A Small Free Kiss in the Dark by Glenda Millard

clean fingers.
    After a while Billy said, ‘Got a bottle for the little ’un?’
    The girl didn’t answer. She held out her finger for another squeeze of milk, and Billy gave her some. Then he passed the tube to me and got out his harmonica and started to play. After a bit the baby stopped sucking and went to sleep.
    ‘What’s her name?’ asked Max and the girl looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Then the lights came on in the hotel and she shivered and wrapped the baby up inside her red coat. She stepped down off the carousel. I saw the look on Max’s face and I hoped he didn’t ask her what I thought he was going to. A baby needs a proper home and a lot of other things that we couldn’t give her and, besides, none of us knew how to look after a baby properly.
    I gave the girl the tube of milk. I wished she didn’t have to go out under the big teeth, but I didn’t know if it was safe to tell her about the secret entrance. She took the milk and walked away into the night, and all we knew about her that we didn’t know the night before was that she had eyes like pansies and skin like the moon.
    That night I dreamt a skyful of stars but when I looked closer the velvet dark was filled with babies’ fingers: tiny starfish hands opening and closing.
    Next day the sun came out, red against the blue, like the rose in one of Salvador Dali’s paintings. The hotel lights, No-Man’s-Land and missing persons lists became distant things like the shark-fin ships and the ransacked city.
    Even Billy seemed happier. He said there were things we needed to attend to.
    ‘What things?’ asked Max.
    ‘Things to make life easier,’ he said and he got a look of mystery on his face.
    First we hung our blankets outside in the sun to dry because there were leaks in the tin roof of the House of Horrors. Then Max and me stacked our supplies up on the wooden framework inside the tunnel, because we hadn’t got it all done the night before. It was like a shop. We put the cans on the bottom: alphabet soup because it was Max’s favourite, tomato for Billy and me, peas, creamed rice, and a giant-sized can of fruit salad. Max and me arranged the jars from littlest to biggest: Vegemite, peanut butter and then pickled onions. The boxes and packets took up the most room: there was porridge and potato flakes, long-life milk, sugar, biscuits, noodles, muesli bars, dried fruit, matches and another tube of condensed milk. We hung the packet of marshmallows on a nail. I wondered how long the food would last us and if there would be anything left in the shops when we ran out.
    Once we’d finished, Max and me went outside to see what Billy was doing. We couldn’t see him but we heard noises coming from a tin shed that wasn’t much bigger than a cupboard.
    ‘We’re in luck!’ he said when he saw us at the door, and we went inside to see why. There were buckets and bits of wood and cans of paint and all kinds of tools in there. Billy had his coat off and he was doing something to the coffee-vendor’s trolley.
    ‘What are you making?’ asked Max.
    ‘A wigwam for a goose’s bridle,’ said Billy. That was what he always said when he didn’t know the answer to something or he didn’t want to tell you. Billy looked as if he knew exactly what he was making that morning, so I guessed he wanted to surprise us.
    ‘What’s a wigwam for a goose’s bridle?’ said Max.
    Billy put a bunch of nails between his lips. He looked like a catfish. I think he did it so Max couldn’t ask him any more questions.
    ‘A wigwam, an Indian’s tent, a tepee, a wigwam, wigwam, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo!’ I drummed my fingers on my lips and made Indian sounds, and I danced out the door and into the wintry sun and Max followed me. We tore strips of rag off the flags on the dodgem cars and tied them around our foreheads. We threw our jumpers off and stuck our fingers in the mud and painted each other’s faces and chests with ancient symbols of war and peace.