by Geoff Palmer
‘Mice,’ Tim gasped before he could help himself. Smudge struggled and yowled. ‘I just came out for a drink and Smudge went berserk.’
His uncle surveyed the damage and the struggling cat. ‘You should’ve left her to it.’
‘But she was ...’
Smudge struggled free and dropped to the floor. She immediately readied herself to leap back on the bench.
‘My new cups!’ Aunt Em exclaimed, following her husband in.
Frank turned and Tim quickly dipped his hand into the sink. Feeling the grey mouse scramble on to his fingers, he lifted it and slipped it into the pocket of his dressing gown. A second later, Smudge skidded to a halt beside the empty sink, looking round with a hiss of annoyance.
‘What a mess!’ Aunt Em exclaimed. ‘Look at the toaster! Smudge, get down!’
Tim seized the cat again and dropped her back on the floor, realising he was still holding the broken torch. He slipped it into his pyjama pocket and continued searching for the fawn mouse.
‘You should let her do her job,’ Frank said.
‘She shouldn’t be up on the bench,’ Em replied. ‘It’s not hygienic.’
‘Aw, Smudge is pretty tough. I don’t think she’ll catch anything,’ Frank grinned.
Em glared at him while Tim turned back to the open microwave. Below it was a bread bin set into an alcove. They fawn mouse must have run in there. He hoped it wasn’t hurt.
Reaching up to close the microwave, he leaned his left arm on the bench, letting the sleeve of his dressing gown fall open beside the alcove. Almost immediately he felt the scuffle of tiny feet on the cuff. Carefully withdrawing his arm, he lowered it and let the mouse slide down into his pocket.
‘You know what I mean, Frank,’ Em was saying. She bustled round to where Tim stood. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, then, ‘Oooo!’
Snatching a brush and pan from the sink cupboard, she began vigorously sweeping the bench top around where the toaster had been.
‘Get the traps,’ she said, screwing up her nose and holding out the pan. ‘Look.’ She pointed to two dark objects nestled amongst the breadcrumbs and dust. ‘Mouse droppings.’
It was only as she tipped the pan into the rubbish bag that Tim realised they weren’t mouse droppings at all. One of them was the broken pencil lead and the other was the tiny calculator.
3 : Reunited
Tim kept a sharp eye on the rubbish bag. Even if he hadn’t seen the calculator go into it he’d have stayed to help clear up the mess. It was, after all, partly his fault. But keeping tabs on that brown paper bag now became his number one priority.
He righted the toaster. It had a nasty dent in one side but still seemed to work. He wiped the bench top clean of salt and pepper spills and held the dust pan while his aunt swept up her shattered cups. And when the broken china — wrapped in thick wads of newspaper — was lowered into the near-full rubbish bag, he offered to take it out.
‘Oh, we’ll get a bit more in there yet,’ Em said, packing down the contents.
Frank returned with the traps and began fiddling with them. Unable to find another excuse, Tim gave the rubbish bag a lingering look and headed for his room.
On the way he realised he’d slipped the mice into separate pockets. They’d each be thinking the other one was missing. Or worse. He hurried to the roll-top desk and gently turned out his right-hand pocket. The grey mouse, its fur still damp from the sink, trotted listlessly on to the blotter and looked glumly up at him.
‘Hang on,’ he said, carefully tilting the left-hand pocket to release its fawn occupant. ‘There ...’
The two mice caught sight of each other and stared for a moment. Then they rushed at each other, leapt to their hind legs, embraced and danced round and round in a dizzying circle. Tim felt awkward and looked away.
He was still staring at the curtains when there was a tug on the elbow of his dressing gown. Looking down he found the two mice standing side-by-side staring solemnly up at him. Slowly and deliberately they high-fived each other then turned and held out their tiny paws to him. Carefully stretching out his own hand, Tim high-fived each of them in turn.
‘You’re probably wondering what happened to your calculator,’ he said. They nodded eagerly and he told them how he’d seen it swept into the rubbish.
‘I can’t get it now,’ he added. ‘Too suspicious. I’ll have to wait till everyone’s gone to bed.’
With the lead from a newly sharpened pencil the fawn mouse scrawled:
U think is ok?
‘Yeah, it’s just been dumped in with a ton of other stuff. I’ll need to sort through it.’
Phew! Good, good.
Meny thanks!
the mouse wrote, then added:
Frend!!
‘That’s OK,’ Tim said. ‘It was fun. Sort of.’
The grey mouse nudged its companion. They conferred briefly then the fawn one scribbled,
We must hoam go now. Back tomorororw.
‘OK. And I’ll get your calculator back. Promise.’
4 : Strange Dreams
Tim woke from strange dreams with a stiff neck and pins and needles in one hand. He must have fallen asleep before getting properly into bed. He was still wearing his dressing gown and the old fashioned bedside lamp was still on. He glanced at his watch: 1:30. Then he recalled another time on another digital display — 7:26 — and the memory of his strange dream returned.
He got up, stretched, and began taking off his dressing gown so he could get into bed properly, but while he was doing so he caught sight of the blotter.
It was covered with faint marks.
‘Doodles,’ the thinking part of his brain told him. ‘Just get into bed.’
‘Hmm,’ said the dreamy part. ‘I wonder ...’
‘This is silly’, he muttered and marched over to the desk.
He froze, his heart suddenly pounding like a bass drum, and rubbed his eyes. The blotter was covered with tiny messages. Beside them lay a broken pencil and a discarded pencil lead.
He sat down on the edge of the bed feeling slightly faint. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. Message-writing mice? Dancing, prancing mice who carried calculators? No way!
* * *
The house was silent and the hall pitch black so he kept one hand on the wall to steady himself and counted off the doorways to the kitchen. Lounge, linen cupboard, dining room ...
Silently closing the kitchen door behind him, he reached up and switched on the light.
‘Jeez!’ his sister exclaimed.
Tim blinked at the sudden brightness. Coral was sitting at the kitchen table shielding her eyes and squinting at him.
‘You!’ she muttered. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’
‘Me too,’ Tim gasped.
‘What are you doing up?’
‘I ... um ... What are you doing?’
Coral had been sitting at the table in the dark, staring out the window at the stars. There was a half-empty glass of water in front of her and her eyes were puffy and her cheeks streaky. For a moment she bristled defensively then sighed and looked away.
‘Coral ...?’ he asked, moving closer. ‘Are you OK?’
She sniffed. ‘I hate it here. I really, really hate it. And it’s going to be another six weeks. At least. Six weeks!’
‘It’s not that bad,’ Tim consoled.
‘It’s all right for you, you’re just a kid. I miss all my friends.’ Tim knew what that meant: Precious Derek. ‘I can’t even text them,’ she continued. ‘And as for that awful school ...’
‘Aunt Em and Uncle Frank are OK though,’ he said.
‘More’s the pity.’
‘What that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that if they were mean and horrible we’d have an excuse to run away. But they’re not. We’re stuck.’
Tim felt oddly heartened by that we. Coral was two years older than him; a teenager and a girl, so they didn’t have much in common. But she’d said we could run away and we’re s
tuck, as if they were a team.
Smudge, pleased at the early morning company, moved back and forth between them and they spent some minutes making a fuss of her.
‘What are you doing up, Timmo?’ Coral asked again, but gently this time.
‘Oh, I ... couldn’t sleep ...’ He glanced around the kitchen, saw the empty cup stand and the dented toaster. ‘Coral, am I dreaming?’
‘What?’
‘I know it sounds weird but I think I’m dreaming this.’
‘Want me to pinch you or something?’
‘Yeah, go on. Ow!’
Tim went to the rubbish bin and raised the lid. On top of the brown paper rubbish bag sat the bundle of broken cups wrapped in newspaper. He let out a sigh, unclipped the bag from its holder and carefully carried it to the table.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Looking for something.’
‘Like what?’
‘A c alculator. A really, really small calculator.’
* * *
Coral got the giggles.
‘I think I’m the one dreaming now,’ she whispered. ‘I mean look at us. This is mad!’
She was right. It was pretty funny. And weird. Here they were in their pyjamas, sitting round the kitchen table at two o’clock on a Tuesday morning with the entire contents of the rubbish bag spread out before them.
‘Tell me again what we’re looking for?’
‘A little tiny calculator ...’
‘... that looks like a mouse turd,’ she snorted. The more she tried to keep it in the funnier it became.
Tim got the giggles too. ‘You know what happens now, don’t you?’
‘What?’ she gasped.
‘Uncle Frank and Aunt Em come in and catch us!’
That almost made Coral burst. Tears streamed down her face, but good tears this time.
‘I ... could always ... say ... I was just trying to get ... a signal ... on my phone!’ she spluttered, waving a broken coffee cup over her head.
That was it, that was the limit. Desperate not to wake their aunt and uncle but unable to contain themselves any longer, they bounded for the back door and aimed their laughter at the cool night air and the stars.
‘I’ll give them one thing,’ Coral said eventually. ‘They get better stars down here.’
Tim had to agree. The vast night sky shimmered with a million points of light. Back in Auckland, beneath the night-time haze of street lights, only the brightest and boldest shone through. But here the night sky was like spilled sugar on a black tabletop, each grain a sun, each with planets of its own.
Back in the kitchen they continued their search with renewed energy and concentration. The problem, Tim had explained, was that what they were looking for was so tiny it could have got caught in a fold of screwed up paper or the crease of a carton.
Coral hadn’t really believed Tim’s story, but her little brother had seemed so serious and intense — even more than normal — that she went along with it anyway. They both had their own ways of coping with their exile, she supposed, and if this was Tim’s, well, what the heck?
Then he’d pointed out the tiny letters scribbled on the bench top
Agane plese. 10x.
and she began to wonder ...
‘There! What’s that?’ Coral flattened out a corner of the newspaper and dusted away some cup fragments.
Tim looked. ‘No, that’s the pencil lead. But we’re getting warmer.’
She moved a piece of broken china.
‘That’s it!’ Tim cried.
‘Ssshhh!’
They peered at the small black box lying in a pile of breadcrumbs. Tim turned it over with a fingernail to reveal a surface set with minute coloured buttons around an even smaller oval screen. Coral stared at it a second then glanced at her brother’s excited face, wondering, impressed, and also slightly wary.
She got up, rummaged through a drawer and returned with a magnifying glass. After studying it intently she handed the glass to her brother and shook her head.
‘That’s no calculator, Timmo,’ she muttered. ‘It’s way more complicated than that. But what on earth is it?’
5 : Fitchett’s Flyer
‘Get your skates on you two or you’ll miss your bus,’ Aunt Em called to the figures slumped at the kitchen table.
‘Gosh, we wouldn’t want that,’ Coral said listlessly.
A distant tooting sounded.
‘Chop, chop!’ Em said, handing them their lunches as they trooped out the back door and headed up the gravel drive.
Fitchett’s Flyer was waiting for them at the road, its ancient diesel engine knocking to a regular beat that reminded Tim of the sound of the milking shed.
‘Morning Coral. Morning Tim,’ Errol Fitchett called cheerily.
‘Morning Errol,’ came the two half-hearted replies.
Tim found a seat and, to his surprise, Coral swung in beside him. She usually found her own. They were only the second or third pick-ups in the morning so there were always plenty of spares.
With a graunch of gears and its customary lurch, the Flyer moved off.
Tim recalled his sister’s horrified expression the first day they’d caught the bus, when Aunt Em had stood with them at the gate and flagged it down.
‘Can’t we wait for the next one?’ she’d asked.
Her aunt laughed. ‘There isn’t a next one, not round here.’
The ancient bus — a relic from the 1950s — looked almost home-made. It was as if someone had taken an old shed, nailed an equally ancient car bonnet to the front of it and set the whole thing on wheels.
In spite of its age the bus was lovingly cared for, and beneath a layer of dust from the unpaved road its iridescent green paintwork gleamed, as did the jaunty yellow-lettered legend on its sides: Fitchett’s Flyer.
Coral was aghast. ‘That thing wouldn’t fly if you pushed it off a cliff!’
Tim liked it immediately. It would be like travelling in a vintage car. He liked it even more when he saw the destination board above the driver. The sign in the small glass window read ‘Skool’.
Then they were introduced to Errol Fitchett, a man as old as his conveyance, a man with more gaps in his mouth than teeth. He had a happy grin and was ‘Errol’ to everyone, whether you were nine or ninety.
The old bus chugged past a rubbish dump, a stand of untamed bush and the entrance to a nature reserve before swinging left to begin its grinding climb up the series of hills that separated the low-lying coastal farms from the little town of Rata. The road was little more than a dusty gravel track and climbed so steeply it pressed them back in their seats.
Tim glanced out the window then looked away quickly. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the view. It was the thought that all that separated them from it was a flimsy wire fence running along the side of the road.
Near the top he breathed a sigh of relief as the bus rounded the sharp corner known as Dead Man’s Bend where a single tree — Dead Man’s Pine — hung out over the rocky coastline and the sparkling blue Tasman Sea far below. The tree served as a misshapen signpost that they’d made it. Frazzled by a lightning strike years before, its top half was dead and blackened, yet somehow its lower limbs still clung on, as if they too feared the drop.
‘Did you bring it with you?’ Coral asked.
Tim took a small plastic bag out of the button-down pocket of his shirt. She studied the tiny jewel-like calculator inside, turning it over and holding it up to the light.
‘We really did that stuff then, eh? I know why you asked me to pinch you last night now. I thought I’d dreamed it too. And you reckon mice were using this thing?’ Tim nodded. Coral shook her head. ‘That is seriously weird.’
Fitchett’s Flyer lurched to a halt and they heard Errol call out, ‘Morning Harmony. Morning Melody. Morning Romany.’ Coral handed the tiny calculator back and rolled her eyes.
Tim buttoned it away again as the Jones twins walked past. Their older brother, who was in Coral’
s class, settled on the seat across the aisle from her. He was gangly and big — too big for the clothes he was wearing — and had a big, gangly open face to match.
‘Hi Coral,’ he said.
Coral acknowledged the greeting with a curt nod and turned to look out the window.
At the next stop three strapping, scrapping lads known collectively as Marty, Barty and Farty got on. They jostled for the best available seats as they came down the bus, pushing and shoving each other until they spotted Coral. Suddenly their behaviour changed.
Tim glanced at his sister. What was this effect she had on boys? He didn’t understand it. It seemed the meaner and more distant she was with them, the more they liked her. Like that fool Romany. He trailed her like a lost puppy and she treated him like dirt. Perhaps it was her ‘city’ look. She did dress smartly. Not like Harmony and Melody who today wore identical baggy sweaters that looked as if they’d been knitted out of muesli.
The Flyer lurched again. More kids clambered on. The closer they got to town — if a dozen shops, a pub and a petrol station actually qualified as a town — the more crowded it got until, for the last few kilometres, it was standing-room only. Two-and-a-half kilometres beyond the so-called town, the doors burst open and the tangled, fractious mass disgorged itself to cries of ‘Cheerio!’ from Errol.
Rata Area School stood in the shade of a gigantic Southern Rata. The main building — three adjoining classrooms and an office block — were spotlessly maintained. Morning sun sparkled on its pristine paintwork and asphalt paths appeared to have been laid the day before. The whole place would have been thoroughly inviting — if it hadn’t been a school.
There were two small exceptions. On one side of the grounds sat an abandoned prefab classroom, a reminder of a time when both town and school had been larger and more prosperous, while on the other the carefully levelled sports field ended in an odd bump. Some claimed it was just cheap seating for spectators, others that it covered old mine workings. Whatever the case, it was known simply as Mount Moron.
As they tumbled off the Flyer, the bus kids’ numbers were doubled by a similar number from the town itself, giving the school a population of seventy-nine, ranging in ages from five to fifteen. Tim’s school in Auckland was almost twenty times that size. Coral’s was even bigger.