by Paul Collins
Back at the motel, Dad looked at us. ‘Well, you two. Do you know how dangerous that was? I was furious when I found what you’d done.’
Dan and I looked at each other. We knew what was coming and we knew Dad was right.
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘Sorry, Mister B.,’ echoed Dan. ‘We know it was a dumb thing to do.’
‘Yeah, especially in the desert,’ Dad said. ‘What were you thinking?’
There was a knock at the door. Standing outside were the two police officers.
‘I thought you boys would like to know that Mike’s doing well, and we wanted to tell you that if it hadn’t been for you two we would never have found him in time.’
‘Wow! So we really did save his life?’ I asked.
‘There’s no question,’ said the officer.
‘But read my lips,’ said Dad. ‘No more exploring and lizard hunting without me knowing about it. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ Dan and I mumbled.
‘And we’d like to second that,’ said the police officer. ‘You boys were also lucky you came across that bloke. The desert can be a dangerous place, especially when you’re lost.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, looking at Dan. ‘I think we’ve learned our lesson.’
‘How about some breakfast, a big breakfast?’ said
Dad.
‘Awesome!’ Dan and I shouted together.
The Oakley yard was a scavenger’s delight. It had bric-a-brac of assorted car parts, cannibalised engine blocks, rows of windscreens, roof-high stacks of bench seats, bonnets, and an assortment of tyres from the merely pedestrian, like you’d find on any family car, to the oversized monsters sourced from huge earthmovers. The Oakleys’ backyard was a magnet to our curiosity.
No one was ever invited into the Oakley yard, and no one ever dared enter. It was a no-man’s-land.
As Tom and I stood hesitating by the wooden fence over our next move, my knees went to water.
‘We can get all the points we need by finding other stuff,’ I tried feebly.
‘You want to win this thing or not?’ Tom asked me challengingly. ‘I say we go straight for the big-ticket item and win the challenge outright. We’ve already wasted enough time looking for the other stuff. Now we do it my way. Okay?’
I narrowed my eyes. Winning the school’s annual scavenger hunt by finding the number-one item and bringing it back would make Tom and me legends.
No one had ever dared put this one so-talked-about item on the list, ever. It was like the Holy Grail.
The entire town had heard about it, but no one had actually ever seen it. And now it was on the list as the most prized scavenger item of them all.
‘What ifshe finds it missing?’ I countered uncertainly.
‘She won’t miss it,’ Tom said fixedly as he aban doned all caution and scampered up onto the fence.
‘Trust me. It’s not like she has any daily use for it, right?’
I hesitated. Really? I thought. She won’t miss it? I doubted that very much.
‘You coming or not?’ he asked over his shoulder, his eyes challenging, one leg already dangling pre cariously into the Oakley’s no-go zone.
I swallowed.
‘Chicken!’ Tom chirped and dropped out of sight. I froze. He’d done it. Tom had talked about us going into Mrs Oakley’s backyard, and now he’d actually done it.
‘Tom?’ My voice was a tiny squeal.
No answer. I swallowed again, licked my lips, and against a screaming voice in my head telling me not to, I scaled the wooden fence and ...
Landed in a pool of stagnant engine oil, my brand new sneakers sucking up the black ooze like a thirsty sponge.
‘Oh no!’ I gasped, but didn’t have time to think about what I might tell my parents as Tom grabbed my shirt front and pulled me down behind a wall of crushed cardboard.
‘There’s someone in the laundry,’ Tom announced out of the corner of his mouth.
Great, I thought. Maybe I could plead illiteracy as an excuse. Sorry, we didn’t understand the signs: Do Not Enter, Trespassers Not Welcome, Stay OUT!
I lifted one foot then the other. Thick, sticky, black-as-night oil clung to them; splattered all over the tops.
‘This better be worth it,’ I protested. ‘These were brand new and now ...’
But Tom wasn’t interested in my petty problems. When I looked up he was already across the yard, the spectre of whoever might be in the laundry not a deterrent to his ultimate goal.
Tom was going to recover the number-one item on the Scavenging List, and I was going to be a part of it.
‘She keeps it in the shed,’ Tom whispered as I came alongside him. ‘I’ve heard her tell my mum. She keeps it on the driver’s seat of Mr Oakley’s old taxi, the one he apparently drove that celebrity around in.’
‘If we get busted we’re done for,’ I offered, but now that we were in the yard I was actually feeling a little less fearful. Mter all, if we did manage to get the number-one item back to the school we’d be heroes.
I might get put under house arrest by my parents over the ruined sneakers, but I’d be a legend under house arrest!
I knew the house well enough to know that the laundry door faced the shed, and Tom and I had to get past the laundry to get to the shed. If there was someone in the laundry the way Tom figured there was, we would have to have our wits about us.
‘Hand me those bits of broken tile,’ Tom said, pointing at the jagged pile of roof tiles by my feet. I passed some to him and without a word he launched one huge bit high and fast into the air.
I held my breath as the tile tumbled and flipped and finally dropped on the corrugated iron sheeting at the rear of the roo£
The noise was piercing and sharp, the tile bounc ing about wildly, clattering and tumbling with a racket that started the chooks in the henhouse squawking.
It brought Mrs Oakley out of the laundry, floral apron loose around her waist, one hand still clutch ing a wad of wet washing as the other shaded her eyes against the sun. She peered up toward the roo£
‘Go on, get out!’ she cried at what I imagined she thought had invaded the otherwise quiet of her afternoon. ‘Go on ... get!’
And that’s when Tom launched the second missile.
It too clattered about and found its mark, only this time on the blind side of the roof so that Mrs Oakley tossed the washing aside, and with remarkable speed for an elderly woman, sped off round the side of the house to investigate.
‘Come on!’ Tom urged. We bolted across the yard, leaping over discarded car panels, outcrops of bro ken headlights and even the odd taxi dome littering the ground, and through a narrow metal door into the fabled shed.
Inside was just like I’d imagined it to be: close and dusty and cluttered, especially when Tom shut the door behind us. It was as though we’d entered another world.
Neither of us could speak. We simply gaped in awe at our surrounds. Besides the old cab we’d expected, its silver and black bodywork dirty under a patina of cobwebs, there were at least three other cabs, all sitting haunch to haunch and grill to rear end.
But it was what hung from the ceiling that really grabbed our attention.
It was Mr Oakley, his arms and legs splayed out like a cross, face down, eyes wide open as though protecting his precious collection of taxi cabs.
I gagged. So did Tom. But neither of us could move.
We had expected to find old Mr Oakley. He was supposed to be in an elaborate funerary urn his wife kept on the driver’s seat of his last and favourite taxi, one of the original 1979 Holden Commodores.
We didn’t expect to find him, mummified and hanging from the roof of his shed, still dressed in the tattered remains of his taxi driver’s uniform, guard ing what he’d left behind
.
‘It’s not real,’ Tom managed finally. He prodded me gently and stirred me back to the present.
‘It’s a mannequin. Look, it’s a female mannequin, like the ones in Hardy’s Ladies Wear,’ Tom contin ued. ‘It’s spooky, eh? Had you going though, buddy.’
‘Like you didn’t freak,’ I spat back. I swallowed agam.
Tom didn’t answer. He was already climbing into the closest cab, prying the driver’s door open just enough to squeeze through, leaving me still gazing up at the uniformed mannequin hanging like some otherworldly sentry over Mr Oakley’s most treasured earthly possessions.
While Tom rummaged about inside first one cab then another, I took in the shed. It was a museum to Mr Oakley’s time as the town’s premier cab driver. There were framed photos, mostly grainy and some in muted sepia tones, of a youthful Mr Oakley stand ing beside the very cab Tom was pottering around m.
There was even a plaque commemorating the dead man’s time as the only cab driver for the entire region, and a framed photo taken on the day he established his own taxi service, with a much younger Mrs Oakley standing just as proudly beside him.
‘Found it!’ Tom called so suddenly it startled me.
‘Look,’ he said, climbing out of the cab holding what looked to be a flower vase.
‘Is that ... Is that him?’ I croaked.
Tom beamed. ‘Yep. This is old Mr Oakley. And he was right where we’d always heard he’d be, on the front seat ... As though he could still just drive off to work.’
Tom held the urn out to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch it. I just nodded and cautiously fol lowed him out the door, across the yard and out the back gate, which we unsnibbed from inside.
We didn’t go far before we stopped and stood looking at the bronze-coloured urn Tom held out between us.
‘We’ve won for certain. The number one, ultimate item on the scavenger list and we’ve got it.’ Tom smiled and added, ‘I told you to trust me on this.’
By the time we arrived at school, most of the other seekers were back, all of them carrying something or other from the list.
But only Tom and I had the major points earner.
We had the urn containing old Mr Oakley’s ashes!
We laughed as we made our way to the judges’ table, high-fiving ourselves on being so daring.
A crowd gathered as we approached the table. Voices that had been raised in chatter hushed as Tom and I approached.
‘Never doubt me again,’ Tom gloated.
I winked and reached out to take hold of one handle of the urn so that we might place it together before the judges and claim victory.
And that’s when we saw them.
Four urns. All identical in every way to the one we were holding between us like some revered trophy.
‘The ashes I presume,’ a Year Ten judge sniggered sarcastically. She reached for the urn.
Tom and I gave each other a quick glance.
And then, without a word, she unscrewed the lid and upended the urn on the table. Tom and I backed away from the expected cloud of ash that would come cascading out. I grabbed at the single small piece of paper that floated toward the table.
‘Trust me,’ the judge read without having to actu ally look at the note, ‘don’t believe everything you hear, and only some of what you think you see.’
And with that she put our urn alongside the oth ers, so that there were now five identical urns sitting on the judge’s table, a small note at the foot of each.
‘Next!’ the judge called and waved Tom and me aside.
We stood blinking at one another.
We’d been duped. I exhaled loudly and shook my head. I was about to suggest we go in search of the other listed items when there was a commotion over by the main door.
Someone walked in carrying an urn that was the exact duplicate of the one Tom and I- and obviously others - had brought back from our hunt.
Only it wasn’t one of us.
It was Mrs Oakley. She didn’t hesitate, but strode right up to the judges’ table.
Jack always loved scavenger hunts,’ she declared through a chuckle that made my blood run cold.
‘See?’ she added, pointing at the urn. ‘Here he is now. We caught a cab in.’
When she glanced back toward Tom and me, the old woman was smiling broadly, her aged eyes pressed into tiny dots that pinpointed us.
‘Do we win?’ She laughed, tossing back her head, her mane of frizzled grey hair catching the sunlight streaming through the overhead skylight.
Tom and I nodded in unison. Around us everyone else was doing likewise, even the judges.
‘Didyou hear that?’ Rua nudged her mate with a paw. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’ Rrrk rolled away to face the wall of the den. It was an old abandoned rabbit burrow he had enlarged for the last litter of pups. The walls were still flecked with grey fur. Rrrk’s stomach growled at the thought of fresh rabbit.
‘Go to sleep,’ he said and pretended to snore.
Rua was insistent. ‘I heard something outside. It sounded like a pup.’
Rrrk grunted in irritation. Rua’s mothering days were long gone and their den had been empty for five years now. But Rua often pined for the late autumn days spent nurturing newborns. Rrrk smiled. He missed it too. There was something satisfying about giving a fatherly nip to the rump of a wayward pup.
He turned and nuzzled the silver fur around Rua’s snout. ‘It’s probably one of Urf’s litter. She lets them wander all over the place.’
There was only one other dingo family in the area.
Farmers had killed the male, Wuf, and Urf had her paws full with five rowdy little ones. Rrrk and Rua kept an eye on the pups from a distance, but Urf made sure they understood to come no closer. The protective instinct was strong in the young mother. She snapped and gnashed her teeth in mock defence whenever she saw the two dingoes watching her.
‘It might need help. Come with me and look,’ pleaded Rua.
Rrrk could not refuse his life mate and together they left the burrow and padded out onto the sandy soil. The moon was pearly white, draping the earth in evening shadows. Rua moved closer to Rrrk, touch ing his flank. Winter in the desert was especially cold this year and pain gnawed at their old bones.
Rrrk’s ears pricked. He could hear the sound now.
He was old and he could no longer run great dis tances, but his senses of smell and hearing were still keen. ‘This way.’
The sound was coming from beneath a pile of freshly turned earth. Rrrk sniffed deep. Something was buried under the ground. It was making a noise like a pup mewling.
‘I know what this is,’ said Rrrk. ‘It’s a human burial ground. Wuf told me.’
Wuf had known a lot of things about humans. That was how the trouble started. He spent too much time poking his snout around the nearby farms. When he raided the chickens, the men hunted him down.
Rua bent her head closer to the dirt. ‘Whatever the humans buried is not dead.’
‘I’ll dig it out and we’ll see what it is,’ said Rrrk.
‘Be careful.’
‘Stand back,’ he ordered.
Rua didn’t hesitate to obey. Humans were danger ous creatures and if they didn’t want this, it might be even more dangerous.
It didn’t take Rrrk long to dig through the earth. The soil was soft and his claws sharp. He dragged a wooden object out of the hole. Rrrk struck the box with his feet and it broke open.
‘It’s a human pup!’ exclaimed Rua.
The box had an air of sadness about it that con fused her. Rua’s maternal heart could tell how much the parents had loved this child.
‘It’ll be nothing but trouble,’ said Rrrk. ‘I’ll put it back.’
‘No, you don’
t.’ Rua turned to her mate and snarled. ‘It’s too young. And it’s not dead.’
That was true. It was making an awful noise. Rrrk was the alpha head of the den in every respect ex cept one. Rua was in charge of pups. Without even a yip of discussion, she lifted the child by its wrappings and headed towards the burrow.
Rrrk whistled softly to call her back, but she ignored him. He sighed, knowing it was a waste of dog-breath to argue about this and he was too old to risk having a patch of fur ripped out in the middle of winter. So he pushed the broken box into the hole and replaced the dirt.
‘How will we feed it?’ he asked when they were settled back in the den, the child curled between them.
‘Him,’ Rua said. ‘I will ask Urf to help. She has enough milk for one more.’
Rrrk grunted and curled up like a ball of spinifex. The females were gathering against him and there was nothing an old dingo could do about it. If he were honest, he had to admit he liked the feeling of the child against his fur. It was warming.
Rrrk was nervous the first few days. He walked the ridges at dusk and dawn checking for anything unusual. He sniffed the length of his territory and re-marked it to keep other animals away. No humans came looking for the child. They thought the boy was dead. Urf joined his pack and he found new energy with two females, three pups and the boy to look after.
Rua named the boy Rlph and he grew quickly. Before long, Urf’s pups were hunting and looking after themselves. Next summer, they would be leav ing to find their own territory. But Rlph still needed help with everything.
When Rlph hunted with the pack he was always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘It’s your fault the rabbit got away,’ his pup brothers complained.
They laughed at his useless nose, his long arms, and his skin that couldn’t even grow fur to keep him warm at night.
‘Leave me alone,’ Rlph snarled. He waved a stick and threatened to throw it. Instead, he drew pictures in the dirt. His brothers couldn’t do that with their paws.
But they came back later to dig holes and mark their territory over his artwork.