Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

came to stay for six long years. Each day they carried home more soil on their stinking sandshoes, until all that was left could barely support the complementary peppercorn trees that minded not the heat nor lack of rain, but grew on in grotesque shapes, their potent white sap tainting the hands, the hair and the very air in the barren yard.
    â€˜Barren world. Barren life,’ he murmured, and reached for the green thermos conveniently placed in the drawer beneath his table, pouring a cup of what he hoped looked like weak black tea.
    Heads lolling, propped in hands, bodies leaning, waiting, perhaps dreaming too of cool drinks – of raspberry cordial with chunks of ice floating, and of cream-puffs and jellied lamingtons the town ladies always provided at the shire hall on that final day of the school year.
    The mute appeared to be reading, the two Burton heads close together, sharing one school magazine. No doubt copying her brother’s actions, Malcolm decided, and reached again for his thermos, shaking it to test its level. It would last him until three thirty when a tender leg of lamb awaited his culinary skills. He’d serve it with a crisp lettuce, tossed lightly in cream – but not too lightly. The barest sprinkling of mustard, but no potato, definitely no potato; a concession to his doctor.
    He drank too fast. His cup again empty, he up-ended it to make quite certain.
    â€˜Too soon a pleasure taken, then forgot,’ he quoted, measuring out a small refill before tucking the thermos out of reach inside the drawer.
    He was feeling better by the minute, the knots in his neck unravelling, his skin stretching to fit his limbs, while memories fighting for supremacy that morning now slid away to the smudged grey corners of his mind where he need not pursue them. Mornings were always worse than afternoons, afternoons worse than evenings. Dawn was the killer.
    â€˜Dooley!’ he bellowed
    â€˜What, sir!’ A drowsy carrot-topped teenager sprang to attention in the sixth-graders’ row.
    â€˜â€œThe Team”, Dooley. The poem we have all been reading. Who was the author?’ the headmaster asked. He stood and moved between the aisles, slapping a desk here and there with a chubby pink hand, his walk a pulsation, each hump and lump moving independently, sluggish and slow.
    â€˜I dunno, sir.’
    â€˜Do you know anything, Dooley?’
    â€˜I dunno, sir.’
    â€˜Do you know where you will be insulting the sensibilities of the teaching fraternity in the new year, Dooley?’
    â€˜I’m goin’ to high school – on the bus. If I pass this year, sir. If that’s whatcha mean, sir.’
    â€˜Indeed I do, Dooley, and indeed you will pass. If it means I must go down on bended knee, begging forgiveness for my gross connivance, you will pass this year, Dooley,’ he replied and pulsated on, sidestepping a broad bare foot placed strategically in the aisle to trip him.
    With a baby fat elbow, he jabbed at a near mature youth’s rib cage. ‘Tell me, Mr West. Dare I contemplate the day when I have no more a West’s big splayed foot attempting to trip me in my grade six aisle?’
    â€˜Don’t count on it, sir. The old man and lady was hard at it again last night.’ Robby West cackled and the elbow nudged again, harder this time.
    â€˜ Were hard at it, Mr West,’ the headmaster corrected. ‘The old man and lady were hard at it. They were. We were, but he was . I was –’
    â€˜When, sir?’ the class clown asked, poker faced, and the elbow with twenty-eight stone behind it near lifted him from his desk. Unperturbed, Malcolm Fletcher moved to the next row, stopping beside the Burtons.
    â€˜Give me the author’s name, Burton,’ he said, knowing the youth would freeze, wanting to punish him for his timidity, his acceptance, his very name. ‘On your feet.’
    The boy stood, licked dry lips. ‘Henry Lawson,