When we were walking home, I asked Eddie how he had coped with his first day at school.
“It’s rooly hard Neil. It makes me head hurt. Maybe I should start at kinder.”
“Don’t worry Eddie,” I reassured him. “Nobody remembers anything they learned before last weekend.”
“But Neil, me head hurts. I want to go back with the dingoes.”
I tried to boost his confidence.
“But Eddie, they don’t want you back.”
“I just don’t fit in anywhere Neil.”
“You’ll get used to people. Here. How about I take your leash off?”
“Gee thanks Neil. You’re a rool friend.”
“You won’t run away?”
“No Neil. Promise.”
Just then we walked past Clarrie Hibble’s place. Clarrie’s a misery guts, gossipy oldster pensioner and a bit of an old woman. (Calling someone an ‘old woman’ used to be a put down, but that was way back when men were more highly regarded than women.)
Clarrie’s so mean he wouldn’t light his own fart for fear someone might warm themselves on the flame.
“Got your little dog boy there?”
“Please sir, Mr Hibble, his name is Eddie you syphilitic old bag of puss,” I replied diplomatically.
“Come here and I’ll clip you round the ears.”
I walked over to Clarrie’s verandah.
“You and who’s army,” I dared him with great originality.
He clipped me around the ears.
“Ooh, aah. That hurty, hurt,hurt,” I squealed with quiet dignity.
“I think we’d better go home,” called out Eddie.
“Yes,” I replied. “If he keeps hitting me like that, he might hurt his frail hand.”
7
Next morning as Eddie ate his breakfast from a bowl on the laundry floor, I brekkied off the table top with Mama and Papa.
“Good morning Mumsikins.”
“Good morning Neil my son. Light of my life. Why you are looking so hail and hearty.”
“Don’t you mean Heil and Hitler?” I merrily quipped, clicking my heels together. It always hurts in thongs.
“Such clever wit in one so young,” mother chuckled.
“The roast smells just tippy-top, Mumsy.”
“Why thank you dear one. But don’t you think ‘smell’ is just a teeny bit crude to use in our blessed house?”
“Apologies Mumsy. Perhaps ‘aroma’ will suffice in future?”
“Very good Neil. As they say, ‘Language is the wallpaper of the mind.’”
Mother always rises at five to cook a roast breakfast for father and me. These meals can be a little heavy going on a summer morning. But hey, what the heck? Father and I aren’t about to deny mother her small pleasures in life, so I say ‘pass the gravy.’
Mother, father and I, (and now my little Eddiekins), live in a cute little white cottage with a jacaranda tree in the backyard overhanging a chook shed and with a white picket fence at the front. Our house is known around town as “the cute little white cottage with a jacaranda tree in the backyard overhanging a chook shed and with a white picket fence at the front.” Ask anyone and they will tell you - this is a very creative town.
On week days, father always appears for breakfast in a suit and tie. Now I’m not boasting, but my father is the local undertaker/funeral director - depending which side of the tracks you become a corpse.
Father is still trying to live down an incident a few months back when he drove the hearse up the highway to pick up all the pieces of some guy who fell into a sugar harvesting machine. On the way back to town, the back door of the hearse swung open and the various body parts went flying out the back of the van to be scattered along the Pacific Highway. Fortunately, a Christian primary school mini-bus was following the hearse so they stopped and organised a treasure hunt. The kid who found the most parts won a meat tray.
Mother looked up from the local newspaper.
“I see Clarrie Hibble was blown up. The police can’t explain how it happened. Strangest thing – Clarrie was simply making a humble cuppa and having a smoko when he exploded. Just like those spooky spontaneous combustion folk. The odd thing is, Clarrie’s right hand was red raw.”
I felt my ears.
“That’s odd,” said mother, looking straight at me. “Your ears are red raw Neil. Perhaps it’s a weird deadly killer virus carried by tropical bats and racehorses. If it spreads to your toes you’d better have it looked at young Neil.”
8
A busload of us from school were taken up to the Mullumbimby Hospital to inspect ‘Hobbled Hibble’ (as they called him at the Ex-Services Club) but he was so covered up in bandages, all we could see was a cigarette dangling from his mean lips. Which was kind of ironical, seeing as the purpose of the excursion was to illustrate the hazards of smoking to our innocent, impressionable, unformed little minds.
It was on the bus trip back that Eddie extracted a vow of silence from me before taking credit for Clarrie Hibble’s blast-off.
“How did you do it?” I asked with an air of indifference, not wanting Eddie to see how impressed his new big brother really was.
“I snuck into Clarrie’s yard after the milko had been,” explained Eddie. “I took the lid off the bottle, planted a fart in it and put the lid back on.
“I watched through Clarrie’s window as he lit a cigarette. Then he made a cup of tea. Clarrie drew back on his smoke just as he flipped the lid off the milk bottle, letting loose my fart. Then everything exploded.”
“Gee Eddie” I exclaimed, unable to conceal my admiration any longer. “A pasteurised, marinated fart. A regular blow-out of nuclear arsenal – so to speak – proportions.”
9
In drama class we had the first read through of a play I had written during the summer holidays. It was about how the early settlers had established the town of Mullumbimby. I was inspired by an episode of The Simpsons where they had a school play about the founding of Springfield.
My play showed how the pioneer Mullumbimbyites arrived in a wagon train only to be attacked by aborigines on horseback with bows and arrows. It then showed how the settlers made peace with the aborigines by teaching them cutlery etiquette, cricket and handkerchief folding and by trading in their old black and white television sets for the aboriginal banana plantations.
The aborigines were so grateful they said, “We are only too happy be rid of this land. Our youngers can’t afford the escalating property prices demanded by our elders. In fact “Mullumbimby” is Aboriginal for “exorbitant rent.”
“But a couple of questions:
“How about we give you Byron Bay (including Wategos Beach) in exchange for home delivery of TV Week?”
“Ya ain’t connin’ no TV Weeks outa us black man,” replied the pioneers.
“And was that ‘start with the outside knife and fork’ or ‘start with the inside knife and fork’?”
“Geez, we only showed you ten minutes ago.”
“Well?”
“Can’t remember.”
Having successfully found a spiritual homeland, (not to mention the better-than-expected trade-in deal), the settlers rejoice by dancing and singing ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning’ from ‘Oklahoma.’ Curtain closes on my short tribute to the early pioneers.
The play was being directed by Joanna Perkins. After the reading, she entered into a mild critique of my literary masterwork: “Well I think it’s just so totally putrid. Why black and white television sets? I mean how cheap can you get?”
“Well, they didn’t have colour sets in those days Joanna,” Miss Clover our drama teacher explained.
Joanna was not to be satisfied so easily.
“What are we going to use for covered wagons? Billy-karts?”
“When was the last time you saw a billy-kart in Mullumbimby?” Duncan asked Joanna. “This town’s flatter than your chest.”
“Miss Clover! Are you going to let Duncan get away with such crass sexism?”
“No Joanna. Now Duncan, I want you to apologise to Joanna at once.”
“Yes Miss Clover. Joanna, I’m sorry you’ve got a flat chest. Haw, haw, haw.”
10
In Mr Farrer’s science class, we were treated to a spectacle of three ring, four star and five bell proportions. Mr Farrer claimed he had solved the alchemists’ riddle of the ages. He had worked out how to turn lead into gold. And he was going to show us how.
Mr Farrer is one of those plump, balding, middle-aged, brown-jacket-with-leather-elbow-patches, boring old fart, ‘Is he alive?’ type of guys. Definitely not a surprise guy. So this was real ‘fasten your seatbelts’ stuff.
He placed a large cardboard box on a table. He put his hand in and pulled out a very inflated balloon - blown up to near bursting point.
Mr Farrer turned toward the class, and after pausing for a theatrical moment to allow the suspense to build, said: “This balloon I hold before you is filled with pure fart. This is the lead. I would like Eddie Patterson to come to the front of the class and turn it into gold.”
Eddie looked across to me with a pained expression. I shrugged my shoulders. Who knew what was going on?
Eddie dawdled to the front, looking like a man going to the gallows.
Mr Farrer placed the balloon in one of Eddie’s hands and a cigarette lighter in the other.
“Now Eddie, light the lighter and hold it to the balloon.”
“But Mr Farrer, it’ll explode in my face.”
“No it won’t Eddie. Trust me.”
Mr Farrer spoke with such warmth and sincerity that Eddie’s fears appeared to evaporate. He held the lighter flame to the balloon. It exploded with such a whoosh and roar that we all dived under our desks.
When we looked up again, Eddie was standing frozen, still holding the lighter in one hand and the spent balloon in the other. His hair and eyebrows were completely singed off. He was dumbstruck. So were we.
Mr Farrer broke the silence. “And now we have gold. The gold of knowledge and insight.”
“Ah, what insight,” whimpered Eddie.
“Never believe a boring old fart in a brown jacket. And Eddie, always cover your tracks.”
At lunch, Eddie, wearing a borrowed straw hat, asked me, “Do you think Farrer’s on to me Neil?”
“Just a coincidence, Eddie. Pure coincidence,” I reassured him, thinking that if he believed Farrer, he’d believe anyone.
11
With just a bell, a flashing light and a couple of magnetised signs, father can convert his grand white hearse into a ‘Mr Jolly Pringle’ ice-cream van. A baby’s coffin with party ice is just the trick to keep the ice cream cold. The cones are laid out in rows on a Kitty Litter tray.
As we cruised the streets after school, Eddie and half the cats in Mullumbimby, ran along behind the van. I think this was because father also used the baby coffin as a fish bait box and he hadn’t cleaned it all that well. The litter tray was a bit pongy too. But never mind. We did brisk business.
I told the kids it was a new flavour mackerel ice cream. They said it tasted terrific although a couple thought the cones tasted like cat piss. I asked them how the hell they knew what cat piss tasted like and the other kids laughed at them.
Mother was so pleased that I had sold all the ice-cream reeking of fish bait that she allowed me a small glass of chilled chablis with my meal.
”Tres sophisticated a la Frog, Mater,” I commented.
“Yes dear. Very European ,” she beamed.
“I see Neil you are going on a school excursion to see the sugar harvesting,” father commented. “Would you mind handing out some of my business cards in case someone else falls in a harvester?”
“I’m afraid Father that when it comes to treasure hunts I lean rather more to the traditional practice of using lollies rather than sugar workers’ body parts.”
Father graciously conceded my point.
12
Early next morning, as I delivered newspapers on my bike with Eddie running behind, a mist of fine cobwebs fell from the sky. They draped across power lines and dangled from trees like whispy, christmassy decorations.
Old Aunty Alice sat on her verandah catching some sun before it got too hot. Everybody calls her ‘Aunty’ to pretend they have respect for their oldsters. She’s 112 years old.
She beckoned for me to come in. I left the bike and Eddie at the front gate and sat on a cane chair on the verandah.
“No one had fancy bikes when I was your age.”
“No Aunty Alice.” I knew where this was heading.
“In fact, no one even had bikes.”
“No Aunty Alice.”
“Why we didn’t even have roads to ride them on. Potholes. That’s all we had. Potholes. Come to think of it, they weren’t even really potholes. Just thingamy kinda things. You know.”
“Yes Aunty Alice.”
“And even the thingamy kinda things were...You could really hurt yourself if you weren’t careful. And when people hurt themselves, they really hurt themselves. And they didn’t whimper and weep. Oh no. Not like now. And plastic. We didn’t have plastic.”
“Can’t imagine that Aunty Alice.”
“You know Neil,” she continued. “I have a feeling in my bones that this dear little town of ours is unhappy. I think it’s trying to say something to us Neil. But we’re not listening. This shiny, sticky, silvery cottony stuff floating all over us. It’s an omen. Mark my words. It’s an omen.”
“Spooky?”
“Yes Neil, Spooky?”
13