The Book of Emmett Read Online Free PDF Page B

the dirt. Still, the frame of the thing is sturdy enough for kids to swing on and as a wizzy-giver it’s unbeatable.
    The kids aren’t allowed inside much when Emmett’s around, so the backyard and the street are theirs. For a little yard, there’s a lot going on. In one corner is the big shed which is seldom used by adults anymore since Emmett made beer and most of the bottles exploded.
    Now the big shed is calm though slightly creepy and the kids reckon there may be someone buried inside in a shallow grave, just going by the atmosphere. A curtain of spiders’ webs hangs over the crooked little window.
    The dog who became Frank was hidden in there for six days until his scratching and howling got him discovered and turfed out by Emmett who raged red-faced that he refused to take on any more bloody dogs ... or kids. ‘They shit everywhere and bite people and then a man has to sort the whole bloody mess out. NOT HAVING IT!’
    But the dog was never really impressed by Emmett. He just sat there in the shed watching and even seemed bored, as if he’d seen better displays. He propped outside on the concrete and scratched himself lazily. And the kids had seen worse displays about less, so they weren’t without hope either.
    For two days the dog sat at the front gate of number fifty-five without food. He took a bit of water from the gutter when he could find it but it seemed he had chosen his family and that was it. In the end, coming home from work one day, Emmett saw him there, invited him in for a feed of Rice Bubbles and gave him a name.
    â€˜Francis Xavier O’Hooligan,’ Emmett declared in the kitchen that night standing beside Frank as the dog enthusiastically knocked back his Rice Bubbles, ‘is a Catholic dog.’ Pause, while the kids absorbed the detail. ‘And as such, will need to be treated with respect and affection. These Micks get touchy if you don’t love ’em,’ he explained sagely to the kids, drawing on his time in a Catholic orphanage but not saying so. ‘They are very fond of a bit of ceremony,’ he said. ‘Love a bit of a fuss.’
    The kids thought their father was off and raving again and they knew that the dog was unlikely to have a religion, but listening was the way of peace, and they were deeply glad to have the sane and wise Frank on board.
    ***
    The little shed was where Pa used to finish off cricket bats, planing them patiently and knocking them in with a wooden mallet. It was even said that some of his bats had been used by test cricketers.
    And when he was working, the knocking of wood on wood rang out in hollow circles. Pa once worked at a little bat factory down the road in Seddon. He made a bat for Rob but it got pinched which was said to be Rob’s own fault, yet no one suffered more at the loss of the mystical bat than Rob. He yearned for it, dreamed about it. Emmett called the boy pathetic for losing the bat and said he ought to be whipped but right at that moment, he couldn’t be bothered. He did say that giving the boy a bat was a waste. ‘Never be much of a batsman, would ya anyway? Never be much good at anybloodything.’
    Still when the boy made his first century in the schoolyard Emmett was mildly aroused. He was stacking the week’s beer supply into the fridge leaving not much space for anything else. Bending over, he was illuminated by the fridge light and for a while it seemed he might even be impressed. But then flipping the lid off the first for the day, he dismissed it as schoolboy cricket and not worth a pinch of shit.
    After Pa died each of the kids claimed the little shed at various times – the boys for a fort with sticks poking through the windows like weapons. For a while the war theme was uppermost and they made hand grenades out of tins stuffed with oily rags and chucked them out onto the petrol station where Dimitri, the transcendently dark bloke who ran the servo, kicked