Free Last Day in the Dynamite Factory by Annah Faulkner

kindly with them; make them proud. Proud enough for two boys – yes?’
    Yes.
    Chris hadn’t been able to save Liam but he would do whatever he could to save Aunty Jo and Uncle Ben. After Gran left, he took on the job of Mother and Father Bird. If fledging was a matter of feeding and caring for the helpless until they could manage on their own, he would. Tea, coffee, fruit, biscuits and sandwiches: vegemite, peanut butter, cheese or jam. He took it all on trays to the shed and to the bedroom. He washed up, dried up and put away the dishes, made his bed, did the laundry and squeezed it through the wringer. Hung it out to dry in the backyard, standing on an old butter box.
    One day Aunty Jo appeared by his side, her eyes all puffy and blinking in the sunlight. ‘When does school start again?’ she said, handing him a peg.
    Chris held up five fingers.
    She looked at him and blinked again. ‘You still can’t talk?’
    He took a sock from the basket and pegged it up.
    â€˜Chris,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry …’
    They took him to a doctor who looked down his throat, and then to another one who didn’t. He asked Chris to lie on a couch and dangled a plumb-bob in his face that went from side to side until Chris felt dizzy and closed his eyes …
    Liam running … Chris hobbling after him, his leg on fire. Can’t keep up. Gran howling from somewhere above and – Liam!
No
… the terrible gleam … the unbearable weight … the hair in his face … the bloody bubbles and …
    The doctor was shaking him. ‘It’s okay, boy. You’ll be all right. Shock,’ he said to Jo and Ben. ‘Don’t worry. He’ll talk when he’s ready.’
    Chris was ready but the words were not.
    Words were scarce in the Bright household. Ben and Jo guarded their grief, Chris guarded the unspeakable. He had discovered how few words were necessary to communicate but the inability to make any sound at all terrified him. People who couldn’t hear you couldn’t see you. He could survive without words but without the sound of his own voice, he stopped hearing his own questions. People talked hectically at him for a few minutes, then matched his silence with their own.
    Uncle Ben went back to work, but every night returned to his shed. Aunty Jo took up the housework again but often got muddled; putting out cereal for lunch or toast for dinner. She’d go to the sink or the clothes line and stare at her hands as if she’d forgotten what they were for. One time she gave Chris her purse with the same look she’d given her hands and told him to buy himself a treat. He went to the corner store and bought a selection of lollies – humbugs, milk bottles, Fantails and Jaffas – which he tipped into bowls and took to Aunty Jo in her bedroom and Uncle Ben in his shed. They were still there a week later when he started the new school year. Alone. No small, chattering cousin bouncing along beside him.
    School was different. Lonely. No-one knew what to say to a kid who couldn’t talk. Sometimes words felt so close he’d open his mouth and expect them to pop out, but they never did. He was becoming invisible, the walls of his cell closing in. Some nights he woke wide-mouthed with the weight of Liam’s body on his chest and terror drove him into the corridor to beat his hands against the walls. His thumps brought Ben.
    â€˜It’ll be all right, lad. You’ll talk again. I promise.’ Only that promise stopped him from going crazy.

    â€˜Chris.’
    â€˜Huh?’
    â€˜You’ve eaten nothing.’ Diane leans over and removes his plate. ‘Go and have a lie-down; you look exhausted.’
    â€˜He called me son, but he never let me call him Dad. How could he do that?’
    She rinses the plates. ‘You’ll have to ask him. He can’t feign ignorance after this.’
    â€˜I spent my
life
asking