Dunger

by Cowley, Joy

  It’s easy to see the old people because of the colour of Grandma’s hair, but there is no sign of a triangular fin. Maybe there are no sharks at high tide.

  They don’t stay in long. I guess they ran out of breath because they come in puffing and walking even slower than when they went in.

  They spread their towels on the grass beside us, and sit down, and Grandpa puts his hand on Grandma’s knee. “My Betty Grable!” he says.

  Grandma gives a spluttering laugh.

  He turns to us and winks. “Betty Grable was a film star in the 1940s. She had perfect legs, insured for a million dollars.”

  I look at Grandma’s legs and look away again. Man, that is some sick joke!

  She doesn’t mind. She just gives him a shove and says, “Silly old fool.”

  It was extremely difficult talking to Mum and Dad and not being able to say anything much with them standing practically on top of us. But the phone has given me an idea. I dry the dishes for Grandma and ask, “Do you mind if I use your phone?”

  “What for?”

  “I – I – just a quick call to my friend Herewini. She’s going to Queenstown soon and I – I want to say goodbye.”

  “Is it a toll call?” Grandma says.

  I nod.

  “When’s she leaving?”

  “Um, next Thursday.”

  “That’s not soon, girlie.” She limps over close to me, then says, “Tell me about your phone thingy.”

  “My mobile phone?”

  “That’s it.”

  “It has a battery, Grandma, that’s flat, really dead. I brought a cord to recharge it but that needs electric power and you haven’t –” I stop because my throat gets full and I might cry.

  She puts her hand on my arm. “We might be able to fix this. We get supplies from the mailman, Johnnie Proctor. Drives past twice a week. I write out a list for the grocers in Blenheim and he delivers it. Obliging fellow. I’m thinking he might take your phone home with him and recharge it.”

  My heart does a little flip. “Would he do that?”

  “I told you, he’s obliging.”

  “When’s he coming?”

  “Tomorrow. He’ll be picking up a list from us, so you get me your phone thingy and its cord, and we’ll put it in the mailbox with a little note.”

  I have to give her a hug. “Thank you, Grandma. You’ve no idea how you have saved my life.”

  “No idea at all,” she says.

  I help her to make out a list for the supermarket. With no fridge, they can’t keep meat more than a day. There is a metal box with mesh sides, hanging under one of the macrocarpa trees. She calls it a meat-safe and she also puts butter and milk in it, anything she wants to keep cool. Yesterday, she bought a frozen chicken we’re having tonight for dinner, but there’ll be no meat after that, until an order comes in with the mailman.

  On a spare piece of paper, I write a note for the mailman, asking for a phone recharge and saying please about a hundred times so he knows how important it is. I wrap the note, phone and charger, and put them in a bag ready for the mailbox.

  With the phone sorted, the next thing I need to tackle is the bath. The bathroom in this bach is pretty well-named, because that’s all it is, a room with a bath, extremely basic except, oh yes, there is a washbasin too, and a rail for towels. Well, anyway. I need to have a bath and before that can happen I have to clean four years of dust, dead insects and straw out of the bath. Don’t ask me how the straw got in. I presume birds nested in the roof and bits dropped down through cracks in the ceiling. It looks really gross, so I ask Grandma where she keeps the vacuum cleaner, which gets a big laugh. I keep forgetting there’s no power. I mean, I’ve always lived in normal houses. I have to use a brush and dustpan to get the trash out of the bath, no rubber gloves mind you, and then I need to give the tub a good scrub with detergent and hot water. At least now there is hot water. Grandma gives me hand cream but that does nothing for my Cinderella skin. The nails I’ve grown and shaped for the holidays will have to be cut back to school regulation bluntness.

  While the bath is filling, I ask Grandma, “How do I wash my hair?”

  “Eh?”

  “My hair, Grandma. There’s no shower, so how do I wash it?”

  She says, “Didn’t you see the saucepan by the bath?”

  “I can’t wash my hair in a saucepan!”

  She snorts. “Girl, you use the saucepan to pour water over your head!”

  Well, I tell you, that’s how primitive this place is. I think I’ve already earned my thousand dollars.

  I’ve calculated there’s a circular driveway running around the garage and house, but the grass and weeds have grown so high you can’t see it. It’s a nuisance having to fight our way through waist-deep jungle every time we want to go to the garage or outhouse.

  Grandpa says he must do something about it, and I imagine one of my jobs might involve mowing the area, but here lies a serious concern. There’s no motor mower in the garage, the only grass-cutting devices being an old push mower, and worse, a scythe with a wooden handle and a pitted blade. I wouldn’t have a clue how to use either.

  On the way back from his swim, Grandpa pushes his way through the tall grass and brushes against some stinging nettle. He swears, and looks for some dock leaves to rub on his leg because apparently that’s what you do when you don’t have a chemist shop down the road.

  “We have to say goodbye to this.” He waves his hand over the wilderness of grassy weeds.

  I wait for what he will say next, but he’s busy rubbing green leaves on his leg, and when he’s finished, he’s thinking about something else. He says, “Can you drive a gear-shift car?”

  “Grandpa, I’m not allowed to drive. I’m eleven!” I remind him.

  “Well, what do you know? I thought you’d be at least nineteen. Ah, come on, boyo, I’m not talking about driving on the road. A gear-shift. You know anything about that?”

  “Of course I know about cars, gear ratios, clutch, exhaust manifolds, pistons, I’ve read a mountain of stuff.”

  He looks at me, head on one side. “You’re dead smart, aren’t you?”

  I shrug.

  “Well, boyo, there’s dead smart and there’s living smart. You might like to put some of that car theory into doing. What say you?”

  I look across at his old car, my mouth goes dry and I say nothing.

  “If the car gets driven around, it’ll flatten all this mess, a lot easier than cutting it, I reckon. You on for that? Don’t worry. I’ll be co-pilot first circuit or two, then you can go solo.”

  This doesn’t make sense. How do you cut long grass with a car? Is he really asking me to do that? The sun makes me sweat and my skin itches. Me, actually drive?

  That’s what he means, all right. He opens the car, pulls the bench seat forward and then sits on the passenger side, his knees up around his chin. “Think you can reach the pedals?”

  I climb in. Yes, I can reach okay, and I know which is which, clutch, brake, accelerator, clutch, brake, accelerator. I say it over, under my breath. It’s hot in the car and there’s a strong smell like oil and cooked plastic. I move forward on the seat and grip the steering wheel, which is almost too hot to touch.

  “Great, kiddo. Now we turn on the ignition.”

  The engine starts and the car shakes with life like some racehorse at the starting gate, ready to bolt. I’m not scared, just naturally nervous. It would be fair to say that Grandpa is the last person on earth qualified to teach anyone to drive.

  “Okay, okay, you see where first gear is? You put the clutch in and shift the stick up to first and then you slowly let the clutch out. Got it? In clutch, move stick, clutch slowly out.”

  I do that. I feel the clutch pedal go all the way to the floor and I hold my foot on it while I shift the gear stick with my left
hand, making a slight directional error because I am right-handed.

  “First, not third!” he says.

  Now it’s in first gear. I look to make sure, and take my foot off the clutch. The car leaps on all four tires and the engine dies.

  “For crying down the sink, boy, you forgot to take off the handbrake!”

  I don’t want to do this. I open the door and jump out. “You forgot to tell me!” I yell at him. “You didn’t mention the handbrake!”

  He leans across. “Get in the car,” he says. “Come on, get in! You’ll be all right.”

  The nervous feeling is making me feel sick. I shout at him, “I hate this place!”

  He doesn’t shout back or even look mad, just nods and bites the edge of his thumbnail. “I guess this holiday is a bit of a dunger for you kids.”

  I squint at him. “Dunger?”

  “You don’t know what it means?”

  “It’s an old car. Like this.”

  He says, “Dunger’s too good to be limited to cars. You can use it any way you like. You know what dung means?”

  “Crap.”

  “You got it.” He smiles squint-eyed. “Get in. We’ll give this grass a thrashing.”

  I get back in. Dunger. Dunger, dunger, dunger! Most of my nervousness has leaked out and what I’m thinking now is, choice, I’m learning to drive his car, although I realise that’s about as practical as learning how to shoe a horse since there are no cars like this where I live. Still, I am eleven, and I am going to drive. Just wait till I tell my mates.

  I get back in.

  The clutch is a bit jerky but the car goes forward, with Grandpa holding his side of the steering wheel because he knows where the driveway is. After two rounds there are clear tire-marks. That’s when he tells me to put a foot on the clutch, and the other foot on the brake, so we can stop. He gets out. “Just keep the old girl in first gear, tama, and follow the tracks.”

  I’m so excited I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. Around and around I go, edging over slightly each time, watching the grass and weeds disappear under the bonnet. Most of the driveway is under the shade of the big trees but in two places I break out into sunlight and it’s hard to see through the dust on the windscreen, then I’m back into shade again. After the fourth time, Grandpa steps out and holds his hand up. One foot on the clutch, one foot on the brake, put the gear stick in neutral, then yank on the handbrake. A perfect stop!

  “Afternoon’s getting on,” he says, leaning through my window. “What say we speed it up a little? Second gear will be about right, to my thinking. When you’ve got it running in first, ease off the gas, put in the clutch, push the stick down to second, then give it gas as you take your foot off the clutch. Got all that?” I nod.

  “Take off!” he says, waving his hand. He returns to the garage, without looking back. The first few times I try to change to second I forget the accelerator and the car stalls, but after that I get the hang of it and I drive until a wasteland of wild growth looks like a speedtrack, mostly flat dry grass with green patches of squashed thistles, weeds and nettles. I stop the car outside the garage and switch off the engine.

  Grandpa comes out, wiping his hands on a rag. He looks over the circular driveway, flat as though a roller has been over it, and nods, but all he says is, “Did you remember to put on the handbrake?”

  For someone who’s nearly blind, Grandma notices things. After my bath, I come out to the kitchen with a towel around my hair, and she says, “You’ve cut your fingernails.”

  “I had to. They were chipped.”

  “What’d you say?”

  I’m tired of shouting at her, so I don’t answer. I don’t know how I’m going to manage my wet hair without a dryer.

  “Sensible girl,” she says, pushing her hand inside the body of a chicken. It’s lying in a roasting dish, a pale corpse with pimpled skin, and she’s stuffing it with a crumb-herb mixture. “Can you play a guitar?”

  “No.” I unwind the towel. The heat from the wood stove is almost unbearable. It flows out of the kitchen, through the dining room and into the living area, which is already stewing in sunlight. “I had three years of piano.”

  “You’ve got the hands for guitar. My hands.” She stretches her right hand, wet with chicken and breadcrumbs. Her knuckles are wrinkly and there are brown blotches on her skin, but she’s right, we have the same width of palm, same length of fingers. I don’t know if I like that or not.

  “It’s so hot in here,” I say, shaking out my hair. “Can’t we open a door or window?”

  “Flies.” She picks up the roasting dish and takes it to the stove.

  “Your father had a guitar. Does he still play?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “He loved this place when he was young. He used to sleep in the same bunk you’re in, liked stormy nights when he could hear the sea. What he didn’t like was the trip out in the dark to the dunny. You know what he did?”

  Of course I don’t know. I watch the chicken go into the oven.

  “He used to stand on the back doorstep and pee over the lavender bush. We wondered why it turned brown.” She laughs as though this is some enormous joke. It doesn’t occur to her that I might find it embarrassing. She shuts the oven door, puts more wood in the firebox, and says, “You’re right. It is rather warm. Give me a hand to peel the vegetables, then we’ll go down to the beach. Tide should be out far enough to get some mussels.”

  “What about the sharks?” I ask.

  “Sharks? No big sharks out there.”

  “Grandma, you told me last night, watch out for the sharks.”

  “Did I? Heavens above, girl, you mustn’t believe all you hear, or you’ll never survive on this planet. You’ll find potatoes in that bag.”

  Potatoes, pumpkin, carrots. It doesn’t take long and we escape from the heat of the kitchen. Grandma gives me a pair of old sneakers because my shoes would be ruined, she says, and I put them on although they look extremely hideous, with my toes showing through two frayed holes. But it’s just as well I have them on – the tide is now so far out that the edge of the sea is just mud with small rocks sticking up. On these rocks are masses of mussels, green and black oval shells jammed together. I should tell you now that I don’t like eating shellfish, but it is quite interesting gathering them.

  I help Grandma down the beach. We have a knife and two buckets. The knife is to cut the beard on the mussel, which is the bit that holds it to the rocks. Grandma just pulls the mussels off with her hand but the shells are sharp, and my hands are still sore from scrubbing.

  “Don’t take the small mussels,” she says. “And don’t take the ones with a rough blunt end to their shells. They don’t taste too good.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Don’t know,” she yells back. “I never asked them.”

  The tide is still going out. Mud squelches under my feet and there are little yucky things like crabs and starfish and squishy sponges. I’ve seen them at Marine World but that’s different from treading on them.

  When we have half a bucket each, I take Grandma’s bucket so she can walk back with her stick. She is very slow, poking the flat stones in front of her before she steps on them, blinking, trying to see. She really is scared of falling. I tell her to stay where she is, and I run up to the road to put down the buckets. When I get back I have both hands free to take her elbow and arm and help her up the beach. Once she’s on the road, she’s all right.

  She tells me to take the mussels to the tap by the garage and wash them. I do that. They have mud on them, and some little tube-worms.

  So I get them as clean as possible and take them inside. “How are you going to kill them?” I ask.

  “In a pot of water.” She holds up a big saucepan.

  “You’re going to drown them in fresh water?”

  She laughs. “I’m going to boil them.”<
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  I think I react, like with a shudder or something, because she laughs again. “You want me to give them an anaesthetic first?”

  Grandpa says his grandfather was only the second man in town to own a car, a Buick, he says, shiny black with big running boards and velvet seats, really posh, except he was accustomed to his horse and cart. So when Grandpa’s grandfather drove to church with the family he forgot it was an automobile he was driving, and to stop it he called out “Whoa! Whoa!” and pulled on the steering wheel. The Buick stopped all right, halfway through the wall of the shop next to the church.

  “Does Dad know that story?” I ask.

  “Yep, he’s heard it.”

  “Why hasn’t he ever told it to us?”

  “People remember what they need to remember,” says Grandpa, rubbing his chin exactly the same way Dad does. “The rest slips through, which is just as well or our brains would self-destruct. Your dad was always quiet. Me and your grandma wanted a whole heap of kids but we just got this one boy, kind of gentle, always thinking. Don’t know where he got that from.”

  I’m about to agree with him but I’m not sure how he’ll take it, so I just nod. Besides, I wish he’d say more about the flattened grass that looks like newly cut hay. We are sitting in two metal folding chairs in front of the garage. The shadows are long and the air is full of dust and insects, bees flying home, sandflies and midges, big bluebottles that gather on the kitchen door because they can smell roast dinner. I say to him, “Dad did tell me about the wasps.”

  “Too early for them yet. They come late summer, and your dad was scared of them. He never got stung, but he was with me when one of those assassins got on my coffee cup. My lip swelled like a ripe marrow.”

  He pulls at his upper lip as though checking it is still there. “Bees sting once. Wasps go into a stabbing frenzy. Tell me, boyo, does your dad ever sing?”

  I think he says “sting”, and then I realise he’s changed the subject. “Sometimes.”

  “He’s always had a good voice. Used to march with us in the Vietnam War protests, serious little kid, seven or eight, singing at the top of his lungs, We shall overcome…”