Read Bleakboy and Hunter Stand Out in the Rain for Free Online

colour the horizon. A flock of starlings swoop across the sky, like a mottled fan unfolding. A soft-drink truck pulls up a few metres in front of them. The driver jumps down from his cabin and lifts a yellow plastic crate of assorted drinks from the tray top, carrying it into the house with a green-painted fence.
    â€˜When I was a kid,’ the old man says, ‘a bloke around the corner drove one of those trucks.’ He looks cheekily at Hunter. ‘He kept crate loads of soft drinks under his house.’ The old man winks. ‘Whenever I got thirsty, I knew just where to go. Even now, I can hardly resist the desire to just scoot alongside the truck, reach in, grab a bottle and be on my way.’
    Hunter laughs at the image of a pensioner thief puttering away on his scooter. ‘I’ll keep watch, if you want,’ he says.
    The old man chuckles. ‘We’d never make it, laddie. The battery on this thing is on its last legs. Much like me.’
    The truck driver comes out from the house, carrying an empty crate. He pulls the tarp over the full crates on the tray top and ties it down with rope, ready for the approaching storm.
    The old man turns his scooter, preparing to cross the road. ‘I never ride down this side of Ficus,’ he says. ‘Going that close to the church gives me the screaming willies.’ He waves the pipe at Hunter and speeds across the road. Hunter watches him reach the other side and scoot up the gutter, the food in the basket shaking, the old man intently holding the handlebars as he surges forward.
    Hunter turns away and walks slowly down Burnley Street. Lightning forks in the distance. He practises spitting between the gap in his teeth, first for distance, then for accuracy. He’s an expert by the time he reaches his house.
    Hunter sits on his front fence, watching the storm bruise the horizon. A curtain of rain folds toward him. He hears the rain on the corrugated roof of Mrs Betts’s house before he feels it. He closes his eyes and turns his face to the sky. Pock. Pock. Pock. The raindrops drum on his forehead, soak his hair and channel down his back. He opens his mouth to catch the drops and says, ‘I’m eating the rain.’ He giggles.
    Hunter remembers when he was five years old, being caught in a thunderstorm with his dad. How his dad lifted a newspaper above their heads as they scurried for cover. They were soaked before reaching the safety of a bus shelter. While he watched the rain gush down the gutters and turn potholes into puddles, his father read the wet newspaper, peeling each page away from the other. Hunter marvelled at the sky, amazed that clouds could hold that much water. With one of his father’s discarded sheets of newspaper, Hunter fashioned a boat: a newsprint canoe. He stepped from the shelter and launched it in the gutter. It swept away, riding the stormwater waves. Hunter knelt on the footpath and laughed. His father told him to come out of the rain.
    A car horn sounds and Hunter opens his eyes, startled. Mrs Betts is pulling into her driveway. He hops off the fence and rushes across the road to where his neighbour is about to get out of her car. Hunter calls, ‘I’ll do it, Mrs Betts.’ He quickly reaches over the gate and unlatches it, pushing it wide. He stands back as she drives through into the garage. He closes the gate and runs back across the road to his home. Mrs Betts waves in thanks.
    Hunter leaps across his front fence and looks at the gutters, gushing wildly. If only he had a newspaper.

9
    jesse
    The problem with the internet is one moment I’m learning all about the campaign to stop the Japanese killing whales in the Southern Ocean and within two clicks, I’m staring at a starving boy from Ethiopia.
    His name is Kelifa. He’s eight years old and lives with his dad and four sisters. His mum died giving birth to his youngest sister, Mubina, last year. He looks at me with sad eyes