Page 184 - Exile-ebook

184 AN EXILE OF THE MIND WHERE THE COWS SLEEP AT NIGHT 185

The house reflected in the natural spring. About to have a race. Bogtrotter is on the red Widow Maker.

ran the store in the small settlement were several signs at the ready to Redeemed several weeks later after quietly munched grass and yelled,
of Whiporie nine kilometres south. be strung up at a moment’s notice. his windfall, he demanded the “Geronimo,” at the top of his voice.
The captain accustomed to vast My favourite was ‘NO BODDYS NOT return of his X before handing over He was immediately catapulted
spaces of the ocean and now HERE’. Burky and his wife could the cash and waited patiently while headlong between Toby’s ears and
confined to his shop, sat riding the neither read or write and would sign I retrieved it from the garbage. thudded heavily to the ground in
waves in his rocking chair under the off the tab at the store with an ‘X’. Our livestock consisted of Tandy, astonishment. Toby casually went
shade of a tree to avoid his wife. A house was finally built next a beautiful palomino, a buckskin back to eating his breakfast.
Down the road past the shot- to their bus when Burky won the quarter horse called Toby and a On subsequent rides Toby would
peppered road signs, the Burkes lottery. Their whopping tab at the donkey and her jenny, Bella and trot off to the spring and topple
and their six children lived in an Whiporie store repaid at last to Wisty. Tandy, trained to separate
old double-decker bus. Its engine the huge relief of the captain and cows in a mob, was a gentle horse in
removed to make a generator until his wife. They had been closing the sharp contrast to Toby who had fiery
it caught fire and burnt down the store and hiding in the cramped eye and temperament to match, as
woodshed. Parents and children storeroom spending rare moments we found out later.
would scuttle to the top deck when of close proximity when the Burkes My brother’s one and only visit,
debt collectors or truancy officers were seen coming. for a rustic taste of the farming life,
called. A sign written across the rear Burky bought the Widow Maker inspired him to try a jaunt on Toby,
entry by one of the brighter kids to build his new house with a piece the larger horse. He swung into the
read: ‘GON TO GRAN DADDS’. There of blank paper marked with his X. saddle in a John Wayne leap as Toby Toby, later renamed Thunderbolt.