Surfing Mr Petrovic

by Colin Bowles

  ‘Da cheque?’ he said.

  Matt looked at me and I looked at Matt.

  ‘I leave da cheque in da meter box. How much you?’

  Matt signalled for me to give him a pen. I scrambled in the pocket of my shirt and gave him my biro. He wrote ‘$170’ on the back of his hand.

  ‘Da address?’ Matt said into the phone. ‘You write down now, okay? Sev-en-teen Can-ton-ment Street.’ Matt said it very slowly, to make sure the man on the other end of the line got it right. ‘Okay. Very thank you.’

  He put the phone down. We all gave each other high-fives.

  Then Bluey said, ‘But where are you going to get a cheque for one hundred and seventy dollars?’

  ‘I’ll think of something,’ Matt said.

  It was Matt who had worked out that Mister Petrovic went out every Wednesday afternoon. Matt must have spent an awful lot of time just watching Mister Petrovic’s house and it wasn’t until later that I worked out the reason why.

  The cheque presented us with quite a problem. Matt had already explained that if there was no money in the meter box the delivery man wouldn’t leave the wood. By Wednesday morning I thought the whole prank would be called off. I should have known better. When we met Matt outside the deli on South Terrace on that Wednesday morning he had a huge smile on his face.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ he said.

  ‘Got what?’ Bluey asked.

  ‘I’ve got the cheque.’

  ‘You got a cheque for one hundred and seventy dollars from Mister Petrovic?’

  ‘No, dork-brain. It’s one of my dad’s cheques.’ He reached into his schoolbag and took out a plain white envelope. On the front, in Matt’s handwriting, was ‘Tomasetti’s Mill’. He opened the envelope and took out a thin slip of paper. ‘All I did was fill in “Tomasetti’s Mill” at the top, write the amount, and sign it “Mister Petrovic”. I’ll slip it in his meter box on the way to school this morning.’

  It sounded too easy. There had to be a flaw somewhere.

  ‘But what will your dad say when he finds out a hundred and seventy dollars is missing from his bank account?’ Bluey asked him.

  ‘But that’s the good part,’ Matt said. ‘It’s not my dad’s signature on the cheque so the bank won’t pay the money. Mister Petrovic will have to pay it.’

  I stopped walking. Matt stopped too, and looked at me. ‘Now what’s the matter?’

  ‘But what if he doesn’t have the money?’ I said.

  ‘Look, don’t worry about it,’ Matt said. ‘They’ll probably just come and take the wood back. It will be okay. But if we don’t leave a cheque – somebody’s cheque – in the meter box, the delivery man won’t leave the wood and then the joke won’t work.’

  ‘I don’t think this is a joke,’ I said.

  ‘You’re getting to be a pain,’ Matt said. ‘I don’t know if I want to hang around with you any more.’

  Bluey gave me a look that let me know he was on Matt’s side.

  They both walked ahead and I didn’t make any effort to catch up. Things seemed to be getting right out of hand. I thought perhaps we were being a little tough on Mister Petrovic, even if he was a hardened war criminal.

  I had a stomach ache all day in class and I couldn’t concentrate on my schoolwork. When the bell went for the end of school, Matt and Bluey were first out of the school gates. I was about last. I’d made up my mind that I didn’t want any part of what they were going to do to Mister Petrovic.

  But when I reached the corner of Cantonment and Federation Streets, I couldn’t help myself. I had to see what was happening.

  I saw Bluey and Matt halfway down the street, hiding behind the wall of a disused motor-repair shop. I decided I wasn’t going to try and hide. I sat down on the wall in front of them and dropped my schoolbag on the footpath.

  ‘Get down!’ Matt hissed at me. ‘They’ll see you!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone! Get down!’

  As Matt had predicted, Mister Petrovic appeared to be out. The driveway gates were open and so were the garage doors, and his car was gone.

  ‘I don’t think we should be doing this,’ I said.

  Just then I heard the roar of a big truck. It had just turned into Cantonment Street from South Terrace and was chugging up the hill. There was an absolutely massive load of wood on the back. Oh, no. That couldn’t all be for Mister Petrovic. Could it?

  The truck stopped outside Mister Petrovic’s house and the driver got out. He was a big man in blue work shorts and a blue singlet. He had a pot belly and a moustache. He went to Mister Petrovic’s house, opened the meter box and took out the envelope that Matt had put there that morning. He opened it, saw the cheque and seemed satisfied. Then he went back to his truck, took the clipboard out of the cabin and checked whatever was written on his delivery sheet. He stared at the driveway and scratched his head.

  He seemed confused. He obviously thought there wasn’t enough space in the driveway to put it all.

  ‘We have to tell him it’s a joke,’ I said and got up.

  ‘If you do, I’ll beat the shit out of you,’ Matt said from behind the wall. I knew it wasn’t an idle threat. I’d seen Matt beat up Nathan Rogerson for spitting in his lunch box. Nathan’s nose had bled like a tap and he’d had to go home for the whole afternoon.

  But it was too late anyway, even if I’d decided to be brave, which I probably wouldn’t have. The delivery driver just sort of shrugged, threw the clipboard back in the cabin and climbed back behind the wheel. The truck started up with a roar and he backed it all the way into Mister Petrovic’s driveway. Then the tray on the back of the truck tipped up and the wood emptied onto the driveway and into Mister Petrovic’s garage.

  Now I don’t know if you’ve ever in your life seen ten tons of mill-ends, but it’s a lot of wood. An awful lot of wood. The truck just seemed to tip and tip for ever and there was a lot of banging and clattering as the wood emptied out. By the time it was done there was a mountain of off-cuts in front of Mister Petrovic’s house so high you couldn’t see the garage and you could only just see the roof.

  Just about then Mister Petrovic came home. Mister Petrovic drove a really ancient Holden with rust spots all over it. There was no mistaking it anywhere. He drove right past us down Cantonment Street and he mustn’t have seen us because he didn’t stop. The Holden braked suddenly in front of the wood pile and Mister Petrovic got out.

  Even from where I was I could see the veins in his neck bulging out like bits of rope. His face changed colour, going from white to a really grotesque purple colour and he literally stood in the middle of the road and jumped up and down on the spot. He screamed things at the driver in a language I didn’t understand and shook his fist at him. The driver climbed down from the cabin and showed him his clipboard and then tried to show him the envelope with the cheque in it.

  But I don’t think Mister Petrovic was listening.

  The shouting went on for a long time and a lot of people came and stood around to watch. The whole of Cantonment Street was blocked off by the truck and Mister Petrovic’s car. People were trying to drive through and they shouted and honked their horns but neither Mister Petrovic or the wood-delivery man took any notice. They were too busy arguing. Matt and Bluey lay on their backs, helpless with laughter.

  I suppose it was funny, if you weren’t Mister Petrovic or the delivery driver.

  After they’d finished laughing and giving each other high-fives, Matt turned to Bluey and said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  They ran off.

  Right about then Mister Petrovic turned to get back into his car and looked up the street and saw me standing there. And for just a moment our eyes met. And that’s when I think he knew.

  8

  That particular week, Connie and Michael were at our house. Whenever they were with us, it always made me wonder why I had to stay the whole time with Mum. Why didn’t Dad ever have me over to stay with him? He said it was because he worked such l
ong hours but I figured it was because of Belinda.

  I never minded Connie. She was in the same grade as me, and she was a quiet kid, with long, curly brown hair. At first I thought she was really snooty and I didn’t like her. But once I got to know her she was okay. Her little brother Michael is something else. He’s three grades younger than me, a nerdy little kid with glasses. He always gets one hundred per cent for everything, even maths. Whenever anyone talks about him they use words like ‘gifted’ and ‘a child with special needs’.

  He has special needs all right. He needs to be beaten up regularly.

  A few days after the wood incident with Mister Petrovic, I was in the family room doing my maths homework. Question three was 429 divided by eleven. I was trying to think what our math teacher, Mister Woods, had told us about goes-into’s – something about a Magic Zero. Where was I going to put the Magic Zero? If I put it on the end of the eleven that made it 429 divided by 110, and that looked even harder. If I put it on the end of the 429 that made it 4290 divided by eleven which made my head hurt.

  Connie was sitting at the other end of the table writing in her English Test Book. Michael was sitting in an armchair reading a great thick book called Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. No one had made him do it, or anything. He was reading it because he wanted to.

  Amazing.

  ‘Connie,’ I said. ‘What are you like at goes into’s?’

  ‘Division, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah. When you’ve got a number in a little prison and another one outside talking to it and you’ve got to put another number on top of the prison to get the right answer. Division.’

  Connie put her English book down and came and sat next to me. She had a look at what I’d done so far, which was nothing.

  ‘Well, first of all you have to divide forty-two by eleven. Can you do that?’ she said, after a bit.

  I chewed the end of my pencil. ‘Eight?’ It was a wild guess, but every now and then wild guesses come off and teachers think you’ve been learning and it takes the pressure off for a bit.

  Connie is really nice. She never loses her patience with me, like Mister Woods does. ‘Do you know your eleven times table?’ she asked me.

  ‘I bet he doesn’t,’ Michael said.

  ‘Shut up, Michael,’ Connie said. ‘Okay, let’s go through it. Once eleven is …’

  I stared at her in blind panic. ‘Eleven?’ I said. Another wild guess.

  ‘Right. Two elevens are …’

  ‘Eight?’

  Michael sniggered behind his book. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said.

  ‘Shut up, Michael!’ Connie turned back to me. ‘Look, the eleven times table is easy. The answer is the same number that you’re multiplying by, only twice. Two elevens are twenty-two. Two two’s, get it? So three elevens are …’

  Well, if it was the same number I was multiplying by, which was three, only twice, then … let me think. Two threes are … ‘Six,’ I said, feeling that I had made a breakthrough.

  Michael looked over the top of Great Expectations, his face beet-red with laughter. ‘You’d have better luck trying to teach the cat,’ he said.

  Connie did not look discouraged. ‘Shut up, Michael,’ she repeated. She picked up a pencil and turned back to me. ‘Look, here’s the eleven times table,’ she said, and she wrote it down for me on a piece of paper.

  ‘They’re the same numbers,’ I said. ‘Only twice.’

  ‘Duh, yeah, Tao,’ Michael said from behind his book.

  ‘Shut up, Michael,’ Connie repeated. She turned back to me. ‘Do you see how it works?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got it now. That’s easy.’

  ‘Okay,’ Connie said. ‘How many elevens in forty-two?’

  I looked at the eleven times table she had written out for me. ‘Forty-two’s not down here,’ I said.

  ‘No, you’re going to have a remainder.’

  This was what I was afraid of. Remainders meant doing a goes-into and then doing a take-away.

  ‘What number’s closest to forty-two?’ Connie asked me.

  ‘Forty-four.’

  ‘But that’s gone past forty-two. What number’s closest but before forty-two?’

  I looked down at the list Connie had written. ‘Thirty-three’.

  ‘Which is how many times eleven?’

  Another check of the list. ‘Three.’

  ‘Right,’ Connie said and wrote ‘3’ over the little prison ‘429’ was in. ‘And forty-two take away thirty-three is?’

  I stared at her. I knew I had to say something. ‘Eight?’

  ‘Close,’ she said, obviously not realising that ‘eight’ was just my favourite guess at anything. ‘Think again.’

  But Michael had already worked it out. ‘Ask him who discovered America,’ he said, ‘I bet you he’ll say “eight”.’

  That was it. I’d had enough of being taunted by a third-grader. I leaped up from the table and jumped on him, knee-first. I landed right in the middle of Great Expectations. My knee made a very satisfying ‘squitch’ sound as it sank into his stomach. He screamed, knowing what was coming next, and tried to cover his face with his arms. But I was much bigger and stronger than he was. I grabbed his arms and held them out of the way above his head. Then I hawked a big goozy from the back of my throat and opened my mouth so he could see what was coming.

  ‘Say you’re sorry!’ I shouted at him.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Say you’re sorry!’

  He wouldn’t, so I slowly let it drip. A big bit of my spit landed on his nose and dribbled down his chin. He writhed and yelled some more. That was when Mum came in.

  ‘What’s going on? Tao! Leave Michael alone! Get off him now!’

  I did as she said. I got off, resting all my weight on my knee and using his stomach as a springboard. He gave a hoot of pain, the little wimp.

  ‘Would someone tell me what’s going on?’

  Connie, to her eternal credit, just looked at the floor. But Michael yammered away like the little snitch he is. ‘We were just helping Tao with his homework and he just went ape because he didn’t know his eleven times table!’

  I stared at him in outrage. How could someone twist the truth so much?

  Mum looked at me. ‘Well?’

  ‘He was making fun of me.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Something about … I can’t remember now.’

  ‘Well, you can both go to bed half an hour early tonight. I’m not going to put up with that sort of behaviour in my house. Do you both understand?’

  I nodded.

  I understood all right.

  I understood that apart from everything else, I was stupid. Well, if you’ve got the name, you might as well have the game.

  9

  When our teacher, Mister Woods, came into class the next day he had a really cross expression on his face. He looked around the class and pointed at Matt. ‘Armstrong, the principal wants to see you in his office. Now.’

  Matt looked at me and I looked at Bluey. Uh-oh.

  The room was completely still. Nobody else knew what he’d done but they all knew it must be pretty bad. A few of the kids were grinning. The ones who didn’t like Matt.

  Which, as it turned out, seemed to be most of them.

  When Matt came back into the classroom his face was bright red, like he’d just run three laps of the school oval. He didn’t look at me or at Bluey. The school principal, Mister Watson, followed him into the classroom and everything went quiet.

  ‘McGrath, Symonds, come with me please.’

  That was when me and Bluey knew for sure he’d snitched on us.

  The rat.

  Mister Watson sat behind his desk, tapping on the arm of his chair with his fingers. The sun was streaming in through the blinds behind his head and we had to squint to look at him. Not that we tried to look at him very often, except when he told us to. We spent most of our time staring at the floor.

  ‘I imagine
you know what this is about,’ he said.

  ‘Yes sir,’ we both mumbled.

  ‘This morning I had a phone call from a Mister Petrovic, who lives near the school. Do either of you know him?’

  Me and Bluey looked at each other.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir.’

  ‘He seems to know you.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Ten tons of firewood,’ the principal muttered. ‘This poor man could not get his car in and out of his own garage. He had to climb over the fence – and bear in mind, he is seventy-two years old – climb over his own fence to get to his front door. Something funny, Mister McGrath?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Bluey said.

  I felt my cheeks getting hotter and hotter. My stomach was crawling around inside me, trying to find some place to hide. This was it. I was going to get thrown out of school. I tried to imagine what Mum would say. It might even be in the local newspaper. I was going to be branded for life. The kid who tipped ten tons of firewood on an old-age pensioner.

  ‘Did you really think you were going to get away with this?’ Mister Watson said.

  ‘No, sir.’

  He made a clicking noise with his tongue. ‘The cheque that was left in Mister Petrovic’s letterbox was traced to the account of Mister Armstrong. Evidently it’s young Armstrong’s handwriting on the cheque. I’ve just spoken to his father on the telephone and he is coming to collect him from school right now. I imagine he will have a few words to say to his son about this matter, as he will now be obliged to make good the cheque and make arrangements to collect the firewood from Mister Petrovic’s driveway himself. He did not sound very pleased. Do you think your parents will be very pleased when they are told of this unsa-voury incident?’

  ‘No sir,’ we both mumbled. I could imagine what my Mum was going to say. When she gets mad she blows up her chest like Arnold Schwarzenegger and comes out swinging. I would have liked to crawl into the caretaker’s cupboard and not come out until I was twenty-six.

  ‘I asked your young friend if he had any accomplices. He said you helped him. Is that correct?’

  I could feel Bluey trying to make eye-contact with me. I made a decision. Matt had split on me but that didn’t mean I should split on him. It was a question of principle.