Free The Best Australian Stories 2010 by Cate Kennedy Page A

might call it the soul. “The soul dwells in every living being, and in every part of every living being; it dwells in the hand and the foot, the skull and the mouth, the eye and the ear.”’ Pran watched Marly move her lips as he spoke, as if she was trying to make his words fit into ones she might understand. ‘But for us in this world, it is only necessary to do one’s duty.’
    â€˜You’re giving me a headache, Pran.’ Shaun finished his beer and lowered the bottle to the table. ‘I think we’re done here.’
    â€˜But I want to hear more. This is interesting.’ Marly nodded at Pran and he saw the tension in her tight forehead. ‘Come on, Shauny. Let him tell us a bit more.’
    â€˜Yeah, Shauny,’ Azza whined in a mock falsetto, ‘let’s hear what the Paki has to say.’ His voice dropped to its normal register. ‘But you’ve gotta ask, if they’ve got it all worked out where he comes from, what’s he doing here?’
    â€˜Come on.’ Shaun leaped up from the table, his big body causing the room to tremble. ‘We’ll walk you to your car, mate.’
    â€˜I’m fine, thank you. It is very near.’ Pran thought about the reserve and its bits of glass and discarded car parts. Outside it was getting dark. The bush in the reserve would be dry and still and shadowy. He wasn’t sure whether a path led straight through to the street where his car was sitting. Perhaps it would be wiser to take the long way around.
    â€˜Nope, I insist. Where is it?’
    â€˜Really, I don’t want you to bother.’ Perhaps these men thought they could attack him, take money from him. As if he would be stupid enough to carry money around a suburb like this. Pran eased his clipboard into his canvas bag and shook it until the clipboard had dropped completely inside. ‘Unless you feel like a walk. Company is always pleasant.’
    â€˜That’s us, pleasant company. Right, Azza?’
    â€˜Right.’ Azza stood and hitched up his jeans. ‘Let’s do it.’
    Before he headed for the door, Pran turned and dipped his head to Marly. She was looking at him as if she felt sorry for him.
    â€˜What you are suffering in this world’ – he waved his hand at Marly’s prosthetic foot, but his eyes were trained on her face – ‘will serve you in the next life.’
    â€˜Great, ’cause it’s not doing her much fucking good in this one.’ Shaun laughed as he positioned his big hand on the back of Pran’s neck and guided him out of the kitchen.
    *
    Marly was waiting in the chair on the front veranda when the boys walked back through the hole in the fence. Neither of them looked at her. As she followed them into the house, a creased sheet of paper eased out of Shaun’s back pocket and fluttered to the floor. He didn’t notice until Marly had stooped to pick it up, then he turned and tried to snatch it from her. She stared at the printed sheet with Shaun’s scrawled signature at the bottom.
    â€˜What’s this?’
    Shaun tried again to nab the paper from her fingers but Marly held on.
    â€˜A minimum of two thousand dollars over twenty-four months? Are you fucking kidding? As if you don’t watch enough TV already. How did he get you to sign this?’ She threw the paper onto the kitchen table and as she did she noticed Azza thrust his hands in his pockets, but not before she had caught sight of the rusty brown stain on his palm.
    â€˜Oh, no. What did you do to him?’ She pictured Pran’s melty eyes swimming with tears of pain, his soft mouth squeezed into a grimace. ‘Where is he?’ If they’d hurt that beautiful man she was going to kill them.
    â€˜He’s all right, okay? I lost it for a minute, tapped him on the nose.’ Azza pulled his hand from his pocket, spat on it and rubbed it against his jeans until the reddish stain was