Red-Back Spiders

The Red-Backed Spiders - Orignial Short Story

Wednesday 3 June, 2015

So I found the story guys, yay!!

If you were wondering why things did or didn't happen in my draft and final, this is why ---

Written in 1958 by Peter Cowan

The Red-backed Spiders

IT had begun that morning, at breakfast, one of the interminable able disputes that arose from nothing, yet became suddenly sharp and fierce, exploding into the violence of words or force. At first I had thought the force was worse, but it burnt out in a kind of shock, whereas the words stayed bitterly so that even I, as an outsider, felt their pain. He had hit the girl abruptly with the flat of his hand, jerking her head back, and, her eyes dark with misery, she had gone from the room.

As he had done himself, almost before I realized it had happened, had jarred sharply to a focal point, and was past. For the woman, rising quickly, had said, "No, please it's not his fault-"
Nor was it perhaps anyone else's business. And I did not want it mine. I had known the first time I saw the house, standing by itself on the bare ground of the hillside, that this was no place where one would stay, and the time there had not changed that feeling.

I was going across after the meal from my room by the sheds to harness the horse when I saw the boy. The track passed the old jarrah by the fence of the house yard. The twisted trunk held a scarred hollow reaching up from the base, mark of a fire, the tree itself had been useless for timber or for sleepers even before it had been burnt. It was the only one in the yard, though in the paddocks numbers of them still stood.

Scattered across the ground between the fence and the tree, and about the base of the trunk, the rubbish of an old dump lay. The boy was playing in it. He was picking out the old jam tins and meat cans, spacing them in a kind of design, the jam tins going one way and the short, fat meat cans spaced out at an angle to them. The dump held bits of old machinery, old tyres, rusty kero tins, and the tins and bottles from the house. Near the tree lay an old stove and some rusted cream cans. From among it all the boy was picking out the small jam and meat tins, digging among the rest for them, and making his design on the ground.

I could see him as I crossed the yard, but he gave no sign, as though he had not noticed me, and I went over to the dump. I stood by the tree, looking down at him.

"What are you making?" I asked.

He did not look up. He had one of the jam tins in his hand, the top partly covered by his fingers.

"You'll rustle a snake out of there one day. And it'll be too bad if you both make for the house at the same time."

"There's not," the boy said. "Not in there."

"Well, you never know. And your father doesn't like you playing here. How about finding somewhere else for a while, eh?"

The boy made no move, but his hand shifted down away from the top of the tin so that he was grasping the round rusted surface of the can. I could see into the tin.

"You'd better chuck that one away," I said. "Look, there's a red-back in it. They won't hurt you unless you interfere with them, but that one's not going to like what you're doing to his tin. Throw it away."

I moved my hand to take the tin, but the boy held it tightly. I heard the door of the house slam and looked across the yard. It was too late then.

"Here's your father. He's not going to be too pleased finding you here. To say nothing of me being supposed to have the horse harnessed up. You come down to the shed with me and we'll harness up."

The boy might not have heard. He was sitting quite still, the rusty tin in his hand.

"Well, I'm going to get the horse in."