Digger Field (5 page)

It had been the worst holidays ever so far. The world championship was off, I no longer had a best mate and I still needed to find seven hundred and thirty-five dollars to buy Uncle Scott’s tinnie.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that ‘Mr Black’ guy either. Maybe Wrigs was right and he was up to no good. I mean, if he was trying to sell the old house, why didn’t he just put up a ‘For Sale’ sign, or a sign saying ‘Private Property, Keep Out’? And why would he have just stood there watching while we were making our ghost film? It was weird.

Dad came outside. He backed his Falcon out of the garage. It was gleaming in the sun. He had buffed it especially for Christmas.

‘I’m just off to see if the shops are open.’

‘Dad, nothing’s open on Christmas Day,’ I said.

‘What about churches?’ Dad said.

‘They’re not shops.’

‘Still, it proves some things are open. So maybe I’ll find a shop.’

He roared off in his car. We could hear the big engine all the way down the road.

It was thirty degrees and not even eight o’clock in the morning. And it was still four hours until lunch.

‘It’s so hot my dog’s got a sunburnt tongue,’ I said.

‘We don’t have a dog,’ said Squid.

It’s not the same playing with Squid.

‘It’s just a saying, Squid, like saying, “It’s so hot my grandfather burst into flames.”’

‘Papa? You better tell Mum. He’s coming over for lunch.’

‘No, Squid, it’s a joke. Like, “It’s so hot you could cook an egg on the footpath.”’

‘Can you really?’

I hadn’t thought about that before.

‘Let’s try,’ I said.

Squid went and got some eggs out of Dad’s chicken coop. We cracked one onto the footpath outside the front of our house. But it just sat there. It didn’t even look like it was thinking of cooking.

We got some aluminium foil from the kitchen, folded it up like it was a bowl and put it on the footpath. Then we cracked another egg into it. But still the idea of frying itself didn’t even enter the egg’s stupid brain.

Have I mentioned before that I hate eggs?

I held my magnifying glass over the egg so all the sun’s rays hit the one spot, and slowly an edge started to go white. Really slowly. So slowly I was more likely to cook in the sun before the egg did.

Dad arrived back from the shops and parked in the drive. He was clutching a bunch of really lame-looking flowers, like the ones you get from a petrol station.

‘What have you got there, Dad?’ asked Squid.

‘Just something nice for your mother.’

He raced inside.

A heat haze was coming off the front of the car. I touched the bonnet. It was boiling hot. Then I had an idea that knocked me over like an angry reindeer who’d been towing a fat man around all night.

I cracked an egg straight onto the bonnet.

Squid was clenching his fists really tightly, which is what he does when he thinks he’s about to get in trouble. ‘Won’t that wreck Dad’s car?’

Thin dribbles started spreading out over the bonnet.

‘No, nothing sticks to this paint. It’s high gloss, like a non-stick frying pan.’ I was guessing. I was hoping I was right.

Squid shouted, ‘Look, it’s cooking.’

The thinnest end of the dribble was starting to go white. I touched it and it was sticky. Some of the stuff stuck to my finger but, worst of all, it looked like the paint under it was bubbling.

Dad came rushing outside again.

We were officially dead. I took the only sensible option and ran and hid down the side of the house. Squid was left standing by the car.

‘What’s up?’ Dad asked Squid.

Squid pointed at the bonnet.

Dad went up to it, touched it, and tasted it. ‘It’s an egg,’ he said.

‘A chicken must have laid it on the car,’ Squid said.

‘Wow,’ said Dad. ‘And look, the bonnet is so hot, it’s cooking the egg.’

Squid looked at Dad with his big eyes, as innocent as can be.

‘It’ll stuff the paint,’ Dad told him.

‘Bad chickens,’ said Squid.

‘We should get rid of them,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll clean it off when I get back. I’ve just got to see if I can find a jewellery shop that opens on Christmas Day.’

He jumped into the car and drove off.

I know Squid’s only little, but I reckon he’s got a lot of potential. Though I’m not looking forward to when Dad starts looking for the touch-up paint.

CHAPTER 12

DAY 11: Tuesday, Boxing Day

My skims: 17

Tearley’s skims: 12

Wriggler’s skims: Who cares?

Days to becoming world champion: 28—it’s back on.

Money made for tinnie: $0 ($735 to go, but I’ve got plenty of ideas.)

Mum and Dad have all their friends around for a big cook-up on Boxing Day. Normal families have sausages on a barbie. We have
bigos
.

Bigos
is like a Polish stew. It’s a brew of old meat with bucketfuls of rotten cabbages, old apples and overripe tomatoes.

Every Boxing Day Dad gets up before the sun. A couple of minutes later the smell of frying cabbage and onion pollutes the whole house. Fried cabbage smells like a rotting rat that’s got stuck up a drainpipe.

Then Dad starts dumping in the meat. First in are the ox tongues. Then pork knuckles and a couple of kilos of bacon, followed by cubed rump steak. Don’t be confused by the word ‘rump’, it means ‘butt’. Cow’s butt, to be exact.

After that, Dad adds more buckets of cabbage, then some sausages. Then he stirs in some tomatoes and apples, and tops it all off with—wait for it—more cabbage.

Late in the morning all our neighbours and friends start arriving.

Uncle Scott came around early this year with some extra garden tables and chairs.

‘How are you going with the money for the tinnie?’ he asked me.

‘Not so well, Uncle Scott.’

‘Mate, y’know, I’d give it to you if I could. But I need all the money I can get at the moment to fit out the coffee van.’

‘We’ll get the money. You’ll have it by the end of the holidays,’ I said.

‘Mate, I hope you do. It’s a terrific little boat and I’d love to see it stay in the family.’

So many people came around this year that some of the neighbours brought their own picnic rugs and set them up on the front lawn. There must have been fifty people.

Tearley and her mum turned up.

Tearley’s mum made a beeline for my mum and I was sure she was going to tell her about the snow-dome incident. I was dead.

But when I looked over, Tearley’s mum was helping my mum with the salads and they were both laughing.

I was hoping Wrigs would turn up. When his mum arrived, carrying a cake, I asked if he was coming.

‘No, Callum wanted to spend the day at his cousins,’ she said.

Wrigs’ real name is Callum. Callum Finnigan. We became friends when we sat next to each other in kindy. The teacher used to always complain he wouldn’t sit still which is why he is called Wriggler.

Wrigs hates going to see his cousins. He once told me that he would rather swim in a vat of acid than spend an hour with them. But he chose to spend Boxing Day at their place rather than mine. We really mustn’t be friends any more.

So there were fifty people at my place and no one to hang with. I sat between Dean and Squid to eat lunch. Freakishly,
bigos
tastes pretty good. The thing about it though is that it produces more methane gas than any other food. About five minutes after I finished there were a couple of squeaks. Dean was looking pretty happy with himself.

‘I bet I can fart the alphabet,’ he said.

And he did. He farted from A right through to Z.

Squid was looking at Dean as though he was a superhero. I kind of admired the control, but the smell was unbearable.

When Tearley asked me if I wanted to go skimming I said yes, even though she is my archenemy.

I was scared about running into Mr Black, so I was hoping to convince Tearley to go somewhere else along the river to skim.

‘Did Wrigs tell you about Mr Black?’

‘Who?’

‘The guy who hangs down by the river?’ I said.

‘Oh, the big scary guy who Wrigs says is going to set up a terrorist training camp?’

‘Yeah.’

‘In Pensdale? As if,’ she said. ‘Wrigs is such a wuss. I bet Mr Black is just some dude who’s got a really boring job that he doesn’t want to go to. He’s wagging it and has got nowhere else to go all day.’

There’s no way I was going to let Tearley think I was a wuss too, so we went to the usual spot on the river to skim. Luckily Mr Black wasn’t there.

On my first skim the rock landed perfectly and jumped back into the air like a rocket. Then it bounced again, and again, and again, and kept on bouncing across the water. It was the most glorious peg ever.

‘Seventeen!’ Tearley shouted. ‘That’s so pro.’

I tried to be as cool about it as possible. ‘Yeah, not bad for a warm-up.’

We spent the afternoon trying to outdo it. Neither of us could. I’ve got to admit though, Tearley is pretty good, for a girl.

‘You’re better than Wriggler,’ I told her.

‘That’s not hard,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ I laughed, ‘he’s hopeless. I only let him hang around because he’s got a video camera.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘the only world record he’d get is for being unco.’

It ended up being a pretty good day. Tearley is okay. Maybe she can take Wriggler’s place in the world championship.

CHAPTER 13

DAY 12: Wednesday

My skims: 0

Wriggler’s skims: 0 (He’s still not talking to me.)

Tearley’s skims: 0 (She’s been disqualified.)

Days to becoming world champion: 27 (The pressure’s on.)

Money made for tinnie: a vomitcovered $10 note. ($725 to go.)

I was feeling pretty good about the restart of the world record attempt. And I’d decided Tearley was right about Mr Black just being a random dude hanging around the river instead of going to work. My plan was to go to the river as early as I could and put in a really big day, to try and make up for all the lost days. I was on the verge of breaking the big 2-0 skims.

I was going to swing by Tearley’s house on the way to the river and see if she wanted to come. But Dean did it again. He left me to look after Squid. As soon as Mum went to work he picked up his surfboard.

‘See ya, sucker,’ he said. ‘Look after the grommit.’

‘I’m going to tell,’ I shouted at him. ‘Get back here this instant.’

To be honest I shouted it to him when he was already down the street a bit. I wasn’t keen on getting another thonging.

I could feel the world record slipping away, again.

I had no idea what to do with the giantheaded Squid. He was standing there with a great big stupid smile on his face. He expected me to come up with some way to entertain him. Then an idea hit me like a bottle of wee between the shoulderblades.

Squid’s a kid, right? Kids like to cook. So I pulled out some flour, sugar and butter and told him to start making biscuits. We were going to have a biscuit stall. I’d make a fortune. Just because Wrigs and I weren’t friends any more, it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to get the tinnie.

I stood Squid on a stool by the kitchen bench and he went to it like a demon, sifting, mixing and baking. He could hardly see over the top of the bowl but that didn’t stop him. He just climbed onto the kitchen bench so he could mix the ingredients better.

This was the most perfect scheme ever. Someone else does all the work and you make all the money. Wrigs would have loved it.

Squid was having the best day of his life. When he finished baking the biscuits, I set him up at a table on the footpath in front of the house.

‘I’ll give you ten cents for every one you sell,’ I told him.

‘Great,’ he said through a mouthful of biscuit.

I put a sign up that said: ‘Digs’ homemade biscuits—fifty cents each’.

‘That’s the third biscuit I’ve seen you eat,’ I said to Squid. ‘You owe me a dollar-fifty.’ I pointed at the sign.

‘That’s not fair.’

‘You only have to sell fifteen and you’ll have earnt enough to pay me back.’

I went back to the house. I was going to ring Wrigs and tell him about the plan. Even though Tearley was right when she said Wrigs is a wuss, he has been my best mate forever. When he answered the phone, I opened with my best line.

‘Hey, Wrigs, it’s so hot I heard a pig complaining about sweating like a human.’

Nothing came back. Okay, he was out of practice. It’d been a few days.

‘It’s so hot I just saw a tree asking a dog to wee on it,’ I said.

Nothing.

Then, ‘What do you want, Digger?’

‘I just wanted to see if you felt like coming around.’

‘No, I’m busy.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Stuff.’

‘Well, do you want to come down to the river tomorrow?’ I said.

‘What about Mr Black?’

‘Don’t worry about him. He’s just some dude who’s wagging work.’

‘You don’t know that,’ he said.

‘Don’t be a wuss, Wrigs,’ I said. ‘We can still get the world record.’

‘Can’t you find someone else with a
video camera
to go with you?’

A video camera! Tearley. The double-crosser. She told Wriggler that I was only his friend because he had a camera. I let down my guard for a second and she set me up. I should never have trusted her.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked him, as innocently as I could.

Wrigs hung up.

I walked onto the front verandah and looked down at the stall. Squid had a customer. It was Mr Black.

He gave Squid some money and took two biscuits. Mr Black looked up at me. We stared at each other for a moment, then he walked off down the road.

Squid came running up holding a ten-dollar note.

‘That man gave me ten dollars. Ten dollars for two biscuits.’

I was about to take it off him when he said, ‘I’m feeling sick.’

A spout of puke came rushing out of his mouth and splashed all over him.

He was completely covered, from head to toe. And so was the ten-dollar note.

I couldn’t believe he’d had so much stuff in his stomach.