Kamikaze Kangaroos!

by Tony James Slater

  I consider it a measure of how strong our lust was for each other, that none of this seemed even marginally questionable at the time.

  And so, our chance came. Gill went to bed early, and Roo and I stayed up reading by torch-light. Then, when we guessed enough time had passed, we rummaged through the junk in Rusty in slow motion (for the sake of quietness), discovered the picnic blanket, and set off across the campsite.

  Now, the pool area itself was dimly lit by solar-powered globes scattered around the enclosure. It’s quite possible that, in the reflection of this light, the soft glow of Roo’s body could be seen from outer space. We were in serious danger of attracting helicopters on bushfire patrol, and I was forced to consider going back to Rusty to look for my sunglasses.

  This being the case, we decided to take the party a bit further out, finally settling in the shadow of a big shrub by the fence. Perfect!

  And now…

  This was the moment I’d looked forward to all day at work, and all evening whilst sitting around in the kitchen drinking endless cups of tea. It was my time, alone in the dark with Roo, and it had become my refuge; a part of my life that was, in spite of all the odds, actually going well.

  And better than well.

  I made a pillow for Roo from our discarded clothes, and fumbled for a little cardboard box I’d managed to buy earlier on…

  Let me just point out that it was quite difficult to buy anything in secret when all three of us did all our shopping – and paid for it all – together. There seemed to be no need for one person to sneak off on their own to, let’s say, a pharmacy. Not without arousing suspicion. I needed a reason, and it had to be good. If I suddenly remembered I wanted a different brand of shampoo, the girls would naturally expect to accompany me, to browse the bins of discounted nail polish. So I took my chance when it presented itself. At the moment of maximum distraction, when the girls were busy bagging up our food as it was beeped through the supermarket check-out, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “I’ve got to run to the pharmacy and get some cream, ‘cause my balls are really itchy.”

  Ha! That’d keep them away.

  It also earned me a concerned look from the lady behind the cash register – and from three or four of the customers queuing up behind us – but no matter. I’d done it! I was free. I raced out of the supermarket, all the way down the road, and sprinted up to the pharmacy counter with the biggest box of condoms I could find. Sweating and panting, I pushed them forwards and wheezed “Just these please!”

  A ripple of disgust ran through the girl serving me, but luckily sheer breathlessness saved me from telling her, “don’t worry, they’re not for me!”

  That would have been even more awkward.

  But never mind that; I’d got what I came for. And according to the box, I’d even scored some free lube. Result!

  So. Back to the present. Roo lay back on our picnic blanket, looking… magical. I was breathless all over again. I groped around in the shadows, finding the box and pulling out a condom, giving Roo my best ‘bedroom eyes’ the whole time.

  (I have since been asked not to do my ‘bedroom eyes’, after Roo caught me making bedroom eyes at a bacon sandwich I was about to eat, and decided it makes me look like Gollum from Lord of the Rings.)

  But anyway, I digress.

  I moved closer to Roo, and bit open the packet.

  And then gagged, as my mouth was flooded with an entire sachet of complimentary lube.

  “EUURRGHH!”

  I coughed and spluttered, hacking and spitting into the grass, as Roo shrank back out of range. God, that stuff tasted vile. I was choking on it, and swearing viciously between heaves, which kind of ended the stealth part of the operation right there.

  As if to prove this point, I heard a voice from the other side of the bush.

  “Tony? Is that you?”

  I froze. Roo froze. I could almost hear her heart beat over mine.

  “Tony?”

  Ohhhh… Shit.

  It was Gill.

  For reasons unknown, she must have decided to visit the farthest toilet block instead of the near one – and now she was standing, somewhat confused, by the entrance – directly on the other side of the fence.

  “Is there someone there?”

  She sounded nervous now. Poor girl! But DAMN IT! But also… poor girl.

  “Yes, it’s me,” I said, trying to keep the soul-crushing disappointment out of my voice.

  “Oh! I thought I heard you. Where are you?”

  “I’m in the pool area.”

  “Oh. What are you doing?”

  “Just, um…” I glanced around me for inspiration. Roo had curled herself into a ball, as though that would make her any less naked. She had one hand ineffectually covering her bare ass. “Just… looking at the moon.”

  There was a few seconds of silence.

  “Are you… okay?” Gill asked.

  “Yeah. I just ate something unpleasant. A bug.”

  “Oh. Okay. Are you… coming back to the tent?”

  “Yeah, I might just have a walk first. That’s what I’m doing, you know, having a walk. At night. A night walk.”

  Roo gave me a kick, which I took as a sign to shut up.

  “Do you know where Roo is?”

  “Ah… yeah, she’s here too. She wanted to have a walk. To look at the stars! We left you asleep.”

  “I woke up to go the loo. They’ve closed the toilets near us.”

  “Oh? Really.”

  “Yeah. I had to walk all the way over here.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  Gill said nothing, and I could practically feel her confusion through the shrub.

  (Not a sentence I get to use very often, that one.)

  “The stars are so beautiful tonight…” I offered.

  “Uh, yeah,” said Gill. “So anyway, I’m going to go to the loo.”

  “Alright. Enjoy yourself!”

  “Thanks. I will.”

  And she shuffled off. I heard the creak of the bathroom door as it opened and closed.

  “I think we got away with it,” I told Roo. She was dressing with a speed and ferocity that said she disagreed.

  “Come on, quick,” she hissed.

  “Wait! Wait a minute. We can’t go back now. Not before she does! We have to wait, like we’re walking around for a bit. That’ll be less suspicious.”

  “Less suspicious? Less suspicious than what? Than huddling in the nude behind a bush while she shouts at us from the other side?”

  “Well, I just think we should wait a while… Maybe she’ll go back to sleep?”

  Roo stared at me.

  “Think about it! She’s not expecting us to be here, doing this. She doesn’t know anything. Plus, she’s still half asleep. I bet she believes we’re out here to look at the stars. You guys used to do that, right?”

  “I guess so. In America, in the desert.”

  “See! We’ll be fine.”

  “So, what, you want us to wait for her to go back to sleep? Just sit here and do nothing?”

  “Well, I didn’t mean we should do nothing. We are here, after all…”

  “Bloody hell! You’re– I don’t know if there’s a word for it! Impossible, and irresponsible, and, and… too bloody horny, all rolled into one.”

  “But in a good way, right?”

  She wisely left that one unanswered.

  This event has gone down in history as the greatest failure of stealth since Moses tried to sneak a bunch of Israelites out of Egypt by parting the Red Sea. On the upside, no-one drowned – though I came close to it, thanks to the free packet of ‘Play’ Gel. On the downside, there was a lot of wandering through the metaphorical desert, parched, so to speak, before we dared try it again.

  I thought about sending a sternly-worded email to the Durex company, complaining about the damage they’d inadvertently done to my sex life.

  I mean, they should warn us about shit like this!

  Bu
t then I noticed that someone had beaten me to it.

  Maybe this was a more common problem that I’d realised.

  Because Durex had already been compelled to add a warning to the packaging of their complimentary lube.

  ‘DO NOT EAT’ it said.

  “That’s the trouble with you men,” Roo said, when I told her, “you never follow the instructions.”

  Field Day

  When we heard on the grapevine about a chance to switch jobs, we dropped those pumpkins like hot potatoes. Our new job was on a sandalwood plantation, further away on the outskirts of town. We treated ourselves to a couple of days off, celebrating the end of two full weeks in the pumpkin fields. How we’d lasted that long, I do not know. My back still hasn’t forgiven me.

  On the first morning of our new job, we were presented with a worryingly familiar scenario.

  Dawn found us sitting in a rapidly disintegrating minibus, bouncing along a knackered dirt track towards the plantation. The vehicle was in roughly the same state of repair as the road; there were holes in the roof; there were holes in the floor. It needed to be push-started every time, and was stopped by ‘natural breaking’ – ie, coasting until it either ran out of speed, or hit something. Or both.

  Seven other workers were crammed into the torn vinyl-covered seats alongside Roo, Gill and myself, and every one of us was braced in position with arms legs and in a few cases, heads pressed against what was left of the dented metal roof.

  “She’ll be right!” the boss had said, in true Aussie fashion, when I’d commented to him that only the paint was holding his van together.

  After which he’d introduced himself as ‘Johno’.

  Johno loved to drive that wreck of a van. He loved to drive it at speed. He prided himself on knowing exactly how to coax what he wanted from the ancient engine. He deftly slotted it between openings in the fence and shot across makeshift bridges over a network of irrigation ditches. He was grinning at me in the rear-view mirror, as if to say ‘See?’

  When suddenly the world turned upside down and the seat in front of me took a swipe at my ribs. I twisted as I fell, and ended up lying on my face across the mud-encrusted windows.

  Roo was lying on top of me. And at least three people were lying on top of her. The van was on its side, nose down in a ditch, and I was slowly being suffocated.

  This must be what it’s like to play the Aussies at rugby, I thought.

  “I can get out the window!” someone called from the front.

  “Yeah, me too!”

  And one by one we squeezed out of whatever opening presented itself. After all, there were plenty of them.

  Johno stood on the bank, counting heads as we crawled up to him.

  “Sorry lads!” he said cheerily, ignoring the presence of several women. “It gets a bit narrow there.”

  Apparently this satisfied him that the situation was back under control. He pulled out his cell phone and took a deep breath before punching a number in.

  “Hey there Big Man! Yeah, we’ve, um, had a bit of a crash…”

  He held the phone away from his ear for a few seconds while the swearing on the other end subsided. His mood deteriorated as the noise continued.

  “Yeah… that narrow part, by the ditch… yeah, in the ditch. Upside down.”

  There was a final blast of abuse from the speaker.

  “Yes,” he agreed glumly. “Again.”

  The voice did not sound impressed.

  Luckily for us, the crash-site wasn’t far from the job-site.

  Johno, eager to get back in the good books, led us straight into the field and got us started. ‘Weeding’ would be an accurate description of the job that ensued. Not that I was sure exactly what we were weeding and why, but the contrast with our last job picking pumpkins was unbelievable. It was just so… easy! After two weeks of straining, back-breaking toil hefting gigantic pumpkins into the back of a tractor moving at jogging pace, this wasn’t even work at all.

  I strolled over to Roo, who was busily pulling a small leafy plant from the soil.

  “This is incredible,” I commented.

  “I know! Shh!” She was obviously thinking the same thing – don’t rock the boat. We had to keep this job at all costs.

  Another lazy hour drifted by. I wandered up another furrow, pulling up whatever came closest to hand. There was a certain dark green, very persistent weed that seemed to be everywhere. “Check this out!” I dropped a handful of the plants in front of Roo. These damn things are in every row!”

  “That’s because they’re the support plants,” she hissed. “Don’t pull them out. okay? We’ll get in trouble.”

  “Oh, really? Shit. Sorry!”

  She herself was leaving a trail of remarkably similar looking plants uprooted.

  “What’s the difference?”

  She sighed. She always had to help me with stuff like this. I was never a particularly observant person.

  “These are weeds.”

  I took the proffered plant and studied it.

  “This is the support tree.” The fingers of her free hand gently lifted the leaves atop the stalk nearest to her.

  To me, they looked identical.

  “See?”

  “Of course,” I lied.

  “Good.”

  “And what about this one?” I held up another of my recent victims. “We pull these out too, right?”

  “That’s the sandalwood tree!”

  “Oh! Now I get it!”

  In spite of herself, Roo was starting to giggle. “How many… how many of those have you… ripped up?”

  “Um, well… all of them. I think.”

  She burst out laughing, but caught herself – with effort – after one guffaw. “Shit!” she coughed out between suppressed giggles. “Don’t… pick… any more!”

  It was all I could do not to crack up myself. We were halfway through the day and I must have divested about a quarter of the field of its primary raison d’etre.

  We picked on in silence for the next half-hour.

  “Woah! Careful there!” It was Johno, stomping up the furrow behind me. “Don’t be pulling that one out, mate!”

  I froze mid-motion.

  “That there’s a sandalwood – just looks a bit different ‘cause it ain’t grown as much,” he explained.

  I released my grip on the immature specimen.

  “Phew! Glad I stopped you there!” And he strode past me towards the next keen plucker.

  I stopped for a few seconds and mopped sweat from my forehead with a bandanna. “So those ones too eh? This job is harder than I thought!”

  As Johno drove us home in the recently de-ditched minibus, I couldn’t resist asking; “Is this job real? There has to be a catch? Like, deep underground you’ve got some super-secret weapons lab, and we’re just here to make it look innocent on the satellite photos? And you pay us eighteen bucks an hour to pick weeds so no-one rocks the boat, right?”

  “Ha ha! Not quite that exciting,” he replied. “See, these sandalwood trees will be producing oil in a couple of years and that oil is expensive stuff. Some trees will make loads, some not as much, but when they’re mature they’ll be worth between three and fifteen thousand dollars each.”

  There was a stunned silence. I couldn’t have spoken even if I’d wanted to. My throat had suddenly gone dry.

  “F-fifteen? Thousand?” I finally croaked.

  “Jeez,” one of the other workers exclaimed, “that’s crazy man! What if someone steals one!”

  “Security. Whole place is fenced all around. Got cctv cameras on all the fence posts. And our own fire station on site, in case a bush fire gets too close. Yeah, that field you were working in today is worth something like eighty-five million dollars. They go all out to protect these babies.”

  I felt vaguely sick. Whilst at the same time I had the hideous feeling that deep inside me was welling up a great big belly laugh. I’d worked here for one day. By my rough estimate I’d done at
least a million dollars’ worth of damage…

  Roo was nudging me with her foot. I glanced over at her. Her expression was unmistakable; ‘Say. Nothing.’

  I was inclined to agree.

  Back at the campsite that evening we discussed our options. Well more accurately, Gill and Roo discussed them, while I fell around the place laughing. “It’ll take them a long time to get it out of my salary!”

  “Come on, seriously!” Roo chastised me. “What are we going to do?”

  I took a few deep breaths to calm myself and sat on the grass next to her.

  “If we don’t go back it’ll look really suspicious,” I pointed out. “On the other hand, if we do go back and they spot my little mistake, it’s quite possible they’ll drown us in a ditch.”

  “Or they could just put us in a car with Johno driving…” Roo added.

  “So what do you reckon? Shall we look for new jobs? Again?”

  With a theatrical sigh, Roo reached for our mobile phone. “I put Johno’s number in here, I’ll send him a text.”

  I watched over her shoulder as she typed.

  ‘From Tony, Gill and Roo. Thanks for an amazing experience.’

  Which I thought was quite generous. She paused for a moment, then shrugged. “Not much else to put,” she said.

  And added ‘We Quit.’

  Revelation

  Luckily, that text message never got sent.

  Gill vetoed it, on the grounds that she’d only just rediscovered the ability to walk upright again; she would far rather risk the wrath of the sandalwood owners than risk ending up back on the pumpkins.

  So instead of leaving our dream job, we showed up for work the next morning all innocence and smiles – hoping against hope that no-one would link us to the wholesale destruction that had recently beset their precious plantation.

  (I say us; technically it was me that was most directly responsible, but I find that in situations like this, it’s good for friends to stick together. And share things. Like blame.)

  There was one other pressing concern on my mind that morning.

  Roo and I had made a decision. After carefully considering all the pros and cons, we’d decided that:

  a) we were starting a relationship, and