The Book of Emmett Read Online Free PDF Page A

Emmett the quizmaster tosses questions around and waits for the kids to catch them and open them up as though they were boxes of treasure.
    â€˜What is a hedge?’ he asks one night after tea when the plates are pushed back and the blue laminex table cleared enough for questions and elbows. This is a night when there will be a bit of entertainment. The question hangs and the silence stretches and eyes dart between the children. Competition is king and which kid is the smartest? Louisa or Rob?
    The kids, at six and seven, are astounded and stumped by the word ‘hedge’. Nothing grows around the housing commission but weeds.
    â€˜That’s one for ya,’ Emmett laughs and pushes back his hair and when he laughs there’s that eyetooth, sharp and yellow.
    â€˜Hedge! Come on now! Think about it,’ Emmett urges and the word hangs above them solid and impregnable. Louisa thinks it’s a word like ‘edge’ and Emmett says ‘maybe’ and ‘you may well be right my dear’. Rob, still fooling with the fork, will not be outdone by Louisa smarming up to Emmett. That the old man sometimes likes her makes her someone to beat. He hatches an answer. ‘A hedge is something green,’ he declares and Emmett says that together they are completely one hundred bloody per cent right and he suspends the moment for a long time and spins it out until you can hear time moving away in inches with each tick of the clock.
    And then, all theatre, he says that yes it is so, that ‘a hedge is indeed a green edge, an edge of green’. The kids are pleased but you wouldn’t know it. They’re both subdued, Louisa with worry and Rob with sharing victory. She hisses to Rob to put the stupid fork away.
    The twins, Peter and Daniel, are in their wicker carrycots on the floor, cooing and batting away time as if it’s nothing at all and Louisa wishes she was still a baby, safe from questions.
    Rob decides Louisa is acting like Lady Muck, typical pain-in-the-neck- know-all-girl, and she’s watching with owl eyes. Patient, waiting, willing Emmett not to change, to let this night finish without incident.
    The boy hates her encompassing stare. Sometimes it seems not to be aimed at you, though most often it is. Still, he reckons, she’s a worthy rival because she can pursue you without seeming to hunt and she’s always alert. Always ready to get you and always wishing for a better Emmett.
    In this wish they’re united, but Rob doesn’t leave it at wishing. He places his own hopes on time. On being a grownup. Then Emmett will be gone and there will be just him and his mum.
    â€˜Watch out Rob,’ Lou hisses urgently, spitting on her finger and smearing the red territory of a mozzie bite on her leg, ‘and listen. Might be a story coming.’
    Louisa understands the way to be. Be silent until he wants to speak to you and then be polite. Your eyes should not be boastful. Hold yourself inside. She doesn’t share her understanding with Rob, there’s no way he’d listen anyway, he’s too full of himself for listening.
    But a peaceful night is not on the agenda. Not long after the triumph of the hedge definition, the fork inevitably stabs Rob in the leg and he leaps away from the table with a revealing scream. A little row of blood beads stands out from his thigh. That’s it, game over.
    Emmett leans over, his long arm heavy in the yellow kitchen, and swats the boy hard as he passes, so hard that he reels back. Louisa, standing appalled beside the chair, is belted across the face for good measure.

4
    The walls of Wolf Street are coated with old smoke from the fire when the couch went up a while ago. Grandpa George thought it was the fireplace and put a match to it. Pretty soon smoke was rolling out from the house and Stan Williams from next door, a big soft pillow of a man, just happened to be getting home late from his Red Cross meeting. He was a