Take it Easy, Danny Allen

by Phil Cummings

  The sun was peering between the gaps of tall buildings. The park was busy. Danny thought it odd that such a big green world, like an island continent, could sit so peacefully in the middle of city mayhem. It was like a land in a fantasy story.

  Last night’s rain had given the trees, grass and flowers a beaded sparkle. Danny stood and smiled at the scene. There were joggers, mums and dads with babies in pushers, dogs on leads and gangs of toddlers wielding thick slices of bread and terrorising ducks.

  ‘Here ducky. Ducky!’

  Quack, quack, quack.

  ‘I said, come here, ducky!’

  Quaaaaack! The wayward waddle of the ducks was no match for the sprint of an untamed toddler. ‘Ducky!’

  Quaaaack!

  Two kids on the rope bridge caught Danny’s attention. He guessed that they were about the same age as him or maybe a bit older, like Sam. They were laughing as they made the rope bridge swing. There was a girl with a single plaited rope of red hair, the same colour as Thommo’s. ‘Pull harder and really make it rock,’ she cried. ‘But wait till I’m ready.’

  The boy with her had dark spiky hair and a skateboard under his arm. ‘Okay, but hang on. I’ll put my skateboard down.’ He flipped it to the ground and started swinging. They all laughed, especially the girl.

  Danny couldn’t help but smile again and wish that he was on the swaying bridge with them. Sam had run to them and they were already chatting to one another. He’d be up there with them soon.

  Billy leapt from Danny’s arms and took off. ‘Hey! Billy! Come here, boy!’ Billy bounded on as if he didn’t hear. He was chasing Vicki, who had headed, skipping and singing, for an empty swing.

  Vicki jumped on the swing and kicked her legs, just as Danny had shown her back in the playground in Mundowie. She tried her hardest to make the swing work, but wasn’t having much luck. Her swing was twisting and spinning, but not swinging.

  Danny stood alone. His nose suddenly twitched. A strengthening odour made his spine tingle. He turned to see the familiar shuffling figure of the old woman with the bottle-green beanie. She wasn’t towing her shopping trolley. Danny eyed her suspiciously as she shuffled toward Vicki.

  Danny found himself glued to the spot, watching, mesmerised.

  The woman stood behind Vicki and leant over, casting a shadow just big enough to blanket her. ‘Don’t be friendly, Vicki,’ Danny muttered to himself.

  Danny watched as his little sister turned to face the shadow that had caught her attention.

  The old woman smiled, this time with teeth, and they looked new. She clutched at the chains of Vicki’s swing. Danny saw Vicki’s lips move. He couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  The old woman leant further over Vicki, nose to nose. Vicki looked confused. The woman reached to touch Vicki’s arm.

  The voice inside Danny’s head was urgent. ‘Get off the swing, Vicki! Get away from her.’

  Billy suddenly flew onto the scene. He danced playfully at Vicki’s dangling feet. Yap, yap, yap.

  Danny then noticed a swift movement to his left. He turned his head sharply. There, charging across the park straight for Billy, was a huge black dog. Its owner called out feebly, ‘Hercules! Hercules, sit! Heel boy, come, stop!’ But the galloping dog, with its silver-chain lead whipping through the grass, had the puppy in its sights. The powerful animal, the muscles of its sweaty flanks glistening like the beaded grass, weaved through the crowd with deceptive balance and skill, and the focus of a hunter. Heruff.

  Billy hadn’t noticed. Yap, yap, yap. He was still dancing beneath the drape of Vicki’s dangling legs. The old woman had her hands with their wrinkly old fingers, lumpy knuckles and gold rings on Vicki’s shoulders when the huge dog blurred into the picture.

  Billy was sent tumbling. Yeeelp.

  The huge dog snarled and Vicki was caught up in a tornado of tangled bodies. Jaws snapped and tangled bodies writhed in a blur. Billy yelped and yelped. Vicki screamed and screamed. There was dust that was white, not red like Mundowie dust.

  The old woman was sent tumbling backwards, falling to the ground with arms flailing and false teeth spinning into the air; Billy fought bravely. The large dog had his teeth bared, and snapped and snarled. Its huge black and brown body twisted and spun madly in the rising dust.

  Vicki was kicking and calling for help. ‘Danny! Heeelp! Aaarghhh!’

  Danny stared in disbelief and his heart rose to his throat. He saw the fear in Vicki’s face and felt it inside himself. Vicki!

  He ran desperately. As his feet pounded, the world seemed to shake as if in an earthquake. Danny saw blood glistening from Vicki’s calf. She screamed louder. ‘Dannyyyyy!’

  All heads in the park turned to see Danny fly bravely into the dust, scoop up a long stick and charge into battle like a knight wielding a sword.

  Billy, knowing he was out of his depth, leaped into Vicki’s arms.

  ‘Stop!’ Danny screamed at the huge dog, leaping in front of his sister to shield her. ‘Get away! Get!’

  The big dog circled, eyeing Billy fiercely.

  ‘Drop Billy!’ Danny yelled. ‘Throw him away, Vicki!’

  But she couldn’t let him go.

  Vicki wept and clutched onto Billy fearfully, her dripping blood staining the settling dirt.

  Danny stood defiantly in the swirl of the dust with his heart pounding and his pathetic weapon poised. His knees were bent, fists clenched and eyes fixed in the stare of a warrior. He was ready to fight. Visions of lions in Africa leaping at helpless hunters filled Danny’s mind.

  The large dog seemed confused. Drool hung like silver threads from its jowls. Danny watched its eyes flick to Billy and back again, as though wondering which one to attack first.

  Sam, who was looking across at the battle from the bridge, screamed so loudly the veins on his neck protruded. ‘Danny! Back off!’ He ran from the bridge.

  Vicki was weeping and afraid. Danny didn’t budge. The big dog was panting. Danny saw the needle-like points of huge, sharp teeth. He gripped the stick tightly. His lips were dry and his hands were shaking, but he would not yield. There was a tense stand off between the beast and the boy. It was only a second, maybe two, but it was long enough.

  Suddenly the dog was pulled sharply away. The owner, a man on a bike, kept saying, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry. He slipped from my grasp.’

  As if from nowhere a flash of rainbow colour caught Danny’s attention. Puffing hard, Mr Caruso appeared. He quickly helped the old woman to her feet then rushed at Vicki. He knelt beside her. ‘Oh my,’ he gasped. ‘Let me help you, let me help.’

  Billy licked Mr Caruso’s face. Danny wondered if he tasted sweet like sugar.

  Shivering with shock, Danny dropped his weapon and looked at his little sister. She was crying harder than she had yesterday when he’d hit her. These were real tears. The dripping blood was fresh. She was afraid and so was Danny.

  The big man took his rainbow apron and with his powerful hands ripped a long strip from its hem. ‘I have another. I have lots, don’t worry.’

  He kneeled at Vicki’s feet just as he had knelt in the street the night before. ‘I will wrap this leg.’

  Danny liked his accent.

  Sam took Billy and checked him over. Danny threw a glance at Sam to gauge his reaction. Sam was gentle. ‘Good boy, Billy. Good boy.’

  Amazingly, Billy was unharmed. The big dog, it seemed, had been gentle with him. The hair on the back of Billy’s neck was still bristling though. He looked defiantly at the big dog. From the sanctuary of Sam’s arms he barked bravely at his attacker. Yap, yap, yap. Take that, Hercules!

  Danny helped Vicki to stand. ‘My leg, Danny,’ she sobbed. Danny let her lean on him. He could feel her body shivering. She bled onto his new jeans. Danny didn’t care.

  ‘I’m sorry, Danny,’ Vicki snuffled.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, I’ll get more new ones,’ said Danny quickly.

  Vicki kept sobbing, wiping a dribbling nose on th
e back of her arm and then on Danny.

  Mr Caruso threw his hands to the air. ‘Oh, what a terrible day! This thing is a terrible thing. I will help you.’

  Danny could hear his mum’s voice warning him not to talk to strangers. He thought of the mysterious events of the night before. Where had the old woman gone? She was here one minute and gone the next. The big man seemed kind, but Danny wasn’t going to trust him. He was from the city.

  He turned his back ‘No, thank you,’ he said curtly. ‘I can look after my sister – we’ll be all right now.’

  Sam came to stand with them. ‘We’ll take her home,’ he said. ‘Our mum’s there.’

  Vicki sobbed and Sam gave her his crumpled handkerchief. ‘Don’t cry, Vicki. You’ll be all right.’

  The big man stood, the hem of his apron shredded, scratched his head and watched them walk away.

  ‘Vicki! Oh no! What happened?’ Danny’s mum panicked when Sam and Danny walked into the apartment with Vicki slumped between them. She saw the blood. ‘Never mind, tell me in the car!’

  Danny and Sam went to the hospital with Vicki and their mum. Vicki had an injection – ‘Ow! That hurt!’ – And only two stitches.

  ‘The good thing is,’ sniggered Sam quietly to Danny as they sat waiting in the corridor, ‘she won’t be skipping and dancing for a while.’

  Strangely, Danny didn’t think that was a good thing at all.

  Danny sat reflectively in the cold clinical corridor of the hospital as Sam checked out Vicki’s stitches. ‘That’s pretty cool, Vicki. Did it really hurt?’

  ‘Nah.’ Sniff. ‘Not much.’

  Their mum took Danny to one side. Her eyes were red. ‘You know,’ she swallowed, ‘that dog might have had you too, Danny.’ She clutched his hands and rubbed her thin thumbs across the back of his knuckles.

  Danny hadn’t thought of that, but he knew Hercules hadn’t meant it. He understood because he had been just like that big dog yesterday when he flew at Vicki. Danny knew that sometimes you can’t help yourself, you just lose it.

  That night Danny couldn’t sleep.

  He lay on his back with his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He was sure some of the cracks were longer and wider than the day before. He heard his parents talking.

  ‘We’ve only been here a couple of days and I’ve already had enough.’ His dad sighed. ‘Things just keep going wrong. And I don’t even feel close to finding work.’

  ‘We’ve only just arrived,’ his mum replied. ‘Things will get better and work will come; we’ll get a new house and everything will fall into place, I know it will.’

  A door closed.

  Silence.

  Danny turned his head to the soft whispers of Vicki mumbling in her sleep. He couldn’t make out what she was saying. He carefully pulled the blankets from his legs. He crept over and knelt at Vicki’s bedside. Her angelic face crumpled as she writhed and kicked.

  Danny looked to the open palm of her small outstretched hand. It was quivering as she struggled with the nightmare. For reasons he couldn’t fathom he reached to touch it, gently placing a single finger in her open palm. To Danny’s surprise her hand closed. His finger was a caterpillar warmed in a cocoon of fat fingers.

  The city lights offered just enough illumination for Danny to see her eyelashes flutter like a butterfly’s wings.

  She suddenly opened her eyes. ‘Hey, Dan,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t like big dogs.’

  Danny snatched his finger away from her grasp. ‘Shut up, you’ll wake Sam. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Yes,’ she yawned. ‘I will.’

  She lay on her back, her long hair spread wildly across her pillow.

  ‘Hey, Dan?’ she said.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘I don’t wish you were dead.’

  ‘I said shut up and go to sleep.’

  ‘You shut up!’

  Danny sighed and crawled back into bed.

  3

  Surprise Visitors

  Danny opened his eyes. Needle-thin beams of morning sunlight were spearing into his room. Fanning like echidna spines, they poked through gaps in his hastily hung curtains. One cut across the tip of his nose making it look red, like Rudolph’s.

  He gazed dreamily up at the tiny floating bits of dust trapped in the beams. He sliced a flat hand through them to make the particles dance. He remembered doing the same thing in his old tree hide-out by the creek.

  Danny yawned and looked at the clock: it was eight-thirty. He rubbed away crusty bits from the corners of his eyes.

  He’d had a restless night. The last time he remembered checking the time it had been one o’clock. It was after he’d finished looking out of the window with the binoculars.

  To his delight he had spied a possum in the park under the streetlights’ spaceship aura at the park’s gates. He had caught only a brief glimpse of the little fluff ball before it wandered away into darkness.

  After the possum, he had spied a pigeon, hopping along the footpath. That had puzzled Danny. It shouldn’t be down there at night – why wasn’t it in a tree or on a window ledge? It was obviously injured or sick, but at that time of night there was nothing Danny could do. Like the possum, the poor bird had eventually skipped into the deepest darkness, where it couldn’t be seen. Danny had hoped it would survive the night.

  Afterwards he had slept restlessly, worrying about parents, little sisters, possums and birds that couldn’t fly. He was glad morning had arrived.

  Lying in bed, caged by bars of morning sunlight, Danny could hear dishes clattering. The radio was playing softly in the background. His mum wasn’t singing along like she usually did.

  Sam and Vicki were already up. He could hear them laughing at something on the TV.

  Then, suddenly, a loud thumping on the front door that was rhythmic, like jungle drums in Africa, boomed loud above all the other morning sounds. Thump! Thump! Thump!

  ‘I’ll get it!’ Sam cried.

  ‘No, I will,’ Vicki protested, obviously forgetting the stitches in her leg. ‘Ow! No, I won’t.’

  The next voice Danny heard was his mum’s, soft but firm. ‘Stay there! Both of you. I’ll get it. You don’t go answering the door to just anyone.’

  Danny had never heard her say that in Mundowie.

  He was curious but he didn’t leap out of bed. He listened to the soft padding of his mum’s shoeless footfall as she headed for the door.

  Danny counted the steps inside his head. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven. In the big old Mundowie house it was at least thirty steps from the kitchen to the front door, depending on where you were standing, of course. And Danny missed the symphonic creek of the floorboards.

  The chink chink of the hanging chain of the door lock was followed by bursts of surprised laughter and warm, enthusiastic greetings. ‘Oh hello!’ cried Danny’s mum with obvious delight. ‘What are you doing here?’ she laughed. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

  Danny sat up, puzzled . . . Then he heard the next voice.

  ‘Mark insisted we come here first thing.’

  Mark! Danny threw his quilt to the floor. He knew that voice! Mrs Thompson from Mundowie!

  Then Danny heard, ‘G’day, Mrs Allen.’

  Danny sat up. Thommo!

  Danny was out of bed in a shot. He snatched up clothes from the floor as he listened.

  ‘We’re here to collect our patient and take him home,’ explained Mrs Thompson. ‘But the hospital said we can’t pick him up until later so we thought we’d spend the day with you, if that’s okay?’

  ‘Of course, that’s great,’ Danny’s mum replied. ‘Come in and I’ll put the kettle on, you can stay as long as you like.’

  Danny tugged madly at his knotted jeans. He couldn’t get them on quickly enough. He stood on one leg, spinning and teetering. Vicki’s bloodstain was clearly visible and it was large, like a map of Europe.

  He listened to the joyful greetings, fearful of mi
ssing something.

  ‘Hey! Thommo!’ Sam laughed.

  ‘Hey! Sammy my main man.’ There was a loud slapping of hands. ‘What’s happenin’, dude?’ That was Thommo’s sad attempt at city talk.

  ‘Hey there, Vicki,’ he called.

  ‘Hello Mark, I got a sore leg, see? A big dog nearly bit it right off.’

  Danny could picture Vicki lazing on the lounge, leaning back and raising her leg high into the air to wave it under Thommo’s nose. Thommo probably wasn’t looking. He didn’t like the sight of blood.

  The happy banter escalated and blended with the sounds of the TV and the radio.

  Danny stood at his bedroom door, hair raised in tufts sculpted by his restless sleep. His T-shirt was on inside out and backwards, with the label sticking up under his chin, and his pants were twisted.

  From the doorway he could see his mum’s eyes sparkling with happy tears. Danny couldn’t understand her. He was happy to see Thommo, but he wouldn’t cry about it.

  ‘Thommo!’ grinned Danny.

  ‘Danny Allen!’ Thommo bellowed operatically, opening his arms in a movement that struck Danny as being remarkably similar to that of the mysterious Mr Caruso.

  There was more back-slapping and high fives as Danny and Sam led Thommo into their bedroom.

  ‘Jeez,’ said Thommo, standing at the door and raising his eyebrows as he looked around the room. Craning his thick neck, he peered at the narrow alleys between crowded beds, stacked boxes spewing clothes and the wardrobe squashed against the wall. ‘Glad I didn’t bring the cat.’

  ‘Huh?’ puzzled Danny.

  ‘Couldn’t swing it around in here,’ said Thommo. ‘We’d hit every wall!’ He spun his arms above his head as if swinging a cat by its tail. ‘Splat, splat, splat,’ he chortled, delighted at his own sick joke.

  ‘Yeah, but look at this,’ said Danny, jumping on his bed and looking out of his window into the street below. Trails of people moved like ants. ‘It’s a wicked view. Come and see.’