Dunger by Joy Cowley

the bay.
    What I don’t estimate is the time it takes to get the boat back on the trailer when we arrive. All I want to do is jump over the side and race up to the mailbox. Instead, I have to stand in the water with Will and hold the boat while Grandpa goes off to get the car. When the trailer is backed in, the three of us have to wind in the rope. “It’s not an automatic winch,” Grandpa tells us. “Just use elbow grease.” Which is his way of saying hard work. I’m sure it would be much easier without Grandma’s weight on board.
    When the boat is secure on the trailer, we hop in the car and Grandpa drives up the beach to the road. There is a cardboard carton sitting beside the post, and the flap of the mailbox is slightly open. My phone is there! It’s in the same wrapping I put around it, but the plastic and paper is loose and, yes, it is fully charged! Fabulous! I know I should help Will and Grandpa but I’ve waited so long for this. I switch it to connections and press Jacquie’s number. The sign comes up. No service. That means no reception at the mailbox. I’ll need to go up to the house. I stand on the verandah and press again. No service. In the living room. By the garage. No service. I don’t believe this!
    I have to go up the hill. There’ll be reception on high ground. I run past Will and Grandpa who are helping Grandma out of the boat, and I splash across the stream and go up the hill to the edge of the bush. No service.
    When I arrive back at the house, Grandma is sitting on the couch with her feet up. She says, “Have you caught up on all the gossip?”
    I can’t answer.
    â€œYou’re a bit young to be going deaf,” she shouts.
    The tears come. I can’t help it. “There’s no – no cell phone reception in this stupid place!”
    â€œNo what?”
    I yell at her, “No reception! This is the end of the earth! People don’t live like this any more!”
    She swings her feet off the footstool and stands up, holding on to the arm of the couch. Then she lurches towards me. I put my face against her shoulder and cry and cry. She pats me on the back. “Light the fire,” she says. “After dinner you can use our phone.”
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    I tell Lissy she should never gamble because she has so much bad luck. She calls me a turd because she thinks I’m being mean, but I honestly feel sorry for her. All this fuss about recharging the phone, and then she finds out there’s no reception. Grandma, the Duchess of Tightpockets, amazingly offers her free toll calls to Queenstown, but none of Lissy’s friends are answering. The best she can manage is Mrs McKenzie whose twins had gone on a day trip to some cattle station. With luck as bad as that, I wouldn’t even buy a raffle ticket if I were her.
    I take back everything I said about a mild dislike of fish. The fried snapper is brilliant, especially now it looks like food and not some dead creature. Before dinner, I hosed down the boat while Grandpa put the gear away, and now we’re ready to take it back to the Hoffmeyers.
    â€œThey won’t be there,” Grandpa says. “They were going to the North Island this afternoon. But we’ll take a bag of cod fillets and put it in their freezer.”
    As we walk to the car, Grandpa looks up at the sky. It has misted over with a greyish-yellow look and the air is very still, a sure sign, he says, of an approaching storm. “It’ll be here in the morning,” he tells me.
    He drives us to the Hoffmeyers’ place, and backs the boat and trailer into the implement shed, at which point I remember him holding his chest when he tried to hitch the trailer to the car. So I jump out. “Let me try, Grandpa!”
    â€œToo heavy for you, kiddo,” he says. “But you can help.”
    He puts down the jockey wheel on the trailer, then undoes the chain and clamps. We get on each