The soft sound of someone humming, unusual in the harsh city, had caught his attention. The weird old street woman was shuffling across the road from the park. She had her shopping cart in tow. A gust of wind whirled wildly around her, flapping the hem of her coat and playing with her steel-wool hair.
She shuffled on, pulling her green beanie down hard over her brow. Danny’s mum had always told him it was rude to stare, but Danny couldn’t help it.
A man on the far side of the road with dark, wild, curly hair and an equally wild beard raised a hand and called, ‘Hello there, Maggie!’ Instinctively, Danny looked at him.
Then his eyes flew back to the old woman. She stopped, turned, smiled and waved to the man.
Danny’s lips were suddenly dry. The beating of his heart rose to his throat. Mad Maggie!
Although he wasn’t close to her, her distinctive odour filled his nostrils. It was the same odour that filled the attic room in the old theatre.
Stunned, he watched her shuffle away into the throat of Old Kings Lane. He thought about following her and spying on her, but decided not to, not alone. She’d do away with him just like Thommo said. No one would know where he had gone or what had happened to him. He would disappear without a trace . . . phoot!
The wind gathered strength, making the traffic lights sway. Danny turned away from the blood-red glow of the stoplight and, with the wind at his back and Mad Maggie on his mind, ran home.
As soon as Danny burst into the apartment he was whisked away by his mum and dad. ‘Don’t get settled, Danny, we’re off to collect Mr Thompson from hospital.’
‘But . . .’
His mum pushed at his back just as the wind had done in the street. ‘No buts. Off we go.’
‘Off we go, Danny,’ chirped Vicki, copying her mother’s action and pushing Danny in the back.
Danny glared at her.
Vicki stuck her tongue out at him and put on her best sore-leg limp. If Danny hit her she would get maximum sympathy and no blame, and she knew it. She smiled smugly.
Danny seethed. Next time I’ll let the big dog eat you, he thought.
Down the stairs they marched, their chatting filling the stairwell with echoes. Danny was just behind Sam and his dad when he heard Sam ask, ‘No luck with any jobs today then, Dad?’
Danny’s dad shook his head and sighed solemnly. ‘No,’ he said, raising his eyebrows and managing a thin smile, ‘but tomorrow’s another day.’
Danny didn’t get it. Of course tomorrow was another day. He always worried when he heard his dad say that. He had said it heaps of time back in Mundowie when they were waiting for the good rains that never came.
And that was another thing. When his mum asked Danny to clean up his room, he often answered, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it tomorrow.’
Then she would say, ‘Do it now, tomorrow never comes.’
How could tomorrow never come if it’s another day? Sometimes, Danny just didn’t get adults and their weird ways.
Danny was kept busy all afternoon. It seemed to take forever to get Mr Thompson out of the hospital.
Vicki was really getting up Danny’s nose. She hobbled along the corridor, getting sympathetic nods and sighs.
Two little old ladies with stiff purple hair sculpted into nice waves and black handbags swaying like pendulums from their elbows, took particular interest.
‘Oh, what happened to you, sweetie?’
Vicki loved the attention and put on a forlorn lost-puppy expression as she explained. ‘A giant dog with the biggest teeth you’ve ever seen tried to bite my leg right off.’
The ladies looked very concerned. ‘Oh dear!’
‘But my brother,’ Vicki continued, pointing at Danny (attention he was in no mood to accommodate), ‘he loves me and he saved me. That’s him there.’
‘Oh, how wonderful,’ said the shortest of the little old ladies, turning slowly to look up at her friend. ‘Did you hear that, Grace?’
‘Yes, I did, Edith.’
Danny was polite, but his smile was forced. The old ladies waddled off chatting. ‘I must tell Herb about that when I get home, Grace.’
‘Yes, no, yes, my word, and how’s his hip, Edith?’
‘Well . . .’
Vicki could have stayed in the hospital all day, basking in the attention.
Mr Thompson was just the opposite. He couldn’t get out of the sterile place quick enough. He almost jumped from his bed into his wheelchair. Along the corridor he sped, pushed with reckless enthusiasm by Thommo, plastered leg stuck straight out in front like a battering ram. No one dared get in the way.
Spurred on by his father, Thommo pushed the wheelchair down long, polished corridors at dangerous speed. ‘Go, boy! Go! Hit top speed down the straight!’ Then Mr Thompson burst into song. ‘On the road again . . .’
Mrs Thompson stayed well back and pretended not to know them.
Watching the squealing wheelchair tyres and Thommo’s black boots leaving skid marks on the perfectly polished floors as the pair wheeled down the corridors, Danny had a sudden realisation of how much like his dad Thommo was. Neither of them seemed at all concerned that maybe Mr Thompson could break another leg if there were a wheelchair rollover.
‘Wahoo!’
Danny reckoned the Thompson family wheelchair-racing team set a record in getting from the second floor to the front door and out on the pavement in three minutes flat, not counting the time in the lift, which Thommo pointed out was completely out of their control and so didn’t count.
Seeing the Thompson boys at play cheered Danny up, until it came time for them to leave.
Danny found it strange saying goodbye to Thommo on the pavement of a loud city street. The last farewell had been in front of the house in Mundowie, where the grandest building was the Institute Hall with the white soldier statue standing guard.
There was a security guard at the door of the bank across the road (Vicki called him the scootery guard) but he didn’t look as proud or as patriotic as the soldier. He stood with rounded shoulders. His ballooning pot belly hid the large buckle on his thick black belt.
Thommo noted the gun in the holster. He nudged Danny and said, ‘Do you see that? I’m telling you, you’d better get back to Mundowie soon, while you’re still alive. I don’t know how you’re going to survive life in this city, Danny Allen.’
Danny shook his head. ‘Nah, me neither.’
‘Get in the car, Mark,’ Thommo’s mother ordered suddenly.
Danny’s mum started hugging everybody, even Thommo – he broke free pretty quickly – and she was teary again.
Danny’s dad and Mr Thompson were shaking hands firmly and laughing loudly about something to do with Mr Thompson’s balancing act on a hospital bedpan. Mr Thompson made a loud lip-shuddering phhhhttt! noise with his mouth. It echoed loudly out across the street. Danny wasn’t keen to hear the details, but was pleased to see his dad laugh.
Thommo gave Danny a parting slap on the back and Sam a high five, and tugged Vicki’s hair playfully. ‘See you later, city folk.’
And with that, Thommo was off. He and his dad waved from the back seat of the old four-wheel drive, their arms just visible through the muscular cloud of blue smoke.
Country music blared from the windows. The vehicle rattled and squeaked. Spattered layers of red Mundowie dust had been caked onto the white paintwork and baked hard in the hot sun over the years.
A punctured spare tyre was tied to the roof rack and Thommo’s dad, who was lazing across the back seat, stuck his plastered leg playfully out of the window as they drove off. The fat toes were wriggling as if waving.
Danny couldn’t help but smile.
‘If Mrs Thompson gets too close to the kerb that leg will hit a no parking sign,’ chuckled Sam.
Danny didn’t chuckle; he cringed. Ouch! That would hurt!
Thommo was driven away as the city streetlights sparked to life, signalling the beginning of another city night. Neon signs flashed constantly and th
e framed light of bright shop windows reached out, fanning wide across darkening roads.
The city lights were fascinating, but Danny missed the Mundowie dusk. He missed the colours of the horizon as the sun dipped below the hills. Some days there were brilliant burnt-orange wisps of fine cloud streaked as if painted by a lazy brush.
When Thommo had turned the corner and was out of sight, Danny felt empty, alone and very unsure of himself. The city sky was thundering and Danny thought Thommo was the luckiest boy alive. He was going back to Mundowie, safe and secure.
On the way home in the car Danny sat quietly in the back. It wasn’t dark yet, but it was getting there. The sky had turned angry. Thick clouds were bustling boisterously for sky. The booming of their thunder triggered memories of the rhythm of storm skies over Mundowie.
Danny yearned for the smell of rain on hot dust. He sighed at the thought that Thommo could be rafting in the swollen creek by morning. Danny had no such adventure to look forward to. All that lay ahead was a restless night in the prison-like Waterford Towers, listening to his mum and dad’s sad whispers. Don’t cry, Mum, don’t cry. A night tangled in the turmoil of worrying about pigeons, possums, mad old women and the festering mystery of Caruso’s World of Fine Cakes and Confectionery.
Danny felt a surge of anxiety tighten his chest. He didn’t know what to do and he hated that feeling. He felt as though he wanted to cry and kept having to fight back tears and swallow the choking lumps that formed in his throat.
Next to him, Vicki sang, ‘Tra la la dee dah,’ as she wrote her name in the mist her breath created on the car window.
When Danny got home he went straight to his room and pulled his Mundowie treasure tin out from under his bed. He felt the need to reminisce. He was scared of forgetting things, important things.
He lifted a small dog collar. Before he had Billy, Tippy was his dog. He was a brave little black and white terrier. When he died Danny was heartbroken and had vowed always to keep his collar.
He fingered a tuft of soft fleece from the back of Stanley the ram, who he’d fed as a lamb. At the bottom of the tin, the ugly varnished dough head he’d made in the big country kitchen one day looked up at him with crooked eyes.
Danny’s mind drifted to other memories. His dad when he wasn’t so quiet and laughed more, driving the tractor over bumps by the creek to make it bounce just to make Danny and Sam laugh. ‘Hang on, boys!’
He remembered his mum in the kitchen in Mundowie, with a white dusting of flour across her forehead, dancing to the Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’ when kneading the dough. What terrible singing!
Danny looked longingly into his tin. Thommo was probably right: it was only a matter of time before the city gobbled up poor Danny Allen of Mundowie.
Danny rested his chin on folded arms and gazed blankly out of the window. A collection of papers was trapped in the swirl of a mini whirlwind. Back home in Mundowie Danny called such winds ‘whirlys’ because of the thin veils of red dust that mapped their form.
The aggressive little street whirly spun from Old Kings Lane, collecting more papers as it went. Given life by the wind, the dancing papers were tugged like marionettes across the road, bobbing, spinning and twirling as Vicki had done in her white dress on the verandah at home.
Fat raindrops came, bombing the papers and making them heavy and soggy, eventually putting a stop to their dance. They died near the entrance to the park.
Danny looked up and down the street. The dusk cast an eerie light. The rain made the roads shine silver and steam rose in ghostly ribbons from the warm tar.
Rain tapped, pitter patter, on Danny’s window and ran in tears from the top, down the glass to the ledge where the pigeons liked to sit. Danny was following the path of a raindrop tear when he saw Mad Maggie moving in the shadows. He sat up straight. She was shuffling across the road towards the park. She looked this way and that. Strangely, mysteriously, there was no traffic at that moment. The streets were quiet.
Suddenly a flash of sheet lightning blanketed the sky. Danny jumped back. ‘Whoa!’
The lights from Mr Caruso’s shop flickered under the deafening crash of angry thunder. Babooom!
Danny sat bolt upright. Not because of the shock of thunder and lightning, but because of the shock of what he saw. His dad was on the street! He was walking, broad shoulders rounded against the rain, into Caruso’s World of Fine Cakes and Confectionery.
‘Dad!’ Danny hissed, his hands pushed desperately flat against the cold glass. ‘Don’t go in th . . .’
It was too late: his dad was gone.
Phoot!
Danny turned his confused attention back to Mad Maggie. Through the curtain of fat raindrops that fell he saw her stop at the footpath on the far side of the road. She looked into the park, towards the fountain. She walked on. Danny scrambled for his binoculars, clawing through sheets and quilt . . . blast it! Where were they? He tossed clothes and pillows . . . ah! Got them!
He put them to his eyes, the eyepieces cold on his skin. The gloom of the clouded dusk offered enough light for Danny’s straining eyes to track her. ‘I see you, you mad old witch.’
A short distance into the boundary of the park she stopped again. Danny’s breath misted the glass. Words appeared magically, obviously written by a little grubby finger: Danny is a Wollee.
Danny shook his head. ‘You little idiot, Vicki,’ he grumbled. Then he rubbed her words away viciously.
Mad Maggie’s movements became suddenly sharp and reactive. She dodged this way and that with amazing agility for such an old woman. She crouched low, her arms open, like the pincers of a crab. The rain grew heavier. Danny stared hard. Go away rain. Go away. I can’t see properly. He looked to see what she might be trying to avoid, but he soon realised she wasn’t trying to avoid – she was trying to capture something!
‘No!’
Danny saw a bird, a pigeon! He could make out its shape and fluttering movements.
‘Why don’t you fly away?’ he breathed desperately. ‘Fly away, you stupid bird! She’ll roast you.’
The bird was hopping, hobbling, faltering. So was Maggie. The bird flopped to the ground, its flapping wings fighting desperately for freedom. Then Danny realised he’d seen this bird before. The bird that couldn’t fly!
Danny lifted himself to his knees. His palms pressed flat against the glass, cold now from the rain. ‘Fly!’ he said to the sound of the rain. ‘You can do it! Fly!’
But the frightened bird was flapping itself in a dizzy circle: easy prey.
Danny slapped the window pane. ‘Fly!’ he cried.
He watched in breathless horror as Mad Maggie knelt and scooped up the bird with her bony old fingers. The poor thing tried to get away, flapping its wings and making whipping neck movements, but it couldn’t. She held it firmly in her sickening grasp.
Danny stood on his bed. He lashed out at the cold glass. Slap!
‘Fly, you stupid bird! Flyyyyyy!’
He kept slapping.
Once . . . slap! ‘I can see you,’ he cried.
Twice . . . slap! ‘You mad old city woman!’
Three times . . . slap! ‘I see you!’
With a sly glance left, then right, and showing no hint of hearing Danny’s cries, Mad Maggie tucked the bird into her midriff. She folded herself over it, smothering the poor thing under her thick coat.
Danny felt a familiar heart-wrenching anxiety, the same desperate feeling he’d had the horrible day he had to sit and watch Tippy die. The brave little dog, spattered with the blood of the snake, lay helpless, panting hard, his frightened eyes rolling, his small body riddled with poison. His head flopped into Danny’s cupped hands and his velvet ears drooped as he grew weaker. Danny sat red-eyed, watching his friend’s life draining away. Don’t die, Tippy. Please don’t die . . . Danny never wanted to face that pain again, a pain he felt would never go away. He was right. Tears welled. Danny flew from his bed. He wouldn’t let it happen again.
Danny ran with
the same fierce energy the bird had displayed when it flapped in a frenzy to free itself. He charged from his room just as his mum arrived at his door to see what he was shouting about.
‘Get out the way, Mum!’ Danny cried, rushing past.
She spun backwards before coming to a stop with a thud, her back flat against the wall. ‘Danny! What’s going on?’
He ran at the front door. He clawed at the chain and threw it open. The dark stairwell beckoned.
‘Danny!’ his mum called firmly. ‘Get back here!’
Stopping for a second, Danny turned. ‘I can’t, Mum. If I don’t stop her, she’ll kill the bird and eat it.’
Dumbfounded, Danny’s mum tried to make sense of what Danny had said. It was almost as if he were speaking a foreign language.
‘Danny Allen!’ she cried into the throat of the stairwell. Danny didn’t stop. No time to explain – she would have to wait. ‘You get back here! Don’t you go out onto the street at night alone! This is not Mundowie!’
Danny knew where he was; he didn’t need to be told. He flew down the stairs. If only Sam were there: he would have seen Danny reach a personal best in stair jumping. He jumped over three steps at a time.
Danny had not thought about what he would do when he got to the street or what would happen when he stood face to face with Mad Maggie. This could be worse than the snarl and snap of the dog in the park. Suddenly he didn’t care. The street and the city didn’t frighten him. He was frightened only for the bird. He knew what it was like to struggle in the city.
She had to be stopped. She could not keep eating possums and pigeons. It wasn’t right. Being mad or eccentric was no excuse. Someone had to put a stop to her horrible behaviour. Danny Allen decided that if he was going to have to live here then things were going to change!
Danny burst onto the street, puffing hard, keen eyes searching through the curtain of steady rain: droplets glimmering in lines as they fell into the fanned beams of streetlights. Fat drops exploded onto Danny’s arms, neck and face.
Licking grimy rain from his lips, Danny looked in the direction of Caruso’s Fine Cakes and Confectionery. The lights flickered again to the booming sound of angry thunder. Babooom!
Take it Easy, Danny Allen Page 10
