Stuck in the Mud

by R. A. Spratt

  ‘Goodness, why?’ he wailed.

  ‘People will be watching,’ said Ingrid enigmatically.

  Dad looked about at the inside of his greenhouse, checking for hidden cameras or even hidden people. ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Ingrid with deadpan seriousness. ‘But they will be watching, taking photographs. If we make one mistake – that’s it.’

  ‘They’ll kill us?’ asked Dad.

  ‘No, they’ll deport me,’ said Ingrid.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dad. ‘Of course, that would be bad too.’

  ‘I will go in this mud race,’ said Ingrid. ‘You will come and cheer for me.’

  Dad winced. ‘Do I have to? I hate sport. It seems so pointless and sweaty.’

  ‘Yes, you have to,’ said Ingrid. ‘It is a big event. Everyone in town will go. It will look odd if we’re not there. Your children are competing.’

  ‘I suppose watching children play sport is what normal parents do,’ said Dad to himself. He spent so much of his life worrying about being killed by enemy agents that he had not done much normal parenting. Constant fear of death was a good excuse, but children didn’t care about excuses. They wanted their parents to be like other parents, or at least not weirder than other parents. He really should make an effort. ‘Will it take long?’ He was thinking of his seedlings again. He didn’t like to leave them on a hot day in case they needed misting.

  ‘Hours,’ said Ingrid.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dad.

  ‘And when we are there together …’ said Ingrid. She paused because she knew he would not like what she had to say next. ‘We should hold hands.’

  Dad dropped the pot he was holding. Now he had potting mix all over his feet. The poor young tomato plant lay prostrate on the concrete, but Dad didn’t even glance down.

  ‘Why on earth would we do that?’ he pleaded.

  ‘It’s what couples do,’ said Ingrid.

  ‘I never held my wife’s hand,’ said Dad.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Ingrid. ‘She was an international super spy. She needed to keep both hands free at all times in case of attack.’

  Dad was taken aback. ‘She told me it was because I had dirty fingernails.’ He looked glumly at his short, stubby nails. Ever since his wife’s comment nearly two decades earlier, he had conscientiously scrubbed his nails and kept them clipped every day. But it must have been a lie. She wouldn’t have cared about dirt. She didn’t care about getting blood on her hands that time in the restaurant when she broke the assassin’s nose with her fist.

  ‘There will be no need for kissing at this stage,’ said Ingrid impassively.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ said Dad, clutching his chest as his heart started to palpitate at such a terrible thought.

  Back at school on Monday morning, April was again in Mr Lang’s office. Part of the terms of her agreement for not getting expelled was that she had to check in with him every second day so he could keep tabs on her.

  ‘I see from the local paper that you were at the training session with Tom,’ said Mr Lang.

  April rolled her eyes. The Bilgong Gazette had published a big colour photo of the training session that showed April sprawled awkwardly on the ground as Tom leapt athletically in the air. ‘I did as I was told. I should get bonus points for that.’

  I have also been informed that you were very loud and disruptive,’ said Mr Lang.

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ said April. ‘That was Tom. He doesn’t realise when there are people nearby and he talks too loud.’

  ‘You’re blaming Tom again?’ asked Mr Lang.

  ‘Yes,’ said April. ‘He’s not very well behaved. You should keep an eye on him.’

  Mr Lang suspected April was baiting him. He decided it was better not to engage. He just shook his head sadly. ‘Ms Dharawal hasn’t thrown you out of the group yet, so I suppose that’s something,’ he conceded.

  ‘I think she thought about it,’ said April. ‘But there was that lunkhead journalist from the local paper there, so it would have been a bad look kicking out a vision-impaired kid. Tom’s really good at milking that sympathy stuff for all it’s worth.’

  ‘Well, you aren’t going to be followed by the press everywhere you go, so try to behave better,’ said Mr Lang.

  ‘Tom was the loud one,’ said April. ‘I suppose I could shove a sock in his mouth, if you’d like. I’d quite enjoy that.’

  BANG. Mr Lang’s office door slammed open. A big man in his late fifties stood in the doorway panting for breath.

  ‘You!’ said the man between gasps.

  Mr Lang looked at April, assuming she had done something to incur his ire.

  But the heavy-set man pointed at Mr Lang and repeated the one monosyllabic word. ‘You!’

  ‘What?’ asked Mr Lang.

  ‘I want my wife back!’ rasped the big man.

  April was shocked. And it took a lot to shock her. ‘I’d better leave you to it. This sounds like a private conversation.’ She bent to scoop up Pumpkin, but the little dog had a firm grasp of the newcomer’s sock and didn’t want to let go. ‘Come on, Pumpkin, you’re too young to hear grown-up talk.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything to Mrs Pilsbury,’ protested Mr Lang, gripping the edge of the desk as if seeking protection from the humble piece of furniture.

  ‘That’s Mrs Pilsbury’s husband?’ asked April. She was impressed. Her respect for the receptionist increased knowing that she had married such a large and angry man.

  Mr Pilsbury shook his finger at Mr Lang. He was quivering with emotion. ‘You started it,’ he accused. ‘You’re the mayor now. You’re responsible for this woman coming here and brainwashing all our wives.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Mr Lang. He was relieved to realise that Mr Pilsbury did not think he had personally done something to abduct his wife, it was merely something that had occurred under his political tenure. But he was still baffled by what this man thought had occurred. ‘Who’s been brainwashing wives?’

  ‘That heptathlete woman,’ said Mr Pilsbury. ‘She comes here with her message of fitness and exercise for women. She’s ruining everything. Val is up every morning exercising in the park. Then they all go and have coffee at the cafe afterwards. I don’t get to see her before I go to work.’

  ‘Why don’t you join her for breakfast at the cafe?’ asked April.

  The man turned, noticing her for the first time. He seemed flabbergasted by this suggestion.

  ‘I know the Good Times Cafe is disgusting and the service is dreadful,’ said April, ‘but they do a good strawberry milkshake, and my shameless meat-eating brother highly recommends their $5 bacon and egg rolls.’

  ‘But they’re all ladies,’ said the big man. ‘They’d all laugh at me.’

  ‘They’re going to laugh at you whether you’re there or not,’ said April. ‘The question is, will you be eating an egg and bacon roll at the time?’

  The big man clearly decided he’d had enough of talking to April. He turned his attention back to Mr Lang. ‘The men in this town don’t like it. Every morning all the women go off for hours and they come home muddy and exhausted, and all they want to talk about is sprint times and ab crunches.’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ said Mr Lang.

  ‘Yes it is, you’re the mayor,’ said Mr Pilsbury. ‘There’s an election coming up. Men vote too, you know.’

  ‘But I don’t want to be re-elected,’ said Mr Lang. ‘I never wanted to be appointed in the first place.’

  ‘So you’re just going to let the whole town go to heck then, are you?’ demanded Mr Pilsbury.

  ‘This town has way bigger problems than women getting muddy and drinking coffee,’ said April. ‘I’m pretty sure there are toxic heavy metals in the water supply. It’s the only rational explanation for why no one has ever done something about the giant poo out on the highway.’

  ‘It’s a giant potato,’ said Mr Lang. ‘And it’s historic.’

  ‘It was erected in 1989,’ said April. ‘It
’s a lot less historic than the pyramids of Egypt.’

  ‘Are you making fun of me?’ demanded Mr Pilsbury. He rubbed his left arm as he said this. He was starting to look very grey and sweaty in the face.

  ‘No,’ said April. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine …’ said Mr Pilsbury, which he immediately contradicted by collapsing to his knees and grasping the side of the desk. There was so much paperwork stacked on the surface that it slid off in his hand and he toppled forward facedown on the floor.

  ‘He’s having a heart attack,’ said April, picking up the phone on Mr Lang’s desk and starting to dial triple zero. ‘Now that you’re mayor, you’ve got to stop bullying people. You can get away with it when you’re a guidance counsellor because no one cares how you treat kids. But adults are more delicate.’

  ‘This isn’t my fault!’ cried Mr Lang. ‘I didn’t do anything.’ He was on his knees next to Mr Pilsbury, loosening his shirt collar.

  ‘That’s always the politician’s defence isn’t it, “I didn’t do anything”,’ accused April. ‘Well, sometimes that’s the problem, you don’t do anything when something needs to be done.’

  ‘But I didn’t give him heart disease,’ said Mr Lang, taking hold of Mr Pilsbury’s wrist so he could check his pulse.

  ‘He’s in your office complaining about your decisions,’ said April.

  A voice came through on the other end of the phone line. ‘Emergency, what service do you require?’

  ‘We need an ambulance at Currawong High,’ said April. ‘The mayor may have killed a voter.’

  ‘I’m not dead,’ groaned Mr Pilsbury.

  ‘Not yet,’ said April. ‘But we all die eventually, don’t we. And with his mayoral policies that day will probably come sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Tell Val I love her,’ Mr Pilsbury choked out.

  ‘Tell her yourself,’ said April. ‘I’m not a messaging service.’

  ‘PESKI!’ screamed Mr Popov, the PE teacher.

  Fin looked about. He assumed Mr Popov was yelling at April. Usually she was the one in the family to inspire that level of anger. But then he remembered, she wasn’t there. She was still in her meeting with Mr Lang, much to the relief of everyone else in their English class. It meant they were actually able to do ‘quiet reading’ in quiet for once. That was until the PE teacher had burst in and started yelling.

  ‘Can we help you, Mr Popov?’ asked Mr Sturgess, the English teacher.

  ‘That boy,’ said Mr Popov, struggling to find the words for his anger. He was Russian originally, so when he was angry he often thought in that language. ‘That boy, he has vandalised my football field!’

  ‘He’s been sitting here quietly reading for the last half hour,’ said Mr Sturgess.

  ‘I had meeting with the supplier of the skipping ropes,’ said Mr Popov. ‘When I went back to my office, there were three diggers and bulldozer on the football field. They’ve cut great big trenches right down the middle.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Fin. ‘I was worried that the diggers wouldn’t have a long enough reach to get the depth I wanted.’

  ‘You admit you did this?’ demanded Mr Popov.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d mind,’ said Fin. ‘The mud run is a form of physical education.’

  ‘Not mind?!’ exclaimed Mr Popov. ‘The football season, she starts in four weeks. How could I not mind?’

  ‘They’ll fill the holes in again next week,’ said Fin. ‘After the race.’

  ‘They’re going to bring dirt all the way back here, are they?’ asked Mr Popov sceptically.

  ‘Well, it’s not going far,’ said Fin. ‘That dirt is going to form the mud mountain obstacle.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Mr Popov.

  Fin checked his watch. ‘They should be building it right now, on the school’s bowling greens.’

  Mr Popov was horrified. ‘All that dirt on the bowling greens? They can’t! We only just got the greens right again after that Dharawal woman landed her airplane on them.’

  ‘They’re not going to dump dirt anywhere,’ said Fin.

  Mr Popov sagged with relief.

  ‘No,’ continued Fin. ‘They’re going to compact it into a big muddy hill, embed massive posts all around it and drape a cargo net over the top.’

  Mr Popov did not stay to hear the rest of Fin’s description. He was already running back across the school to see what damage was being done to his beloved greens.

  What followed was a gruelling three weeks for all the Peskis. Joe was being trained as hard as any horse preparing to run in the Grand National. Loretta had been riding horses since she could walk. She knew all about training big sweaty inarticulate beasts. Joe was no different. If anything, he was easier to train than a horse. He was less likely to bite her or kick her in the head.

  April was being put through her paces by Maya Dharawal, with Tom being dragged along behind. April had started to enjoy the early morning training sessions. She never seemed to tire, no matter what Maya threw at them. She almost seemed to feed off the misery of the middle-aged women in their training group, particularly Mrs Pilsbury. April loved seeing Mrs Pilsbury suffer.

  ‘Thirty-five … thirty-six … It’s ironic,’ said April between sit-ups.

  ‘What?’ asked Tom between breaths. He’d rather not talk. He found it hard to count and talk, and there’s no way he wanted to do more than the instructed fifty reps.

  ‘I never put Pumpkin on a leash, thirty-eight … thirty-nine …’ said April. Pumpkin was nearby eating rubbish he’d found next to the bin, while he waited for them to jump up and do something more interesting. ‘But here I am, forty-one … forty-two … dragging you around on a leash.’

  ‘It’s not a leash,’ panted Tom. ‘It’s a lanyard.’

  ‘Same same,’ said April. ‘Forty-five … forty-six …’

  ‘Come on, you two,’ called Maya Dharawal. No slacking back there. ‘When you’ve finished your sit-ups, I want you to jog to the giant poo and back.’

  ‘But that’s two kilometres away!’ wailed Tom.

  ‘Forty-nine … fifty!’ exclaimed April, springing to her feet and tugging Tom up by the lanyard. ‘You heard her, it’s time for walkies!’ She took off jogging, with Tom and Pumpkin close on her heels.

  ‘I don’t know how you put up with her,’ Tom grumbled to Pumpkin.

  Pumpkin just barked. To his tiny dog brain, April was the best human a dog could ever have. She always provided lots of opportunity for exercise.

  Ingrid was in training too, but Dad was not sure exactly what that training involved. From his makeshift bed in the walk-in wardrobe, he heard her get up and go out every night between two and four o’clock in the morning. He assumed she was training for the mud race. He didn’t like to imagine what else she might be doing during that time.

  As this all went on, no one paid any attention to Fin. This was a mistake, because Fin was plotting challenges and obstacles that would rival the doomsday devices of any evil genius. He and Neil spent hours locked in Dad’s shed hammering, sawing and whizzing away with power tools as they came up with design ideas for the mud run. They would build scale models, then give them to the builders with the heavy machinery to construct in full scale.

  Everywhere round town strange timber rigs were being constructed by day. Every night, the mining company would dump tons and tons of dirt in a new location on Fin’s instructions. Currawongians were enjoying the mystery. It was like opening the door of an advent calendar, only instead of a little cardboard door with a chocolate behind it, they were opening their actual front doors and discovering where today’s dirt hill had been placed.

  The day the giant poo disappeared was the most controversial. A massive mountain of dirt appeared one morning in the exact location of the giant potato. Local residents were outraged, until someone got a spade and dug in a bit to discover that the giant potato was still there, just covered in dirt. On the whole, it was decided this actually made it more l
ike a real potato, because real potatoes were buried. So everyone just got on with their day and forgot about it.

  The next controversy was when a farmer from out Bilgong way donated fifty tons of dirt to a pile Fin wanted in the median strip right at the entrance to town. He deposited the load exactly where he had been instructed to, then drove back to his farm. But everyone on Main Street soon realised that just because it was brown and dirty, did not mean it was dirt. Constable Pike was called in and it was confirmed that this pile was really dung.

  The farmer refused to come back and pick it up. The owners of the restaurants in Currawong (all three of them) were distraught. No one wanted to eat with that smell in the air, but luckily garden pride won out. Fin simply placed a sign on the pile saying ‘Free Manure’ and the avid gardeners of the town had it cleared away and fertilising their roses by nightfall.

  Then, on the eve of the big race, the heavens opened. It was a heavy pelting deluge. Fin couldn’t have been happier, all his strategically placed dirt was now mud and getting muddier by the second.

  Joe was the last to return to the house that night. He had been out on the furthest point of the St Anthony’s cross-country course when it had started to rain. He couldn’t have been wetter if he jumped in a lake. His hair was flat against his head. His T-shirt and shorts felt like they had bricks in them, they were so heavy with water. And his shoes sounded like the mating cry of a frog. He squelched and squeaked with every step.

  By the time Joe got back to the dressage arena, where Loretta was waiting for him while putting Vladimir through his paces in the comfort of the dry, sawdust-strewn shelter, he had never been so sodden in his life. Loretta’s driver drove them home, but only after wrapping Joe in a tarpaulin so he wouldn’t ruin the leather seats. But Joe’s teeth were still chattering. The cold had gotten into his bones. As Joe staggered past the living room, he was emotionally and physically exhausted.

  ‘Are you ready for the big day?’ Fin called over the back of the couch, without even looking up from the blueprints he was studying.