Take it Easy, Danny Allen

by Phil Cummings

  Danny’s dad was nowhere to be seen. Danny looked at the park. The gates were spotlit in the soft lustrous halo of the streetlight overhead. His chest was heaving. He fixed his gaze on the hunched form of Mad Maggie. She was on the edge of the island of light, crouching on the path.

  He took a cautious step forward, staring hard.

  A fork of lightning cracked across the cloudscape overhead. Flash!

  Danny threw a glance up to the window. Vicki was there, peering out, her pale face distorted by the rain on the glass.

  Babooom!

  The lights went out. Vicki’s face vanished into deep alien darkness.

  Danny imagined her screaming. He froze and tried to steady his erratic breathing. The darkness closed in on him, spreading from the deep velvet throats of city lanes and shadow-filled doorways.

  He could hear untraceable noises and his head kept flicking in search of the source.

  ‘Dad,’ he breathed shakily.

  The cool rain ran down the back of Danny’s neck. The trickle followed the bed of his spine, like rain found its way into the beds of the Mundowie creeks. It was just as Thommo had said it would be: the blackout, the sinister city closing in on him.

  Thommo’s words echoed in Danny’s mind. ‘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 . . . Beware the blackout, Danny Allen.’

  Danny was petrified, just as he had been when the snake crept past his toes in his hollow tree hide-out by the creek.

  He looked up into the rain. A brilliant flash of lightning highlighted the world and burned a snapshot in Danny’s memory: the ugly face of the gargoyle and a glimpse of Vicki clawing at the apartment window.

  Baboom!

  Danny tried to call out, but he had no voice. He was doomed, trapped in the street, a sitting duck. And they would come now, shadowy people seeping from the gloom to stalk their prey.

  Suddenly, Danny heard something to his left: the shuffling of feet on gritty tar.

  Danny’s bottom jaw quivered. He found it hard to breathe.

  Then a voice called to him from across the street.

  ‘Danny Allen?’

  ‘Argh!’ Danny jumped. He tried to run, but his legs were leaden, his breathing erratic.

  Danny felt like the bird that couldn’t fly.

  He went weak at the knees. He couldn’t speak. Please don’t hurt me, said the whimpering voice inside his head.

  The voice called again, ‘Danny Allen?’

  The accent confirmed the lurking presence of Mr Caruso.

  Danny glanced at the unmistakable balloon shape of the big man standing at the front of his shop, his face masked in shadows. Then he glanced back to Mad Maggie: still, silent and devilishly secretive. Time stood still.

  Flash! Once again, a jagged fork of angry lightning illuminated the dark sky. For a split second, the shadows were gone.

  The street scene was suddenly captured in an explosion of brilliant light like the flash from a giant camera. The image of Mad Maggie huddling protectively was burned in Danny’s mind. The fear inside him was rising and rising.

  The thunder followed. Baboom!

  Danny hadn’t seen the mayhem at the intersection to his left. The impatient cars at the lights roared to life, desperate to win a race with no prize.

  Mr Caruso saw them coming. Danny was in the middle of the road and not moving. The big man stepped from the pavement.

  ‘Danny Allen!’ he called sharply.

  Danny swung to face the glare of headlights. Blinding him, they came closer . . . closer . . . closer.

  Mr Caruso ran at Danny. ‘Danny Allen!’

  Screeeeeeeeeech!

  The car that had won the traffic-light race suddenly lurched into a skid. Startled by the screeching, Danny found strength in his legs and ran. He ran hard towards the park. The car horn blared loud and insistently. Bah dahhhhhhh! Danny ignored it and kept his eyes firmly on Mad Maggie. She had lifted her eyes at the sound of the screeching tyres.

  Danny flew onto the pavement. ‘Stop!’ he cried.

  The old woman straightened herself. The fan of car headlights reached out and bathed her in uneven, moving light. Raindrops hung like strings of silver beads across her eyebrows. Her old fingers, bent and twisted like the branches of dead trees, caged the helpless bird. Her awkward left hand gripped its neck. Her right hand fumbled determinedly to trap its feet and wings.

  Danny was closing in. Flap harder! Fight! Fly bird! Fly!

  More lightning. Flash!

  Thunder. Baboom!

  The city lights blinked back to life, flickering with the same uneven madness as the wild sky. Danny stood under the soft lustre of the streetlight over the park gates. He glared at Mad Maggie.

  The old woman returned his gaze. The bird nearly flapped from her grasp. Mad Maggie struggled hard to trap it. Danny saw its fear and felt fear swell inside himself.

  Maggie snatched at the bird again, fumbling in a frenzy of fidgeting fingers and wings. The rainbow feathers of the bird’s neck glinted. Mad Maggie was as determined as the bird.

  Wrapped in fingers old but firm, and lost in the heavy overcoat, the bird disappeared from sight. Mad Maggie’s shoulders rolled. Her wrists were twisting.

  ‘Noooooo!’ Danny bellowed.

  He stared in disbelief, trying not to cry. ‘No,’ he whimpered resignedly.

  Mad Maggie looked up at him again. Their eyes met. Danny looked into her eyes. They were hazel, the colour of the Mundowie fields after the first rains of autumn came and needles of new grass poked through in sweeping islands across round hills, brown fields tinged with hints of green.

  She smiled at him warmly, not wickedly. It was as if the world had slowed, maybe even stopped, just as the globe that spun on the pole at Caruso’s World of Fine Cakes and Confectionery had stopped in the blackout.

  The rain was soft now, the world strangely quiet. Danny listened to his breathing and the thumping of his heart: as strong as the thumping of distant thunder.

  Then Mad Maggie, who was still smiling, lifted her hands. The bird was wrapped within them.

  ‘No,’ Danny breathed.

  Suddenly his mum burst onto the street with Sam by her side. ‘Danny!’ she called from the pavement. Cars were rushing past and she couldn’t cross.

  Danny looked back over his shoulder. He noticed she was carrying her shoes. She’d taken them off to run barefoot so she could be fast. Danny remembered the last time she’d done that was when she thought Vicki had drowned in the dam.

  ‘Danny! Are you all right?’

  Meanwhile, Vicki could be seen still gazing down from the window.

  Mad Maggie took a few steps forward to the edge of the island of light cast over the park gates. She didn’t say anything. She just kept smiling at Danny. She winked as she lifted her hands in front of her face slowly, then above her head. She opened her hands, looking up into the thinning rain.

  Danny’s jaw dropped. His chest rose and fell quickly. His cheeks were cool and his fringe was pasted to his forehead by the rain. He tried not to blink as he looked on, gob-smacked.

  The bird spread its glorious wings, pushing itself from Mad Maggie’s grasp. It flapped hard past Mad Maggie’s laughing face. Lifting, lifting. Danny lifted himself onto his toes, soaring with the bird.

  The pigeon was off, through the light that glinted rainbows on its neck feathers, and away.

  Danny tracked its flight. The bird circled, feeling its freedom. Over the theatre it soared, then down, swooping the gargoyle before heading, with an uneasy landing, to a ledge. Vicki’s ledge.

  Danny saw his little sister bouncing and clapping. He couldn’t hear her but knew what she was saying. ‘Yaaay!’

  5

  Meeting Mad Maggie

  Danny stood on the edge of light that melted into grey gloom just inside the park gates. He fixed a fierce gaze on Mad Maggie, refusing to blink. His br
eathing was loud, his wet clothes hanging heavy, his puzzled face carpeted with beads of rain. He was confused and it showed. As he had run across the road, he had had visions of wrestling the injured bird from the old woman’s grasp, but she had set it free and somehow given it the power of flight.

  Mad Maggie raised her eyebrows as she met Danny’s gaze. ‘I’ve been trying to get that bird for days,’ she croaked. She tugged her beanie from her head and shook it. ‘Some people call them pests, but how can something that soars like that be a pest?’

  Then she held up her right hand to show Danny a tangle of fine nylon thread. It glinted in the light and Danny thought of spider webs in rain.

  ‘The poor thing could hardly move: its leg and wings were wrapped in this mess. It was helpless, like a fly in a web.’

  In the background Danny heard his mum calling from across the street. ‘Wait there, Danny!’

  Danny turned and saw that the traffic light was green. His mum and Sam were waiting for a centipede-like line of cars to pass.

  ‘Danny! Did you hear me?’ she called above the roar of engines and loud spitting of tyres on the wet road.

  Mr Caruso’s approach had also stalled. His wife had called him to a halt. ‘Carlo!’

  Danny’s dad was with Mr Caruso now. He’d been trapped at the back of the shop for a few minutes after his introduction to the very fast talking and warmly enthusiastic Mrs Caruso.

  ‘Carlo!’ she called sharply, hands on hips. ‘Don’t be rude! You wait for Mr Allen!’

  Mad Maggie wrestled with her coat pocket. ‘These poor birds often get their legs or wings trapped in something,’ she said matter-of-factly. She pulled another ball of tangled line from her pocket. ‘This is from the balloons they sell in the park on weekends. The kiddies love their balloons and so do I, but I do wish they’d be more careful about where they dump things.’

  Danny’s head tilted like a curious pigeon’s. This wasn’t making sense. The panting voice inside his head said, So you don’t eat them?

  ‘What about the cage in the theatre attic?’ he blurted out belligerently. ‘I heard something.’ Then he pointed accusingly. ‘And I saw your photo and bed and . . .’

  ‘Brilliant!’ said Mad Maggie.

  Brilliant?

  The old woman folded her beanie and placed it in her coat pocket. ‘We’ve got that possum at last by the sound of it. Now we can fix him.’

  Danny didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Fix him?’

  ‘Why yes,’ said Mad Maggie. ‘He was clipped by a car the other night at the front of Carlo’s shop. Despite all his injuries, the little tiger managed to get away.’ She chuckled a little. ‘Carlo took off his apron and tried to wrap up the poor little thing, but he couldn’t hold him.’

  She looked up at the theatre. ‘But we knew where he’d gone.’ She tapped a finger knowingly to the side of her nose. ‘That’s why they try to cross the road. They love scrambling up into the attic and rafters of that old place.’ Then she sighed and said, ‘Ah, but who wouldn’t?’ She gazed about. ‘Especially in this weather – even I sleep up there sometimes.’

  ‘I put the possum cage up there to trap him. I put some nice apple in it to lure him in and it obviously worked. I left the apron in the theatre in case I needed to wrap him up again. I’ve been checking the cage regularly. I was worried that he had gone away to die somewhere before we could get him to the vet.’

  A vet, thought Danny, hadn’t been able to save Tippy. He hoped one could save the possum.

  Mad Maggie touched Danny’s shoulder. The touch had the gentleness of one who saves pigeons and possums. Danny didn’t recoil.

  There was a break in the traffic. Danny’s mum flew across the wet road.

  When she reached Danny she clasped his arm firmly, her face tight with worry. She spun him fiercely to face her. ‘Danny . . . what . . .?’ she stammered. ‘What do you . . . think . . .?’

  Danny looked up at his mum. He spied the sparkle of welling tears. Don’t cry, Mum. Don’t cry.

  Mad Maggie stepped in. ‘It’s my fault, dear. He was helping me save a bird. It was tangled in nylon line and couldn’t fly. We had to do something, quickly.’

  Danny looked up at his mum. ‘This is Mad Mag . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  Mad Maggie smiled at him and patted his shoulder reassuringly. ‘Just Maggie is fine,’ she beamed. Then she laughed quietly to herself.

  Introductions had finished by the time Danny’s dad arrived. He pulled Danny in close. ‘Danny,’ he snapped. ‘What on earth . . . ?’

  He was interrupted by the loud arrival of Mr Caruso. ‘Oh, Danny Allen, I thought you were going to be skittled like the little possums.’ He was huffing and puffing like a steam train approaching Howler’s Tunnel. He threw his hands to the air. ‘I thought you were a goner . . . phoot!’

  He tousled Danny’s wet hair. ‘But you are not skittled, Danny Allen,’ he beamed, ‘and that’s a good thing.’ He waved a finger of warning and pushed his big face close to Danny’s. ‘You are like the possums, trying to find your place here, but don’t get squished doing it.’

  Maggie tilted her head and was also close to Danny now, face to face. ‘You thought I was going to hurt that bird, didn’t you?’ Maggie whispered.

  Danny liked her better without the beanie. The natural wave of her silver hair was wispy like thin clouds teased across a Mundowie sky. And the smell, her smell, a country smell, it was the same smell that sometimes drifted around the steps near Aunty Jean’s front door . . . lavender!

  Danny swallowed nervously and said nothing.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Maggie continued, ‘I know what the kids say about me. It’s rather fun, really. I was an actress once.’ She motioned toward the Old Kings Theatre. ‘I spent a lot of time on stage there and I love playing a part.’ She grinned cheekily and said, ‘Pretending to be mad is quite easy for me. But I’m not mad, you know, just old.’

  Danny knew it was rude, but he couldn’t help but stare at her. He was stunned. The last few minutes had seen an incredible transformation from mad old woman munching on pigeon pie and possum stew to a saintly saviour of confused city animals and boys like Danny Allen.

  It was as if a performer playing a character had had their stage costume torn away to reveal the real person underneath. Just like the time Thommo had been cast as an angel in the nativity play. There he was, a large white-winged blob with sparkling halo hanging above the stage on a harness of wires and pulleys his dad had made to help him fly. He hovered with the grace of a dung beetle on a maiden flight. It was the best, most entertaining nativity Danny had ever seen. None before or since had had a real flying angel, and they never would again. The rope had broken and Thommo’s bellyflop landing back stage, giving him a blood nose – Thump! – had convinced the teachers that the flying harness was not safe for future use.

  Maggie dabbed at her face with a small handkerchief that was white with wildflowers in each corner and lace-trimmed edges.

  As Danny studied her face and its high cheekbones, narrow chin and sparkling smile, she seemed suddenly familiar.

  ‘Ah Maggie, you are an angel!’ said Mr Caruso, embracing his friend warmly. ‘You saved the bird.’

  With his arm wrapped tightly around Maggie, the big man turned to Danny. ‘You know who this is, don’t you?’

  The first name that immediately sprung to Danny’s mind was Mad Maggie, but he knew that wasn’t the right answer. It didn’t matter anyway, for Mr Caruso didn’t give Danny time to reply.

  ‘This, ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced grandly, ‘is the great Margaret Fairweather-Low: a wonderful actress who has performed on stages all around the world, even here at the Old Kings Theatre. Oh, she was marvellous on the stage. Once I saw her . . .’

  Danny blocked out Mr Caruso’s ramblings. He knew where he’d seen that face before. Maggie was on one of the posters in the theatre! She was much older now, of course. The skin was wrinklier and the hair a different colour, but it was t
he same face, the same eyes . . . definitely the same eyes. They were the same hazel, hints of brown and green like the Mundowie hills a few days after the first good autumn rains.

  As he stood listening, Danny saw his dad push his hat from his forehead with a single finger. Danny hadn’t seen him do that since they left the farm. Then he clasped a firm, reassuring hand on Danny’s shoulder. He didn’t say anything. Danny sensed that he would later though.

  ‘I’m glad we saved the bird,’ Maggie said quickly, patting Danny on the back. She looked at Danny’s dad. ‘This lad of yours is good at saving things, like birds and little sisters.’

  Danny’s mum gasped and suddenly slapped her forehead. ‘Little sister? Vicki! She’s still in the apartment.’

  ‘Oh ho, no, no, no,’ chuckled Mr Caruso. ‘The little one who waves to me is not in the apartment.’

  He motioned with a friendly nod to the other side of the street. At that very moment everyone was startled by the sound of a small but very loud voice screeching at them from the far side of the street. ‘Hey! You! Everybody over there!’

  All heads turned to see a very cross Vicki standing on the pavement at the doorway to Waterford Towers. She stood with hands on hips, scowling and tapping her good foot angrily on the pavement. Part of the bandage wrapping her sore leg had come unravelled and was hanging in the grey grime of a city puddle.

  ‘I don’t like the dark,’ she growled, ‘and the loud sky, and my leg really hurts, you know!’

  ‘I’ll get her,’ said Sam.

  Off he went, looking both ways for traffic. When he reached Vicki he knelt in front of her and she scrambled, grumbling, onto his back.

  Sam galloped her across the road just as he had galloped her home after hunting for tadpoles in the Mundowie dam. Vicki slapped his shoulder. ‘Go faster, and don’t drop me.’ When they drew up beside Danny, she pulled at Sam’s head with two hands around his forehead. ‘Whoa! Wait up!’

  Sam cantered playfully beside Danny. Vicki’s head was bobbing up and down. She hit Danny on the shoulder and scowled at him. ‘Don’t you run away again, Danny Allen!’ she growled, making a fist and shaking it. ‘Never ever! It was dark and loud outside . . . but I wasn’t scared.’