Charlie Burr and the Great Shed Invasion

by Sally Morgan

  As we got dressed for school, we could hear Mum calling the cat. ‘Here, Fluffy! Here, baby girl!’

  I felt a bit guilty. But if Fluffy really was sick, Mum shouldn’t have gone out and left her!

  ‘Come on, my little tor toiseshell beauty,’ Mum called. ‘It’s breakfast time!’

  That was too much for Johnno. His eyes went all water y again. I told him to pull himself together.

  Johnno stayed looking upset right through breakfast. Mum thought he was homesick. She told him to ring home.

  Johnno did. But instead of asking how his mum was, he asked about Rosy. After a moment he started to shake with fear. Mum came over and took the phone off him.

  ‘Mason?’ she said into the phone. ‘What’s going on?’

  We heard Mason’s laugh coming through the receiver.

  Mum hung up. ‘Rosy hasn’t gone missing,’ she told Johnno. ‘Your brother was just teasing you.’

  Tia and Sharni looked up from their toast and laughed. Mason is a star footy player. He could stand on one leg and my sisters would think he was hysterical. Why do girls go crazy over stupid sportsmen?

  Johnno and me got stuck into our cereal.

  ‘Have you boys seen Fluffy?’ Mum said.

  I shook my head. I hadn’t seen Fluffy for a long time now.

  Johnno choked on his spoon.

  ‘Is there something you’d like to tell me, Johnno?’ Mum asked in her fake-kind voice.

  I gave Johnno a warning pinch on his leg under the table.

  ‘N-no, Aunty Shirl.’

  Mum glared at me. ‘Fluffy was all right last night, wasn’t she?’

  I nodded. The cat had been her usual grumpy self—at least at the star t, when we tipped her out of the pram.

  Mum looked suspicious. ‘Charlie, was she in her basket in the laundry before you went to bed?’

  Johnno made a guilty squeaking noise.

  ‘Aw, come on, Johnno,’ said Tia. ‘Tell Mum the truth, and I won’t ask you ever again about what brand of shampoo Mason uses!’

  My sisters are always wanting to know personal things about Mason.

  Johnno opened his mouth. I squeezed his kneecap with my fingers.

  ‘I-I don’t know anything!’ he gasped.

  ‘Right!’ Mum said. ‘The last time I saw Fluffy, she was sleeping in the pram. I don’t know what you boys did, but until she turns up, no one touches that pram!’

  But I was going to borrow Grandpa’s electric drill and turn the pram into a go-car t!

  ‘And just to make sure,’ Mum went on, ‘I’m chaining the pram to the verandah post! As for you, Charlie, Fluffy was your responsibility. You have to find her. Or else!’

  Sometimes I think Mum loves Fluffy more than she loves me. She’s always swapping pet stories with Granny Mary, but never Charlie stories. Granny has a pet duck called Paddles. He likes to poo on people. Quack! Quack! Quack! Splat!

  At least he gives you a warning. Which is more than I can say for Fluffy. She just leaves her poos under little piles of dir t, and when I accidentally step on one I get a stinky foot.

  Still, I did feel a bit guilty that Fluffy had gone missing. But I kept telling myself that it was Mum’s fault for not taking her inside when I’d asked.

  Johnno and me escaped to the front verandah to wait for Grandpa. He was giving a talk to our class that morning. He was driving to school so he was going to give us a lift there.

  Mrs Wilson had asked Grandpa and some other bloke to come to school and tell us about their jobs. She reckons all of us in her class will have jobs one day, but in this town there’s not enough jobs to go around. That’s why most of our family has moved to the coast. But why ask Grandpa to speak? There’s no money in rescuing animals.

  ‘What are we going to do about Fluffy?’ Johnno said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘She’ll come back.’

  When Grandpa pulled up, there was a wooden crate on the back of his ute. He said that what was inside was a surprise for our teacher, and he wouldn’t let us peek.

  On the way to school, I told Grandpa about the shed invasion, but he was no help. He just told us that his wife (Mum’s mum who passed away) had done the same thing with his shed when she was alive.

  ‘Your mum is a wild woman, Charlie!’ Grandpa said. ‘Your dad knew that when he married her!’

  Grandpa has more tools and junk than any bloke in town, but he didn’t offer to give me anything to help replace Dad’s stuff. Pretty mean, really.

  Johnno and me helped Grandpa lug the crate from the ute into our classroom. It was pretty heavy. I hoped whatever creature was inside wasn’t dead.

  Grandpa showed me the insides of a dead goanna once and explained why he thought it had died. He reckoned if he’d ever had a chance at a good education he would have become a vet like Ron Chalmers.

  We put the crate at the front of the room, right next to Mrs Wilson’s desk.

  The surprise was fantastic! Some of the girls even screamed. But I couldn’t see what the big deal was. Carpet pythons aren’t poisonous and they don’t even smell. Not much, anyway.

  ‘This python is three metres long,’ said Grandpa. ‘His name is Pig, because he’s a real guts for food. I’m going to let your teacher be the first to pat him.’

  Pig liked Mrs Wilson. He lunged for her hands straight away. Mrs Wilson stumbled backwards, plopped down on her desk and hid her hands under her bum. There was more screaming from the girls.

  And from Johnno, too. What can I say?

  Grandpa wrestled Pig away from Mrs Wilson and back into his crate. ‘Have you been handling food recently?’ he asked Mrs Wilson.

  ‘Only p-polony sandwiches,’ she said. ‘For our guest speakers to eat for morning tea.’

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Grandpa. ‘Never touch a snake unless you wash your hands first,’ he told our class. ‘The smell of food can give them the wrong idea.’

  He smiled at Mrs Wilson. ‘Thank you for helping me to teach these youngsters a valuable lesson!’

  Everyone clapped.

  Then Grandpa told my class about how important it was to look after bush creatures and the country that we all shared.

  ‘We all need each other,’ said Grandpa. ‘So make sure you have respect for every living thing. And when you grow up, perhaps some of you might like to think about becoming animal doctors.’

  Grandpa told Mrs Wilson he couldn’t stay for the polony sandwiches because he wanted to get Pig home.

  ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you some sandwiches to take with you.’

  Johnno and me helped Grandpa put the crate back on the ute. Then we went back to class, and Grandpa went with Mrs Wilson to the staffroom to get his sandwiches.

  The next speaker was supposed to be a bloke who’d spent thirty years in the Australian Navy. But he didn’t turn up. So instead Mrs Wilson showed us a poster of a man with a woman’s hairdo.

  ‘Does anyone know who this famous person is?’ she said.

  Johnno said it was Mr Grayson. Mr Grayson does people’s hair in his caravan. When he’s not touring around the outlying communities, he parks the caravan in the driveway of his house.

  When Mr Grayson cuts your hair, you have to pay cash. I know because my last haircut cost five bucks. Mum made me pay for it myself because she was broke.

  Also, last year Mr Grayson dressed up as a woman to raise money for library books. On the karaoke night he wore a dress and high-heeled shoes and sang a soppy country and western song called ‘Stand By Your Man’. His curly white wig looked just like the one the bloke was wearing in the picture.

  Turns out the man in the picture wasn’t a hairdresser. He was a sailor.

  ‘Captain Cook was in the British Navy in the olden days,’ said Mrs Wilson. ‘His job was to go on voyages of discovery. It was very dangerous to be a sailor back then. There were no life jackets. And the food was very bad, so a lot of sailors died from an illness called scurvy.’

  Johnno put up
his hand. ‘How dangerous was it exactly to be a sailor in the olden days?’ he said. ‘Like, if Captain Cook sailed into that cyclone that’s off the coast right now, would his boat sink?’

  ‘Probably, Johnson,’ said Mrs Wilson. ‘Cyclone Betty is quite a big cyclone. Also, while sailing ships often had a couple of spare smaller boats on board, they didn’t actually have proper lifeboats. If the ship sank a long way offshore, most of the crew would drown.’

  Johnno put up his hand—again! Mrs Wilson likes us to ask questions. I reckon Johnno only does it for attention.

  ‘Why would a sailor wear a wig?’ he asked. ‘Wouldn’t it blow off in a storm?’

  Guess what? It turned out Captain Cook only wore the wig when he was on land. And wigs were like lice-catchers. The lice crawled out of your hair and into your wig, so you wouldn’t have to scratch all the time.

  ‘Did people have worms in the olden days, too?’ Johnno asked.

  I got the wriggles. So did my classmates. Mrs Wilson let us out five minutes early for morning break. Good old Johnno!

  When we got back to class, Captain Cook was stuck on the wall. Johnno stared at him for ages. Then he slipped me a note:

  Camel-fur wigs to catch fleas. Flog them to pet owners. What do you think?

  The trouble with Johnno is that he doesn’t think big. Why stop at fleas?

  I slipped him a note back:

  The captain says—make a wig that catches smells!

  ‘I’ll have both those notes,’ said Mrs Wilson.

  She was cross when she read them.

  ‘Captain Cook didn’t wear a wig to trap smells, Charlie!’ she said.

  Everyone laughed. Mrs Wilson gave our class her best cross face. The one where her lips nearly disappear. The laughter stopped.

  I don’t know why she was so upset. I reckon Captain Cook would’ve loved a wig that trapped smells. He was stuck on a stinking ship with no shampoo, no toilet paper (Johnno reckons people didn’t have toilet paper in the olden days, so what they used, I don’t know!) and probably no soap. Even if Captain Cook did have some soap, he couldn’t wash in the ocean because of sharks.

  Mrs Wilson cheered up once everyone stopped laughing. She even carried on talking about wigs for a bit. She told us that only rich people wore wigs in the olden days. Wearing a wig showed you were getting on in the world.

  ‘How did Captain Cook get rich?’ asked Tim Slade, the kid who’d laughed at Johnno wheeling the pram the afternoon before.

  Tim hardly ever asks a question. He’s just as broke as I am, so maybe he thought he might get some money-making tips from Captain Cook.

  ‘Captain Cook became very famous after finding places like Australia,’ said Mrs Wilson, ‘and with that fame came a good income.’

  ‘I didn’t know Australia was lost!’ I whispered to Johnno.

  He cracked up.

  Mrs Wilson heard us laughing and now we’ve both got homework—a crummy project on Captain Cook. Not only that, but we have to hand it in on Friday. As if I didn’t have enough to worr y about!

  After lunch, Mrs Wilson told us there were lots of ways to make a living, and one of them was to be an artist.

  She showed us pictures of some really weird sculptures that a bloke in Queensland had made and sold for thousands of dollars. I couldn’t believe it. They looked like piles of junk to me. One of them looked like a giant robot. I made a better robot in Grade One, even if it was smaller.

  Then a little kid from the younger grades came in with a message. Mrs Wilson called me to her desk.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Charlie. A member of your family is unwell. Please go outside right now and meet your grandfather at his car. As Johnson is staying with you, he can go home early, too.’

  I freaked out. Had there been an accident out bush? Was Dad hurt? And what about Spike—was he okay?

  When we got to Grandpa’s car, I asked him straight away if there’d been an accident.

  ‘There sure has,’ he said. ‘I forgot to lock Pig’s crate when we put it on the back of the ute. I got all the way home and found the devil had done an escape job on me!’

  ‘Did Pig get out when you went to get the polony sandwiches?’ asked Johnno.

  ‘Reckon so,’ said Grandpa. ‘I need your help to find him, boys. Luckily I’ve spotted his track.’

  Pig had headed off into the scrub behind the school, then doubled back to the main road.

  ‘Best if we catch him before dark,’ said Grandpa. ‘He’s due for a feed and he likes his dinner warm-blooded.’

  Grandpa said he was keeping Pig’s disappearance a secret from everyone except me and Johnno. No need to alarm anyone just yet, he reckoned.

  ‘Could a python swallow a human being?’ Johnno asked.

  Grandpa shook his head. ‘But he could swallow a small animal, no worries.’

  ‘How small?’ Johnno asked.

  I wished Johnno would stop asking questions!

  Grandpa said a python Pig’s size could swallow a smallish dog.

  ‘Charlie,’ Johnno whispered, ‘what about Fluffy?’

  ‘She’s fine, Johnno!’ I whispered back. I didn’t want him sooking over the cat again. Besides, Pig had gone missing near the school and Fluffy had gone missing near our house, so it wasn’t like they were going to bump into each other.

  Still, it’d been a rotten week so far. Two animals missing, Dad’s shed invaded, and extra homework. What else could go wrong?

  I had another nightmare last night. This one was about Fluffy. It was all Johnno’s fault. Before we went to sleep, he told me one of his dad’s stupid tourist stories.

  ‘There was this tourist from the city,’ Johnno said. ‘Dad found him out bush with his right arm stuck down a python’s throat. He tied a towrope to the snake’s tail, then winched the python off the man’s arm. But guess what? The bloke’s arm never grew hair again. Only scales.’

  In my nightmare, I was Fluffy! I was in a dark place inside a snake’s stomach, soaking in bubbling juices. Then I began to moult. But when my fur fell off, I was covered in scales, not skin. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I woke up and my pillow was on my face. I threw it in the air. It landed on Johnno.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he groaned. ‘It’s the middle of the night!’

  I told him about my bad dream. He said not to worr y, it was a good-news bad-news dream. The good news was that Fluffy was okay. The bad news was that she was in danger. But if we found her soon, she’d be all right.

  How he got that from my dream, I don’t know. But I hoped he was right. Now I was awake, I didn’t reckon Fluffy and Pig really had crossed paths.

  Still, if something bad happened to that cat, I’d never be off the hook with Mum.

  At school everyone was bragging about the junk they’d collected from beside the road. Johnno boasted that we got the best stuff.

  ‘You mean that sissy pram?’ said Tim Slade.

  Everyone cracked up.

  ‘Leave Johnno’s pram out of it!’ I said.

  That made them laugh even more.

  Johnno looked mad. He opened his mouth to say something. I was worried he’d blab about the go-car t plan, so I pulled him away. I didn’t want him giving my brainwave away to other kids who might have an old pram at their place.

  ‘They’ll be laughing on the other side of their faces,’ I told him, ‘when our go-car t is up and running!’

  ‘Yeah!’ said Johnno. ‘And if Tim wants a ride we’ll charge him double!’

  The go-car t was my only money-making idea. Without money, I’d never be able to help Dad buy those new tools. And without doing that, I’d never make up for the shed invasion. I had to convince Mum to unchain the pram. I needed to turn it into a go-car t as soon as possible.

  So I made up a speech for Mum and practised it in my head all the way home.

  ‘You’re no fun when you don’t talk!’

  said Johnno.

  ‘I told you, I’m practising,’ I said.
‘If this idea works, we’re both off the hook with Dad, so don’t bother me.’

  Johnno asked if he could talk to someone else, too. I said yes, as long as it wasn’t me.

  So he pretended to talk to Rosy.

  Grunt. Reply. Grunt. Reply.

  I was nearly mental by the time we got to my place.

  Before I went into the house, I had one last practice.

  Mum, I have to talk to you about something sad. It’s poor Johnno. Promise you won’t tell anyone, but he was crying in his sleep last night. The only word I heard him say was ‘pram’. He’s too shame to tell you himself, but he really wants it back. Only you can help him, Mum. What do you say?

  The house was empty but I could hear Mum and my sisters laughing out on the back verandah. Through the kitchen window, I could see the handle of the pram. It was unchained! Had Mum changed her mind? I rushed outside.

  Arrgh! The go-car t was covered with pink ribbons and crepe paper!

  ‘It’s for Fluffy,’ said Tia.

  ‘To welcome her home when she returns,’ said Sharni.

  Were they crazy? If Fluffy hadn’t been stuffed full of treats, there was no way she’d have laid quietly in the pram! And as if a cat cares about crepe paper!

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, Johnno?’ said Mum.

  Johnno just grunted.

  I guessed it was the camel’s turn to speak.

  Mum went inside with the girls.

  ‘You idiot!’ I yelled at Johnno. ‘You just gave my go-car t to the cat!’

  Then I noticed that Mum hadn’t bothered to re-chain the pram. Maybe she thought we wouldn’t try and nick it if it was covered in ribbons. Boy, was she right. All that speech-practising had been for nothing!

  ‘Reckon the go-car t idea is a goner,’ I moaned. ‘I guess we’ll have to have another go at finding some other blokes’ junk out on the street.’

  ‘But there’s only girls’ stuff left out there,’ said Johnno. ‘And there’s no money in that.’

  My brain lit up with a wicked idea.