Four Fires Read Online Free PDF Page B

school and cop the strap.
    Often times in the winter we'd have to first knock the ice from the shower rose. We'd dance about on the cement floor, sucking in our breath, the shower sending deadly ice needles raining down on us, piercing us to the very bone. But we still scrubbed till it hurt. We took as much time as we could stand without freezing to death to get rid of the smell of garbage and the shame Sarah said it would bring if people smelt it on us kids.
    You'd be standing under the shower, gasping, trying to rinse off your all-over-body soaping with frantic hands, Mike and Bozo waiting, Page 20

    eyes closed from the soap dripping down from their hair, both still furiously scrubbing, slapping themselves, yelling out to me to bloody hurry up. Bozo's balls would disappear somewhere up between his legs and they'd only drop down when he was warm again. 'Sometimes,' he said, 'they only came good during the second period at school.'
    Sarah said we had our pride and even if we were the town garbos and Tommy was in gaol, so what? Nobody was going to say a Maloney wasn't a clean person. She'd have ironed our school clothes with the creases in our shorts sharp as a knife. Then when we came in from out the back, all dressed for school, there'd be these big enamel plates filled with steaming oatmeal porridge with a ring of melted brown sugar on the top, hot milk, thick wedges of white toast and plum jam as well as tin mugs of hot, sweet tea waiting for us on the kitchen table.
    After that we'd wash our mouths and clean our teeth at the sink, grab our jam sandwiches for school lunch, kiss and hug little Colleen and call 'Cheerio!' to Nancy out the back verandah.
    'You four stick together, you hear? You tell me if any teacher gives you trouble!' She'd shout the same thing every morning from where she'd settled down in the old cane couch, and she'd already be halfway through a large bottle of milk stout. Her latest layette order, together with her embroidery stuff and the old Singer sewing machine, would be on the work table beside her.
    We'd be out the front gate and off to school in a great tearing hurry, Sarah walking along with us, the three of us boys scrubbed properly to her satisfaction. She'd be neat as a pin in her box-pleated tunic and blazer with her prefect's stripe sewn on just below the school badge. If you looked at Sarah, who had this shining red hair, Nancy called it 'titian', and just a sprinkle of speckle freckles around her nose, it would make us proud that at least one Maloney had turned out okay.
    Sarah, Mike and Bozo, together with Bozo's dogs, would peel off to the high school and I'd make my way alone to the primary school down the road a bit. I know I'm carrying on a bit about Bozo's dogs but
    you've got to understand they were truly amazing. They'd wait at the school gates minding their own business, never giving any trouble, until school came out. They did the same when Bozo and me were in primary school, going crazy with joy when they saw us at the end of the day, you'd think we'd been away on holidays. Which never happened of course. In fact, it was Bozo's dogs waiting at the school gates that was the real reason for him becoming a boxer.
    It happened like this. We were in the playground and this kid, Brent Middleton, bigger than Bozo by a good head and surrounded by nine of his mates, comes up to us and says, 'Hey, Bozo, is it true your auntie escaped from the loony bin and went starkers down King Street?' He's got this half-smile on his face and the others with him are Page 21

    all grinning their gobs off.
    Bozo's got no option, has he? So he smacks the bastard, only it's with his fist and the perpetrator drops like a stone. Well, he knocks him down anyway. Brent Middleton is one grade above Bozo and the school bully and the leader of a gang and, before you know it, there's four or
    five of them having a go at my brother.
    I get stuck in, but at the time I'm too little to do much damage, but they've got