Burning Eddy Read Free

the back of Dad’s aviaries last summer. Dad keeps caged birds like parrots and doves, and the snake would have been after the mice that live under the feed bin. Kind of handy to have around. It was curled up when I found it, quite content inside a coil of black poly-pipe. The budgies were going berserk. I wanted to open their cage. I wanted to see them fly into the trees. I went back to grab Tobe and gave him a piggyback up to the aviary, then sat him on my knee a safe distance from the snake. It had just shed its skin and it was glossy like wet paint. For the Indians, the shedding of skin symbolises death and rebirth.
    Tobe’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. His mouth dropped open and he pointed. ‘Snate,’ he whispered.
    I nodded and the snake’s tongue darted out. I put my finger to my lips and walked gently away, holding his hand.
    ‘Beautiful, hey Tobe?’
    Toby nodded with a big smile on his face.
    ‘When you see a snake, go the other way. Okay?’
    He nodded and thought for a minute. ‘Walk or run?’ he asked.
    I chuckled. ‘Walk or run. They can bite you but they are frightened of you. Walk is good. Run if you want.’
    Two times last summer, Toby came up to me and pulled on the leg of my shorts.
    ‘Snate,’ he said, and proceeded to tiptoe through the yard to where he’d spotted a sleeping serpent. One turned out to be a piece of poly-pipe in the grass; the other was a tiger snake, up behind the aviaries again. It looked bigger and more vividly banded than the first time we’d seen it, if it was the same snake.
    ‘We should give it a name, Dan,’ he suggested.
    ‘Yeah, good idea. What?’
    ‘Zeb,’ he said.
    I looked at him. ‘That’s a good name, Tobe. Where did you get that from?’
    He shrugged. ‘I just made it up. Zeb . . . Zebbie . . . Zebra. From his stripes.’
    Word about me working on blackberries got around. Tina and the mayor of Greater Carmine, Antonio Calais, are good mates. Mr Calais lives in a posh house in Henning,the township at the western end of the Bellan road where Kat and I catch the bus every morning. I started doing a couple of hours on his blackberries after school and a few weeks later he got me going on his ride-on mower, cleaning his pond, weeding the rosebeds, planting flower seedlings, and clearing more blackberries. He paid me five dollars an hour, cash in hand, and I worked hard for him. He told me about the Dutch lady. Said her name was Eddy. He gave me her address. He said he’d told her that I was good but expensive. He told me to go see her.

three
Y E L L O W R O B I N

    Tina drops Kat and me off at the bus stop every morning on her way to work. She started providing that service a few weeks after we shifted to Bellan. Every second Thursday, Mum and Toby go shopping. They get a lift with Tina into Carmine and shop and hang around town until she knocks off work again. Tina’s a scientist with the EPA in Carmine. She makes sure all the power stations at Carmine and Milara don’t mess up the rivers and creeks and the air. Big job.
    I went to the Dutch lady’s place one shopping day. Straight after school. I raced out after the bell and told Kat that I wouldn’t be catching the bus, that I’d get a lift with Tina and Mum and Toby. She wanted to stay in town too but we don’t all fit in Tina’s ute. Well, we do fit — but not legally. Driving to the bus stop on shopping days, Mumsits next to Tina, Toby sits on Kat’s knee and I ride to the end of the dirt part of the Bellan road in the back of the ute. All the way to the tar. Like a kelpie. I love it. It’s okay on the Bellan road but we’d get in serious trouble if we were caught.
    No. 4 Concertina Drive. The number on the letterbox was obscured by vegetation. All the other houses, for as far as I could see, had a square of lawn and two shrubs. Four Concertina Drive was totally overgrown. A solid wall of greenery. There was no lawn, not a tuft of grass to be seen. The driveway was concrete but