page 19

With the Wind

By Ivan

Calm and strong came the chill dawn. The east lightened with a paleness that spread over the dusky sky, the cold stars faded. The mountain ridges stood stark and clear barring the eastern brightness, and over the fields lay the still blankets of mist. Nothing stirred in the dawn-silence, the quiet of the cold dawn.

Close by the road a great haystack stood foursquare against wind and weather, and under the shelter of its steep side lay a man. Calmly he lay under the lee of the great stack that stood where a hundred others had stood, since the cycle of seed and harvest has come to the plain. Under the stack that is the symbol of the richness of the soil, the storing of the wealth of summer against the lean months, the land's security against the dark winter.

The man had rolled his coat for a pillow under his head, and he lay close against the warm hay. In the cold dawn he had woken and watched the fading stars. Now he sat up, leaning against the stack, stretching with a great yawn. He unrolled his coat, brushing off the wisps of hay. Lazily he put it on, and stood up to stamp his feet, crushing the stuble.

An ordinary looking man, such as people passed on dusty roads every day in the time of the depression. Whirling over the white roads in the shimmering heat, people saw the drab figure far ahead, slouching along, a little cloud of dust rising and falling round the moving feet. The car would draw near, the dusty figure would edge closer to the roadside, walking slowly on the rough metal. Then the car would whirl past, engine roaring, loose stone beating a tattoo under the fenders. And behind it the dust boiled and eddied in a choking cloud, so that the man walking on the rough stones of the roadside screwed his eyes tight shut, feeling the dust hot and rank in his nostrils. Perhaps they would look at him from the car, to wave, as they did to all countryfolk. But the man plodded on with eyes shut in the burning cloud, dust settling on stained shapeless hat, dust spurting up around the broken shoes. 'Swagger' said the car-driver as they rolled on over the hot, white road.

The man under the haystack was one of these that travelled the roads homeless and without hope. Casual workers, factory hands, drovers, tradesmen, they tramped through the burning summer heat, through the chill, dark winter, from farmhouse to farmhouse, the victims of a cycle of boom and slump they could not understand. On over the roads, having no roots in the rich earth, no foundations in the hard cities. On endlessly over the roads, like the thistledown of high summer, like the scattered leaves in autumn.

So this man, stamping his feet in the stubble-field. Tall, yet stooping, the stance of one used to contemplating the road just ahead of weary feet. The skin of the face brown and lined, stretched tight over nose and cheekbones. Bearded, because it page 20 had long been too much trouble to shave. Eyes lacking the hopefullness of youth. And the clothes were any old clothes, a clutter of greasy habilements, everything baggy and stained, shapeless and old.

The man felt in his pocket, grimed fingers reaching for a parcel of sandwiches, begged at the last farmhouse. Two left, yesterday's bread, crusty, hard. Chewing slowly, he stamped his feet. Slowly, luxuriously he tasted each mouthful, savouring the coarse bread, the rank cheese. Then he looked round, made sure he had left nothing, and climbed the wire fence into the ditch by the road. Here lay a bicycle, ancient and without mudguards, the tyre casings swollen by sleeves inserted to protect the tubes. He lugged the wreck onto the road. Then he did a strange thing. He looked around, determined the wind's direction, and set off on his creaking machine so that the wind was behind. Each morning he did this. So little object had he in his wanderings that the changing wind was his guide.

Behind was the night through which he had slept, before him the day through which he would ride, pushing his bicycle up hills, coasting down their far sides, grinding steadily along on the flat stretches. The day, punctuated, if one were lucky, by three meals.

Blue smoke rose behind pine trees round a bend in the road, and the man pushed on, thinking of the pannikins of hot steaming tea, red and fragrant, splashing scalding out of smoke blackened billies. One poured milk into the strong red tea, clouding it so that it became a rich brown ....

Now he came round the corner past the pine belt, and saw down to the left in a hollow the broad-roofed sheds of a sawmill. The beautiful scent of woodsmoke hung in the fresh morning air. Men were moving about, preparing the first meal of the day. The swagger turned his bicycle onto the sideroad that led to the mill, and clattered furiously down the slope. The green manuka bushes growing at the roadside slapped wet against his legs as he bumped along. Faster and faster down the road, clinging tightly to the handlebars ....

On the flat ground round the last bend stood the big red truck, ready loaded with timber, its engine warming up for the day's work. The man on the bicycle had no time for anything but the reaction of surprise, and by his own impetus he was dashed against the radiator grill and instantly killed. 'You never seen such a mess,' said the truck-driver. 'You never seen such a bloody mess in all your life.'

A moment in time, an incident, pointless, rather grisly, not to be dwelt upon. Ludicrous to the mill-hands, who after their first surprise joked about the disadvantages of dying on an empty stomach. You glanced at the three lines at the bottom of the last column on page five, voluptuously made a mental picture of the incident, turned the page. It meant little, except one less shiftless mouth to feed. The next day more swaggers would be along, tramping the same way.

That was it. More swaggers. Not all were conveniently removed as he. The army of the hopeless marched on. And as they marched, they gained ideas, which hunger and want and the stricken faces of their wives and children urged them to embrace. Ideas they worked out as they tramped along, which they discussed in generalizations over communal fires. Ideas which became their hope, their background, page 21 part of their lives. Ideas which the factory owners would not think about, because they were afraid

They are still with us, these men. Tom is dead, but Dick and Harry and others are here. They cannot be duped again, they have suffered too much. And they will not soon forget the faces of their children, for whom they will die, these men who travelled aimlessly with the wind. With the wind, of which it has been said that no man can tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.

Or whither it goeth .... Remember this.