The Serpent's Skin

backwards, then spun it around, taking off in a great spray of gravel. Mr Kennedy dived for the rope before he was turfed out sideways. Dad banged the roof of the ute.
‘Give us a chance to pop a tinnie,’ he complained, but laughing, like something was loosening in him.
Tim and I laughed too, letting his loose curl around us. When we got to the back gate, Tim jumped down to open and close it without a whine, all run through with the excitement of things.
It was in me, too. There’s magic in spotlighting. I liked the way the grown-ups’ voices sounded in the dark. I liked the way they worked together, laughing and joking, making something different from what they did in the day.
Pete careered the ute off down the hill, hurtling over rocks.
Dad hit the back window again. ‘Kids,’ he growled, but eyes dead on his tinnie where the beer was frothing out.
Pete turned the ute on to the flat, skidded right so we were facing Jean’s Corner, then gunned the motor before cutting it.
‘Bloody idiot,’ said Mr Kennedy.
‘Gimme a beer, ya bastard,’ called Pete. Dad nodded at Tim, who pulled the ring of a can and angled over to pass it through the window to Pete.
The moon wasn’t up to much tonight, so I could only just make out the little stone bench under the apple tree in the elbow of the creek. Mum said there used to be a cottage a long time ago. A lady called Jean lived in it after she had a baby without a husband. The baby wasn’t right in the head and it didn’t live long. But that Jean never went back to her family. I guessed she liked it in her corner because it was pretty with the gums leaning long across the creek and the water rushing by all day long like a friend. Nothing left now except the little stone cross getting all overgrown by long grass. I wished I knew the name of that not-right-in-the-head baby so I could scratch it back into the cross. Mum said naming a thing meant you knew it, and knowing a thing made it easier to get a hold of. I reckoned every baby needed knowing.
I chewed my nail and made myself look into the dark of another direction because Jean’s Corner made me think of Mum again. She came down here for a bit of peace and quiet when she was fed up to the back teeth with the lot of us. Sometimes I snuck down after her. Picked all kinds of different wildflowers. Mum and I would sit on the bench and figure out what they were saying when you put them all together. She always carried them home in her apron, put them in a jar, put them on the table for dinner. ‘Make it special,’ she said. She shushed Philly right up one night when Philly asked what a bunch of dead weeds sitting on the table was for. Wished now I left Mum alone on that bench sometimes. Let her have that bit of peace and quiet. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone.
I looked over to Tim but he was doing his best not to look at Jean’s Corner, either. It was in the huddle of him.
‘You seen it yet?’ Mr Kennedy asked Dad in a low voice like there was a chance Tim and I mightn’t hear. He hissed the top of his second tinnie open.
‘I’ll not look at it, even if you hold it under my nose,’ Dad said, all decision and purpose, telling Mr Kennedy what was what. ‘And nobody else should either. It’s a bad business. Brian and Mary can’t hold their heads up.’ Dad spat out the side of the ute. ‘They don’t deserve even a bit of this. That girl ought to be horsewhipped for what she’s done to her parents.’
Tim raised an eyebrow in my direction, jerked his head towards Mr Kennedy. But if Tim wanted to know he could do his own dirty work this time. I already had it from Mrs Nolan and Mum that somebody had seen a picture that might have been Colleen, who’d left for the city two years ago, in a dirty magazine. In the nuddy. Or maybe mostly nuddy.
‘Yep, horsewhipped,’ Mr Kennedy echoed. ‘Got your head screwed on right there, Jack. Like always.’
I scrunched my face up into the terrible of it, because a girl shouldn’t be doing that. But Dad would never horsewhip a horse, so why would he want to do that to a girl even if she did do a bad thing to her parents? I hunched tighter. That wind was picking up.
Dad tossed Tim his shotgun easy and Tim loaded it, perking up.
Dad and Mr Kennedy did some weather and crop talk until Pete wanted to know if we’d be getting going anytime before Christmas.
That Pete. He might always be trying to get into Dad’s good books, but he was still a character.
Dad looked at me all curled up and tight in the corner. ‘You can have a shot this time.’
‘Nah, I’ll be right.’
Dad clutched his heart, pretended to stagger. I grinned.
‘She’s just a little girl, after all,’ said Tim, grinning too.
‘Am not,’ I flicked back. But maybe I was because I was always on at Dad to give me a go, but tonight, with the joey dying and Mum being gone—it didn’t feel good.
‘You leave her alone,’ said Dad, scuffing him on the shoulder. ‘She’s ya sister. Should look after er.’
‘Yeah, Tim,’ I said, grinning wider.
‘When I’m not around, it’s up to you to be the man, mate,’ Dad said, all serious.
Tim cut me a look, guilty, hunched over his gun, because he let Mother Gabriel light into me instead of him. But I shook my head at him behind Dad’s back, letting him know it wasn’t like that.
‘Let’s get on with things,’ said Mr Kennedy, turning on the spotlight. ‘Or they’ll hear us coming for bloody miles.’ He