The Serpent's Skin by Erina Reddan (top 5 books to read .txt) 📕

‘Reckon you were right,’ I said, taking in the great swathe of prickly pear he’d chopped into.

‘What are you going to do once it’s all cleared?’ I strapped the can onto my back and hauled Dad’s over to him.

‘Keep it like that.’

‘What did you do with Jack?’

He did laugh that time. ‘Your mother was always on at me to get this done. She’ll be happy looking down now. She didn’t want Jean’s Corner grown over.’

‘Her corner, too.’

‘Taught me to swim, she did.’ He adjusted the straps and pointed at the place he wanted me to start. ‘I wouldn’t go near the water before that.’

‘Because Great Aunty Patty drowned in the creek when she was just fourteen, and your mother had you all scared of the boogey man in the water.’

‘Righto, righto. You’ve heard the story before.’

I grinned. I was silent a while as I remembered how much pressure I needed to get the spray of poison just right and landing where it should. Dad had us all jet-packed up as kids, and we’d walk the paddock spraying artichokes. The family that poisoned the earth together stayed together. I got back into the swing of things pretty quick and we each took an end and worked inwards.

‘It’s coming on dark,’ said Dad, after a while. ‘Best pack up. Suppose you’ll want to get off home?’

‘I could stay for dinner.’

A trapped look slid behind his eyes. I unstrapped the drum on my back, unsheathed my arms from the gloves. The breeze of the early evening cooled against the sweat on my skin. I stretched my arms in front of me. All the sweetness of being tired in your pores, but not weary with the bone-grinding weight of it.

‘Storm coming,’ Dad said.

I looked up and the sky looked back, a steady, stormy blue on the edge of night. ‘We’ll make it a quick bite, then.’

We both got into our cars and ambled across the flat. My brain had flattened out so I wasn’t thinking at all. That kind of a sky had that effect; it thickened the air so that thoughts seemed like little things. The ute ahead of me growled with the effort of getting up the hill, and then jarred and jumped over the potholes across the home paddock.

We washed up in the laundry before Dad went to get his slippers. I took out Monday’s and Tuesday’s dinners and put them in the oven. Now that the moment had come I wanted to push its raft back out into the creek. The physical work had rocked Dad and me into a whisper of tired softness, and that was worth something.

Still, I stiffened my resolve: Jack had a lot of admitting to do, and I’d been down too many dead-end streets.

Dad and I sat over the just-hot-enough food. The cheese of the lasagna spreading and flattening on the plate.

‘Where are the pages you took from the diaries, Dad?’

‘Used them for dunny paper,’ he said without a blink. ‘Thought it was funny.’

‘Did you read them first?’

‘Too dark in there. Would have been a load of rubbish.’

Dad was getting closer and closer to his food, shortening the time between plate and mouth.

‘Why’d ya take the diaries?’

‘Thought there might be something bad in there.’

I wasn’t used to the truth from him. It took the words out of me for a moment. ‘Like what?’

‘If I’ve been hiding anything, it was for your own good.’

‘So you admit it finally. You are hiding something.’

‘I’m not admitting anything. I’m just saying that sometimes a father has to do things his kids don’t understand. Can we just drop it?’

‘Drop what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What?’

Dad shovelled food in like there was no tomorrow. The stones of the wall were mortared back into place. All that whispered softness had disappeared in me and we were back to opposite shores.

‘Why did you say Mum had left us that first day?’

‘She shouldn’t have gone off like that. A woman doesn’t leave her family. Wanted to turn you lot against her when she finally got home to punish her for taking off. I was sure she was coming home.’

‘So why did you change your mind the next day and tell us she was at Aunty Peg’s all along?’

His eyes darted around the room, looking for a hole to crawl into. His eyes ended up on that photo of Mum, which was still propped against the wall on the bench.

‘I calmed down,’ he said, his mouth full. ‘It wasn’t right. I shouldn’t have been turning you buggers against your mother.’

‘Is that so?’ I said, and I couldn’t keep the scepticism out.

‘What else could it be?’ He hunkered down into his plate. His eyes slipping sideways to Mum’s photo again.

‘You know Philly and Ahmed are sleeping together.’

‘Stop stirring.’ He shovelled in the fork again. He was almost down to the plate-scraping stage. I noticed he was taking less in at each mouthful to make the whole thing last longer.

‘Tessa’s been drinking for months.’

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘Me?’ I couldn’t hear what was going on in my own head any more because cymbals were making such a racket. I scrabbled about in there, but I couldn’t get still enough to locate my well-made plan. ‘What happened to you when Mum died?’ I said, voice pumped up with accusation. ‘It was like you’d died, too.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish.’

‘Dad, it was like we were invisible.’

Jack tapped the table faster and faster. ‘You were never satisfied after your mother died. You carved me up with a knife and a fork, then left me out to rot.’

‘You were the parent, Dad. I was ten years old. You left me to rot.’

‘Ten years going on one hundred. You were a bloody handful. Still are. Causing trouble from one end of the ship to the other. If Tessa’s drinking—if Philly’s living in sin—it’s your fault. You’ve never let any of us settle. It’s all raw and bleeding and picking at scabs for you.’

The screech of the chair as I pushed it back ripped through the house. ‘I