Castaway (5 page)

Uncle Mungo was waiting on the verandah when Sam and George rode up on the quad bike. The police vehicle had already left.

‘That was the local cops from Jabiru. Just called by to see how Mac was getting’ on. News travels fast around here, doesn’t it?’

Sam and George climbed the stairs and Sam said, without looking at his uncle, ‘Has Mum called yet?’

Uncle Mungo shook his head. ‘No. Jock and I just got back ourselves, just before the police came. But Jaz said there’s bin no calls. Yer mum’ll probably wait till after dark, when she knows we’re all here. Well, it’s almost dinner time, better go and wash up, hey?’ He looked at the bike. ‘How’d you go with the fence?’

‘Fine’, said Sam shortly.

Just then Jaz came out to see where they were. ‘Hi, guys, dinner’s nearly ready. George, where’s your shirt?’

George looked at her blankly. Sam panicked for a brief moment – George’s shirt was still on the child,
now hidden in the loft – but George just gave Jaz a rueful grin and said, ‘I forgot it. Took it off when it got wet before. I left it behind. Sorry!’

Sam relaxed. ‘We’ll go and get it tomorrow, Jazzy,’ he said. ‘What’s for dinner?’

Sarah phoned halfway through the meal. Mac was still recovering, and they wouldn’t know anything for another few days, but he seemed better. He was conscious and asking after the boys.

‘Tell him everything’s fine,’ said Sam, ‘we’re looking after everything. We fixed the fences today.’ For a few brief seconds he wondered if he should tell Sarah about the child, but swiftly decided against it. His parents had far too much to think about right now. He and George would work something out, somehow.

After dinner, Sam and George washed up and, as soon as Uncle Mungo, Old Jock and Jaz were out of the way, they crept out of the house with the leftover stew from dinner and a fresh bottle of water. George had grabbed a pillow and a sheet off the spare bed in his room as well. Up in the loft, the child seemed relieved to see them, and hungry. Jaz’s stew seemed to go down pretty well, and the child ate quickly, spooning rice and vegetables into his mouth as if he was afraid someone would take the bowl away before he’d finished.

‘We better go,’ Sam whispered to George. ‘We don’t want Uncle Mungo coming to look for us.’

They managed to get back into the kitchen without meeting any adults, and hurriedly washed up the bowl and spoon.

‘You blokes still washing up?’ boomed Uncle Mungo. ‘How ’bout a game of cards?’

The last thing Sam felt like doing was playing cards with his uncle. He turned back to the sink and shook his head. ‘Nope. I’m going to bed.’

George looked from Sam to his uncle and back again, and said, ‘Yeah, I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go to bed too. G’night, Uncle Mungo.’

Sam was in his room with a book propped up on his knees when George came in and plonked himself on the foot of Sam’s bed.

‘What are we gunna do about the kid? We have to tell
someone
.’

Sam closed the book. The truth was, he had no idea what they should do. All he knew was that he was not confiding in his uncle. ‘We’ll think of something. He’ll be okay for a little while, and we can keep sneaking food up to him when no one’s looking.’

George thought about that for a moment and, ever
practical, said, ‘What about the toilet? How’s he gunna go to the toilet? Or have a bath? He can’t just hide up in the loft forever!’

Sam had to admit that he hadn’t thought this through very well. Things like toilets and baths hadn’t occurred to him yet. ‘Well … we’ll just have to sneak him into the house when no one’s here.’ It
was
a problem.

‘And how come you’re being so mean to Uncle Mungo, anyway?’

‘What? I haven’t been mean to him!’

‘Well, you’re not talking to him, are you?’

Sam hesitated for a second, and then blurted out, ‘Well neither would you if you heard what I did at Aunty Lou’s!’

George looked at him expectantly.

‘I got up to get a drink of water last night, and I heard him tell Aunty Lou that the accident was all his fault, that Dad wanted to cut the tree up before they shifted it, but Uncle Mungo reckoned he could move it without doing that. It’s
his
fault Dad got hurt!’

George stared at his brother with his mouth open. He closed it abruptly, and looked out of the darkened window for a bit.

‘
That’s
why I don’t want to talk to him.’ Sam angrily wiped the corner of his eye, as if something was bothering it.

‘But … but … Uncle Mungo wouldn’t hurt his own brother. I mean, it was an
accident
. He just thought he could save time or something, didn’t he?’

‘Well, if he’d listened to Dad, Dad wouldn’t be in hospital right now, would he?’

George didn’t know what to say to that. He kicked his feet for a while, and frowned at the floor. Then he changed the subject back to the child in the hay loft. ‘We better bring the kid in here tomorrow to use the bathroom, as soon as the coast is clear. Maybe when Jaz goes back over to her donga after breakfast, and if Uncle Mungo and Jock go fencing again, we’ll be able to do it. We gotta do
something
. Man, he’ll be busting!’

After George said goodnight and went to his own room, Sam lay back and thought about the child in the loft. He wondered if he was missing his parents, like Sam was. He wondered what kind of life the child had led in his own country, whether he had a brother too. He shook his head. There must be
something
they could do to help him. If only Mac and Sarah were here. They’d know what to do.

As it turned out, getting everyone else out of the house the next morning wasn’t such a problem. Jaz was keen to go and see the boat wreck at low tide, and Uncle Mungo agreed to take her down there. When he asked Sam and George if they would like to come along for the drive, they shook their heads.

‘Nah, I have to clean out the guinea pig cage, and Sam said he’d help me,’ said George.

As soon as Old Jock had disappeared back to his quarters and the others had driven off, Sam and George
raced over to the shed and quickly climbed up the ladder. As they stepped out onto the floor of the loft, a little head poked out from behind a box, green eyes staring hugely at them. Sam beckoned to the child to follow them, and they all climbed back down.

The child appeared to be quite pleased to be inside a house again, and was fascinated by it. The kitchen, living room, hallway, all were subjected to a thorough examination. He looked immensely relieved to see the toilet, and wasted no time shutting the door in their faces. When he came out again, Sam showed him the bathroom.

‘George, get some of your clothes – he’s closer to your size than mine.’ Meanwhile, Sam turned the taps on and began to fill the bathtub with warm water. When George came back with clean shorts, T-shirt and jocks, Sam mimed to the child to take off his clothes. The child seemed not to understand him, so Sam tried to take hold of the dirty, ragged T-shirt, and lift it over his head. At this the child spun out of reach, and a torrent of indignant words came pouring out at Sam, while his green eyes flashed angrily and his hands gesticulated at Sam with very clear meaning.

‘I don’t think he wants you to do that,’ said George warily.

‘Yeah, what’s the big deal?’ He turned off the taps,
and shrugged. ‘Well, I guess we can just leave him to it. I hope he doesn’t take too long.’ Sam tried to mime ‘hurry up’ but he didn’t think he was very successful. He hung a fresh towel over the rail and pointed to it and to the child, who just stared furiously at him until he shut the door.

They hovered outside the bathroom door until they heard the sound of splashing water.

‘Sounds like he knows what to do with a bath, anyway,’ said George.

‘Yeah,’ said Sam. ‘You stay here and keep an eye on him, and I’ll go and watch out in case Old Jock comes over.’

The child seemed to take forever, and Sam was getting very nervous. He went to the bathroom and knocked on the door a couple of times, but a torrent of words was all the response he got. Sam waited, his heart pounding in his chest. What if Jaz and Uncle Mungo were to come back now? In his mind’s eye he could see the ute driving up the track, Uncle Mungo banging his way into the house because he’d forgotten something, and deciding to nip into the bathroom before he went out again. Sam began to sweat a little as the splashing continued on and on.

He knocked on the door again. ‘Hurry up!’ he whispered urgently.

Finally the door opened and the child stepped out, a happier look on his gleaming face. The matted, spiky hair was clean and not so spiky now, and George’s clothes were a pretty good fit. He had the wet towel and his dirty clothes in a bundle, which he handed to Sam.

George looked into the bathroom, and whistled. ‘Wow, he leaves the bathroom a lot cleaner than we do!’

There was still no sign of Jock, so Sam thought they’d chance giving the child some food in the kitchen. He sat him down at the table and filled a bowl with cereal and milk, and sprinkled some sugar on top. The child looked at the bowl and then at Sam and George.

‘Doesn’t he know what cornflakes are?’ said George.

‘I guess not. They probably don’t have them where he comes from.’ Sam picked up a spoon, and mimed eating from the bowl.

The child looked warily at the bowl again, but he picked up his spoon and tasted the cereal. He appeared completely mystified as he began to chew, and then smiled at the boys, and dug in.

‘Hah!’ said George with satisfaction. ‘
No one
doesn’t like cornflakes!’

The child ate another bowl of cereal and some bread and jam, and then he drank a large glass of milk. Sam and George watched as he devoured it all, and he grinned at them as though he was sharing a joke.

‘For a little bloke he can sure put it away!’ said George appreciatively. ‘He must have been really hungry before we found him, hey?’

‘I guess so,’ said Sam. ‘I wish he could tell us something. I wonder what language he speaks?’

Just then they heard a door slam, and Old Jock’s voice calling out to them.

‘Oh no!’ hissed Sam. ‘Quick, go and keep him busy while I get the kid out the back door!’

George disappeared immediately, and seconds later Sam could hear him asking the old man a question, trying to delay him. He motioned to the child to follow, and hurriedly led him through the back door and out across the yard towards the hay shed. They scuttled up the ladder and the child buried himself amongst the boxes again. Enormous green eyes stared up at Sam as he arranged an old blanket across the top to make a better hiding place.

‘Just stay quiet here for a bit longer, okay? We’ll think of something …’ He stopped as he saw fat tears spill out of the child’s eyes and roll down his cheeks. Sam squatted down beside him, and patted him on the shoulder awkwardly. It occurred to him that this child had probably lost his whole family, that maybe there were lots of reasons why he might be crying.

‘I don’t know where you’re from, or who you are, or
what’s happened to you. You seem pretty small to have such big problems. But you’re safe – for now, anyway. If my dad was here …’ But at that, Sam’s own eyes blurred, and he stood up blinking furiously. Stepping over to the ladder, he turned to the child, placing his finger against his lips. ‘Just stay there, okay?’

‘Whew, that was close,’ George whispered to Sam when he came back inside the house. ‘I had to pretend to Old Jock that I was having a second breakfast. Now he reckons I’ve got worms!’

Sam felt completely hopeless. What was he doing? How did he think he could keep a child hidden like this? All he knew was, there was no way he could let this child be taken away to a prison, like those other kids. He looked up at his brother. ‘C’mon, we’re supposed to be cleaning out the guinea pig cage, and I said we’d go round the horse paddock fence again, so we better hurry up.’

Before they left, they brought some more food up to the loft, with a fresh bottle of water and some fruit, and tried to indicate to the child that they would come back later. The child smiled and nodded, pretending to hide under the blankets as if to show them he knew what to do.

‘He’s pretty smart, really, considering he doesn’t speak English. He seems to know what we mean most of the time,’ said George as they climbed down again.

‘Yeah,’ said Sam, ‘but I bet he’s pretty scared. C’mon, hurry up or Uncle Mungo’ll beat us home.’

Uncle Mungo did beat them back to the house. Sam and George arrived home on the quad runner from checking the horse paddock to find the old work ute parked beside the hay shed. Sam looked at George and bit his lip. ‘Maybe he’s gone straight into the house?’ said George hopefully. They drove the bike into the shed and stopped at the bottom of the ladder.

‘Well, well, what have we here?’ Uncle Mungo’s loud voice echoed off the tin roof high above them. Sam and George looked at each other in horror, and scrambled up the ladder as fast as they could.

‘Uncle Mungo –’ Sam started to say when he reached the loft platform. Uncle Mungo was standing looking about him, but as far as Sam could tell, the child was out of sight.

‘So this is where you guys get to when you want to avoid some work, huh?’ He chuckled a bit, and poked at the plate with orange peel and an apple core on a hay bale. ‘You blokes are a bit old for picnics and cubby-houses, aren’t ya?’

Sam was thinking fast. ‘Yeah, well, it’s our – our shed, you know?’

‘That’s right,’ chimed in his brother. ‘We often come up here with some food and hang out. We brought some lunch up here before we went out to the horse paddock. It’s fun.’

Sam’s heart almost stopped. Right behind his uncle’s big booted foot was a small bare one poking out of the hay. The child must have been caught off guard when Uncle Mungo climbed up the ladder. George noticed it too, and he pointed up at the roof, saying, ‘See the nests up the top? Some swallows nested there last season,’ and while his uncle craned his neck up to see, Sam nudged some hay over the exposed foot.

Uncle Mungo looked around again and grinned. ‘Yeah, well, all Australian boys need a shed, they say. Heh heh, good on ya.’ And he climbed down the ladder, the platform shaking precariously with his weight.

‘I don’t think I can take much more of this!’ said George once Uncle Mungo was out of earshot. ‘We’re gunna have to think of something soon, or he’s gunna find out about the kid for sure.’

Sam sat down and tapped the foot with his fingers. ‘It’s safe now, c’mon.’ A hay-flecked head and two frightened eyes peered out, and then the child scrambled from beneath the blanket. He sat on the floor looking terrified and exhausted. The three of them stared at each other, not knowing what to say.

Tess and Darcy arrived just before lunch the next day. Sam and George heard the beep of a horn, and raced out to the verandah to see Aunty Lou’s car pulling up outside the gate. Jock appeared next to them, a grin on his leathery old face.

‘Blimey, I better go find them hobble straps. Too many young’uns at Brumby Plains now – us old folks’re outnumbered! G’day, Lou-Lou, nice ter see ya again.’

Tess ran up the steps and gave the old man a hug. He shook hands with Darcy and received several hugs and kisses from Aunty Lou, who was resplendent in bright green cotton trousers and an equally bright pink and red shirt which clashed violently with the purple-red hair. Uncle Mungo cautiously poked his nose out of the door, spotted Aunty Lou too late and was given a bear hug and an enthusiastic hello. He looked a bit stunned and blinked a few times as Aunty Lou chattered away at him about the trip out to the station.

‘Hey, guys … have you heard from your dad?’ Tess asked carefully.

‘Yeah,’ said Sam. ‘He’s a bit better, but Mum said we won’t know anything for a while yet.’

They unloaded the car while Aunty Lou chatted to Old Jock on the verandah. ‘Careful of the esky, boys!’
she called as George and Darcy manhandled it out of the back. ‘It’s got some special treats from the markets inside. We’ll have them for lunch.’

As soon as Tess and Darcy’s bags – and a suspiciously bulgy pillowcase – were stowed away, Sam jerked his head at the others and said, ‘C’mon, let’s go down to the horses.’

They trooped over to the horse paddock, which was far enough from the house for Sam to feel safe from being overheard, and climbed through the fence.

‘What’s up?’ said Darcy. ‘Aren’t we going to have lunch now? I’m starving. We brought tom yum soup and a heap of satays and stuff,’ he said with relish, and George’s face lit up.

‘Soon, but first George and I have got something to tell you,’ answered Sam.

‘It’s not your dad …?’ ventured Tess, with a worried look.

‘No, it’s something else altogether. You know how we told you we found a wrecked boat at Deception Point the other day?’ The twins nodded. ‘Well, when George and I went back there the day before yesterday to fix the fence, we found a
kid
.’

Tess and Darcy looked completely puzzled, until Tess said, ‘A
kid
? You mean you found someone? What, from the wreck?’

‘Yeah, at least we guess so,’ said George. ‘I mean, he looks a bit foreign, and he can’t speak any English. And he eats a lot!’

‘Well if eating a lot makes him foreign, you must be from the moon, George,’ said Sam. ‘We found him lying on the beach, right beside the water –’

‘And just in time,’ broke in George, ‘because that humungous old croc, the one we told you about from the rookery? He was just about to snatch the kid from the beach but we frightened him away. Sam sconed him with a big rock and he took off!’

Tess shook her head in disbelief. ‘Wow. What did Uncle Mungo say?’ she said, remembering the comments he had made a few nights earlier about illegal immigrants. ‘He must have been really cross!’

‘Uncle Mungo doesn’t know about it. We’re not telling him.’ Sam frowned and looked away. His mare Holly had come up to them, and she pushed her nose into his back and demanded a pat. He turned towards her and rubbed her neck absently.

Tess looked at him curiously. ‘So where’s this kid now then?’

‘We hid him up in the hay loft – you know, where we used to have our old cubbyhouse. We brought him inside to have a bath yesterday while everyone was out of the house,’ George said in his usual rush of words,
‘and then we gave him cornflakes. He didn’t know what they were!’

Tess and Darcy pondered all this for a moment, then Darcy said, ‘Well, what are you going to do with him? You have to tell someone, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, we know. But not Uncle Mungo,’ said Sam vehemently. ‘He’ll either shoot him –’

‘Sam! He would not!’ Tess was shocked.

‘– or he’ll call in the Immigration people and they’ll lock him up in a detention centre somewhere, like those kids we saw on tv at your place. He’s just a little kid. We can’t let that happen to him.’