Honey Spot

Jack Davis

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781925359855
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

The friendship between an Aboriginal boy and a white girl raises issues of race in a touching story of two families who seem to have nothing in common... until danger strikes and forces them to face their prejudices. Illustrated by Ellen José.

PROLOGUE

Music plays. People appear one by one, going about their daily business.

MOTHER, an Aboriginal woman in her mid-thirties, walks past carrying a shopping bag. The FOREST RANGER watches her go, then finds a limb of a tree lying on the ground. He picks it up and examines it, noticing that it has been cut cleanly through with an axe.

WILLIAM, a young Aboriginal man, comes along. He is holding an axe. He hides behind the log when he sees the RANGER, then runs off as the RANGER returns to his house.

TIM, an Aboriginal boy of thirteen, runs along bouncing a basketball. He wears a school uniform. He stops when he sees PEGGY, a twelve-year-old white girl, also in school uniform, practising ballet steps as she walks along. The two look at each other for a moment, then PEGGY runs off.

WILLIAM comes back and he and TIM throw the basketball between them a couple of times, then leave. MOTHER returns, her shopping bag now full. She stops to rest for a moment, then moves quickly on when she sees the RANGER watching her. The mood is one of suspicion between white and black people.

SCENE ONE

It is a hot afternoon in a state forest. TIM arrives, eating a piece of honeycomb which he is holding on a scrap of bark. A small tomahawk is stuck in the band of his school shorts. He sits on the log.

PEGGY arrives, returning home after a ballet class, practising a step as she walks. She is carrying a school bag. When TIM sees her he hides behind the log, but she has heard a noise and comes back to see who is there. TIM tries to bury himself in the ground but she has seen him.

PEGGY: Hello?

TIM: Go away!

PEGGY: What for?

TIM: Go away!

PEGGY: Are you alright?

TIM: Yeah.

PEGGY: What’s wrong with you?

TIM: Nothing. Mind your own business.

PEGGY: Are you hiding from someone?

TIM springs to his feet, threatening her with his tomahawk.

TIM: Clear out, will ya?

PEGGY sees that he has honey all over the front of his shirt.

PEGGY: Yuk! You’ve been lying in something.

TIM: Stop being a sticky beak, will ya?

PEGGY: It’s honey.

TIM: No, it’s not.

PEGGY: I know what you’ve been doing.

TIM: What?

PEGGY: And I know who you are. You’re new at our school, aren’t you?

TIM nods his head.

Are you in Mr Barker’s class?

TIM: Mrs Porter’s.

PEGGY: Mrs Porter’s? That’s onl...