Dark Fires Shall Burn Read Free Page B

ladies department, pulling one over. Annie holding her hands clasped so the holes in her gloves couldn’t be seen, gliding in, her face serene, like Daddy owned a sheep station. He knew their game: stockings and ribbons mostly, easy to hide, easy to sell on. And the occasional luxury, or a fancy hat just for sport. Annie liked the ones with the ostrich feathers, the hardest to smuggle.
    â€˜Where do you hide a hat?’ he asked once.
    â€˜I’ve got my ways,’ Annie replied, fluttering her fingers like a magician’s assistant.
    â€˜What’s an ostrich?’ Sally posed with the hat, flopping plumage over one eye.
    â€˜It’s a big parrot,’ Templeton answered.
    â€˜No it’s not, you pair of dolts!’ Dot said. ‘It is like an emu, only from Africa. Big.’ She mimed holding reins with a cock-eyed smile. ‘You can ride it like a horse.’
    â€˜Surely not. Is that right, Annie?’ asked Sally. ‘Africa?’
    â€˜Darned if I know,’ Annie said, and spat on her palm to rub a spot on the hat brim.
    Templeton imagined Annie seducing the salesman, sashaying and twirling, asking this and that and flashing all kinds of charm while the other girls snuck in and put their deep-pocketed dustcoats to use. She always went straight for the men; the women wised up too quickly. And the salesmen were old blokes, or fellows with a finger off or a leg brace or thick, Coke-bottle spectacles. Marks so easy he almost felt sorry for them. ‘Just the codgers, the lame and the sissies left at David Jones,’ Annie liked to say. ‘And even the best of them go to the VDC for three square meals and five bob a day.’
    He knew Annie would cuff him for shirking, for bringing no coin home for the pot, but all he was thinking of was the breeze peeling off the harbour and salting his nostrils. A milk van splashed through the street, flecking passers-by with water. He hated the job at Railway Square selling papers, but more than that he hated the flat grey eyes of the paperboys, known by who their fathers were — Smiths, McKenzies, Ryans. They were younger versions with the same attitudes. They stole his papers come end of day, and his takings too, if they felt like it, and stomped him for good measure. They teased him for his name, Templeton, his mother’s family name. Luckett meant nothing to them — and why should it? He was no one.
    There would be no money to be made on a day like this anyway, when the heavens were open. Annie could go to hell.
    Down at Glebe he likes to watch the oystermen leaning in to the tides’ comings and goings, the slow, quiet rhythm. He buys smokes and hangs about whenever he can get away, and no one pays him mind. The blokes often wave as he pets the mutts that gang the dock. On days he has a sandwich he throws the dogs the torn-up crusts and takes hold of their scruffs and breathes in their comforting stink. Each new morning brings a day so stuffed with hours it makes him churn inside at how to fill them.
    The wind picks up now over the Point and he hears a dog bark and then yelp. The men who tied their boats head off for a beer, and soon there is not a soul on the street, and screen doors grizzle loosely on their hinges behind him on Northcote Road. He chews on the sour end of his cigarette. A baby squalls along with the weather and the cry pricks a memory in him: the blood on the bed, the taste of muddy dam water in his mouth, the sheet with the hem of blue daisies ruined. He digs his nails into his palms, forming scallops.
    Making his way to the harbour’s edge, Templeton slings his cigarette butt into the bobbing crates and fish guts. The filmy rainbow of diesel fuel on top of the water greases the seawall.
    It is almost seven by the time he turns on to King Street from City Road, and his hunger nettles him. What he wouldn’t give for a mixed grill or a plate of steak and eggs, but he is as like to find a bob in