Published by Avant Press in 2010.
1000 Whitehorse Road
Private Bag 2014
Box Hill VIC 3128
The author welcomes your feedback via:
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www.carolepoustie.com.au
Copyright of text © Carole Poustie, 2010
All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced or stored by any process without prior written permission of the publisher. Please apply by e-mailing:
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Cover design by Les Thomas and Ann James.
Illustrations by Andrew McLean
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Author: Poustie, Carole.
Title: Dog gone
ISBN: 978-0-9804484-5-0 (pbk.)
ISBN: 9781742982083(ePub.)
Target Audience: For primary school age.
Dewey Number: A823.4
Digital edition distributed by Port Campbell Press
www.portcampbellpress.com.au
Dedication
For Margo
(My Grandma – Hilda Margetts)
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Ish’s Poetry Journal
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
I couldn’t open the present. Not now, not after hearing the news. And certainly not with Mum and Molly gawking at me. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else seeing what he’d chosen for me until I’d seen it myself.
I needed time to get over the shock. We’d open it later, in my room, Lucky and me. I pushed the pile of presents aside and stood up. ‘I’m going for a walk with Lucky. I’m not in a birthday mood anymore.’
‘Okay.’ Mum looked at me blankly, as if she’d heard my words but hadn’t taken them in. ‘Okay, then.’
‘Do you want me to come?’ Molly’s eyes were welling with tears.
‘No. You stay with Mum. I’ll be all right. Come on, boy.’
As soon as he heard the word ‘walk’, Lucky started to wag his tail, running back and forth to the front door. I clipped on his lead and headed for the creek.
Then we walked. For ages.
The tears started at the footbridge. They wouldn’t stop.
Grandpa was dead.
It was my twelfth birthday and I’d been in the middle of opening my presents. Unbelievably, the one I was about to open – I actually had it in my hand – was Grandpa’s. The postman had delivered it that morning.
The phone had rung and Mum went to answer it. She came back into the room, her face the colour of milk. It had been Gran with the bad news.
A heart attack.
I couldn’t believe it.
When we got back from our walk, I couldn’t open Grandpa’s present straight away. I waited all day and unwrapped it in my room before I went to bed. Lucky was eager to help. Inside the padded post bag was a parcel wrapped in rainbow birthday paper. Gran would have chosen that. Stuck to it was a card with my name on it in Grandpa’s handwriting. On the outside it had a boy fishing – I was crazy about fishing – and inside, some birthday wishes signed with love from Gran and Grandpa. Underneath, in brackets, Grandpa had written:
This present is from me. Gran will give you hers when you come up in the holidays. She is still knitting it.
I could tell by the shape and feel that it was a book. That wasn’t surprising. Grandpa was a poet. He always gave me books. Ever since I’d been little, he’d read me poems. It was important to hear poems read aloud, he’d said. It didn’t matter if I didn’t understand them. Just enjoy the swish and swirl of words dancing off the page.
Maybe this was a poetry book. It was smaller than a novel and had a hard cover. I ripped open one end of the paper and Lucky helped with the rest. While he ran off around the other side of my bed with a huge chunk of the paper, shaking it from side to side as if he was trying to kill it, I held the book in my hands, thinking of Grandpa.
The tears started again. I cried so hard my whole body shook. Lucky looked up at me with his head to one side. He dropped the chunk of paper and jumped up on the bed. He practically sat on top of me and leaned his head on my knee.
‘Grandpa’s dead, boy. I can’t believe it. He’s dead.’
The book had a bright orange cover with the word ‘Journal’ on the front. I flicked through the pages which were blank, apart from a fishing rod and a bucket with some fish in each corner. Inside the front cover Grandpa had written a note:
Dear Ish,
A place for your poems
Poetry - the best words in the best order
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Love Grandpa
Chapter 2
Paddock after paddock of sheep and brown muddy dams zoomed past as I sat in the back of our car on the way to Gran’s. Occasionally, there was a vineyard or rows and rows of wheat in perfectly straight lines. My sister Molly sat in the front, arguing about something with Mum, but for the most part I’d blocked out their voices, preferring my own thoughts. Lucky had his head out the window, getting his ears blown off.
It didn’t feel like three months since Grandpa had died. It felt more like last week. I got the journal he’d given me out of my bag and turned to the first poem I’d written, about the times we’d gone fishing together.
Photo
Sitting on our log
by the river
my Grandpa, my dog
and me
not moving
not talking
just fishing
This was the second time we’d been up to see Gran since Grandpa had died. The first was for the funeral. I was looking forward to spending the holidays with her, but it wouldn’t be the same without Grandpa. He was always out the front, waiting, when we arrived. And after a hug, I knew what he’d ask first: Written any poems? No one ever asked me that anymore.
Last holidays he’d promised that next time I came up, he’d show me the old well down the back of the garden. It had been covered over with dirt for years, and I didn’t even know exactly where it was. There’d be no chance of that now. Gran hadn’t been happy because it was full of junk and probably crawling with spiders and snakes.
Mum’s voice cut across my concentration like someone shaking me awake from a dream. ‘Ish? You’re quiet in the back.’
‘I’m reading.’
‘Good book?’
‘My poems, that’s all.’
There was a load groan from the front seat. ‘Not your stupid poems again,’ Molly cut in, ‘they don’t even rhyme. You should get out more. Boys should be on their skateboards or out playing footy, not writing poems.’
‘What are you talking about? I brought my skateboard. Look.’ I held it up, as if I needed it for evidence.
Molly turned around and rolled her eyes at me
. ‘It’s all Dad’s fault.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.
‘He shouldn’t have left. If he was a responsible father he would’ve stayed and taken you camping on the weekends and done outdoor things with you. Then you wouldn’t need your silly poems.’
‘Molly, that’s enough,’ Mum said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Ish writing poems.’ Mum smiled at me in the rear-vision mirror.
Molly believed a poem wasn’t real unless it rhymed. I used to think that, too, and I could never find the right words. But Grandpa showed me how to write free-form poems, which don’t need to rhyme. It made writing poetry so much more fun. Sort of like writing a story with a snippet on each line.
Molly also believed that Dad would leave. She said it was on the cards. I’d seen her slip into the tarot-reading tent at the Mind and Soul Exhibition. Mum was too busy trying on hand-made pixie sandals to notice. Later, Molly told me she’d been visited by a dark truth – a family member would soon be embarking on a journey of self-discovery. Well, if you apply that to Dad going to live in Sydney, I suppose she was right.
You didn’t need tarot cards to work out that things were bad between Mum and Dad. The writing was on the wall, if you ask me. Or in the air. The atmosphere at our house was getting blacker by the day, full of their angry words. So it didn’t surprise me when Dad left. But it still sucked.
‘Writing poetry’s wussy for a boy.’ Molly turned Mum’s classic hits on the car radio up as if to show she’d had the last word.
‘Are you saying Grandpa was a wuss?’ I objected, over the top of Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean.
‘Grandpa was an old man. That’s different.’
‘Nearly there, not long now,’ said Mum, turning the radio back down and giving me another little smile in the mirror. ‘Hope your Gran’s made some of her veggie soup for lunch. I –’
‘Yuk!’ Molly screwed up her face. ‘I certainly don’t. Gran’s soup tastes like metho mixed with bat wee.’
Mum glanced over at Molly, changing down gears as we approached a roundabout. ‘When have you ever tasted methylated spirits?’
‘Or bat wee?’ I added.
‘Gran puts vegetables in everything,’ continued Molly. ‘She even puts vegetables in cake!’
‘Yeah, carrot cake. You’re supposed to have carrot in carrot cake.’
Molly turned around and glared at me.
I poked my tongue out at her.
‘Well, I wish she wouldn’t. Gale’s mum makes carrot cake without carrot and it tastes much nicer.’
‘How can you have carrot cake without carrot? That’s stupid.’
‘You’re stupid!’
‘Come on, you two, quit that.’ Mum sighed. ‘We’re nearly at Gran’s and she doesn’t want to greet us with a war going on.’
Gran lived up on the Murray River. Mum was going to drop us off and stay overnight, then go back down to Melbourne to catch a plane. She’d won a competition at the Mind and Soul Exhibition – a holiday for two in Mongolia, flying into the capital, Ulan Bator, then staying in tents and riding camels in some mountains I can’t pronounce. She was going with her best friend, Sylvia.
‘Look, there’s Mr Ironclad,’ said Molly. ‘He looks fatter than ever! Bet he’s been eating more than vegetables.’
Mr Ironclad, Gran’s neighbour, was out in the garden and gave us a wave as we pulled into the driveway.
‘Molly! Shoosh,’ said Mum, ‘he might hear you!’
‘As if, Mum. Do you think he’s got our car bugged?’
Lucky was going crazy. He’d spotted Mr Ironclad, and was frantically trying to climb out the window. Everybody in the neighbourhood would now know we’d arrived. I reckon they could hear him barking over in New South Wales.
‘Lucky, calm down, will you!’ He dug furiously at the door, his white-tipped tail swishing backwards and forwards so fast it was cooling me down behind him.
‘Ish, open the door and let him out before he digs a hole in it,’ Mum shouted.
I leaned over and had hardly lifted the handle before Lucky was out, heading straight over to Mr Ironclad. I bet he had his usual pocketful of dog treats.
I followed Lucky and threw my skateboard out onto the path, where it bounced and rolled to the bottom of the front steps.
‘Hey, Lucky! How’s me old mate, then?’ Mr Ironclad’s deep voice always reminded me of a tape recorder played at slow speed. He slipped Lucky a treat and sent him into a frenzy. He continued down his front path, patting Lucky as he walked, and came across to Gran’s. ‘What’s all the fuss about?’
‘He’s just crazy about you, Mr Ironclad,’ I said.
The front door opened and Gran came out, still in her apron. ‘Well, you lot certainly like to announce your arrival. Hello, Ish, love.’
Lucky darted up the steps to greet her.
A split second later, he darted down again to Mr Ironclad. ‘Whoa, settle down there, boy!’ Lucky was trying to jump up and lick Mr Ironclad’s face.
Gran came down the steps. She was so busy waving at Molly and Mum that in all the excitement she didn’t see my skateboard on the path.
‘Careful, Gran,’ yelled Molly, from behind the car. But it was too late. She stepped right onto it and went shooting towards Mr Ironclad.
What a sight. Gran looked as if she was flying. She had both arms out, flapping up and down, and one leg up in the air as she hurtled along the path. I was hoping Mr Ironclad wasn’t getting the view of Gran’s enormous frilly white knickers that I was. We all watched in horror, even Lucky. This wasn’t going to end well.
Gran collided with Mr Ironclad and they both ended up in a crumpled heap in the middle of Gran’s daisies.
Mum and Molly dropped what they were carrying from the car and ran over to help. Lucky, not a dog to miss an opportunity, dived into the middle and started to lick their faces. Gran and Mr Ironclad both yelled at him to stop.
In the end we all burst out laughing. Mum laughed so much, she had to wipe the tears off her glasses, and Mr Ironclad hardly had the strength to get back up.
In all the commotion, I suddenly realised Lucky had wandered out onto the road and was sniffing at something out in the middle.
‘Lucky! Here, boy.’ I patted my leg for him to come.
Just as he looked up, a truck came hurtling around the corner and roared up Gran’s street. Lucky seemed frozen to the spot. The truck was going so fast I knew there was no way it could stop in time.
‘Lucky!’ I screamed so loudly my voice echoed inside my head.
Miraculously, the truck screeched to a halt about a metre in front of him.
I gasped.
The driver – you couldn’t see his face because it was hidden under the rim of a big black hat – jumped from the cabin. Lucky began to bark at him. I thought the man was going to come and tell us off for letting our dog go on the road, but he seemed to suddenly change his mind. He hopped back in his truck and drove off.
I sat on the grass outside Gran’s house and put my arms around Lucky’s neck. If anything ever happened to him, I don’t know what I’d do.
Chapter 3
‘Come over here, love,’ said Gran, after I swallowed the last spoonful of my third helping of pavlova.
Gran should open a restaurant. She’d have customers lining up for a table and they’d be drooling while they waited. Her cooking is so awesome.
‘I’ve got something to show you. It’s something your Grandpa wanted you to have.’ Gran took off her apron and hung it on the door handle, before stepping out onto the back veranda.
I nearly fell over as I got up to follow her. Grandpa wanted me to have something of his? ‘Gran wait! What is it?’
When I flew out the door, Gran was holding something I recognised straight away. It was Grandpa’s fishing rod. His very expensive telescopic one that pushed together so you could pack it away. It’d been Grandpa’s favourite. He’d been hooked on fishing; just about drove Gran crazy with it. He’d told m
e once how much he’d paid for this rod. He’d also said it was best I didn’t mention the price to Gran.
‘Oh, Gran. Grandpa’s fishing rod!’
‘It was in his will, love. You were to have this one, and the others were to go to Henry Ironclad. He knew how much you loved fishing, Ish. It’s a beauty, isn’t it?’
I took the rod from Gran and extended it to its full length. I didn’t know if it was excitement or a great wave of sadness, but my hand started to shake so much the whole rod began to vibrate up and down.
‘Looks like you’re raring to go, already,’ said Gran.
If it wasn’t such a silly idea, I could have sworn the rod was making my hand move, not the other way around. ‘Gran, can I go down to the river tomorrow morning, before Mum leaves, to try it out?’
‘Course you can, Ish. Make sure you wear the gumboots. It gets pretty muddy down there in winter.
Lucky and I left Gran’s place at about five. It was freezing. Gran’s old gumboots kept out the damp from the early morning frost, but not the cold. My foggy breath seemed to lead the way as my ice-block feet trudged along behind.
I always went alone, without Molly, and I always took the same route: out the back gate, past the peppercorn tree, down the lane, over old Nelly Arnott’s back fence, through the cemetery and down to the river. I loved the smell of the peppercorn. The tree stood next to the Bottom Lane signpost, where someone had scratched out the word ‘Bottom’ and written ‘Bum’.
Some mornings, if I left after sunrise, yummy smells would waft my way from the frying pans and toasters of Gran’s neighbours. It reminded me of the breakfasts Dad used to make, before he decided he’d prefer cooking for one.
This morning I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep. Besides, I couldn’t wait to try out Grandpa’s rod.
So I left in the dark.
Climbing over grouchy old Nelly Arnott’s back fence was always the tricky bit. She’d told Gran that if she caught either one of her ratbag grandchildren or their dog on her property she’d – well, Gran never actually told us what she’d threatened to do and I didn’t like to think about it. There was a rumour going around about Nelly Arnott, that she once locked two kids in her garden shed when she caught them cutting through her place to get down to the river. The kids were said to have seen a human skull in there. I don’t know how much truth was in the rumour.
Dog Gone Page 1
