All the Birds, Singing: A Novel by Wyld Evie

Author:Wyld, Evie [Wyld, Evie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307907776
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

14

Shortland Street is on twice a day and we watch it either in the afternoon or the evening, but sometimes we watch both. There are always drinks that are left on tables, undrunk. Coffee or beer, ordered and then sometimes not even lifted to the lips before the actor storms off, or slopes away with a sad look. Through the whole thing, Otto explains bits to me.

“See that one, he’s got a history of playing around—an’ that’s his ex-wife, but really he’s fallen in love with this one over here. But she’s after his money.” And, “He’s referring to the big fire that happened. That’s where his father was killed.” And I nod and watch the drinks being wasted. By the end I’m thirsty and sad but I think of my last cigarette, hidden where Otto will not look. I’ve put it on top of my wardrobe and I’ve been checking on it now and then to make sure nothing has started to eat it or steal the tobacco for a nest. Suddenly though it doesn’t matter if a clutch of spiders have made it their home, I’m going to smoke it.

I sneak out to the dunny. I’d thought I’d smoke it in there, but the heat has made the drop toilet even worse than usual, and I think, Balls to it, I’ll just stand behind. Kelly is under the house panting in the dirt and she doesn’t give me a second glance for once, and I feel like a hero lighting the match behind the dunny shed, taking that first deep draw which makes me smile and sends my head into a spin. I don’t know how long it’s been. Months. Maybe half a year. The smoke gets rid of the flies around my face. A terrorist confidence gets into me and I sneak a look around the corner, and Kelly’s back is to me, heaving away under the shadow of the house, and the side wall which faces me has no window, so I come around the front of the shed and stand like anyone else would stand, smoking a cigarette, without anything being the matter, without it being the bad thing to do and without the slightest worry. Underneath the house the dirt is lumpy from Kelly’s digging. I’ve seen her before dragging some animal’s stinking carcass out of the paddock and starting to bury it there. If she catches me looking she stops, out-stares me and waits for me to leave so she can dig in secrecy. Like she’s stocking a larder.

The sun is at that moment not an unbearable sting on my eyes, but a clean memory of being a kid, and of having got one over the olds. I close my eyes and think of the smell of eucalypt in the heat. It could be the hit from the cigarette, but I feel good. I open my eyes because there’s a noise, and I hold the smoke I’ve sucked in deep in my lungs. Otto has come out of the house and is unbuttoning himself at the veranda.

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