Take it Easy, Danny Allen Read online

  Phil Cummings was born in the seaside town of Port Broughton on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. The youngest of eight children, he was surrounded by storytellers and lived a life full of adventure!

  After many years as a teacher of young children in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, Phil now writes full time. He lives in the Adelaide foothills with his wife, two children, a dog, two chickens, a budgie, eight goldfish and several possums.

  http://www.philcummings.com

  Also by Phil Cummings

  Danny Allen was Here

  PHIL CUMMINGS

  ILLUSTRATED BY DAVID COX

  Pan Macmillan Australia

  First published 2008 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Text copyright © Phil Cummings 2008

  Illustrations copyright © David Cox 2008

  The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Cummings, Phil, 1957–.

  Take it easy, Danny Allen.

  For primary school age.

  ISBN 978 0 330 42373 1 (pbk).

  I. Cox, David, 1933–. II. Title.

  A823.3

  Typeset in 12.5/16 pt Bembo by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2008 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Take It Easy, Danny Allen

  Phil Cummings

  Adobe eReader format 978-1-74198-191-9

  Microsoft Reader format 978-1-74198-192-6

  Mobipocket format 978-1-74198-193-3

  Online format 978-1-74198-194-0

  Epub format 978-1-74262-465-5

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  For Ann, Paquo and Jacob with love and thanks

  for treasured friendship.

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  1 Picnic at Howler’s Tunnel

  2 The New World

  3 Surprise Visitors

  4 The Bird that Couldn’t Fly

  5 Meeting Mad Maggie

  6 Opening Night

  Acknowledgements

  1

  Picnic at Howler’s Tunnel

  The afternoon sun shone down on the little town of Mundowie. Long shadows stretched across fields, dry creek beds and white gravel roads. Roosters that had never met crowed to each other across the little town. A flock of noisy white cockatoos took flight from the gums by the creek and shredded the sky. They swooped and squawked, their shadows scarring the ground. They headed for Danny Allen’s house.

  The yard was empty. There were no chickens, no little dog, and no children clambering along the rope bridge that hung between the two old pepper trees in the backyard. No one burst through the rickety old blue screen door onto the front verandah. The lonely house sat quiet and empty – there was no one home.

  Danny had gone. It wasn’t his home any more; he was moving to the city.

  The old red truck that was taking Danny away growled along the gravel road. A crazy clutter of furniture was stacked high on its back – rocking and rumbling. Mr Thompson, who lived across the road from Danny, was driving. The words THOMPSON TRANSPORT were written in white flaky letters on the doors. Dust rose in muscular clouds from the rumble of its wheels. Danny was in the front seat sitting next to the window and his dad was in the middle. They bounced with every pothole and shivered with every shudder of the road’s corrugations. His mum, little sister, Vicki, and big brother, Sam, had gone on ahead in the station wagon – way ahead. The old truck was slow.

  Dust drifted in through the open window. Danny could smell sheep and grass and gum trees. He loved the farm and the house. Mundowie was big enough for him with seven houses, its hall with a white soldier statue standing guard and its church. He wasn’t looking forward to a life without pepper trees to climb, red sand dunes to surf, day-long adventures across open fields and bumpy tractor rides into dry creek beds with their red-earth canyons.

  He sighed as the truck rumbled on. Around a sweeping bend it roared, the brakes squealing like an injured cat as it approached a railway crossing.

  Mr Thompson revved the engine and wrestled with the gear stick. Danny held on as they rumbled over the railway track. The truck rocked and the windows rattled.

  Mr Thompson smiled as he pumped the clutch and tapped the accelerator. It almost looked as if he were pedalling to keep the truck moving.

  ‘Come on, old girl,’ he said, patting the steering wheel. ‘You can do it.’ He loved his truck.

  The engine backfired and the nearby sheep scattered. The gears crunched like grinding teeth. A small ribbon of steam was rising from under the bonnet.

  Danny knew this wasn’t going to be a good day, he just knew it!

  The truck jerked suddenly. The awkwardly stacked load it carried rocked and rolled. There was a wild orchestration of clangs, bangs, rattles, clanks and squeaks. Danny put his head out of the window to check. Blue smoke veiled his face. Squinting, he looked up at the load. Chairs were bouncing, wardrobes were swaying, but nothing was falling. Everything had been tied down.

  To Danny, the ropes that wrapped the load looked like the tentacles of a great beast from the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean.

  A ribbon of steam rising from the engine suddenly became a cloud. It drifted across the bonnet, blanketing the windscreen. Danny’s dad nudged Mr Thompson with his elbow and pointed to the front of the truck.

  ‘Maybe we should check that,’ he said.

  Mr Thompson wiped a hand across his dirty windscreen and nodded. ‘Yeah, we’d better.’

  He pulled the truck to the side of the road. The engine was hissing and spitting.

  Danny jumped out. The trail of dust the truck had left was drifting across the fields. Danny spied the leaning railway crossing signs through the veil.

  He walked back to the railway track. When he walked into the drifting dust cloud he felt as though he were walking into a dream.

  He left his dad and Mr Thompson to fight the dragon-like fury of the engine, their arms waving away thick steam.

  ‘Whoa! Get a rag, quick!’

  ‘Where did you put the water?’

  The old railway track had never run through Mundowie. It was a five, maybe six, kilometre bike ride out of the town. Danny liked the way the old track twisted acros
s the paddocks and fields. He had ridden beside it heaps of times, cruising with the sun on his face and warm summer breeze in his hair, crowds of sheep looking on.

  As he looked along the track, snaking and curling back through the hills, his mind journeyed back to a treasured memory, the day of the picnic at Howler’s Tunnel.

  He’d set off with his older brother Sam and Mr Thompson’s son, Mark (Thommo). The journey to the tunnel was a day trip, without dogs and little sisters. The three boys rode their bikes, with packs full of supplies (chips, cakes, Anzac biscuits, honey sandwiches and drinks), strapped to the back of each bike.

  The day of the picnic, Thommo was trying tricks on his bike. He was always trying something spectacular. He leaned back to raise his front wheel. ‘Come on, boys, do a mono, come on, it’s easy.’ After Thommo nearly fell flat on his back he stopped trying.

  ‘If it’s so easy why can’t you do it, Thommo?’ said Sam.

  ‘I can do it,’ snarled Thommo, ‘but I’m not going to because then I’ll give away my secret on how it’s done.’ He quickened his pace and rode ahead, swerving to avoid a fallen log.

  The sun was breaking brilliantly through the trees near the big creek. The sky was clear and the yellow grass lining the banks was spectacularly jewelled with dew.

  Danny and Sam quickened their pace and caught up with Thommo. Danny was breathing hard and could see his misting breath shine silver in the sunlight.

  Thommo’s helmet looked too small for him. His wild orange hair was long and thick. He was in desperate need of a haircut.

  ‘Is it really scary in the tunnel?’ asked Danny.

  Thommo skidded to a stop. His eyes popped to the size of ping-pong balls. ‘Oh yeah!’ he cried, then paused and put a hand on Danny’s shoulder. ‘Well, for you it will be. It’s like the time we were in the city at night and there was a blackout. Don’t ever be in the city at night when there’s a blackout.’ Thommo’s round face became suddenly animated. His eyebrows danced wildly. ‘There were weird noises and shadows moving about and everything. I’m glad Mum didn’t go live in the city. So is Dad. I mean, there are a lot of scary things in the city at night and they’re even scarier when the lights suddenly go out.’ He lunged at Danny. ‘Phoof!’

  Danny pulled back. He cringed at the thought of pitch-black city streets. ‘Sounds horrible.’

  ‘It was! And the tunnel’s a lot like that.’

  ‘Why is it called Howler’s Tunnel?’ Danny asked, breathing silver mist in Thommo’s direction.

  ‘Haven’t you heard the story?’ scoffed Thommo.

  ‘What story?’

  ‘You mean you haven’t heard why they had to stop using it?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Sam sighed, wheeling away. ‘I’m not listening to this again.’

  Thommo took a deep breath. ‘Right, well, when the trains passed through the tunnel it was so dark that people couldn’t see a thing. Then apparently this horrible howling sound would come out of the darkness and then, phoof! Some people on the train just vanished.’ Thommo glared at Danny. ‘They never came out of the tunnel at the other end,’ he said softly. ‘Ever . . . they disappeared completely. Never seen or heard of again.’

  A second of scary silence passed. Danny swallowed.

  Thommo frowned thoughtfully. ‘It’s like that movie my mum was watching. About some girls who go on a school picnic and are never seen again.’

  Brilliant morning sunshine made Danny’s next breath sparkle like millions of minute stars in a galaxy. ‘I don’t remember that movie.’

  ‘It’s Australian, something about a picnic at a big rock. Yeah,’ Thommo said confidently, ‘that’s it, Picnic at Huge Rock.’

  Danny had never heard of such a movie and was suspicious about whether it existed at all.

  ‘In the movie, the girls went walking up a huge rock,’ Thommo continued, ‘and were never seen again, ever.’

  ‘What, not even their dead bodies?’

  ‘No, nothing. And the same with the tunnel. It’s so dark in there that the passengers all heard the howling but couldn’t see anything.’ Thommo tapped the side of his big red nose knowingly. ‘But I know what it was.’ He promptly tossed his head back and did some appropriate howling.

  Danny listened to the howling and then asked, ‘So what do you think was there?’

  Thommo spun round, his top lip curled to reveal a row of snarling teeth, his right hand raised from his handlebars in a tight claw.

  ‘Werewolves!’ he growled, lunging at Danny.

  Danny was proud of himself – he didn’t even flinch.

  Thommo put his claws away and off they went.

  The ride to the tunnel was full of the usual pastimes. When the road sloped down to a creek bed there were races to the bottom and up the other side. Thommo won most of them and if he didn’t look like winning he’d cheat. ‘Losers!’

  Danny never came close to winning. Sam won a couple of races, but it should have been more.

  One time, Sam was speeding into the lead when Thommo, realising he was going to be overtaken, stuck his leg out and kicked Sam off the road. ‘Eat my dust, Allen!’

  Sam’s front wheel hit a log and Sam flew over the handlebars into a jungle of dry, scratchy bushes. He landed on his back with the bike on top of him and bits of dry weeds in his hair. Sam wasn’t hurt, but he was angry. He threw his helmet to the ground, pointed at Thommo and yelled, ‘Hey! That’s not fair. You’re a cheat! I win that one. That counts as a win to me!’

  Thommo rode on smugly, his nose lifted to the air. ‘No way, buddy. If you can’t balance then you don’t win.’

  Whistling loudly so he couldn’t hear Sam’s protests, Thommo rode casually up the next slope and out of the creek. When he reached the top he raised his hands triumphantly in the air and shouted, as if commentating, ‘Yes! Thompson is a winner. Victory in the Mundowie Creek Climb once again goes to Mark Thompson – a true champion.’

  Sam was fuming and already planning revenge, Danny could tell. Wondering when it was going to happen kept him on edge.

  The time came when Sam spotted squishy little melons (Danny called them paddymelons) on vines that webbed the ground in one of Fogarty’s paddocks.

  Spying the melons at the same time as Sam, Danny knew the time was ripe and so were the paddymelons. Some were rotten brown. Sam eyed the most rotten as his ammunition.

  Thommo was pedalling a short distance ahead. He was talking loudly, thinking Sam and Danny were listening. ‘I haven’t been to the tunnel for ages.’ Thommo reached into his back pocket and drew out a crumpled piece of paper. He waved it in the air. ‘I drew this map from memory. It’s pretty good, I reckon,’ he said.

  Danny kept Thommo talking, feeding his ego. ‘Yeah, you’re pretty good, Thommo. I couldn’t remember all that.’

  Thommo inflated his chest, nodded and without turning his head continued, ‘I know, well you have to be switched on to do it. I just pictured all the landmarks in my head.’

  Danny noted that Sam was struggling to scoop up one of the squishiest rotten melons. ‘Amazing,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Thommo agreed, lifting the front wheel of his bike a few centimetres off the ground in a sad attempt at a mono. ‘I guess it is, really.’

  Danny kept one eye on Sam, who had run to the edge of the melon patch armed with three rotten melons. Sam met his young brother’s gaze and gave him a wicked smirk. He twitched his eyebrows. Danny instinctively mirrored his brother’s expression. Ambush! This was going to be good.

  Sam managed to cradle his little missiles in one arm without splitting them. Danny’s eyes widened with anticipation as Sam took aim and suddenly, with rapid-fire arm-slinging, bombarded Thommo.

  ‘You shouldn’t cheat, Thompson!’ Sam called, as he let fly.

  Danny ducked away and felt like cheering when the first bomb splattered sickeningly into the back of Thommo’s head.

  Squootch!

  Thommo teetered, swerved and
nearly fell off his bike. ‘Ow!’ Rotten slime ran like snot from a runny-nosed sneeze down the back of his neck. Before he could balance, the second hit him between the shoulder blades.

  Splitch!

  ‘Hey! What the . . . ?’ Thommo put an arm in front of his nose for protection as he turned to face his attacker.

  The final and largest of the three missiles was a perfect shot. It whistled past his arm and exploded onto his right ear.

  Splat!

  Thommo’s next protective strategy was to wave his arms wildly as if fending off a swarm of bees. ‘Cut it out! That hurt! Aw! They stink!’

  Sam and Danny laughed so hard they each felt as though they would split like a rotten paddymelon. They leaned on each other, brothers in arms. There was no fear of reprisal with the melon patch under their rule.

  Thommo rose from his bike seat and sped away out of range, head crouched low over his handlebars.

  Still laughing, Danny and Sam set off after him.

  They caught up with Thommo at a sheep trough under a slowly turning windmill. Squeak . . . squeak . . . squeak.

  He was washing rotten ooze from his face, neck and back.

  ‘You stink, Thompson,’ chuckled Sam.

  Thommo spun. His face, glistening with beads of water, was wild like a cornered animal. He slapped a hard flat hand to the water and sprayed Sam.

  ‘Hey!’ cried Sam. ‘That’s cold.’

  ‘Wuss!’

  Danny ran to the other end of the trough and bombarded Thommo with a frantic two-handed torrent. ‘How do you like it, Thommo?’

  ‘Oi! You little . . .’

  A water war had begun. Water splashed in a storm from the trough, like waves exploding violently on a rocky coastline. The dust underfoot turned to mud. There was a lot of laughter as bemused sheep looked on.

  Outnumbered and under heavy fire, soggy Thommo retreated.

  The boys stopped and shook themselves like dogs. They looked as though they’d been caught in a sudden downpour.