‘Wicked.’ Vicki beamed. ‘I can do that when my leg gets better.’ She raised the leg again. ‘It really hurts,’ she said pathetically. ‘But you’ll show me how when it gets better, won’t you?’ She looked up with sad little eyes.
Danny watched Weaver to see how he would respond. ‘Yeah, sure I will,’ he said, rocking back and forth uneasily. Danny groaned. Vicki had manipulated him perfectly. Obviously Weaver didn’t have a little sister.
Danny looked around. The apartment was packed. It was like the whole city outside had tried to squeeze in.
Danny found it hard to take his eyes off Aine. She had the finest wisps of gossamer hair (strawberry blonde his mum called it later) at her temples. Her eyes were blue as a Mundowie summer sky. Danny thought her name was neat.
So did Danny’s mum. ‘What a wonderful name,’ she said.
‘Thank you, it’s Irish,’ Aine explained. She looked over at Danny. ‘You were pretty brave yesterday . . . brave or stupid.’
‘Brave,’ interjected Sam, and Danny’s heart swelled with pride.
Aine pulled a large strap of licorice that was twisted like her plait out of the basket. She glanced back at the adults. They were chatting busily in the kitchen amid the chinking sounds of spoons stirring in cups. She leaned over the basket. ‘Hey, you guys,’ she said in a hushed tone, ‘we came to see how your sister was, but we also came to see if you were up for some fun. We’re going next door to the old theatre and thought you might like to come and check it out.’
She looked sideways at Thommo, who had smeared something sticky and silver like a snail’s trail across his wet chin. ‘Do you live here as well?’ she asked with a look of disgust on her face.
Thommo shook his head, unsure why Aine’s face had buckled with repulsion. ‘No,’ he replied meekly, ‘I’m just visiting. I’m an old friend from Mundowie.’
‘Mundowie?’
‘Yeah,’ said Danny. ‘We used to live there when Dad was a farmer.’
‘What does he do now?’
There was an uncomfortable silence before Sam said, ‘He hasn’t got a job just now. He’s out looking.’
‘He was a carpenter once though,’ Danny added hastily. ‘And he will be again.’
‘So, do you want to come to the old theatre?’ prompted Weaver.
‘What’s in there?’ asked Danny.
Weaver’s eyes lit up. ‘Heaps of things, like the stage, the staircase, the old posters, you wait and see. And there’s a huge attic where they store stuff like old painted sets from plays and shows. Weird things like castles, shops, pirate ships, aeroplanes, cardboard forests. There’s even a Santa house. And there’s a big metal tunnel that’s hanging from the rafters over the stage. We’ve made it into a sliding ride. It’s a silver air-conditioning tunnel. We slide down it. It’s like one of those rides in the amusement parks. It’s wicked.’
Danny’s imagination was running wild.
Sam was keen. ‘How do we get in?’ he asked.
‘There’s a side door that doesn’t close properly,’ Aine replied. ‘I know because my dad’s been working in there. He’s at meetings now, but we can still get in.’
Danny was reminded of the day he and Vicki had climbed in through an open window of the Mundowie Hall. Vicki had danced and sang on the stage. She had spun like a ballerina so that the white dress she wore – the one her mum had made, with lace trimmings on the hem – flared out like an umbrella. If she heard about the theatre, Danny knew she’d make a fuss and want to come. But she hadn’t heard the plan. She’d hobbled off to the bedroom to stash some treasure she’d pulled from the basket.
‘What’s your dad doing in the theatre?’ asked Danny. ‘Is he an actor?’
‘No,’ Aine chuckled. ‘He’s an engineer with the council. He was the one who set the air-conditioning tunnel up as a slide for us. He’s always going into old buildings and checking them over. I think they’re looking at fixing the old place up.’
‘Sounds great! I’m in,’ said Sam.
‘Me too,’ said Thommo, dragging his forearm across his sticky chin. He wrapped his lollipop to save it for later.
‘Mum won’t let us go in there,’ said Danny. ‘Not if there’s no one in there.’
‘But there is,’ said Sam. ‘Aine’s dad.’
‘But he’s not, he’s at . . .’
Sam raised a flat hand. ‘Mum doesn’t know that, does she?’ he whispered.
Thommo shook his head at Danny. ‘Jeez, Danny Allen, when are you going to learn how to deal with mums?’
Sam managed to convince his mum to let them go. ‘It’s only next door. We won’t go anywhere else, I promise. Aine’s dad’s an engineer and he’s working on the theatre so we’ll be okay.’
Danny squirmed. It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the whole truth either.
When they left the apartment Danny thought of the last time they’d been alone out in the city world. Vicki had been attacked.
But hey, as Thommo had said to him. Stop worrying, you’re only next door, what could go wrong?
In the short journey to the Old Kings Theatre Thommo chatted animatedly to Aine and Weaver about the Mundowie days with the Allen boys. ‘Once we went surfing on a sheet of iron down a sand dune,’ he said, spreading his arms and bending his knees on one of the small landings in the stairwell. ‘Sam fell off and nearly had his arm cut off.’
Sam proudly showed his scar.
‘He would’ve been a goner if I hadn’t been there to save him,’ Thommo said.
Danny decided not to give the correct account of events, in which Thommo fainted at the first sight of blood and was lying flat on his back in the sand while Danny administered all the first aid to his brother.
Thommo kept raving. ‘When the creek flooded, we built this raft and slid it down the muddy bank. It was like launching a real ship from a slipway. The creek was wild with rapids and in I went, kertoooosh! I was riding the raft alone. And the waves came up as high as this building and then . . .’
Danny also chose not to dispute the size of the waves. It sounded good coming from Thommo. His exaggerations sounded right somehow. Aine and Weaver needed to know that there was something big about life in little Mundowie. Something that couldn’t be measured in the number of TV stations you could get, or the number of shops and tall buildings it had.
Thommo was just finishing the story about the picnic at Howler’s Tunnel when the group turned down the narrow lane and into the shadows. The echoing sound of the wheels of Weaver’s slow-moving skateboard was a ghostly reminder of the distant train approaching Howler’s Tunnel. Tickety tack, tickety tack.
Thommo nudged Weaver and motioned to Danny and Sam. ‘These boys were terrified,’ he said smugly, ‘but I wasn’t.’
They arrived at the side door of the theatre. It was made of grey metal and crudely decorated with an unreadable graffiti tag. Aine leant on the long bar that was the handle. Weaver also took hold. They both pushed down until they were red in the face, then . . . clunk!
Leaning back, they pulled at the heavy door. Despite their mighty efforts the door opened only a little way. ‘That’s as far as it’ll go,’ said Aine. ‘We have to squeeze in sideways.’ She eyed Thommo’s watermelon stomach. Thommo sucked it in. ‘It might be a bit of a squeeze, but we should be okay.’
Aine led the way. Thommo followed and, with Sam pushing and Aine pulling, he made it through. Danny didn’t even have to breathe in.
Inside, the darkness was thick. Danny blinked furiously, his eyes slow to adjust. Again he was reminded of his hollow-tree hide-out by the creek. His spine tingled with the memory of rustling leaves, the fine shaft of light that had cut through the darkness to illuminate the shimmering scales of a fat brown snake slithering in the darkness, twisting and curling at the very tip of his toes.
Instinctively, Danny wriggled his toes.
Once inside, Aine spun herself across the musty red carpet. ‘I’ll go and turn on some lights.’ She marched to the stage.
Squinting, Danny tracked her dark form, like a walking shadow.
‘Tah dah!’ she cried. ‘Welcome to the grand Old Kings.’
Then a loud click snapped through the darkness. Some of the footlights across the front of the stage came to life. There should have been about fifty, but not many worked. Danny counted twelve.
Their shadow-creating light added to the mystique of the old place. Heavy red curtains, tied back with golden ropes that were complete with tassels the size of a horse’s tail, hung in sweeping grandeur on either side of the stage.
The dimly lit stage reminded Danny of the warm summer nights in Mundowie when he used to sit on the front fence, with Tippy, his little black and white terrier, at his dangling feet. As much as he loved Billy, Danny would never forget Tippy. He had died fighting a snake in the dust and it was soon after that that Billy had come along.
Danny missed those summer nights, the smell of the dust, the fields and endless star-filled skies. He missed Tippy. They had grown up together. The very best of friends, they would sit and gaze across the country darkness to Thommo’s house, just across the road. The yellow light fanning out from the Thompsons’ shed was always riddled with moths on frenzied flight paths. Thommo and his dad would be working on the old truck to the sound of chinking tools and a crackling radio playing country music.
From Danny’s perch on the fence, looking into the light of the shed was like looking at a life-sized three-dimensional TV set . . . or, now that he came to think of it, a stage in an old theatre.
‘Isn’t this great?’ said Aine, as she skipped across the stage. ‘I bet they don’t have one of these in Mundiewallop . . . or wherever it was you guys lived.’
‘Mundowie!’ Danny called back proudly.
‘I’ll put on a spotlight,’ said Aine. She moved gracefully across the stage. With another click the spotlight shone past Aine to the back of the stage, illuminating a large silver structure. ‘Look at this,’ Aine called. ‘This is the ride!’
Behind her, hanging from the rafters like the mechanical tentacle of some alien machine, was a huge silver-coloured air-conditioning duct. Danny recognised it immediately. He had seen plenty of spies climbing around inside them in ceilings in movies, peering down through little vents and listening in to secret conversations.
It drooped down from the darkness at the top of stage right and came to an end centre stage, its large dark mouth gaping. Unlike Sam and Thommo, Danny didn’t head straight for the stage; he wanted to check out the theatre first.
He wandered around slowly. His eyes had adjusted and were catching every wonderful detail. Until this moment, the grandest building he had ever seen was the Mundowie Institute Hall. The Old Kings was far grander. It was for kings and queens, not farmers.
A huge chandelier hung from the ceiling high above. Decorative vines and flowers were carved into the plaster that bordered the ceiling. The gold-leaf paint was peeling. Groups of happy cherubs sat high in the corners.
Danny stuck his head out through the doors of the main theatre and found the foyer. He didn’t wander out in case he was seen by passers-by. Six large glass doors with heavy gold handles kept the outside world at bay. To one side there was a large staircase, rising in a sweeping curve, which led to the balcony and private boxes. The polished wooden balustrade looked perfect for sliding.
The roof of the foyer was domed with a small glass atrium, but there wasn’t much light getting through. The glass was blanketed by spattered layers of crusty pigeon poop.
Apart from their sloppy poop – the sloppiness of pigeon poop was something Vicki had pointed out – Danny liked the city pigeons. They reminded him of the cockatoos that soared and swooped around the hills, creeks and open skies of Mundowie. Danny felt sorry for the city pigeons having to glide through a world of man-made canyons walled by concrete and glass. Sometimes they came to sit on his window ledge, just out of reach. He liked the rainbow colours that showed at the neck of their grey feathers. They were like the swirl of colours that tractor oil creates in puddles, or the rainbows he’d spied in the crystals of the chandelier. I wonder what happened to the one that couldn’t fly, he thought.
He closed the door on the poop-spattered atrium and was once again back in the dark theatre. He looked across a sea of empty seats to the stage. Thommo was up examining the mouth of the silver tunnel, which sat gaping centre stage. He gave the pipe a kick. It rattled. ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ he asked.
‘Hey,’ said Aine, ‘it’s been inspected by an engineer.’
‘What do you do when you fly out of this thing?’ asked Thommo. ‘End up sliding across the stage and out into the seats by the look of things. Might be okay if there was a crowd there and you could do some crowd surfing, but without that, hitting those seats will cut you up a bit.’
‘No, you stop before then,’ said Weaver.
‘How?’
‘We just always do.’
‘You might,’ said Thommo, ‘but you’ve never seen me slide. I’ll fly out clean across the top of those seats at the speed I travel.’
Aine and Weaver laughed. ‘No way.’
It was obvious to Danny that Weaver and Aine liked Thommo. Danny was glad.
Thommo marched off. ‘You just watch me.’
Danny ran to join them. He didn’t want to miss anything. He thought of how poor Mrs Thompson would be if Thommo ended up in hospital the day his dad was due to go home. On the positive side, though, it might be a good thing: Thommo would be in the city for a while, a neighbour again, almost.
Aine led them all up the steps to the platform that ran along the top of the stage where the rigging and ropes and old lighting frames hung. From the platform they had a bird’s-eye view of the stage.
Danny stuck his head in the dark tube. It was the perfect size for them to climb inside, lie on their backs and slide down.
Aine offered a red sack to Thommo. ‘Climb into this and you’ll go faster.’
‘Is that a Santa sack?’ said Thommo, pulling it from Aine’s grasp and examining the white fluffy band of cotton wool at the mouth.
‘Yeah,’ said Aine. ‘We found it in the storeroom attic.’ She leaned closer to Thommo. ‘You got something against Santa?’
‘No,’ said Thommo sheepishly. ‘But let’s see if the old boy’s sack has got any magic left in it.’
Thommo set about preparing himself for the first ride.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to show you what happens first?’ asked Aine.
‘No way!’ scoffed Thommo. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
Thommo crawled into the Santa sack. Danny thought he looked funny with his round face and red cheeks, all snuggled up in the large red sack with white fluffy frills and sparkling golden rope ties. What a Christmas present! Well, his mum and dad probably thought so.
With Aine’s guidance, Thommo sat himself in the mouth of the large metal tube. He looked down to the light at the end of the dark throat. ‘Give us a hard push,’ he said, wriggling into a comfortable position.
Weaver shook his head. ‘It’s really fast, Thommo, I don’t think you’ll need a pu . . .’
‘I can control any speed,’ interrupted Thommo. ‘I’ve surfed sand dunes on sheets of iron and I can sail rafts down swollen creeks on waves as big as . . .’
He kept talking loudly, but no one was really listening.
Aine turned to Danny and asked softly, ‘Should I tell him that they’ve been polishing the stage this morning and that it will be faster than ever?’
Danny thought about that for a moment.
Thommo looked to Sam as he said, ‘When you get a turn, don’t you fall off again, Sam Allen. You’re always falling off things.’ Then he looked to Aine. ‘These Allen boys, huh, I tell you, no control, that’s their problem.’
Danny nudged Aine gently with his elbow. ‘Let’s just push him,’ he said, smirking. ‘Hard!’
‘What are you lot waiting for?’ barked Thommo. ‘Give us a push.’<
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They all shrugged their shoulders. ‘Whatever you say, Thommo.’
Everyone crowded around Thommo’s large back – Sam lay on his back with both feet planted on Thommo’s rump – and pushed hard.
Thommo was gone!
Phoot!
‘Waaaaggghhh!’
The others quickly hustled to viewing spots on the landing. They hung their heads over the rail with their eyes glued to the end of the big pipe.
Thommo’s bellowing echoed loudly up the throat of the silver-coloured tunnel and out into the theatre.
‘Weeehhaaaggggh!’
His bumping butt boomed thunderous bounces as he slid.
Boom – bah-boom – boom – boom.
‘He’s really flying!’ laughed Weaver.
Then . . . Phoot! Thommo shot out of the tunnel as if fired from a cannon.
‘Yoooohhooooow!’
‘Ha, ha, ha. Look at him!’ laughed Sam, slapping his knees.
The smooth, freshly polished boards of the stage were perfect for sliding . . . too perfect.
Thommo was flying across the stage, spinning in a blur.
With his bum as the apex, he rotated like a chubby top.
‘Whooaaaarggghhheeeeyyyaaarghgghh!’
His legs were wrapped so snugly in the sack he had no way of slowing himself. He simply had to endure the uncertainty of the wild ride. The terrified expression on his face relayed his fear very clearly to the others.
Despite the obvious danger, they couldn’t help but laugh. It looked hilarious! A chubby-faced kid spinning at a dizzy speed across a slippery stage in a Santa sack!
Suddenly his sliding trajectory was taking him stage left.
‘Heeeeaaarggghhhh!’
He flew out of sight and into the shadows behind the thick fold of the open curtains.
The spectators braced themselves and then . . . crash! Clunk! . . . Rumble, rumble . . . ting.
Weaver was the first to break the thick silence that followed. ‘Do you think he’s okay?’
Sam cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Hey, Thommo, are you dead?’
Take it Easy, Danny Allen Page 8