Four Fires Read Online Free PDF

staring at the two killer dogs, like they were dirt or something. Which goes to show how well they were trained, you try stopping a small dog barking at a big one. I swear Bozo had taught them how to do a bored sort of a yawn in sequence.
    It never failed to work, we'd hear Oliver Twist cursing and trying to get his upstairs bedroom window up to abuse us, whereupon Bozo would give this little whistle and his dogs would leave the gate and hurry to the blind side of the truck so that their intimidation act couldn't be seen by the furious beak.
    The window would eventually go up, but before the furious magistrate could ever get the first word in, Nancy, her head already stuck out the truck window, would shout up at him, 'Better call those brutes off, one day they're going to get out and bite one of my boys!'
    Her tone of voice always suggested that such an event would be more trouble than even Oliver Twist could handle on his own.
    The magistrate in his red-striped pyjamas would open his mouth to say something and Nancy would quickly add, 'They're a menace to society!' Which was what Oliver Twist had once said about Tommy. Lost for a reply, he'd try to call his dogs off and we'd be away with a clank and a roar, sending a perfumed cloud of carbon monoxide up through his
    bedroom window. Nancy would yell out over the noise of the engine,
    'Half-past three and all's well!' like the night watchman in that movie Great Expectations, or was it The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
    Oliver Twist really pissed Nancy off. Tommy never took personal property, like jewellery and stuff, or broke into someone's house. He only did warehouses or commercial premises where the insurance would cover the loss. He mostly worked in Albury-Wodonga or the industrial areas in the western suburbs of Melbourne and only occasionally in Wangaratta. Nancy reckoned that Tommy didn't deserve more than one Page 19

    stretch at a time for being such an honourable crook.
    Shortly after six-thirty we'd be at the tip a mile out of town for the last time that day, having been out twice already. Unfortunately the Diamond T wasn't a tip-truck and so each trip out the three of us would pull on our broken old gumboots, grab a blunt shovel and shovel the shit that came out of people's bins onto the tip.
    Then on the way home we'd stop at the abattoir and hose the back of the truck clean while Mum went in and fetched us a bit of meat for that night and Bozo got half a sack of bones and scrag ends for the dogs. Fridays we'd eat fish, mostly smoked cod in white sauce which us kids hated. Once Bozo caught a fish in the Sawell Dam and it tasted of mud. We all had about a teaspoon each of that fish to comply with God's wish and then filled up on bread and jam. It was the first fresh fish we'd ever eaten and we vowed it would be the last if we had any say in the matter.
    Bozo and Nancy had the selfsame thing going for them, they had mates everywhere and the abattoir workers never saw us short, although Nancy would always pay, even if sometimes she'd have to put stuff on tick. Maloneys didn't take charity. 'Nothin' worse than someone feeling very sorry for you,' Nancy would say.
    We'd be back at Bell Street by seven-fifteen, just in time for a cold shower out the back shed, winter or summer. The smell of garbage clings on, gets up your nostrils and into the pores of your skin, in your hair, everywhere. So we'd need to scrub real hard, using Velvet soap on our arms, legs, stomach, up the bum crack, between our toes, back of the ears, places you wouldn't normally care much about. Each spot had to be rubbed practically raw with the scrubbing brush. Last of all, you'd
    get Mike or Bozo to do your back.
    Sometimes, in the winter, it would be below freezing. We'd come home from riding in the back of the truck, breathing frost smoke, and freezing our balls off. Sarah would've put our school clothes in the shed with the towels and straight off we'd have to go into the shower or we'd be late for