The Cow Poo Treasure Hunt

by Theo Baker

  “Hank!” someone shouted. It was Ashley coming towards me. “You’ve missed loads of injuries.” She was supporting Jonah Gottlieb, who was covered in mud from head to toe and looking off to a faraway place.

  “Good ones?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She slapped Jonah lightly a few times to rouse him. He was unresponsive. “I brought my smelling salts,” she said, placing a little packet under his nostrils.

  Jonah snapped to and immediately started coughing up … mud.

  “Miss Adolf’s making you eat mud?”

  “I wish!” Jonah said, his eyes lighting up. He started laughing, then he started sobbing, then he was doing both at the same time.

  “You’re all right, Jonah,” Ashley said. “You’re going home.”

  “She scrambled his brains!” I said.

  “Poison ivy on the right arm, stinging nettles on the neck, a twisted ankle, and general mental exhaustion,” Ashley said. “Adolf’s running a minibus service. They’re calling it the Quitters’ Express.” She pointed at the bus parked on the side of the road. Bill the caretaker was in the driver’s seat. Alnor, the orange cat from the playground, was sitting on his shoulders. I waved at both of them but got no response.

  Ashley started to walk over to it. “And watch that rucksack,” she called back. “Adolf’s confiscating anything suspect.”

  Papa Pete’s tinderbox!

  “Wait, Ash! Take this back for me.” I undid my rucksack and quickly tipped everything out onto the muddy field. My tub of cake mix. My three lightsabres. My plastic Wolverine-claw glove. My mobile phone. My Bermuda shorts. The complimentary T-shirt my weirdo dentist gives away with every cavity filling. My ten pairs of clean socks … hello, trench foot! And the tinderbox.

  “Can you take this back to my parents?” I asked, handing it to Ashley. “It’s valuable. I’ll text them to say that you’ll bring it by.”

  “Don’t let Adolf see your phone. She sent them all back on the last minibus.”

  A whistle pierced the air. It was followed by a shout of “Henry Zipzer!”

  Miss Adolf was heading right for us. Somehow she seemed to be covering the ground at the speed of an Olympic sprinter. As she neared I saw that her nose was coated in white sunscreen. When Jonah Gottlieb saw her, he fell to the ground and started fish flopping.

  I quickly shoved my phone down my trousers.

  “See ya,” Ashley said quickly, and she walked off with Jonah the fish to the sad little bus.

  “Ah, Henry Zipzer,” Miss Adolf said. “Only an hour and a half late. If this were a real survival scenario, we’d be eating your corpse by now.”

  My jaw dropped. “Miss?”

  “Yes, Henry, the quick and the dead. And as is always the case, all you can do quickly is make a mess. Let’s take a look at what you’ve brought, then.” At great speed, Miss Adolf unfolded a giant retractable prodding stick like it was some sort of flick knife. At the end of it was a rubber finger. It may not have even been made of rubber. She poked through my shoddy belongings. “Excellent work, Henry. I see you’ve packed all the survival essentials. Three plastic swords…”

  “Lightsabres.”

  “Rubbish.” She flipped them up with her poking stick, then caught them and broke them in two, depositing the pieces in one of her pockets. “A plastic hedging claw.” This she crushed under her foot, along with my spirit. “And last but not least, what no outdoorsman should ever forget, cake mix.”

  “That’s for you. Frankie and I were going to bake it for you.”

  “Very humorous, Mr Zipzer, but as you’ll see, humour will not save you in the wild. The ‘funny’ one is, in my experience, the first one to be eaten alive by bears. And I see nothing here that will aid in your survival.

  “No jacket, no sleeping bag, no torch,” she went on. “No cooking utensils, no signalling apparatus, no water, no water-purification device. How do you intend to survive without water? You’re not planning to … ahem … recycle? If not, you’ll just have to dig a well. There’s a water source about three metres below the topsoil. Did you bring a survival shovel?”

  I couldn’t even answer. It’s hard to talk when you feel like your spine is being slowly crushed. Or maybe that was just Miss Adolf’s prodding stick. She was patting my pockets with the finger. It could have been a real finger. I saw blood. I’m not kidding.

  “Where’s your mobile phone?”

  “Forgot it, Miss.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve done today. Now, pack your bag up properly, and add those two rocks to it. We will need them at the campsite. What are you waiting for? The quick and the dead, Henry.”

  She used her prodding stick to guide my movements, finding those places on my body − like behind my knee or near my armpit − where just a touch can make you lose balance. I was her marionette. And those rocks weren’t just rocks, they were boulders.

  After I’d repacked, she had me hoist the whole pack over my head and pump it up and down as I jogged to the campsite. Her prodding stick tickled my calves the whole time.

  Once I arrived at the campsite, I collapsed … into the mud.

  Everyone was setting up tents. I spotted Frankie among them. He was a shell of a man. He’d lost the twinkle in his eye.

  “Where do you want the rocks, Miss?” I asked.

  “In your pack. They’re your burden for being tardy. Now go and set up your tent.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  I collapsed again when I reached Frankie. He was struggling with the tent.

  “Gimme your water,” was how he greeted me.

  “It’s eight feet below my bum.”

  “Help me build this tent, then.”

  “Can’t we just sleep under the stars?”

  “And be eaten alive by wild badgers? Get up.”

  We struggled with the tent for what felt like hours. It was a gorgeous-looking thing in the picture on the box, but no matter what we did, it never resembled much more than a rubbish bag. Finally we got something assembled where one side of it, at least, was a few feet off the ground.

  “That’ll work,” I said.

  “It might work, if you hadn’t pegged my foot to the ground.”

  The super-taut pole was threaded through Frankie’s shoelaces and then into the mud. And that pole was supporting our whole concoction. I kneeled beside him and clawed the tent peg out. Then I lifted it through the lace with a trembling arm − but there was so much pressure that it twanged out of my hand and went whipping through the air, missing my earlobe by less than an inch. Whatever had been “tent-like” about our tent evaporated in a depressing sigh.

  “Hank, this is a nightmare.”

  “It’s OK. We can just sleep under the tent. Or hang it up like tarpaulin. Or we can make some clothes out of the material. Like a squirrel suit. Then we’ll climb up the trees and glide throughout the night. I’m sorry. I’m just really hungry. Maybe I’ll get started on the well. And the latrine.”

  “Do us both a favour and dig two separate holes.”

  A voice came from behind me. “Well, Henry,” said Miss Adolf. The rubber finger prodded our tent. “Since your arrival, your team has made negative progress. I bet you boys are hungry, yes?”

  We just stared up at her with sad orphan eyes.

  She produced a bag of instant rice from her khaki short-suit. “Here’s your supper.” She chucked the packet over the tent into a patch of stinging nettles. “In the wild, nothing comes easily.”

  “But how will we cook it, Miss?” Frankie asked. “You took my matches.”

  “See that ridge in the distance?” she asked, and pointed to a featureless spot on the horizon. “Run to it. You may find some flint there. And if not, you’ll have time to think of a way to start a fire on the run back.”

  For a split second, I had the unmistakable feeling that this was all Emily’s fault. Her lizard’s curse was hanging over our entire expedition. Then I just started thinking about her and Mum at the deli, with all its
pastries, sandwiches, cured meat and glasses of water whenever you wanted them. Almost crying, I scooped up a handful of dirt with my Wolverine claw.

  “Digging the well?” Frankie asked.

  “No, our shallow graves.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  From the pages of Emily Zipzer’s field notebook…

  3:43 p.m., 7th May

  Papa Pete made friendly gestures early on, yet his later actions show that he has sided with the mother. Although I am not washing up as the mother would have hoped, he has me waiting tables.

  I protested. I explained that I should be auditing his accounts, reviewing his stocktaking procedures, looking for holes in his supply chain. These words clearly frightened him.

  He disguised his betrayal of me by saying, “Everyone starts somewhere.” Then he had the nerve to claim that even the eminent Charles Darwin started out waiting tables. That is not true. Darwin studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge universities before joining the voyage of the Beagle at the age of 22.

  Papa Pete pretended not to hear me when I told him this. I am beginning to learn that the truth is too frightening for most people. They fear it like they fear an approaching enemy.

  I have not given up hope, however. As I still aspire to run this place, I decided to use my time waiting tables to make a study of the customers in their natural environment.

  General Impressions: on the whole I find the customers disagreeable. They are listless, flabby, and make decisions that are not in their best interests. This last observation I find the most puzzling.

  Example: a morbidly obese adult male was sitting at table seven with his teenage son, a squirrelly boy with extensive acne. The adult male ordered a chocomochaccino with cream, and the teenage male ordered a pannacotta. I determined both orders to be totally irrational.

  In a show of decency, I “corrected” their orders, and brought instead a black coffee for the adult male and a plate of carrots for the teenage male. They did not immediately appreciate why my substitutions were superior to their original orders.

  I explained to the adult male, very slowly so he could understand, that a chocomochaccino is very high in saturated fats, and that he should avoid it for the sake of his cardiovascular health. He did not understand my words.

  I explained, more simply this time, that he needed to lower his cholesterol. And to the teenage male, I explained that fresh veggies would help to clear up his skin.

  I was perfectly reasonable and rational, but they saw neither reason nor rationality. The adult male said that he could make his “own decisions”.

  Certainly he could make his own decisions, I replied, but mine were better. The adult male then reacted emotionally and asked to see my manager.

  His emotional reaction I find very interesting. When he was presented with the truth, he attempted to reject it, like Papa Pete. But while Papa Pete pretended not to “hear” the truth, the obese adult male actively resisted it with male pattern violence.

  (Throughout the day, I have noticed several similar reactions. I am beginning to formulate a thesis: the masses are not fit to make their own decisions!)

  I also suspect Papa Pete has grown suspicious of me. He knows that I have been observing that the deli does not run very smoothly under his management. He worries that I will tell the mother. He watches me writing these observations. He watches, yet can do nothing to stop me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  We had been running for hours. We had run all the way to the ridge on the horizon. We had found nothing there. And so we had run back. We had run through mud, through puddles, through tall grass, through nettles. We had run for so long that we could hardly remember what life was like before we began running. We had pushed through cramps and pain until we just sort of felt nothing. We had lost all hope.

  Now Frankie and I were running back to the campsite, where we had no tent, no latrine, no well, and no dinner waiting.

  Before we had left camp, I dug a hole a few feet deep but had to stop when my hand started throbbing and clenched shut. Frankie had rigged up a tool out of sticks and rocks to hook onto the packet of rice and try to rescue it from the stinging nettles. He had to give up when he got stung by a wasp in his armpit. He said he’d never known a pain like that in all his life. Our only hope was that Ashley had returned to the campsite with a suitcase full of contraband – beautiful, lovely contraband.

  We were deep in Miss Adolf’s world. Back in the real world, Miss Adolf was always on at me for living in my own fantasy world. But at least my fantasy world was harmless and fun. It was full of cool birds, spaceships, banana peels and night-vision goggles. Miss Adolf’s fantasy world was a pit of despair, filled only with sweat, weird prodding sticks, mud and—

  “Stop! Hank, stop!”

  Frankie pulled up and hunched over, gasping for air. I’d never seen Frankie so filthy. He’s the clean one. That’s his thing.

  “Hank, not one more step. Look.”

  My foot was hovering three inches above a cowpat the size of an extra large pizza. “Phew. That was close.”

  “Don’t look now, but we’re surrounded,” Frankie said.

  We were surrounded. On every side, as far as the eye could see, were cowpats. It was a cowpat minefield! There was literally no safe step. Ah yes, we were deep in Miss Adolf’s world.

  “How long have we been running through this?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do we get out of this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is your name Frankie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Frankie, snap out of it, man!”

  “I can’t take it any more, Hank. It’s too disgusting. Miss Adolf is taking me apart, piece by piece.”

  “We’re going to make it, I promise. And when we get back to camp, there’ll be food waiting. I’m going to text Ashley and have her bring an enormous pizza on the next minibus. A pizza so big they’ll have to strap it to the roof.”

  I got my phone out from my nether parts. I had seven text messages from Ashley.

  1. “Your parents are being weird.”

  2. “Your parents seem lonely. Keep saying they can’t remember how to have fun on their own.”

  3. “Your mum just made me a sandwich and watched me eat every bite. Said she missed you and Emily ‘too much’, but you’ve only been gone a day!”

  4. “Your parents are making me play board games.”

  5. “Your mum is braiding my hair. Sez she wants to adopt me. What is going on?”

  6. “Your parents are definitely trying to kidnap me. Doors locked. Windows also locked.”

  7. “Help!”

  “Never mind Ashley,” I said. “She’s abandoned us. I’ll just have to get the pizza guy to deliver it here.”

  Frankie stared at my phone. “Oh. You have a real phone. I thought it was just one of your make-believe phones. You can’t have that. If Miss Adolf sees it—”

  A whistle screamed across the sky. We really were in Miss Adolf’s fantasy world. All you had to do was think her name and she materialized into the nightmare.

  “Henry Zipzerrrrr!” came the approaching voice of the undead.

  “Quick,” I said, and chucked the phone at Frankie. “Hide it.”

  “I don’t want it,” he said, and chucked it back. But Dad’s plastic zip-up bag had made it all slippery, and the phone slipped through my catlike grip … and fell with a nauseating plop into the middle of a cowpat, splattering Frankie.

  With the balance of a ballerina and the agility of a cat, Miss Adolf had flawlessly negotiated the cowpat minefield and was standing in front of us. “What are you two doing?” she asked.

  “I thought I saw a ruby,” I said.

  “And why would you think that?” She poked at the nearest cowpat with her stick.

  “Isn’t this a treasure-hunting expedition, Miss? I thought I signed up for Treasure-Hunting Camp.”

  “When the bear began eating the funny one, Henry
, the funny one wasn’t laughing any more,” Miss Adolf said. Then she prodded Frankie’s earlobe. “You’ve soiled yourself, Frankie.”

  Frankie sighed. He was covered in cow poo. “I quit. I’m getting the next minibus out of here. You can come with me or not, Hank, but I can’t take it any more.”

  “I’d like to say it was a valiant effort, Frankie,” Miss Adolf said. “But it wasn’t.”

  “You can’t go, Frankie,” I cried. “Who will I camp with now?”

  He shrugged, and then, with his head down, Frankie began the long, slow march towards the Quitters’ Express.

  “Come with me, Henry,” Miss Adolf said, and prodded me in the armpit. “I think I can find someone for you to camp with.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Miss Adolf prodded me back to the campsite and over to a perfectly erected tent with a fire-pit in front. Hanging on vines beside it were socks, clean T-shirts and a Westbrook Academy blazer. No one was home, but it wasn’t hard to figure out who my new partner was.

  “McKelty is probably in the woods foraging for food items. He’s an excellent outdoorsman, and should make you a fine partner,” Miss Adolf said before retiring to her giant tent on the opposite side of the field.

  I brought my gear over to my new tent. Inside, everything was neatly arranged. And by neatly, I mean compulsively. McKelty’s sleeping bag was in a perfectly straight line and unzipped just a tad. The unzipped part was folded over like in an advert in a camping brochure.

  He had a camping pillow, too, and a footstool. Arranged on top of the stool were all his many toiletries, including hair gel, mouthwash and an economy-size bottle of baby powder.

  I don’t know why, but the giant bottle of baby powder seriously weirded me out. Hanging from a hook on the tent was a calfskin canteen − three-quarters full. I left him a few sips. OK, one sip.

  I lay on top of McKelty’s sleeping bag while I went through his rucksack. He was loaded up with survival gear. He also had plenty of sweaters and waterproofs, but, sadly, nothing edible, unless you counted the toothpaste. And I counted the toothpaste. Because I ate it.