‘He writes them in the air. Like when he wrote Park Terrace in the air and I wondered what the hell he was talking about, then Mum came home and told us she was standing at a set of traffic lights while she was shopping in Corinda when she saw an old woman just step right out into traffic. Right out there into the middle of it all, not giving a shit—’
‘Watch your language, Eli,’ Lyle said, cross at me.
‘Sorry. So Mum drops all her grocery bags and takes two steps forward and reaches for this old woman and yanks her back hard to the footpath just as a big council bus is about to clean her up. She saved the old lady’s life. And guess what street that happened on?’
‘Park Terrace?’ Tytus said, eyes wide.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It happened on Oxley Avenue, but then Mum walks this old lady back to her house a few blocks down the road and this old woman doesn’t say a word at all, just has this dazed look on her face. Then they come to this woman’s house and the front door is wide open and one of the old casement windows is banging hard in the wind and the old woman says she can’t go up the front stairs and Mum tries to guide her up there but she goes crazy, “No, no, no, no,” she screams. And nods to Mum like she should go up those stairs, and because Mum has hard and full bones too, she climbs those stairs and she walks into the house and all the casement windows on all four sides of this old Corinda Queenslander are banging in the wind and Mum paces through this house and into the kitchen where there’s a ham and tomato sandwich being eaten by flies and this whole house stinks of Dettol and something darker underneath, something fouler, and Mum keeps walking through the living room, down a hallway, all the way to the house’s main bedroom and the door is closed and she opens it and she’s almost knocked out by the smell of the old dead guy sitting in an armchair by a king-size bed, his head wrapped in a plastic bag and a gas tank by his side. And guess what street this house was on?’
‘Park Terrace,’ Tytus said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘The cops came to the house and they pieced together the whole story and they told Mum how the old woman had found her husband like that in the bedroom a month before and she was so cross at him because he told her he was going to do it but she demanded he didn’t and he defied her and she was so pissed off with him and shocked by the situation that she simply pretended he wasn’t there. She closed the door on the main bedroom for a month, spreading Dettol around the house to mask the smell as she went about her daily business like making ham and tomato sandwiches for lunch. Finally, when the smell got too much, reality kicked in and she opened all the windows in the house and walked straight down to Oxley Avenue to throw herself in front of a bus.’
‘So where did Park Terrace come in?’ Tytus asked.
‘Well, that had nothing to do with Mum. That was Lyle who copped a speeding fine on Park Terrace while driving to work that same day.’
‘Fascinating,’ Tytus said.
He looked at August, leaned forward in his swivel chair. There was something sinister in his eye then. He was old but he was threatening. It was the sucked-in cheekbones, the white hair, the something I felt in my weak bones. It was Ahab.
‘Well, young August, you budding diviner, do please tell me,’ he began, ‘what do you see when you look at me?’
August shook his head, shrugged off the whole story.
Tytus smiled. ‘I think I’ll keep my eye on you, August,’ he said, leaning back in his swivel chair.
I turned back to the figurine.
‘So how did he lose his foot?’ I asked.
‘He was captured by the bloodthirsty Spartans and put in bonds,’ he said. ‘But he managed to escape by cutting his foot off.’
‘Bet they didn’t see that coming,’ I said.
‘No, young Eli, they did not,’ he said. He laughed. ‘So what does Hegesistratus teach us?’ he asked.
‘Always pack a hacksaw when you travel to Greece,’ I said.
Tytus smiled. Then he turned to Lyle.
‘Sacrifice,’ he said. ‘Never grow attached to anything you can’t