Dunger (8 page)

 

Plainly, our parents hadn't told us the details, because if they had, we wouldn't have come. So this news only adds to their degree of rotten, low-down guilt.

To say I'm annoyed is to call a hurricane a breeze. I mean there are degrees of anger, and when you have so much steam it wants to pop your eyes out, you have to do something about it. I can do nothing, nothing… except go outside with the axe and hack off the smaller branches from the big one I felled yesterday. I've never had an iPad –
bash
– or my own skateboard –
bash
– and now that will never happen –
bash
–
bash
.

“You watch your feet there, chico,” Grandpa calls.

“My name is Will,” I mutter, swinging the axe.
Crack!

“You're chopping in the wrong place,” he yells. “Aim at the underside of the branch, not the vee. It's easier.”

Nothing in this place is easy, so I keep on chopping my way until he goes back inside.

I more than anticipated that iPad – I
visualised
it, worked with it in my head, bought apps for it, until it came into existence as already mine. Dad knew the money was going into a trust when he said “You'll be paid,” and Mother-of-the-hundred-eyes, no, I mean
lies
, she knew about it too. No language has been invented to describe how I feel about their betrayal.

Melissa has come around to thinking the trust is a good idea, probably because she was going to spend her money on rags, anyway, and because she wants to go to a fashion design school which costs money. She wouldn't be Melissa if she wasn't thinking about herself.

My plans for the future are uncertain, but I may become a biologist or a meteorologist and go and work in Antarctica. Penguins and the weather are more predictable than my family.

“You can still get an iPad,” Melissa says for the third time. “You just have to save for it.”

“Stand back,” I tell her. “I don't want to chop your toes off.”

“Stop being a horrible little fart,” she says, and goes back inside.

By mid-morning, that big branch has lost all its small branches, and its lower end is bare with sap bleeding out of a thousand axe cuts. There are still a few bigger branches at the thick end, but those will have to be cut by a saw and I fear the bush saw has outlived its usefulness.

I plan to take a walk by myself up the stream, so I can check on the water intake, but Grandpa comes out jiggling the car keys. “Want to come for a ride?”

My inclination is to choose a walk to the stream, but I look back at the car and become a swinging voter. Well, not for long. It's the car that wins, because there is a chance, a real chance – but that doesn't mean I am happy about bending my principles.

“We're going to Hoffmeyer's farm,” says Grandpa. “He's killed some meat. Has a leg of lamb for us. Not only but also, he's got a fifteen-foot runabout on a trailer and says we can borrow it for a day. Like to do some fishing?”

He gets in the driver's seat and gives me a couple of plastic bags to hold, but as soon as we turn out of the gateway and onto the road, he stops and gets out. “Move over,” he says.

I move over in one quick bounce and grab the wheel.

“It's a private road,” he says.

“I know.”

He laughs. “No pedestrian crossings, no traffic lights, no cop cars. Just watch out for wild goats and pigs and an occasional landslide.”

“Shall I put it in gear?”

“You've done first and second. Now you can try third. That's about top for this winding road. But you'll have to shove her back to second on some of the uphill bends. I'll show you when we come to that. Off you go, Stirling Moss.”

“Moss? What does moss have to do with driving?”

“He was a racing driver before your time,” says Grandpa.

I put my foot on the clutch that now feels very familiar, and find first gear without looking. Clutch slowly out. The car rolls forward without a single jerk. I feed it more gas, then it's foot off the accelerator, clutch in, second gear, clutch out, accelerator, pick up a bit of speed …

“Now third,” says Grandpa.

Easy-peasy, into third gear and we are cruising along the dirt road, which doesn't mean I am driving carelessly, far from it: there are ruts and potholes to be avoided and the occasional big stone that has dropped off a clay bank. I need to watch out for things like that. The road is narrow but there are curved clearings at the edge where I can pull over, in the unlikely event of another car appearing.

Driving is such a good feeling. I say to Grandpa, “Would you call this living smart?”

“I would, laddie, but don't tell your father.”

I have no intention of saying anything to Dad. I have learned the sobering lesson that my parents can't be trusted.

 

 

Of course I'm disappointed, but it's not like the money has been taken away from us, it's been invested for the future, which is sort of old-fashioned and sweet of them. Rather like the photos, meaning they're thinking of a time when they can be with us in another way. I wish Will would understand this. He can't, and maybe I'm expecting too much from a little kid. Because he talks big, I forget he's only eleven. He is pretty upset, I can tell. He says this holiday is a “dunger”, a word he picked up from Grandpa, and that he's never coming here again. But I noticed that when Grandpa mentioned the car, he changed his tune. Bet you anything he wants to drive.

It's photos again this morning, sorting them one by one. This picture is black and white: a man in tight swim-trunks with bulgy bits, on a diving board.

“Does he have glasses?” she asks.

“No. He's going to dive, Grandma! He's pretty cool, and he's got something around his neck.”

“Shark tooth?”

“I don't know. Could be.”

She takes the photo from me and holds it against her glasses. “Stone the crows, girl, that's your grandfather. Put down the date – 1956.”

Grandpa? That is so embarrassing! I recognise some of the other pictures. The little kid sitting on the beach with a dog is my dad, I can tell by his hair – Dad's hair I mean – and the big boy in school uniform is already the serious adult who wants to solve all our problems but usually makes them worse. I find pictures of Dad playing cricket, Dad on skis, Dad and his parents by a campfire, and one of Dad on a beach with a weird surfboard. It's just a wooden plank, round one end and curved in at the other.

“It's all we had in those days,” Grandma says.

Most of the photos are of people that neither Grandma nor I recognise, which is just as well because we throw heaps out and soon the box is nearly empty, the job almost finished.

We stop, and I help her make a cold lunch. Not too difficult: lettuce salad, rice salad, hard-boiled eggs and watercress sandwiches. When I've set it out on the table, she says, “We're nearly out of bread. Do you want to make some new loaves?”

I think about it. “Yes, I would.”

“Nothing much to it,” she says. “If you do it now, it'll be risen after lunch when we light the fire.”

It turns out that, like scone-making, there's nothing much to bread. What she calls a smidgen of salt goes into the flour. The yeast and sugar are stirred into warm water out of the tap, and for the third time she tells me I have her hands. Well, I have to say this, short fingernails are better than long ones when kneading bread, and I do like the touch of it. She tells me to put oil instead of flour on the bench to prevent it from sticking. Over and over it goes in a smooth white lump.

“Knead it until it feels like your thigh,” she says.

Sounds odd, but that's the texture, although if my legs were as pale as this I wouldn't get into a bikini. I grease the bread pans and put two balls of dough in each.

She makes a clicking sound of approval. “Two big loaves. One for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow, and the other to take out fishing.”

“Fishing?”

“It's not just the leg of lamb they're after.” She jerks her head towards the road. “They're bringing back Hoffmeyer's boat. Your Grandpa's all set on us doing a day's fishing tomorrow.”

I don't say anything. I can't go fishing tomorrow, I really, truly can't. At lunchtime the mailman will be bringing back my phone.

 

 

When Mr Hoffmeyer shakes my hand, my knuckles crunch. He's a big guy, square shape, wiry hairs sticking out of the top of his black singlet, and more hairs on his legs bristling between the bottom of his shorts and the top of his gumboots. He looks like everybody's cartoon of a farmer. In his woolshed, he has a fridge without shelves, and inside it is the skinned body of a sheep hanging from a hook. He takes the carcase out, puts it on the bench, and with a meat chopper,
bang
,
bang
,
bang
, goes down the backbone, so the sheep falls in two halves. Just as quickly, he chops off a back leg and hands it to Grandpa who passes it to me. It's heavy, a lump of raw meat with streaks of white fat. I put it in a double layer of plastic bags.

I carry the meat to the car, wondering if all those sheep in the paddock know what I'm doing. Sheep are supposed to be dumb because they don't obey people's orders, but isn't that smart? Has anyone done research on the intelligence of sheep? For all I know, the animals staring at me as I walk over their grass could be making judgements about me as a carnivorous murderer, and telepathically planning their revenge. I put the bag on the floor between front and back seats and make a mental note to ask Dad if there have been any brain scans done on sheep.

Grandpa drives the car to the implement shed where Mr Hoffmeyer is waiting. Next to the tractor is a quad bike and next to that, a white boat on a trailer. Grandpa backs the car up close, then stops and gets out. So do I.

The runabout is a good size for four people, and has a 120 hp motor that Grandpa says is not fast, but adequate. While I'm looking at it, Grandpa lifts the trailer drawbar and swings it towards the car. But then he drops it. He steps back, leaning against the car and breathing hard. I run out to help, but Mr Hoffmeyer is already there, picking up the drawbar and dropping the end over the ball. He clicks it, and then does up the safety chain.

Grandpa is still huffing, holding his chest.

“You all right?” Mr Hoffmeyer says.

“Fit as a fiddle and ready to play.” Grandpa straightens up and smiles, suddenly perky. He gets back in the car, the driver's seat, which is okay because I don't want to drive with a boat on this road, and I am left to say thank you to the farmer.

“You're a good boy,” Mr Hoffmeyer says. “Look after your grandfather.”

I want to tell him that I do, but also that Grandpa never says I'm good, never, and that I wish just once he'd see that I've been trying to do my best and it's not my fault if things go wrong. But that would sound a bit melodramatic, so I just shake hands again with Mr Hoffmeyer with a
crunch
, and get into the car.

Grandpa pulls up at the back of the bach, and Lissy brings Grandma out to look at the boat, although I'm not sure how much of it she can see.

Grandpa is breathing normally again. “We'll get the gear ready tonight, ready for an early start.”

“Does it have to be tomorrow?” Lissy says. “The groceries are coming from the supermarket. Couldn't we go the day after?”

“Not a starter,” says Grandpa. “Weather's packing up Thursday. Southerly bluster coming in, likely it'll last three days.”

Of course, Melissa is not thinking about food being delivered by the mailman. With her, it's all about her stupid phone.

My sister has three brain cells, one for boys, one for clothes and one for texting messages to other girls with three brain cells.