by Alan Duff
But that patched-up sheila kept looking atim. And he knew who she was with; and if he walked in and saw this going on Abe’d have to take what came, which’d be something terrible done against his person ’nless he wanted to fight for her; and her man’d fight to the death, Abe knew that, the whole fucken world did. So he wasn’t returning her looks, no fucken way. Even if inside he felt he could give her man a run for his money. Maybe he could. But not why he was here. And anyrate, she wasn’t his type. Truth was, he preferred white sheilas. (Gonna get me one, too.) Dunno why. Maybe I like a woman to be more like one and not like the ones around here, specially the patched-up bitches.
Then fuck me, if she don’t drag her pretty arse over to a man. Givim the handshake. Hey, man. Hey, sis. Howz it? I’m cool, bro. I’m cool. You too? Yeah, sis, I’m cool. I’m cool. But not so cool he still wasn’t hoping she’d jus’ fuck off leavim alone. Pretty thing, too. But wrong colour. No class. Wrong vibes coming off’er. I know someone you know, her voice a million cigarettes and joints croaky, as well this definite sadness about ’er. Oh yeah — who’d that be, sis?
She sucked in breath for no reason, ’nless she was stoned, which she could be, yet she didn’t seem in that space. Di’n’t ya know? Know what? Who I am, who I knew? An’ she glanced over her shoulder, he thought nervously. Nah, I don’t know anything. Then she started up chewing and he definitely hadn’t seen her put nothing iner mouth. He waited. Then she toldim, I used to go with your brutha. Nig. And it was like an electric charge’d gone through ’im.
That right? He kept his cool. Yeah, she nodded. He was starting to shake all ovah. What, like his …? Yeah, we was close as. Abe fought to gather himself. What, when was this you an’ him were …? She sighed again. When he, you know — Abe’s turn to suck in breath. Died? Yeah, it was then. Her voice’d gone down to this whisper. And she was ready to move back to where she was leaning, on a elbow-height table jus’ like at a real pub, waiting, he sposed, for her man, Apeman.
He went, Listen. Can we, uh, like talk sometime? She wasn’t even looking at him when she asked, Why? What’s there to talk about? He’s gone. I’m outta that shit gang and here with the best one. An’ so’re you.
Abe downed a fresh can to calm himself. Sis, he was my bro. I, you know, I never loved someone like I did him. (Why I’m here. Why I joined up with this outfit.) That right? Looking atim turned side on. You know what happened? Yeah, I do: fucken Bad Horse? thought he’d turn it into a question case she had more to add. His anger welling up something terrible: (I loved my brother.) She nodded — witha scowl — No, it ran deeper than that, this was sumphin’ else again. Not even jus’ hatred, though hatred was the bedda part of it. He set my bro up? Yeah, she nodded again. Set me up, too. Why I went and, you know, hugged your mother at the, uh, the fun’ral. You see me there? No, he shook his head using the gesture to hide his swallowing. She gave a sad smile: You mussa been too busy crying, eh? He gave it back, a kind of stress-relieving chuckle: Yeah, I musta been. Fucken near choked on the words.
She turned three-quarters from him tole him ovah her leather jacketed shoulder, Talk to you ’bout it. One day, eh? Yeah, you do that. He felt like crying. But of course didn’t.
HE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND it, standing here drinking with them and fucken five of ’em at that, the Douglas brothers, and Gary’s got that tease in his tone, after the number of times he’d been out hunting with ’em. (And I showed ’em didn’t I?)
What position? Gary was asking Shaneyboy one of his other brothers, you say prop? Jake a prop? Nahhh. Looking at a man like he was a small pig not worth all the trouble, like he’d let a man go rather’n waste his time considering him. Ko’i, can you see a prop in Jake? Kohi shaking his (ugly fucken) head. Nope. Prop’s gotta be what they call immovable. And he’s too tall to be that. I’m a prop. What, a lock then? Yeah, maybe a lock — nahh. Kohi shaking his head again, tall enough, an’ we know he’s got the strength, but too fucken old, Ga’. What, you’d be forty-five now Jake?
Two, Jake straightened up in a huff. Forty-two. Same age as you, Ko’i, he’d taken to dropping the h in Kohi’s name as much as a sign of their friendship (or so I thought till now) as how the name naturally came out. Yeah, yeah, you’re right on that one, Jakey. But, you know, I’m playing. Been playing my whole life, or since I was about five when the football was’s big as my li’l body then. Not that it is now, hahahaha! Jus’ remembering back, Jake, at how long I been playing that game. Still get excited before a game, too. Then he looks at Hepa. That how you feel before a game, Hep, like you do before, uh, making love? Or having a fuck, Hep drawled back, laughing: shet, it’s better’n that — lasts longer! HAHAHAHA! the table erupted. How about you, Shaneyboy? Same, bro. And Haki and Gary nodding yeah, they felt the same way about playing the game: excited. See, Jake? Ko’i lookin’ a man right in the fucken eye. Tha’s how much we enjoy it. Then running his eyes all ovah a man, clicking his tongue, then tapping his chin as though really giving this some thought. Oh I dunno, Jake, I can’t see where you’d fit, fulla your size … not quite tall enough to match those big Pakeha locks in the lineout, ’nless you know how to do the business on them which you wouldn’t, not if you haven’t played the game in — How long you say it was since you’d played, Jake? Fifteen, Jake said. And immediately Kohi shook his head, You see? You see? (Does he have to say it twice?) What I’m saying, they’d eat you alive on the field I’d say, Jake. All, you know, due respec’.
Jake pulled himself up to full (fighting) height. I don’t remember bein’ eaten by no one, Ko’i. At anything to do with — he stopped. Fuckit, may as well say it: to do with body, Kohi. Formalising his name to keep the record straight.
SO THEY HAD him at practice, an’ a cold, wet Tuesday night it was too; running these impossible-to-unnerstan’ grid lines, scooping up a ball here, gotta put it down there, run around a fulla here, catch a ball there, run up the line of team-mates, pick up another fucken ball, now drop down and do twenty press-ups, now spring! and run to the halfway — le’s go! le’s go! Man never knew such a short distance to feel so long. Back though an’ not the last. Take a breather. Okay, that’s enough now, twenty sit-ups — Oh, all night long, or two hours feeling like all night, this shit went on.
A man dragging himself into the huge (nice) thermal bath with the team-mates, too tired to hardly smile. You right for Thursday practice then, Jake? Who else but Gary. A whole lot of smiling heads in a steaming bath as though they were laughing at a man. But he’d showem. (I’ll showem.) Looking back at ’em with big asking eyes, Wha’ no practice t’morrow night?
FOURTEEN
MULLA THINKING IT muss be the cellphone’d made Bad Horse so fucken sure of himself, when normally Mulla could see that flaw inim, that secret lacking of manhood — he firs’ saw it that night in the bar when Jake The Muss confronted Jimmy and Jimmy blew his arse — he could see it in Jimmy Shirkey like a crack going throughim. But, lately, the crack seemed to have closed.
Engine roared out front of ’em, shuddered their smelly-socked feet sitting sticky in steel-capped head-kicking boots, Mulla an’ Horse in the back, Chocky driving and Chylo (where’d he get a name like that?) with his tensed, murderous (wanting to) existence ’side Chock as they sped through anutha suburb doin’ the roundabout way case there was cops to shake off and drama denied. Brrr-brrr Jimmy took it firs’ ring. Yeow? Mulla able to observe his leader because he was sitting in a pretend-relax slump against the door (hoping it don’t fucken open on a man!) not wanting to be seen to push down the lock cos that’d mean he was a fucken wimp being sensible, that familiar profile of hair explosion like that Negro fulla the ’Merican boxing promoter — King, tha’s right, Don King — hair like his. ‘Cept Jimmy hadda beard and Mulla swore it had its own colony of insects in there cos it moved, Mulla’d seen it, and that was inside the Quarters, no fucken wind in there an’ only breeze coming was from dudes’ mouths shooting off at sumpthin’ the same or other of (admit it, man) their fucked-up condition; Jimm
y Bad Horse is colonised! was the thought Mulla got when first he saw the beard moving, inside pissing himself at the thought.
Bruth-ahhh, I godd it, Jimmy sneering in a fast passing street-light casting on him. Sound of him pushing a button on that contraption; he toted it and used it like a gun. Cunt tryin’ ta gimme di-rections, as if I don’t know my own fucken town. Chocky, it’s Matai Street, up by that church they light up’t night. Church? Chocky laughing. Yeow, bro, ch-hurch. You know the one, down by where Rubie used t’ live — Till she died, Chylo couldn’t wait to cut in with. Have to be Chylo on the subject of death. Yeah, till she up an’ died, Chy. On smack, Jimmy as if he had to remind ’em that smack, even for them, Brown Fists, was out. Ya know why we don’t do smack, boys? Cos it makes our sweet life short, Chocky knowing what to answer (refrain) now. Yeah, bro, you goddit: cos it makes our sweet life short. Now dope — HAHAHAHAHA! the car exploded spontaneously, affected by the same stuff smoked back at the Headquarters. Though Mulla’d kept his intake low, on account of where they were going tonight, the smoke made him too mellowed out; Jimmy might order ’em to do some bizniz when a man was feeling like smelling a flower, or sumpthin’ (nice) stupid like that. Or smelling Gloria’s sweet twat, or jus’ her toothpas’e breath’d do as she tole a man sweet things. Man, had she grown on a man.
Brrr-brrr Jimmy got the cellie call firs’ time; like when a man was waiting around for Gloria t’ ringim at the Quarters, hanging around the phone, starting to have jus’ a few vague doubts about the company he was keeping, and talking of keeping, he was keeping those thoughts to ’imself, not even’d tell Gloria of such, what-they-call-it, heresy thoughts, Mulla ’membered the word and its meaning fitting here from a crossword even dumb jailbirds learn to do cos they’re such an effective way of passing away the time — Br-rruhh-br-rruhh a orn’ry phone rang different (please let it be Gloria) he’d got her call jus’ before they left tonight, ‘nough time to hear her say take care and stuff like that, grabbing it firs’ ring (oh Glor) Gloria? Yeah, it’s me. Let her do the talking, a man’d done his bit jus’ by being there to answer. Jimmy across from him on his cellphone giving instructions to the utha carload a bruthas where to be positioned and so the excitement in the car air, maybe danger, to go with the cigarettes, sock odour and someone’s week-old armpits’t hadn’t seen water ’n’ soap, mean to say, even a Brown has a shower a few times a week, even a Brown. It was that murder-wanting Chylo, he and water was like him and people he took a dislike to — didn’t go.
Mulla thought the kid, Gloria’s young fulla, looked like Chylo would’ve when he was the same age: kinda handsome, in that Maori way of if only they’d clean up their act a bit. But the comparison ended there. Chylo’s growin’ up years musta been worse than even Turi Jones (till I came along and rescued it. I got plans for that boy) or so Mulla hoped in his internal window-demisting changing view of this world, that Gloria’s kid didn’t end up like this (or me, come ta think of it): wanting to be a murderer.
Chylo was tall and lean an’ not jus’ mean but bad; Chylo hated the world, everyone and thing in it, he only liked his bruthas and even some a them he hated and for no other reason than he took a dislike to certain members the way Mulla’d seen some deaf mutes do, of taking one look at even a stranger and hatinim on the spot. Cunt carried knives strapped to each leg, a Stanley knife for cutting faces not lino in his jean jacket pocket, and he was the firs’ if they were going out on a serious madda to haul out the sawn-off shottie and whatever gun was going down. He’d come from anutha Brown Fist gang, up pas’ Auckland somewhere, where he said they had white women for breakfas’ an’ lunch an’ tea and fucken supper, too, if they could lure a slut into their pad. He’d moved down to Two Lakes cos, so he said, he wanted a change of action. No more fullas left t’ rumble with up there, boys! I beat ’em all! (’Cept you didn’t beat yourself, Chy) Mulla did get that thought. He did now he was experiencing, uh, love.
He called out from the front seat — cos he never turned around and faced people when he was sitting in the front, case it was the moment the Hawks were hitting on the bruthas with a driveby how they do in Ameri-ca, our ebony bruthas, bet they’d love us — Man, I hope these cunts’re gonna try and rip us! Hahaghhahagh! Cunt had his own laugh, too, always with that menace married to hope that the menace could cut loose. Weren’t a day went by when Chylo didn’t tell everyone, Man, I wanna waste someone. Lately he’d changed that to smoke cos tha’s how the niggers in the ’Merican ghettoes talked, he’d seen it on video and once on a late night movie, all the boys’d happened to be up drinking when it came on and at the end — well, during it — they had tears in their eyes when the fulla’s mate who was gonna be someone in the better straight world got wasted. Was Chylo jumped up when the fulla in the movie was dying with his chest blasted out by a shottie, screaming he’d be smokin’ any man who did that to one a his bruthas. When, if he’d looked, he’d a seen the bruthas having a quiet li’l weep, seen the point of the movie. Oh, but then plenty of people don’t see even when it’s right in front ofem.
Yeah, man, hope they do, man I hope they do. Chocky. Jus’ showing a face, how staunch he was. Man couldn’t fight for shit. But he could drive like a racing-car driver, why Jimmy keptim on. Jimmy aksed: Chylo, you put some artillery in the boot? For the firs’ time ever Mulla saw Chylo turn his face. This head and shoulders outline saying in a hollow voice, No one said … Man, no one tole me … With a back echo of, what else, murder therein.
He swung Chocky’s way in not panic so much as it was his shame (and the smoke) in maybe not getting an order right. Chock, you sposed to tell me, man? Were ya? No fucken way, Chyl. Jimmy, did you tell us to bring artillery? And Jimmy taking his sweet fucken time in answering: I might’ve. When he coulda eased their fretting an’ tole the truth he hadn’t given the order. Instead, Jimmy was dialling anutha number.
I got my Stanley, Jimmy, you want some cunt’s face opened up. You tell me, I’ll give you a gap in any face you c’n put a truck through, Chylo trying to make up for what’d already passed. And Mulla in the back, right behind Chylo, thinking: Well no one can drive a truck through my existence no more. When it used to be a fucken highway for all of life’s woes to come through, or the hole I tried to stop up with my lifetime’s acts of stealing stuff and hurtin’ people. Not now I got Gloria. Which is why he was shaking a bit, case the bizniz really cut up rough with these honky dealers from outta the bush, tough as, and a man was gonna lose his firs’ love in a — till her — rotten life an’ go back to fucken jail. (Can’t do no more time, God. Jus’ can’t.)
Don’t worry about it, Chy. Utha car’ll have sumpthin’. Get one of their guns when we get there. But stick it your side, on your seat, seen’s you’re the one wanting to use it. (And the one who’ll cop the biggest sentence if this goes wrong, as it does more often than not, Jimmy Cunning Horse.) But you use it when I say, unnerstan’? Town lights going by outside, it could be the inhabited moon.
HE WAS DIALLING one after the utha. To move this big deal of stuff bought from the Bushies, ten fucken kaygees. And they grew good stuff and they weren’t too greedy about it neither, their leader’d tole Jimmy, We got a saying in our organisation — he said that word crystal clear and very firmly — when you do business, leave room for the next bloke to make his profit. And never rip anyone, Jimmy, that’s one of our laws we live by, too. This Trev’d given Jimmy what Mulla knew was a knowing eye when he tole him that. But Jimmy, how he is, rocked his shoulders, scratched his (colonised) beard and went, Yeah, yeah, I always tell my boys, don’t be ripping no one, man. When he toldem no such thing. Fact, he tole his boys rip anyone who can be ripped even if it’s your ole lady. But this deal’d gone smooth as. And Jimmy knew it.