I don't know about God. I did read the Bible cover to cover decades ago when I first began this knowledge journey but then I also read parts of the Koran, hefty amounts of Greek and Egyptian mythology, some Hebrew God stuff, lots of Far East Buddha et al and even Hubbard's Dianetics.

A God though? A God? I was quite sure my idea of God was a good one in terms of life-lessons and hopefull mechanisms mixed with some few dire warnings should one's life go astray: Stay good and kind, don't do bad shit and you'll be fine, pretty much. Its Cathedrals and Temples and Mosques and Pagodas and Pantheons and the resplendent self-appointed servants mouthing off about salvation however- "Repent! Repent! The End is nigh!" always creeped me out.

Sometimes I spoke to God. Like all people of dubious faith I turned to him during moments of desperate need and offered up entreaties: "Please, God." "Please!" Other times though I shook fists and once or twice spat on the reasoning- "Who the fuck calls themselves a God and then rains fire down on children? On children! That's no God of Mercy that's plain fucking cruel!"

As to miracles? Ha! Smoke and mirrors. Some metaphorical paraphernalia mixed in. No decent God would do something good and then turn around and harm an innocent, besides, the stories about him only taking the best- he should leave the best right here to sort out the messes the rest of us make if indeed he is benevolent!

The idea though of "something", a Greater Being, an Overseer- how often these many months have we discussed this theme the boys and me. One of us usually starts: "There's gotta be something out there..."

"What if there is no out there? What if this, all around us, is all there is? Like some Truman Show knock-off." Me firmly within my terror.

"The Earth is flat mon!" This from Jimmy decked out in Marley harem pants.

"I think I learned- oh yeah, something about them being too far away for us to "detect" their movement-"

"Detect my ass! We're supposed to be spinning meanwhile!"

"About that- why don't I step off here and put my foot down in New Zealand? If we're spinning so fast-"

"Jimmy!"

Usually Dyls opts out about now, leaving me and his cousin to argue it out. When James becomes Jimmy the clown he's had far too much weed. Besides, weed has the opposite effect on Dylan, he tends to jump on his phone and read off "news". Not normal people news, not my kid. We get (in-between whatever each of us is doing privately) sidetracked into discussions about this or that; usually some freedom gone or new code of conduct introduced to further silence or disappear the internet. He's been in mourning days now since Linus left Linux and thus rang the death-knell for his beloved Open Source. (I won't get into our views about the SJWs and their communal disruption of just about everything"normal".) 

"Mum, did you know... blah blah blah... the Earth is... blah blah blah... and that would explain why they are hiding it, right?"

"Maybe..."

Yeah. I cannot answer with anything concrete or offer up comment with any real certainty. The notion of such a domed world is not comfortable. More in line with "I can't breathe, get me outta here!" than "Snug as a bug in a rug." The further intimation a Divine hand can pick up this domed object and shake it about a little, like a snowball thingy, and then sit back and watch how everything settles... maybe into new patterns... it's not so pleasing. Not when you're in the damn thing. And being confined in anything- I only need mention how I got trapped in my big grey snow-coat keeping me alive these frosty nights yesterday; coat behind me, wrists stuck in the narrow double cuffs and me yelling at a perplexed Dyls, "Get me out of this fucking thing now. Now!" as he frantically tried to free my backward arms and the constricted cuffs became further snagged by the twelve assorted bracelets on both wrists- "I'm gonna chew my arm off, hurry up!" And when one arm was out of the sleeve and my two hands separated and Dylan said to my "I can't be restrained like this. Ever. Ever!" "Uh... some prior warning would've been nice mum," suffices.

This phobia (origins known for those who read my memoir) extends outward to encompass any and every restraint and restriction to my movements, my words, my capacity to give and to receive. "Don't box me! Don't confine me!" Especially, "Don't put a barrier between me and anything!" Interchangeable threats and pleas scattered behind me dragging behind them long streaks of me trying to get free of one restraint or another; few of them bloody due to some panicked chewing off taking place.

Maybe I believe in "God" now though. Maybe. How else can I account my witnessing something akin to a modern-day miracle (isn't it officially a miracle when also witnessed by another witness?) if not by ceding to the fact Some One somewhere with an all-seeing eye can see everything at once, down to my own little battles... how else can I express the residual awe after today's events? I ask inside where all my knowledge lives: "If there is no plausible (read "logical") explanation for something so awe-striking then is this not the definition of a miracle?"

... It culminated at approximately 10.37 this morning (not precisely that time since my car clock - accounting for Daylight Savings - is either an hour and some minutes off or just some minutes off and every time I look at it I have to do a little math...) on what felt like the first real sunny day of Spring meaning without the accompanying and very much familiar frigid wind. I sat in my car and Dylan sat next to me. We were in the car park behind the Chelsea Foreshore shopping strip.

"My baby!"

I reached out and ran still-cold fingers over the coarse tooled leather of the two-plus century old Family Bible sitting heavy on my son's knees. Lingering fingertips traced the bronze filigree edges and played with the upper brass clip. Open, shut. Open, shut. The satisfaction lingered between waves of awe. Only two hours ago, life had run its normal (for us) course. Now everything had changed. Everything.

"What are the odds, mum?" Umpteenth time this phrase had passed between us in those past couple of hours.

And I could see, Dylan was still part shock part disbelief. He'd yet to arrive where I sat immobilized by the sudden assault on my every belief; stunned into the realisation the version of reality we are being served is upside down and inside out.  

"Not about odds babe. Everything had to happen precisely as it did. Everything. One opposite decision, one wrong turn even two hours ago..."

"What happened back there with our mattresses? How?"

"I can't answer. I look back over and over and some moments I wonder maybe all the trials we endured this past year played out as they did so we-

Oh. Dear. God. There in my head popped the obvious: "It's the Bible babe! Everything led us to it! This is all about the Bible! It had to come with me. Don't ask; trust me, it all figures out in my head."

He thought some. "Yeah?"

I know my son's world tilted the moments in that clearing. Of late he's been obsessed with "hidden" history- he too, like me, leaning towards something being withheld from humanity. Maybe today he paused on the idea of God and Divinity. Certainly we were both shaken. We kept mumbling "The odds!" knowing meanwhile we were expressing awe in a way we could understand; an acceptable way. Measurable. Scientific. Only it didn't satisfy.

My also trying to retrace steps far back enough to find the source - rather the "raison d'etre" - of my needing to be united with this old Bible? I cannot account for it other than to say every examined-in-hindsight step always, always, lead me onward to the miracle of this day.

As to the miracle itself? Two hours and some earlier Dylan and I set off for Cygnall in Frankston for some Dutch-blend organic baccy. I took the usual route from our current lodgings in Chadstone. And as to those, think of a woman my mum's age losing her husband back in the mid-eighties and living since with the youngest, her daughter, whose presence faithfully remains three decades behind her mum's in every aspect, (like living with your ever-future self) then, think of two coffee cups with their names, side by side- they're a rigididge couple! Much like any other couple settled into a long-term relationship, never changing a single thing in the home and both... hoarders. Every room stocked for famine and/or any other possible shortage. They put the boys' other grandma to shame since her hoarding was at least contained to a single large pantry and theirs is spread throughout indoors and spills into the basement and from there, to the double garage. The bathroom alone has enough stock in it for at least two further decades of use before heading for the  body and hair products aisle at the supermarket.

Hoarding aside, they have their peculiar routines: Like the dining chair placed in front of the kitchen cutlery drawers and stacked with crackers no one eats in three pyramid forming plastic tubs so you have to move it and them every time you need a coffee spoon... or the fact they never properly close or lock on either the bathroom or the toilet doors (partly because the house settled on the slope it sits and every door is askew, partly because living together so long- well why close any door?) so every day at least one of us has to avert eyes and mumble an apology and then have to live with the memory... and then, the dreaded "Dinner is ready!" whereby we all have to march up and sit in our assigned places around the dining table precisely seven minutes after the daughter arrives from work (yes, we have timed this interval) and watch my veganism again compromised in some new way - for instance tonight, when I reached for my avo and realised the 'shine' on its skin was the result of splatter from the roast country-style chicken I bought earlier - and, culminating in my yelling later in our room, "I have film in my mouth! I have film!" meaning I've eaten something with animal fat. (Who peels potatoes for a vegan and decides it is a good idea to place them in the same pan they'd prepared the roast earlier without first washing it? I had a "bad toothache" that night and... went to bed secretly sneaking in a bag of lightly salted chips- junk to me!)

Plus, the boys and me are loud. We like heated discussions and we like to argue. Usually this takes place outdoors with only the butch green-haired SJWs next door privy to our conversations (they shoot eye-daggers at us whenever we cross paths arriving and departing) but sometimes when the nights get too cold we carry the discussions indoors. Culminating the other night in the daughter knocking on our closed door (took a bit of maneuvering and some breakage was involved to shut it tight) and mouthing off about "Some of us have to get up and go to work! Pipe down!" and this, at 9.00pm. Prompting me saying "I think we've overstayed our welcome guys..." which only brought on a giggling fit and bits of commentary between:

"She brought Google Assist home and said it was a Bluetooth speaker!"

"And when you told her that thing is always on and listening because how else could it instantly respond when she says "Play me some Bee Gees"... and she replied, "Oh well..."

"Fuck me, this world is crazy!"

Anyhow, Dyls and I continued down the back end of Clarinda onto Springvale Road and then-

"Might go this way, there's a bit of traffic..." I don't think Dylan heard me or maybe he chose to hear the noise usually associated with my talking out loud. Mostly cussing to myself and others stuck in traffic.

I continued down Wells Road instead, intending to turn off at Chelsea. Only, I didn't. I drove on to Patterson Lakes and as I turned right- "Ohhh crap... we're about to get seriously lost, babe!" I had sold a couple of houses back-when in this gated Marina community and its surrounding "mini-burb" of curving streets and canals and endless courts for those not quite affording the key to the gates and their own berth out front. Plenty of times lost and thumbing only the soft-cover Melways on the passenger seat to get me out of there.

"Nice houses," Dyls said looking up. He'd tuned in, finally.

"Ye but it's like a bloody maze in here!"

He fiddled with the tunes some more; didn't seem to mind we should already be on our way back. I in the meantime tried figuring out where the beach was because if I did I could then put Patterson River (the body of water keeping us stuck between here and getting to Frankston) in my sights and aim for a bridge over it.

"Ah! Finally!"

I had somehow stumbled across the side of the Frankston Freeway. Big chain-link fence straight ahead, road going either left or right. I turned right because now I had the sense of direction I'd lacked in the canal maze. Here was a linear road, straight, and if I wasn't wrong leading us straight to-

"Oh my God! Oh my God! Dyls! Look! The mattresses! Our bloody mattresses!"

The kid was blind, no contacts and no glasses this day. His neck whipped back. "What? Where? You sure? Turn around!"

I spotted a narrow dirt road between the freeway and the road we were on, spun left into it and doubled back bouncing and thudding over crater-like potholes.

And there they were. Overhanging gum-tree branches had a bald spot and the sun shone on those mattresses like some divine whatever was beaming down only where they grouped. They glowed in that patch of sun, I swear.

The two brand new mattresses I bought the boys some months back, my father's soiled one, my mothers pristine one and my own (won't talk about its state given I'd had seven months of sons and nephew variously eating and drinking on my bed treating it like a dining table when the munchies hit... and then there were the kittens named Shit and Fat respectively but we certainly won't mention what happened there... multiple times... nor the dog with his allergy to lactose and him digging his snout into the Domino's boxes whenever we forgot him in the room alone...) Even the very expensive therapeutic single mattress and base from old Harry when he went into a nursing home back in our McCrae days which I'd then turned into a day bed in the hacienda-

"Oh my God! Photos Dylan!"

He was ahead of me. Phone already getting different angles of the curious medley since our mattresses had probably intended looking like a Macca's burger and ended up with everything sliding out and yeah. Not pretty. No work of art this. But one really, trully blessed from above and-

"The bastard!" My Communion with Upstairs was short-lived.

"Ye," Dylan said sitting back in the car. He'd obviously hit on the same realisation.

I took off. Back down the bumpy track and screeching (no, not deliberately my back tyres are kinda baldish) as I turned left, back onto Old Wells Road.

"What are the odds?" Dyls said.

For a minute, neither of us spoke. I don't know what was going on in his head but in mine- Oh I was wayyyy ahead of odds! I was fast-forwarding the events of the past two weeks and how... hell, I had to suddenly confront my own ambivalence about the presence of a Higher Being! Was I now leaning more towards... hmm... could I be-

"That bastard Neil! He lied again! Again!" It wasn't time for the above kind of introspection. I had a bastard and his nasty wife in my sights. And they'd not always been bastards or nasty (least not confirmed as such despite previous dubious dealings) till some days ago.

I had contracted Neil, the guy who had the local "Trash and Treasure" shop in Chelsea  (think a mix of Storage Wars and thrift shop bits and bobs crammed together in a tiny space and the larger pieces scattered around in the arcade outside) to remove all the rubbish from our rental, take it to the tip and deduct the receipts from the money he owed me for the good shit he bought like our brand newish two-door black-varnish fridge, the sad and lonely red leather lounge only used infrequently by our dog since my room became the second living area... sigh... and my other pieces collected over time and too damn big or heavy to shove into the two Taxi Boxes sat out front days earlier filled with my books mostly and for some reason, a rocking chair and a brown leather footstool I'd refused to leave behind.

We were gonna be refugees shortly. Boarding a plane with a suitcase each and arriving the other end same way my parents arrived here: With nothing other than what we carried.

And I say refugees because we were currently homeless since the Landlord took it upon himself to spring a VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) hearing  on me end of business on a Friday three weeks back, leaving no option but us to forfeit (that means lose our money forfeit) our then-Monday tickets and defend our Bond. I needed that 4k to get my books and bits on a bloody ship and be reunited! That was part of the plan damn it!

Airlines are not very empathetic turns out. Budget airlines like Scoot go one step further and don't give a shit your dad just died, your Landlord tried to fuck you over, your mother has a dying sister or the fact you are, in essence, homeless and stranded. Bad luck honey, you should have flown with Big Brother Singapore Airlines. Apparently, they give a damn. At triple the cost.

And Landlords here seem to serve one purpose: appearing only at the end of every tenancy to extract as much of the Bond as they can get away with. Rarely does any tenant escape with their Bond intact. The scam extends and extends and voiceless (hapless) tenants scramble to VCAT hearings nervously defending the indefencible: A landlord in cahoots with their Managing Agent. My ones excelled. They not only tried to take the entire 4k, they even went after more, meaning, no fronting up to defend and I'd bloody lose all my money and owe them on top!

We'd spent a week doing forensics living at mum's friend's house: Dyls the photos of the property they supplied us via email, James my copy of the Entry Condition Report, Markie... my youngest emerging from his any-room-is-a-man-cave (given there's no WiFi here) and joining us chasing legal opinions, Shire advice and other numbing tediousness providing evidence against their claims. I in the meantime phoned, emailed and generally ran the team. "Don't fuck with the Postis" became our war-cry. Out came the set-back shoulders and the deep stares and the various shared pieces of alternative thrift-shop attire somehow all blending into a coherent group-dress, and it, mostly intimidating. Coffee in Oakleigh, we got stared at, always. "Who are you people?" sent back to us through puzzled eyes.

We fucking beat those bastards in a week and without having to wait to front up in Court some further two weeks later. I... simply I overwhelmed the youngish Property Manager. Turned up unannounced and her expecting me already overseas. (Insert LOL here.) Boys at my side and the five of us grouped around the small table, I bombarded her with so many questions after first nicely asking if she'd mind us recording- well you can imagine how that went. I am a writer. "I has words" therefore. She ended up teary and mumbling a series of "Ye," "Yep," and "Um-mm..." and by the time I was done with her- let's just say I had the Bond Release Application in my email first thing next morning and the delay was only because the Director had to sign off and she'd gone home already. Bloody hooray, given it had become a full-time job for a week, getting the bugger back.

As to Neil, well... we'd agreed on $800 for the good stuff he'd take minus the tip fees as I said. Payment in full two days later. On the Thursday as agreed, we fronted up to his shop and after some tears from his wife Julie and a protracted tale about this and that catastrophe befalling them we walked away with three crisp hundred dollar bills but minus the receipts... Hmm. That itsy bitsy spider down the back of my neck did its circular crawl.

Damn, I was getting screwed over!

Julie said something about me giving her my bank details and she "will pop the balance in over the weekend"- this whilst snivelling into a tissue. I kinda have no patience with women on anti-depressants and Valium and whatnot else she's on. Something about their flagrant fragility (the way they bloody cry and wail like it's the end of the world) whenever the slightest bother confronts them... I wanna shake them from the fog, you know? Tell them they need strong minds, not ones compromised by a cocktail of bloody mind-altering meds. (Sorry, seen my fair share- given every post-menopausal woman here is offered anti-depressants like jelly beans. "Poor you, all those changes... here, have some candy to make you feel better." Fuck that.)

My eyes meantime drifted to the old family Bible sat on the bottom shelf. My baby. I was leaving it behind damn it and it irked! It irked! I ached for it so bad since the first time almost half a year back I'd unclasped the rusty hinges and peeled back the tough leather to find bits of the "Elliott" family recorded in its first few half-torn, half mouse-chewed pages.

I WANTED THAT FAMILY BIBLE MORE THAN ANYTHING I HAD EVER WANTED BEFORE.

I didn't know why- least not back then. Only the compulsion to own it hovered over my living and it intensifying each time I visited the store and laid eyes on it. It called me. Maybe its bulk. The still-intact filigree brass attachments... maybe the sorry state it presented; its spine held together by duct tape like the arse on my car.  My baby needed love and careful restoration. Or maybe it needed me to reunite it with the generations born long after an Elliott hand last turned its pages. The mystery of why the compulsion drew me in more than any other mystery. Fuck the car though; no amount of emotion or tending or scrutiny will undo the years of abuse inside and out.

"How much you want for it?" I'd asked Julie and Neil the day I spied it on the back top shelf.

Both crossed eyes and shrugged shoulders and snuck looks at it and me and between them and then I was touching it and the rest was as they say... history.

"I'll give you a thousand bucks for it, how's that? Put it away and I'll buy it off you in a bit." I blurted those words knowingly demolishing my own primary and firm rule when negotiating: "Don't be the sucker who offers up any amount first." I offered up an amount because- hell, I wanted to read every one of its many fine pages filled not just with the usual Bible Stories but with comments and explanations and- oh, those colour photos and the symbols all over them and- who were the Elliott family? I'd go blind for sure by the last page but that didn't matter. ("Fine print" was invented centuries ago it turns out.)

I had no idea how I was gonna do it. A thousand bucks and me briefly shake hands each fortnight between machine and wallet and then poof! Gone. Sometimes in three days. Hey, I got a nephew and a son cooked on weed most nights chasing theories and systematically disposing of anything edible within reach and another son with a stomach like a bottomless pit- only he grows up, not out. They eat everything. Like goats.

After the decision to migrate to the old country was made... I'd figured we could do a deal with Neil- he take some of my stuff and hand my baby to me. Fair trade, I'd thought it at the time. So back to the shop we went to tell them we were moving and what the plan was. We'd not been for a month, what with dad passing and-

"Fucking shit!"

The boys, each scattered at a crowded corner (Jimmy strumming an old guitar and my two checking for new old stuff to buy) suddenly glided to a halt around me. They saw what I saw and I felt them all tense. Another Elise "Oh Oh!" situation.

For there sat my Family Bible proudly on display in the glass cabinet below the counter with a bold sign: "Rare 18th Century Family Bible. $2,000."

I heard the now-vocal chorus of "Oh oh!" from my three. Julie meantime stared everywhere but where we were all focussed, her eyes either behind my head (where Neil was lurking fiddling with some gadget) else to the fresh tissue lifted periodically to her snivelling-again nose. What was with this woman and tears?

"Julie?" Boring into her eyes. (My version of a Pauline Hanson "Please explain?")

"Oh well... see... a man came in and he said it's rare and that he'd take it off our hands for two grand. He's coming back next week."

"We had a deal..." I held back lunging at her, I swear. Only the intense snivelling and nose-blowing paused me given I'd be wearing some of her snot. A new tissue flashed and was quickly scrunched. Really? She was gonna try out-act me?

"And he's gonna buy it? For sure?"

"That's what he said..."

"So you were gonna sell it without telling me." (Yes, my language adjusts to that of the receiver- don't quite know how but I always sound like them- be they lawyer, doctor or... a frumpy middle-aged woman on psych meds.)

"Well... it is double what you offered and-"

The idea of my baby - for that is how affectionate and protective I felt towards this old Bible of the Elliott family - the idea of my baby in some stranger's hands... no. Damn it, no!

"I offered a fair price you both agreed to!"

"I felt bad Elise, believe me. I wanted you to have it, I did. I just- it's double..."

Hmm... If I'd not caught her sneaking an ever so brief look at Neil before emphasizing the word "double" I might have missed the con. But I didn't.

Thus finally, Neil weighed in despite my knowing who had the bigger balls in that household: "Would you pay this amount for it? We could tell him someone offered more, you know? We'd do that for you since you want it so much."

Indeed, the price had now doubled and two thousand bucks rarely gets spat out from the ATM to my wallet. Nor could I see the two of them now agreeing to a swap since the value of our goods... maybe they'd make several thousand from them individually but- But that was a secondary concern. First, there was avarice to contend with. And greed sickens me. Greed really sickened me that day. Not because they weren't entitled to make more money. No. It was the bloody spider at my neck again telling me there was no buyer and that this was a ploy- they, well aware of my passion, wanting to maximise on its value to me.

Ooh... I was pissed!

One long lingering last look at it, one last scathing look at the two of them and I marched away, a "Maybe..." tossed over my shoulder.  I really marched. Left right left right left right to my car and then inside sat upright, rigid, hands gripping the steering wheel only to stop them from punching at the windscreen. My baby held to ransom? The bitch!

"She could have called you, mum..."

Dylan understood my sadness best (despite the veneer of anger) for in the meantime he and I had looked at many bibles both online and in thrift shops, chasing... Giants no less. Yep. We were on a Biblical Giant-finding Quest among other pursuits such as the "actual" span of history and all the inconsistencies of what and where and who and the big devil himself, time. Time. My oldest son had finally admitted he believed in nothing "official". Everything was up for scrutiny... including the possible existence of Giants.

"I know hon... but-"

He persisted. "Unfair what she did..."

I hate doing shit like this. Disillusioning my children. Presenting them a world with all its ugliness, its avarice, its corruption on display. Robbing them of hope. Making them cynical, dubious, questioning.

"There is no other buyer guys..."

"What do you mean mum?" Dyls instantly sat up.

"I mean they tried to play me. No way they'd be advertising it if the dude was coming back to buy it at that price! You get it?"

Cogs turned. "That's fucking low." James launched.

"It's okay hon it will sit there, trust me. No one cares for an old dilapidated Bible. Not for 2k. It will wait for me, somehow..."

We had been good customers too. Always on the look out for collectibles- from Zippos to mechanical cameras to... old books- particularly historical ones of late. I always paid them what they asked without haggling. Money out, on the counter, despite the at times dubious vintage of some stuff when pitted against the price quoted. Google and Dyls kept the more disastrous buys away- like the fake Vietnam War Zippo we bought from the Antique shop opposite Parkdale Station and which turned out to have been cheaply reproduced in thousands. That $200 came right back into my wallet thank you, after some minutes in the car Googling and a further minute or two of me going "Hey, you know this is a fake right?" and pointing to the just-learned inconsistencies with the other hand held out for my cash back. 

Dad had passed end of July. We were due to vacate our rental September 1st. Not much time. Tickets booked, passports sent for renewal or in the case of Markie a brand new one. (Caused me all sorts of grief since my youngest likes to fly wayyyyy under any radar. No ID. No bank account. No school ID. No Learner's Permit. Right off the grid this son, though the frequent "So he has NO photo ID? None?" especially caused me copious misery.)

I forgot about my Bible for some weeks, busy packing books and my well-established closet-hoarding of quirky clothes. A lot of bloody boxes!

Neil came the final week as per our earlier agreement. (He'd phoned the day after the shop fiasco and asked if it was still okay for him to buy some things and having little time and less inclination to bargain with strangers, I had said yes.) He took his stuff first, came back the next day for the tip stuff and then... vanished. Texts ignored, calls going to message bank. He was dodging me the bastard. Believing we'd be gone Monday- and if he held off paying me till then... yeah. 

In the meantime it niggled, the fact I'd battled one lot of crooks (Property Manager and Director stooping so low as to forge my signature- never mind the rest of the shady shit going on between them and the Landlord) and getting done a second time by Neil and his Mrs., I'd asked via email for my receipts several times. Got essays back about firstly "We don't now how to scan..." which Dyls dealt with by sending back concise instructions and then, eventually, got an invoice in my inbox for $650. It said, "Paid in Full".

"What the fuck? Where's my receipts from the tip?"

"No way the tip cost anywhere near that, mum."

"I know. Remember we emptied that entire Budget moving-truck down the Peninsula? Only cost one forty and I bitched even then!"

"I remember, yeah."

I scrutinised the Tax Invoice. "He even bloody charged me for labour for the stuff he bought!"

"Got that covered mum, I took a photo of the sign in his shop saying 'Free pick up for house-lots,' don't worry."

Love this kid. Maybe there's a little fear mixed in there too. His mind despite his youth is... I have no words to describe the depth of content it holds nor the ease with which he picks a topic of sudden interest and immerses himself so deeply- only surfacing from the mental hoovering when his general impatience catches up with his... other impatience: Winning.

With the Bond in my bank account and knowing we were still short some couple of hundred to purchase new tickets given each extra day here meant spending more money, I emailed Neil and- well at one point I did say he should grow some balls of his own and cough up my receipts, not a bloody shop invoice for $650 showing "paid in full". I now owed him, somehow, given I'd taken that $300 from Julie.

I know I scared them. Enough to get a mini-saga of everything wrong with their lives and how good and honest they were and how Neil needed surgery and how- anyway... Seemed I wasn't gonna get another cent outta them going by the last email Dyls skimmed. And me being me, I was going to walk away.

Till this day. Till me getting lost in the back of Patterson Lakes led us down a road I'd never travelled before in my almost fifty years in Melbourne... (it had become defunct as the road to Frankston since the freeway build, thus the name 'Old' Wells Road)  and straight to our mattresses.

"The bastard took everything. Their shop is our bloody house!" This as Dyls and I sat in the arcade outside their closed door with the sign "Back in 10"... on our green sofa- rather my mother's green sofa, no less. There was no sight of the red leather wraparound couch or the fridge anywhere. Everything else though, including (how the fuck he get that?) a cream silk coat of mine whose belt I still held hoping it would be reunited, was crammed in their small space. Our plates. Our cups. All the odd stuff the Salvos knocked back and we thusly assigned to the tip- he'd kept to sell!

"I reckon the mate at Springvale Tip he yapped about in yesterday's email- you know, how he gives discounts for cash but no receipts- that's bullshit! Most of our stuff is here. I was thinking the only tip fees he'd have paid would've been for the mattresses. Any real trash, he'd have put in his big bin out back."

"They'd only have cost twenty five bucks each to dispose off anyway." Dylan fast-checked on his phone.

"Exactly."

"Hey Julie!" I was staring at my damn coat on the damn dolly I gave Neil (which I got from Stephen as my goodbye present from his sporting goods store and I'd had plans for it overseas till the plans changed, as they oft do) when I heard Dylan's voice rise- only for him to nudge me in turn and mumble "She's here, mum."

"Hey Jul-" The rest was swallowed. What the fuck? She was already tearing up and I had a fake smile on my face!

"Oh Elise, I've been thinking about you." Sniffle, sniffle. "You read my email?"

"Nuh. Dylan did."

Sniffle. "Soooo..."

Her mind was meanwhile trying to figure out why the hell we'd landed on her doorstep. Far as Neil and she were concerned they'd fulfilled their part of the bargain and even done me a favour, saving me money at the tip. I should be thanking them. Maybe the residual awe; our bit of 'rapture' as my mind assigned it a name, still showed. 

"Let's take this inside hon," I said, thinking only of the very near need of a tissue on her part. I knew the ever-ready box sat on the old desk behind the counter.

I also became Nancy from Weeds then, apparently.

"The tip receipts Julie-" Straight to the point.

"It's all in my email Elise! I told you-"

"So the mattresses cost how much at this tip?" On target.

"Neil paid twenty dollars for each one. Cash to his ma-"

Ooh... Her generous stretchy pants should have been well-alight by now. Liar, Liar Pants on Fire!

"You sure bout that?"

"Of course! We're decent people you know? You made us out to be... criminals... Um... I promise on my mother's grave, we didn't go through your stuff... um... it all went to the tip like you asked..."

"Dylannn..." He whipped his phone out and in a second had the pics of the abandoned mattresses under her red nose.

I swear, the woman turned several shades. I swear. She stepped back. She sat down. One hand clutched her heart, the other reached for the- yep.... the slobbering began then in earnest, her face a blotch of varied pinks.

"I don't understand! Neil took them to the tip-"

Ooh...

"Springvale tip ye?" Dyls wanted in the fight. He needed satisfaction, my kid. "Twenty ks away from here when your shop is only... uh four ks away maybe?"

"I swear on my mother's grave, Neil would never-"

I had to break this cycle of denial and whimpering. "Here's what's gonna happen Julie. No. Really. Stop!" The denial especially- I wanted to punch her alive damn it!  "Two things. Either I walk out of here with my five hundred right now or I head straight to the Shire."

Yep... Time froze for both of us. She calculating the strength of my intent, I sneaking looks down at the old Bible meantime since it called, it so called out to me! My baby wanted home- Safe! Oh I would keep it so, so safe! (That's how I saw this play out- given her previous reluctance to part with any cash.)

The idea had firmed an hour and some earlier, having coffee with my son waiting for her to open the shop at 10.00am. We went to our usual spot, The Bubbly Beans Cafe in Chelsea - well - because it feels like home. They cook me vegan chips (at least they get it right eighty percent of the time. That's good numbers. Great numbers. Usually most places get it right round the lower end, say twenty percent? The rest is just me bitching at one thing or another they stuff up.) Hey I'm a vegan. Shoot me. Or yet still, like this lovely Lebanese family, embrace me and have me as a guest in your home. Serve me the roasted coffee beans on a square of hessian by the side of the wooden tray you leave behind, the espresso smooth, the crema thick and with a side of hot water in one of those cute crystal shot glasses- hey, you got me for life. Part of your family.

It was there I strategised. (Rather I spoke out loud and Dyls nodded a lot else "ye'd" me.)

"Not walking away without my Bible. It's coming home with us today."

He nodded. "Ye."

"I'm done playing fair babe. Done. All these people screwing me and I'm too bloody polite- fuck 'em all! Really! They play dirty, I play dirty. If they give no money, I'm taking my Bible home."

"Yeah."

"Five hundred bucks or the Bible. Nothing went to the tip you understand now? I bet if we drove around we'd bloody see the rest of our shit scattered down Old Wells Road."

"Maybe we do it on the way back."

"Maybe..."

So when I threatened Julie- maybe were it not they'd blackmailed me first, I might have been more kind... I wasn't. "Think it through hon," I pushed, since she still sat head shaking. "You'll cop a much bigger fine if-"

"Five thousand dollars on the spot! Maybe more..." Dyls finished her off. Hell ye!

Julie meantime swooned. Fell back in her chair like some dame from two centuries ago with a too-tight corset. Dyls rolled his eyes at the exaggeration. We both followed her hand fumbling for the box of tissues. Oh boy.

"It's not fair Elise-"

"Don't talk about fair! It was so fucking simple Julie: Hubby takes the stuff to the tip. He gets receipts. Pays me the outstanding balance to eight hundred on the Thursday, as agreed. Simple right? But you two thought you'd play me. Me! You saw what happened with the other lot and you still tried to keep what's mine!"

"No, Elise, I swear on my mother's gr-"

(Ooh... Don't go there again Julie, my dad's still fresh in his! Besides, you forgot your mother was bloody cremated and her ashes scattered! Jimmy remembered though...) "You two are nothing but a pair of lying thieves. You rob people. You take advantage. I watched you in here last week mouthing off about you "not being a thrift shop" to that old man-"

"But he wanted to-"

"What he wanted is irrelevant. You yelled at him! Be nice. Treat people with respect, you know? When you give, you get ten-fold back. Learn to be generous in spirit Julie."

"Don't lecture me Elise-" She blew her nose umpteenth time. "I don't need that right now."

"I'll lecture all I want. Retire damn it! You're too bloody miserable for this work. You deal with people day in day out!"

"We cant... three failed businesses-"

"Not interested. I'll only ask how this one's working out for you huh?"

The woman actually thought it a real question. One she could answer, maybe? "We do okay I guess in the warmer months... but now Neil needs that operation and I gave in my diamond ring yesterday to be cleaned so I can sell it-"

"Bout that- Dyls said you claimed in your email that moving our stuff finally did it for Neil with his neck problem. You intimated we caused him to be in a neck brace now needing an operation. Who did all the work eh? My three put everything outside in the front yard for him and then hefted it on to your hubby's truck and trailer. You know this!"

"I know... I didn't mean to imply..."

I'd had enough. I wanted to reach across the bloody counter and shake her. Dumb bitch got caught out thieving and she still only cared about her shit. What about our shit, spread out all over the side of the freeway huh?

"Listen to me closely. Not gonna repeat it. Five hundred bucks right now. Or I leave. You don't want me to leave hon, trust me."

She sagged like an overused beanbag with a leak- only she was leaking snotty tissues. It sunk in, finally. Finally. We watched her, each a pair of hawk eyes on her as she opened the side drawer and started counting notes.

"Two hundred and ten dollars, that's all we have. There's nothing left in the bank-"

"I'll take it, thanks."

Now for the Tough luck, you should have known I'd come for it, kiss of death. "... And the Bible."

"No... not... not the Bible Elise..."

She voiced her denial but she sat defeated, her mind needing a minute to catch up with what just happened. I imagined her internalising "The fucking odds, the fucking odds!"

"My Bible Julie."

It weighs almost a quarter what I do. Very heavy. I followed her laboured movements till at last... it was carefully hefted onto the counter and I had both hands on it.It soothed me, this motion.

"Make sure Neil gets someone to clean my rubbish up too. I'm gonna drive past and check. If it's still there, deal's off and I dob you in. Ye?"

She nodded head bowed into another tissue.

"Whatever you're on Elise, I want me some. You're one tough lady."

What a curious thing to say! She tried to fuck me over. I caught her out. I turned her thievery to my advantage. That's all that happened. "I'm not on anything, just my brain hon. You should try it. Get off that crap!"

"I couldn't function without them-"

"And you call this functioning? Cheating and thieving and lying?"

"I know... but what can I do-" The tissue joined a floor already littered with snotty scrunched up balls.

Ooh... Enough, enough. I elbowed Dylan and he reached for my Bible, hands carefully supporting its busted spine.

"Going now. Hi to Neil, wish him the best with his operation."

"What about your car, can I still have it for a thousand next week?"

The gall! I had to laugh to release some of the tension. "You know what Julie? I'd planned on giving it to you free. No money, simply a gift. Neil mentioned a while back you were down to just the truck between you. But then you tried to screw me first with the Bible and then, after filling your shop with all my stuff. What? I wouldn't notice? My coffee mugs are over there! My coat! The boys' boogie boards! Dad's old scooter! Our whole bloody house! I gotta think about whether I even wanna to sell it to you now."

"Of course... I... I understand..."

"Yeah..." Crazy. The woman wailing poor and destitute yet prepared to pay me a grand next week? I knew how that would play out: "Give me your bank details and I swear on my mother's grave I'll deposit the money in straight after the weekend." My arse she would.

Dylan hugged the Bible to him and we walked very briskly to my car. And there we sat, both Testaments and their explanatory notes between us. 

"I was bad!"

"No you weren't!"

"I made her cry. Again!"

"She always cries mum. That's not your fault."

"What is it with women nowadays? They like to mouth off but when cornered out come the woe is me tears. I'm done! Done!"

"Pop it in the back seat? With a seat belt?" Dylan hefted it over the centre console.

"Careful hon..."

"Don't worry."

I looked over my shoulder and there it sat, seat-belt protecting it from my penchant for flying over any and all speed humps. I eased the car out of the parking spot and headed home the usual way taking Nepean Highway along the beach to Mordialloc then straight up Warrigal Road to Oakleigh. Somewhere between Seaford and Patterson Lakes-

"I fell in to a burning ring of fire..." Johnnie Cash belted out and we sang voice deep, windows down. People turned. People in cars stared briefly and then looked away. Who gave a fuck. "This is our victory song today," Dyls said hand reaching to crank the volume even higher. "And it burns burns burns, the ring of fire, the ring of fire..."

Song over, I was back to mulling. "The damn odds. I can't get it in my head."

"I know..."

"Over a week since Neil dumped them babe. The Shire could have come taken them any time- there were houses opposite to one side, did you notice?"

"Yeah."

"Lucky."

Of course luck had nothing at all to do with how the Bible came to be sitting in my back seat lawfully belted up. We both felt the whatever Hand of Fate, Divine Intervention, Miracle? Something caused this day's events because certainly we'd had an entirely different day planned out when we'd set off earlier.

Dylan the Victor proudly carried my Bible into the house. Everyone was up, Jimmy still in his week-old jocks though and looking for some pants. (The three sentinels - my mother slotting in nicely as the third - pick up whatever lays about and promptly put it in the wash and from there - especially knowing our mother - whatever is missing could be anywhere.)

"How the fu-" Jimmy blinked twice and it was enough to stop him from mouthing the usual expletive- given two of our three watchers were present.

Dyls and I took turns explaining. Meanwhile, I spied something not seen before. A strip of paper protruded from the top of the back pages towards the New Testament part. Three more strips! Turned out they were bits of old newspaper torn from the Melbourne Sun Pictorial circa 1940's.

"World War two, mum!" Dyls read bits of a headline.

"Ooh!" I was flicking further along when a turned page revealed a small blank envelope.

Dyl's got to it first. "It's a lock of hair mum!" he said peering inside.

I glanced in. "Baby hair- hey, didn't we see an Elliot baby entry-"

"Ye. Died one year old. Sad..."

"We gotta track the family down... maybe there are descendants..."

Dyls and I spent the afternoon tracking down Giant references instead-

"Hey! Look at this about Noah! Did you know God sent the flood from Heaven? Says so right here. I must have missed this when I read it back when."

Dylan read the passage after me. "Wow..."

"Maybe Heaven is not such a good place as it's presented- I mean if it can destroy all but the creatures and humans chosen to survive on the Ark..."

Later that night and aided by the herb we theorised further:

"Whoever cut the newspaper into strips and marked those passages- it's all got to do with the Jewish people and Israel, mum. Why would he or she be reading about Jews in the Bible?" Dyls made the connection first.

"Hmm... Think babe. An average family back in the forties, especially here, far from the rest of the world... they'd only have the radio to learn news about the distant war. Not many Jewish people here back then. Makes sense he or she would turn to the major source of knowledge present in every Christian home, the Family Bible. Maybe they were trying to understand the Holocaust and the ensuing relocation of the surviving Jews to Israel?"

"Hmm... So the Bible was the traditional Book of Knowledge?"

"In the average home maybe, ye- and think too, back then, most people here were farmers or shop merchants or migrants seeking their fortune. No middle class as we know it today. There would have been high rates of illiteracy and also far greater faith and belief in the Word of God... No formal registries back then too. Why the Bible was used to record major life events such as births deaths and marriages..."

"Last Elliot family entry was in 1900- then someone researched the Bible some forty years later..."

"Makes sense, since Governments began formally recording births deaths and marriages early last century here. Then the Bible became solely a Reference Book or a Book of Faith."

"Huh."

I had to tell them. "Guys... you know I have to write about this..."

"Ye." This from Dylan who despite reading very little of mine, understood I processed everything through writing it down. But he paused?

"Problem, babe?"

"You'll be publicly admitting to breaking the Law yourself mum. Think about it."

"I know... But-"

"You didn't really break any laws cuz," James weighed in, forgetting as he often does I am his aunt and affectionately assigning me the more apt cousin role- given I hang with them and not the three Sentinels.

"But I did, Dyls is right! I threatened and coerced and took advantage. I blackmailed!"

"Ye but look what they did!"

"Doesn't excuse the fact I became like them: An opportunist seeking advantage."

"Nuh. Yes you did give her an ultimatum but you also said the deal was off if Neil didn't go take them to the tip."

"I meant that too. Those mattresses pose a fire hazard come summer and most fires start along the freeways, cigarette butts and so on. I still need to think some more though."

They left me to it. And I did think. Long protracted thoughts about Life And The Meaning Of Everything. Some hours later and after a short sleep there I was, 2.00am in the bitter cold outside hugging my pink stainless steel bottle filled with scalding water wrapped in a shrug between my thighs, a Hawthorn Footy scarf wrapped grandma style around my head and... writing.

I figured in the end this story, as the sum of everything, needs telling. Not to assuage any guilt or remorse or any other emotion associated with breaking my own version of the Hippocratic Oath about "First knowingly do no harm" since despite my not being a doctor I lived by this rule all my life. No. The story is the Miracle. The Miracle on its own merit.

And the Bible? We've not touched it since that first day. It sits in the room three of us sleep in, the fourth (usually Jimmy since Dyls is up just after dawn and asleep by 9pm) having to share one of the couches in the living room; the other occupied by mum. Whatever message it holds for me has yet to be revealed. Maybe, I will feel compelled to find the Elliot Family and reunite them with their heirloom. Maybe. Else, I am meant to read it and find the answers plaguing me somewhere within its very fine print.

Or, it could simply be the strong sense of "family" produced these past eight months since it appeared in my life: my brother moving overseas; my father passing and my making peace with him (Oh that was so, so gratifying despite the immense loss); my nephew Jimmy joining us; Marcus emerging from the background and shining his own light; my mother's frailty and dementia (oh boy...) and, of course, my own ambiguous foray into online romance.

For I did feel something: The strong yet unaccountable compulsion to preserve our history. To tell the boys stories; to record major life-events; to give forward to each new generation a sense of... family history. Real history. Something future generations can hug with certainty; a tangible series of links uniting us all.

And, to build the three boys a home. A place not rented and a place never to be sold. My gypsy soul as I call it finally resting and planting deep roots on a piece of earth they and their progeny will always call "home". A haven. A safe house.

                                                                            THE END