Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) Read Free Page B

the box and turned for the kitchen door but stopped suddenly in his tracks.

    â€˜Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ. He blinked. He bloody blinked.’
    He put the box down on the kitchen table and I saw it too. A slow, perfect blink. We felt for his heartbeat. There was a faint thud like rocks moving about underwater. Dad was grinning so wide I could see his big yellow side teeth. He ruffled my hair, he picked me up and we did a jig around the kitchen. ‘Talk about nine lives,’ he said. ‘Talk about nine bloody lives, eh?’ Then he walked to town to see Dr Smurthwaite and get some advice.
    Abe didn’t move. He hardly breathed – just the occasional blink. I stroked his back until it warmed up then I did the piano for him.
    The book on par-al-y-sis said we had to manage the patient’s essential functions and wait for the brainstorm to subside. We trickled sugar-water and milk down Abe’s throat. We massaged his limbs and bent them backwards and forwards as if he was walking. We breathed into his fetid mouth to expand his lungs. Dad carried him outside and lay him on the dirt. He felt around his tummy and squeezed different bits until some pee trickled out. He was limp. He didn’t even purr, but he was still alive in the morning.
    The first week after the bite when I walked home from school I thought Abe would be either dead or better, but he just lay in the box. We did the essential functions in the morning and the evening. I drew pictures and propped them up in his box. I drew our house, some orange trees, a fish in the creek, a mouse, a family of mice, the Australian continent covered in mice. Two weeks passed, then two months. I grew an inch. I finished the Second Schools Reader but there were no copies of the Third Reader in the cupboard.
    We were being good at the war – especially on the Gallipoli Peninsula. At school we copied out a notice for our mothers asking them to donate sheets, pillow-cases, towels, white shirts or frocks for the war. I got to tidy the bookshelf instead. Then we called out ideas and the teacher wrote a list on the board.
    How we can earn money for the State School’s Patriotic Fund:
Collect eggs.
Shift fence posts.
Catch leeches for the hospital.
Make and sell jam.
Sell empty bottles.
Catch frogs for the University.
Donate birthday money.
Catch difficult horses.
Donate money for sweets.
    Hazel Meaks said she was going to sell her pet lamb to the butcher and everyone clapped, then she cried.
    I caught three frogs. I pretended I was sick to avoid eating lamb. When Dad opened my school tin to put the orange in he asked what the frogs were for.
    â€˜The war.’
    He nodded. ‘Good in the trenches, no doubt.’
    Then one day I walked up the hill and Abe was sitting on the gatepost washing himself as if he had never been sick. I hadn’t even been thinking about him – I’d been thinking about subtraction and how you were meant to know when to borrow a small number from a bigger number and then to pay it back again. I followed Abe all afternoon. He went to the orchard and the packing sheds and under the house. He went to the stables and fell asleep in the straw. Dad made us pancakes to celebrate but he put orange juice in the mixture and it curdled.
    I asked my aunty for scraps of material to take to school and hand in for the war. My aunty made dresses for ladies. I asked her for white scraps or cream scraps so they could be used for bandages.
    The first time I saw Dad in green I didn’t really see him. The green of his uniform was the same green as the orange trees, but the sleeves were too short so I saw his long wrists and big hands. I saw the sharp bones that stuck out at the sides of his wrists. Sometimes I rubbed these bones on his wrists when I couldn’t sleep.
    The next time we went to my aunty’s she let us into the house. She showed me how she had put up a curtain across part of her sewing room to make another