The Peco Incident
Authors: Des Hunt
CHAPTER 1
I
watched the plane touch down on the tarmac with mixed feelings. Yes, it would be good to have some company for the summer holidays, but I wished it was not Nicholas Clarke. Any other cousin would have been better. There were plenty to choose from on both sides of the family, so why did it have to be Nick — the one cousin who was always in trouble?
As the plane taxied along the runway, I chuckled to myself, thinking that maybe I should have put a public notice in the
Otago Daily Times:
Citizens of Dunedin — BEWARE!
Nicholas Clarke of Hastings will be staying with the Masters family at Harwood, Otago Peninsula,
from mid-December until the end of January. During this time, any accidents or disasters caused by the said Nicholas Clarke should not be blamed on his cousin, Daniel Masters. Nor should Daniel Masters be expected to prevent or pay for any damage to property or medical emergencies caused by Nicholas Clarke. All care will be taken, but no responsibility.
‘What’s so funny, Danny?’ Mum asked, watching the plane dock at the terminal.
‘I was just thinking of Nick and all the trouble he gets into.’
‘Yvonne says he’s not so bad now. Not since he went on Ritalin. Anyway, he’s a lot older than when you last saw him. He will have changed, and should be more sensible.’
I said nothing. Sure, Nick would be thirteen now, just a few months older than me, but would that make him any more sensible? I was yet to be convinced.
‘Come on,’ said Mum, ‘we’d better move to the reception area.’ She gave a crooked smile. ‘If we’re not there, you never know what might happen.’
Nick certainly had changed. Well, in looks he had — the behaviour was yet to be tested. It was three years since I’d last seen him, and in that time he’d gone from a cheeky kid to a gangly teenager — compared to me, he was now huge. Yet you
didn’t have to look too closely to know he was still the same person: untidy clothes, darting eyes, and urgent movements. Watching Nick was like watching a human version of the battery bunny — he never seemed to stop moving.
‘Hi, Aunty Chloe,’ he said with a big grin. ‘I got here.’
Mum put an arm around his shoulders in a half-hug, which Nick didn’t seem to mind.
‘No in-flight emergency?’ I asked, partly to avoid any similar contact.
‘No, cuz!’ replied Nick. Then he grinned. ‘Except I did get locked in the toilet and they had to get a special key to get me out.’
I smiled to myself. That was definitely the old Nick.
We were interrupted by the blast of a horn from the luggage carousel. A moment later it started rolling, carrying its load of bags and boxes.
Without warning, Nick took off. He raced around the carousel, bumping people aside as he looked for his bag. Then he spotted it, but a man had, too. They both went for the same black bag. By the time Mum and I arrived alongside, a tug-of-war had developed between Nick and the man.
‘Look at the label!’ shouted the man. ‘That’s my name. It is
my
bag.’
But Nick wasn’t listening, and continued to wrestle for the bag. While Mum stepped in to sort it out, I went looking for a similar bag. There wasn’t one. So I began looking at the labels of all of the bags.
The job got easier as people removed their gear, and soon
there were only a few objects left. Nick’s bag ended up being quite different in shape and colour to the one he’d been fighting over.
Mum had calmed Nick down by the time I returned. The man still wasn’t happy, but his desire to get away was stronger than his need to continue the argument, and he walked off towards the exit, muttering to himself.
‘This is yours,’ I said, dumping the bag at Nick’s feet.
‘Yes,’ he cried, ‘that’s it!’ Then, after a pause: ‘I thought I’d brought the other one.’
As we left the terminal, Mum turned to Nick and asked, ‘Did you take your Ritalin this morning?’
‘Don’t have to,’ he said, happily. ‘The doctor said I could have a drug holiday until I get back to school.’
Mum looked at him sharply. ‘You did bring your pills with you, though, didn’t you?’
Nick shook his head. ‘I forgot, I guess.’
Mum took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I looked at her, seeing the first signs of anger. She’d agreed to look after Nick while his parents went overseas only because her sister — my Aunty Yvonne — had convinced her that Ritalin had changed Nick’s behaviour. Now it seemed there was no Ritalin, and Nicholas Clarke hadn’t changed at all.
We travelled in silence; Mum and I in the front, with Nick fidgeting in the back. By the time we reached the motorway
into Dunedin, the silence had become embarrassing. I turned towards the back seat, and asked, ‘Is a drug holiday like a surfing holiday? You do as much of it as you can?’
Nick burst out laughing. ‘Yeah, Danny! That’s an idea.’
‘Not when I’m in charge,’ said Mum sternly. But I could see that she was relieved that the tension had been broken.
From then on, the atmosphere returned to a more comfortable level. Nick hadn’t been to Dunedin before, and Mum took a tiki-tour around some of the sights, including The Octagon, the university, and finally St Kilda beach, which, even though it was meant to be summer, was deserted because a cold southerly was blasting in.
After that, we headed on to the Otago Peninsula where we live. This was formed from the remains of volcanoes that erupted millions of years ago. It’s about thirty kilometres long, with the Otago Harbour on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. I think it’s one of the coolest places on the planet.
The main town on our part of the peninsula is Portobello, which has a pub, a couple of shops, a school — the one I’d just left — a garage, and several tourist places. We stopped at one of these for lunch, as Mum claimed she deserved a decent coffee.
We sat on a sunny deck, sheltered from the wind. Nick and I scoffed ourselves on chips and mini-hotdogs, while Mum nibbled away on a wrap, sipping her latte. It was only when we’d finished and Mum had gone inside to pay that Nick got into trouble again.
He pulled a cellphone out of his pocket and aimed it at some dopey-looking sparrows that had been hanging around ever since our food had arrived. I figured that the phone must also be a camera, although I didn’t really know much about mobile phones. The only person in our family to own one was Mum, and that was a budget model that she carried in case of emergency.
Nick’s phone was not budget. It had a big screen with a full keyboard. And yet it obviously didn’t have a zoom camera lens, for the sparrows’ image on the screen was tiny. That’s when he picked up a few scrappy chips from his bowl and threw them at his feet to bring the birds closer.
‘Don’t do that!’ a voice snapped.
We turned to see a grim-faced waitress storming towards us. She pointed towards a sign nailed to a post: ‘Don’t they teach you to read at school nowadays?’
‘Yes!’ said Nick, walking over to the notice. ‘Do not feed the birds!’ he read in an official-sounding voice. Then he turned to the waitress. ‘Why not?’
‘Because they spread disease,’ she answered in a calmer voice.
‘
Salmonella
,’ I said.
‘And
Campylobacter
,’ she added. ‘They’re filthy animals.’
Nick nodded, walking towards the sparrows which had hardly touched the food he’d given them. ‘Yeah, they look pretty sick to me,’ he said.
They did, too. Then, as if to prove the point, one keeled over in front of him. He moved to pick it up.
‘Don’t!’ cried the waitress. Then, more quietly: ‘I’ll get a brush and sweep it up.’
‘Have you been poisoning them?’ I asked.
‘No!’ she said, quickly. ‘Not us. Looks like somebody has, though.’
I nodded. It happened at times when people got fed up with the sparrows going into cafés or houses. No one ever admitted doing it, but we’d see them dying around the school grounds. Of course this upset lots of kids who wanted to save them; if you got them early enough, they could be revived by placing them in a warm, dark place, which is what some of the classes did. But mostly the sparrows were left to die, and only the more interesting birds were saved.
By then Mum had rejoined us. She saw the dead sparrow and raised her eyebrows. ‘Somebody had the poison out again, have they?’ she said, without concern. She had no great love of sparrows, as they often attacked things she’d planted in the garden. ‘Come on, we’d better get home.’
Out in the car park there were more sick and dead birds. Nick was fascinated by all the death and dying. He wanted to stay and watch. Even when we were on our way home, he wouldn’t let it go.
‘Maybe they weren’t poisoned on purpose,’ he suggested. ‘It could be the food they serve in that place.’ He grabbed his neck and made retching noises. ‘Help! Help! I think those hotdogs are poisoning me.’
‘Leave it, Nick,’ said Mum.
‘But it could be something else,’ he continued. ‘It could be
some killer disease from outer space that’s going to wipe out all the birds in the world. Maybe it’ll even mutate and start attacking humans … Oh my God! We need to do something, or everybody’s going to die.’
‘I said leave it!’ yelled Mum.
Nick was shocked into silence, which lasted the few minutes it took to get home. Then in the excitement of arriving at a new place, he forgot about the dead sparrows to concentrate on making sure that my bedroom — now with an extra bed — was organized his way, not mine. And it was during this battle to retain some personal identity that I, too, let the matter slip to the back of my mind.
H
arwood, the part of the peninsula where we live, seems remote even though it’s just twenty kilometres from The Octagon in the city. Most of the houses were built as holiday homes, and many are still used that way. A few of them are big, flashy places. The only decent-sized rooms in ours are the two bedrooms and the lounge.