After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,27

mug of box wine towards it, toasting the shriek and whatever the thing was shrieking for.

When the chicken was cooked, he sat the whole carcass on a tin plate in his lap, with the camp oven in reach for the vegetables and juices that were in it. He pushed a newspaper under the plate to stop it burning his bare thighs and pulled at a leg. The skin slid off the meat and clung to the carcass. The flesh came off the bone with a small persuasion from his tongue. The bird was tough but it was tasty and he cleaned the drumstick cartoon-like – the whole leg went into his mouth and came out clean. He pushed his fingers into the breast and tore off white meat, it came away like bark from a tree. With a mouthful of breast meat, he felt the air come hot and fast out of his nose. He was burning his mouth, but it didn’t matter because he was enjoying himself. The juice ran down his chin and throat, and maybe some of it collected in his belly button for all he cared; it was good. He drained his mug of wine and filled it with the stock from the camp oven. He hadn’t skimmed it and the fat was heavy on the surface, giving him the feeling he was oiling the engine of his body. He swallowed down large hunks of tomato and onion without chewing. The carrots tasted warm and heavy, and he chewed them and swilled them around his mouth to remember the taste for a long time.

When the breastbone of the chook shone like a fin in the moonlight, he leant back in his deckchair and smiled broadly, felt his wide thick teeth glowing in the dark, felt his feet rooted to the ground. I did the right thing, he thought. I did the right flaming thing after all. The small wound in his palm throbbed with chicken juice and it made him laugh out loud, a great crack. Silly old bastard.

Creeping Jesus in the cane mawed again, but this time it gurgled, something between a purr and a grunt that was swallowed by the deep dark of the night. He put the lid on the camp oven and took himself off to bed, dirty and smelling of dinner.

There was work in the morning, which he was happy about. How long had it been since he’d showed up somewhere to the slow wave of a hand, the nod of ‘How are ya?’ It was what he’d imagined when he’d first gone to Canberra, that he’d slot in and be one of those men who weren’t afraid of a bit of hard work, who drank a cup of coffee out of a tin cup and got on with it. But when he’d got to Canberra the contact he had was nowhere to be seen and he was stranded, no place to stay, no hard hat or boots, and he’d had to sleep in a bus shelter the first four nights. He’d found work as a cleaner, doing the post office headquarters where the toilets were filled anew with the runs every morning at four. It had been hard smelling that and still smile at the miserable-mouthed bastards in the canteen, as they wolfed down their eggs and beans and fried bread only to shit it out again later into the freshly scrubbed toilets. He’d got himself a bed at the YMCA with a bunch of other hopeless cases and looked longingly at the men who lunched together at the side of the road in their hard hats and reflective gear.

Charlie stood by the derrick in the flaying heat, wearing a yellow sou’wester. His legs were bare and it looked from the right angle like he wore nothing else underneath. He had the hood up to shade his eyes from the sun and dark lines of sweat ran from his hairline. His cheeks were wet and shiny as polished stones. He was chatting with a plimsole-wearing girl from the marina café, whose apron was longer than her skirt. Frank could hear the sound of their conversation, and it was all smiles and they both giggled at each other. Charlie took the lemon lite from the girl’s hand and had a drink of it before passing it back, and Stuart gave a snort, tried to catch Frank’s eye, but he kept his face turned away.

Instead, Stuart turned to Linus. ‘Don’t like your