Unbelievable!

by Paul Jennings

  I tried to get McFuddy to explain what was going on but he was in a bad mood and wouldn’t say anything about it. ‘I’m straining a fence today,’ he said. ‘And I need your help. Grab one end of that corner post and we’ll take it down to the bottom paddock.’

  We staggered down the hillside with the heavy post. I was surprised at how strong McFuddy was. He didn’t stop once but he coughed and spat the whole way. Then, just as we neared the fence line McFuddy stepped in a pat of fresh cow dung and slipped over. ‘Ouch,’ he screamed. ‘My ankle. My ankle.’ I rushed over to him and looked at his ankle. It was already starting to swell and turn blue.

  ‘I’ll help you back to the house,’ said. ‘This looks serious.’ I looked at his face. It was all screwed up with pain. Then, suddenly, a change swept over him and he grinned.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘It hurts like the dickens. Just what I wanted.’ He started to cackle like a chook that had just laid an egg. ‘Go git me a stick boy. This is the best thing that’s happened for a long while.’ I found him a stick and he used it to help him hobble off to the road. He limped badly and I could see his ankle was hurting.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked him. ‘You can’t go off down the road with that ankle.’

  ‘I’m going to the old twisted gum,’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘And then I have some other business. You can go back to the house, boy, and don’t you try to follow me.’ He limped slowly down the road and finally disappeared round a bend in the road.

  The whole thing was crazy. These two old men shooting at each other. And blaming each other for things they couldn’t have done. And sneaking around playing tunes on a gumleaf in the middle of the night. I had to find out what was going on. So I followed McFuddy down the road, making sure I kept behind bushes where he couldn’t see me.

  4

  I found it easy to keep up with him because he went so slowly on account of his twisted ankle. After about an hour he reached the old twisted gum he had pointed out to me the day before. I noticed all of the lower branches were stripped bare of leaves as if stock had been grazing on them. McFuddy hit at a branch with his stick and a leaf fell off. He put it up to his lips and blew. A strong musical note floated up the road. McFuddy laughed to himself and put the leaf in his pocket. Then he headed off down the road. I knew where he was going.

  Sure enough, after about another hour of hobbling, McFuddy reached Foxy’s shack. Foxy was peering into his telescope, which was pointed at our place. McFuddy crept on all fours along a row of bushes so he couldn’t be seen. When he was quite close to the shack, but still out of sight, he grabbed the gumleaf and started to play a tune. I couldn’t hear what it was because a strong wind was blowing but I found out later that it was ‘Click Go The Shears’.

  As soon as the first few notes sounded, Foxy jumped up in the air as if he had been bitten. Then he clapped his hands over his ears and ran inside screaming out at the top of his voice. McFuddy turned and ran for it. He bolted out to the road like a rabbit. I had never seen him move so fast. It took me a few seconds to realise he wasn’t limping. His sprained ankle was cured. It wasn’t swollen and it didn’t hurt.

  Foxy came out onto the porch carrying a shotgun, which he fired into the air over McFuddy’s head. ‘You’re gone, McFuddy,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll have you for goanna oil.’ He tried to chase McFuddy up the road but he couldn’t. He had a sprained ankle.

  5

  My head started to spin. This was the weirdest thing I had ever come across. These two old men seemed to be able to give each other their illnesses and cure themselves at the same time. By blowing a gumleaf where the other person could hear it. I decided to find out what was going on and I followed McFuddy up the dusty, winding road.

  I caught up to him under the old twisted gum tree where he was sitting down for a rest. He was laughing to himself in his raspy voice. I could see he thought he had won a great victory. ‘That’s fixed him,’ he said. ‘That’ll slow him down for a bit.’ McFuddy didn’t seem to care about me following him. In fact he seemed pleased to have someone to show off to.

  ‘What’s happened to your sprained ankle?’ I demanded. ‘And how come Foxy’s got one now and he didn’t have before?’

  McFuddy looked at me for a bit and then he said, ‘You might as well know the truth, boy. After all, you are family. It’s this tree. This old twisted gum tree. When you play “Click Go The Shears” on one of its leaves, it passes your illness on to whoever hears it. But it only works for leaves on this tree. And the only tune that makes it work is “Click Go The Shears”.’

  It seemed too fantastic to believe but I had seen it work with my own eyes. ‘Why does it only work with leaves from this old twisted gum tree?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried it with hundreds of other trees but it never works. It only works with this tree.’ He gave an enormous sneeze and spat on the road. His nose was still red and his eyes were watering.

  ‘Well, how come you’ve still got your cold?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t Foxy get that back just now when you passed on the sprained ankle?’

  ‘You can’t get it back again. The same thing can only be passed on once. After that you are stuck with it. I will just have to wait for the cold to go away on its own. And Foxy can’t give me the sprained ankle back. He will have to wait for it to get better in the normal way. That’s the way it works.’ McFuddy took the gumleaf out of his pocket and threw it on the ground. I picked it up and tried to make a noise. Nothing came out. Not a peep.

  ‘Save your breath, boy,’ said McFuddy. ‘Each leaf only plays once. After that it don’t work any more.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s the meanest thing I’ve ever heard of,’ I said. ‘Fancy making another person sick on purpose. How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Over sixty years, boy. And it’s not my fault. Foxy first gave me the measles when we were at school. But I found out and I gave him a toothache back. That’s how it all got started and it’s been going on ever …’ McFuddy stopped in mid-sentence. He was twisting up his nose and sniffing the hot, north wind. ‘Smoke,’ he yelled. ‘I can smell smoke.’

  He jumped up and started running up the road. ‘Quick, boy,’ he called out over his shoulder. ‘There’s a bushfire coming. Back to the house.’ We both sped up the road as fast as we could go. We were only just in time. A savage fire swept over the top of the hill and raced through the dry grass towards the shack. Smoke swirled overhead and blocked out the sun.

  ‘Git up on the roof, boy,’ McFuddy yelled. ‘Block up the downpipes and fill up the spouting with water. I’ll close up the house.’ I put a ladder up against the wall and filled up the spouting with buckets of water. McFuddy went around closing all the windows and doors. Then he started up a portable generator and started spraying the house with a hosepipe connected to his water tank. Soon the house was almost surrounded by fire. Sparks and smoke swirled everywhere. Spot fires broke out in the front yard and at the back of the house. Then the back door caught on fire. I beat at it with a hessian bag that I had soaked in water but it was getting away from me. McFuddy couldn’t help. He was fighting a fire that had broken out under the front porch.

  It looked hopeless. I couldn’t hold the fire at the back door and I knew that at any moment the whole house would explode into a mass of flames. Then, without any warning, an old Holden utility sped through the front gate and stopped in a swirl of dust. It was Foxy. He jumped out of the car, put on a back-pack spray and rushed over to the back door. He soon had the flames out. Then he ran around to the front and started helping McFuddy on the porch.

  The three of us fought the flames side by side for two hours until the worst of it had passed. Then we just stood there looking at the shack, which had been saved with Foxy’s help, and the burnt grass and trees which surrounded us. The shack was saved but it was now an oasis in a desert of smouldering blackness.

  6

  McFuddy looked at his old enemy, who was still limpin
g when he walked. He held out his hand. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  Foxy paused for a second, then he shook the outstretched hand. ‘It’s okay, McFuddy,’ he answered. ‘I would have done the same for a wombat.’

  McFuddy grinned. ‘Come over and have a beer. You’ve earned it.’ They both went into the kitchen and McFuddy opened two stubbies of beer and a can of Fanta for me. They were soon joking and laughing and talking about what a close shave it had been.

  ‘I’m glad to see you’re friends at last,’ I said after a while. ‘Now neither of you will have to visit the old twisted gum again.’

  They both sprang to their feet as if someone had stuck a pin in them. ‘The old twisted gum,’ they shouted together. Both of them ran outside and jumped into the utility. I only just had time to climb into the back before it lurched off down the hill. I hung on for grim death and stared at the blackened, leafless trees that sped by us on either side. The car screeched to a halt and we all climbed out.

  I was pleased to see the old twisted gum had been burnt in the fire. It was a black and twisted corpse. The leaves had all gone up in smoke. Except one. High up on the top, well out of reach, one lonely green leaf pointed at the sky. We all stood there looking at it and saying nothing. Then, without a word, Foxy ran over to the utility and drove off down the hill as fast as he could go. ‘Quick,’ shouted McFuddy. ‘He’s gone to git a ladder. Come and help me, boy. We must git that leaf before he does. It’s the last one. Come and help me carry the ladder.’

  ‘No way,’ I said. ‘I wish every leaf had been burnt. Passing on your sickness to someone else is a terrible thing to do. Carry your own ladder.’

  ‘Traitor,’ he yelled as he hurried off.

  I sat there beside the blackened countryside looking up at the leaf. It was too high up for me to climb up and get it and anyway, the tree was still hot and smouldering. So I just sat there and waited.

  I had been sitting there for quite some time when something happened. The leaf fell off its lonely perch and slowly fluttered to the ground. It landed right at my feet. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

  7

  I was only just in time. At that very moment McFuddy and Foxy arrived carrying a ladder each. Foxy’s car had conked out from overheating and both men were staggering under their heavy burdens. They dumped their ladders down and stared at the tree with their mouths open. Then they fell onto their hands and knees and started scrabbling around in the burnt debris at the bottom of the tree. ‘The last leaf,’ moaned Foxy. ‘The very last leaf.’

  ‘Gone, gone,’ cried McFuddy. They scratched and searched everywhere but to no avail. They both became covered in black soot and dust. They looked like two black ghosts hunting around in a black forest.

  After a while they slowed down in their search. McFuddy looked at me. ‘The boy,’ he said suddenly. ‘The boy’s got it. Give it here, boy.’ They both started walking towards me slowly with outstretched hands. Their eyes were wild circles of white set in their black faces. They looked mean. Real mean. I felt like a rabbit trapped by two starving dingoes. I could see they would tear me to pieces to get their leaf. I pushed it deeper into my pocket and backed away.

  I had to get rid of it. I wasn’t going to give either of them the chance to get one last shot at the other. But I didn’t know what to do. I was cornered. One of them was coming from each direction on the road and the paddocks were still hot and smouldering. Then I remembered what McFuddy had told me. Each leaf would only play one tune and then it wouldn’t work any more. I decided to use up its power by playing it. I put it to my lips and blew. But nothing happened. Not a squeak. I tried again and a loud blurp came out. It was working. I tried to think of a tune to play but my mind was a blank. I was so nervous I couldn’t think of one single tune. Except ‘Click Go The Shears’. So that is what I played. It wasn’t very good – there were a lot of blurps and wrong notes but it was ‘Click Go The Shears’, no worries.

  McFuddy and Foxy fell to the ground screaming with their hands up over their ears. Then they put their hands over their noses. And so did I. My nose was normal. It had gone back to three centimetres long. And McFuddy and Foxy both had long, long noses. They had both copped my poor broken, stretched nose and mine was normal again.

  McFuddy looked at Foxy’s nose and started to laugh. He rolled around in the dirt laughing until tears made little tracks through the soot on his face. Then Foxy saw McFuddy’s nose and he started to laugh too. Soon all of us were rolling around in the dirt shaking with laughter.

  8

  McFuddy and Foxy didn’t seem to mind their long noses and they made friends again once they realised there were no leaves left. I explained that both of them could have operations to shorten their noses but neither of them seemed very interested. ‘I’m not trying to impress the girls at my age,’ was all McFuddy said.

  The next day I got on the train to go home. I wanted to get back to school again now I had a normal nose. It was a short holiday but it had turned out to be a good cure.

  So there I was sitting in the train with the same people that I had arrived with. They were all staring at me out of the corners of their eyes trying to work out if I was that funny-looking kid they had travelled with before.

  The ranger was the only one not taking any notice of me. He was staring out of the window at the blackened forest. No one was listening to him except me. And I didn’t like what he was saying.

  ‘Never mind,’ he rambled on. ‘It will be green again this time next year. Gum trees usually spring back to life after a bushfire.’

  Birdscrap

  The twins sat on the beach throwing bits of their lunch to the seagulls.

  ‘I don’t like telling a lie to Grandma,’ said Tracy. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. She has looked after us since Mum and Dad died. We would be in a children’s home if it wasn’t for her.’

  Gemma sighed, ‘We won’t be hurting Grandma. We will be doing her a favour. If we find Dad’s rubies we can sell them for a lot of money. Then we can fix up Seagull Shack and give Grandma a bit of cash as well.’

  ‘Why don’t you wait until we are eighteen? Dad’s will says that we will own Seagull Shack then. We can even go and live there if you want to,’ replied Tracy.

  Gemma started to get cross. ‘I’ve told you a million times. We won’t be eighteen for another three years. The last person who hiked in to Seagull Shack said that it was falling to pieces. If we wait that long the place will be blown off the cliff or wrecked by vandals. Then we’ll never find the rubies. They are inside that shack. I’m sure Dad hid them inside before he died.’

  Tracy threw another crust to the seagulls. ‘Well, what are you going to tell Grandma, then?’

  ‘We tell her that we are staying at Surfside One camping ground for the night. Then we set out for Seagull Shack by hiking along the cliffs. If we leave in the morning we can get there in the afternoon. We spend the night searching the house for the rubies. If we find them, Grandma will have a bit of money in the bank and we can send in some builders by boat to fix up Seagull Shack.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Tracy to her sister. ‘What makes you think we are going to find the rubies? The place was searched and searched after Dad died and neither of them was found.’

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t searched by us. We know every corner of that shack. And we knew Dad. We know how his mind worked. We can search in places no one else would think of. I think I know where they are anyway. I have an idea. I think Dad hid them in the stuffed seagull. I had a dream about it.’

  ‘Hey, did you see that?’ yelled Tracy without warning. ‘Where did that crust go?’

  ‘What crust?’

  ‘I threw a crust to the seagulls and it vanished.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Gemma. ‘One of the birds got it. Bread doesn’t just vanish.’

  Tracy threw another scrap of bread into the air. It started to fall to the ground and then stopped as if caught by an invisible hand. It rose high abov
e their heads, turned and headed off into the distance. All the other gulls flapped after it, squawking and quarrelling as they went.

  ‘Wow,’ shrieked Gemma. ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Tracy slowly. ‘Something flew off with it. Something we couldn’t see. Something invisible. Perhaps a bird.’

  Gemma started to laugh. ‘A ghost gull maybe?’

  ‘That’s not as funny as you think,’ said Tracy. ‘It’s a sign. Some thing or some one wants us to go to Seagull Shack.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve got it wrong,’ replied Gemma. ‘Maybe something doesn’t want us to go to Seagull Shack.’

  The wind suddenly changed to the south west and both girls shivered.

  2

  Two days later Tracy and Gemma struggled along the deserted and desolate clifftops. They were weighed down with hiking packs and water bottles. Far below them the Southern Ocean swelled and sucked at the rocky cliff. Overhead the blue sky was broken only by a tiny white seagull which circled slowly in the salt air.

  ‘How far to go?’ moaned Gemma. ‘My feet are killing me. We’ve been walking for hours.’

  ‘It’s not far now,’ said Tracy. ‘Just around the next headland. We should be able to see the old brown roof any moment … Hey. What was that?’ She felt her hair and pulled out some sticky white goo. Then she looked up at the seagull circling above. ‘You rotten fink,’ she yelled at it. ‘Look at this. That seagull has hit me with bird droppings.’

  Gemma lay down on the grassy slope and started to laugh. ‘Imagine that,’ she gasped. ‘There are miles and miles of clifftop with no one around and that bird has to drop its dung right on your head.’ Her laughter stopped abruptly as something splotted into her eye. ‘Aaaaagh, it’s hit me in the eye. The stupid bird is bombing us.’