My Life and Other Failed Experiments

by Tristan Bancks

  Brent screams, ‘Weeeekly!’

  Schloomp.

  It hits him in the face, the hair, the ears, the neck, chest, shoulders, arms and belly. He’s polka-dotted with rotten pear slop.

  The whole class starts to laugh from under their desks. They can’t help it. Jack, Sasha, Stella, Lewis, Jonah – everyone is falling about. Even Skroop stifles a laugh.

  The only people in the room not laughing are me and Brent.

  ‘Detention for the rest of the term for Bunder and Weekly. The rest of you are dismissed.’

  The other kids clear out within seconds.

  ‘This will be a very, very long term for you, gentlemen. You can begin by cleaning up this mess.’

  Brent glares at me, his eyes boring tiny holes in my soul as he wipes splodges of brown goop from his face.

  ‘NOW!’ Skroop shouts and Bunder starts moving towards me at the front of the room. I back up. He’s gathering speed, running at me now. Desks and chairs fly to the side as he rushes down the aisle.

  ‘Brent!’ Skroop warns.

  But Brent doesn’t listen. He’s a raging bull charging at the red cape of my face. I’m frozen to the spot. He’s going to tackle me through the wall and into the next room if I don’t move. At the last second, I duck to my left. Bunder’s forehead and right fist go through the wheelie whiteboard with an almighty crunch.

  Skroop and I look on, shocked. We can only see Brent from the neck down. His head has disappeared through the board. He pulls his fist out and tries to pull his head out but he’s too stunned and groggy. He growls in pain. Brent turns, the board wheeling around with him, until he’s facing me and Skroop. He looks like a convict.

  ‘I’m gonna get you, Weekly,’ he says.

  ‘No, you’re not. You’ve already missed me with two pears.’

  ‘The first one missed you by half a millimetre, and the second one –’ Brent stops and glances nervously at Skroop. He tries to smile, knowing he’s dropped himself in it.

  ‘Bunder, thank you very much. I suspected you were the culprit. Detention for the rest of the term! Weekly, dismissed.’

  The lunch bell goes. I grab my essay on Crime and Punishment sticky-taped dangerously close to Bunder’s face. He tries to bite my hand, but I’m too quick. I skip off out the door and, for once in my life, justice has been served.

  I’ve decided to eat a car.

  I need to make my mark on the world,

  to be remembered.

  Humans have climbed Mt Everest,

  flown to the moon,

  grown eyebrow hairs 19 centimetres long.

  But how does a primary school kid

  get the attention and respect he deserves

  in this world?

  I’ll tell you how.

  He eats a car.

  I guess I could do something else.

  A walk for charity.

  Find the cure for a disease.

  Or work out, once and for all,

  why weekends are two days,

  and the school week is five.

  But eating a car is more my style.

  It’s original. Fresh.

  I mean, how many people

  do you know

  who have eaten a vehicle?

  Probably none.

  I might have a plane for dessert.

  I’ll be like Michel Lotito,

  the Frenchman they call Monsieur Mangetout –

  ‘Mr Eats All’.

  He ate 18 bikes,

  a pair of snow skis,

  and an aeroplane.

  But never a car.

  No one has ever eaten a car.

  Yet.

  I figure I’ll clean the car out first in case

  there’s Lego stuck between the seats.

  That stuff can really hurt.

  For entree, I could eat all the chips and

  biscuits and mixed nuts

  I find down in the cracks.

  Then I’ll eat the baby wipes

  and maps and manuals

  in the glovebox.

  Then the car mats and carpet,

  which will tickle my throat,

  the seat covers and tyres, quite chewy.

  I wonder what a door would taste like.

  And for main course? The engine.

  Smothered in custard and ice-cream.

  It’s 5.36 on a Wednesday afternoon.

  I walk into the lounge room.

  Mum’s sitting on the couch, staring at her phone.

  I tell her that I’m going to eat a car.

  You know what she says?

  ‘That’s nice, mate.’

  She doesn’t even look up.

  Can you believe that?

  Her only son is about to devour

  a rear-vision mirror,

  a car stereo,

  and an exhaust pipe,

  and she says, ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ I ask.

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ she says in that vague, distant way

  that parents say things. ‘Have fun.’

  Now I’m annoyed.

  She isn’t taking me seriously.

  ‘I might eat your car,’ I tell her.

  ‘That’s good,’ she says, pressing send on her

  text and opening up mail.

  ‘Alrighty then. I’m off to eat the car.’

  ‘Do whatever you like. Just give me five

  minutes’ peace.’

  And that seals the deal.

  I’m actually going to do it.

  I was kind of kidding before,

  but now I’m sure.

  This might be the only way

  I can get my mother and the world

  to sit up and take notice of me.

  I step inside the dark garage and flick

  on the light.

  I stare at the car –

  at its hard, red surfaces,

  with patches of rust.

  When Mum comes out in the morning,

  ready to drive to work,

  and the garage is empty,

  she’ll scream, ‘Somebody’s stolen the car!’

  I’ll just burp

  and casually pick metal scraps from my teeth.

  I’m glad it’s only a hatchback.

  For the first time in my life,

  I’m happy that my mum doesn’t drive

  a stretch limo.

  I open the back door on the passenger side.

  The first thing I see

  is a whole bunch of sultanas

  down the edge of the seat.

  I think I remember dropping them there

  when I was three.

  I pick one up,

  dust the sand off.

  It looks hard

  and dry

  and mean.

  I put it in my mouth.

  I chew.

  And chew.

  I swallow.

  Not too bad for food that’s eight years old.

  I poke my finger down

  and pick up another sultana.

  I eat that, too.

  By the time I’ve eaten

  all the dried fruit and almonds and

  rice cracker crumbs from between the seats

  I’m almost full.

  I can barely even look at the car manual

  and maps and wipes.

  But I’ve made a promise to myself.

  A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

  Serves Mum right for ignoring me.

  Serves the world right for ignoring me.

  They’ll all wish they’d been nicer.

  They’ll be desperate to hear what I’ve got to say

  when I’m on the Today Show,

  giving my top five tips on how to eat a car.

  I slide into the driver’s seat.

  I lean forward

  and sink my teeth into the steering wheel.

  It’s leathery and delicious. Like a steak,

  sort of.

 
Best steering wheel I’ve ever tasted.

  Our new ice-cream man is the angriest ice-cream man in Australia. I think he’s forgotten what it’s like to be a kid.

  ‘Should I have strawberry whipple, Lemony Snicket or peppermint crunch?’ I ask.

  It’s one of the hottest days of summer, and Jack and I are standing at the wide window on the side of the pink ice-cream truck. ‘Greensleeves’ is playing on never-ending repeat through the loudspeaker on top of the van. The ice-cream man is tall with a crisp white shirt and very neat hair. He’s sweating like crazy.

  ‘I honestly don’t care,’ he snaps, which hurts my feelings a bit. Pearl, the old ice-cream lady, was really nice. She used to give us tall towers of vanilla goodness, with free chocolate sprinkles. I think that’s why she went out of business. Sprinkles can really add up.

  ‘But which would you choose?’ I ask.

  ‘None of them.’

  ‘If it was life or death?’ Jack asks.

  ‘Under what circumstances would eating ice-cream be “life or death”?’ he asks. ‘And I don’t eat ice-cream.’

  Jack and I look at each other, gobsmacked.

  ‘You’re an ice-cream man and you don’t eat ice-cream?’ I ask.

  ‘Ice-cream is for babies and spoilt brats. Now, what do you want? You’re wasting my time. I have other customers.’

  I turn around. The street is empty apart from the blind, three-legged dog with the broken tail from number 47, who is licking an old, flattened cane toad in the middle of the road.

  ‘One whipple, one crunch,’ Jack says. ‘And make ’em big.’

  The IceCreaminator zaps Jack with spinning strawberry whipple eyes of death.

  ‘Please?’ Jack asks.

  The man starts to make the ice-creams, banging things around and muttering under his breath. I start to worry he might poison my whipple. I watch him carefully.

  ‘Sixteen bucks,’ he announces, placing two very small cones with two minuscule scoops in the holder on the counter in front of us.

  ‘Sixteen dollars?!’ Jack spits.

  ‘Did I stutter?’ He slides out a hand with unnecessarily long fingers.

  ‘But it’s only two ice-creams,’ Jack says. ‘We don’t want to buy the whole truck!’

  ‘Eight dollars each.’

  ‘But a kids’ cone is usually two dollars. Look, it says so on the sign.’ Jack points.

  The ice-cream man rips the cardboard sign off the counter, tears it in half and drops it on the floor. ‘New owner. New prices. New ice-cream. It’s a better product – gluten-free and organic.’

  ‘We don’t want gluten-free and organic!’I tell him. ‘Why would you try to turn ice-cream into a health food? That defeats the whole purpose of eating it. We want the cheapest, nastiest stuff you’ve got, so long as it’s cold, in a cone and costs us less than four bucks for two, ’cause that’s all we have.’

  ‘Oh, well. What a shame. No ice-cream for you.’ He snatches the cones from the holder and drops them into a bin with a clang.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Jack asks.

  The ice-cream man slams down the metal roller shutter on the side of his van. I hear a lock slide across and three quick footsteps inside. The engine roars, there’s a squeal of tyres, and the van takes off, almost running over my foot and only narrowly missing the blind dog with the broken tail.

  Jack and I stand in the middle of the street, open-mouthed, sun-sweltered and ice-cream-less. Even the dog looks shocked as the little pink van turns the corner and disappears in a cloud of exhaust and warbling ‘Greensleeves’.

  ‘Can you believe that?’ I say. ‘He threw perfectly good ice-cream in the bin.’

  ‘He’s gonna pay.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We’ll hold up the van and steal all his ice-cream,’ Jack suggests. ‘Next Saturday we hide and, when he stops, we’ll stick him up like bushrangers. We’ll be stealing from the rich and giving to the sugar-deprived.’

  ‘Isn’t that kind of illegal?’ I ask.

  ‘Isn’t it kind of illegal for a guy with a van loaded with delicious, creamy treats to go parading through the streets charging prices that normal people can’t afford? I mean, which is worse?’

  I think about it for a second. ‘Probably still the holding-up-the-truck thing.’

  ‘We’ll take every tub,’ Jack says. ‘Choc-chip, Snickers, caramel swirl –’

  ‘Or we could just start our own ice-cream stand?’ I suggest.

  Next Saturday afternoon, Jack and I are sitting at a fold-up table on the kerb in front of my place. It’s even hotter than last week. Thirty-six degrees, they reckon.

  ‘Two dollars, please,’ I say.

  Nick Crabtree flips me a coin, takes his ice-cream and walks away past the other 12 or 13 kids and parents in line. Nick’s little sister Elsie steps up to the table.

  ‘Pink, white or brown?’ Jack asks.

  ‘Pink, please,’ she says.

  Jack digs his soup spoon into the eight-litre container of store-brand Neapolitan ice-cream, jams a gigantic scoop into a cone and hands it over. It’s the cheapest ice-cream you can get, and it’s been in the freezer in our garage since the last ice age. When we pried open the lid we had to dig out half a kilo of ice crystals. Our policy is: ‘What the customer doesn’t know won’t kill them.’

  Elsie smiles, slides her coin across the table, and I drop it into a Ziploc bag with the 30 or so bucks we’ve made in the last hour. This is our best get-rich-quick scheme since we sold head lice in the school playground.

  ‘Pink, white or brown?’ Jack asks. I pass him a fresh cone – well, fresh-ish. The cones have been in the top of Jack’s pantry for a couple of summers. There are a few bite marks on some of the cones where mice have nibbled through the box, but they’re still remarkably crisp. They’re from a jumbo pack of 80, made from pure, sweet gluten.

  Then I hear the haunting sound of ‘Greensleeves’ in the distance.

  ‘Here we go.’

  ‘You ready?’ Jack asks.

  ‘I guess.’

  The van tears around the corner of my street with a howl of tyres. I swear the ice-cream man is driving so fast he gets it up on two wheels.

  He speeds up the hill towards us and sees Jack and me sitting on the kerb with a queue of customers. He slams on the brakes, scattering the customers at the front of the line, and the van screeches to a stop right next to our table. He rolls down the front passenger window and rips off a pair of dark sunglasses.

  ‘What do you two dummies think you’re doing?’

  ‘Selling ice-cream,’ Jack says with a grin. ‘Would you like one? Two dollars. Please pull your vehicle around to the drive-through window.’

  The ice-cream man kills the engine, pops the door of the van and climbs down.

  ‘You can’t sell ice-cream in the street!’ he tells us. ‘It’s illegal.’

  ‘You do it,’ Jack says.

  ‘I have a licence.’

  ‘Well,’ Jack says, ‘we don’t. Next!’

  ‘A comb wiv sprinkles,’ says Jet, a five-year-old kid from the house on the corner. I take Jet’s money, sprinkle hundreds and thousands on his ice-cream and hand him the cone.

  The ice-cream man looms over us like a dark cloud. The next customers in line look a bit scared.

  ‘Shut this operation down right now!’ he threatens. His very neat hair trembles with rage.

  Jack slams down his spoon and stands, his chair scraping across the gravel on the edge of the road. I know better than anyone when Jack has had enough.

  ‘You listen here, angry ice-cream man. How about you go and get into your little pink truck and try selling one of your health-food ice-creams someplace else – this is our turf now. Go on! Scram!’

  ‘Scwam!’ says a two-year-old who’s sitting up on his dad’s shoulders at the front of the line.

  ‘Give the kids a break, mate,’ the dad says. ‘They’re being entrepreneurial.’

  The ice-cream man growls, t
wists around and heads for his truck. ‘You’ll pay for this!’

  ‘Maybe, but we won’t pay eight bucks! ’Jack yells.

  The man gets in, speed-reverses his van to the other side of the street and shouts, ‘I’m calling the police!’ He dials and puts the phone to the side of his beet-red face. I’m worried his head might explode from the heat. It sure must be hot up in that little truck.

  Jack and I work double-time, trying to serve everyone in line before the cops show up and shut us down.

  When we’re done I drop the last two dollars into the Ziploc bag, Jack folds up the table, and I look over to the ice-cream man. He’s sitting at the wide window on the side of his truck. For some reason I feel kind of bad for him. I wander over and he scowls. He wipes the sweat flooding into his eyes with a dirty blue tea towel.

  I reach up and place our last ice-cream in his fancy cone holder.

  He stares at it, then looks at me.

  ‘Try it,’ I say.

  ‘I told you. I don’t like ice-cream. It’s for babies and spoilt brats.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I say. ‘Everyone likes ice-cream.’

  ‘Not me.’ He fans his face with a piece of the torn-up price list. ‘Where are the cops?’

  ‘Go on,’ I say. ‘It’ll cool you down. I managed to get all three flavours in one scoop.’

  I’m concerned his head might burst into flames if he doesn’t eat it. He eyes the ice-cream, swallows hard, frowns at me. He reaches out, picks up the cone. He inspects it, sneers, pokes his tongue out and makes contact with the ice-cream.

  I watch his eyes as the sweet, cold, creamy goodness hugs his tastebuds.

  He takes a bite.

  I hear a single note from a siren as a police car pulls up behind the van. It’s Sergeant John Hategarden at the wheel. Jack and I have had a few encounters with Hategarden. Like the time we were attacked by giant mutant head lice. And when I accidentally crashed Nan’s car into the Kings Bay public swimming pool.

  The policeman climbs out of his car and puts on his hat as the ice-cream man takes another big bite. I can tell he likes it. Hategarden sidles up next to me at the window.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asks.

  The ice-cream man wipes his mouth and looks at me, then over at Jack across the street.

  ‘We’ve had a complaint about an illegal ice-cream operation,’ Hategarden says. He doesn’t look too impressed to have been called out in the heat. He wipes the river of sweat from the back of his neck.