‘Oomph!’
Jack’s face hit the dirt, Adrian’s heavy weight on top of him. All Jack could think about at first was how baked the grass smelt, with its bits of melting rubbish and sticky ants crawling through it. But then he thought about his staggering failure: it was his team’s turn to run the gauntlet, and he’d been brought down first.
Adrian let more of his weight down on him, and stuck his chin near his, showing off the scar from his famous car crash. Jack spluttered for air. Eventually Adrian climbed off and Jack, wheezing, rolled on his back.
Troy was peering down at him. ‘You’re out.’
Jack sat up painfully but did not budge.
‘You’re out,’ Troy repeated more loudly, tapping Jack on the shoulder to get his attention.
On his feet now, Jack tried to catch Simon’s eye. Simon was pretending to be fascinated by something in the sky. Jack walked back to the tractor tyres, half wishing he could roll away in one of them.
Miss Jackson poured a bag of sand into a great, big, metal tray that was sitting on her desk. She had everyone’s attention, even Jack’s. This looked promisingly arty to him, and art was what he was good at.
She spread out the sand with her long fingers.
‘To continue with our theme of dinosaurs, we are going to make a diorama.’
The class strained forward, wondering if they could leave their seats and gather round the tray.
Miss Jackson brushed the grains from her hands.
‘The boys can empty the other bag of sand…’ she said, looking up with a squint, ‘…because that’s the dirty job, while the girls can make the palm trees.’
She clapped her hands with a sharp, dry sound, and they got up.
Jack was disappointed he couldn’t help make the palm trees. He watched enviously as the girls taped rolled-up cylinders of green-coloured paper together, then, at one end, cut length-ways, folding the resultant strips back to replicate palm fronds.
But… that said… it was a technique Jack could show his father. Jack could also see a way to improve on their construction. Instead of just the one sheet of green paper, why not roll up two (even three!), but each of a different hue to make tri-coloured palms? It was an idea, all right—one he could save for home.
The boys, apart from emptying then sculpting the last of the sand, were also given the task of positioning rocks and gnarled pieces of wood among the miniature dunes. These, too, could have been better chosen, and he wished Miss Jackson had let them know what was planned before dismissing them for lunch. He would have much preferred to search the school grounds for treasures than attempt to play Red Rover.
Theatrically, Miss Jackson, as if landing a rocket on the moon, placed the last palm tree in the sand.
‘There! Now for the inhabitants.’
She unlocked the drawer to her desk and reached in. Jack thought of the rectangular silver flask. Instead, she withdrew a small, plastic bag filled with green-black shapes. She emptied these onto her palm, revealing them as rubber dinosaurs, each the size of a fifty-cent coin. Jack screwed up his nose. With the palms being pencil-height or taller, she had the scale all wrong. Oh well, he and Dad would do something similar at home, only much better executed.
As Miss Jackson placed the dinosaurs in different positions, she counted slowly. ‘One… two… three… four… five. Five! Remember that. There are five toy dinosaurs. So, if any go missing, and I’m not directing this at the girls, I’ll get you. I mean it.’
Glancing round the circle, she seemed to peck each boy with her beaky nose. All the boys, and many of the girls, peered back timidly over the sides of the sand-tray. Miss Jackson, seemingly satisfied judging by her smile, stepped towards the wide sill of the window nearest her desk. Upon it stood a plastic pot of Geraniums, flowering white. She often called this profusion ‘Miss Prunella’, and had told the class they needed to whisper sweet nothings to plants to help them grow. Drawing her mumbling lips back from the petals, and with her back still turned to her students, she abruptly uttered, ‘Play!’
At once the faster children made for the dinosaurs, and those who managed to grab them first began to play. Michael had nabbed the tyrannosaurus. He nudged Jack as if to say, ‘Watch this’ before making it mount the diplodocus that another student, Kate, had commandeered.
‘Urgh! Michael!’ spluttered Kate, her two looped ponytails making her look like a double-handled teacup.
Jack laughed. Kate let go of her dinosaur, and rushed to Miss Jackson. Jack stopped laughing when he saw the two return and stand behind him and Michael. He tried to nudge Michael, as Miss Jackson thrust her watering can into Kate’s arms (the water dousing the tea cup’s grin) before grabbing Michael by the neck. She pushed him up against the table, the miniature desert quaking and several palms toppling over.
‘Michael, you filthy boy! How dare you? How dare you!’
Higgins was in the adjacent school corridor, sticking a poster on the cork notice board to do with rules for the students about not running, eating, or raising voices inside. To his surprise, he could hear what sounded like a teacher shouting. That shrill voice could only belong to Miss Jackson. He shook his head: he thought she had got past that nonsense.
Michael’s nose was dripping as Miss Jackson pushed his dirty brown top up round his neck.
‘That’s how it starts,’ she snapped. ‘It just takes one filthy boy…’
Higgins, trying not to run and break his own rules (it seemed he was going to have to be an example to student and teacher alike) trotted along the corridor to her classroom.
He could now hear the pleading tones of what sounded like Michael’s voice, by comparison a soft accompaniment to Miss Jackson’s percussion.
‘I wasn’t doing anything! Please, Miss Jackson!’
Jack didn’t know what to do, if there was even anything he could do. The tray was looking precariously like falling off the desk, Miss Jackson had Michael shoved up against it so hard. Before it could topple, she yanked him away and smacked him across the face, sending him flying to the floor. Scrabbling to a sitting position, Michael looked up at her in horror. Jack wondered if he should go to Higgins. Ducking away, he noticed Higgins’ face framed by the glass in the door.
‘I wasn’t doing anything, Miss Jackson!’ squealed Michael. ‘Please!
Jack was the only one to notice the door open. Miss Jackson grabbed her metal ruler off the dusty sill below the blackboard, and raised it above Michael.
‘Liar!’ she screamed. ‘I saw you!’
She took a step towards him.
Higgins shut the door. Miss Jackson swung round, ruler still raised. The scared faces of thirty kids scanned between the two adults. The end-of-school bell sounded, and the class swayed their bodies towards the one exit, but with feet still timidly planted.
Miss Jackson lowered the ruler but kept her chin held high. Higgins looked from the class to Miss Jackson then back at the class again.
‘All right, class dismissed.’
This time, Jack didn’t dally. He grabbed his books and pencil case and was out of there every bit as fast as his classmates. Michael wouldn’t look at Jack as they escaped the school grounds. But Jack could see his friend’s nose was running profusely now, and his eyes had started leaking, too.
The sky was darkening with afternoon leading to evening, the brilliant blue muddying to a reddish brown. Jack was amid the clump of appropriately named ghost gums that edged his property and hugged the neighbour’s. He was playing with a stick and pretending to be a Dalek from Doctor Who.
He wished his father could have played with him, but Jean had made sure he was busy fixing one thing or another for her. Simon had wanted to go for a jog, and nothing could persuade him otherwise. Thus Jack in his present state, was left to make-believe on his own.
He didn’t even have a pet.
Daniel used to have two dogs: lithe kelpie-crosses. One day, when Jack was about six, they came home with bloodied throats. John Harrow, Michelle’s dad and the owner of the property on the other side, reckoned they had mauled six of his sheep. Daniel compensated him but John still threatened to shoot them. Now they’d got the taste, he reckoned they wouldn’t stop. Daniel asked to borrow John’s gun himself, then took the dogs one at a time behind the settler’s huts. Those two shots felt like they echoed throughout the day.
Jack shook himself free of the memory and swung his stick around. He modulated his voice to sound high-pitched, mechanical.
‘Exterminate! Exterminate! Resistance is useless. Resistance is…’
He could see movement at the front of the neighbour’s house, under the stepped gable. He dropped the stick and edged forward to the wire fence, making sure to keep low in the scrub. Upon the wires hung pendants of wool, where sheep had rubbed to alleviate their itches. The oily rich smell was pleasant to his nose.
The same truck he’d seen at the front gate in the morning, now pulled up at the front door. Kim Mitchell’s sons jumped out of the cabin. For the first time ever, Jack saw a light go on in the house and then, even more remarkably, a lady dressed in a long, sheer gown appeared from under the sagging front veranda. The Mitchells wolf whistled. Although in shadow, he was sure it was the same woman he’d seen leaving Higgins’ office that day at school. He wondered where the girl might be.
To get closer, Jack climbed through the fence wires and scrambled over the moist bracken. This was more fun. It involved other people… sort of.
The Mitchells pulled the bolts from the truck’s back door, which then dropped with a thunderous clang.
In Jack’s head, the unmistakable electronic opening bars from the Doctor Who theme music began to rumble. At the same time, the back of the truck filled with acrid green smoke and brightly coloured, lancing lights. A fearsome red-and-grey Dalek glided forth, chanting madly.
‘You must obey! We will be obeyed! Resistance is useless, existence is useless, EXISTENCE IS—!’
The image vanished. The scene was proving too hard for Jack to play-act on his own.
The Mitchells were wheeling a fridge down the truck ramp, one brother going backwards with a sink plunger under his arm—for a brief glorious moment, the eyepiece of a Dalek.
Jack sneaked away, slipping through the two middle wires in the fence. He hurried into the wood of ghost gums, their shadows interlaced across the ground. When he emerged from cover, he could see the sun resting its head on the hills—primped pillows—its luxuriant hair tingeing their brown gold.
In the living room, Daniel finished screwing in the last light bulb that needed replacing and stepped down off the wooden stool. Simon, still panting from his run, was lying sweating on the rug in front of the wood-cased TV, watching Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Daniel wondered if he should try to find Jack, but judging from what little light streamed in from outside, it would be too late for them to play now anyway.
Daniel watched Jean enter from the kitchen, bone knives and forks in hand, to set about laying the table. Well, then, dinner was nearly ready, too; another reason it was too late to join Jack.
Jean glanced about the room. ‘Simon, where’s your brother?’
Simon picked at a blistered toe. ‘Dunno.’
Daniel put the wooden stool back in the corner, where Jean liked it kept.
‘He went for a walk, Jean.’
Jean placed folded beige napkins at the top of each plate. ‘At night?’
It wasn’t quite night yet, thought Daniel.
Jean placed her now empty hands on her hips. ‘I don’t care how gifted he’s meant to be; kids don’t go out wandering at night.’
Daniel threw a look towards Simon, hoping Jean would understand. But either she didn’t, or perhaps she wouldn’t, for she kept up her insinuations.
Eventually, Daniel snapped. ‘Please!’
She desisted but still attempted to stare him down. Simon turned his face back to the TV, smirking. The news was now on and a footy player was scoring a goal to the evident delight of the newscaster.
Jack was in the Cunningham Casuarina that grew close to their house, straddling its wispy, faintly sticky branches smelling like pine. He’d climbed a fair way up and could see the lights on in the neighbour’s house. The sun had buried itself below the horizon, but its faint glow still illuminated a purple sky.
Jack could hear his front door open. By the gentle way it swung, he could tell it was his father without looking.
A light went on in the neighbour’s attic. Jack’s house didn’t have an attic. Jack thought an attic must be an exciting thing to have. He heard Daniel’s footsteps lead up to the base of the tree.
‘You’d better come inside, son.’
Daniel’s face was framed between the needle-like foliage.
‘Your show will be on soon,’ he said.
With dinner over, Simon was the first to excuse himself from the table. He got up quickly and threw himself on the orange shag carpet in front of the TV, switching it on and turning the channel knob till he found the football. Jack looked at his father as the two also excused themselves. Daniel nodded, walked over to the TV, and switched channels to the ABC.
The three-note insistent tune of Doctor Who was playing along to the image of a spiralling tunnel.
Daniel stepped over Simon and sat next to Jack on the couch. Simon huffed, but didn’t leave. He looked from the television to Jack before sitting up, figuring he could obscure Jack’s view and get him that way.
‘Simon, either lie down or watch it from here, with us,’ said Daniel, pleasantly.
Simon grudgingly lay back down. Jack watched Jean get up from the table, dishes in hand.
‘Aren’t you going to watch it, Mum?’ he asked hopefully.
Jean huffed, holding up the plates as if to indicate she had more pressing things to do.
‘I’ll help wash up after,’ offered Jack.
Jean gave him a cynical flick of her head before disappearing into the kitchen.
Daniel smiled at Jack. ‘Girls don’t like science fiction, son.’
Jack turned his eyes back to the TV.
It was the most terrifying episode they’d watched yet. An ark in space, a mummified alien, a crewmate turning into a green… goodness knows what! Sarah Jane Smith was steadily becoming Jack’s favourite Doctor Who companion. He remembered when she joined the doctor, in his previous regeneration, on that scary adventure set in the middle ages, involving those nightmarish Sontarans. All the fun and experiences she’d had since—not to mention the danger!—it made him envious.
Jack knew just which door he’d enter if the doctor’s TARDIS materialised outside his classroom the next day.
After Simon had tired of the show and left, he confided his wish to Daniel.
His father chuckled. ‘Wouldn’t that shake everyone up.’
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