Bridge of Triangles Read Online Free

deep filled his young body as he stood beneath the trees and watched. All about the people stood and softly cried in the night. And that low creening went up to the silent sky and deaf moon. He saw the people and the flames shone through their cotton clothes. The babies were clutched to hips and breasts and all the people looked. To the side a huge figure moved about with a dully glowing lantern. It was black Paula. She was speaking as she helped and her voice contained a tinkle of warm laughter.
    â€œEverything gone now—but it’s alright—it’s alright it’s alright—you see.”
    Behind and to the left the bleating cattle joined in with the fear and to the right the river merely pushed this little event to one side. No one had seen him.
    The boy crept back past the saleyards and climbed in through the window. The room grew slowly darker and the crying drifted further off. Aunty Paula seemed strangely near to him.

The next afternoon Sissy and Rose and the kids crossed over the road and followed the saleyard fence. They were headed for the Old Granny’s. They marched on, under the giant macrocarpas that curved and skirted round the flat following the river. Leaving the shade they struck out across the flat. Off and away in the distant smudges of white smoke were figures moving about.
    The flat was cut by gullies and the path the party followed scouted the deepest of these. The sea of grass stretched away and ended in a shimmer of gums where the river swung back behind the Old Granny’s house.
    As they came near her old wooden shack they saw her pegging clothes to a low swung line. She was dressed in her long white petticoat and her grey hair hung all the way to the thickest of waists. A couple of skinny dogs lay in dark dirt hollows under the shack, eyes half open, muzzles flat along the ground. Paula, vast and black, was bent over a ricketty tub, singing.
    The old lady stepped across the bare earth and it seemed to Chris that she floated. Darkly she pushed her hair from her eyes.
    â€œWhere them people gonna sleep now, hah? All them ’ouses burnt up and it seem all them mob gone camp by the river. Billy and Prince s’pposed to go and ’elp but down at Empire more likely I bet.” She grabbed a shirt Paula was wringing out and threw it back into the tub. “Leave them there!”
    â€œSure Mum—do this ’nother time.”
    The Old Granny put her hands on her hips and smiled toothlessly.
    â€œWhere’s that Clarrie in his motor car heh?” She grinned again and her old eyes glowed with a dull light.
    â€œWhat the bloody hell you want Clarrie for?” Rose was quick in anger and panic.
    The old woman remained silent.
    â€œWhat you mean Mum? He been here? You seen him?” Rose looked at Sissy. “Jesus Sis, you don’t think he’d do a thing like that do you?”
    â€œLook—we were there Sis—did you see him?”
    The old woman floated forward. “Why you two come, eh? Think I’m blind, heh? You come to tell, heh? Well I seen everything already.” Her skinny hand waved in the direction of the distant line of macrocarpas and the river.
    â€œWell I’m not blind—them’s our people. This our country. I know.”
    The boy looked at his grandmother and saw someone he already knew from somewhere else. Her white petticoat was clay and her body was strangely light and airy.
    â€œWhat you mean ‘you know’?” Rose was challenging her mother. “You don’t know anything do you!” Like two children testing for a fight.
    The old woman suddenly looked small and petulant.
    â€œThat Clarrie. ’e no good that one—no good. No, I ’aven’t seen ’im and good job too. Where’s all them people gonna sleep now ha?”
    The grating sound of someone spitting made them all look around. The man Harry stood in the doorway, swaying. One hand gripped the dirt-shiny