{"id":2371,"date":"2018-01-24T13:53:34","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T03:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=2371"},"modified":"2018-01-24T17:43:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T07:13:32","slug":"mallee-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2018\/01\/mallee-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"Mallee Boys Excerpt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mallee<\/a>

The cover of the book<\/p><\/div>\n

Life as a fifteen-year-old boy is difficult for Sandy Douglas, who’s not only facing the challenges of girls and friendship, but battling the gut-wrenching grief that came from losing his mother.<\/p>\n

With his brother Red, who is constantly filled to the brim with rage and his dad, who, despite his best efforts, struggles with their situation, Sandy endeavours to define himself in the Mallee.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Below is the first chapter of\u00a0Mallee Boys.<\/em> To read more, or to purchase the book, follow the link to our website<\/a>, or visit us at our Mile End bookshop.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/h5>\n
<\/h5>\n
<\/h5>\n
<\/h5>\n
Chapter 1: Sandy<\/h5>\n
New Year’s Day<\/h6>\n

You know, when you walk into a murky river you could step\u00a0on anything. I\u2019ve never understood how easily some people will\u00a0just leap on in when they can\u2019t see a thing. I suppose it\u2019s like life;\u00a0maybe I could do with just stepping in more and looking less.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re staying at Uncle Blakey\u2019s shack. We\u2019ve been coming up\u00a0here every summer for years. The breeze is baking today but at\u00a0least the air is moving. It\u2019s too hot to even go for a walk, almost\u00a0too hot to swim, but the lure of the river is tempting, so I\u2019m\u00a0thinking about it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Sandy, get your arse in here. It\u2019s fine!\u2019 Dad\u2019s yelling from way\u00a0out in the water.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s bright red. His big bald head bobbing on his big round\u00a0body. A cheerful, bloody snowman. For a farmer he\u2019s a surprisingly\u00a0good swimmer. In fact he loves it. When we\u2019re at the shack\u00a0he gets up early and swims for hours against the flow and then\u00a0drifts back with the current.<\/p>\n

I decide to go in.<\/p>\n

I wanna be part of the crowd.<\/p>\n

The river is a soft brown colour, a perfect mix of water and\u00a0mud. There\u2019s absolutely no possibility of seeing anything. The\u00a0mud squelches between my toes as I inch away from the bank.\u00a0I\u2019ve deliberately chosen the least reedy stretch but even here I\u00a0can still feel the slippery stalks stroking my legs. I launch off.\u00a0I\u2019m not out very deep so the slimy bottom skims my bare chest.\u00a0Yuck. I kick faster and harder to get away.<\/p>\n

I swim like a dog, my neck stuck out as far from the water as\u00a0I can manage.<\/p>\n

\u2018Put your head in, Sandy!\u2019 I can hear Dad heckling me before\u00a0he fearlessly ducks down.<\/p>\n

No way. Walking and swimming in this is bad enough without\u00a0getting my head in.<\/p>\n

I remember when I was learning to swim Dad used to hold\u00a0me under and I never really got over it. \u2018I\u2019m gonna count to\u00a0three. Here we go. One \u2026 two \u2026 three.\u2019 His voice was all muffled\u00a0as he pushed my head down. My body arched hard against his\u00a0hand, pressing up, praying he wouldn\u2019t mess up the count. So\u00a0now that I can swim I never put my head in.<\/p>\n

The water is cool and it does feel good. I feel clean, washed\u00a0free of the summer dust. I roll over onto my back. I\u2019d forgotten,\u00a0since last summer, how nice it is just to float. To let something\u00a0else do the work.<\/p>\n

Dad\u2019s shouting for me to swim over to him but I pretend I\u00a0can\u2019t hear him. I know if I go over he\u2019ll start tossing me around\u00a0and pulling my legs under. Then my head will be in for sure. I can\u00a0hear laughing. Uncle Blakey and Big Joe Barrel have jumped in.\u00a0They\u2019re all splashing and carrying on, three old farmers acting\u00a0younger than me.<\/p>\n

\u2018That boy\u2019s got an old\u00a0head on young shoulders.\u2019 If I had a\u00a0dollar every time someone said that about me I\u2019d be pretty\u00a0cashed up by now. Apparently my mum, Ellie, even said it about\u00a0me when I was baby. I didn\u2019t have those weird rolling eyes that\u00a0most babies had. I just looked hard and straight at her with my\u00a0clear blue ones, which never did turn brown like the rest of\u00a0them. So, why the bloody hell did they call me Sandy?<\/p>\n

Think of someone called Sandy and I bet they couldn\u2019t look\u00a0less me. For a start I\u2019m a boy. I was told the name comes from\u00a0some rellie back in Scotland but secretly I think it comes from\u00a0Dad\u2019s first dog. So do I have blond or red hair? No. Do I have a\u00a0big friendly smile? Nah, not really. My eyes are still blue, my\u00a0hair nearly black and I\u2019m tall but not filled out yet. I do smile\u00a0but it\u2019s one of those shy, less-teeth-showy smiles. I\u2019ve left that\u00a0to my older brother Red. His real name is Josh. Imagine him: a\u00a0big handsome redhead.<\/p>\n

So, un-sandy Sandy I am.<\/p>\n

\u2018Get back over here, mate!\u2019 Blakey calls.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going over to them. They wanna duck me, for a laugh.\u00a0I push the back of my head deeper into the water and scull away\u00a0from them, cocooned in the muffled silence.\u00a0I don\u2019t really think of sculling as swimming. It\u2019s keeping me\u00a0up but it\u2019s more like flying, using little flaps of my hands as I\u00a0look at the sky.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be sixteen in July, and Year Ten starts in a few weeks.\u00a0I can\u2019t believe it. This year is a big one, the last before things\u00a0really change. Our country school is too small to offer much\u00a0choice in Year Eleven and Twelve. We either have to leave, do\u00a0some correspondence study \u2013 like that\u2019ll ever happen \u2013 or go to\u00a0boarding school in Adelaide or Melbourne.<\/p>\n

I decided long ago I wasn\u2019t going to Melbourne: too many bad\u00a0memories. I flap out a little further into the river. What the hell\u00a0am I gonna do next year?<\/p>\n

I quite like school, not that I\u2019d tell anyone, especially Red. He\u00a0couldn\u2019t wait to get out of the place and caused a lot of trouble\u00a0on his way through too. But for me it\u2019s been alright, once they\u00a0realised I was nothing like my brother. I like looking at things,\u00a0taking them apart, trying to figure out how everything works.\u00a0It doesn\u2019t seem hard. In a funny kind of way school makes more\u00a0sense than a lot of outside stuff.<\/p>\n

\u2018Sandy!\u2019<\/p>\n

Dad\u2019s yelling at me. Off they go again. I can hear them all<\/p>\n

through the heavy wet.<\/p>\n

\u2018Sandy, shift your arse! Quick! Hurry up!\u2019<\/p>\n

The tone is unusual, not the normal knockabout teasing.\u00a0There\u2019s a bit more urgency.<\/p>\n

I roll over onto my stomach and then I see it. What the hell?<\/p>\n

\u2018Sandy, get out of the way!\u2019 But the warning is too late. The\u00a0big brown thing is gonna hit me.<\/p>\n

I launch into a pathetic dog paddle trying to get away. My\u00a0legs kick in a frenzy beneath me and my neck stretches out\u00a0like a llama. I feel a bash on the back on my head and it pushes\u00a0me under. All the shouting from the bank softens. My heart is\u00a0pounding as old memories of being ducked as a kid kick in. I\u00a0can\u2019t get the thing off me. I can\u2019t see anything. I push up with\u00a0my hands and they find something soft but really heavy. My\u00a0head keeps butting up into it, trying to ram a way through. I\u00a0panic. My brain doesn\u2019t know what to do. My lungs are bursting.\u00a0I\u2019m desperate for a suck of clean, fresh air but don\u2019t dare open\u00a0my mouth. The burning is excruciating.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m gonna drown. Not today, surely?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a jerk on the bottom of my legs. Something is yanking\u00a0me under. This is too much. I can\u2019t fight it anymore. I surrender\u00a0with one last kick and then my mouth opens, hungrily gulping\u00a0in water. My body wants it like air and it pours in.<\/p>\n

Everything pauses.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a bashing on my back, heavy and urgent, shaking\u00a0me around. I\u2019m floppy, with no resistance. My body stiffens.\u00a0Rigid. Then the water comes splaying out of my throat and\u00a0my chest heaves as it sucks in real air. Too desperate, I cough\u00a0and splutter. I\u2019ve got no control. My mouth sucking too hard\u00a0competes against the spasms of my lungs spewing the water\u00a0out. Eventually the craving and the coughing subsides enough\u00a0and my heart settles.<\/p>\n

Exhausted, I take a calmer breath. As I open my eyes I see I\u2019m\u00a0still in the river.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ya right? Ya right?\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Dad. He turns me round to face him, holding me afloat.\u00a0I see how terrified he is. He hugs me so tight I start coughing\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

\u2018Bloody idiot, I had to bash the crap out of you.\u2019<\/p>\n

But there are tears in his eyes. He just holds me safe and\u00a0strong till I settle. As his panic and mine begin to subside,\u00a0he pushes me away slightly. It seems a bit awkward now for a\u00a0grown lad to be clinging to his wet Dad in the middle of the\u00a0river. We both get it at the same time and grin.<\/p>\n

\u2018You\u2019ve always been a crap swimmer, Sandy. Sometimes you\u00a0get so lost in your own bloody head you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going\u00a0on around you.\u2019<\/p>\n

True.<\/p>\n

\u2018Was it a log or something?\u2019 I ask. \u2018I just didn\u2019t see it coming.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018No, it was a bloody dead cow! Looks like it died upstream\u00a0and got washed down.\u2019<\/p>\n

I hear cheers and moos from the bank. Looking down the\u00a0river I see the dead cow.<\/p>\n

Bloated, floating and limp from trying to kill me.<\/p>\n

Available as both a paperback<\/a>\u00a0and ebook<\/a>, Mallee Boys<\/em> is the winner of the 2016 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award. It\u00a0is Charlie Archbold’s<\/a> first publication inspired by her time living in the Murray Mallee region in Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life as a fifteen-year-old boy is difficult for Sandy Douglas, who’s not only facing the challenges of girls and friendship, but battling the gut-wrenching grief that came from losing his mother. With his brother Red, who is constantly filled to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553,156,620,160,107,80,759],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adelaide","category-adelaide-festival","category-adelaide-writers-week","category-bestsellers","category-extract","category-for-fun","category-young-adult"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-Cf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2371"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2403,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions\/2403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}