Dunger

by Cowley, Joy

  I never knew Mum’s father, but her mother, my Granny Margaret, is very calm and gentle and romantic in her own quiet way. Every time she changes the sheets on her bed, she also changes her husband’s bed, although he’s been dead nearly sixteen years. That is so sweet. I think I will be like her.

  Grandma is having a go at Grandpa. She’s out of her seat, calling him names. He comes back to stow away the tackle box and when he passes her, he reaches around and pinches her on – oh, that’s so gross!

  Fortunately, I need to pull the anchor up again. The chain and rope get stowed under the hatch, and by then Grandma and Grandpa have had to stop yelling at each other because the motor is going and they can’t hear.

  It’s midday and we pass around the meat sandwiches. Will is steering us towards the Sounds and I can’t help but think of the mail delivery. It has taken us two hours to get out here, so I suppose it will be the same going back to the bay.

  What I don’t estimate is the time it takes to get the boat back on the trailer when we arrive. All I want to do is jump over the side and race up to the mailbox. Instead, I have to stand in the water with Will and hold the boat while Grandpa goes off to get the car. When the trailer is backed in, the three of us have to wind in the rope. “It’s not an automatic winch,” Grandpa tells us. “Just use elbow grease.” Which is his way of saying hard work. I’m sure it would be much easier without Grandma’s weight on board.

  When the boat is secure on the trailer, we hop in the car and Grandpa drives up the beach to the road. There is a cardboard carton sitting beside the post, and the flap of the mailbox is slightly open. My phone is there! It’s in the same wrapping I put around it, but the plastic and paper is loose and, yes, it is fully charged! Fabulous! I know I should help Will and Grandpa but I’ve waited so long for this. I switch it to connections and press Jacquie’s number. The sign comes up. No service. That means no reception at the mailbox. I’ll need to go up to the house. I stand on the verandah and press again. No service. In the living room. By the garage. No service. I don’t believe this!

  I have to go up the hill. There’ll be reception on high ground. I run past Will and Grandpa who are helping Grandma out of the boat, and I splash across the stream and go up the hill to the edge of the bush. No service.

  When I arrive back at the house, Grandma is sitting on the couch with her feet up. She says, “Have you caught up on all the gossip?”

  I can’t answer.

  “You’re a bit young to be going deaf,” she shouts.

  The tears come. I can’t help it. “There’s no – no cell phone reception in this stupid place!”

  “No what?”

  I yell at her, “No reception! This is the end of the earth! People don’t live like this any more!”

  She swings her feet off the footstool and stands up, holding on to the arm of the couch. Then she lurches towards me. I put my face against her shoulder and cry and cry. She pats me on the back. “Light the fire,” she says. “After dinner you can use our phone.”

  I tell Lissy she should never gamble because she has so much bad luck. She calls me a turd because she thinks I’m being mean, but I honestly feel sorry for her. All this fuss about recharging the phone, and then she finds out there’s no reception. Grandma, the Duchess of Tightpockets, amazingly offers her free toll calls to Queenstown, but none of Lissy’s friends are answering. The best she can manage is Mrs McKenzie whose twins had gone on a day trip to some cattle station. With luck as bad as that, I wouldn’t even buy a raffle ticket if I were her.

  I take back everything I said about a mild dislike of fish. The fried snapper is brilliant, especially now it looks like food and not some dead creature. Before dinner, I hosed down the boat while Grandpa put the gear away, and now we’re ready to take it back to the Hoffmeyers.

  “They won’t be there,” Grandpa says. “They were going to the North Island this afternoon. But we’ll take a bag of cod fillets and put it in their freezer.”

  As we walk to the car, Grandpa looks up at the sky. It has misted over with a greyish-yellow look and the air is very still, a sure sign, he says, of an approaching storm. “It’ll be here in the morning,” he tells me.

  He drives us to the Hoffmeyers’ place, and backs the boat and trailer into the implement shed, at which point I remember him holding his chest when he tried to hitch the trailer to the car. So I jump out. “Let me try, Grandpa!”

  “Too heavy for you, kiddo,” he says. “But you can help.”

  He puts down the jockey wheel on the trailer, then undoes the chain and clamps. We get on each side. One, two, three, heave! We try again. One, two, three. I dig my feet in and pull with all my strength. Hee-ee-eave! The trailer comes off the car and we step back. Grandpa is puffing. He gives me the plastic bag of fish and waves me towards the house. “Freezer,” he says. “Kitchen.”

  I look at the house, dark and quiet. Even the dog kennels are empty. “How do I get in?”

  Grandpa is leaning against the wall of the shed. “Key under mat.”

  It feels a bit like breaking and entering, except that the key is under the doormat, which is next to a pair of gumboots, and the door opens as though it has been expecting a visitor. Over the fence, about a hundred sheep stare at me as I go inside. In the laundry, actually before the kitchen, is a chest freezer. I open the lid, put the fish in and head back out, locking the door and replacing the key. The sheep are still staring. When I run back to the implement shed, they break into a run and stream away, rattling across the paddocks. Maybe they are not intelligent after all.

  Grandpa sits in the passenger seat with his knees close to his chin. He’s still huffing. Lifting the trailer has knocked all the wind out of him and it’s a while before he can talk easily. He shows me how to switch on the car’s headlights. We have another two hours to sunset, but the sky is pressing down and making darkness. “Off you go,” he says. “Drive carefully.”

  The road is familiar, so is the car, and the space between Grandpa and me is comfortable. He says, “Wasn’t that snapper something to write home about?”

  “It was good.” I hesitate for a moment, then ask, “Why do you and Grandma fight?”

  “Fight?” He sounds surprised.

  “Yes. Argue. Call each other names.”

  He shifts in the seat and I think he’s laughing but I’m not sure. “You’re too young to know.” Then he says, “Why do you think we fight?”

  I keep my gaze firmly on the road. “If you really want to know, I’d say you two are incompatible.”

  “Incompatible?” He snorts. “You mean I’ve got the income and she’s pattable?”

  “Grandpa, you know what I mean. You and Grandma don’t get on together. You torture each other.”

  He laughs out loud and I feel my face get hot. It’s that old pecking order again, adults rejecting truth from kids. When he stops laughing, he says, “You are totally lacking in judgement, boyo.”

  “That’s an oxymoron,” I tell him.

  “Really? You know some big words.”

  I don’t dare take my eyes off the road. “If something is total it can’t be lacking.”

  He laughs again. “I’ll oxy you, you little moron. Just drive us home.”

  It is exactly 1.25am on the fifth day, and I have to go to the outhouse. This can’t be a quick trip to the grass by the back door, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried going back to sleep because Dad said intestines slow down when we’re sleeping, but this is getting extremely urgent, and I simply cannot go out to that hellish black hole in the dark.

  I try to think of other things, like last night, the grandparents off to bed early and Will and me practising the guitars by lantern light, eating his milkshake lollies, and getting to feel the frets without looking. It sounded good. I showed Will how to pick, easy as long as you are holding down the chord, and keeping to the rhythm, stro
ng first beat: pluck, da, da, da, pluck, da, da, da. It felt good. But under the good feeling was a tension that wouldn’t let go, and I knew what it was about: my phone charged up and useless. Isolation! What’s the use of a smart phone in an unsmart place? We might as well be in confinement in some eighteenth-century penal colony. I’m sure it’s the phone business that’s disturbed my stomach.

  I really have to go. I switch on Grandma’s torch and tiptoe into the living room. Will is sprawled over the couch, tangled in a sheet as though he’s been fighting with it. I shake his shoulder.

  His eyes fly open. “Who’s that?”

  “Me. Will, I need you to –”

  “What’s wrong?” He sits up quickly.

  “Nothing’s wrong. I have to go to the loo, and I can’t go on my own. Will?”

  He groans and lies down again.

  “Please, Will. I’m desperate. You need to stand guard in case something comes.”

  “Like what?”

  “Wild pigs, rats, creepy things. Oh, please, Will! This is very urgent!”

  Grumbling, he gets off the couch and picks up his torch. He leads the way out the back door, across the grass and past the garage, to the outhouse. There is no moon, no stars. Everything outside the torch beam is black, and the air is cool, very still, as though it is waiting for something to happen.

  “Why do they have the outhouse so far away?” I ask.

  “Flies,” says Will. “Bad smells.”

  “Oh.” I wait while he opens the door. “Can you go in and check it?”

  “What for?” he says.

  “You know, spiders, rats. There might be something down the hole.”

  He goes in, waves his torch around and comes out. “All clear.”

  “Wait outside. Please, Will! Don’t go away.”

  “Well, hurry!” he says.

  I go in, shut the door and shine the torch down the hole, double check, before I sit. “Are you still there, Will?”

  “Yeah, yeah!”

  This is so primitive! Jacquie is staying at a motel. Herewini’s aunt has an awesome townhouse overlooking the lake. No one, absolutely no one in my entire school, will be pooing over a hole in the earth in the middle of the night.

  A cold draught comes up, as though answering my thoughts, and I shudder. “Don’t go away, Will!” I call.

  “I’m still here.” Then he says, “Tough biscuit about your phone.”

  What? It’s so unexpected that at first I’m suspicious. But no sarcasm follows and I think he might be sincere. “Thanks, Will.”

  Through the gap at the top of the door, I see moving torchlight, which means he’s testing the darkness. He says, “Those two fight a lot, don’t they?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They don’t care who listens to them. When I was driving back tonight, I told Grandpa they were incompatible.”

  “You said what?”

  “You know – incompatible.”

  “Oh Will, you didn’t! What did he say?”

  “He just laughed like I was talking nonsense. Lissy, do you get the impression they think they’re normal and we’re not?”

  “What made you tell him that!” I am embarrassed for my little brother. “Do you know what incompatible means?”

  He makes a coughing noise.

  “Will?”

  The coughing, hissing sound gets louder and is followed by a squeak. “Lissy!”

  “Stop that noise!” I yell at him. “Stop at once! Will?”

  “It’s not me!” he yells back.

  I finish in a hurry, scared by the panic in his voice. “Wait for me!” I call. “Don’t go away!”

  The only answer is another round of coughing and hissing, like we’re being attacked or something!

  “Will, are you there?”

  There’s a great crash on the roof, close to my head.

  I’m out that door so fast! I run like mad towards the house.

  When I get to the back door, I shine the torch towards the outhouse and see something moving on the roof. It looks like a cat.

  “It’s a possum,” says Will who is in the kitchen, shivering.

  “All that noise from one little possum?” I start to laugh.

  Will laughs too. Actually, it isn’t all that funny but we laugh and laugh until our sides are aching and we’re gasping for breath, and then, because the kettle on the stove is still hot, we make ourselves some cocoa and open a packet of Will’s biscuits.

  The rain starts before dawn, at first lightly brushing the roof, then getting so loud that it drums out conversation. The temperature has dropped too, so nobody minds when Lissy lights the fire for breakfast. There is plenty of dry firewood stacked on the verandah. I bring wood inside and put it on the hearth while Lissy cooks crumbed fish and fried eggs with tomatoes.

  We tell Grandma and Grandpa about the possum but I’m not sure they hear us. They are tired after yesterday’s fishing trip and they walk as though dragging heavy weights. After breakfast, Grandpa goes back to bed for extra sleep, and Grandma brings out her battery radio from the bedroom, tuned to some talk programme. No music, just blah, blah about threatened fish species. We all had fish for breakfast. But saving the planet is always about what other people should be doing, never us. Right? I tell Grandma that and she says, “Shut your cake-hole, boy, I’m listening to the wireless.”

  Lissy needs more firewood, so I go out to the verandah to get an armful. I can see the bay through the trees, grey, choppy and blurred by heavy rain. The wind is coming up and swirling rain in over the verandah. No bird-calls this morning, only water noises, rain on the iron roof, rain on the road and underneath that, the roar of a rain-filled stream.

  Inside, we hear rain hissing in the chimney, but the fire is bright orange and the oven is hot.

  “Want to make some bread?” Lissy asks.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Go on,” she says. “It’s easy.”

  For once she’s right. It is easy, and with Grandpa asleep there is nothing else to do, although I resent the way Lissy makes me scrub my hands twice over before I start, as though I’ve been handling cyanide. Kneading bread reminds me of playing with modelling clay at kindergarten, and the way we’d flick it off our rulers to make it stick on the ceiling. I have no doubt that bread dough would work just as well, but fortunately I have outgrown the desire to try it.

  While the dough is rising, Lissy and I have a game of Scrabble. I win, as usual, and she says I cheated, as usual. I tell her I don’t know why anyone with such a limited vocabulary would want to play Scrabble. She gets so annoyed that she takes over the bread-making and won’t allow me to put the loaves in the oven. I appeal to Grandma. I mean, what kind of logic confuses a word game with baking bread? But I think Grandma is on Melissa’s side because of the useless cell phone. She not only allows my sister to finish the bread, she also tells her she can use the bach phone to contact her friend Herewini in Queenstown.

  Melissa goes to the phone. The process is easy enough, turn the handle three times and when someone at the telephone exchange answers, you give the number you want. But that is too difficult for my sister. “No one is answering,” she says, “There’s a strange crackling noise.”

  “It’s the possum ringing its friend,” I tell her, but she doesn’t laugh so I say, “Here, I’ll do it for you.”

  I grind the handle, lift the phone and wait. Actually, she’s right. There is no voice, merely a crackling sound. “Something’s wrong,” I shout at Grandma.

  “Storm,” says Grandma. “It’ll be a tree over the line somewhere. Don’t worry. They’ll be in tomorrow to fix it.”

  I ask, “How will they know to come in and fix it, if we can’t tell them it’s broken?”

  “Don’t ask silly questions!” Grandma says.

  I think it is a
perfectly reasonable question and it’s her answer that’s silly, but I will not waste time in argument. I look at Melissa, who is close to tears, and I don’t tell her that this is just another example of her persistent bad luck.

  Will is one of those kids who get bored easily, like a grasshopper on hot sand, Dad once said, although it’s just Will’s head that tends to be hyperactive, thoughts bouncing from one thing to another with no gaps in-between. What is extremely annoying is his need to always be right. He’ll create arguments out of nothing, just so he can have the last word. It is very tiring.

  I remember the day he started school. He was really cute then, this cool little kid who wouldn’t let go of my hand. My friends thought he was adorable. Now they see him as a gigantic pain. I sincerely hope he grows out of it.

  The bread comes out of the oven, two perfect loaves. Does that please him? No, he wants to know why the oven doesn’t have a thermometer on the door, and the answer – that it is a very old stove – does not stop him.

  “Why not put a thermometer on it? It would save guesswork and failure.”

  Grandma doesn’t answer. I think her deafness is sometimes selective.

  He stands in front of her. “I’m surprised you and Grandpa haven’t thought of doing that.”

  “Oh, shut up, Will,” I tell him.

  So he turns on me. “I kneaded your bread dough for twenty minutes, all my work put into an oven of unknown temperature. Is that practical? It could have burned. It could have been raw.”

  “The bread is perfectly cooked.”

  “That’s sheer chance!”