Free Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest Page B

education, information and power , he’d say. Forget the bloody Shire Council, you blokes run the place.
    The thing Kelpie did not discuss with the poker players, or anyone else for that matter, was his collection of moths and insects. Sinclair tried, several times, to draw him out on what he was actually doing with the specimens caught by the cub scouts on their camps near the salt lake, or by other interested people. He’d just shrug it away like a nuisance fly, and once snapped at Sinclair when the newspaperman wanted to do an article about what Kelpie had found out about the local species. What I do is mybusiness , he said, and the usually warm gingery-brown eye looked quite cold. If I want the whole bloody town knowing about it I’ll have an exhibition in the foyer of the bloody Shire Hall. And so the people of the town came to understand that Kelpie Crush would, at some time in the future, make an exhibition of his collection for them.
    Very early in the poker relationship, Sinclair Johnson had suggested that he write a short ‘Welcome to Siddon Rock’ article on Kelpie Crush, complete with photograph. The response was short and sharp. No . But Sinclair was not a man to take no for an answer, and wrote a few brief paragraphs on what he thought he knew about the new man in town. When he typeset the page he found that there was a space just large enough for a photograph and thought that one of the hotel would be suitable. To get a good shot of the elegant iron lace verandah Sinclair set up his camera in the station-yard opposite the pub, and as he pressed the shutter Kelpie Crush opened the door of the bar and stepped into the street.
    Sinclair lay the negative in the developing fluid, expecting to have to throw the print straight in the bin because Kelpie’s blur of movement would make it unusable. But when he took it out the print was perfect, with no indication that Kelpie Crush had been in the photograph at all.
    As Sinclair considered the strangeness of the photograph Abe Simmons walked in to pay his poker debt. Sinclair showed him the space in the photo where Kelpie Crush should have been. Maybe the bloke just doesn’t existand we’re all seeing things , Abe said as he counted out a small pile of coins. But the amount he took off me last week makes me think you’d better get your camera seen to.
    Sinclair’s words stayed with Abe Simmons, and he pondered over them for the rest of the day, later discussing them with Harry Best at the pub. Harry talked to him about Plato’s cave, so that by closing time Abe had decided that everyone was just a reflection of something or somewhere else and nothing could be considered real.

    This night – the night Macha Connor came home – Kelpie Crush unlocked the Strangers’ Room. In the light from the single hanging bulb he picked up several photographs and anchored them with drawing-pins to the wooden table. He shook the contents of an envelope marked MOTHS onto a sheet of white paper. Working quickly and flicking away body parts that fell off, he placed insects on the photographs, then, when he was satisfied with the effect, pinned them to the back of the door, in a pattern with others there.
    Kelpie stood looking at the display on the door for a moment. He moved a photo or two, straightening them almost tenderly where they had skewed. Then he chose a recipe book from the pile on the table and leafed through it. He took the book and left the Strangers’ Room, locking the door behind him.
    In the bar, Kelpie saw a strange, throbbing light playing across the frosted windows, filling the room withshifting shadows that made it seem larger. At the window a woman was peering in, holding her hands at the side of her face, trying to see through the writing on the pane. He smiled to himself and walked to the door, but by the time he had unlocked it the woman was well down the street, passing the Farmers’ Co-op.
    Kelpie waited