Rare Pets and Other Oddities

by Dave Leys

coming off the ground, and it was only after squinting that she was able to make the ball out where it lay beneath a pile of sawn-off branches.

  Simon tried a longer run-off, and while sprinting he imagined the unimaginable – the ball flying past his father’s bat and knocking over middle stump. Instead Big Kev stepped forward and seemed to lean on the ball, which flew past Simon’s outstretched hand, and yet again Melissa had to chase it and throw it back. Simon wiped the sweat from his forehead, which had begun to trickle into his eyes, making it difficult to see, and walked back to his mark. He could hear his father laughing to himself, settling in for a long innings.

  ‘I’ll show him,’ thought Simon. ‘I’ll bowl him a bouncer.’ For those who do not know, a bouncer is a horrible ball, a short ball that ideally bounces and flies through around the height of the batsman’s eyes, scaring him and cheering the bowler up no end. Simon stretched his back and thumped the ball into the ground. The ball came through around waist height and Big Kev dispatched it to the side fence with such force it ricocheted off a paling and nearly hit Melissa in the shinbone.

  At the end of his over Simon threw the ball to Melissa with a wince. He felt like he was trying to defeat an army equipped only with a pillow.

  Melissa smiled. She had been practising her spin bowling for a week now, and she was quietly confident she could get a ball to turn past her father’s bat and into the stumps. She sauntered up to the crease and let one fly. Her father jumped down the wicket and hit the ball so high it was almost lost to sight. Simon attempted to catch it but he was too short and the ball too tall.

  ‘C’mon mate,’ Big Kev said. ‘Put some effort into it!’

  Simon pretended not to hear him. He stopped for a moment and had a drink of water. It was getting really hot, so hot the trees were drooping, so hot he could hear the inside of his mind whispering. What was it saying? It’s really hot!

  Melissa kept her spin bowling up for the rest of the over, her father kept smashing the ball all over the backyard, and Simon kept retrieving the ball though he felt like crying.

  By midday Big Kev was still batting, the temperature was scorching, and Simon and Melissa were so hot and tired they felt like they were going to melt into puddles of skin and sweat.

  Then things got hotter. A lot hotter.

  Simon was the first to notice. He was running down to the back fence when he spotted something orange a couple of houses back. Thinking at first it was his Frisbee, which had been lost days ago, he started to climb to get a better look, when he noticed it was moving. It wasn’t a Frisbee, it was a flame! There was a small fire burning.

  ‘Dad,’ he cried out. ‘I can see a fire in Mr Wilcox’s yard!’

  Big Kev leaned on his bat and wheezed. ‘He must be burning off. Don’t worry about it. Come and bowl to me, I’m on a roll.’

  A little later Melissa ran to get the ball, and now it was her turn to call out to her father.

  ‘Dad,’ she yelled. ‘I think there’s a fire at Mrs Wilmont’s as well.’

  Big Kev put his bat down and sauntered over to see. For a moment the game stopped and they all walked to the back fence and looked out. There were small spot fires igniting in the neighbours’ yards, in the back paddock, and if they focused they could see fire on the mountain range, darting up the cliffs and feeding on the scrub. There was smoke everywhere, thick grey plumes that made them cough and feel dizzy.

  ‘Strewth,’ said Big Kev. ‘It’s a bushfire.’ He used his singlet to wipe the sweat from his face, which was red and puffy. Simon and Melissa stood there waiting for instructions. Should they run to the house or run straight to the car? Simon started to pull the stumps out of the ground.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Big Kev, walking forward. ‘Game’s not over yet. I’m only sixty-eight runs. I want to make a hundred.’ He picked up the ball, which had grown warm in its leather casing, and threw it to Melissa.

  ‘But,’ started Simon, only he knew it was no use. His father had that look in his eyes – the look of determination, slightly tinged with craziness – that he always got when he was nearing a century.

  The game resumed. By now there was the sound of sirens as fire trucks approached the area, and as Simon leant down to pick up the ball he peeked through a hole in the fence, where he saw the neighbours rushing out onto the street carrying photo albums.

  Grey fumes rose from the ground – the smoke was so thick it was hard to see. Simon coughed and threw the ball to where he thought Melissa was. He heard Melissa yelp as it landed on her feet. Now the haze was so bad Simon was relying on sound alone. He heard the thwack as the bat hit the ball and his father called out where he had smashed it: ‘Four runs, back left corner’, ‘Six runs, it fell out of the tree!’ The game continued as his father hit shot after shot.

  ‘Ninety not out!’ Big Kev yelled, stopping only to wheeze and cough. ‘Ten runs to go. Come on, kids, give it your best now.’

  Simon stepped up to bowl and saw through the smoke a figure with a bearded, ashen face leaning over the fence. It was Commander Collins, head of the local volunteer fire brigade. ‘Get out of there, you idiots!’ Collins yelled. ‘You’re surrounded by fire. You’ll fry any minute!’

  Simon turned to his father. Big Kev smeared the ash from his eyes and shook his head. The only word he said was, ‘Bowl.’

  Simon held the hot ball between his fingers and somehow flung it down the pitch. His father slogged the ball and it flew to the fence for four. Melissa dodged the cinders that flew through the air, and picked it up from where it lay. As she ran back to Simon she was almost hit by something black falling from the sky. It was a dead magpie, burned to a crisp.

  Commander Collins waved his hands in the air. ‘You’re crazy!’ he screamed. He turned around and gave a signal up above his head. ‘We’re sending in Berta!’ Berta was the local water helicopter, a huge chopper which carried in a tank fixed to its bottom a reservoir of water to douse bushfires.

  Big Kev waved back, smiling, his teeth the only sign of white on his soot-blackened face, and got into position, his bat wavering menacingly in the air. Simon picked up the ball by the stitches and felt a gust of wind as the helicopter hovered in the air above them. The downblast caused the ash and the cinders to fly in mad patterns, kaleidoscopic streaks of grey, black and red.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ yelled Collins. ‘The water tank isn’t opening.’

  ‘Six runs to go,’ yelled Big Kev. ‘Only six more runs to my century!’

  Simon ran in to bowl, coughing and veering, tearing in like he never had before, and finally, finally he got his bouncer right. It landed halfway up the pitch and bounced sharply up at his father’s eyes.

  Big Kev hardly saw it coming, but somehow instinct took over, and he hit it with the full face of the bat and it flew high into the air. High through the force of the downblast from the helicopter’s wings it flew, and then there was a large bang as it hit the tank, and then a ripping sound, and then a gush and a hiss as the tank tore open and water flooded out. Down the water came, down onto the backyard, onto Simon and Melissa, onto Big Kev and the stumps and the whole house. The fire, extinguished now, turned to steam.

  ‘Six!’ yelled Big Kev.

  The helicopter wobbled slightly in the air from the impact and then, its water dumped and mission done, it rose again and flew off to the mountains. Commander Collins leaned over the fence staring at the three of them, blackened and drenched, and groaned. ‘You’re nuts.’ Then he too disappeared.

  Simon sat down on the ground, exhausted, his sister slumped next to him. His shirt had half burnt off and his fingers were singed. His feet were aching and he felt his whole body trembling. Melissa looked even worse, with soot marks all over her arms and legs.

  Big Kev, however, looked as pleased as punch. He began to run up and down the pitch waving his bat in the air. ‘A century,’ he was singing. ‘One hundred not out.’
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br />   Then he finally came to rest and, leaning on his bat, smiled at his kids. ‘How about we pop into the house, clean up and have a bit of lunch?’ he suggested. ‘And then this afternoon, we’ll see if I can’t push on to two hundred not out.’

  Be-Happy Campaign

  Alexa and Sarah were at the corner shop buying ice-blocks. Sarah was trying to choose between a Splice and a Paddlepop, and may have held the freezer door open a split second too long, because the shopkeeper got out of her chair and snarled, ‘Just choose something and hurry!’

  Sarah gulped and closed the freezer door. She grabbed Alexa’s arm and the two of them shuffled quickly out of the shop. The woman behind the counter stared at them with menacing eyes all the way to the door.

  When they were outside Sarah turned to Alexa and sighed. ‘I don’t get it. Why are adults so angry all the time?’

  Alexa rolled her eyes. ‘Totally. Remember Mr Gilantes?’

  They had been walking along minding their own business when Mr Gilantes had rushed out of his house in his shorts and singlet and shouted at them that they were walking on his driveway, and he had just swept it, and they were messing it up. They had squealed and run all the way down the street.

  In fact the more they thought about it the angrier adults as a species seemed to them. There was Abdul the bus driver who growled at the kids