Steel Pelicans Read online

  I looked at it. This was no kid’s toy. ‘Yeah,’ I said, with more confidence than I felt. ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Good,’ said Nana. ‘Because I can’t. So, from now on, you’re going to have to be my wheels.’ She pointed to two helmets resting on the seat. ‘And just in case you can’t drive as well as you think, I got those as well. I want to die of old age, not with my head crushed under a machine.’

  We started the next day. The rain had yielded to a sunny autumn morning. I found the quad easier to ride than anticipated. It worked the same as the little ones I’d ridden at carnivals, just a whole lot faster.

  Working with Nana was fun. Her body might not have been in the best of order, but she still had her wicked sense of humour. She began calling me her lackey, which is some sort of servant. As her lackey I had to drive the quad to a part of the farm that she chose, usually with her straddling the seat behind me. At the destination, we would dismount and get on with whatever needed to be done. While I did most of the work, Nana wasn’t totally useless, and as time passed she was able to do more and more.

  We talked all the time. As far back as I could remember, I’d been able to talk to Nana about things that I would never discuss with my parents. She could listen without being critical.

  ‘What’s this I hear about you making explosives?’ she asked on our first day. ‘Tell me about them.’

  So I did: the full story, including the rat-guts episode.

  She laughed. ‘I’d like to have seen that.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Next time we slaughter a chook, I’ll give you the guts so that you can show us your zombie look. I can just imagine the reaction of your parents if you walked into the lounge with your face covered in chicken guts. Your mum would have a fit.’

  That was how we were. Each telling stories and enjoying the other’s company. At the end of the day we would both be exhausted, but in a satisfying way.

  Although Nana had her own little house down by the duck pond, she joined us most evenings for dinner. After the meal I’d go and use the computer at her house, as mine was still on its way over from Australia. There would usually be at least one email from Dean.

  Dean’s emails always said how bored he was. ‘There’s nobody to do things with’ was a frequent complaint. This surprised me, as I’d always thought that he had heaps of friends. He certainly seemed to know everyone and everyone knew him. I had thought that someone would quickly replace me as his closest friend — but somehow that hadn’t happened.

  He did go surfing a lot, which made me jealous because my gear was still on a boat. Anyway, even if I’d had gear, it was no longer a matter of walking down to the beach with a surfboard under my arm. The nearest surf beach was about fifteen clicks away at a place called Kariotahi and that wasn’t all that good.

  Towards the end of my first week in New Zealand there was an email from Dean that was shorter than any previous message.

  Check this out!

  Steel Pelicans rule 4 eva!

  A web link followed. I clicked on it and found that I was on the website for the Wollongong Press. Half the screen was filled with a photograph of a Norfolk pine. At the top of the tree was Frosty, still smiling and staring out to sea, just as I had left him a week before.

  I smiled to myself, remembering that final day in Australia. Then I read the article and my smile quickly disappeared.

  Police are investigating the theft of a large plastic snow man stolen from a showroom sometime during the night of 10 April. The snow man has since been found at the top of a Norfolk pine near Port Kembla.

  Merv Peters, the owner of Illawarra Coast Refrigeration, said the intruder smashed a window to gain access to the showroom. Although the snow man is worth only a few hundred dollars, the cost of repairs is expected to be much higher than that.

  ‘Those who stole it might think it a harmless prank,’ said Mr Peters, ‘but it’s a prank that’s left me out of pocket by several thousand dollars.’

  Police have decided that, for the meantime, the snow man can stay on the tree. ‘Climbing to the top is out of the question,’ said Detective Constable Wilson. ‘It is far too dangerous without specialized gear. Whoever did this risked their lives in a stupid act of bravado. The police will not jeopardize further lives.’

  It is understood that the local fire brigade is considering retrieving the snow man as part of a training exercise.

  I was stunned by what I read. Not the bit about risking lives, and not even so much by the theft, although that did worry me. It was the fact that Dean had lied to me about where he’d got Frosty. In my view, Steel Pelicans didn’t lie to each other. I was so deeply hurt that I felt physically sick. For a time I thought of replying and telling him how I felt, but in the end I let it be. When I did send him an email several days later, I made no mention of the affair. That could wait until he came over in July.

  On Thursday of the second week, Mum, Nana and I went to my school, Franklin Collegiate. It was time for me to get a uniform and have a look around.

  We met with the deputy principal who said I would be in Year Nine, which was the equivalent of Year Eight in Australia. I was placed in Wilkins House, named after Maurice Wilkins, a New Zealander who won a Nobel Prize for helping discover the structure of DNA. The other houses were also named after scientists with a New Zealand connection: Rutherford, MacDiarmid, and Hollows.

  After that we had a guided tour. The place looked great, sitting on a hill overlooking the Waikato River near a town called Tuakau. The school was only five years old, so the buildings were new. The grounds were large, with fields and courts for a wide range of sports. If ever a school could seem inviting, this one did.

  Friday was our final clean-up day and Nana had saved a special job until last — cleaning out the sheds where the ducks and chooks slept. The birds were an important part of her income, as she sold farm eggs through a number of local shops.

  Digging out the manure and spreading it on the paddocks was a horribly messy job. The worst part of it was the strong smell released with every shovelful.

  ‘Poo! What’s that smell?’ I asked when I got my first lungful.

  Ammonia,’ said Nan with a chuckle. ‘Wonderful stuff. It’ll really make the grass grow.’

  I’d heard Dean talk about ammonia. ‘Is that the stuff in fertilizers?’

  ‘The very same. Except this is better.’

  ‘It can be used to make bombs,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed it can. Terrorists make them.’ She looked at me sideways. ‘You haven’t been using it, have you?’

  I shook my head. ‘My friend Dean keeps talking about it. He tried to buy some, but you’ve got to have a special permit.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said Nana, ‘or your own guts would have been splattered all over the place, not just the rat’s.’

  We worked silently for a time, before she said, ‘You know, Pete, I reckon an interest in chemistry must be in our DNA. Brendon has always been interested in it. So was my dad, your great-grandfather. He used to tell me stories about things he did when he was a boy.’

  She smiled at the memory of the man who’d died before I was born.

  ‘Back then, you could buy things like ammonia fertilizers in hardware stores. Lots of other chemicals as well. Dad said you could stock your own chemistry lab just using things from the local shops. But some chemicals you couldn’t buy, and one of those was metal sodium. Sodium is so reactive that if you put a small piece in water it rushes around madly and eventually catches fire. If you put in too big a piece, it explodes.

  ‘Of course when Dad heard of this stuff, he just had to get hold of some. So one day at school he stole a jar from the chemistry lab. Unfortunately for him, the chemistry teacher went to use sodium later that day and discovered that it was missing. A note went around the school asking for teachers to search bags.’

  She paused long enough for me to ask, ‘Did he get caught?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Before the teacher got to his bag, he p
ocketed the jar and claimed that he needed to go to the toilet. Foolishly, the teacher let him go.’ She chuckled. ‘You can probably guess what Dad did.’

  ‘He flushed the sodium down the toilet,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘Exactly. And hid the empty jar at the bottom of a rubbish bin. Anyway, he got back to class and nothing was found in his or any other bag, so the teacher resumed the lesson. But deep down in the sewerage system, the sodium was reacting with the water. The gases built up until there was an explosion.

  ‘Well, the only place where all the stuff in the pipes could go was out of the toilets. And that included the staff one, on which, at that moment, the principal was relieving himself.’ She chuckled. ‘You can imagine the mess and the subsequent reaction of the principal when he eventually got clean. According to Dad, all hell broke loose. They interrogated every boy in the school, but never did find the culprit. If the teacher had admitted he’d let Dad go to the toilet during the search, then he would have been caught for sure. But for some reason the teacher never did tell, and your great-grandfather got off scot-free.’

  It was a great story and one that was a fitting end to our two weeks of working together. We both had a good laugh over it. And yet later I would no longer find it so funny. Within a few weeks, the stealing of chemicals from labs would mean I’d never laugh about it again.

  Chapter 7

  The first event at my new school was house assembly. Most of the boys present were boarders and lived in the large building which was the home of Wilkins House. We day-boys were very much outnumbered.

  Although there were teachers present, the assembly was entirely run by the Year Thirteen students. It was friendly enough in the beginning, with a humorous welcome-back speech from the house captain. When he finished, the house prefects took over for the new boys’ initiation ceremony. There were only two of us, both day-boys. Unfortunately I was chosen to go first.

  I had to stand to attention in front of the big table where the prefects sat, firing questions at me. These started with name, age and father’s occupation, which I managed to answer without stammering too much.

  ‘And where did you go to school before coming here?’ asked a prefect named Hotchkins.

  ‘Wollongong,’ I replied.

  ‘Wollongong?’ he repeated with a sneer. ‘Where in the world is Wollongong?’

  ‘Australia,’ I said.

  This was met with a chorus of boos and jeers from the assembled students.

  ‘Awstrailya,’ mimicked Hotchkins. He turned to the audience. ‘Looks like Wilkins has got its first true-blue Aussie. A ginga Awstrailyan. What do you think of that, House?’

  The booing and jeering got louder.

  That’s when I really messed up. As the noise died, I said, ‘I was born in New Zealand’, hoping this might make me more acceptable.

  ‘Born in New Zealand, eh?’ said Hotchkins. ‘Then let’s have a quiz to see if you’re an Aussie or a Kiwi.’ He thought for a moment. ‘What is the next number in this series? One, two, three, four, five …’

  ‘Six!’ I replied.

  This brought raucous laughter from the students.

  ‘Sex!’ said Hotchkins, putting on a shocked look. ‘Is that all you can think about, boy?’ More laughter. ‘All right, Kelly: question number two. What is the devil’s number?’

  ‘Six-six-six,’ I said, trying hard to match the Kiwi accent. Obviously I failed, as the laughter was even louder this time.

  And so it went on, with several more questions poking fun at my accent. Eventually Hotchkins ran out of ideas and passed the questioning to the next prefect, who gave me a reassuring smile and introduced himself as Evans.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Evans, ‘what’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done?’

  I weighed up which story to tell: the rat-guts explosion or putting Frosty on the Norfolk pine. I chose the explosion. It was a good move, for the moment I mentioned homemade fireworks the mood of the audience changed. Now they were interested in what I had to say.

  The story I told was mostly true, with a few bits added to make it more interesting: the bomb was bigger; the blast threw me to the ground; and the rat was unbelievably huge and by far the stinkiest thing on the planet. By the end of the story they were no longer laughing at me, but with me.

  ‘Well done, Kelly,’ said Evans. ‘I think you’ll be a worthy member of Wilkins.’ He turned to the audience. ‘What do you think, House?’

  The house responded with clapping and cheering. After that I was allowed to sit down. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, until I looked up and saw Hotchkins staring at me. His face was tight with anger. His lips moved as he mouthed something I couldn’t read. I got the message, though. He’d set out to ridicule me and now I was being treated as a hero. He didn’t like that. My performance might or might not have made me some friends, but it sure had made me an enemy — one who was in a position to make my life hell.

  The other boy to be initiated into Wilkins that morning was Afi Moore. He said his father was European and a mechanic. His mother was Samoan — you could tell from his appearance that one of his parents had to be Polynesian.

  Afi had gone to school in nearby Pukekohe, where he’d won a scholarship to Franklin Collegiate at the end of the previous year. He was starting here late because his grandmother in Samoa had died. The family had gone over for the funeral and stayed to sort things out. In the end, he’d missed the whole term.

  Because my initiation had taken so long, there wasn’t enough time for the prefects to give him the full initiation and so he wasn’t exposed to the treatment I’d had from Hotchkins.

  I learnt more about Afi during the day, as we ended up sitting next to each other. He was a big boy, much bigger than anyone else in the class. Big enough to be given some respect just because of his size. However, as I came to know him, I realized that Afi wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was a gentle giant.

  And he was smart. Not just smart, but really clever. His scholarship to Franklin Collegiate was funded by a milk-processing company. Afi told me that there had been more than three hundred kids after the one place. He was proud to have won, but also scared. I guess that’s why we sort of drifted together right from the start. We were both in a situation well beyond our previous experiences.

  The morning lessons consisted of maths, technology and science. The teachers were good and the classes well-equipped. For example, the chemistry lab was much flasher than anything I’d ever seen before. One wall was lined with an impressive selection of chemicals, another with complicated-looking glassware. When I walked in, I immediately thought of Dean. This lab would have been his idea of heaven. I felt sure he’d know how to use some of the chemicals here.

  Lunchtime was different to what I was used to. Franklin Collegiate students didn’t have sandwiches or pies from the school canteen; they sat down for a proper meal in the dining hall. Each house had its own area, with the prefects sitting at a top table and the staff at another alongside.

  The main dish was lasagne: Monday was always lasagne. After the meal a few notices were read out before we were released to do what we wanted for the rest of lunchtime.

  Afi and I went exploring, enjoying the opportunity to be by ourselves for a while. Behind the buildings was a patch of bush. Judging by the size of the trees, it had been there much longer than the school. It looked like a great place to explore.

  It was. Walking through the bush, it felt like we were miles away from civilization. That was until we came across a group of about twenty smokers. I recognized a couple from our class, but most were older boys.

  ‘Do you smoke?’ asked one of the older boys who was wearing a prefect’s badge from Rutherford House.

  Afi shook his head. I said, ‘No.’

  ‘Then don’t come in here,’ he said. ‘This bush is out of bounds.’

  ‘Except to us,’ said another boy.

  ‘And you’d better keep your mouth shut about what you’ve seen,’ added the prefect
. ‘Now shove off!’

  We did.

  First period in the afternoon was English, and at last I found a subject where I was better than Afi. In a way it was a bit of an unfair victory, because Afi could speak, read and write Samoan and Maori as well as English, while all I had was the English.

  Last period was sport, which was held in house groups organized by the prefects. To my horror, Afi and I were put in a group led by Hotchkins. The sport that day was rugby, which I’d never played before. I’d previously played league, but never very well. I’ve never been any good at sports, although I usually enjoyed playing them. That would change under Hotchkins’ leadership.

  Brett Hotchkins was not big for an eighteen-year-old, but what he lacked in size he made up for in meanness. This was aimed not only at me. He picked on all the dayboys, whom he sneeringly referred to as ‘playboys’.

  The game he organized was day-boys versus boarders. There were not enough on our side, so Hotchkins picked on the fattest and the weakest of the boarders and added them to our team. While the boarders were allowed to organize their own playing positions, Hotchkins organized ours. He seemed to get great pleasure out of making me hooker. I soon found out why.

  In rugby union, the hooker has two set jobs: win the ball in the scrums, and throw the ball into the lineout. He’s also expected to be working hard in the rucks and mauls. Within ten minutes of starting, it was clear to everyone that I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d lost all the scrums, my three throw-ins to the lineout had been crooked, and I’d been penalized four times for lying on the ball in a ruck. Needless to say, Hotchkins was the referee.

  By half time we were losing twenty-four to zero and I’d had enough. I went up to Hotchkins and asked to change positions.