Belly Flop (7 page)

Not laugh out loud and stick their hand down their shorts for a scratch.

When I'm world diving champ and I come home to accept the keys of the town, no way am I accepting them from him.

Anyway, he's wrong.

I'm absolutely positive that if the council bought half a million litres of water for the pool, people would not think it was the same as the councillors sticking the money in their bottoms, setting fire to it and doing cartwheels around town.

Mr Bullock's also wrong about the state of the pool.

I'm checking it out now and it's nowhere near as bad as he says.

OK, the fence is very rusty, but that's only a problem when you're climbing over it in a white T-shirt like I just did.

The turnstiles are pretty rusty too, but they'll soon loosen up once kids start pushing them with blockout on their hands.

And the steps up to the diving board have seen better days, but people aren't idiots, they're capable of looking out for a few loose bits of concrete and a wobbly handrail.

Down here inside the pool itself things aren't too bad at all.

The paint on the bottom and sides is peeling a bit, but you've got to expect that when it's been dry as a duck's dunny for eight years.

The important thing is there are no big cracks, so it won't leak.

When these soft drink cans and chip wrappers and old shotgun cartridges are cleaned out it'll be good as new.

Once I've got it filled up.

Which won't be easy.

Gran always reckons when you've got a problem, make a list of all the things you could do to solve it, even the dopey ones.

Here goes.

I could ring the city and pretend to be the Gas ‘N' Gobble and order two million cans of Coke and use them to fill the pool. Trouble is parents'd be dragging their kids out every five minutes to make them clean their teeth.

I could stick lots of hoses together and syphon the beer out of the bowls club. But then only people over eighteen would be allowed in the pool.

I could persuade everyone in town to come down here on a really hot day and sweat a lot. If I lived in a town with more people.

No Doug, it'll have to be water.

It'll be pretty hard getting hold of half a million litres of the stuff, but it's the only way.

It'll be pretty risky, too.

Not just for me, for the other kids as well.

Some of them might need an eye kept out for them.

I'll do the best I can Doug, but I might need some help, OK?

 

 

 

 

For a while it looked as if the meeting was going to be as big a disaster as my birthday party, even though I tried even harder this time.

I made the invitation sound as important as I could.

VERY IMPORTANT MEETING, I wrote. THIS MEETING COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE. IF YOU EVER PLAN TO VISIT A NON-DROUGHT AREA (EG CANBERRA, THE COAST OR A TACO DIP FACTORY), BE AT THIS MEETING. AFTER SCHOOL AT THE DUMP. NO PARENTS OR DOBBERS.

I stuck an invitation in every school locker like last time, but this time I included a map. Even though it wasn't really needed cause everyone in town goes to the dump at least once a week with their garbage, twice if they're looking for fridge parts.

When I got to the dump it was deserted.

Except, for a sec, I thought you were there, Doug.

A breeze was making the plastic bags flap and was pinging the dust against the old tractor parts.

Then I remembered how Mr Conkey once explained that air movement at the dump is caused by gas from rotting potato peel. (At the time he was trying to get everyone to buy frozen potato wedges.)

I waited by the piles of plastic drink bottles we collected last year when the council went on a recycling craze. We saved bottles for months, right up until someone remembered the nearest recycling plant is two thousand kilometres away.

By ten past three only two kids had arrived and they ignored me and started chucking Mrs Nile's bedsprings at each other.

By three-fifteen I was desperate.

I started wondering if a diving competition could be held in real life with just wardrobes and beds.

Then I saw a bunch of about twenty kids coming towards me.

As they got closer, looking hot and annoyed, I saw Carla Fiami behind them, yapping at the stragglers' heels like a cattle dog.

‘You'll never know if he's crapping on or not if you don't give him a listen,' I heard her saying to Troy and Brent Malley. ‘Give him five minutes and if you still reckon he's a slimebucket, bash him up then.'

Carla grinned at me and I gave her a grateful look, but not too grateful.

The kids gathered round and I climbed up onto Mr Saxby's old ute and tried to ignore Troy and Brent's noisy breathing.

I've worked out a way,' I said as loudly as I could, which wasn't very loud cause my throat was dryer than a lawn sprinkler, ‘of getting the pool filled.'

The kids stared at me.

The dump was silent except for the flapping plastic and the pinging dust and the sound of Emma Wilkinson getting her foot jammed in a paint tin.

‘Bull,' said Troy Malley after a bit.

‘You're gunna ask my uncle, right?' said Hazel Gillies. ‘His tribe can get water out of rocks with wallaby guts. He'll fill the pool for youse. Next year when he gets back from Perth.'

I thanked Hazel for her offer and pointed across the dump at the reservoir tower in the distance.

‘There's enough water in there to fill the pool,' I said. ‘More than enough. Six hundred thousand litres.'

The kids stared at me even harder.

Carla was starting to look worried.

Troy and Brent Malley were starting to look impatient and angry.

‘You can't use that,' said Matthew Conn. ‘That's the town's water supply. That's got to last till the next delivery.'

‘If you use that,' said Danielle Wicks, ‘what are we meant to wash in?'

‘What are we meant to drink?' said Sean Howe.

‘What are we meant to boil two-minute noodles in?' said Andy Howard.

‘The people round here need that water,' said Jacquie Chaplin.

‘That's why,' I said, ‘we're gunna let them use it first.'

During the silence that followed I jumped down from the ute and grabbed an armful of empty plastic drink bottles and started handing them round.

Most of the kids looked puzzled, specially Troy and Brent Malley.

Carla Fiami grinned.

Three bottles.

Not bad for one evening.

It would have been more if Mum had boiled something for dinner instead of microwaving, and if I'd been a bit quicker with the sponge when Dad dropped the kettle.

Tomorrow after school I'll get a proper plug for the shower.

I don't know if you've ever tried to save your shower water, Doug, but you're fighting a losing battle when the plug's made of toilet paper and keeps going soggy.

Come to think of it, angels probably don't need showers. You probably just fly so fast all the dirt gets blown off.

Thanks for keeping Gran out of the bathroom while I was getting the shower water into the bottles.

Best if the adults don't know about the plan yet.

If they knew there was a secret stash of water in town, they'd probably all want to wash their cars.

I think the plan's gunna work, Doug.

I just saw Carla in the playground and she's got six bottles already.

Six bottles in less than a day.

She explained that only two are from her place cause they've got a special shower spray that hardly lets any water through, plus she got shampoo in her eyes this morning and kicked the plug out and lost about another two bottles.

The other four bottles are from the Gas ‘N' Gobble.

Carla had to meet her mum there yesterday after the meeting and Geoff the mechanic was flushing out a ute radiator and she asked if she could have the water.

She said it was for a project, which is almost true.

Pretty smart thinking, eh Doug?

Water's water, even if it is a bit rusty.

If all the kids are as on the ball as Carla, we'll have the pool filled in no time.

OK, not all the kids are as on the ball as Carla.

Just now going into class Danielle Wicks saw me and tried to walk the other way so I cornered her.

She showed me what she'd collected.

Half a bottle.

Half a bottle from a family of seven.

‘What about all the people having showers at your place?' I asked.

‘We don't get showers on Thursdays,' said Danielle, ‘just a bath with all of us using the same water.'

I looked at her half bottle in amazement.

‘Seven of you have a bath in that much water?' I said.

‘Don't be a pin brain,' she said. ‘We use heaps more than that but Ryan goes last and he lets the dogs drink it.'

I asked her to keep her voice down. We were pretty close to the offices and Ms Dorrit's got ears like a council irrigation inspector.

Quietly I suggested to Danielle that the more she can stop their dogs running around and getting thirsty, the quicker we'll have the pool filled.

She scowled.

‘Listen, smarty pants,' she said, ‘don't get bossy just cause you can pinch crates of bank water. Your dad and his poxy bank are the reason our family's living in a poxy house in town in the first place with three dogs going mental in the yard.'

I decided not to get into an argument.

Life must be pretty tough for the Wicks's, plus when Danielle gets worked up her voice can be heard for miles.

I started to quietly explain to her that the bank doesn't supply its staff with water, just tea and coffee.

Danielle unscrewed her bottle and tried to tip it over my head.

With another 499,986 litres still to get we can't afford to waste water, so I shut up.

Most of the kids are trying to avoid me.

Andy Howard reckons trying to fill the pool is a dopey idea and that his mum's pot plants need the water more cause if her cherry tomatoes die she'll kill him.

Matthew Conn hasn't collected a drop.

He says his dad goes really crook if anyone in his family has a shower or washes clothes and doesn't use the water to top up the radiator in the truck.

I just bailed up Sean Howe in the boys' dunny.

He hasn't collected a drop either.

He reckons he doesn't dare cause his mum and dad use all their cooking water for making beer.

He offered to pee into a bottle, but I said no.

You'd think, wouldn't you Doug, that a townful of fairly intelligent kids could do a simple thing like save household water.

Jeez.

I can see why Mr Tristos gets so stressed when he has to try and organise everyone for sport. If I had a moustache like Mr Tristos I'd be chewing it right now, I can tell you.

I've just wasted three hours after school waiting for kids to turn up with some water.

OK, the time wasn't completely wasted. The first hour I spent clearing rubbish out of the pool changing rooms so we've got some-where to stack the full bottles.

The next hour I spent finding the Stegnjaaics' old inflatable plastic swimming pool at the dump and dragging empty bottles back in it and hiding them in the pool kiosk.

But the last hour I just waited.

And did some thinking.

I reckon I know now what the problem is, Doug.

None of those kids believe in you.

None of them believe you can save them from being sprung by their parents and whacked round the head with wilting pot plants and dried-up home-brewing kits.

There must be something we can do to change that.

 

 

 

 

Sorry to disturb you so late, Doug, but I've thought of something.

I'm not sure if you're going to like it.

Or even if it's possible.

Oh well, here goes.

What I'm hoping, Doug, is that angels can stop being invisible for a bit and appear to kids.

You know, if there's a really really important reason for them to do it, like saving a town and a dad.

I've been thinking about it for hours since I went to bed and I reckon it is possible.

I read in the paper once about some kids in Peru who said they saw an angel, and I reckon they were telling the truth. I reckon Dad was wrong about them having fried their brains from sitting too close to their computer screens.

If their angel could appear to them, I reckon you could appear to a group of kids in this town standing on your head.

Not actually standing on your head but, though you can if you want.

In a blaze of light would be better.

With fireworks in the background.

And maybe some laser beams or something.

If I arrange things this end, could you do it tomorrow night?

Please?

It's all set, Doug.

Wasn't easy, but.

None of the kids believed me at first.

‘Bull,' said Matthew Conn.

‘As if,' said Jacquie Chaplin.

‘Jeez, you're a pin brain,' said Danielle Wicks.

‘It's true,' I said.

‘Yeah, right,' sneered Andy Howard. ‘What's this angel gunna do after he's appeared, drop into the Gas ‘N' Gobble for some hot chips and a grease and oil change on his wings?'

The others all laughed, which just shows how desperate kids in this town are for real entertainment.

I frantically tried to think of something to take their minds off being pikers.

‘It'll be pretty spectacular,' I said. ‘Fireworks, probably.'

‘I doubt it,' said Cathy Saxby. ‘Seeing as there's been a total fire ban for the last eight years.'

‘Pin brain,' said Danielle Wicks.

They started to wander off.

I was losing them.

Then Carla saved me.

‘If Doug does show up,' she said, ‘where's he gunna show up at?'

Her eyes were glittering and I couldn't tell if she was having a go at me or not.