Read The Vintage and the Gleaning for Free Online Page B

screen. Belle picks up the baby and puts it in the highchair. She hands him the bottle and he chucks it and she goes and picks it up and gives it back to him. Her hair hangs limp.
    So how come Spit’s on seasonal? she asks me.
    We’re all on seasonal, I say. Apart from Wallace. Wallace’s on full.
    The baby has chucked the bottle again and Belle goes and gets it. She puts both his hands on the bottle and tries to get him to take the teat in his mouth. He won’t take it. Same as the other one he won’t take it. He turns his face away, flapping his arms and letting out little angry groans.
    So how come you’re not all on full? Belle asks. You all work full time. You should be on full.
    Seasonal pays better, I say.
    The older boy is sitting propped up against the couch, looking at his hands. He looks at them like he’s never seen them before. When he sees me watching he stares at me and then he looks back at his hands and claps once. He looks up at me again with wide eyes. He seems surprised, like he’s surprised he can clap his hands. Like it’s the first time he’s ever done it. He claps again and he keeps clapping and he is smiling and laughing and the stuff on his hands goes flying all over the place. Belle leaves the room and comes back with a damp tea towel and wipes his face and hands. She picks him up and takes him out of the room and I hear a tap being turned on in the kitchen.
    The baby has chucked its bottle and I go and get it off the carpet and hand it to him and he chucks it again, holding onto the teat and swinging it. It rolls under the couch. I get down on my hands and knees and feel around for the bottle. On the television they are singing.
    I find a toy fire engine under the couch and I roll it out and keep feeling around for the bottle, lying on my side. When I get it I stand up and give it to the baby. He chucks it and I leave it.
    Belle comes back in with the older one. He is cleaned up and his clothes have been changed. She sits him against the couch again. I hand him the fire engine and he holds it close to his face, turning it around. Belle goes looking for the bottle and takes it back to the baby. Outside it is beginning to haze and glare.
    So they’re going to dock him then, she says to me.
    It’s not a matter of them docking him or not, Belle, I say. It’s about not getting paid for not working. He’s not showing up to work so he’s not getting paid.
    Belle takes the fire engine away from the boy, who is trying to chew on it. The boy starts bawling and Belle tickles him under his ribs. He cries out and pushes her hand away.
    Still, she says, the bastards never give you a chance.
    The baby chucks the bottle and it rolls across the floor.

    Going home along the railway track I see the crows in the long grass. They are bunched close together in a frantic quivering mass, squabbling and pecking at each other. Their heads go up and down.
    Other crows circle the air above the glistening mob, coming and going and cawing. They swoop down from the silos, passing low over my head, flaring out their wings and wheeling over the huddle, slowing and flapping about and landing among the crows on the ground and there is squawking and fighting and the mob goes back to its busy, jerking movement. Now and then commotion as a crow leaves in a flurry and streaks off into the air, a few others chasing it, calling angrily.
    They do not seem to notice me coming until I am close and then only glance at me before putting their heads down again, going at it even faster than before, not moving until I kick at the whole dirty lot of them. They flap up in the air and drop down behind me onto the tracks, making threatening noises.
    I squat down in the long grass to see what they were getting into. It is the rabbit I skinned for the boy yesterday. The top half is stripped to the bone, the eye pecked out, entrails left untouched and perfectly intact.
    Flies crawl among the