Tom Jones Saves the World

by Steven Herrick

  it doesn’t have a school.

  Every morning

  a bus picks up all the children

  outside the gate

  and drives us to

  Muttaborra Primary School.

  It’s the oldest school I’ve ever seen

  with three wooden buildings

  surrounded by huge old fig trees

  and a toilet block

  that looks like it was built

  a few years after Captain Cook arrived,

  and smells like it too!

  Muttaborra was a dairy farm

  until someone had the bright idea

  of building hundreds of new homes

  in the meadows.

  In two years the school

  has gone from one teacher and twenty children

  to

  six teachers and one hundred and forty kids,

  and one very angry snake

  that lives near

  the boys’ toilets.

  Class 6 W

  I like Ms Watkins.

  It’s her first year as a teacher.

  Each Monday she adds a prize

  to her Treasure Chest of Mystery,

  which is a wooden basket

  of wrapped presents on her desk.

  During the week

  she awards points for

  Behaviour

  Attitude

  Correct Answers

  Creativity.

  All our names are on a

  scoreboard near the door.

  At Friday recess

  Ms Watkins awards

  the highest point-scorer of the week

  with a wrapped present from her basket.

  It’s four weeks into the year

  and I’m still trying to win.

  Why?

  I think it’s because

  everyone likes the mystery

  of the Prize.

  It doesn’t matter what it is.

  It’s a surprise.

  Bribery

  When I told Mum and Dad

  about wonderful Ms Watkins

  and her Awards List

  Dad said,

  “Bribery is an outmoded

  and ill-advised form of

  social engineering.”

  Double Dead Parent Wish # 6!

  Time and motion

  Yes,

  my Dad talks weird.

  Since his new job

  it’s got worse.

  He’s obsessed with something called

  “Time and Motion”

  He says,

  “Maximise time.

  Maximise life!”

  Mum says

  Dad has a lot of worries

  with a new job

  a new car

  a new house in

  a new suburb.

  I think

  he needs a new brain as well!

  Money

  We moved here

  because of Dad’s job.

  “Appearances, Thomas.

  One must look successful

  to be successful.”

  Over dinner

  Dad goes on and on about

  Share Trusts

  Managed Funds

  Warrants

  Investment Portfolios

  and Money.

  Always money.

  My Dad is being slowly

  painfully

  boringly

  brainwashed.

  I want my real Dad back!

  Chapter Two

  GRANDPA JONES AND THE FUNERAL

  Grandpa Jones

  Last week,

  I met Grandpa Jones.

  It was at my Aunt’s funeral,

  in our old town.

  What a day.

  Everyone dressed in black,

  in church,

  listening to the Priest

  talking about Aunt Ella

  when we hear a bottle smash outside

  followed by lots of swearing.

  We all turn to see

  a very old man

  with long grey hair and beard

  dressed in an oversized suit

  holding a walking stick

  and swaying.

  He lifts his walking-stick

  knocks on the already open door

  and says

  “Is this the funeral for Ella,

  the old battleaxe?”

  Welcome, Grandpa Jones!

  Shock! Horror! Drunk!

  It got better.

  Lots better.

  Grandpa Jones stumbled

  down the aisle

  singing, yes, singing,

  “Here comes the bride

  here comes the bride

  big, fat, and wide

  slipped on a banana peel

  and died died died.”

  He sat in the front row

  next to Dad and said

  in a loud voice,

  “hello Arnie,

  going bald, I see!”

  and motioned for the Priest

  to continue,

  then fell asleep and snored

  throughout the eulogy

  and all the singing

  and even when they carried

  poor Aunt Ella’s coffin out of the church.

  Everyone stood to follow

  trying to be really quiet

  so as to not wake Grandpa Jones,

  and we would have made it

  if only Grandpa hadn’t burped

  really loudly in his sleep

  and I couldn’t help but laugh

  which woke

  Grandpa

  who picked up his walking-stick

  and followed us

  still singing—

  “there goes the bride

  there goes the bride

  with a face so ugly

  she should stay inside.”

  The Grandpa Jones list of things to do at a funeral

  1 At the cemetery, as the coffin

  was lowered into the ground,

  Grandpa Jones sang,

  “She was an Ella of a girl she was...

  She was an Ella of a girl she was...”

  2 When all the relatives threw flowers into the grave,

  Grandpa walked over to a gum tree,

  broke off a small branch,

  and threw that onto Aunt Ella’s coffin.

  3 Everyone filed past the Priest and shook his hand.

  Grandpa patted him on the back and said,

  “Good game, son,

  good game.”

  4 We all slowly walked back to the cars.

  Grandpa jumped into the back of the hearse

  and asked to be taken to the Wake

  at Aunt Pat’s house.

  5 At the Wake, we all sat around,

  nibbling Aunt Pat’s cakes,

  and talking quietly about how nice Aunt Ella was.

  Grandpa Jones went to the kitchen,

  made himself a huge sandwich,

  sat on the lounge, and sang some more.

  The moon and the stars

  I talked to Grandpa Jones

  later that night.

  I was sitting on the back steps

  looking at the moon and the stars

  and hoping Aunt Ella was happy,

  wherever she was,

  when I heard a burp

  from behind the trees

  in the backyard.

  It was Grandpa Jones,

  doing up his trousers

  and looking up at the sky saying

  “there’s nothing like

  goin
g to the dunny

  under a full moon.

  It makes you glad

  to be alive.”

  Then he saw me,

  smiled and said

  “Hello, Tiger,

  all the beer finished inside, is it?”

  He sat down next to me.

  He didn’t look so scary up close.

  He had big sad eyes,

  and his hands shook,

  even when he placed

  them in his pockets.

  He started telling me

  about Aunt Ella.

  Good stories.

  Not rude ones, not mean ones,

  but stories about

  how nice and friendly she was.

  After a while Grandpa Jones

  looked at me and said

  “You’re Arnie’s son

  aren’t you?

  You’re Tom?”

  I said I was

  and that he was my Grandpa

  and I stood up

  and shook his hand

  as Dad had taught me.

  “You’re Arnie’s son all right,”

  said Grandpa

  as he shook my hand.

  The deal

  I told Grandpa Jones

  about our new house

  and Dad’s three-bedroom

  bottle top collection.

  We both laughed at that.

  We sat together

  on the wooden steps

  for a long time

  and Grandpa talked

  about where he lives now

  and how he’s only allowed out

  for funerals, weddings,

  and the occasional picnic

  with the other old people from the home,

  which he hates,

  because he’s not allowed to drink.

  He laughs some more,

  and says,

  “You’ve noticed I like

  a drink or three

  haven’t you, Tom?

  I’m not like your Dad.”

  And even though

  Grandpa is a rude old bloke

  I felt sorry for him,

  stuck in the Old People’s Home

  so I told him I’d visit

  if he promises not to drink

  for the day when I’m there.

  He held out his hand,

  still trembling,

  and we shook.

  Chapter Three

  CLEO AND THE ESCAPE PLAN

  Cleo and the pinhead parents

  Why can’t I be like normal kids,

  with normal parents?

  Parents who go off to work,

  come home at night,

  say, “How was your day at school, Cleo?”

  Parents who lead

  boring lives, like everyone else.

  But no,

  I have to have pinhead parents

  obsessed with their work

  digging up ancient bits of rubbish

  from all over the world

  which means

  they go to China,

  and leave me here

  with my Aunt Ruth

  and Uncle Robert

  in this stupid suburb

  that looks like a prison,

  miles from anywhere.

  Why can’t my parents be bank managers,

  or own a shop,

  or work in an office?

  Why do I have to have

  archaeologists

  who leave 400-year-old vases

  scattered around the spare bedroom

  which I’m never allowed to enter?

  I tell them

  if I want to look

  at a pile of old rubbish

  I’ll go to the Council Dump.

  Aunt Ruth and Uncle Robert

  Robert: I like to cook.

  Ruth: I like to cook as well.

  Robert: I like to eat what Ruth cooks.

  Ruth: I give the dog what Robert cooks.

  We like Cleo. We look after her

  when her parents are away.

  Robert: We don’t have children of our own

  on account of...

  Ruth: Bad luck. That’s what it was,

  just bad luck. But we’ve got Cleo.

  She loves my cooking.

  Robert: She loves Ruth’s cooking.

  Ruth: She gives Robert’s cooking to the dog as well.

  Robert: The dog likes my food.

  Ruth: We moved to Pacific Palms to retire.

  Robert: We like the big walls, and the gate.

  Ruth: I like the gate too, but we keep

  forgetting our Personal Entry Number.

  Robert: Yes. When the Guard isn’t there

  we wait hours sometimes

  for a neighbour to arrive home

  and let us in.

  Ruth: But we like the safety.

  Robert: Yes. It’s so safe, we can’t even get in.

  Cleo, the snake, and how to be instantly popular

  It’s the fifth week of school.

  I’m wandering around the oval at recess,

  waiting for somebody, anybody,

  to ask me to join in the game of soccer

  when—

  “SNAKE, SNAKE!”.

  We all rush to see,

  and, sure enough,

  it’s a one-metre long rock python

  curled up at the entrance

  to the boys’ toilets.

  (Obviously, snakes have no sense of smell.)

  Everyone’s standing back,

  waiting for a teacher.

  I walk through the crowd,

  reach down,

  and quickly grab the snake

  behind the head

  and lift the little fellow up,

  just like my Dad taught me,

  when I went digging with him

  two years ago in the Outback.

  I know this snake is harmless.

  You wouldn’t get me going near a poisonous one!

  I pick him up and

  a few Kindy kids scream,

  but the rest of the school goes really quiet,

  except one kid who yells,

  “Flush him down the dunny!”

  As if I’d hurt a beautiful creature like this.

  I walk slowly through the crowd,

  down to the oval,

  with everyone following a few metres behind.

  I ask Tom, a boy in my class,

  to open the gate

  so I can cross the road

  and let this little fellow go

  in the long grass near the creek.

  When I come back,

  everyone’s standing still,

  watching me,

  as though I might lunge forward and bite them,

  just like a snake.

  Tom says:

  “Well done, Cleo.

  You want to play soccer?”

  Everyone turns

  and runs back to what they were doing

  five minutes ago,

  when I didn’t have a friend.

  Tom and the snake girl

  It’s not that I like soccer

  or that I even want Cleo to play,

  but with the whole school

  standing staring

  and Cleo

  looking more uncomfortable

  than any of us,

  someone has to say something.

  Cleo says “Sure”

  and we spend

  the next twenty minutes

  kicking a ball around.

  Me and Cleo,

 
the snake girl.

  Tom and Cleo

  Walking back to class

  Cleo says “Thanks for the game.”

  I ask her where she learnt about snakes.

  “It’s the only thing

  my Dad taught me,

  unless you want to know

  about 400-year-old vases

  and building tools from the eighteenth century.”

  I tell Cleo her Dad

  should look at Arnold’s Bottle Top Collection.

  “Why are parents like that? she asks.”

  “That’s what happens when you get old.

  Dumb things become important.” I say.

  “Yeah, that’s why we have to live behind

  a huge stone wall, I reckon.”

  “I hate that wall.

  Every time I go for a bike-ride

  Mum says, ‘Stay within the wall.’

  So I ride around in circles,

  like a circus animal.”

  “It’s a prison. A prison for kids.”

  Cleo’s bright idea

  All my bright ideas

  arrive in Maths.

  I’m sitting, staring,

  thinking about

  Pacific Palms Prison,

  when it comes to me:

  If you live in a prison

  you find a way to escape—

  a tunnel,

  a ladder over the wall,

  like in those War movies Uncle Robert watches.

  So, while everyone begins on page sixty-seven

  of Applied Maths

  I start drawing the wall

  stone by stone

  and planning an escape.

  I look across at Tom.

  He smiles

  and I wink.

  I can’t help it,

  I need an escape partner

  and I’m sure he’ll be in it.

  He winks back.

  I keep working

  on my escape plan.

  The plan

  I sit next to Tom

  on the bus home.

  I tell him my plan.

  AN ESCAPE.

  He says,