Burning Eddy by Scot Gardner Page B

She patted her cobweb hair.
    ‘We lived on the Bellan road. Near to where that poor man died under the tractor. Do you remember that? Last year?’
    ‘Mr Lane? That was three years ago at least.’
    She snickered. ‘ Ja , it probably was.’
    ‘Who bought your house? Was it Graham and Tina?’
    ‘No. Our house was burnt to the ground twenty years ago. There is nothing left. It’s all pine trees now.’
    I looked at the mental pictures I had of that pine forest — I’d walked through there a hundred times — and I thought I remembered a concrete slab. Yes, a slab and a few broken bricks. I knew where she had lived.
    ‘Skippy saved us. I used to look after animals. All the baby animals off the mothers who were dead by a car. One little baby joey we called Skippy — we called all the baby kangaroos Skippy, after the TV program. You remember? Nay, it was before you were born. Skippy was to be put down the next day because his back legs wouldn’t work. When his mum was killed his back was hurt but Kasper and I fed him and looked after him. He slept in an old jumper in the lounge room, hanging on the arm of the chair. He couldn’t hop and we decided before we went tobed that night that we would take him to the vet in the morning to be put down.
    ‘Kasper and I were asleep in the house and during the night I heard hop , hop , hop down the wooden hallway. I’m thinking to myself, “ Ja , I’m dreaming, hoor .” And it came again, the sound hop , hop , hop , so I am getting up to find Skippy bouncing in the hallway. It is a miracle and on the ceiling is all smoke. The stove flue had caught alight in the roof while we were sleeping. I wake Kasper and there is a crash from the kitchen and I can see the flames from the bedroom, so I am grabbing Skippy and we’re climbing out of the bedroom window and watching the house burn like a big bonfire. True, hoor .’
    I believed her. I had no reason to, but I believed her. No reason except the tears in her eyes and how her breath caught in her throat. She believed.
    ‘These are my experiments. One day you will have an experiment the same and you will know. You will know that there is more to life than skin and bones and trees. That is how we understand spirit, from experiments. Church teaches people about spirit but they can’t really know until they have an experiment of their own.’
    I had to go. The gold clock on the cabinet was screaming at me. If I didn’t leave right at that moment, I’d be walking the forty kilometres home.
    ‘ Ja , take a biscuit. Come back again when it is not so raining and work some more,’ she said, and stood up. She pulled an envelope from her pocket and handed it to me.
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
    ‘ Jaaa . You turned up. Take it. Do you think if you workfor McDonald’s and nobody comes through the door that they will not pay you? Come again, huh, schat ? Come and work some more in my garden.’
    I took the money and felt guilty about it until I reached the shining street. The sun had poked its watery head between a few heavy clouds and lit up the neighbourhood with a triumphant shine. It had stopped raining and the air smelled wet and alive. The white car with the ‘For sale’ sign in the window was still sitting on the nature strip. I read the phone number. I ripped the envelope from Eddy open, counted fifty dollars and thought that I might buy that car. Eight hundred and fifty dollars. Would blow a steaming great hole in my savings, but would the water bead like crystals on the bonnet of a car that hadn’t been looked after?
    It started raining again. Hard. I said the phone number over and over as I jogged to Tina’s work. By the time I made it to the ute I was soaked again, but I was singing the phone number over the din of the rain like a madman. Tina was rattling her keys and hurrying from the office with her head bent and eyes squinting. She stopped short of the car when she saw