Danny Allen Was Here (13 page)

Danny’s dad looked into Tippy’s eyes. ‘Hold him and keep him as still as you can, Danny,’ he said quickly. ‘Let’s get him home, then we can take him to Port Bilton. The vet will know what to do.’

Danny’s dad drove the tractor back to the house faster than he should have. Danny nursed Tippy, who began panting harder and faster, all the way home. And all the way to Port Bilton Danny talked to Tippy, saying
things like: ‘When the vet fixes you we’ll take you home and you can rest. Mum will give you cakes and biscuits. Tomorrow I’ll throw more sticks for you and you can come over to the hall and watch me climb the lookout tree. You can pee on the soldier’s foot. We can even chase chickens if you like. You little bully!’

Tippy’s response became less and less natural. Danny was as afraid as Tippy.

When they charged into the veterinary clinic the little dog was hanging on by a thread. The vet quickly examined the now-unconscious Tippy and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Danny, I can’t help him.’

‘Can’t you just give him an injection to make him better?’ Danny said. ‘Do something, anything, please!’

The vet shook his head again.

Tippy died under the gentle stroke of Danny’s hand and the sorrowful sound of his inconsolable weeping.

That night Danny couldn’t sleep for the redness of his eyes and the hurt inside that was so bad he felt it would never go away. Images of Tippy scattering chickens, begging for food, running with the tractor, chasing a stick and peeing on the soldier statue’s foot in front of the Mundowie Institute Hall kept appearing. As he tossed and turned they wouldn’t leave him. If only tomorrow could be yesterday and all the memories would be real again. If only the warm patch at the end of his bed were there.

Danny held his pillow and lay awake listening to Vicki sobbing and his mother singing softly to her.
Tra, la, la, la, la, dee, dah
. Across the room he heard Sam snuffling.

Late into the night light from the tractor shed filtered in through his window. The tractor had started clunking noisily on the way back from the creek. Danny had begged his dad not to stop, so he hadn’t. And now he was hard at work trying to fix whatever had gone wrong. He would need the tractor the next day. The fence by the creek still hadn’t been mended.

Danny spent the following day wandering aimlessly. He climbed his lookout tree and sat on his branch dangling his legs. In the afternoon he stood by the creek throwing sticks like boomerangs, but they never came back.

Later in the week, he took Tippy’s collar from under his pillow and went to the creek to put it in his secret place with the other treasures. This time, he remembered to wear his boots.

Just over a week after Tippy died, on a Friday evening just before sunset, Danny’s dad arrived in the truck with Mr Thompson. Danny was sitting on the front step. He was throwing little sticks and stones at the chickens to make them scatter.

His dad climbed from the truck and came walking through the gate. There was something moving under his arm, hidden under his hat. Danny’s dad wasn’t much good at wrapping presents. Mind you, this one would have been impossible to wrap.

Danny took little notice until his dad called him. ‘Danny, come and help me, please?’ He motioned down to his moving hat. ‘I’m going to drop this in a minute.’

Danny rose to his feet, puzzled as to why his dad was wrestling with his hat. He approached cautiously. His dad had played tricks on him before. In fact, he was a lot like Sam in many ways.

‘What is it, Dad?’

Danny’s dad didn’t get time to answer. Danny saw it. He knew what it was.

His heart skipped a beat when he caught sight of a tail flicking happily from under the hat. The secret was out. Danny’s father flung his hat away like a magician revealing the wonder of a successful trick.

Under his arm, squirming and wriggling, was a small white pup. Danny ran to hold him.

The pup went crazy and so did Danny. ‘Sam! Vicki!’ he bellowed. ‘Come out here, quick!’

Danny’s father ruffled his son’s hair. ‘I had planned to get a sheep dog a while back, anyway,’ he said. ‘But since I don’t need one any more, I thought it best to get a little dog.’

Danny was too excited to take much notice of what his dad had said. He was too busy laughing and fending off the little pup’s boisterous affection. ‘Ha, ha, keep still for a minute.’

Danny wrapped his fingers around the pup’s middle, lifted it and held it at arm’s length in front of his face. The tail never stopped. He was a soft ball of fluff with a pink belly. His nose was stubby and his bent ears flopped over his forehead. His tail curled cheekily onto his back. Danny put him down at his feet. The little pup didn’t walk; he bounded around playfully, looking for a game. Then he saw Danny’s shoelaces and lunged at them, taking them in his sharp little teeth and tugging.

Grrr
.

‘Hey, get off!’ Danny chuckled as he reached down and pulled him away.

‘What do you want to call him?’ his dad asked. ‘What about Tippy the second?’ he suggested.

Danny thought for a minute. Tippy was a good name, but there would never be another Tippy. As far as Danny was concerned there should be a statue of the little hero next to the soldier in front of the Mundowie Hall.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘I couldn’t call him Tippy.’

Sam and Vicki flew through the front door and off the verandah. They saw the pup, laughed and made a lot of noise. The little fellow seemed to like it. He yapped and spun about.

Sam and Vicki dropped to their knees. Sam set off on all fours and walked with the pup. ‘What are we going to call him?’ he asked.

At that moment the pup snapped a biscuit from Vicki’s hand. ‘Ow! You’ve got sharp teeth!’ She was pouting as she looked at her dad and said, very loudly, ‘He shouldn’t snap like that.’ She pointed at the puppy. ‘You are a silly-billy,’ she scolded.

‘He is,’ grinned Danny. ‘Hey! That’s it!’ he said. ‘Billy. Let’s call him Billy.’

There were loud cheers of agreement. Vicki forgot about her biscuit. She smiled and clapped. ‘I thought of it, didn’t I, Danny? I was the one who thought of that name.’

‘Billy it is then,’ said their dad, pushing his hat from his forehead.

Danny looked at his dad. ‘Where did you get him?’

‘Mark Thompson saw an advertisement in the
Port Bilton Times
. He told his dad and his dad told me.’

‘Mark Thompson?’ said Danny.

Danny’s dad nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s right. Mark misses Tippy too, you know. He loved him. His dad said that he’d never seen Mark cry as hard as he did the day he heard about Tippy and the snake.’

Danny was stunned. Mark Thompson had cried?

‘He loved that little dog of yours, you know,’ his dad continued. ‘When you weren’t here spoiling him he was over at the Thompsons’. Mark liked having him around. He used to feed him doughnuts and let him rest on his bed. He wanted a dog of his own, but his dad didn’t want one once they sold the farm and thought they might move to the city.’

‘But I didn’t think Mark and his dad
were
moving to the city.’

‘Well, they’re not sure yet, he’s got the truck, but who knows?’

Danny frowned. ‘But Mr Thompson hates the city.’

‘Hmm, I know.’

He gazed at his dad.

‘Like you; you don’t like the city much, do you, Dad?’

Danny’s dad looked away. ‘Not really,’ he sighed. ‘But I guess you get used to it.’

Danny nodded pensively. He wasn’t sure he could.

Before Danny could drift into deeper thought, Billy took hold of his shoelace again.

Grrr
.

Danny shook his leg. ‘Get off, you little beast!’ Billy let go and immediately skirted playfully around in preparation for another attack.

Before he could latch on again, Danny reached down and picked him up. ‘Come on,’ he said to Vicki and Sam. ‘Let’s take him over to show Mark.’

They headed off across the road with Billy’s tail spinning in a blur.

Vicki danced to make her dress twirl and made up a song. ‘Silly Billy, I love you. La, dee, da, dee, da, dee, dum. Silly Billy.’

Danny and Sam looked at Vicki, then each other, smirked and suddenly burst into a run.

‘Hey!’ Vicki cried, forgetting her song and flying from a skip to a run. ‘Wait up!’

Danny and Sam were pushing and pulling each other playfully in the passageway. Their stomping feet rumbled on the wooden floorboards. They weren’t fighting; they were just being silly. Every time Danny came near, Sam pushed, bumped or swung Danny away. Of course, Danny always came back for more. It was great fun.

Spinning and bumping, tugging and swinging, he bounced from the walls of the passage like a silver
ball in a pinball machine. He was laughing hard and couldn’t stop. His body felt floppy and weak. He liked the feeling.

‘Bump me again,’ Danny chuckled. ‘But not too hard.’

‘No, I’ll spin you this time,’ Sam replied.

‘Okay,’ said Danny. ‘Grab my shirt and spin me fast. Make me dizzy.’

Sam was keen. ‘Right, you asked for it. Hang on.’

Sam took the tail of Danny’s shirt in his hands and whizzed him around and around. Danny’s outstretched arms thumped the walls. The boys laughed raucously.

Weak and floppy with laughter, Danny lost his balance and dropped to his knees with a dull thud.

Sam took hold of his brother’s arm and dragged him along. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Up you get. I’ll spin you again.’

‘Okay,’ Danny laughed. ‘Just wait until I get up.’

Sam pulled harder. Danny staggered to his feet.

The boys bumped into each other again and cried out happily, ‘Whoa, ho, ho, ho.’

They were loud, but not as loud as their father when he suddenly stormed into the dull light at the end of the passageway. ‘That’s enough!’ he roared viciously. He’d been in the kitchen sorting through folders and papers. ‘Now get outside!’

Stunned, the boys stopped. Sam’s eyes were sparkling. He smiled brightly up at his father. ‘What did we do, Dad?’ he asked innocently.

His dad took a step forward. He loomed in the darkest part of the passageway. His unshaven face was shadowed. ‘Don’t answer me back!’ he snarled.

Sam’s smile quickly faded.

Then pointing sharply to the back door, his dad yelled, ‘I said get outside!’

Danny stared at his dad as he edged past and thought he looked different. Maybe it was just that he hadn’t had a shave and wasn’t wearing his hat and he looked tired. Or maybe it was the dull light of the passageway. He just didn’t look right.

Danny was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of his mum’s footsteps. She walked, soft and calm, into the passageway and put her hands gently on the boys’ shoulders. ‘Off you go,’ she said quietly. ‘Your dad’s trying to think.’

Clutching at his forehead, Danny’s dad slunk back into the kitchen. The boys walked behind him as quietly as a snake slithers through spring grass. Their dad slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. He had his back to them. Envelopes and papers surrounded his elbows. There were folders stacked at his feet in leaning towers. Danny’s mum walked the boys to the back door and pushed it open. ‘Vicki’s down the back. She’s dragging things out of the shed to make a cubby house in the old pepper trees. She won’t be able to do it alone. Why don’t you go and help her?’

The boys walked out the back door and headed toward the shed.

Halfway down Danny broke the silence. ‘What’s wrong with Dad?’ he asked.

Sam glanced back to the house and shrugged his shoulders. He hung his head and kicked up dust. ‘I don’t know,’ he said distantly. ‘Probably just a headache.’

He playfully nudged Danny to unbalance him. ‘We
were
pretty rowdy,’ he chuckled.

‘Yeah,’ giggled Danny. ‘No one could think above that racket.’

Sam grabbed Danny’s shirt, swung him mischievously and took off. Danny laughed and stumbled dizzily after him.

Down at the shed, Vicki emerged from the shadows. She had her arms wrapped around a long piece of wood and was dragging it along. Her flowery dress was filthy. She had a dark grubby mark across her cheek and her hair clips were loose. Her long fine hair, gently curled at the temples, fell across her face. She was singing as usual.
Tra, la, la, la, dee, dah
.

Danny shook his head. She always seemed to be singing the same song. His mum was the same. Once she had a song in her head she’d sing it over and over again for days. Then she’d go and buy the song and
play it
over and over again for weeks.

Vicki stopped when she saw the boys. She blew away the annoying strand of hair that hung over her eyes with a strong puff of air from her bottom lip.

Her face filled with delight. ‘Hey boys,’ she sparked. ‘Do you want to help me?’ Vicki dropped the piece of wood and skipped over to them. Her hair flapped at her shoulders. ‘I’ve got this really good idea.’

She stood next to Danny and looked up into the branches of the big pepper trees. Her face was scrunched because the sun was in her eyes. Vicki pointed to the trees. ‘I want to build a house up there with the birds.’

With a hand shielding his eyes, Danny gazed up into the sparks of sunlight flickering through the leaves of the tree. He squinted. ‘Yeah, I think we can do that.’

He had no idea how, so he looked to his big brother. ‘Can’t we, Sam?’

Sam nodded. ‘Yeah, we can do that.’

Vicki bounced on the spot and clapped loudly. ‘Yaaayyy! I’ll get more stuff from the shed.’

They all set to work.

Sam took charge. He was a good builder. His Lego constructions were incredible. There was a whole city on their bedroom floor once, with streets, houses, offices, institute halls and a freeway that went under his bed that he called the bed-tunnel freeway. When he finished constructing it he took some model aeroplanes he’d built and he and Danny flew about in dogfights above the Lego city. They dropped bombs made of marbles and cheered at the cracking sound of exploding Lego until the city lay in ruins. Then they rebuilt it and started again. It was wicked!

But some of the best things Sam created were made with junk – like the huge cardboard-box castle that sat under the window and the two tin-can tractors. These were made of a tin can with wheels, a little wooden seat and an engine drawn in feltpen on the side, and they sat on his bedside cupboard. They had a rubber band that ran through the centre of the can and somehow made them zoom along when it was wound up. Danny didn’t understand how.

Two kites with bamboo frames and clear plastic
coverings hung on one wall. Sam had cut small round holes into the bamboo so that the kites would whistle like flutes when they flew. He’d read a book that said such kites were used in ancient wars and flown over armies at night to make ghostly sounds to scare the enemy. Sam loved the idea and put it into practice by terrifying Mark Thompson one windy night.

Danny loved it when Sam was inventing or building. It usually meant an exciting adventure would follow. Danny was amazed at the way Sam’s mind worked and how he made little dreams come true. He was convinced that one day Sam would become someone very important – like an inventor, or scientist, or space explorer, or someone else who would be of enormous help to the world.

With great anticipation, Danny watched as Sam surveyed the site. He wandered thoughtfully, plans taking shape in his mind. Danny followed as Sam walked around the trees examining their trunks and branches. Then he strode into the tractor shed to check out what he could use in construction.

Danny’s excitement was building. He couldn’t wait to see how his brother was going to make Vicki’s dream of a house in the trees with the birds come true. Danny wondered if it was going to be as grand as Sam’s cardboard-box castle creation. If it was, Danny
would not be surprised at all. A tree castle would be a fine thing to have.

Sam climbed the tree to look for the best building spot. Where the leaves were thickest he stood on a chunky branch that ran parallel with the ground. The branch forked off at a perfect point and spread like a giant hand holding a small jewel in its palm. ‘We’ll build the floor here,’ Sam called, pointing to his feet. ‘Across these two branches.’ He stood astride the two thick prongs of the fork. ‘It’ll be perfect.’ He looked across to the other pepper tree, which wasn’t far away. ‘We can build two houses,’ he said. ‘One in each tree and then . . . link them with a rope bridge.’

Vicki bounced up and down clapping her hands for the second time in only a few minutes. ‘Yay! Yaaaaaay!’

Danny was excited, but resisted the urge to bounce. He could imagine two perfect tree houses with a rope bridge just like those that stretched across dangerous canyons in places like Argentina and Brazil. And it was going to be right here in his backyard. Brilliant! This was going to be a good day.

Vicki stopped bouncing and stood in front of Danny. She suddenly looked very serious. ‘I get to choose the best house,’ she declared loudly, with hands on hips. ‘It was my idea. I get to choose.’

Danny put his hands on her shoulders. ‘All right, all right. You get to choose.’

Danny and Vicki watched Sam climb down. ‘Let’s get started,’ he said as he marched toward the tractor shed. Intensely curious, Danny and Vicki followed like sheep.

‘How are we going to get everything up there, Sam?’ Danny asked.

Sam waved a dismissive hand. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got that all figured out,’ he said.

Vicki quickened her step and skipped up beside Sam. ‘Remember, I get to choose the best house,’ she repeated.

‘You’ll have a hard choice,’ Sam replied. ‘They’re both going to be pretty good.’

Vicki frowned thoughtfully. ‘Will you help me choose then?’

‘Of course,’ Sam grinned shiftily. ‘I’ll choose for you if you like.’

Vicki was happy.

The patch of ground beneath the trees soon looked like a building site. There were old pieces of wood dumped in a small pile, bags, ropes, tins and wooden boxes. Sam clipped on a tool belt that held a hammer, some pliers and a pouch containing an assortment of nails. Vicki and Danny were in the shed pulling out more wood. Vicki
was wearing huge leather gloves so that she didn’t get splinters or spiders on her hands. Danny had found them for her after taking a tiny splinter from her thumb that was as fine as a strand of hair and hardly visible; it had sent her into a screaming frenzy.

Using strands of wire twisted and tied securely, Sam hung a pulley in the tree. He threaded a rope through it and let one end drop to the ground. It dangled like a snake. His idea was to tie anything heavy he might need to the rope at ground level, then haul it up into the tree – just like a crane on a skyscraper. Danny was in awe of his brother; he would never have thought of such a thing.

The first item they hoisted into the tree was an old wooden picket gate that their dad had made once. There were ten splintery pickets with small gaps. It looked rough, but it was strong. They had all tested its strength by bouncing on it in the shed; Vicki gave it a particularly long bouncing test. ‘I’ll use this for the floor,’ Sam had suggested. ‘It will look like the decking that some of those fancy houses have around their swimming pools.’

Sam waited in the tree as Danny and Vicki took the dangling rope and tied the gate with lots of ugly knots.

‘Make sure you tie it on properly,’ Sam called.

‘Don’t worry,’ replied Danny, looking down at the intestine of knots they’d created. ‘It’s tied on all right.’