Read Online Making Laws for Clouds by Nick Earls - Free Book Online Page A

doesn’t seem to take long for his hand to start to hurt, and he has to stop.
    â€˜Bloody thing,’ he says. ‘Ten minutes of painting and it’s no good any more.’
    â€˜That’d be ten minutes more than yesterday, wouldn’t it? And about half a boat more too.’
    â€˜Yeah, well, I’ve had practice.’
    â€˜Burned a few in your time, have you?’
    He laughs. ‘Parked them under too many fireworks displays, maybe. I’m always where the excitement is. You don’t have to do all this you know.’
    â€˜It’s no problem.’
    â€˜No, mate, you should be off doing what young people do. “Raging” – isn’t that what they call it? You shouldn’t be hanging round here like it’s some penance.’
    â€˜Penance? I’m hanging round here to work on your boat. No one’s making me. And you’d do the same.’
    â€˜Yeah, maybe I would, I don’t know. But I appreciate it. You and your friend, you’re doing a lot. She said she’d be driving Mrs Vann and the Skerritts home in a while and coming back to do some more, and that you’d probably be up for it too. She said I should put it to you. Like yesterday. But you don’t have to.’
    â€˜I know I don’t have to. I know all that stuff.’
    I nearly go off at him then, but I don’t. He’sprobably just embarrassed that he can’t do more. In which case he shouldn’t have said penance. He shouldn’t have brought that kind of thing into it. This is not a religious deed. I’m painting his boat because he can’t paint his boat. I’m painting his boat because it’s a good thing to do. I haven’t done some deal that says however many hours of painting gets me off the hook for something.
    Something. Bugger them. I have the right to have feelings about Tanika Bell. Look at her – the way she stands, the way she talks, the way she paints and drives the bus when her dad’s busy and shows her sweat off only to me. I want her style, I want to talk to her for hours, I want to put my hands on her again. But respectfully, of course.
    Okay, it’s not all about Harbo and good deeds. It is about that, but it’s not all about that. And I’d still be here working on Harbo’s boat if the Bells had never come to town. That’s what I do, what we do. It’s one of the better things about this group of people. Even Mrs Vann comes to help out, and she’s next to useless.
    Soon enough, Tanika rounds the others up and they’re off. She leads them across the yard, tossing the keys in the air and catching them again, and she stops at the gate and looks back at me. She waves in a way that her dad never could, not even at the best of times, and she shouts something. There’s an angle grinder going,so I only catch some of it but I know what she’s saying. She’ll be twenty minutes, twenty-five at the outside.
    If Tanika Bell was driving the bus, you should expect community singing. By which I don’t mean ‘Kumbaya’ – I mean those cheery songs about the bus driver. People should just burst out and do it. That’s how they should feel. But it doesn’t happen. Her dad spoils it, turns the driving of the bus into a dreary thing. He slouches across the yard as if he’s on his way to pay a parking fine, so everyone takes a serious approach to transport.
    These people, simply, undervalue Tanika Bell. Tanika Bell is a bright light regularly hidden under a bushel by this crowd. To them she’s the girl who got sacked from being a Magus for doing it with Kane. The girl who got sacked even though we walked first, and who will be forever banned from nativity plays and maybe also the three-legged race at the church fete. That’s what they think of her, probably. That’s my guess, because I’m pretty sure what they think of me. Three-time shepherd, one-time