Stuck in the Mud Read online

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t been all right for years,’ said Dad.

  ‘I mean, do you have an injury?’ Ingrid asked in her heavily accented English.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Dad. He looked down at himself. He was too filthy to tell. He did have a dull pain where his head had hit the bottom of the bin, and a scrape on his stomach where he had fallen over the corrugated iron edge, but there was no way he was going to show his middle-aged stomach to the tall, beautiful Swedish woman above him. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You will show me where I put my things, yes?’ said Ingrid.

  ‘Huh?’ said Dad.

  Ingrid held up a large sports bag. ‘My clothes and personal items,’ explained Ingrid. ‘Now that I live with you, I will need somewhere to store them.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dad. He had hoped that the whole idea of Ingrid moving in with him had just been a nightmare, and that if he worked really hard on his garden the whole problem would go away. This was how he came to be head down in the compost bin in the first place. But he didn’t want Ingrid to think he was rude. Dad stood up and brushed off the bigger lumps of black manky compost. ‘Yes, we must find you some space.’

  Dad led the way back to the house. Normally he would take his dirty gardening clothes off before going inside, but he thought it would make a bad impression if he started undressing, so he stayed filthy instead. He stepped in through the French doors at the back of the house, immediately tracking mud into the kitchen.

  ‘Um,’ said Dad, trying to avoid actually using words with meaning. ‘Um … I suppose. You know, it would be best if you had the big bedroom upstairs. You can find it yourself. It’s the room with a bed in it, that’s big.’

  Ingrid looked towards the staircase. ‘Yes, I am aware of the layout of your home.’

  ‘Yes, good,’ said Dad. ‘Then I can take a sleeping-bag and go and live in the shed.’ He smiled at this. He had just had the idea and he thought it was a good one. If he lived in the shed, he would be entirely alone and he would be terribly frightened, but he would have less responsibility.

  ‘No, that will not do,’ said Ingrid in her typically Nordic deadpan stoicism.

  ‘It won’t?’ said Dad, crestfallen.

  ‘The immigration people, they have eyes, they will know,’ said Ingrid. ‘They will think this is not a real marriage we want.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Dad whispered truthfully. He whispered just in case anyone with eyes was watching them right now.

  ‘It is,’ said Ingrid. ‘It must be, if I am to stay in your country.’

  ‘Surely not,’ said Dad.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Ingrid.

  ‘Well, marriage is so, you know … so personal,’ whispered Dad.

  Ingrid nodded. ‘We must endure this,’ she said.

  ‘If you say so,’ said Dad forlornly.

  ‘It’s not I who says so,’ said Ingrid. ‘It is Maynard. We must follow her orders, both of us.’

  Dad was confused. ‘I thought you didn’t trust her.’

  ‘Of course I don’t trust her,’ said Ingrid. ‘I don’t trust anyone. It would be unprofessional.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Dad in agreement. Personally, he was terrified of Professor Maynard. She was his wife’s boss. She was the one who had sent him into hiding in Currawong, then eleven years later sent his children to join him. Professor Maynard had saved his life and the lives of his children by hiding them from the Kolektiv, but Dad was still more afraid of her than any international hit squad.

  ‘I shall unpack my things.’ Ingrid started towards the stairs.

  ‘You can have the chest of drawers,’ said Dad. ‘And the wardrobe. Really any storage space you like. Just shove my things in the corner.’

  ‘It will be taken care of,’ said Ingrid with a nod as she disappeared upstairs.

  Dad watched her go, making a mental note to order some really high-maintenance orchids online. Something that would require his attention in the greenhouse all through the night.

  Joe was walking back to school with the rest of his class when something wet and soggy hit him on the back of the head.

  ‘Hey, blockhead,’ called April.

  Joe turned, rubbing the back of his skull. He looked at his hand. It was dirty. ‘Did you just throw m-m-mud at me?’

  ‘I thought it was appropriate given the mud run,’ said April. ‘Besides, there’s no other way I’d catch up with you. You walk too fast. Your legs are too long. I need to talk to you.’

  Once April had caught up with him, they both continued walking to school.

  ‘You need to go in that race,’ ordered April.

  ‘What?!’ exclaimed Joe.

  ‘You heard me,’ said April. ‘You may stammer, but you’re not deaf.’

  ‘But I d-d-don’t want to go in the race,’ said Joe.

  ‘Why would I care what you want?’ asked April.

  ‘Because I’m your b-b-brother and you love me,’ said Joe.

  ‘Ha,’ said April. ‘Good one. No, you’ve got to go in that race and win, then share half your prize money with the first lady across the line.’

  ‘What?’ said Joe. He was repeating himself, but he did find himself having to exclaim with incredulity at most of the things April said.

  ‘You have to do it to right the injustice of the system,’ said April.

  ‘But I don’t want to fight for justice,’ said Joe.

  April bent down, scooped up a handful of dirt and threw it at Joe again.

  ‘Hey!’ cried Joe. ‘Stop that.’

  ‘I’m helping you with your training,’ said April. ‘You need to get used to being covered in mud.’

  ‘I don’t w-w-want to,’ said Joe.

  ‘Our mother is rotting away in a secret jail cell in Eastern Europe and you say you don’t want to fight for justice!’ accused April.

  ‘Shhhhh,’ said Joe, putting his hand over April’s mouth to silence her. He looked about. The other students flooding past were ignoring them as they chattered excitedly about the race. ‘It’s a secret,’ he whispered.

  April bit his hand. Pumpkin joined in and bit his leg.

  ‘Ow! Ow!’ cried Joe.

  ‘I know it’s a secret,’ said April. ‘These mouth-breathing yokels aren’t going to follow what we’re saying. Their brains are all giddy with the prospect of wallowing in mud.’

  ‘Hey, who are you calling a mouth-breathing yokel?’ asked Kieran as he walked past.

  ‘Not you obviously,’ said April sarcastically. ‘I’m sure you’ve just got a blocked nose.’

  Kieran looked confused but kept walking.

  ‘Why d-d-don’t you just go in the r-race yourself?’ said Joe, trying to brush the dirt out of the back of his hair.

  ‘I will,’ said April. ‘But I’m not a freakishly tall, inhumanly strong meathead like you, am I?’

  ‘You might not be t-t-tall,’ muttered Joe, ‘but you’re w-weirdly strong.’

  ‘We’ll both go in it,’ said April. ‘It will double our chances. Especially when I cheat and knock out your competition for you.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ said Joe.

  ‘I can do whatever I like!’ snapped April.

  ‘You really can’t,’ said Joe. ‘Not if it’s b-b-breaking the law. Or the r-rules of the competition.’

  ‘Pfft, rules,’ said April, rolling her eyes. ‘They’re just for goody-two-shoes.’

  April shoved Joe in the shoulder as she said this. Joe, weighing twice April’s weight and being used to constant physical assaults from her, barely broke stride. But April took her eyes off the path ahead for a fraction of a second to aim her blow, so she did not see the thin white stick move across in front of her shin and she tripped, slamming knees first into the concrete footpath.

  ‘Hey!’ cried April, reaching out and snatching the stick. She was usually the one inflicting violence, not the recipient.

  The person on the other end of the stick d
id not let go, mainly because of the strap that was looped around his wrist. He was a tall boy, about fourteen years old, with short blond hair and sunglasses.

  ‘Let go,’ said the boy.

  The crowd parted but continued to flow around them.

  ‘I will not!’ yelled April. ‘You deliberately tripped me.’

  ‘I did not,’ cried the boy.

  ‘You deliberately waved your stick in front of my legs,’ accused April.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ said the boy with a sneer.

  ‘What did you say?’ demanded April, lunging for the boy, but Joe grabbed her by the shoulders from behind.

  ‘April d-don’t do it,’ said Joe. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘You don’t accidentally put a stick in front of someone’s legs and make them face plant on concrete,’ said April.

  ‘It’s not a stick,’ whispered Joe. ‘It’s a c-c-cane.’

  ‘Huh?’ said April. ‘Stick, cane – what’s the difference?’

  ‘A white cane,’ said Joe. ‘The type b-b-blind people use.’

  April looked at the boy. His gaze was slightly off-centre, as if he didn’t know exactly where she was. And the stick, now that she looked at it, was white with a red tip and a ball on the end.

  ‘I’m not blind,’ said the boy. ‘I’m vision-impaired.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’re vision-impaired or brain-impaired,’ declared April. ‘There’s no excuse to go round tripping people up.’

  ‘You’re meant to see the red bit of the cane and courteously give me the space to move around freely,’ said the boy.

  ‘Oh, because you’re the prince of vision impairment and we all have to accommodate you with a whole footpath to yourself,’ said April sarcastically. ‘Well, I don’t believe that for a moment. You tripped me on purpose, didn’t you?

  ‘April, don’t do this,’ pleaded Joe.

  ‘Arf arf arf!’ said Pumpkin happily. He loved a fight. And if April started one, he could join in.

  ‘I wish I did,’ said the boy. ‘If I’d known how annoying you were, I would have hit you harder.’

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ said April, wriggling out of Joe’s grip so she could lunge at the boy.

  ‘April, don’t. He’s blind,’ cried Joe.

  ‘Not blind, vision-impaired,’ corrected the boy, deftly whacking Joe on the head with his cane just as April crash-tackled him to the ground.

  The cane caught Joe across the eye, so he was momentarily blinded and couldn’t break up the fight.

  Mr Lang waded through the crowd. ‘What is going on here?’

  April had the boy in a headlock. She had torn his collar off his shirt, but the boy was holding his own. He had a firm grip of her tie and was trying to strangle her.

  ‘April Peski!’ bellowed Mr Lang. In his thirty-year career as a guidance counsellor, it was his job to help often extremely troubled students. He prided himself that he had never ever raised his voice. But this was the moment that he snapped. ‘What on earth do you think you are doing?’

  ‘Defending myself,’ said April.

  ‘Arf!’ Pumpkin barked happily. He had a swatch of the boy’s shorts in his mouth.

  ‘Let go of Tom this instant,’ demanded Mr Lang.

  April released the headlock.

  ‘Where am I?’ asked Tom in a helpless voice. ‘Where’s my cane?’

  ‘It’s still dangling from your wrist, you big faker,’ snapped April.

  ‘How dare you assault a disabled person,’ accused Mr Lang. ‘Do you have no conscience? How could you attack a blind boy?’

  ‘He’s not blind,’ said April. ‘He’s vision-impaired.’

  ‘I’m scared,’ said Tom helplessly.

  ‘You there,’ said Mr Lang, turning to Joe. ‘Help the boy to his feet.’

  ‘I can’t see,’ said Joe. His eyes were watering so much. There was a distinct red welt the exact thickness of Tom’s cane swelling up across his face.

  ‘Don’t be clever with me,’ said Mr Lang.

  Joe reached out to help Tom, but he misjudged the distance and tripped over Tom’s cane, landing on top of April.

  ‘Ow!’ cried April.

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ snapped Mr Lang. ‘Detention for all of you.’

  ‘Even me?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mr Lang. ‘Animesh! Come here. Help Tom to the office. They’ll need to find him a new shirt and shorts. Then you can help him get to his next class.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Tom meekly, as he was led away.

  ‘You don’t fool me,’ April called after him. ‘I know you’ve got an evil, dark heart.’

  Tom just kept walking, not betraying anything.

  Further ahead in the crowd, Neil fell into step alongside Fin. Neil was a quiet boy, whose face bore an unfortunate similarity to a potato. Frankly, his personality did too. Neil did not like to speak generally, but today he had something he wanted to say. It took him a minute to get out the words. ‘You going to enter?’

  ‘What?’ Fin’s mind had been elsewhere entirely. He was forming an idea. A big idea, one that took a lot of concentration.

  ‘You going to enter the race?’ Neil asked again.

  Now, obviously, it would be more grammatically correct for Neil to say, ‘Are you going to enter the race.’ But Neil was the type of boy who preferred brevity to clarity.

  ‘The race?’ said Fin, confused that someone would even consider him getting involved. ‘No way. I’m too short for that. I’d get trampled into the mud, like an Ice Age woolly mammoth on the arctic tundra. I’d be dug up thousands of years from now and marvelled over by palaeontologists.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Neil. There were several words in that sentence that he did not understand, and he definitely did not understand the full meaning of them combined.

  ‘I’m going to enter the course design competition instead,’ said Fin with a manic gleam in his eye. He liked inventing things, but he rarely got to invent things on such a large scale. There were so many possibilities. Plus he would have access to a digger, and what young boy doesn’t dream of that sort of opportunity. It was his every Tonka truck fantasy come true. ‘I’m going to create something totally mind-blowing. This town might think Joe is awesome because he’s good at lawn bowls, and that April is terrifying because of her weird and irrational rage issues, but soon they’re going to learn about the other Peski kid. The one with the talent for making totally awesome stuff.’

  ‘That’s you?’ asked Neil.

  ‘Yes, that’s me!’ snapped Fin.

  ‘Right,’ said Neil.

  ‘Then I’ll be the one people are talking about,’ said Fin.

  ‘Okay,’ said Neil. ‘So, um … you know your sister?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fin warily. Neil was love-struck with April. Fin felt for his friend. Not since Romeo and Juliet was a love so doomed. The difference was Romeo and Juliet both died, whereas he was sure that whatever damage April did to Neil, she would sail through the ordeal unscathed.

  ‘Do you think … um … she’d be impressed if I won the mud run?’ asked Neil.

  Fin stopped and looked at his friend. Neil wasn’t frothing at the mouth and his eyes were not rolling in his head, so he was suffering none of the classic symptoms of delirium that you see depicted in cartoons. His friend was honestly asking if a feat of athletic prowess would impress his sister. Fin considered the question on its merits.

  ‘I’ve got no idea,’ he answered truthfully. ‘I’ve lived in the same house as April for twelve years and I’ve still got no idea how her mind works.’

  ‘But it would get her attention, wouldn’t it?’ said Neil.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Fin. ‘But you know there is that two-time Olympic athlete and other seriously athletic people who will be going in the race, don’t you?’

  ‘I like my chances,’ said Neil.

  ‘Really?’ said Fin. Neil was a short, stocky boy who suffered from chronic vertigo. There was nothing abo
ut him that struck Fin as being athletically talented. But to say so would be mean. Better to say something unrealistically optimistic instead. ‘Good for you.’

  Neil nodded. He leaned in closer to Fin and confided in a lowered tone, ‘I’ve got a knack for running in wellies.’

  Fin smiled and nodded as if this statement made complete sense. Neil clearly thought it did.

  Twenty minutes later April and Tom were sitting in the guidance counsellor’s office, facing Mr Lang across the desk. Tom sat in silence enjoying listening to Mr Lang yell at April.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ pleaded Mr Lang. ‘How could you assault someone with a disability?’

  ‘Because he was being annoying,’ said April. ‘I would have attacked him if he had good eyesight, so to not attack him would have been discrimination. And I don’t believe in discrimination. I believe in equal opportunity.’

  ‘Equal rights is about improving standards, not lowering them,’ said Mr Lang.

  ‘If you think that, then you obviously don’t believe in equality of equality,’ said April. ‘And that just makes no sense.’

  ‘What?’ said Mr Lang. Whenever he tried reasoning with April it only took about forty-five seconds before he started getting a headache.

  ‘I don’t like being referred to as disabled,’ Tom chimed in, correcting Mr Lang with his slightly nasal voice. ‘It’s not politically correct.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mr Lang kindly. ‘What is the correct term?’

  ‘I’d prefer it if you acknowledged me as a unique individual,’ said Tom. He was very comfortable with correcting adults.

  April made a snorting noise.

  ‘No derogatory noises from you, thank you,’ snapped Mr Lang.

  ‘Well, it’s ridiculous,’ said April. ‘You have disabled parking spaces, not “unique individual” parking spaces.’

  ‘I can’t drive a car,’ said Tom. ‘So I don’t have any parking spaces.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said April. ‘Because you’re disabled.’

  ‘Be silent,’ ordered Mr Lang.

  ‘That’s right,’ said April. ‘Silence the truth speaker. That’s what all dictators do.’

  ‘You are being incredibly rude,’ said Mr Lang, turning on April. ‘You are relentlessly, incredibly rude.’