by Alan Duff
Took an age, though, just to get near to the ball in the second half; and when a man’s got the ball it’s hard to throw a punch even when the fulla ya want to throw it at’s smashing you ovah in a tackle. Not with coach on the sideline. A man’ll be stood down with only two games left in the (very enjoyable, thank you very much) season.
He got the ball in yet another clean take, thinking his anger at the flanker’d so psyched out his opponent the gutless wonder wasn’t jumping against him no more. And he kept leaving that gap for Jake to run (man, I could sail a fucken big ship through) into. Alright, a try’d make up for a lotta things. (V-room, v-rooom!) He got his Mack truck engine going.
Woke being asked where was he from, what was his name, where did he live. Anyone’d think I’m a criminal, he tole the St Johns ambulance guy down on his knees asking these stupid questions. You a cop? Then he realised he’d been carried off and the game was still going — without him. He asked, What happened? You got taken in an illegal tackle, mate. This funny li’l whiteman fulla in his white shirt and red things on his shoulders. Stiff arm? Jake wanted to know so he could get the fulla who did it. Yes, stiff arm. He struggled to get off the ground to his feet but felt dizzy. The li’l St Johns pushed him back down, Now you stay right where you are. Fuck off, I’m playin’. No you’re not. I’ve told the ref you’ve been concussed. You not only can’t continue playing this game, but there’s a stand-down period — (No!) The season only had two games left in it. How many weeks you say? Three. It was three.
IN BETWEEN THE singular distraction of the Lloyds matter looking like it was going his way on the letter he’d sent with the specific instructions to exclude his insurance cover on the asbestosis claims, which would at least mean the money would stop bleeding him to death, and having decided he couldn’t see himself selling fried chicken on a franchise (but I do have something else which I should’ve thought of years ago) — he always had plans b, c and d — Gordon Trambert was enjoying a rather amazing rugby spectacle. Of T. Nahona — or Toot! as his sideline supporters were wildly proclaiming of his magnificent prowess — cribbing an extra Saturday game for the senior B side and seeming to have a particular target, the big, rather fine-looking lock; which had ended in Nahona being sinbinned for the high tackle (he should have been ordered off, but still, what a player) and the big fellow carted off to the sideline to recover. Clearly this young Toot Nahona had something in for the big lock who himself looked a few years too old to be playing this game, but not a bad player, if a little on the lazy side to start with. Perhaps he’d put in some dirty work with Toot and found Toot a willing replier to that.
He was surprised that the lock didn’t see the set-up of the lineout gap being deliberate, with the opposition lock stepping back and strapping young Nahona peeling off from the tail and running a loop to get his speed up to make his hard, driving tackles as the lock took the ostensible gap. Gordon Trambert did see Toot Nahona rake the lock’s head in a ruck, hardly honourable rugby and something which Gordon had yelled his objection to. But still, Nahona’s general play was pure pleasure to behold.
He heard the big lock addressed at one stage as Jake The-something or other, Gordon didn’t catch it. Whatever, this Jake fellow had certainly got a pasting by young Nahona. It was — almost — all Gordon Trambert could think about driving home, though he did have his moment of wishing he could take Toot Nahona aside and offer him both encouragement as well as advice that he could go a long way in the game if he’d get himself fitter. On today’s inspired — or possessed — performance such advice would have been unnecessary.
Just before home he slowed down to look at the newly staked-out land for a planned twenty-house subdivision which he had almost sold as bare land until he suddenly realised he could have developed them as sections ready to build on, with reading and drainage put in by his own hired sub-contractors and make the land developer’s profit for himself. (Why the bloody hell I didn’t see that before I’ll never know.) Rueing those parcels of bare land he’d let others make big profits on. Now it was his turn. Perhaps his turnaround of financial fortunes; he could feel it. Though he had to admit to himself, if no one else, that he’d had this sure-thing feeling before. So, you know, one would not declare it a guaranteed success. (Oh, but then again I haven’t felt this sure about anything in business I’ve done for some considerable time.)
His other major worry in life was personal: Isobel and he were drifting apart. She had lost respect for him, he knew it; it felt worse than had she out and out hated him, for whatever reason. But her scorn for his business management — which he thought rather a harsh judgement — became her disrespect for him the man. (She’s stopped even giving me my, uh, selfish screws. The ones an understanding, well-bred upper-middle-class woman has been subtly raised to, well, understand as her, uh, duty. As long as a chap doesn’t abuse it.) He felt she had lost her way on that; that she had taken a stance without sufficient thought and been, well, sort of swept along by it, her emotions at everything being clouded by the money woes hanging over them. Unlike himself who had fought for all he was worth, the proof of it now in taking over control of his land (and with it my own destiny) even if he’d had to borrow from the bank to pay for the subdivision costs. (I’ll get it back two-, possibly, three-fold if the economy keeps picking up as it has done. It can’t possibly go wrong.) And even should there chance (chance, Gordon? These downturns come with approaching signals don’t they?) an economic downturn he still had equity (just) in both the land and, as soon as it was done, the section development, too. The rugby spectacular solo performance by Toot Nahona brought a little smile. At least till he drove through his home gates and found himself hoping, if rather forlornly, that this latest change of plan might start the process of winning back her respect. And who on this earth didn’t desire, even crave, respect? Not Gordon Trambert. Hell, just a good session in bed would do. One is human after all. It’d been some time. Perhaps one ought to have appreciated her better when the respect was there.
TWENTY-THREE
MULLA WAS SLUMPED ovah the steering wheel damn near in tears if she hadn’t been there — looking atim. The hell’s up with you? when if she didn’t know she wouldn’t’ve aksed like that. So he leaned back, sucked in breath (Fuckit, I’ll teller the truth, why.) Glor, I can’t do anutha fucken sentence in jail, I can’t (I can’t).
Tha’ right? With eyes that said she di’n’t seem to care one fuck. Eyes’t the black stuff, mascara, di’n’t suit, made her look too — I dunno — slutty. As for that black lipstick when she had brown skin, it made ’er eyes look bloodshot, even though he couldn’t make the connection between lip colour and eyes, it jus’ did. I thought you was a tougharse Brown Fis’? Yeah, well I am. (I’m in the fucken gang aren’t I? I been a member for goin’ on, what, seventeen, eighteen years.) Something struck him then. Eighteen years? Tha’ how long a man’s been a kid, wouldn’t grow up, eighteen fucken years? Made ’im feel even worse about himself. What, with how Glor was lookin’ atim (wi’out respect. Man, she’s lost her respect for me.)
All it is is you sitting in a stolen car half a mile from the action — th’ action-jackson’s the pros’s’ job — they pull in here, get out, run ovah to the stolen car you’ll have here, throw the bags in the boot, jump in, goin’ crazy with wantin’ outta fucken here. An’ you, Mulla the fulla, all of a sudden’s their only hope, their only one chance a gettin’ their li’l black arses outta here cos all they wanted is t’ earn their patches — all you do is drive ’em to my place, Glor’ll look after ’em, whilst you’re helping yourself to some a the money. Now, how hard’s that? An’ how’s that gonna put you back inside? Don’t you want a house wi’ me no more? That what you’re tellin’ me, that it’s all ovah between us?
And it was no act her staring furiously out the windscreen in the parking area they were sat in round the back of a building in town, commercial premises, with an alley jus’ one left turn of the wheel escape away for the day’t now was never go
nna come. (Fuckim.)
Glor, I never wanted sumpthin’ so much in my life — Liar. Fucken liar. Don’t gimme that shet, Mulla. You a-greed. Or’d you for-get? Spoke it like that: broken up like her dream was. (It’s all broken. My dreams’re all gone down the fucken toilet.)
Now he was crying. Which disgusted her. Not a Brown Fist crying. Jeezuz chrise, man, you been peeling onions under your lap while we been sittin’ here? Wha’s wrong wi’ you? I aks you to build a twenny-storey building in the main street?
Can’t do no more time, I keep tellin’ you. Hon, I — Fine. Fine by me, Mulla Rota. Alright? Tha’s jus’ fine by me, now take me home. To my State home, that is. If you don’t mine.
Driving through his tears and misery, Mulla wanted more’n anything to teller, alright he’d do the armed rob with the pros’s then, if she’d only unnerstan’ his position, if she’d only know that if they got caught and went down for it, he was’s good’s dead cos he couldn’t do no more time (I can’t I can’t can’t can’t). He had no more lef’ inim. No more of the necessary what-for, of supply of hatred, of mongrel-dog cunning and rabid-dog bite for any cunt tried a man on, as every man got done toim, even the toughest; it was the way of doing jail time: ya suffered twice, first in losing y’ freedom, second for havin’ to put up walls of steel, concrete, clamp a big lock on yer heart, seal up yer tear ducts, shut down ya soul, and think even less than what you anyway never thought ’fore ya came in, ’fore ya was so fucken thick ya got caught again; ya mind had to be even more mindless ’n that. And Mulla Rota jus’ wasn’t like that no more. An’, funny thing, it was this very woman who’d helped bring about the change inim. He wanted that new (I been in cells not much smaller!) house as much as she wanted it. And he wanted her kids to share in it, the dream come true. But.
Glor, i’s ten years with my record for even drivin’ in a armed rob. Yeah. Yeah, she looked across atim. I ’gree wi’ that. I agree. But then again, think of it this way: y’ get parole don’t ya? So ya make that, what, a seven? And afta seven years you come out an’ you gotta share of a house to come home to. A house, Mulls? And me. An’ me. I count, don’t I? If ya don’t mine a lady has had, like, a li’l fling now and then. Seven years isa long time. Smiling atim. (The bitch is smilin’ at sayin’ she’d be unfaithful to me?) But then her logic made sense. But no, seven years, a man couldn’t do anutha seven weeks (I can’t I can’t.)
But then as he got closer to her place and knew this was prob’ly gonna be it, he got an idea. A good one. Surprised he hadn’t thought of it before. Listen, he said as he turned off the engine of the shared mean machine. But she kept on climbing out. Please! Glor, please. (He di’n’t remember ever having said please to anyone.) Said it again: Please, hon. Reaching for her — gently. Sit back down for a minute. I got this idea …
And she did quite like it. Yeah, she did. (If the stupid crybaby cunt c’n pull even that off.)
MOOKIE TOOK TOO long to load the shottie. Too long to get in the stolen car. Too long in givin’ chuckle about the guns. Too long in startin’ the engine. Too lo — Mook! Man, you gonna take us on this job or what? Too long a knowing frown for Abe’s liking.
They drove over to Pine Block, just the extension of the suburb their pad was in, just a spillover like a toilet overflow what difference, it was all human shit; the State houses said so, and the car wrecks, the broken, rusting hulks of bodies and shells in the streets on the lawns said it. Abe, when he was a Heke — and he was having his occasional doubts on bein’ a Blackie, lately he was — remembered Grace’s friend, Toot, (used to call Grace G) lived in one, it was sat right outside his own family’s front lawn, they didn’t like him his parents didn’t, so he had to sleep nights in the car wreck, he had to eat after they’d eaten, sometimes on their scraps if the parents’d pissed up more than usual. Abe often wondered, and tried to spot, if kids lived in the wrecks now. He’d heard Toot’d ended up a real good rugby player (like I coulda been if I hadn’t got this idea in my head to be a Hawk).
The shottie on the seat between ’em, both anxious about the stolen car cos this’s where the pigs started their searches and. hahaha, ended most ofem. The sawn-off sittin’ there like it had life, not a thing gonna end it; maybe the thickness of barrels and the effect of being shortened, and how darkly warm and inviting the timber stock looked (jus’ to hold, to run ya hand ovah and feel how smooth — hey, like a woman’s body, her arm, or startin’ ater knee — yeah, how smooth it was to the touch) as they turned into Rimu Street (my ole street. Man …) lookin’ at it and realising it was not as similar to the street his gang resided in, sumpthin’ about the associations (maybe it’s the layers of memories, like grime, built up) and his being formed here. Jake The Muss and his mother conceiving him here. (When? After a party, when he was drunk? In the morning, with his breath still stink of booze?) Yet he remembered she said they’d had a good, uh, love life (well she is my mother).
He touched the shottie handle. An excuse to shoot (hah! shoot) a look at Mook, they’d grown up together and even after Beth took her family, minus Jake, Grace and Nig, out of the area to live with Charlie Bennett, Abe met up with Mook every day at school and they shared each other’s streets after school. And here’s a man — who’d been one since, what, fifteen, with havin’ Jake as a ole man made him one before his time — and Mookie back on the street they’d waddled with shitty nappies while their mothers (his stayed like that, leas’ mine changed) played cards and got steadily drunker as they drank beer at a practised, easy pace. (Like exquisitely drawn-out sex ya think, Abe? Seein’s the sex they got wouldn’t a been, like, out of a love-story movie.)
They went with corner eyes at the Brown Fists’ barb-wire topped, high sheet-iron fences, the big gates there the side door, the top of the two-storey rearing up like direst of threats but of trembling, fury-rising challenge, too (and all them inhabitants inside on the utha side of the gates to Hell). How they hated them. Without even thinking why, though Abe felt he had his brotherly love reasons. They were just two forces, blindly opposed to each other. The same race, the same youth, the same growing up circumstances, same town, same country. Same blind hatred.
They went past the Shits’ HQ and made unintended quiet sighs the same in passing, on down to the shops, now like ghetto pictures from America, graffiti scrawls, steel shutters, that decayed look, and did a u-ey and came back up Rimu. Gun it, Mook. Why, man? I said, gun it. So Mookie gunned it and they went past the Brown Shits’ HQ at speed. And Mookie was asking, How we gonna do a driveby if I’m goin’ a hundred and sumpthin’? You gotta laser on your shottie?
But Abe didn’t say anything. And Mookie knew him well enough not to push it too far. Keep goin’ and head for the hills somewhere, man. I wanna talk. Mookie shot a glance at his friend. Man, we don’t have t’ drive to no hills for me to know you’re, uh. He didn’t need to say it and nor would, not Mookie. Abe only looked across at Mook to see how far his contempt ran, how bad it showed. Instead, he saw his friend looking about the same as he felt. Mook?
Was Mook shaking his head and saying, man, man, ovah an’ ovah. You know, the ram-raid was bad enough but leas’ we did it, eh? Leas’ we did it. But a driveby? Even if it’s him, Jimmy Bad Horse himself, we saw, it’s — well, man, mean t’ say, shootin’ a man is … Mookie driving them through the streets with the wrecks of cars sat kerbside, graffiti sprays like ghetto hieroglyphics, like messages from hell, rottweilers that’d eat a baby one gulp, and owners that produced and dumbfoundedly proceeded to try and raise (abuse) all the Block’s babies, or most ofem anyway. And these two young dudes in a stolen car cos they were gonna abandon it soon’s they’d done the biz, get back to the pad and boast cool about it, about a driveby like adding to their job CVs, unable to go through with it.
Mook, I was worried you’d, you know — Man I w’s worried you were. Neither was gonna say the word: scared. No need to put the boot into ’emselves. Abe, you tell any of the bruthas what we were gonna do? Fear in Mook’s voice. No man, I d
idn’t. ’D you? Yeah, I did. Sorry, bro, but I tole someone.
Abe looked away, out his window at the fucken straight, uncomplicated don’t-have-ta-prove-’emselves-all-the-damn-time or’n’ry folks. Mosta them white (lucky bastards). He looked at Mook: Y’ think honkies have to do drivebys to, like, prove ’emselves? Do ya, man? And Mook shook his head, Nah, I doubt it. And both were shaking their heads, both a li’l bit tearful (from the relief of realising they weren’t that fucken crazy). Man, I remember this trip with my ole man, Abe began. We had a rental car, eh, my ole lady’d saved up to get so we could go and see my bro — the one I tole you about’s at, thing, uni-versity, well him — though he was in a boys’ home, eh, cos they thought he was bad when the brother we knew weren’t bad, he was juss, like, mixed up (like us), people didn’t unnerstan’ him, eh, specially the cops, only my — Well only Charlie understood him. And so he was in this home. And we were going to visit him; ole lady had a massive picnic in the boot. She’d wrote to Boog to say we were coming. My ole man was drivin’. You knew him, eh Mook? Yeah, man, everyone knew your ole man. Jake The Muss. Though he never said one word to me, Abe, not in all the time we grew up together. Nor me much either, Mook, and I was his son. Jake The Arsehole, man, tha’s what he shoulda been called.
Well, the trip started off choice. Jake in a good mood, happy he was driving this bran’ new car even though we had t’ give it back nex’ day (which didn’t come for one of us. It didn’t come.) I remember we were in the back seat singing up large, me and my li’l bro and two sistas, Poll and — He had to stop. It was like her very soul had rushed up from inside him, Grace’s (my sister’s soul). Grace, eh? Mookie finished for him. Yeah, Grace. A moment of silence, as though just for her.