Dunger

by Cowley, Joy

  “No!” I tell him. “Grandma told me when to take it out. She could smell it.”

  He will not give in. “The oven door needs a thermometer. They could easily get one and stick it on with heatproof glue and then you’d know –”

  He doesn’t finish the sentence, because Grandpa appears, rubbing his hands together. “A good afternoon for the garage!” he says to Will.

  Grasshopper Will is onto the next thing. “What are we doing?”

  “You know those surf-casting rods in the roof?” says Grandpa. “We can take the reels to bits and fix them. Have you ever cast from the beach for snapper?”

  “I’ve read about it,” Will says.

  “That’s like reading about swimming,” Grandpa says. “But I’ll show you and your sister. You can have a rod each.”

  Will gives me a look, like the glare when Grandpa asked me to drive the boat, but he doesn’t say anything. I smile at Grandpa and say thank you several times.

  Lunch is potato and watercress soup with warm bread, then Grandpa and Will go out to the garage, taking one of the lanterns because the day is so dark with rain.

  Grandma switches off her radio and gets out her knitting: big needles, thick wool. She has a large plastic bag full of knitting yarns, and I sort them into balls of different thicknesses. While I’m winding a skein of green bouclé wool, she says, “I’m told you don’t like our conversations.”

  I look at her. “What conversations?”

  “Your grandfather and I. You and your brother have a problem with the way we communicate.” She puts her knitting down in her lap, which is her way of expecting a response.

  I’m nervous. She’s been told whatever it was that my stupid brother said to Grandpa last night. “You mean – Will?”

  She doesn’t answer, just stares at me with those strong blue eyes that are about as useful as my phone.

  I go on winding the green wool. “It’s just – just that you seem to fight a lot.”

  She nods. “Is that what you call it? Fighting?”

  “Um, well, yes, it sort of sounds like it.”

  She grunts, then says, “We’re not around kids much, these days. It’s easy to forget how young you are.” She picks up her knitting and pushes one of the thick needles into a stitch. “So you think we fight, eh? I’ll tell you this, girlie. You have to be very close to have that kind of freedom, very close indeed.” Two more stitches and she says, “What about you and William?”

  I look at her.

  “You fight,” she says.

  “That’s different,” I say. “He’s my brother. He’s not –”

  “Not what?”

  Since she’s asking, I have to say it. “I just know I will never fight like that when I have a husband!”

  She laughs. I’ve told her something seriously serious, and she’s treating it as a joke. I remember Will suggesting that she and Grandpa thought they were normal and we weren’t, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling angry. I sort out an appropriate answer. “I believe there’s a peaceful resolution to every problem,” I tell her.

  There is another burst of laughter, and she says, “I said the same things at your age!”

  I put down the ball of wool and make the excuse that I need to go to the outhouse. The rain is heavy and there is no such thing as an umbrella, but there is a sheet of plastic by the door that I can put over my head. I run across the sodden grass and fling open the wooden slat door. How dare she say that I am like her! Imagine it! Comparing my little brother and me to an old married couple! I know she’s old and probably getting dementia, but really, there is no excuse. I sit for ages, thinking about it. She always has to have the last say. That must be where Will gets his overwhelming desire to be right from.

  Water thuds on the outhouse roof, reminding me of last night’s possum. With the plastic sheet over my head, I open the door.

  As I go towards the house, Will comes running out of the garage. He almost bumps into me, stops, stares at me like I’m some kind of monster. His face is wet. He looks terrified. “Grandpa!” he whispers.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  He starts to cry. “I think Grandpa’s dead.”

  It happens like this. We are going to take the reels off the surf-casting rods that lie on a rack under the garage roof. The rack is like a little mezzanine floor under the peak, too high for us to reach, although I can see the ends of the rods sticking out like handles on a wheelbarrow.

  Grandpa looks around. “Where’s that ladder?”

  We both remember where it is, against the macrocarpa tree I cut the day before yesterday, only now the rain is pouring down like a waterfall and neither of us wants to go out to carry a wet ladder. We look through the curtain of water that falls over the door. Grandpa says, “Likely as not our water pipe’ll be washed out again.”

  “I’ll go up the stream tomorrow and fix it,” I tell him.

  “Tomorrow’s no good. You have to wait until the flood subsides.” He pats me on the head. “Nature’s a good teacher, laddie. When there’s tons of water outside, you’ve got to be careful with it inside. Pipe gets washed out, no water running into the tank, you can’t fix it until the stream’s gone down. Good excuse for not having a bath.”

  “What about the ladder?” I ask.

  He’s not listening. “Look at those trees in the rain. You ever notice the way they produce branches the same design?”

  I say yes, but I don’t know what he’s talking about.

  “No matter what tree you look at, the branch is the same shape as the tree it’s growing on. Look at the pine, the manuka! Every tree! That’s nature for you, boyo, design expert number one. ”

  “The ladder!” I remind him.

  “Forget the ladder,” he says, turning back into the garage. “This’ll do it.” He tips a round drum of oil on its edge, and rolls it under the surf-casting rods. “Give me a bit of a help up, eh?”

  We should do it the other way around. I don’t weigh too much. If Grandpa lifts me high enough, I can reach the rods, but for some reason, I don’t tell him that. Instead, I let him put his hand on my shoulder so he can hoist himself up on the drum. He stands, feet together inside the rim, and raises his right arm. His hand is shaking. He brings it to the end of one of the rods and holds on for a moment, as though he is thinking what he should do next.

  “Can I help?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. His hand comes down and rests at the top of his jacket as he makes that huffing noise. It was what he did at the Hoffmeyers’ place, a sound somewhere between a fast breath and a cough.

  “Grandpa?”

  Then he falls sideways. It happens too fast for me to do anything. He just drops. Like the tree branch. The oil drum skids across the floor with a screech and Grandpa’s head hits the floor.

  “Grandpa, are you all right?”

  Of course he isn’t all right. His eyes are almost closed and his face is the same colour as the concrete. Blood comes out of his nose. I try to lift his head up but it falls back again. I pull my hands away and there is blood on my fingers.

  That’s when I run out into the rain and see Lissy.

  “Grandpa!” My voice is choked.

  “What’s wrong?” she says.

  He’s lying on the floor in a dark pool of blood, his right arm bent up behind him. I kneel and place my fingers on his neck. He’s not dead. There is fluttering movement under the wrinkled skin. “Can you hear me?” I shout in his ear.

  He doesn’t move. I get a tissue from my shirt pocket and wipe the blood running from his nose. “He’s alive. Unconscious. Go and get Grandma.”

  Will runs to the house while I sit on the garage floor. I don’t know where his head is bleeding, but I fold up the sheet of plastic and put it under, so he’s not lying in the blood. When I move him, his eyelids flicker. “Grandpa?�
� But there is no other response. His face is grey and there are dots of sweat on his forehead. “Grandpa, are you awake?”

  We have to get help. There’s an emergency helicopter that flies into remote places, but could it come in this weather? Then I remember, the phone’s not working, so how would we contact them? I have an idea. Will can drive. He can go to the neighbour’s place, the people who lent us their boat. Will knows where the key is. He can use their phone, maybe get an ambulance. How long would it take on this road?

  Grandma stumbles across the grass, stick in one hand. Will supports her on the other side. They have no coats and are very wet. Their hair sticks to their scalps and Grandma’s glasses are spotted with rain. As she comes into the garage, she tries to run. She would have fallen too, but Will and I grab her just in time, so she just sort of sinks down beside Grandpa. “You silly old fool!” she yells at him. “What have you done, you useless beggar?”

  “We’ll phone for an ambulance,” I tell her.

  “Something’s wrong with his arm,” she says. “Why is it bent like that?”

  “We’ll go to the neighbour’s phone.”

  “Help me lift him.” She grabs his shoulder. “Roll him over so we can free his arm. Come on!”

  We half lift, half roll him, and pull the arm out from underneath. It is covered by the sleeve of his woolly jacket, but even so, it looks a funny shape. Grandma sits on the floor with Grandpa’s head and shoulders against her skirt. She is feeling along his scalp. “It’s just a flesh wound. He’s concussed. I think his arm’s well and truly broken. We have to get him to hospital.”

  Maybe Grandpa hears the word hospital, because he groans and I see some of the worry go out of Will’s face. It’s a groan of pain, but it means Grandpa is alive and waking up.

  I say to Grandma, “Will can drive the car to those neighbours – you know, where we got the boat. He knows where the key is. He can go in the house and phone for the ambulance. They won’t mind. It’s an emergency.”

  “No good.” Grandma shakes her head. “If our phone is out, theirs will be out too. We’re both on the same line.”

  Grandpa groans again.

  “Standing on a drum at his age!” says Grandma. “You’d think he’d know better. We’ll just have to take him to hospital in the car.”

  Will stands up straight.

  “Who’s going to drive?” But as I say it, I realise it’s a silly question.

  “William, do you know how reverse works?” she asks.

  He shakes his head.

  “Now’s the time to learn,” says Grandma. “Back it up to the garage. Melissa, you go into the house and get my purse and the tartan rug out of our bedroom. Hurry!”

  “Grandma, you’re soaking wet,” I tell her. “You need to get changed.”

  Grandpa opens his eyes. He looks at us and gives another groan. “What a dunger!” he says.

  Melissa insists that Grandma and I change into dry clothes, but even then, no one is ready. They keep going back for stuff, a sheet ripped in half to make a sling for his crooked arm, some cushions, paracetamol for pain plus a bottle of water, a spade in the back in case we have to dig our way out of a rock fall, towels, a bag with his medication and pyjamas because he might have to stay in hospital. But while all this is going on, two good things happen: Grandpa wakes up enough to get in the car, and the rain slackens to a drizzle.

  Backing the car was slightly horrendous because I nearly ran over Grandma who was behind me giving orders. I thought it was Melissa who was directing me, and I could see her. I didn’t know there were two of them.

  “I’m not exactly invisible!” Grandma yelled.

  But she was, because I couldn’t see in the rear vision mirror. So Lissy suggested I sit on one of the cushions, and that is much better. Driving the car in reverse gear is no big deal as long as I keep a light touch on the accelerator.

  While we’re waiting, I watch Grandpa in the back seat. He doesn’t say much because he still hurts – a bandage around his head, his arm in a sling, dried blood on his neck, a blanket over his knees, like he’s a victim of some hit-and-run accident. It’s his eyes that have come right, fully focussed, two marbles rolling together, ping, ping, noticing that I don’t have the handbrake on. He says slowly, “If a tyre rolls over your sister’s foot, she won’t be able to wear her castle stabbers.”

  I laugh and put on the handbrake. His memory is okay.

  Grandma gets in the back seat with him, and Lissy’s in the front to help me see the road. She also helps by putting on the windscreen wipers and the lights so any oncoming traffic can see us through the rain. I confess to feeling nervous about meeting a large truck on a narrow part of the road.

  “We’ll deal with that problem when we come to it,” says Lissy, and although that advice is entirely useless, it is more acceptable than our grandmother’s ongoing comments about the idiot who stood on an oil drum. I suspect that anger is her way of downloading shock, but it gets a bit stressful, especially when I’m trying to focus on the road.

  The distance to Hoffmeyer’s farm is familiar. I know the bends, the trees that line the road, and I remember what Grandpa said about branches looking like miniatures of the whole tree. I can’t believe that was only two hours ago.

  “How fast am I going?” I ask Lissy.

  “Can’t you see?”

  “I don’t want to take my eyes off the road.”

  She leans towards the dashboard. “Forty kilometres an hour.”

  We splash through clay-coloured puddles and Grandpa groans. “Mind the bumps.”

  “Sorry. How far is it to Blenheim?”

  Grandma answers for him, “Two and a half hours. You’re doing well, Will.”

  I’m not so sure. It’s all right on this road with no traffic, but what happens when we get to the main highway? What about traffic cops?

  “Damned fine thing I taught him to drive,” Grandpa says. “Remember when I taught you to drive, my little gooseberry tart?”

  “You taught me a lot of things,” says Grandma. “Half of which I was too young to know.”

  They laugh and I hear Lissy snort and mutter, “Too much information!” I want to remind her it’s their deafness that makes personal conversation public, but I am too busy watching the road through the rain, which has thickened. I peer over the top of the steering wheel and ask her, “Can you make the wipers go faster?”

  The cloud is so low, it rests on the tree-tops. On some outer bends on the road, wind gusts drive rain against the car with a sudden rattle as though it is hail. The sea is choppy but no longer all grey. Near the shore it is a yellow-brown colour where clay from the land has been washed into it.

  When we go up a hill, I forget to change into second gear, and the car stalls with a jerk. No one says anything. As I lift my foot off the brake, we begin to roll backwards. Quickly, Lissy pulls on the handbrake. I turn the key, the engine starts, and I push the gear lever into first. We are facing uphill. “Go on,” says Lissy, still holding the handbrake. I shift my foot over to the accelerator and slowly let out the clutch. As the wheels roll forward, Lissy releases the handbrake and slides it down. We go up the rest of the hill in first gear and when we get to the top, I change into second and then third.

  “Thanks,” I say to Lissy. Then I ask, “How did you know to do that?”

  “I watched you,” she said.

  The water has loosened clay on some of the banks, so there are slips and little heaps of yellow dirt on the road. Luckily, nothing so serious that we have to stop and get the spade out of the back of the car. Will just drives around them. But on the other side of the Sound we come to a tree lying across the road. It’s a skinny little manuka, but it’s still attached to its upturned roots in a mound of mud nearly as big as the car. There is no way we can move it.

  Will and I stand in the rain, staring at it. We hav
e a blunt spade to shift dirt but no saw or axe to take care of a tree. We tug at the manuka, which is no thicker than my wrist, hoping that it will break, but it keeps whipping back to its original position. It’s about half a metre above the ground and it blocks the entire road.

  “This is ridiculous,” says Will.

  I agree. “We need your bush saw.”

  “It’s not my saw, and anyway it’s busted. There’s a rope in the car. Maybe we can tie it to the top of the tree and pull it up high enough for the car to get through.”

  I shake my head. “That’s too hard. Let’s try the other way, push it against the ground and drive over it.”

  We lean on the skinny manuka tree and it sinks a little. Then we both sit on it. It feels like a spring beneath us. We could bounce on it all day and not break it.

  “We don’t have to push it right to the ground,” Will says. “If it’s just above the road, the wheels will do the rest.”

  Grandma has wound down her window. She puts her head out. “What’s happening?”

  Will and I look at each other, thinking the same thing. “Will she do it?” Will asks.

  I walk back to the car and brush my dripping hair away from my eyes. “There’s a little tree across the road. If we push it down, Will can drive over it.”

  “Then push it down,” she says.

  “I’ve tried sitting on it, but I’m too light.”

  She doesn’t even grumble. She grabs the door handle and swings her feet out to the muddy road. Will and I help her over to the tree and find the right place for her to sit. I sit beside her. It works. The springy tree collapses under her weight and settles close to the road.

  Will runs back to the car. There isn’t much space between Grandma and the edge of the bank, but he drives carefully, edging the car into the gap. As the front wheels touch the tree, it moves as he said it would, down against the ground, then bump, bump, the car is over it and on the other side.

  I help Grandma to stand. We are both wet but she is not complaining. “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” she says to Will when he comes back with a couple of towels. He grins, and neither of us tells her that people quote that one at him all the time. Usually, it comes from teachers who want him to do better at sport, but from Grandma it’s a compliment.