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    Rhyming Boy
    Rhyming Boy
    Rhyming Boy
    Ebook147 pages1 hour

    Rhyming Boy

    By Steven Herrick

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    About this ebook

    Jayden Hayden, wordsmith, aka rhyming boy, doesn’t have a dad, just a mom obsessed with football player Jayden Finch and an embarrassing name that gets him teased. When his school’s father-son day is announced, Jayden’s quest for answers becomes a puzzle he needs to solve quickly. He wonders: Could Jayden Finch be more than just a football player? With the help of his an-answer-to-every-question friend Saskia, he aims to track down his namesake and his father all at once.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Queensland Press
    Release dateMar 1, 2013
    ISBN9780702251535
    Rhyming Boy
    Author

    Steven Herrick

    Steven Herrick is one of Australia's most popular poets. His books for teens include Love, Ghosts, & Facial Hair; A Place Like This; and The Simple Gift.

    Read more from Steven Herrick

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      Rhyming Boy - Steven Herrick

      Steven Herrick was born in Brisbane, the youngest of seven children. At school his favourite subject was soccer, and he dreamed of football glory while he worked at various jobs. For the past twenty-five years he’s been a full-time writer and regularly performs his work in schools throughout the world. Steven lives in the Blue Mountains with his partner Cathie, a belly dance teacher. They have two adult sons, Jack and Joe.

      www.stevenherrick.com.au

      Also by Steven Herrick

      Young Adult

      Slice

      Black painted fingernails

      Water bombs

      Love, ghosts and nose hair

      A place like this

      The simple gift

      By the river

      Lonesome howl

      Cold skin

      Children

      Untangling spaghetti

      The place where the planes take off

      My life, my love, my lasagne

      Poetry to the rescue

      Love poems and leg-spinners

      Tom Jones saves the world

      Do-wrong Ron

      Naked bunyip dancing

      Pookie Aleera is not my boyfriend

      Chapters

      In the street of silly names

      The darkest hair in the world

      Pardon to ponto

      Asleep in the sauce

      White shoes, with yellow laces

      Saturday morning at Thompson Stadium

      Sleuthing with Saskia

      Top Five special days

      The worst actress in the world

      You can’t have too many sausage sizzles

      The big wind

      A jam of Jaydens

      A periwinkle left out in the sun

      On vegetarians and cyclones

      A world record in your own backyard

      Tiffany, Kirk and a herd of wildebeests

      Dinner with Charlie

      Rhyming Boy

      The obscure facts of Jayden Hayden

      Never trust a dictionary

      A hundred questions and only one answer

      The leper beside the river

      Balancing on a branch

      Words

      Mothballs and after-shave

      Lights, camera, action

      Dictionary Boy

      Dunsmore Swamp

      A sunny Sunday soy & sausage smoky barbeque

      In the street of silly names

      I turn the page, quickly.

      Riley Willis, firefighter, smashes down the heavy wooden door with his axe and leaps through the flames, lifting Henry Tumbleton onto his broad shoulders and carrying the overweight octogenarian from the blazing fury of his scorching lounge room.

      Never leave chips on the stove when you’re watching The Price Is Right!

      ‘Jayden, what’s the score, darl?’

      Mum’s in the kitchen, doing some cooking of her own.

      ‘I’m reading, Mum.’

      She appears, wearing a blue and white butcher’s apron and the lilac ugg boots I gave her for her thirty-fifth birthday. Hanging loosely around her shoulders is a striped football scarf. She’s holding a spoon full of a mysterious dark-red liquid. She runs her finger along the spoon and tastes it, smacking her lips loudly.

      ‘Keep an eye on the game, darl! Whistle if the hunk scores again. I’m not wearing this blessed scarf for fashion, you know.’

      The hunk is Jayden Finch, in his farewell season for Souths. He’s so famous people name their children after him.

      Like Mum, who’s searching for the television remote. She picks up my books scattered on the couch.

      ‘It’s like a plague of books in here.’

      ‘I was reading and checking the score, Mum.’

      She walks to the spare room, opens the door and throws the books inside.

      ‘Jayden, a wise mouth gathers no foot. You can’t do two things at once. Either watch footy or spend all day with your head stuck in those pages like a toucan.’

      ‘Haven’t you heard of multi-tasking, Mum.’

      It’s my word for the day.

      Every morning at precisely seven-fifteen, I close my eyes, open my dictionary at a random page and point to a word. I study its meaning, then try to fit it into a conversation.

      The only word to stump me this year was precipitant – to rush headlong, hastily.

      Something Mum’s pretty good at.

      ‘Multi-task my eye! Watch the telly, darl. Some things are more important than books.’

      Mum looks at the spoon in her hand, trying to remember what she’s been doing.

      ‘Blood, Mum. Mixing blood in the kitchen.’

      She holds the wooden spoon close to her nose and sniffs.

      ‘Don’t be silly. You’d need a metal spoon for blood. It’s raspberry coulis.’

      Jayden Finch, megastar, scores a goal just before the whistle to complete a total rout for the Blues. I call out the news. Mum dances from the kitchen, waving her scarf victoriously over her head. She pirouettes (yesterday’s word!) past the phone, lifting it off the hook and pushing speed-dial. She skips across the room and gracefully bows, before flopping onto the lounge.

      ‘Gail? Wasn’t he brilliant! And so handsome! He can park his shoes outside my door . . .’

      She points at the spare room, putting her hand over the phone and whispering to me.

      ‘Get your books, darl . . .

      Yeah, Gail. A home game next week. Wild possums couldn’t keep me away. It’ll be more fun than a . . .’

      I carry the books to my bedroom and shut the door.

      More fun than a rat with a ping-pong ball?

      A pizza in a blender?

      A horse with hiccups?

      ‘Hurry up, Dad. It’s getting dark.’

      Next door, Tony Thompson stands in his backyard impatiently tossing the ball from hand to hand. His brother Timmy is crouching between the two frangipani trees along the back fence. Drawn on the timber palings behind him are hundreds of smiling moon faces with jug ears and bright red hair. An instant crowd.

      I open the window and lean out to get a better view of Mr Thompson half-way up a ladder, placing a floodlight over a hook on the verandah.

      He calls to his wife, ‘Switch it on, Agnes.’

      An intense beam fizzes and crackles, filling the backyard with a warm glow.

      ‘There you go, boys. Better than Aussie Stadium.’

      Mr Thompson climbs down and leans over the railing as Tony carefully places the ball on the penalty spot. He pulls up both socks before slowly pacing back, eyes never leaving the ball. Timmy, in goal, smacks his two gloves together and bends his knees ready to spring.

      Mr Thompson’s deep voice booms, ‘It’s one-all with twenty seconds remaining in the Cup Final. Will United’s Tony Thompson score the winner and become the hero of all of Jackson Street?’

      Timmy stops slapping his gloves and looks up at his dad.

      Mr Thompson continues, ‘Or will Timmy the Cat save the day for the Wanderers? The tension is so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw.’

      Mrs Thompson interrupts, ‘A bread knife, dear. Cut it with a bread knife.’

      Mr Thompson scratches his head.

      ‘That’s not very exciting, Agnes?’

      ‘It’s too violent, dear.’

      ‘The tension is so thick you could cut it with . . .’

      ‘Dad!’

      ‘Sorry, boys.’

      Tony runs in and slams the ball hard to Timmy’s right. Timmy dives but can’t quite get his fingers to the ball and it smacks into the fence. The faces in the crowd splinter. Tony runs around the yard, his shirt pulled over his face, arms spread wide. Mr Thompson skips down the stairs whistling and clapping. He jogs to Timmy and helps him to his feet.

      ‘Great effort, son. You gave one hundred and fifty percent!’

      He lifts Timmy onto his shoulders and the three of them run in crazy circles around the backyard cheering and laughing.

      Tony Thompson. Timmy Thompson.

      I live in a street of silly names.

      Two doors down is Mrs Bent who walks with the help of a pusher. Every afternoon she trundles to the corner shop stopping every few minutes to rest. She has a sip of water from the sports bottle she keeps in the basket on the pusher. Then she slowly keeps walking. Her back is shaped like the letter C.

      Next door to her lives Mr Hardy who wears shabby clothes and spends all day digging in the garden or walking his dog, Deefer. Whenever Deefer scampers ahead, Mr Hardy clicks his fingers loudly and Deefer sits, panting, waiting for him to catch up.

      Every morning when I go past his house to school, Mr Hardy stretches his arms wide and chuckles, ‘Beautiful day to be alive, young fellow.’

      Even if it’s blowing a gale or blistering hot, he looks up at the sky and says, ‘God’s mighty canvas. A work of art.’

      Opposite Mr Hardy lives the Sweet family. Mr Sweet drives a cement truck which he washes every afternoon. Mrs Sweet stands beside him, talking. She points to a dirty spot he’s missed. Mr Sweet nods and keeps scrubbing. When he’s finished, Mrs Sweet gets him a cool drink and they sit on fold-away beach chairs on the front lawn, holding hands and admiring the shiny truck.

      Mr Hardy says God gave them their name. Sweet.

      But the silliest, stupidest, strangest, most surprising name for anyone in the street, in the suburb, in the state, in the world is reserved for the boy at number eighty-eight.

      My name is Jayden. Jayden Hayden.

      Stop laughing!

      At the age of nineteen, Jayden Finch scored the winning goal in the 1996 Grand Final. The

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