Title: Coal Flat

Author: Bill Pearson

Publication details: Paul’s Book Arcade, 1963, Auckland

Digital publication kindly authorised by: Paul Millar

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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Coal Flat

4

4

Don started at the dredge the following morning. It was a light job. With long tongs he held rivets in a furnace till they were a yellowy-red; then he held them in holes in dredge buckets while Mike Herlihy hammered them down. The hammer blows jarred on his bad arm, but he enjoyed, on this frosty morning, being near the fire, with the flush feeling of all active outdoor work. Mike was not good company. He treated Don as if he was a lad just starting. Occasionally he would hesitate with his hammer and tell Don to push the rivet in more tightly, and then it would be too cold and he would have to heat it again. Don couldn’t keep a conversation going, because often Mike didn’t answer him. Thompson and the foreman came to them at knock-off time.

‘I’ll run you home in the truck,’ Thompson said. ‘There’s a welcome party on the shore.’

page 242

As they stepped up the gangway Don saw a group of about twenty of the dredge-hands.

‘Take it quietly,’ Thompson said. ‘Ignore them. They won’t [sic: ]attack. You get in with me and Frank, Don. You get on the back, Mike.’

‘Let the young fullah ride on the back,’ Mike said. ‘Seniority counts too.’

‘I don’t want a ride,’ Don said.

‘You’re not going to walk by yourself?’ Thompson said.

‘I’m not scared,’ said Don.

Mike and Frank and Thompson climbed into the cab to the jeers of the hands, and drove off. The men followed Don as he started on the mile he had to go before he would be home. They jeered at him till he couldn’t ignore it. ‘Come on then,’ he called. ‘I’ll take any one of you on.’

Someone offered to take the challenge.

‘Hold it,’ Archie Paterson said. ‘He’s got a bad arm.’

‘I’ll take you on one-handed,’ Don called.

But no one would fight him on those terms. Don called them scared; one of the men offered to fight with one hand tied behind his back. But Archie made a speech: ‘No violence, boys. We’d be playing right into their hands. They’d have the cops up in no time. The papers would turn it into a riot. You’ve got to fight with your head as well as your hands.’

Don had never felt so sour before. He had always felt the world’s goodwill as a natural extension of his family’s. It had never turned against him. Now, even though he felt better for having challenged them, he hated himself as he walked ahead of them, and they tagged on behind like a nagging conscience. On the main road of Coal Flat, other people stopped and stared or joined in to jeer; the hunted look in his eyes roused looks of triumph, contempt and accusation in the eyes of everyone he could face out. What hurt him most was the children joining in.

When his mother called him in the morning he rolled over and said, ‘I don’t reckon I’ll go today, Mum.’

‘Why not, son?’

‘I can’t go through that again.’

‘You stood up to them all right. You told me.’

‘You try it, Mum. Kids making a fool of you. They’ll be picking on Donnie at school.’

‘Paul’ll put a stop to that. Or if he won’t Heath will. I’ll catch him on his way to school.’

‘I’m not going, Mum. You try it and see.’

‘All right, boy, I will. They won’t beat the Palmers. I’ll go down page 243 there myself and heat the rivets or whatever it is. I’ll show them Mum can take it.’

He jumped out of bed. ‘Go out. I want to get dressed,’ he said. ‘You’re not doing anything of the sort. Go on, close the door.’

Against his protests she accompanied him to the dredge. Outside, against the front window of the bar a crudely-painted notice read: ‘Palmers for Black Beer and Black Wages.’ Mrs Palmer put it in the passage, face against the wall.

The dredge-hands were waiting at a corner a few hundred yards down the main road.

‘Look, he’s got an escort. It’s a convoy,’ one of them called.

‘True enough!’ Mrs Palmer called. ‘Rats might leave a sinking ship. But we’ll man it. My boy and I.’

‘A proper old battleship, Mum? The H.M.S. Dreadnought.

‘Watch how you go down the gangway with those high heels, Mum.’

‘Are you opening up a sixpenny bar on the dredge?’

‘You’re taking the wrong turning. You want to take your boy to the doctor. He’s got scabs all over him.’

‘It’s you’re the scabs!’ Mrs Palmer called. ‘Think of your wives and children. I’d be ashamed to be the wife of any of you. Where’s their guts? Letting their menfolk loaf.’ It would be difficult for any woman to keep her poise in such a situation, but Mrs Palmer, in spite of her high heels on the macadam road, managed to look aggressive and dignified, flicking jibes back at them over her shoulder like a dirty dish-cloth. But Don didn’t speak to her or the men all the way to the dredge. When Mike Herlihy arrived in Thompson’s truck, they hooted him. Don hardly spoke to Mike all day; he was thinking, ‘I won’t do it tomorrow, even for her.’

‘Oh, I tell you, I stood up to them. You’ve got to show you can fight back,’ Mrs Palmer told Dad when she was home.

‘Don’t try to do it again then, Lil.’

‘Why, Dad? Someone’s got to see him home tonight.’

‘This is a man’s affair. You keep out of it.’

‘I’m equal to it, Dad. You know I am. They wouldn’t lay hands on a woman. Not on me and get away with it.’

‘I said stay home. You’re making a fool of the boy.’

‘How? I stuck up for him.’

‘Showing him up in front of those men, like a little boy with his mother to look after him. He’ll never live it down.’

‘Oh, Dad, you don’t understand. What do we care what they think?’

page 244

‘Well, you’ve put the lid on it, Lil. He’s not going to the dredge again.’

‘But Dad, that’s giving in.’

‘You can blame yourself for that.’

‘Oh, Dad, sometimes you make me sick,’ In the kitchen she sagged in a chair and wept.

Later she rang Mr Rae and insisted that he should escort Don home after work.

Rogers came late away from the school that afternoon and came on to the main road to see a group of miners standing in the road outside the pub. He stood by the crowd. They were mostly younger men and some lads. He looked for Jimmy Cairns and Ben Nicholson but they were not there. He sensed that the crowd were itching for action.

‘We ought to go in and demand a sixpenny beer,’ one youth said.

‘Like those chaps at Kumara. They got fined,’ another said.

‘It’d be worth it for the fun.’

‘Someone ought to throw a stone through the window.’

‘You’re fools if you try that,’ Rogers said.

They turned to him. ‘Listen to who’s talking. The school teacher.’—‘Whose side are you on anyway, Rogers?’—‘I hear you don’t drink black beer any more.’—‘Watch out we don’t throw a stone through your window.’

‘Don’t be such fools,’ said Rogers. ‘I bet if Ben Nicholson or Jock were here they’d tell you the same.’

‘Who are you to speak for Ben and Jock? Last thing I heard about you, you were a scab,’ Arty Nicholson said.

‘Here comes another scab,’ one of them said, and they saw Don Palmer coming up the road with the policeman.

‘Christ, he’s got his uniform on. He’s getting official now.’ Behind Don and Rae, the dredge-hands walked jeering.

‘Let’s join in,’ a mining youth said.

Don and the constable turned to face the crowd by the door of the hotel. Rae said, ‘I warn you now. If there’s any trouble it’ll go hard on you.’

‘Oh, go and lock yourself in your gaol, Rae. Remember the Seldom strike. The union beat you then.’

Don spoke for the first time since he had left the dredge. His eyes were hunted: ‘What I like about you blokes is the way you fight one man against one.’

‘We haven’t started fighting yet,’ a dredge-hand said. ‘We’re tickling your conscience.’

page 245

‘Forty to one,’ Don said. ‘If you count these lads.’

‘I’ll take you on,’ Arty Nicholson said. (The Palmers that were too bloody good for him.)

‘You hold your tongue, son,’ Rae said.

‘You’re not the only returned man in this town,’ a dredge-man said.

Don was preparing to fight. His parents and Flora and Heath had just come to the door. Flora was shocked to see Arty Nicholson threatening Don; she would have thought that Arty would be different from the others. Rogers pushed forward to keep Don from his challengers. ‘Get inside, you fool,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you in trouble enough without looking for more?’ Don resisted but Rogers pushed him forcibly while Don released his frustration in several blows in Rogers’s chest and chin with his one good arm. His mother ran out, pushed Rogers off and pulled Don inside.

‘Just be careful, young man,’ Rae said. ‘That could be called assault.’

‘I did it for his own good,’ Rogers said. ‘Did you want to stand by and see him injured?’

Arty stared angrily at Rogers. ‘I can manage my own bloody fights.’ Rogers thought he was going to start on him instead.

Heath stepped forward in a sudden fit of rage. Half of these miners were youths he had taught at school. ‘Go on, go back home, you boys,’ he called, pointing one arm. ‘You should be working, not hanging around the streets.’

He was answered by catcalls. ‘You didn’t used to be a drinking man, Mr Heath. Paying the extra penny just to show us, eh?’

‘Neither should you be drinking,’ Heath said. ‘Half you boys aren’t twenty-one yet. You ought to have put a stop to this a long time ago, Mr Rae.’

‘Well now,’ Rae said. ‘One thing at a time. There’s an ugly situation here without you criticizing me.’

‘It’s time someone complained,’ Heath shouted, talking to everyone and no one in particular. ‘The constable should be reported and the publicans too, for serving youngsters. When the boycott’s over, I’ll make it my business to see that a stop’s put to it.’

‘Putting the whole town to school, aren’t you?’ Archie Paterson sneered.

‘It’s about time it was put to school,’ Heath shouted. ‘This town has had too little discipline, and the proper sort of discipline will do us all good.’

The lads of the miners’ group were spoiling for a chance to attack this man who had bullied them and humiliated them at page 246 school. Rogers heard one whisper, ‘Gang up on him’. He knew that the older men, if they knew of it, would be against it. Four youngsters were scheming now in mutters.

‘This is a working-man’s town,’ a dredge-hand called. ‘We won’t need any schoolmaster telling us what to do. Or any cop either.’

‘It’s time you learned,’ Heath said. ‘We aren’t going to allow the rabble of the country to push us around.’

There were cries of, ‘Who’s we?’ but already there were shouts of, ‘Rabble?’ and the youths were moving towards Heath. Rogers rushed into thoughtless action; he ran to Heath, pulled his hat from his head and threw it on the grass at the side of the road. It was a stupid action and he couldn’t have said why he did it.

‘Here, you!’ Heath said, taken by surprise, but his eyes followed his hat. Rogers ignored him and stepped forward.

‘Listen, you chaps,’ he shouted. ‘Can’t you see that you’re playing right into their hands?’

They weren’t listening, they were jeering at him.

‘I’m not one to talk, I admit,’ Rogers shouted. ‘I’m on your side and I don’t expect any welcome, either.’ They began to listen, but only tentatively. ‘I’m trying to tell you what your Ben and Jock would tell you if they were here. You’re doing the very thing the publicans want, you’re playing right into their hands. If you start a fight the papers will blow it up into a bloody riot….’

But their attention had left him. They were grinning. Heath had gone after his hat, which was perched on long grass on the side of the water-race, ready to fall into the water. It was as if property was more important than dignity the way he chased it, saying, ‘Get that man, constable!’ He saved the hat from wetting, but he slipped, and in trying to balance himself he planted one leg in the race, and then, fell in. He climbed out, his hat crumpled, and his face red and foolish, his suit covered in mud, stamping his muddy shoes. The crowd burst into laughter. Even Rae was tempted to grin. The four youths who had planned to rush him, rolled, leaning on one another, laughing loudly. Heath danced from one foot to the other while he took off his shoes and emptied water from them.

‘You’ll be sorry for this, Rogers,’ he called. ‘It was assault, constable, assault.’

Rogers went to the youths. ‘Can’t you see he was only trying to provoke you into attacking?’ he said. ‘Then they’d have had you where they wanted you.’

‘He’s right,’ Archie Paterson said, taking control. ‘Where’s your union officials? They should have put you wise to that trick. We’d have had police reinforcements here.’

page 247

‘You’ll have them anyway,’ Rae said. ‘This thing’s getting out of hand. What did you do that for?’ he asked Rogers.

‘I saved the peace,’ Rogers said. ‘You couldn’t have managed if there’d been trouble.’

‘Well, that’s as may be… I can’t say Heath’s remarks were helpful either to public order or to me…. And I don’t see any sense in one public servant hounding another,’ Rae said. ‘Very well, I’ll let this go. But I warn you, don’t try anything like that again.’

‘That was a near thing,’ Archie said. ‘They shouldn’t have needed a wavering schoolteacher to tell them that.’

‘They’re only boys,’ one of the dredge-hands said. ‘The miners could have warned them not to start anything on their own.’

Heath was walking with all the dignity he could rouse. The crowd broke up laughing. Rogers spoke to Jimmy Cairns who was arriving attracted by the noise. He told him what had happened. ‘Whose side are you on?’ Jimmy asked.

‘I’m on yours,’ Rogers said. ‘I told the Palmers I couldn’t stick Don’s scabbing.’

‘You’ve woken up then,’ Jimmy said. ‘Just as well. It might have been too late. But you can’t blame the lads if they’re suspicious of you. I can’t make out why you were against the boycott in the first place. You were too comfortable at Palmers’ I think…. Frank Lindsay made bloody sure he didn’t marry the whole family.’

‘Next thing I know they’ll be kicking me out.’

‘If you’re stuck, Jessie’ll take you in. You see what I meant about the boycott. One small step to the right and the next thing you know you’re supporting scabs and profiteers and policemen. You’re not used to union discipline, that’s your trouble.’

‘You’re talking like Heath now, Jimmy. Discipline this and discipline that.’

‘He means keeping people down. We mean keeping ourselves in fighting trim. Self-discipline.’

‘You still don’t allow anyone much independence.’

‘If Palmers kick you out and you’re stuck, try Jessie.’