Mucked Up (19 page)

They’re so busy with their sicko tongue-biz they don’t notice me and Sumo-pig run past, and now we’re heading along the side of the school fence toward the footy oval where I can see the footy posts with the bins on top. How the flarp DID they get them up there?
Must’ve used a ladder. Or did they really hire a crane?

There are trees on the edge of the footy oval and we are running between them. Up ahead I see the footy scoreboard. It is on a brick wall that is the back wall of the maintenance shed.

‘Tom!’

???????

I stop and look up.

Five Asians in a tree.

Five hot blonde Asians in a big tree. All on different branches with their schoolbags on their backs: Angie Maningas and Mae Nguy on middle branches. Krissy Klang near the top on a high branch. Ji-Hyun (Jack) sitting on the branch beside her. And looking down from a low branch, right over my head, Brisley Weng.

‘Tom, you’ve got to help us. There are Year 12 girls on scooters who want to get us and we’re hiding from them.’

‘You mean the Superspicy-Girlz on Scooters?’

Krissy Klang goes ‘Well they’re not as super-spicy as us, but yeah, they’re on scooters. They’re jealous of our hotness and they’ve been chasing us but we managed to get up this tree.’

Brisley goes ‘Please, Tom, they want to jizz-bomb us’ and Mae Nguy goes ‘Yeah, do you know how hard it is to get paste out of colour-treated hair?’

Sumo-pig hasn’t waited for me: it’s way down near the footy scoreboard and I should be with it, not standing here. ‘What do you want me to do, Bris? I can’t do anything, I’m just trying to survive too.’

Krissy Klang says ‘Just find them and tell them to stop looking for us’ and Bris goes ‘Yeah, tell them we’ve gone home or something.’

Funny how she wants me to help her out
NOW
even though she walked away from
SCUM
this morning, then wouldn’t talk to me in the library when I didn’t have a country to sit in. Why should I help her and her stupid
HAGZ
who have never even spoken to me before because I’m an unworthy nobody little loser-lamer …

I can’t think of what to say so I say ‘Sorry gotta go’ and just run off and they’re all yelling ‘Tom …
THIS IS SERIOUS
…
OUR HAIR!!!!!
…’

The pig is at the scoreboard wall. When I get there, it walks round to the other side of the scoreboard. This is where the door to the maintenance shed is.

The door is closed and the pig just stands there. ‘You want me to open it?’

The handle is oily when I turn it. Open the door. It’s dark, can’t see—

‘
GET BLUDDY OUUUUTTTTTTT!!!!!
’

An old scary face pops out, scares the flarping flarp out of me.

‘…
BLUDDY MAJ-MUNE JED-ANNNNN!!!!!
’

It’s King Bozz the Yard Guy. His face is all crazy and he is holding the Yard Duty garden-grabbers and snapping them in my face,
snap snap
.

‘
GET OUTTTTTTT, BLUDDY YEAR 12 RIFFRAFF!
’

‘I’m Year 9, Year 9!’

He stops snapping: ‘Why you dress in bluddy costume?’

‘Yard Duty, remember? I did it this morning with you.’ He stands and thinks but I don’t think he remembers. I think he may be drunk on alchie.

He looks down and sees the pig and gets all happy. ‘Haha, bluddy pig have come back!’

‘Yeah the pig brought me here.’

‘Pig have been hiding with me all day. It is safe here from riff-raff.’

He opens the door and the pig goes in, then King Bozz says to me, ‘Awww you enter here also, bluddy maj-a-rac!’ Not sure if a maj-a-rac is a swear or a good thing because all Bosnia-words sound like swears, but I go in and he closes the door.

It’s dark in here, can hardly see a thing, and stinks too, like car petrol. Dangerous to walk in here too, cos of the darkness and all the crap in here.

You know those old Egypt movies where there’s all these booby-traps and deadly things in the pyramid and if you touch anything a spear will pop out or the floor will open and you will die? Maintenance Shed is like that. There’s this old rusty mower right in front of the door so I’ve got to carefully walk round that, then behind the mower is a flat paint-tray with something sloshy in it that I almost put my shoe in. Gotta duck a bit now because there’s a huge piece of wood poking out of nowhere, with a giant nail sticking out the end, and it almost gets me in the eye.

The pig goes to the back of the shed where a shelf is filled with old tins and brushes and jars with nails and stuff, then it sits on the ground. I am realising something amazing: the pig brought me here because it knew I would be safe. It took me the long way because it was the safest way. It is the most brave creature that I have ever known.

King Bozz goes over to a rusty wheelbarrow in the middle of the shed and uses his garden-grabbers to grab a can from out of it. There are lots more cans in the wheelbarrow that haven’t been opened. He must be pretty wasted on alchie because there are empty cans all over the ground, like seven or eight, foot-squashed.

King Bozz sits on the edge of the wheelbarrow, opens the can and takes a massive sip, like almost half a can in one go. Don’t know how he can do it, alchie tastes rank AS. Like sugar mixed with hospital smells.

‘What is name then?’

‘Tom Zurbo-Goldblatt.’

‘SERBO?’

‘No, Zurbo. Tom ZURBO-Goldblatt.’

‘Good, no bluddy Serb EVER come in my shed, bluddy jebb … EMM-li … mahj-KU!’

I don’t know where to sit because there are no other wheelbarrows around. I sit on a roll of chickenwire against the wall but it bends in the middle and I sink into it. King Bozz goes haw haw while he’s taking a sip from his can and the drink misses his mouth and goes down his chin. He has to wipe his chin with his big dirty Yard Duty hand. His hands are always dirty with mud because he digs out plants without gardening gloves, just using his fingers as a digging tool.

‘What bluddy name is Tom Zurbo-Gold— Gold—?’

‘Goldblatt. Yeah, weird I know. When I’m older I’m going to change it to something more normal.
Thom
Zurbo-Goldblatt. Then I’ll sound like Thom Yorke from Radiohead. You like Radiohead?’

…

Guess not. So I sit and watch King Bozz finish the rest of the can, then he drops it on the ground and squashes it flat with his boot. He gets two more new cans out of the wheelbarrow then stands up, comes over to me, holds one can out like he wants me to take it.

‘You drink with me.’

I try to act cool, like I am a profesh alchie-drinker, ‘Nahh, not up for it today, really need to have a non-drinking day.’

He pushes it in my face: ‘In my country, when we was hiding from war criminal in our village and someone offer you drink,
YOU BLUDDY TAKE DRINK BECAUSE IT MAY BE YOUR BLUDDY LAST!!!!!!!
’

I don’t like alchie and I don’t like what it does to me. I once had like just four little sips of wine at my Uncle Steve and Aunt Pen’s place and I went all demented in my brain and felt really sick and Mum had to take me home early and I chucked up in my hands in the car. But his yelling freaks me out so I take the can and open it: ‘Aighhht, just a sip,’ then he lifts his can in the air and says ‘Drink can escalate happiness when there is nothing else to make happiness! NAZ-DRAVLJE!’ which must be the ‘cheers’ they do in Bosnia-land, so I
lift up my can back, ‘Yeah … naz-raz-yyy.’

He takes a massive sip, the whole can in one go; I take a tiny bit in my mouth and just secretly spit it straight back into the can so he thinks I swallowed but I didn’t. But actually it does taste pretty good and un-hospitaly.

‘Very nice alcohol, King Bozz,’ I go and he says ‘Not alcohol! I am Bosnian Muslim, we do not drink alcohol. Lemonade. I not give alcohol to young boy. Pfah!’ I look at my can: it’s hard to see in the dark but yeah, it’s definitely lemonade, a cheap dodgy brand I’ve never heard of. Ravo won’t believe this when I tell him that King Bozz is actually a very sad lemonade-oholic.

King Bozz sits back down on his wheelbarrow: ‘Now that we have drunk lemonade together, we are comrades and I will tell you sad story. Hiding in shed all day from riff-raff has made me think much about my bluddy village, in war we are having against Serbs twenty years ago. When I was boy, same age as you, bluddy war criminals come to my village and I am hiding in barn with donkey. Me and small donkey. I should have gone outside barn and fought war criminal but I do not do that. I just hide like bluddy disgrace while war criminal go round shooting up bluddy village …’

Don’t know what to do or say. He’s staring at me like a big scary statue: ‘If you are pushed down by bad enemy, you must not run away and hide, you should rise up and fight war criminal. Be brave-boy, not bluddy coward-boy like me. Get up! Get out! Help your village! Help your people! LIVE BY HEART AND FIGHT WITH HEART!!!!!’

He bangs hard on his chest then waits for me to do something, so I get up, but the chickenwire roll has shaped itself into my arse so when I stand, it comes with me and I have to kind of pull it off my arse. King Bozz stops being sad and is laughing haw haw haw.

I don’t know why I am doing this but I’m trying to pick up the pig.

It’s hard to pick it up.

Because—

—it’s slippery with Vaseline.

And it doesn’t really want to be picked up, it is flipping round in the middle …

‘Look at boy pick up bluddy pig haw haw.’

Never had this strange kind of not-scared feeling before. Most moments of my life I am usually in Xtreme Scaredy Mode. I don’t know if it’s King Bozz’s speech or the paint fumes from the paint-tray or the cheap dodgy lemonade, but I am walking up to the door with the pig in my arms.

‘You are right, King Bozz! From the moment I stepped into school this morning I’ve been running and hiding. And I’m sick of running and hiding like a scaredy little dickweed!’

(Why am I am opening the door? Why am I stepping out of the shed?)

‘I am going to fight back! I am going to help my people! I am going with my pig!’ King Bozz says ‘Good luck to you Zurbo Gold-boy. Now close door! In my country, when people are hiding from war criminal,
YOU CLOSE BLUDDY DOOR!!!!!
’