J.B. In Charge Chapter 1

I Introduce My Family

This is a story about my life when I was a small boy. In some ways my life then has no resemblance at all to your lives as children. In other ways, nothing at all has changed.

When I was a small boy, life everywhere was a bustle of nations of children. There were clever children and stupid children, bossy children and bossed about children, serious children and comic children, children with a lot of money and children with no money at all.

All grownups lived in a strange country. Their country was so big and its rules so powerful and mysterious that we children just had to make up our own rules how to survive in it. You know now what I meant when I said in other ways nothing at all has changed.

You now might like to ask me who I am. I am a man who has what grownups call many important responsibilities. I am the sort of person who, when I start to speak, the other grownups fall silent or at least their voices hush. I wear a tie not as flashy as a television host's, and my suit bulges comfortably around my waist. When I am at home, I am no different from most other grandfathers.

In my place of work, I give orders to other important grownups. Sometimes I visit other very important grownups. On those occasions, my palms become sweaty too, and I too, nod and pretend to agree with everything they say. I have found out the grownup nation is a bustle of clever grownups and stupid grownups, bossy grownups and bossed about grownups, serious grownups and comic grownups, grownups with a lot of money and grownups with no money at all.

Now I shall begin to tell you my story. I woke up one sun glowing morning. There was not a cloud in the sky. The chooks outside my bedroom window were scratching and clucking. It was Saturday and I did not have a care in the world. My big brother still dozed on the pillow beside me in our big four poster bed. I always liked to get up before he woke up and began to tweak my nose. I jumped out of bed and dashed off to my parents' bedroom. I opened their door and took a dive and roll on their bed. When I was little, I had begun to do that. Dad would crawl under the blankets and pretend to growl like a bear.

Mum would shiver and look at me with frightened eyes and say:

Quick, run away! Dad has turned into papa bear and will eat you.

I would giggle and pretend to scream. I never really thought he had, but I was always very glad when he came up with his familiar smiling face. We all stopped doing that when Big Brother told us it was not good for fathers to frighten their little children.

I should have told you my name is Jim Brown and my big brother's name is Brian Brown. Because there was another small Jim Brown down the road, everyone called me J.B. I had wondered why the other boy wasn't called J.B. Then I found out he was clever and bossy, was serious and had lots of money. I was thought by all the grownups and the children to be all the other things. When he became a grownup, Jim Brown stole a lot of other people's money and is now in gaol.

Some of the other children also told me my face is as round in the cheeks, and as flat in the nose and forehead as a potato. Some kids from town visited our school and said my face looked like a balloon. We kids at our school knew what a balloon was but we were much more familiar with potatoes.

Anyway, I jumped on the bed and rolled under the blankets and gave little piglet squeals. Our sow Frieda had just littered. When I rolled over Dad, I immediately felt that something was wrong. It was as if I had just rolled over a log of a tree. I looked up frightened at Mum. Mum was yawning.

Dad is very tired this morning, she said.
All yesterday he was pow‐wowing with Old Bootles.

Old Bootles had a farm a mile down our road. Whenever a grownup talked about Old Bootles, their voices would hush and they would nervously look around. We children then liked Old Bootles and were always trying to find out what was bad about him. You will find out everything about Old Bootles in my story. We called him Old Bootles because all the grownups called him that, and to our surprise, let us children call him that too.

I felt at that moment it was best to take up a kid's useful strategy. I pretended not to be there. That was usually not difficult with grownups.

Dad who had been silent suddenly spoke in a strange murmurous voice.

I am going to get up.

I said murmurous, but his words had that grittiness they had when he was on the point of ripping out a tree trunk from the earth. I stared at him. Dad with his right arm flung the blankets from the bed, jerked himself up, and heaved his left leg and then all the rest of him on to the floor. For a moment he stood up with his back to us, and then as heavily as a falling log, he crashed on to the floor on his left side. Dad lay there. He seemed to stretch across the entire floor. I jumped from the bed and stared at Dad at my feet. I looked at Mum. I thought she would look at me with those shivers and frightened eyes as when we played that game.

But Mum had her ‘everything is going to be all right’ smile.

I think we will have to get a doctor, she said.

I had heard of doctors but had never met one except at school visits. When we were sick, Mum – who was never sick – made up horrible tasting potions from a big book in her wardrobe. We never stayed in bed long but as soon as we could get up we would be at school, or in the cowbails to avoid those potions. We were hardly ever sick.

A doctor coming to visit us was of course exciting. But I would much rather Dad could get up even if he only gave me work to do.

Mum picked up Dad and helped him back into the bed. Dad looked up at me.

I can see two J.B.s! and he gave his familiar smile.

Mum looked at me. I saw a tear and a little bit of that fear in her eyes.

J. B. go and get me a bowl of water and soap and a cloth and don't say anything to Brian and Aunty Fan, Mum said.

Aunty Fan was Mum's sister. She was a little bit bigger than Mum but she was smaller than Brian. Dad was so tall I had to climb high in the garden apple tree to be taller than him. Dad was strong too. He was so strong he never had to cut into pieces a new apple but would instead break it with his fingers. Now he was lying there more helpless than a kitten. It, at least, could walk away from its bed.

I returned with the bowl of water and the soap. We never had those fancy soaps you buy from the shops. Mum made all our soap. At first Dad killed a sheep. Then Mum boiled and stirred its fat in caustic soda in a copper in the warehouse. When the fat cooled, it set hard. Then Mum emptied the fat on to a concrete slab and cut it into pieces with the back edge of an old cross‑cut saw blade. Mum's soap was so strong the merest touch on the skin stung like a sun burn. Mum's soap was as fearful as the back of her hand and about as effective.

Mum knelt down and soaped and dried Dad's face. Then she knelt down at the foot of the bed.

I never thought I would end up washing Dad's feet,
she said in her ‘everything is going to be all right voice’.

I instantly felt better again. I had seen Mum give our bull, Lloyd George, one of her looks. Dad had chased it half the morning on his horse, Charlie.
Lloyd George stared back at Mum for a second and then slunk back into his paddock.

Dad glanced at me. Then he said in that murmurous voice.

J.B. leave the room.

He had only ever used words like those once before when old Bootles arrived at our house late at night.

I ran from the bedroom and that was the first time, in many times over the next few months, my sight clouded over in a wash of tears.

Cry baby Brown, in your tears go drown. chanted Brian still in our bed.

We should by now have been in the cowbails. Brian, a clever boy, who went to high school, took any excuse to dodge work. While Dad and I sweated in the mud, Brian sneaked away to play his mouth organ and make up little songs. We could never really get angry with him. He was almost useless at the work; anyway, he was clever and his songs made us laugh.
One of his songs, Taranaki Spring, went like this.

Oh we rise and we're glad to be alive
Though the clouds come over the mountain,
And the mud lies thick in the home paddock
And the rain comes down in fountains.
Bang go the cans, and the dog he understands
And he's off and through the slip-rails,
And we gaily sing of a Taranaki Spring
As the cows come down to the cowbails.

I secretly remembered we never sang of a Taranaki Spring or any other sort of Spring as the cows came down to the cowbails. We were too busy sloshing our path through the mud to the bails. I thought perhaps Brian meant our cows were singing. I remembered how our school master, Mr Macgregor, taught us about poetic licence. The song was quite good I thought, but sometimes I wished our dog, Bruce, slept with me and Brian slept in the kennel.