Artie and the Grime Wave

by Richard Roxburgh

  Anyway, his wolf escapade definitely hadn’t made things better around the Small family home. He only succeeded in making Maggie Small sadder and Lola Small crankier, and Lola was already the crankiest person on earth. Bumshoe tried to cheer Artie up by coming up with ways that Lola’s rage could be used by science. ‘Eventually,’ Bumshoe mused, ‘Lola could replace the solid-fuel rocket booster used to launch the space shuttle! They could just lie her down under the shuttle and on the countdown she could yell ARTIE, COME AND EAT YOUR BEANS, YOU MORON! and it’d be off into orbit!’

  Needless to say, when she got home, Lola hadn’t believed Artie’s story about the lost shoes either, let alone the Cave-of-Possibly-Stolen-Stuff.

  ‘Now I’ll have to take you to the charity shop in the morning and get you new ones!’ she snapped, glowering at him over her baked beans.

  ‘I can go by myself,’ said Artie.

  ‘No, you can’t’, she shouted. ‘Because I’ve just paid for the groceries, so I’ll need to withdraw more money and you can’t be trusted to do that because you’re such a turnip!’ And with that she thundered out of the room, slamming the door.

  Chapter 4

  The next day Artie woke up late. Lola had already gone out to meet her friends and there was still no money for shoes, so he loitered around the house all day in his bare feet, trying not to think about the Cave-of-Possibly-Stolen-Stuff. Everything about the place gave him a bad feeling in his belly.

  Eventually, evening fell, and Artie busied himself making his dinner. Since the night of the wolf he had decided he could never look another baked bean in the eye again, so he had started his own culinary experiments. He knew you couldn’t just eat sweet things all the time, so he always tried to add at least one healthy ingredient. Some of his recent feats included:

  Tuna Ice-cream Surprise with Sprinkles

  Banana, Corn and Spaghetti Smoothie

  Nougat and Chocolate Bar Sandwich with Lettuce and Mayonnaise

  Carrot, Smarties and Peanut Butter Omelette

  Tonight, Artie set about creating a chicken chip, tomato and honey sandwich. He was quietly pleased with the result, having made many worse-tasting sandwiches, and sat alone, munching his creation.

  ‘ARTEEE … ARTEEE …’ came a call from outside.

  Artie scampered to the kitchen window and saw his neighbour Zoran’s face peering over the fence. He put down his sandwich and tore out into the backyard.

  ‘Hi, Zoran!’

  Artie’s neighbours were a family known as the Unpronounceable-enkos. Their daughter Gladys was in his year at school, and she was always teased about her name and her accent, though Artie really liked both. Gladys was super-bright; in fact she was always coming first in everything. She would often help Artie with his homework, and occasionally, when he was really behind, she would simply give him all the answers, though this was mostly accompanied by a lot of head-shaking and tutting noises.

  The Unpronounceable-enkos came from a country called Ukraine. The only part of their name that everyone was certain about was the -enko bit, but the rest of it looked like someone had torn apart a bag of Scrabble tiles. So they were just referred to as the Unpronounceable-enkos.

  Artie, however, knew Gladys’s full name off by heart, and he would lie in bed practising it, enjoying the feel of the letters rolling around in his mouth … Gladys Zatserklyannaya-Tsekmistrenko.

  Gladys’s mum and dad were always cooking delicious things, and Artie would hang about in his backyard around dinnertime in the hope that he would be invited in.

  These dinners were the highlight of Artie’s social calendar. Gladys’s mum, Oksana, always fussed over him and stroked his hair. She worked as a librarian, and would frequently hand him a book or two that she’d borrowed for him. Zoran was gigantic, hairy and terrifying-looking. He was an Olympic discus champion, and there were photographs of him all over the walls as a young man, wearing Lycra tights and a funny hairdo.

  The other good thing about visiting the Unpronouncableenkos was that Artie would often sit next to Gladys. He never said very much to her, he just liked being around her.

  On this particular evening, Zoran looked unusually sombre.

  ‘Hey, Artie. You haven’t seen Gareth the tort-oyse, huh?’ he whispered.

  ‘Is Gareth missing?’ asked Artie.

  ‘Yeah. Very bad, very bad! He been stolen from out of the tank. They steal our telly, and our tort-oyse! You can save up and buy another telly, but there is only one Gareth, you know? Gladys is very upset …’ Zoran gave his huge, hairy head a forlorn shake. ‘Anyway, you hungry, Artie?’

  ‘Oh … maybe … Just a little bit,’ said Artie, whose sandwich didn’t seem so appealing anymore.

  ‘Come on, then!’ boomed the neighbour. In a flash, Artie had made his way into their yard via the secret passage he’d created through the hedge and was surrounded by the warm mayhem of the Unpronounceable-enko family.

  ‘Where are your shoes, Artie?’ asked Oksana, but Artie was saved the embarrassment of answering by Gladys’s little twin sisters, who started gabbling stories about their new unicorn shoes.

  At the dinner table, Artie noticed that Gladys had been crying. Something felt sore in his chest when he saw that.

  ‘I’m sorry about Gareth,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Could you please keep a look out for him? Maybe whoever stole him made a mistake. I mean, why would anyone want to steal my tortoise?’ Gladys’s eyes flooded with tears.

  ‘What’s goin’ on in the world?’ yelled Zoran, ‘People all up and down the neighbourhood having things stole from right under them!’

  Artie began to feel a prickling sensation on the back of his neck.

  ‘What sort of things?’ he asked.

  ‘Everythings! All things!’ Zoran bellowed. ‘Television, cats, heater, rabbits, clothings … Who steal clothings? Who steal little girl’s tort-oyses?’ He glared wild-eyed at Artie, as if he was the one who’d been stealing everything.

  ‘Here you go, skinny boy,’ said Oksana, laying a huge plate of crumbed meat and vegetables in front of him.

  ‘Have some this!’ growled Zoran, spearing a great slab of cheese with a knife and waving it in the air. ‘I make this cheese myself. With my bare hand!’

  Artie had encountered Zoran’s cheese before, and knew that even though it smelt like nappies, it tasted absolutely delicious.

  In normal circumstances Artie Small would have been blissfully happy in this moment, chewing on the delicious food and listening to the chattering of the Unpronounceable-enkos. But things weren’t normal. Something bad was going on. Artie was beginning to think that it had everything to do with the Cave-of-Possibly-Stolen-Stuff, which was now a Cave-of-Almost-Certainly-Stolen-Stuff. He also had an uneasy feeling that whoever the people were at the cave, they must also be responsible for Gareth’s disappearance.

  As he sat eating his dinner, glancing at Gladys’s sad face, Artie made a decision. He would do whatever it took to find her tortoise and bring him safely home.

  He almost blurted out the story of the cave, but quickly thought better of it. Why would they believe him? Like the rest of the neighbourhood, the Unpronouceable-enkos had seen him running around his garden being chased by an imaginary wolf.

  No, if Artie was going to convince the grown-up world about the cave, he and Bumshoe would need proof. And Artie had an idea how to get it …

  Chapter 5

  The bedrooms at Bumshoe’s house looked just like dormitories, with rows of triple-decker bunk beds for all the siblings, and so many clothes and toys strewn over the floors that the floors themselves weren’t visible. The boys snuck into one of these rooms and Bumshoe quickly slid open a bedside drawer, pulling out a tiny black object.

  ‘If Angus realises this is gone there’ll be hell to pay!’ he shout-whispered. (Do you remember about shout-whispering, dear reader?) ‘He saved up for years for this camera!’ Artie, who was keeping watch at the bedroom door, didn�
�t really know what ‘hell to pay’ meant, but it didn’t sound good. Bumshoe buried the little object in his pocket in a sticky nest of Chococaramel-Cococreambombs and grinned at his friend.

  ‘Lucky for me our place is so crazy, nobody ever knows where anything is!’

  As if to prove his point, the bedroom door suddenly burst open and in flew about seven of Bumshoe’s siblings, yelling and squirting each other with water pistols. Bumshoe and Artie took the chance to scramble out through the junk of the Bumshoe hallway, past the junk of the Bumshoe lounge room, and beyond the junk of the Bumshoe front yard. They passed about five million Bumshoe brothers and sisters on their way.

  So far, Artie’s plan was unfolding like clockwork. He had realised that what the pair needed was video proof, and he remembered that Bumshoe’s brother Angus was always filming animals in the wild, and had the perfect camera for the job. Artie had explained to Bumshoe that if they could just borrow that camera for the weekend, and set it up in exactly the right position in front of the cave, they could film the comings and goings of the robbers. Then they could take the evidence to the police, the robbers would be caught, and last but not least, Artie could return Gareth the tortoise to Gladys, who would be happy once again.

  The two boys took off on their bikes, keeping an eagle-eye out for Nate and Wart as they went.

  Artie and Bumshoe heard Aunty-boy long before they cycled past her house. There was, as always, a great thumping noise as she pounded out a military march on her piano. Her little ramshackle cottage seemed as if it was about to bounce off its stumps with all the ruckus.

  The town was awash with stories about Aunty-boy. Nobody seemed to know how she’d got such a strange name. As long as anyone could remember she had always been Aunty-boy. Some people said she used to be a world-famous concert pianist, and others said she was a mad scientist who only played the piano for relaxation. Others still said she’d had her heart broken when she was a young lady and had lived as a virtual hermit ever since.

  What everyone agreed on, though, was that Aunty-boy was NUTS. Stark staring, one hundred per cent, no-shadow-of-a-doubt, let’s be clear about it: NUTS. As nutty as a plate of peanuts if you took the peas away. Or a plate of walnuts if you took the walls away. Or a plate of Brazil nuts if you took Brazil away. She was just plain nuts.*

  *Please note, dear reader: this sentence may contain nuts

  As the boys rode past her house, the piano abruptly stopped, the window flew open, and the old lady popped her head out.

  ‘Yikes. Yikes. Boys on bikes!’ she chirped. ‘Where are you headed, butterscotch pies?’

  Aunty-boy was about the same size across as she was up and down. Always wearing brightly coloured clothing, she looked a bit like somebody’s balloon collection. She wore thick spectacles, which gave the impression that she was gazing at you through the bottom of drinking glasses, and kept her white hair up in a tight little bun. She clacked her false teeth out at the two boys and said, ‘Wait, wait! Sweeties for sweeties!’

  The boys waited while they heard the old lady unbolting the multiple locks on her door. Then she burst out with her dog, Macaroni, offering the boys lollies from a paper bag. They clambered off their bikes and patted the animal, who squirmed excitedly around their legs. Macaroni looked as if he was made entirely of spare parts from other dogs, but he adored his mistress, and was highly intelligent.

  Artie and Bumshoe dreaded being offered sweets by Aunty-boy. The problem was this: Aunty-boy never, ever had a bath or shower, instead choosing to fling baby powder over herself each night before bed. Over the years, every single surface in Aunty-boy’s house had become coated in a thick layer of powder, including her gigantic stash of lollies, which looked like they’d been uncovered in an archeological dig. When eating one of the old lady’s sweets, Artie could never escape the thought that he was also tasting the powder that had once replaced a bath or shower, possibly twenty or thirty years before …

  Artie himself had a fairly relaxed attitude to personal hygiene (without a parent there to insist, he could sometimes forget about showering for days on end), but Aunty-boy was vehemently opposed to the whole idea of soap and water, and railed against it. Today, unprompted, she launched into a little poem on the subject, bobbing up and down, flapping her arms and chanting.

  Being very polite boys, Artie and Bumshoe would always accept the stale and powder-coated objects, pop them in their mouths, hold their breath and feign immense enjoyment. Then, once safely out of sight, they would eject the hideous mouthfuls with much hacking and spitting.

  One time Artie tried to sneak one of these ghastly morsels to Macaroni, assuming the dog would be thrilled. But even Macaroni sniffed at the gooey mess on the pavement and turned away in disgust.

  Today, as ever, the boys dutifully accepted a lolly each.

  ‘Mmmm,’ they said in unison. ‘Delicious.’

  ‘Where are you buzzing to, cherry strudels?’ asked Aunty-boy.

  ‘Up Nail Can Hill,’ said Artie.

  ‘Ooooh. That’s a big trip. Big trip. Toodle-pip!’ said Aunty-boy, clacking her dentures out again for effect. ‘And look out, look out! Strange folk about! Persons unknown tried to steal my Macaroni and put him in a van yesterday! Didn’t they, boy?’ she cried, bending down and talking directly to the dog, who thumped his tail delightedly in agreement. Artie exchanged a look of concern with Bumshoe.

  ‘You’ll need provisions! Energy, boys, energy!’ carolled Aunty-boy, and with this she offered the bag of lollies again.

  ‘Thanks, Aunty-boy, but we’ve probably got enough energy now,’ said Bumshoe.

  ‘Quick, boys, quick! Grab a handful! Sweeties for sweeties,’ she chortled.

  Reluctantly, the boys dipped into the powdery mess and pulled out more of the fossilised sweets.

  At that moment, Nate and his gang appeared down the road. In a flash Artie and Bumshoe were off on their bikes, calling thanks to Aunty-boy over their shoulders. Safely out of sight, they spat their lollies as far as they could, and kept spitting until the taste of powder was finally gone.

  Chapter 6

  The boys soon found their way back up to the cave. Having been spotted by the robbers last time, today they took care not to make a sound. They slid down gently through the bushes towards the clearing. Artie was extra careful as he still had no shoes, and his feet were spiked with prickles and sticks at every step.

  Today the place was abuzz with activity. There was a van in the clearing as well as a huge black motorbike with a sidecar. Some scary-looking men were coming and going, carrying all manner of objects that the boys were now fully convinced were stolen.

  One of the men carried a cage of brilliant-coloured birds in one hand and yapping puppies in the other.

  ‘Check that out! This has got to be where poor old Gareth ended up,’ exclaimed Bumshoe under his breath.

  Artie and Bumshoe wasted no time getting to work. The plan was to position the tiny camera and film the gang of robbers over one entire day. The camera was motion-activated, so it would only record when people were arriving and transporting things to and from the cave. The boys would return the following day and go straight to the police station with their video evidence.

  Having chosen the perfect tree for the task, Bumshoe crouched down and Artie clambered onto his shoulders. On the count of three, Bumshoe grunted and raised himself upright.

  From there, Artie was able to haul himself into the fork of the tree. Despite the fact that his dad had been a trapeze artist and tightrope walker, Artie was terrified of heights. His heart was galloping. To make matters worse, he suddenly realised he was completely exposed to the clearing below. Why was he doing this? This was exactly the kind of thing he hated! An adventure … and a terrifying one at that! He wished more than anything that he was brave like his dad, but he wasn’t. He froze. If the gang spied him now, who knew what would happen?

  Then Artie thought of Gladys, and how thoroughly miserable she looked without her tortoise. He re
ached forward and jammed the camera into a small flat shelf between two branches, making sure it pointed at the entrance to the cave.

  ‘Don’t forget to turn it on!’ yell-whispered Bumshoe from below.

  Artie clicked the little green button and the tiny camera pinged on. Now they would have proof!

  At that moment, a huge black car came roaring into the clearing below and slid to a halt. Two enormous men in black suits and sunglasses sprang out and opened the back door, then stood to attention as a man in a shiny blue suit emerged. He had long, sparse strands of hair slicked down over a balding scalp. He stood with his back to Artie and began barking orders at the thieves, who immediately came running.

  Artie was trapped in full view and only metres away from the group. He stayed deathly still. Sweat started trickling down from the top of his head into his eyes. Maybe they’ll think I’m a koala, he thought. He tried to think koala-like thoughts to calm his pounding heart.

  ‘YOU’RE DAWDLING!’ bellowed the man below. ‘YOU’VE ALL GOT TO WORK FASTER! DO YOU THINK IT’S THE WEEKEND OR SOMETHING?’

  One of the thieves, a wispy little man who was clutching a cage of chirping finches, murmured, ‘Well, it is the weekend, Boss …’

  ‘WHAT DID YOU SAY?’ screamed the man.

  ‘Erm … Well, it is Sunday, and that is … um … the weekend … technically, Boss,’ said the thief.

  The man in the suit clicked his fingers, and one of the men in sunglasses lurched forward, plucked the cage from the thief’s hands, lifted it high in the air and smashed it down over the little man’s head. Startled finches flitted away in all directions.

  The man in sunglasses, expressionless, stepped back to rejoin his colleague at attention.