He walked over to a drawer and took out a bright blue can opener. Then he took out a book and flipped over the pages. ‘Here it is,’ he exclaimed. ‘Lifting up refrigerators. Pea and ham soup.’
He took down a can of pea and ham soup from the shelf and opened it up with the bright blue can opener. Then he drank the lot. Raw. Straight out of the can.
‘Urgh,’ I yelled. ‘Don’t drink it raw.’
‘I have to,’ he said. ‘I don’t have time to heat it up. Just imagine if I got a call to save someone who had fallen from a building. They would be smashed to bits on the ground before the soup was warm.’
He walked over to the fridge and lifted it up with one hand. He actually did it. He lifted the fridge high above his head with one hand. I couldn’t believe it. The soup seemed to give him superhuman strength.
‘Fantastic,’ I shouted. ‘No one except Superman could lift a fridge. Do you really get your power from cans of soup?’
He didn’t answer. Instead he did a long, loud burp. Then he held his hand up over his mouth and went red in the face. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a stomach ache. It always happens after I drink the soup too
quickly. I’ll just nick into the bathroom and get myself an Alka Seltzer for this indigestion.’
Indigestion? Superman doesn’t get indigestion. He is like the Queen or the Pope. He just doesn’t have those sort of problems and he doesn’t burp either. It wouldn’t be right. That’s when I knew he was a fake. I decided to try the soup out myself while he was in the bathroom and prove that it was all nonsense.
I looked at the book which had the list of soups. There was a different soup named for every emergency. For burst dams it was beef broth. For stopping trains it was cream of tomato. Celery soup was for rescuing people from floods.
I decided to try the chicken soup. It was for smashing down doors. I picked up the bright blue can opener and used it on a can of chicken soup I found on the top shelf. I drank the whole lot. Cold and raw. It tasted terrible but I managed to get it down. Then I went over to the door and punched it with my fist.
Nothing happened to the door but my poor fingers were skinned to the bone. The pain was awful. My eyes started to water. ‘You fake,’ I yelled through the bathroom door. ‘You rotten fake.’ I rushed out of the flat as fast as I could go. I was really mad at that phoney Souperman. He was a big disappointment. I wished I could meet the real Superman. The one in the comics.
3
My comics! I needed them badly. I wanted to read about the proper Superman who didn’t eat cans of raw soup and get indigestion. I wondered if the garbage truck had taken the comics yet. There might still be time to get them back. It had taken me three years to save them all. I didn’t care what Dad said, I was going to keep those comics. I rushed down to the Council bin as fast as I could.
I couldn’t see inside the bin because it was too high but I knew by the smell that it hadn’t been emptied. I jumped up, grabbed the edge, and pulled myself over the top. What a stink. It was putrid. The bin contained broken eggshells, old bones, hundreds of empty soup cans, a dead cat and other foul muck. I couldn’t see my comics anywhere so I started to dig around looking for them. I was so busy looking for the comics that I didn’t hear the garbage truck coming until it was too late.
With a sudden lurch the bin was lifted into the air and tipped upside down. I was dumped into the back of the garbage truck with all the filthy rubbish. I was buried under piles of plastic bags, bottles and kitchen scraps. I couldn’t see a thing and I found it difficult to breathe. I knew that if I didn’t get to the top I would suffocate.
After what seemed like hours I managed to dig my way up to the surface. I looked up with relief at the flats towering above and at the clouds racing across the sky. Then something happened that made my heart stop. The rubbish started to move. The driver had started up the crusher on the truck and it was pushing all the rubbish up to one end and squashing it. A great steel blade was moving towards me. I was about to be flattened inside a pile of garbage. What a way to die.
‘Help,’ I screamed. ‘Help.’ It was no use. The driver couldn’t see me. No one could see me. Except Souperman. He was sitting on the window ledge of his room and banging a can of soup on the wall. He was trying to open it.
The great steel blade came closer and closer. My ribs were hurting. A great pile of rubbish was rising around me like a swelling tide and pushing me upwards and squeezing me at the same time. By now I could just see over the edge of the truck. There was no one in sight. I looked up again at Souperman. ‘Forget the stupid soup,’ I yelled. ‘Get me out of here or I will be killed.’
Souperman looked down at me from the first-floor window and shook his head. He looked scared. Then, without warning, and with the unopened can of soup still in his hand, he jumped out of the window.
Did he fly through the air in the manner of a bird? No way. He fell to the ground like a human brick and thudded onto the footpath not far from the truck. He lay there in a crumpled heap.
I tried to scream but I couldn’t. The crusher had pushed all the air out of my lungs. It was squeezing me tighter and tighter. I knew I had only seconds to live.
I looked over at Souperman. He was alive. He was groaning and still trying to open the can of soup. From somewhere deep in my lungs I managed to find one more breath. ‘Leave the soup,’ I gasped, ‘and turn off the engine.’
He nodded and started crawling slowly and painfully towards the truck. His face was bleeding and he had a black eye but he kept going. With a soft moan he pulled himself up to the truck door and opened it. ‘Switch off the engine,’ I heard him tell the driver. Then everything turned black and I heard no more.
The next thing I remember was lying on the footpath with Souperman and the driver bending over me.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Souperman with a grin. ‘You’ll be all right.’
‘Thanks for saving me,’ I replied. ‘But you’re still a phoney. The real Superman can fly.’
‘I can fly,’ he told me, ‘but I couldn’t get the can of soup open. When you rushed out of my flat you took something of mine with you. Look in your pocket.’
I felt in my pocket and pulled out a hard object. It was a bright blue can opener.
The Gumleaf War
The park ranger looked out of the train window and said, ‘It’s a hot summer. We’ll have bushfires this year for sure.’
No one in the carriage answered him. They were all too busy looking at me and my nose. They weren’t looking straight at me. They were straining their eyeballs by trying to look out of the corner of their eyes. I didn’t pay any attention to them. If they wanted to be sticky-beaks, that was their business and there was nothing I could do about it. I was used to people staring at me but it still made me embarrassed. After all, I couldn’t help it. I didn’t ask to have the longest nose in the world. It happened by accident and it wasn’t my fault.
Actually, I had only had the nose for three months. But three months is a long time when your nose has been stretched to seven centimetres long. Every day is filled with humiliation and pain because of people staring and smiling to themselves.
It all started one night when I went down to the kitchen to get myself a snack from the pantry. Dad and Mum were asleep so I crept down the stairs as quietly as I could. The pantry had two swinging doors which closed in the middle. I opened them a few centimetres and poked my nose through, looking at all the goodies within. Suddenly, someone pushed me from behind and I fell onto the doors, slamming them shut. The only problem was, my nose was stuck between them. The pain was terrible and there was blood everywhere. My screaming just about brought the house down and Dad and Mum rushed into the kitchen. Dad shoved me in the car and raced me off to hospital while Mum stayed home and told my little brother off for pushing me in the back and causing all the trouble.
The damage to my nose was monstrous. It was stretched from its normal three centimetres to seven. It stuck out on the front of my face
like the bonnet of a car in front of the windscreen. I could see my own nose quite clearly without even using a mirror or going cross-eyed. And to make matters worse, the doctors said nothing could be done for another three years when I had stopped growing. They weren’t willing to operate on it for three whole years. Three years of walking around with my own personal flagpole. I felt ill at the thought of it.
I only lasted one day back at school. Most kids were pretty good about it. They tried not to stare at me and only peered at my nose when they thought I couldn’t see them. But people have to look at you when you talk and I could see some of them were having a hard time not to crack up laughing. And then there were those who were downright mean. One girl made a smart remark about the only boy in the world who had to blow his nose with a bedsheet.
When I got home from school I gave it to Mum straight. ‘I’m not going back to school,’ I said. ‘No way. I’ve finished with school for three years. I’m not going to be the laughing stock of Terang High.’
Mum and Dad tried everything to get me back at school. They tried bribes, but I wouldn’t take them. Dad lifted me into the car and dumped me at the school gate but I just walked home again. They brought in a psychologist, a nice bloke who spent hours and hours talking to me. But nothing worked. In the end they decided to send me for a holiday with Grandfather McFuddy, who lived all alone in a shack high in the mountains. They thought a spell in the country might bring me back to my senses.
So there I was, sitting in the train on the way to Grandfather McFuddy’s with a carriage load of people staring at me out of the corner of their eyes. Besides the ranger there was a clergyman with a white dog-collar around his neck, an old woman of about thirty-five and a girl about my age. The girl was biting her tongue trying to stop herself from laughing at my nose. In fact the only passenger who wasn’t interested in my nose was the park ranger. He just kept mumbling to himself about how dry it was and how there were going to be bad bushfires this year.
2
Grandfather McFuddy was waiting for me at the station with a horse and trap. A horse and trap. That gave me a surprise for a start. I didn’t think anyone drove around in a horse and trap any more. But that was nothing compared with what was to come. Grandfather McFuddy turned out to be the strangest old boy I had ever met. He was dressed in dirty trousers held up with a scungy pair of braces. He had a blue singlet and a battered old hat which was pulled down over his whiskery face. His false teeth were broken and covered in brown tobacco stains. He cleared his throat and spat on the ground. ‘Git up here, boy,’ he said. ‘We have to git back before dark.’
I don’t know how Grandfather McFuddy recognised me because I had never met him before. I guess he recognised my nose from Mum’s letters. We rattled along the dusty road which wound its way through the still gum forest. ‘Thanks for having me for a holiday, Grandfather,’ I said.
Grandfather grunted and said, ‘Call me McFuddy.’ He wasn’t a great one for talking. I told him all about my nose and what had happened at school but he made no comment. Every now and then he would cough terribly and spit on the ground. He was a fantastic spitter. He could send a gorbie at least four metres. A couple of times he stopped the horse and rolled himself a cigarette.
After a while the trees turned into paddocks and the road started to wind its way upwards. There was only one house, if you could call it a house, on the whole road. It was really a tumble-down old shack with a rusty iron roof and a rickety porch. McFuddy stopped the cart before we reached the shack. ‘Cover your ears, boy,’ he said to me.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Block your ears. Put your hands over your ears while we go past Foxy’s place,’ he yelled.
‘Why?’ I wanted to know.
‘Because I say so,’ said McFuddy. He put his hand in his pocket and fished out a dirty wad of cotton wool. He tore off two pieces and stuffed them in his ears. Then we went slowly past the old shack, me with my hands over my ears and McFuddy with cotton wool sticking out of his. The horse was the only one of us who could hear. An old man ran out onto the porch of the shack and started shaking his fist at us. He was mad about something but I didn’t know what. I was shocked to see that the old man had cotton wool in his ears as well. There was one thing for sure, I told myself: this was going to be a very strange holiday.
McFuddy stood up in the cart and started shaking his fist back at the other old man. Then he sat down and drove on, grumbling and mumbling under his breath.
I looked round at the shack to see what the angry old man was doing. All I could see was the top of his bald head. He was bending over, peering through a telescope set up on the porch. It was pointed at another old shack higher up the mountain.
‘He’s looking at my place,’ said McFuddy. ‘That’s my place up there.’ My heart sank. Even though McFuddy’s shack was about a kilometre away I could see it was a ramshackle, neglected heap. There were rusty cars, old fridges and rubbish all around it. The weatherboards were falling off and the last flake of paint must have peeled off about a hundred years ago.
We went inside the shack and McFuddy showed me my room. It was the washroom. It had a broken mangle and an empty trough. On the floor was a dusty striped mattress and an old grey blanket. The whole place was covered in cobwebs and the windows were filthy dirty. In the kitchen I noticed a telescope pointing out of a window. A little patch had been cleaned on the window pane to allow the telescope to be aimed down the hill at Foxy’s shack.
‘I’m going to put in some fenceposts in the top paddock,’ said McFuddy. ‘You can have a look around if you want, boy, but don’t go down near Foxy’s place. And don’t git lost.’ He went out into the hot afternoon sun, banging the door behind him.
I wandered around McFuddy’s farm, which didn’t take long, and then decided to go and explore a small forest further up the hill. I saw a brown snake and a couple of lizards but not much else. In the distance I could hear McFuddy banging away at his fenceposts. Then I heard something else quite strange. It was music. Someone was playing a tune but I couldn’t work out what sort of instrument it was. Then it came to me. It was a gumleaf. Someone was playing ‘Click Go The Shears’ on a gumleaf.
I sat down on a log and listened. It was wonderful listening to such a good player. The tune wafted through the silent gum trees like a lazy bee. I strained my eyes to see who it was but I couldn’t see anyone. Then, suddenly, I felt a pain in my left hand. I looked down and saw a deep scratch. It was bleeding badly. I wondered how I had done it. I thought I must have scratched it on a branch. I forgot all about the music and ran back to the shack as fast as I could.
McFuddy was sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea. He was as angry as a snake when he saw the cut. ‘How did you do it?’ he yelled.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘I just noticed it when I was sitting on a log.’
‘Was there music?’ he shouted. ‘Did you hear music?’
‘Yes, someone was playing a gumleaf. A good player too.’
McFuddy went red in the face. ‘They were playing “Click Go The Shears” weren’t they?’ he said. I nodded. He jumped out of his chair and ran over to the wall and took down a shotgun. ‘That rat Foxy,’ he spluttered. ‘I’ll get him for this. I’ll fix him good.’ He ran over to the door and fired both barrels of the shotgun somewhere in the direction of Foxy’s shack. It went off with a terrific bang that rattled the windows.
I ran outside and looked down the mountainside. Far below I could see Foxy’s shack. A tiny figure was standing on the porch and pointing something up at us. There was a small flash and then the dull sound of another shotgun blast echoed through the hills.
‘Missed,’ said McFuddy. ‘Missed by a mile.’ He went back in the kitchen chuckling to himself. I wasn’t surprised that Foxy had missed. I wasn’t surprised that either of them had missed. Shotguns aren’t meant to be used over long distances. There was no way they could have hit each other.
‘What’s going on?’ I aske
d. ‘Foxy didn’t give me the scratch. There was no one near me at all. I didn’t see one person the whole time I was away. It wasn’t his fault. It was an accident.’
McFuddy didn’t answer for a while. He was eating a great slab of bread covered in blackberry jam. He pushed his false teeth between his lips and fished around under them with his tongue, cleaning out the blackberry seeds. When he had finished he said, ‘Don’t git yerself into something yer don’t understand. Foxy is lower than a snake’s armpit. He caused that cut and that’s that.’
‘But,’ I began.
‘No buts. And don’t go wandering off again without my permission.’
That was the end of the discussion. He just wouldn’t say any more about it. That night I went to bed on the old mattress. I tossed and turned for a while but at last I went off to sleep.
3
In the morning McFuddy had a terrible cold. He was coughing and sneezing and spitting all the time. His nose was as red as a tomato. He was in a bad temper. ‘Foxy’s been here,’ he yelled. ‘He’s given me the flu. He came when I was in bed and I couldn’t git out quick enough.
‘Didn’t yer hear it boy? Didn’t yer hear the gumleaf playing?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t believe Foxy gave you the flu. You can’t catch colds through closed windows.’ I walked out of the front door to get away from his coughing. That’s when I saw the note. A crumpled dirty envelope was lying on the porch. It said:
To the boy, with the long nose.
I tore it open. Inside was a message for me.
Sorry about the scratch, boy. I thought you was McFuddy.
McFuddy tore the note out of my hand. ‘I knew it. I just knew it,’ he spluttered. ‘That low-down ratbag was up here last night and he gave me the rotten flu.’ He ran inside and came out with the shotgun again. Once again he fired off both barrels down at Foxy’s shack. The shot was answered straight away by another dull bang from Foxy in the valley below.
Unbelievable! Page 6