Charlie Burr and the Three Stolen Dollars Page 3

  Then he pointed to a big yard with two enormous camels in it. Dad and Uncle Mick were nearby, looking over the fence.

  ‘That’s Bluey over there,’ said Johnno, pointing at the larger camel. ‘Dad reckons Bluey’s going to be the star of a camel wrestling league. But he’s kidding himself. Bluey’s too friendly.’

  I tried to picture camels wrestling, but I couldn’t.

  ‘Camels butt each other a lot,’ Johnno said. ‘Sometimes they try and trip each other. The wrestling league is Dad’s latest money-making idea.’

  ‘A top wrestler needs a mean name,’ I said. ‘Like the Punisher, or something. Not Bluey.’

  ‘Mum thinks camel wrestling’s a stupid idea,’ said Johnno. ‘I reckon she’ll try to can it.’

  Aunty June called us in for afternoon tea. I tied Spike to the verandah post with a new lead Dad had bought him.

  ‘A dingo pup, ay?’ Aunty said.

  I told her Spike was a kelpie.

  She laughed her head off. Then she said, ‘And is your mother still hankering after a cat?’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s a stand-off. Dad doesn’t want a killing machine, and Mum reckons Spike is only on trial.’

  Aunty June told me Mum was baking cakes to sell at the Camel Carnival.

  That was news to me. I haven’t smelt anything good in our kitchen for a while.

  ‘Your mum promised to give me a hand selling things on Sunday,’ said Aunty June. ‘I tell you what, Charlie, I’ll put in a good word for you about the little fella.’

  ‘Aw, thanks, Aunty!’ I said.

  Johnno and I had camel milk, squares of camel cheese, and wholemeal biscuits baked in the shape of camel heads for afternoon tea. They tasted a lot better than they looked.

  Aunty is hoping to sell her goodies to shops once she’s finished experimenting.

  When we went back outside, Spike’s new lead was chewed in half and he was gone. So were the camels.

  The pup’s as smart as an acrobat, so I guessed what had happened. He’d climbed up the fence railings and nosed up the loose latch on the gate. The camels must have made a run for it out of the open gate.

  It was terrible, of course. But it was also so clever, I couldn’t help feeling proud! But where was Spike now?

  ‘Mick!’ Aunty June yelled. ‘Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear anything?’

  Dad and Uncle Mick had their heads stuck under the hood of the truck. When they realised what had happened, they started following Spike’s paw prints and the camels’ hoof prints. Johnno and I went with them. We finally found Rosy and her camel mates hanging out in the shade of a gum tree with Spike, like they were good friends.

  Rosy wasn’t happy to see Unc, though. She headbutted his shoulder.

  I think Johnno’s right. Rosy knows she might not stay with Johnno forever, and it’s upsetting her.

  After we got the camels back in the yard, Unc reckoned his shoulder was aching something terrible. Aunty June stuck Unc’s arm in a sling, but she wasn’t very sympathetic.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mick,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll help out at the Camel Carnival on Sunday if you’re not right by then.’

  ‘But you’ve got stitches in your hand, Jim!’ Uncle Mick said.

  ‘Aw, she’ll be right, mate. It’s my right hand, and your left shoulder! We’re the perfect team!’

  Aunty reckoned they were both nuts.

  When we got home, Dad said, ‘Right, son, we’ll have to handle this carefully.’

  The first thing I noticed were the red paw prints on the lino. They were on the sofa in the lounge room, too. A little bit of hair dye goes a long way.

  My sisters were in the kitchen, giggling over their new clothes. If I were a girl (puke!), I wouldn’t be seen dead in either of their dresses. They were pink and flowery. Mum should save her energy for more important things than buying horrible dresses for my sisters. Like cooking dinner.

  I waited to see if they’d bought me something. Nothing! Not even a cap. Why do girls get all the family money?

  Then Mum came in from the laundry.

  ‘G’day, love!’ said Dad in a fake cheerful voice. ‘Did you have a good time shopping with the girls?’

  Mum ignored him and grabbed Spike off me. That’s when I noticed all the red paw prints on Mum’s best plastic tablecloth. Mum stuck Spike’s paw onto one of the prints on the tablecloth. It was a perfect fit. So much for Mum not being able to prove anything!

  She turned to Dad. ‘Jim, you owe me a new tablecloth, new lino, and a new lounge suite! And don’t forget the feather pillow!’

  She was mad, but also a bit excited. I think she was looking forward to all the new stuff Dad was going to buy her. Now me and Dad were both in debt to Mum. I hoped Dad didn’t expect me to pitch in for all the things Mum said Dad owed her. I still had to find a way to make three dollars.

  Tia asked me if Mason was taking a girl to the school dance. That’s one of the problems with being friends with Johnno, I get stuck with dumb questions about his older brother, who is a star football player. So what if he got his name in the local paper? It was only because he kicked some dumb goals!

  Anyway, why should I tell my sisters anything? They hadn’t bought me so much as a pair of socks!

  My brain screamed, Don’t say it, Charlie!

  But my mouth blabbed, ‘Mason is taking Rosy.’

  Talk about stupid! Everyone knows everyone in our town.

  But the girls didn’t twig. ‘There’s a new girl?’ said Sharni. ‘What’s she like?’

  My brain said, Stop now, Charlie!

  But my mouth blabbed, ‘Rosy’s hot-tempered and good at running and kicking!’

  I reckon I’m a lot more like Dad than I thought! He’s always blabbing things he shouldn’t.

  ‘Mason must like tomboys,’ said Sharni.

  ‘I think we got the wrong dresses,’ Tia said.

  ‘We’ll have to go shopping again,’ said Mum.

  Then she made Dad fork over a hundred bucks!

  There’s only one clothes shop in our town, and half of it is the post office and the bank. Unless Sharni and Tia wanted to wear something made of bubble wrap, with staples for earrings, they wouldn’t find anything better than they already had.

  After dinner Mum told Dad there’d been another break-in.

  ‘Sergeant Scott reckons it must be some blow-ins from Perth,’ she said. ‘He’s watching the caravan park.’

  ‘But some of the tourists are nice,’ said Tia. ‘A lady and her husband talked to us when we were buying our dresses.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Sharni. ‘And Mr Walsh reckons the tourists are all having barbecues, so he’s selling a lot of sausages.’

  Mr Walsh sells meat. And other stuff, like tomahawks and road maps.

  ‘You always have to be careful of strangers,’ said Dad.

  ‘Lucky we’ve got a guard dog, then,’ I said. ‘Ay, Mum?’

  Mum wasn’t impressed. ‘I’m starting to think that was a bad idea, Charlie,’ she said. ‘The pup steals things himself! If we’re going to have a guard dog, then it needs to be fully-grown and trained.’ Mum wasn’t thinking of sending Spike to live with Grandpa Ted again, was she?

  Later on, Dad told me not to worry.

  ‘Grandpa’s out bush, son. We still have a bit of time to work things out.’

  Yeah, and goannas can fly!

  I like to lie in the shade of the back verandah and do nothing after school, especially when I’m miserable. And on this day I was very miserable. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. First I didn’t have a dog. Then I did, but he was on trial. Now it looked like I might be losing him again. I reckoned Mum was just upset about her stupid hair dye. I don’t know why she mucks around with that yucky stuff. She hasn’t even got grey hair.

  Then Dad asked me to help him clean out the car. At least we didn’t have to unpack the trailer as well, but just the same, his prospecting junk kept on coming. Three shovels, a couple of jerry cans, his swag, metal detect
or, first-aid kit. On and on it went.

  ‘Peace and quiet, Charlie!’ Dad moaned, as he stacked the stuff neatly next to the trailer. ‘That’s all I wanted! I only got back on Monday. You’d think a hardworking bloke could get a break for a week, at least!’

  Yeah, well I thought I deserved a bit of a break too, yet here I was cleaning out the car! I felt a bit sorry for Dad, though. He’d been prospecting out bush for a whole month, slaving away to make us rich.

  But was Mum grateful? No! All she wanted was a clean car for the school dance that evening!

  She doesn’t appreciate how hard Dad works. He has to drive hundreds of kilometres looking for gold. He can’t go just anywhere. There’s some places where the old people don’t like you to go, and the only way to show respect is to drive right around, even if you think there might be gold or gemstones there.

  Dad puts up with flat tyres, biting flies, poisonous snakes, loneliness and burning sun. Then he comes home like a hero with a tin full of gold nuggets and has to clean out the car. It’s so unfair!

  My selfish sisters were behind the clean-car idea. I heard them telling Mum that Dad was going to be their chauffeur. They were pretending our bomby old four-wheel drive was a stretch limo. Stupid!

  Then Mum came out with Spike. The pup looked kind of limp.

  ‘Charlie, please keep Spike with you,’ Mum said. ‘He’s been getting into the kitchen cupboards all day.’

  I couldn’t help feeling proud that Spike had learned to open the cupboard doors.

  Spike seemed happy when I sat him next to the car. Once the back seat was clear, he jumped in and sat on it quietly.

  ‘That’s good,’ Dad said. ‘If the pup gets used to the car, he can come prospecting with me.’

  Boomer used to go prospecting all the time. Dad reckons Boomer could sniff out gold nuggets. Although he sniffed out old tins of dog food, too. It’s amazing what people dump in the bush.

  Speaking of dumping things, Mum came out late in the afternoon and dumped a bucket of soapy stuff beside us. It smelt like roses.

  ‘I want that car washed inside and out!’ she said. ‘In two hours it has to be spotless for the girls!’

  Then Sharni and Tia came out with a big bottle of car polish they’d bought when they went shopping.

  ‘Make it shiny for us, Dad!’ Tia said.

  I tried to sneak away. Enough was enough!

  But Dad whipped ten bucks out of his pocket and waved it under my nose. Three bucks for Mum’s housekeeping jar and seven bucks for me!

  I worked my butt off! The car was caked in dirt and hadn’t been washed in a year. The job was worth forty bucks at least. After we finished, Dad said he was surprised I’d settled for ten dollars. He had been prepared to go to twenty. What an idiot I was!

  But why would a man his age think it was funny to rip off his own hard-working son?

  It was after the car-polishing that everything went wrong. Spike exploded from both ends and every bit of it was green! No wonder he had been sitting so still. He was crook. He must have eaten something bad in Mum’s kitchen cupboards.

  ‘Charlie!’ Dad bellowed. ‘Unless you can get rid of the stink, you can forget about the ten bucks!’

  I said we should take Spike to the vet.

  Dad said it was clear Spike had emptied his tank, so he was probably okay, but we’d keep an eye on him.

  I made Spike up a bed in the laundry, put newspaper on the floor just in case, gave him a bowl of water, then returned to help Dad.

  ‘How’s the car going, Charlie?’ Sharni called, as I passed the kitchen door.

  ‘F-fine!’ I said, acting normal.

  ‘Charlie,’ Mum said. ‘What’s going on?’

  I rushed out the front.

  Mum and the girls followed me.

  Dad was juggling a runny green poo on some scrunched up newspaper.

  ‘Oh no, the dog has stunk up the car!’ Tia cried.

  Sharni gagged.

  ‘Jim! What’s that dog done now?’ Mum yelled.

  ‘It wasn’t his fault, Mum!’ I said. I meant Spike, not Dad. ‘The pup must’ve eaten something that upset his stomach!’

  Mum glared at the poo.

  I was glad it wasn’t mine.

  ‘The car deodorant,’ she said. ‘That’s what the little devil has eaten. I had it in the cupboard under the kitchen sink!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Dad said. ‘Charlie and I won’t stop till we get rid of the smell.’

  Tia started crying. Sharni copied her.

  Mum put her arms around both girls. Then all three of them stormed back inside the house.

  We scrubbed for another hour, but it was hopeless. Spike had spiked the girls’ outing and my hard-earned money.

  We gave up and went inside.

  ‘No luck!’ Dad told them.

  Sharni and Tia blubbered like babies.

  ‘Look,’ Dad said in a tired voice, ‘it’s normal for a dog to expel something poisonous from his system.’

  Mum exploded.

  Not at both ends, though. (I hope she never reads this.)

  ‘Normal?’ she shrieked. ‘Nothing about this family is normal! Charlie, are we normal?’

  I was saved by the phone. I ran to the kitchen bench and answered it.

  It was Johnno wanting to know if he could stay the night.

  I had a brilliant idea.

  ‘Sure!’ I told him. ‘If your dad can pick up my sisters and take them to the dance with Mason.’

  Phew! It was sorted!

  ‘You can go with Mason,’ I told my sisters. ‘Rosy’s sick, so she’s not going.’

  Well, the sobbing stopped straight away! The girls looked at me like I was an angel, or something. Then they screamed so loudly my eardrums nearly burst. What’s so great about footy players?

  Mum was still mad. ‘Where is that disgusting, disobedient dog, Charlie?’

  I told her not to worry, he was on his sickbed in the laundry.

  ‘Sickbed?’ she said.

  Mum headed for the laundry.

  I followed.

  The laundry door was open. Uh oh!

  The room was empty.

  Mum made a weird kind of gasping noise and rushed to her and Dad’s bedroom. That door was open, too.

  Spike had found a much bigger sickbed. And right in the middle, on Mum’s hot-pink bedspread, was a slimy green blob.

  I guess Spike hadn’t quite emptied his tank in the car after all.

  Dad’s timing was perfect (for me, not him). He walked in just as Mum started screaming.

  I grabbed Spike and left them to it.

  Everything would be all right if Mum would just see the funny side of things!

  I took Spike back into the laundry and he drank some water. There wasn’t any poo or vomit to be seen in there. He’d saved it all for Mum and Dad’s room. His eyes looked a bit funny, but apart from that he seemed okay.

  While Mum and Dad were still arguing, I sneaked Spike into my bedroom and laid him on the bed. I opened the window. If he looked like he was going to do something, I’d hold him out the window.

  Eventually Mum and Dad stopped yelling at each other. Then I heard Mum go into the girls’ room. There was a lot of excited squealing and talking about the dance. I wondered if Dad had gone out to sit in his shed.

  I stroked Spike’s head for ages.

  Then I heard a really spooky sound. Like a cross between a grunt and a burp, only much louder.

  I raced outside. It was Bluey. A camel team and cart was parked at the front of our house. Mason was sitting in the back all dressed up in a frilly shirt and blue velvet pants. He had a smug smile on his face. Maybe he thought he was that idiot in that stupid fairy tale: Prince Charming.

  Uncle Mick was perched lopsidedly on the driver’s bench at the front of the cart. He was wearing a suit.

  ‘G’day, Charlie!’ he said. ‘It’s not a pumpkin like Cinderella’s coach, but I reckon it’s the next best thing! Do you think your sist
ers will like it?’

  Johnno, who was seated next to him, jumped down and ran behind a tree in our front yard. He didn’t want anyone to catch him laughing.

  Dad suddenly appeared around the side of the house.

  I guessed he was sick of hiding out in his shed.

  He jumped up on the cart, next to Unc.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand with the team, Mick,’ he said.

  He wanted to get away from Mum!

  Then Mum and the girls came out. Sharni and Tia looked a fright. They were dressed like punk rockers. Tia had spiked up her short hair and dyed it purple. Sharni’s ponytail was blue. Both girls wore tight black clothes, fake tattoos on their arms, false nose rings, eyeliner—the works.

  The ruffles on Mason’s shirt fluttered. I knew how he felt. I was afraid of the girls, too.

  My sisters said the camel team was fine.

  But that was only because Mason was sitting in the cart. They probably thought he really was that moron, Prince Charming. That made Uncle Mick a fairy godmother and the camels prancing white horses!

  Sharni shoved a camera at me. ‘Take our picture, Charlie!’ she said.

  They posed next to the camels and poked their tongues out like a pair of psycho punks. I clicked away.

  Johnno came out from behind the tree. He wanted to have his picture taken with the punks. I clicked away again.

  Then the girls leapt onto the cart and thumped Mason on the arms with their fists.

  ‘Taken up karate!’ said Sharni. She did a kick that just missed his velvet-covered legs.

  ‘Cool, ay?’ said Tia.

  Uncle Mick rolled his eyes. ‘Girls! There’s no explaining them! I guess that’s why my Rosy is the way she is!’

  Dad took the reins and moved the team on straight away.

  Mum’s hand shot out and gripped my shoulder. She’s really strong when she’s in a temper. She grabbed Johnno, too. ‘Who is Rosy?’ she asked.

  My lips were zipped!

  ‘Tell me the truth, Johnno,’ Mum’s voice was so sweet it was almost evil, ‘and that will be the end of it.’

  My stupid mate believed her!

  Mum didn’t see the funny side of things when she found out Rosy was a camel. I think she was still mad about the sick on her bedspread.