Jacob Cook honestly wasn't sure how this had happened.
He'd known the kid existed, of course, he'd even helped pick the name, and even if he and Lisa had officially become Not An Item a few weeks before the birth, he'd still been pacing outside the hospital and shown up with flowers as soon as the doctors announced that newborn James Ramsey could now receive visitors. He couldn't say he'd had much of a hand in bringing him up, either; Lisa had been the one to ferry the boy through babyhood, getting him to talk and walk. Jake had dropped by every so often, usually with beer, to see how his son was getting on, and he had a faded photo tucked into his wallet and a few grainy snapshots on his phone. He'd known the kid existed. He just hadn't ever expected to be the one raising him, that was all.
Well, that was life. Or the other way round, for Lisa; a trip back to Brisbane to see her parents, leaving James with a friend and a list of instructions since her folks didn't approve of the child she'd had out of wedlock with a deadbeat mechanic, that had ended with a pile-up on the motorway and a motherless four-year-old. It was a pity. She'd been a nice girl, even if she and Jake couldn't spend more than two days in the same house without something breaking. And her friend couldn't keep James, and her parents didn't want him, and so Jake had done the only decent thing and stepped in to take care of his son.
"There's a spare room through here,” he said, shouldering the door open with the arm not full of small, wide-eyed boy. Something crunched under his heel, and Jake flailed around with an elbow for a few seconds before managing to hit the light switch, and winced at the scene revealed by the ailing lightbulb. He didn’t remember the room being this cluttered. Sure, he’d stashed old junk in here from time to time, and maybe he hadn’t bothered to clear it out much, but still –
The camp bed was still there, albeit bearing a small mountain of old books and chipped mugs, and – oh, so that was where that wrench had got to – and hey, he hadn’t seen those model aeroplanes in –
Jake coughed, juggling the boy on his hip. “Change of plans, mate.” He retreated back into the narrow hallway and bore his son towards the living room. He deposited the boy onto the old, squashed, battered sofa, and dropped the rucksack beside him. A moment’s frantic rooting through the box turned up an old copy of Dot and the Kangaroo, faded by time, and Jake put the movie on with a quiet sigh of relief.
He ruffled James’s hair. “You just watch that, okay? I’m just going to clear your room out.”
The boy stared up at him with wide brown eyes. Jake smiled as reassuringly as he knew, and backed out of the room.
There was a lot more in the spare room than he’d realized. Most of it was actual junk, but as Jake attempted to uncover the furniture he kept finding little odds and ends that he wanted to keep. He put the important things in a little pile next to the door, and the things to put in the rubbish in a larger heap out in the hall, but it was obvious after ten minutes that the room wasn’t going to be clear in a day. Jake groaned, and settled for clearing the junk off the bed and as much of the floor as he could. At least he was fairly sure he had spare bedding –
Jake was in the middle of wrestling with a moth-eaten blanket, trying to unfold it without swatting the bare lightbulb, when a terrified scream came from the living room. Jake lunged for the doorway, tangling himself even worse in the blanket and tripping on the heap of junk in the hallway, before he scrambled towards the sitting room on all fours.
…how was he supposed to know the kid was going to be so scared of the Bunyip Song, anyway?
Oh, Anon! I can't wait to see where you take this. :D Australia clearing space for James is basically what I do EVERY time my cousins come to stay for a weekend and one of them gets put in my room.
Oh my fucking god, that cartoon is SO SCARY HOW COULD THEY SHOW IT TO LITTLE KIDS. Ugh, as if the poisonous spiders and everything else in Australia wasn't bad enough, now I will have nightmares about spooky monsters that are half bird and have CREEPY ROARS hunting me in the dark..
He hadn’t intended it to. He’d intended to feed the kid the same food he made for himself; he’d just cook extra portions of everything. It had sounded simple, easy, and obvious. In retrospect, that should have clued him in to the fact that it was but a lofty ideal, because ever since the boy landed on his door Jake had rapidly been learning that nothing to do with children was simple, easy, or obvious.
Case in point: James was a picky eater. Jake couldn’t remember if he’d ever been such a picky eater when he was four years old, but that wasn’t really relevant right now, because James didn’t like pasta. At all. Tuna bake, spaghetti bolognaise, macaroni cheese – Jake had tried them all, and without exception, James had taken a few unenthusiastic bites and refused to eat any more.
Since about two-thirds of Jake’s diet was pasta-based, conflict had arisen.
Which was why he was now pulling a tray of fish fingers out of the oven, hoping they weren’t too badly done – the instructions had made it sound simple, but there was a reason Jake mostly cooked the same few dishes over and over. He juggled the hot tray with getting the saucepan of seething water and rather sodden-looking vegetables off the stovetop, and somehow managed to get everything onto the counter without burning something.
“James!” he called, dipping a ladle into the saucepan and frowning at it. Were vegetables supposed to be that floppy? Well, they were probably edible, at least. He shrugged and heaped them onto the plates, making sure James got most of them. Small kids needed stuff like that, according to the telly and the book he’d found. Jake? He was done growing, thanks, and he’d have exactly as many vegetables as it took to make James eat his. “Dinner!”
The inane babble from the television cut off, and James appeared over the back of the sofa like a tiny mountaineer cresting the wobbly summit of Mount Couch. Jake dropped the plates on the table and lunged to grab the boy before the sofa’s long-suffering back could give up the ghost, and kicked James’s chair out from the table before depositing his son into it and shoving the plate with extra vegetables in front of him.
James studied the plate.
Jake sat down and began eating. He’d done something wrong with the fish fingers. He had to have. They looked fine, but they only tasted like fish in the loosest sense of the word. Sure, Jake didn’t eat fish much, but his mum could do something with a whole half of a salmon that would make hardened criminals sing hosannas. This just tasted odd, but James, praise all deities who might have at some point visited the continent, ate his fish fingers without complaint and without prodding, so Jake kept his mouth shut and felt wiser for it.
James finished off the fish fingers and regarded the (somewhat sodden, okay, he’d just have to cook them shorter next time) vegetables with a palpable lack of enthusiasm.
“All of it,” Jake said firmly. Lisa had grumbled occasionally about how hard it was to get the kid to eat things that were good for him, but Jake would take an argument over the food rather than the kid…melting, or losing his teeth, or going blind, or whatever it was that people wanted to avoid when they insisted that children should eat vegetables (he really ought to look that up).
James prodded a stalk of…something. Maybe it was broccoli. “Don’ wanna.”
“Eat it anyway. Look, it’s nice.” Jake took a mouthful of stringy, floppy greenery and instantly wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t the flavour, although the mouthful didn’t taste of anything much (definitely boil it for less next time). The stuff squelched. Food shouldn’t squelch when you chewed it. Jake tried to keep the revulsion off his face and swallowed as quickly as he could.
“Yum,” he said, queasily.
James shot him a look that was not fooled at all, and returned to poking his broccoli like it was a dangerous animal. Maybe he had something, there. It had just committed assault on Jake’s taste buds. That was not the act of an innocent vegetable.
“It’s not bad, really.” He forced down another mouthful in record time. “Go on, eat up.”
James tentatively ate one piece of broccoli. Then his face scrunched up and he spat it back out, folded his arms, and looked at Jake stubbornly. “Don’t do that.” Jake sighed. “C’mon, kid, eat it.”
“No.”
“It’s good for you.”
“Don’ care.”
“Your teeth’ll fall out if you don’t.”
“Don’ care.”
“You get ice cream if you eat it. All of it.”
James reluctantly unfolded his arms and started eating again. Jake mentally added ‘bribery’ to the list of tactics for using on the four-year-old.
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The Bunyip Moon and Other Phenomena (1)
(Anonymous) 2013-04-28 09:12 pm (UTC)(link)He'd known the kid existed, of course, he'd even helped pick the name, and even if he and Lisa had officially become Not An Item a few weeks before the birth, he'd still been pacing outside the hospital and shown up with flowers as soon as the doctors announced that newborn James Ramsey could now receive visitors. He couldn't say he'd had much of a hand in bringing him up, either; Lisa had been the one to ferry the boy through babyhood, getting him to talk and walk. Jake had dropped by every so often, usually with beer, to see how his son was getting on, and he had a faded photo tucked into his wallet and a few grainy snapshots on his phone. He'd known the kid existed. He just hadn't ever expected to be the one raising him, that was all.
Well, that was life. Or the other way round, for Lisa; a trip back to Brisbane to see her parents, leaving James with a friend and a list of instructions since her folks didn't approve of the child she'd had out of wedlock with a deadbeat mechanic, that had ended with a pile-up on the motorway and a motherless four-year-old. It was a pity. She'd been a nice girl, even if she and Jake couldn't spend more than two days in the same house without something breaking. And her friend couldn't keep James, and her parents didn't want him, and so Jake had done the only decent thing and stepped in to take care of his son.
"There's a spare room through here,” he said, shouldering the door open with the arm not full of small, wide-eyed boy. Something crunched under his heel, and Jake flailed around with an elbow for a few seconds before managing to hit the light switch, and winced at the scene revealed by the ailing lightbulb. He didn’t remember the room being this cluttered. Sure, he’d stashed old junk in here from time to time, and maybe he hadn’t bothered to clear it out much, but still –
The camp bed was still there, albeit bearing a small mountain of old books and chipped mugs, and – oh, so that was where that wrench had got to – and hey, he hadn’t seen those model aeroplanes in –
Jake coughed, juggling the boy on his hip. “Change of plans, mate.” He retreated back into the narrow hallway and bore his son towards the living room. He deposited the boy onto the old, squashed, battered sofa, and dropped the rucksack beside him. A moment’s frantic rooting through the box turned up an old copy of Dot and the Kangaroo, faded by time, and Jake put the movie on with a quiet sigh of relief.
He ruffled James’s hair. “You just watch that, okay? I’m just going to clear your room out.”
The boy stared up at him with wide brown eyes. Jake smiled as reassuringly as he knew, and backed out of the room.
There was a lot more in the spare room than he’d realized. Most of it was actual junk, but as Jake attempted to uncover the furniture he kept finding little odds and ends that he wanted to keep. He put the important things in a little pile next to the door, and the things to put in the rubbish in a larger heap out in the hall, but it was obvious after ten minutes that the room wasn’t going to be clear in a day. Jake groaned, and settled for clearing the junk off the bed and as much of the floor as he could. At least he was fairly sure he had spare bedding –
Jake was in the middle of wrestling with a moth-eaten blanket, trying to unfold it without swatting the bare lightbulb, when a terrified scream came from the living room. Jake lunged for the doorway, tangling himself even worse in the blanket and tripping on the heap of junk in the hallway, before he scrambled towards the sitting room on all fours.
…how was he supposed to know the kid was going to be so scared of the Bunyip Song, anyway?
Re: The Bunyip Moon and Other Phenomena (1)
(Anonymous) 2013-04-29 08:44 am (UTC)(link)Re: The Bunyip Moon and Other Phenomena (1)
(Anonymous) 2013-04-30 04:36 pm (UTC)(link)Re: The Bunyip Moon and Other Phenomena (1)
(Anonymous) 2013-05-11 05:42 am (UTC)(link)The Bunyip Moon and Other Phenomena (2)
(Anonymous) 2013-05-26 02:37 pm (UTC)(link)He hadn’t intended it to. He’d intended to feed the kid the same food he made for himself; he’d just cook extra portions of everything. It had sounded simple, easy, and obvious. In retrospect, that should have clued him in to the fact that it was but a lofty ideal, because ever since the boy landed on his door Jake had rapidly been learning that nothing to do with children was simple, easy, or obvious.
Case in point: James was a picky eater. Jake couldn’t remember if he’d ever been such a picky eater when he was four years old, but that wasn’t really relevant right now, because James didn’t like pasta. At all. Tuna bake, spaghetti bolognaise, macaroni cheese – Jake had tried them all, and without exception, James had taken a few unenthusiastic bites and refused to eat any more.
Since about two-thirds of Jake’s diet was pasta-based, conflict had arisen.
Which was why he was now pulling a tray of fish fingers out of the oven, hoping they weren’t too badly done – the instructions had made it sound simple, but there was a reason Jake mostly cooked the same few dishes over and over. He juggled the hot tray with getting the saucepan of seething water and rather sodden-looking vegetables off the stovetop, and somehow managed to get everything onto the counter without burning something.
“James!” he called, dipping a ladle into the saucepan and frowning at it. Were vegetables supposed to be that floppy? Well, they were probably edible, at least. He shrugged and heaped them onto the plates, making sure James got most of them. Small kids needed stuff like that, according to the telly and the book he’d found. Jake? He was done growing, thanks, and he’d have exactly as many vegetables as it took to make James eat his. “Dinner!”
The inane babble from the television cut off, and James appeared over the back of the sofa like a tiny mountaineer cresting the wobbly summit of Mount Couch. Jake dropped the plates on the table and lunged to grab the boy before the sofa’s long-suffering back could give up the ghost, and kicked James’s chair out from the table before depositing his son into it and shoving the plate with extra vegetables in front of him.
James studied the plate.
Jake sat down and began eating. He’d done something wrong with the fish fingers. He had to have. They looked fine, but they only tasted like fish in the loosest sense of the word. Sure, Jake didn’t eat fish much, but his mum could do something with a whole half of a salmon that would make hardened criminals sing hosannas. This just tasted odd, but James, praise all deities who might have at some point visited the continent, ate his fish fingers without complaint and without prodding, so Jake kept his mouth shut and felt wiser for it.
James finished off the fish fingers and regarded the (somewhat sodden, okay, he’d just have to cook them shorter next time) vegetables with a palpable lack of enthusiasm.
The Bunyip Moon and Other Phenomena (2.5)
(Anonymous) 2013-05-26 02:38 pm (UTC)(link)James prodded a stalk of…something. Maybe it was broccoli. “Don’ wanna.”
“Eat it anyway. Look, it’s nice.” Jake took a mouthful of stringy, floppy greenery and instantly wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t the flavour, although the mouthful didn’t taste of anything much (definitely boil it for less next time). The stuff squelched. Food shouldn’t squelch when you chewed it. Jake tried to keep the revulsion off his face and swallowed as quickly as he could.
“Yum,” he said, queasily.
James shot him a look that was not fooled at all, and returned to poking his broccoli like it was a dangerous animal. Maybe he had something, there. It had just committed assault on Jake’s taste buds. That was not the act of an innocent vegetable.
“It’s not bad, really.” He forced down another mouthful in record time. “Go on, eat up.”
James tentatively ate one piece of broccoli. Then his face scrunched up and he spat it back out, folded his arms, and looked at Jake stubbornly.
“Don’t do that.” Jake sighed. “C’mon, kid, eat it.”
“No.”
“It’s good for you.”
“Don’ care.”
“Your teeth’ll fall out if you don’t.”
“Don’ care.”
“You get ice cream if you eat it. All of it.”
James reluctantly unfolded his arms and started eating again. Jake mentally added ‘bribery’ to the list of tactics for using on the four-year-old.
Re: The Bunyip Moon and Other Phenomena (2.5)
(Anonymous) 2013-05-26 06:17 pm (UTC)(link)You know the weakness to the bribery technique? The kids tell on you!
Re: The Bunyip Moon and Other Phenomena (2.5)
(Anonymous) 2013-05-26 06:31 pm (UTC)(link)You're doing a really nice job in describing those little and larger cchanges!