by R. A. Spratt
‘Quick, load us up,’ urged Kieran.
Joe’s fingers were shaking as he tried to undo the sack.
‘Let me,’ said Loretta. She took a comb out of her pocket.
‘You’re going to comb the potatoes?’ asked Kieran.
‘No silly,’ said Loretta. She twisted the handle of the comb and a knife flicked out.
‘Cool!’ said Animesh.
Loretta cut the string and thirty kilograms of potatoes tumbled out at their feet. ‘Okay, off you go, boys.’
The boys used their shirts to scoop up the potatoes and once they had a full load they set to work. Sprinting out to advance positions, while dodging incoming potatoes and throwing back missiles of their own.
Joe took cover behind a picnic table. He’d seen Bretta trying to sneak around the left flank of the park and he had driven her back with some well-aimed shots. Wendy and Simon had two St Anthony’s players pinned down. But where was Daisy? She was the real threat. Joe soon found out.
There was a bloodcurdling war cry, ‘Yahllalalalalalala!’ Daisy was sprinting across the park towards him.
Joe ducked under the table. But Daisy ran right, up and over the top of the table. She was heading straight for their home base. Joe had to do something. Or the whole game would be over in three seconds. It didn’t feel right to throw something at a girl. It was against his every instinct.
But he did just that, he pelted a potato at her as she leapt off the table top and into the air. But Daisy had been taking gymnastics at the PCYC since she was three years old. She simply tucked into a tight spin and the potato sailed past her. She landed cat-like on the ground.
‘Eat my dust, loser,’ Daisy called back to Joe.
But turning to gloat had been a mistake. As she pushed up from her crouch to start running again, Loretta stepped out from behind the rubbish bin. Daisy saw her and raised a potato ready to throw, but Loretta threw hers first. All Daisy’s momentum was pushing her forward so she couldn’t change direction. Loretta’s potato hit her with full force in the nose and Daisy dropped like a proverbial sack of potatoes.
‘Oops, sorry,’ said Loretta.
‘Odinsdottir, return to base,’ ordered Mr Lang.
Daisy groaned, rolled over and started dazedly making her way back.
‘Now’s the time, Joe,’ called Loretta. ‘Time for our plan. Harness your rage. Think of the egg and bacon rolls!’
Joe nodded. He turned back to face St Anthony’s. Joe had the best throwing arm in the team. He could throw potatoes sixty metres consistently, time after time, and St Anthony’s home base was sixty metres away. He tipped out his potatoes and started raining them down on the other team.
Around him the game raged on. Daisy soon regathered herself and pushed forward with her teammates. Getting them to cover her as she moved from one defensive position to the next. She was a superb athlete. Even with Simon, Wendy, Kieran and Animesh trying to pin her down, they couldn’t stop her slow but steady progress.
Meanwhile the other half of her team were pushing up the opposite flank. Simon and Wendy moved over to block their progress. The whole while Joe kept hurling spuds. Behind him, Joe heard a splash. Someone had fallen in the fish pond. Joe reached down to throw another potato but there was none there. He glanced down at his feet. Nothing. He was out. It was time for the second stage of Plan P.
Joe rolled out from behind the table and set off sprinting. He had no idea what was going on with the rest of the game. He just knew that potatoes were flying at him from every direction. Joe ducked and weaved like a soldier trying to evade sniper fire. From the corner of his eye he saw someone moving even faster than him but in the other direction – Daisy. Joe pushed forward. St Anthony’s flowerbed was only ten metres away now. He ran as fast as he lungs and legs would allow him, but when he was just two metres short he felt it, a painful blow, right between the shoulder blades. Joe stumbled, falling face forward into the loose dirt of the flowerbed.
The crowd groaned, except for the St Anthony’s supporters who cheered.
Joe rolled over, scraped the dirt out of his eyes and looked up, just in time to see Daisy at the Currawong end of the gardens. She was standing next to the rubbish bin, holding up a potato sack.
‘We have a winner!’ declared Mr Lang. ‘St Anthony’s have the Currawong High sack.’
The St Anthony’s team were hugging each other and high-fiving. Their defenders ran the length of the gardens to join the celebrations.
‘Congratulations . . .’ began Mr Lang, but he was interrupted by a piercing whistle.
‘Not so fast!’ called Loretta.
Everyone turned to look. She was climbing out of the far end of the fish pond, a snorkel hanging from her head. She stepped onto the bluebell bed and picked up St Anthony’s sack. ‘I have the St Anthony’s sack,’ said Loretta. ‘We are the winners.’
‘But they got to your sack first,’ said Mr Lang.
‘Did they?’ asked Loretta. ‘Check the sack.’
‘You can’t boss the umpire about,’ snapped Daisy.
‘Before the winner is announced it is the job of the umpire to check the winner’s sack,’ said Kieran. ‘It’s all here in the rules.’ Kieran whipped out a small rule booklet from his pocket. He was a stickler for all rules. Especially the ones he knew about that no one else did.
‘What’s to check?’ demanded Daisy petulantly. ‘It’s a sack.’
Daisy held up the sack for everyone to see.
‘Check the contents,’ said Loretta.
Daisy ripped open the sack and tipped it on the flowerbed. Thirty kilograms of . . . apples, green shiny apples, rolled out.
There were gasps from the crowd. Muttering as people were explaining to people who couldn’t see properly what was going on. ‘It’s apples! Not potatoes!’ And then more muttering from the confused people who didn’t understand. ‘But I thought it was the Potato Festival, the Apple Festival is in May.’ The babble of the crowd was good because it drowned out the colourful language Daisy was using.
‘Where are they?’ demanded Daisy.
‘Yes, the potatoes must stay in the field of play, in clear sight the whole time,’ said Mr Lang.
‘We know the rules,’ said Kieran.
‘Our potatoes were in plain sight the whole time,’ said Loretta. ‘We threw them at you.’ Loretta bent down and picked up a potato from the flowerbed at her feet. She held it up for Mr Lang to see the marking.’
‘CH,’ marvelled Mr Lang.
‘She cheated!’ accused Daisy.
‘Oh no,’ said Loretta, smiling. ‘Everything we did was within the rules. The best way to stop you capturing our potatoes was to throw them at you, so you’d think they were worthless. I had my lawyer check the rules thoroughly to be sure. She costs $800 an hour so she doesn’t make mistakes with things like that.’
Mr Lang flicked through the rule booklet Kieran had handed him, shaking his head. ‘The rules are very straight forward. This isn’t cheating,’ said Mr Lang with a shrug. ‘It’s strategy. Currawong High are the winners!’
Daisy threw down her empty sack and sprinted for Joe.
‘I’m going to kill you!’ she screamed.
Joe did the only thing a gentleman could do in the circumstances. He ran away, dodging around trees and bushes to avoid her. Loretta and the rest of the Currawong High team went over to shake hands with the remaining St Anthony’s players. They were disappointed to lose, but relieved that Daisy was taking her anger out on Joe, not them. Then they all went over to the rostrum where Mr Lang presented Currawong High with the winners’ Potato Sack.
‘I’m very proud to announce,’ declared Mr Lang, ‘that for the first time in eighteen years, Currawong High are the winners of the Capture the Potato Game!’
He handed Loretta a golden sack. She held it up triumphantly and the crowd roared cheers of approval.
Mr Lang put his hand over the microphone and spoke to her, ‘Should we do something to help Joe?’
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br /> Joe had managed to leap up and grab a branch too high for Daisy to reach, and then pulled himself up into the tree. He was safe from physical harm, but Daisy still stood beneath hurling abuse and leaping in the air desperately trying to clutch at him.
‘Oh no,’ said Loretta. ‘Best just leave her to tucker herself out. She’ll run out of steam eventually.’
‘All right,’ said Mr Lang, returning to talk into the microphone. ‘The first event of the day is over. We will reconvene in one hour on Main Street for the main attraction of the day – the Potato Princess Parade! Please enjoy all the potato-based refreshments available in the refreshment tent in the meantime.’
‘I feel so humiliated,’ said April. She was standing in the car park of the Co-op Stock Feed Lot wearing her father’s daggy brown dressing-gown. It was massively oversized for her. April was scrawny and not terribly tall, so the sleeves fell way past her wrists and she had to clutch the collar to her neck so that it wouldn’t gape open. Pumpkin had grabbed hold of the belt and was thrashing it back and forth, as if it were a snake he desperately had to kill.
Loretta was dressed like a fairy tale princess. She had on a long pink gown, which literally glittered in the sunlight because it had tens of thousands of sequins sewn into the taffeta. She had also tipped a whole jar of glitter over herself just to be extra eye catching. As April and Loretta stood side by side, they were like chalk and cheese. If chalk was incredibly glamorous and beautiful and cheese looked like it had been pulled through a hedge backwards.
‘You need to take off the dressing-gown,’ said Loretta.
‘No, never!’ said April.
‘I know you’re not comfortable wearing a dress,’ said Loretta. ‘But surely you can’t be more comfortable wearing that? It’s one thing when Dad wears it, but he’s middle-aged and bumbling. No one has any expectations of him. You’re about to be a star in the Potato Parade.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t want to do that either,’ said April.
‘I gave the stylist your measurements and a variety of photographs so she could appreciate your colouring,’ said Loretta. ‘I’m sure the dress looks lovely.’
‘I don’t want to know how you got my measurements,’ said April, glowering at her self-adopted sister.
April had refused to buy a dress for the parade. She hated clothes shopping. So Loretta had arranged for one to be custom made when she was ordering her own. April was now wearing this dress underneath the hideous dressing-gown, which she refused to take off so Loretta had not seen her creation yet. Loretta recognised that this was a delicate situation. She couldn’t force April to reveal the dress or she might fly into a rage, or storm off, or any of the usual ways April dealt with emotional situations.
‘This whole thing is ridiculous and patriarchal,’ muttered April. She was clearly gearing herself up to throw a tantrum.
Loretta decided it would be diplomatic to change the subject. ‘I wonder where Fin could be?’
Fin had promised to build April’s float, but she hadn’t seen it yet. Given that the parade was about to start in just a few minutes, he was cutting it rather fine. Loretta’s float was as magnificent as her dress. She had a two-wheeled carriage pulled by Vladimir, her faithful if perpetually grumpy stallion. The carriage had been bedecked with pink faux toilet paper. Loretta didn’t use actual toilet paper because that struck her as being tacky, so she’d had custom faux toilet paper handmade by paper artists in Kyoto and flown over specially. It was so convincingly like toilet paper that you could barely tell the difference, which just goes to show the superb craftsmanship involved.
The staging area was round the back of the Co-op Stock Feed Lot, away from the start of the parade. The floats always met there so they’d be out of sight from the main street of town. That way all the locals could pretend to be surprised by yet another display of toilet paper covered trucks and utes as they rolled out into full view of the town.
To be fair some of the toilet paper festooned vehicles were quite impressive. Daisy Odinsdottir had transformed a sheep truck by dangling long lengths of toilet paper behind it that would flutter like flags when the truck picked up speed. And Matilda had metamorphosed her dad’s Toyota Hilux into a giant daffodil.
‘How did you get the yellow bits?’ asked April. ‘I’ve never seen yellow toilet paper.’
‘I dyed it,’ said Matilda.
‘Not with urine, I hope,’ said April.
‘Of course not!’ snapped Matilda.
‘It’s not so ridiculous,’ said Loretta. ‘Venetian women used to soak their hair in urine, then sit out in the sun to bleach it.’
‘That’s disgusting,’ said Matilda.
‘It’s rude to be judgemental of other cultures,’ said April.
‘Urine is disgusting in every culture,’ said Matilda.
‘Unless you’re in a wetsuit in cold water,’ said Loretta. ‘Then urine is lovely and warm.’
‘Urgh, your whole family is gross,’ said Matilda. She stropped off to make final adjustments to her throne. It was gaffer taped onto the truck bed. She wanted to make sure her dad hadn’t skimped and bought the generic tape that didn’t stick properly. She didn’t want to topple off the side of the truck when they turned into Main Street.
‘Where is Fin?’ asked April. ‘I bet he forgot to build me a float and he’s hiding because he knows I’ll kill him.’
‘Oh. My. Gosh!’ said Loretta, pausing between each word for maximum dramatic emphasis.
Pumpkin started barking excitedly.
April turned to see what Loretta was looking at. It was April’s float and it was far from invisible. It was the Giant Potato Fin had been ordered to fix by the CWA. He had fixed it all right, and ‘improved it’. The potato now had wheels. The massive mobile spud rumbled down the back street, belching diesel smoke out of an improvised chimney at the top. It pulled up next to April and Loretta, Fin climbed out from underneath. He looked very dapper. He had dressed up for the occasion and was wearing a tuxedo.
‘You turned the Giant Poop into a car?’ asked April.
Fin nodded proudly. ‘We inserted Neil’s nan’s tractor into the base. Neil’s inside now, working on the engine.’
April peered in through a hole at the front of the potato. It was dark inside, but she could see something moving about. ‘Hello Neil,’ she called.
‘Good luck,’ said Neil. ‘You look lovely.’
‘I’m wearing my dad’s dressing-gown,’ said April.
Neil didn’t say, ‘You always look lovely,’ but that was what he was thinking.
‘Is this safe to drive on the road?’ asked April.
‘I doubt it,’ said Fin. ‘The tractor wasn’t safe before we put the potato on top.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ said Loretta. ‘The parade crawls along at five kilometres an hour. You can’t fall off at that speed. And even if you do, it won’t hurt that much.’
Matilda bustled over. She was clearly angry. ‘Floats are meant to be decorated with toilet paper!’ she yelled. ‘You can’t upstage us with this abomination!’
‘It’s a Potato Pageant and this is a giant potato,’ said April. ‘That’s appropriate.’
‘And it looks like a giant poo,’ said Loretta. ‘So that fits with the theme of toilet paper.’
‘Typical!’ snapped Matilda. ‘You Peski kids ruin everything.’ She stormed off to sit on her own float.
‘But where am I supposed to sit?’ asked April.
‘Duh,’ said Fin, as if this was the most stupid question he had ever been asked. ‘On the top,’ said Fin.
April stood up on her toes to try and get a better view of the Giant Potato. As it rumbled closer she could make out the shape of a chair, one of the dining chairs from their own kitchen in fact, attached to the top.
‘I’ve got to sit up there where everyone can see me?!’ demanded April.
‘That’s the whole idea of a float,’ said Fin. ‘To sit with everyone looking at you.’
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�But under this dressing-gown I’m wearing a dress,’ wailed April. ‘I don’t want people to see me like this.’
‘April, get a hold of yourself,’ ordered Loretta. ‘Focus on what’s important here. Winning . . . and humiliating Matilda Voss-Nevers.’
‘Puh-lease,’ said April, but with none of her characteristic venom. She seemed almost defeated. ‘I’m not going to win anything. No one will have voted for me. I know I annoy everyone. I know everyone can’t wait to see the back of me!’
‘You do?’ said Fin. It had never occurred to him that April might know this.
‘I’m not a moron,’ said April. ‘I know. I just don’t care.’
‘Then why are you doing this?’ asked Fin. He knew April found it humiliating to wear a dress. He wasn’t sure why it upset her, but it clearly affected her self identity so much that she found it physically distressing to be seen in one.
‘It’s Matilda’s fault!’ exclaimed April. ‘I only agreed to this because I lost my temper and couldn’t stand the smug look on her face.’
‘That is a pretty good reason,’ said Loretta. ‘Matilda is very annoying.’
‘No, it’s stupid,’ said April. ‘I shouldn’t care what she thinks. That’s just guff. But this – me on a potato in front of the whole town – that is reality. I’m never going to win anything. I’m just going to humiliate myself, high on a potato so that everyone in town gets a good view of me making a fool of myself.’
Fin and Loretta were stunned. Neither of them had witnessed April being self-aware before. They didn’t realise she was capable of it. Loretta, who normally had no qualms about bullying anybody into doing anything, suddenly felt ashamed to have pushed her sister into this. April may be violent and angry, but really she had good cause. She’d been let down by a lot of adults. She’d had a lot of upheaval to deal with in her young life.
