A Man Melting

by Craig Cliff

  ‘I’d now like to bring Diana Shepherd, the president of the New Zealand Sceptics’ Society, into the discussion,’ the news presenter said. ‘You’re becoming a regular fixture, Diana. Always a pleasure to have you. What do you make of this latest claim?’

  ‘My views have not changed. My feeling is that this rash of reappearances is scientifically implausible, and a much simpler explanation lies at the root. We should, perhaps, be proud that this meme, this trend for fabricated sightings of extinct animals, forged photographs and increasingly professional-looking videos, originated here in New Zealand with the affair of the Haast’s eagle —’

  ‘Which scientists have verified —’ someone called Dr Moore butted in. Melanie booed, as she did every time his face came on the screen.

  ‘— for which a government laboratory’, Mum continued, ‘ran mitochondrial DNA analysis on three samples: one returning harrier hawk, one Haast’s eagle and one human being —’

  ‘I’m amazed you are still clinging to this worldwide hoax theory,’ said Dr Moore and Melanie booed again. ‘Look around you, Diana.’

  ‘And I am amazed that all it takes to sway you is quantity. I’m standing firm.’ Mum turned and looked down the camera. ‘I’ll believe when my burden of proof is met.’

  She looked angry, or something like angry. I was there when Mrs Oe had called her that afternoon, so I knew she knew about me pushing Laurel. It made me nervous. When the sports news came on I went to the kitchen and I tried out a new recipe to take my mind off what would happen when she came home.

  When I heard the front door at eight o’clock, I called out, ‘Your tea is in the microwave and will be ready in two minutes.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Melanie went to bed half an hour ago,’ I said when she came into the kitchen. She dropped her satchel on the breakfast bar and began taking bobby pins out of her hair.

  She didn’t say anything else. She just stared towards the plate spinning round inside the microwave until it dinged. That seemed to wake her up.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ she asked.

  ‘Roast vegetable linguine.’ I placed the plate in front of her on the breakfast bar. ‘It’s another one of my namesake’s recipes.’ My namesake is Jamie Oliver. I wasn’t actually named after him — I was born a bit before he got famous — but he is my favourite TV chef.

  ‘Have you had enough to eat?’ Mum asked.

  I nodded and handed her a fork.

  ‘Are these cherry tomatoes?’

  I nodded again and she took a mouthful.

  ‘Hot,’ she said, and waved her hand in front of her mouth.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s delicious, darling.’

  ‘You were good on TV tonight,’ I said.

  She lifted one shoulder and continued winding pasta around her fork.

  ‘Isn’t it funny how different a male huia’s beak is from a female’s, but everything else is so similar?’

  ‘Was,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, was. I’ve done all my homework. Is it okay if I go on the internet?’

  She nodded and brought another forkful to her mouth.

  On the internet I went to www.antisceptics.com. I had been visiting this site for the past three weeks, ever since they interviewed someone on the news and underneath their name it said the web address. The first page was a big green-and-white Dettol logo, except it said Acceptall instead of Dettol. I clicked the logo to get to the main page, then clicked the tab for the message board. I wanted to see what people were saying about the huia and my mum.

  I clicked on the newest thread, which was called ‘Shepherd Strikes Again’.

  Can you believe, someone called Felix82 had written, that Diana Shepherd is still claiming ‘the burden of proof ’ has not been met? Still.

  Carnyhands had replied: But she is still a fox.

  My username is Quagga2, which is an extinct animal with the head of a zebra and the body of a horse, or maybe a donkey. It reappeared in Africa three weeks ago, allegedly. I think ‘allegedly’ must be one of Mum’s favourite words.

  I wrote: Isn’t it strange how the only difference between a male and a female huia is their beaks?

  I refreshed a couple of times, but no one responded, so I deleted the browser’s history for that day and got ready for bed.

  I used to watch A Taste of Tuscany on FoodTV while I ate my breakfast, but with all the reappearances I had started watching the morning news instead. The day after the huia, the newest sightings were of golden toad in Costa Rica, Caspian tiger in Armenia, and the indefatigable Galapagos mouse in Ecuador. The last one was my favourite.

  I went to the school library at lunchtime and looked up indefatigable in the dictionary.

  Indefatigable — adj. [L. indefatigabilis] Incapable of being fatigued; not readily exhausted; untiring; unwearying; not yielding to fatigue; as in, indefatigable exertions, perseverance, application.

  ‘Reading the dictionary again, Sceptic’s Kid?’

  I looked up, even though I knew it was Matthew Morgan.

  ‘What are you doing in the library?’ I asked. ‘Are you lost?’

  ‘I’m allowed to use the internet again. It’s been a month.’

  Matthew Morgan had been banned from using the library internet for a month because he did a Google search for: Who has the biggest boobs in the world?

  ‘You and your indefatigable quest for the biggest boobs in the world,’ I said.

  Matthew Morgan looked at me. I wasn’t sure if he was going to punch me or not the whole time he stood there. Then he finally said, ‘See ya, Sceptic’s Kid,’ though the way he said it sounded like Sceptic Skid.

  The next day everyone at school was calling me Sceptic Skid. By lunchtime, I was being called Skid-mark Shepherd and ended up in Mrs Oe’s office again.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ I said.

  ‘What’s not fair?’ Mrs Oe asked.

  ‘Why I’m the one who always gets sent here and everyone else doesn’t.’

  ‘Everyone else doesn’t try to hit people with a cricket bat.’

  ‘I didn’t hit anyone.’

  ‘But you tried.’

  She wove her thin fingers together and leant her chin on the platform they made.

  ‘It was only one of those plastic bats,’ I said. ‘The yellow ones. I’m useless at cricket, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand the consequence of your actions, Jamie. You don’t seem in the least bit sorry. If you don’t take a serious look at yourself, you’ll just end up back here in a couple of days. What if next time you do hit someone with a cricket bat? Will you feel better or worse?’

  It depends on who I hit, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

  I walked home from school with Melanie as usual. She knows the way, but she gets distracted by everything. If it wasn’t for me, it would take her six hours instead of six minutes.

  Mum was waiting for us when we arrived.

  ‘Aren’t you going on the news tonight?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even to talk about the indefatigable Galapagos mouse?’

  ‘Jaime, Mrs Oe rang me again today.’

  Melanie made an ooooh noise and Mum told her to go into the lounge. I didn’t say anything.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Mum said. ‘You’ve been called names before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. All the time.’

  ‘So why all of a sudden does it bother you?’

  ‘But everyone is doing it, now. Before it was just one or two. Now it is everyone and it gets so loud I just want them to stop. I just want them to stop.’

  ‘Come here, my man,’ she said, and hugged me. After that we ate French vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries and bits of meringue broken over the top and watched FoodTV. When it was tea time, we weren’t hungry, even though watching FoodTV usually makes me hungry no matter what. Mum made Melanie a cheese and Marmite sandwich, then said she was going to have a bath. I went on the in
ternet.

  On antisceptics.com, the person called Carnyhands had replied to my message about huia beaks.

  I think you’ll find there’s one other difference.

  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to write LOL or WTF, so I didn’t reply at all.

  The next day was a Saturday. Mum got a call at eleven in the morning from the news. When she hung up, she told me and Melanie we’d have to go to Uncle Roger’s.

  ‘But I can look after Melanie,’ I said. ‘Just coz it’s a weekend, doesn’t —’

  ‘You’re going to your uncle’s, mister,’ she said, ‘and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘But how can we watch the news? He doesn’t have a TV!’

  ‘Or a ’puter,’ said Melanie. She knows how to say computer, but was talking like a baby to annoy me.

  ‘We’ll record the news,’ Mum said. ‘You can watch it with me tomorrow.’

  When we got there, Uncle Roger was digging up carrots from his tiny garden.

  ‘So what’s come back from the dead this time?’ he asked.

  ‘A flock of pigeons,’ Melanie said.

  ‘Passenger pigeons,’ Mum added. ‘In Wisconsin.’

  Uncle Roger was wearing a faded blue singlet and you could see he was sweating on his back because it was a darker blue. He was muscly, Uncle Roger, but I knew you weren’t supposed to look at that sort of thing so I looked down at the carrots.

  ‘You can have one if you want, Jamie,’ he said.

  ‘They’re covered in mud.’

  ‘A little dirt never hurt anyone.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘I want to go on a treasure hunt,’ Melanie said.

  Mum went up to Uncle Roger and placed a hand on his shoulder. He went to put his hand on her shoulder too, but she stopped him, I guess because she didn’t want to get her blouse dirty.

  ‘You right if I dash off now?’ she asked him.

  He looked at me and Melanie and said, ‘Okay.’ I thought that was a bit rude, but didn’t really know why.

  Mum kissed Melanie and me goodbye and left us with sweaty Uncle Roger.

  ‘Treasure hunt?’ Melanie said.

  Uncle Roger tipped the kumara and runner beans from his flax kete and gave it to Melanie. ‘You can put your treasure in here,’ he said. ‘Will you keep an eye on her, Jamie?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Melanie was already walking into the bush, so I ran to catch up. I picked up a branch and practiced my cricket swing as I followed my sister around. She was picking up everything that wasn’t still growing — stones, squashed cans, bits of weta skeleton stuck to a tree — and some things that still were, mostly flowers. I pretended tree trunks were Matthew Morgan, but my branch kept breaking. When I saw a pile of leaves like a little pyramid I imagined it was Matthew Morgan crouching on the ground and went to kick him, but my foot hit something so hard I thought I broke my toes.

  Melanie came over to see what the screaming was about.

  ‘I kicked something,’ I said.

  ‘Why were you hitting trees?’

  I didn’t answer. Still holding my toes with one hand, I started sweeping away the leaves with the other to see what I’d kicked. All I could see was a pale red triangle sticking up about the height of my pointer finger. When I pulled more dirt away I could see it was a handle.

  ‘Boring,’ my sister said.

  ‘Don’t you know about icebergs? It’s mostly below the surface.’

  ‘That’s not ice,’ Melanie said.

  ‘No, but this handle could be attached to anything. A wagon. A metal detector to help find treasure.’

  ‘My bag is full,’ she said, and held up her kete.

  ‘Don’t you want to find some real treasure?’

  ‘I’m finished treasure hunting, Jamie.’

  ‘What are you going to do then?’

  ‘Go back to the house.’

  ‘You don’t know the way,’ I said.

  ‘Yes I do.’

  Melanie started taking tiny steps backwards.

  ‘If you’re going back,’ I said, ‘get me a spade or something.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, then spun around and walked away.

  I wrapped my fingers around the handle and pulled. It wouldn’t come. I tried jiggling it to loosen the dirt, then pulled again. Instead of the thing coming straight up, like King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone, it came up longways, like it had been lying down. When I realised that it was a spade, the very thing I asked Melanie to fetch me, I wanted to laugh, but that was when I heard my sister squeal. I dropped the grubby spade and ran to where I thought the sound had come from. When I came to the clearing behind the house I saw Uncle Roger crouching down and it looked as if he was whispering to Melanie. For a second I thought Uncle Roger had done something. My stomach felt like when you go over judder bars too quick.

  But when Melanie turned and saw me, she said, ‘I saw one, I saw one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A moa.’

  ‘Did not. You know Mum says it’s just a big hoax.’

  ‘I did, I did. Jamie, it was this tall.’ She stood on her tippy-toes and stretched her arm as high as it could go, which wasn’t that high.

  ‘Uncle Roger, tell her she couldn’t have seen a moa.’

  He stood up properly and brushed his thighs. He was still wearing his muddy gardening trousers but had put on a white t-shirt. ‘Could it have been something else?’ he asked her. ‘A weka, perhaps?’

  ‘Or a tree,’ I said.

  ‘Mo-a,’ she said.

  ‘Mum will not like hearing that,’ I said.

  ‘She certainly will not,’ Uncle Roger said, and went to place his hand on my shoulder but I moved away.

  ‘But I saw one, Jamie!’

  ‘You’re stupid,’ I said.

  ‘You’re the stupid one. Uncle Roger, he was hitting trees with a stick.’

  Uncle Roger didn’t look like he knew what to do. I called Melanie a baby until she went inside crying.

  An hour later she had her felt pens out and was drawing on Uncle Roger’s table. There was nothing for me to do except read a book, which is also what Uncle Roger was doing, as usual. My book was about native birds, but all it made me think about was how the news would be starting soon.

  ‘Do you have any neighbours with TVs?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘You’re stuck here with me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘How do you write without a computer?’ I asked him.

  He leant over and picked up something from the ground beside his chair. ‘I write in here.’ It was a 1B5 notebook like we use at school. ‘When I’m ready, there’s the typewriter.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘In storage.’

  ‘Oh.’ I looked at his bookshelves, which took up two of the four walls in his tiny house. ‘Are any of these by you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I stood up and went over to see what Melanie was drawing. Spread out on the table were pages and pages of moa. I picked one up. The moa was pink with one green eye and one blue eye. There was a green tree beside the pink moa, but it only came up to its knees.

  ‘Moa aren’t pink,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a girl.’

  ‘What colour was the moa you saw, blue?’

  ‘Jamie,’ Uncle Roger said. It was almost a growl. He had never told me off before, ever. I backed off and he let me cook tea.

  Even though I thought Uncle Roger was a weirdo, it felt good when he said my baby carrots with thyme, cumin and orange butter (another of my namesake’s recipes) were the best carrots he’d ever had.

  ‘Better than carrots with mud?’ I asked.

  All he said was, ‘Yes.’ Sometimes I wonder if he knows what a joke is.

  When Mum arrived to pick us up, Melanie was asleep on Uncle Roger’s bed.

  ‘How was the news, Mum?’

  ‘Fine, sweetheart. Were they too much hassle?’ she asked Uncle Roger.

&nb
sp; He looked at me, then shook his head.

  Melanie woke up while Mum was carrying her to the car. ‘My drawings,’ she said.

  ‘We can pick them up next time, hon.’

  ‘My moas,’ she said.

  ‘She must still be dreaming, Mum,’ I said. ‘We went on a treasure hunt and guess what I dug up?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jamie,’ she said softly as she buckled Melanie up, ‘what did you dig up?’

  ‘A spade! How funny is that?’

  At school on Monday no one called me Sceptic Skid or Skid-mark Shepherd. I decided this was because lots of interesting things must have happened over the weekend, and because I was doing my best to avoid Matthew Morgan. Near the end of lunchtime, though, I really needed to pee. In the boys toilets there are three cubicles and one long urinal. I always try to get a cubicle because you spend all your time at home practising with a normal toilet, it seems a waste to just pee into a trough in public. But the three cubicles were occupied. Normally I would go outside and wait until someone left, but I had drunk a whole bottle of pineapple Fanta and I really needed to go. So long as no one came and stood beside me, I told myself, I would be fine.

  I unzipped and got it out, but before I could start to go, Matthew Morgan came in and unzipped right beside me. He started going straight away. It was as if someone had stuck a plug in mine, even though I could feel the hot pee burning in my bladder.

  ‘Hey, Skid-mark,’ he said, waving his stream a little to the left and right.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, trying not to look.

  He finished going, zipped up and went to wash his hands.

  I knew that I wasn’t going to go anymore standing at that urinal, and the three cubicles were still occupied, so I decided to wash my hands and pretend like I had been. Matthew Morgan was still at the basins. He was using paper towels to plug up one of the sinks.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t you nark on me,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t.’

  A kid in Year Five came out of the middle cubicle and left without washing his hands.