, were informed of the incident but due to lack of evidence decided there was little they could do.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I

  t was a Monday morning, a school day, the bell rang and the pupils lined up waiting to be let into their classrooms. The school consisted of just one building with two classrooms off a central corridor. One of the classrooms was for the juniors the other for the seniors. A small staffro
om attached to the senior classroom was separated by a door and contained a couple of chairs and a table so that the teachers could relax during interval. Each classroom had a pot belly fire and one of the children, the Fire Monitor, was assigned to light it and keep it going during the winter months. He also had to collect the firewood from the stack that was supplied by the local mill. At the first interval on every day, milk would be served in bottles to each student by the Milk Monitors, who collected it from the gate every morning. The person who supervised the juniors was Mrs Webby, a quiet widower who wasn’t actually a teacher but more a fill in, a helper, while the school waited for a replacement. The last teacher, young Miss Pettit, left in hurry. It seemed she was there one day and gone the next and still she hadn’t been replaced. Townsfolk thought they knew why she left. The head teacher and teacher of the seniors was Miss McFierce, a middle aged Scottish woman who stunk of tobacco and was known to smoke a pipe at every opportunity. She had an unhealthy pallor and was as thin as a rake. She wore her grey hair pulled back tightly and tied in a bun so that the skin on her face look stretched, eliminating any wrinkles, which resulted in cadaverous features. She always wore the same outfit; a drab olive coloured dress that fell below the knees, long tan socks that covered the rest of her legs and a brown cardigan buttoned to the chin. She didn’t wear jewellery, didn’t believe in it, and her only adornment was her long wooden ruler that she carried at all times in the classroom and would smash down, without hesitation, on any unsuspecting, inattentive student. She would hit them on the hands, the arms, around the legs and buttocks, on their backs, even on their heads if that provided the best target. Sometimes she didn’t need a reason and would hit a pupil just because they hadn’t been hit for a while and ‘were overdue for hitting’, she would explain. She drove the other teacher away the townsfolk reckoned, scared the living daylights out of her some said, and it was true, poor Miss Pettit was a nervous wreck in the days leading up to her finally scarpering. They had all lived together; Miss Pettit and Miss McFierce were the boarders of Mrs Webby, so Miss Pettit had no time to herself, couldn’t get away from the overbearing head teacher and it had finally driven her to despair, causing her to make the decision to pack her belongings and leave suddenly and without notice in the middle of the night. Some said it was because Miss McFierce was a lesbian and had tried it on with the pretty young teacher, but they were only rumours and were never substantiated. Nothing was ever done or said to Miss McFierce by the school board or the inspectors (they were frightened of her too) and so she remained, still in charge, running both classes with an iron fist. And with a little help from the meek and mild widower Mrs. Webby, who she continued to board with.

  On this fine but chilly winter’s morning the doors were opened and the students marched into the hall and to their respective classrooms. Miss McFierce stood by the door to her classroom, tapping her leg with the ruler she held in her hand as she watched her senior students file into the classroom, one by one. And as the last student walked through the door, she unleashed her ruler and whacked him around the arse, as hard as she good, just for good measure and followed in behind him. She stared at the back of his neck, daring him to complain about the smack. Of course he didn’t and inside the classroom the pupils stood silently as Miss McFierce, slamming the door behind her, went and stood at the front of the class, turned and faced her students. “Good morning class,” she snapped in her Scottish brogue.

  “Goood morrrning Misss McFieercce,” her students chanted.

  “Right who shall I choose to start of our national anthem...Yes, you’ll do Delaney. I want the first two lines sung by you then the rest of you will join in. A good effort please, when you’re ready.”

  ”Ahem, ahem, cough, ahem,” uttered Jack.

  “Is there a problem Delaney do you need some persuasion?” She said tapping her ruler against her leg.

  “No Miss McFierce.”

  “Right this time please, straight away now.”

  “Ahem... God save our gracious King, Long live...” Droned Jack.

  “Stop, stop, stop for God’s sake stop! That was pathetic!” And she stormed over to Jack and whacked him on the arm with her ruler. The class laughed. “That’s enough you bunch of heathens! Right you, you Johnson, you do it, you think you’re so clever, start singing and be warned, get it wrong and I’ll take my strap to you as well as the ruler!”

  In a beautiful strong tenor Farley Johnson sung, “God save our gracious king, long live our noble king,” and the rest of the class joined in, “God save the king. Send him Victorious...” Finally the class finished. “With heart and voice to sing, God save the king!”

  Miss McFierce nodded once and then said, “Right roll call, when I call out your name I want to hear present. Not yes, yep or yeah or any other word. Understand? Good. Then I want you to sit down after I call your name... Right, Anderson?

  “Present.” “Present.” “Present.” Three children answered at the same time and sat down. Two of them were the twins Stan and Dan Wright.

  “Ah the Wright twins, pray tell, why are you answering ‘present’, when I clearly said ‘Anderson’?” She asked calmly looking back and forth between the twins. She added “How does ‘Anderson’ sound anything like ’Wright’?” Then she yelled “ARE YOU BOTH STUPID OR SOMETHING?!”

  “Sorry Miss but you said Wright first,” said Stan.

  “Yes you did, you did say Wright. I heard it too,” said Dan turning bright red.

  She screamed, “I did no such thing. Are you both hard of hearing or are you just a pair of idiot twins that share the same brain. You will not question me you hear! I know what I said and what I said was ‘Anderson’ not ‘Wright’. Now go out into the corridor and wait for me there. Six of the best I think is in order for you two!” They shuffled out of the room into the corridor and closed the door. She carried on with the roll call. “Right, Baker?”

  “Present”

  “Delaney?”

  “Present”

  “Johnson?”

  “Present”

  She sneered. “And I must say Johnson it’s not often we see you in school. Please explain to the class why you chose today of all days to grace us with your presence as it seems you usually have more important things to do with your time?”

  Farley replied, “Well Miss McFierce, I think it’s time I settled down and took school seriously. You know my mum’s been sick for a time and I had to stay home and look after her, but now I think she’s getting better, at least I hope so, and I think she can cope without me at the moment.”

  She tapped her ruler. “Mr Johnson. I’ve heard some rubbish talked in my time but never more than what comes out of your mouth. Your mothers not sick, apart from being sick of you perhaps and all your carryings on around the village. You and your pathetic little gang. Well let me tell you something Johnson and you listen. You listen really well. Because you and your gang’s days are numbered. I’m going to make it my personal mission in life to squash little bugs like you and your cohorts. And speaking of bugs I see your partner in crime Tu Whakatuma is sitting over there in the corner. Another one who seems to forget that he is required by law to attend school each and every day. What do you have to say for yourself Whakatuma?”

  He sniffed then mumbled, “Present.”

  “Just as well, I couldn’t take any more manure being dished up. And blow your nose for God’s sake! Now listen here. And this is for every set of ears in the classroom. You must by law, attend school every day that it is open. No exceptions. Apart from when required by your parents for urgent help on their farms or places of business. The only dispensation I have allowed is Delaney’s and Kotare’s, Wiremu Kotare’s, none of his siblings just him. And I must warn you two that I am about to check on the validity of both of you having every Friday off too. You better hope there is a genuine reason or so help me God there will be trouble!”

  Jack and Wiremu quickly glanced at each other, gulped, then looked away. Horror showed
on their faces. Luckily she didn’t notice and looked down at her register once again.

  “Right let’s carry on with the roll call. Lincoln...?”

  Class carried on as normal learning arithmetic in the first period. Miss McFierce flitted between the two classrooms supervising Mrs Webby and setting the days lessons for the juniors. The Wright twins were both strapped on their hands (the ones they didn’t favour so they could still write) and when they re- entered the classroom, they both tried to make out that it hadn’t hurt. Even though the whole class had heard them scream and blub every time the leather strap smacked their palms.

  The first interval arrived and as the Milk Monitors handed out the milk, the pupils went outside to drink it in the winter’s sun. The Fire Monitor, a small, quiet boy called John, picked up his wood basket from near the pot belly and went out to fill it with firewood from the stack outside. As he left the building he was stopped by Farley and his gang. “Hi John, how are you today?” Asked Farley, wheezing in the cool air as he stood towering over the boy.

  “Um, alright I ’spose,” said John wondering why Farley was asking about his health.

  Farley smiled. “Aren’t you going to ask how I’m doing John? I mean isn’t that the polite thing to do now?”

  “Um, okay, ah, how are you Farley?” Asked John, warily.

  “Well John. I’m doing real well, and thanks for asking. And you know, this is your lucky day, ‘cause you don’t have to get the firewood today. We, and by ‘we’ I mean my friends here and I, are going to take that chore off you, just because we like you John. Yep, that’s right, you just relax and take it easy today and hand that wood basket to Tu here and we will do all the work for you. We’ll even stoke the fire in class. You know, put the wood on it when it needs it.”

  John shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t think I’m allowed to do that Farley. I don’t think Miss McFierce would like it.”

  “Well that’s just the thing John. See I’ve asked Miss McFierce and she said she didn’t mind as long as we were getting the job done. And she said if we’re all happy with the arrangement, then she was all happy,” Farley said with a grin.