by E. M. Reapy
He kisses your hand, ‘This ain’t a goodbye though, me’lady. Sure, won’t I be seeing you back in Ireland? You better visit me in the Big Smoke. Even if you’re a culchie and you’ll probably get lost outside Heuston Station. I want you to meet me mates.’
Susan and Ollie finish loading their things and say bye. They start up the van, the fumes cling in the air as it chugs, stationary.
Tommo gets in and waves his garlic finger hand at you. He blows a kiss and puts his thumb to his ear, his baby finger to his chin and mouths, ‘Call me.’
You wait until he’s out of sight.
‘Goodbye, Tommo.’
★
At dusk, you go for a walk through the centre of Darwin. It’s small, smaller than Westport. The streets are muggy and dusty. You go to the park, sit on the ground and figure out the wording of a text you’ll send your parents:
Things are getting better here, I promise. We’ll chat soon. Love ye x
You gather your breath. Gather your thoughts. You look up and sketch, the pencil grazes the page. Two kangaroos are silhouetted on the horizon, the sun sets behind them. Burning red and orange turns indigo as the sky deepens. The grasses and palm trees swish in the light wind. You wait for night.
THEM
Them. Hopper had to get them to a town in the middle of nowhere. A bag of MDMA caps from a motorcycle gang in Adelaide. An eleven-hour train to David P and the buckos. Hopper was no dealer. He was a delivery man. A thousand dollars for this run. That’d set him up for a move to Perth.
David P’s hostel was great, mad so it was. A converted hospital out near the forest. Big common room. Few sexy looking women from around the world. A machine for cold drinks, another one for sweets and crisps. A bad swimming pool that Hopper was warned not to jump into because it was full of glass at the bottom where they’d smashed their bottles.
David P offered Hopper a pint of goon to warm up.
Hopper wouldn’t turn it down with these new people, though they’d all get along in a while, he knew that much, when they’d fucking be in love with each other, buzzing off each other. But until that happened, a drink would help. Sometimes Hopper got embarrassed. People had big ideas and words and lots of them finished school or went to college. Lots of them could read good. Even the heavies. He didn’t want to be thick around them, didn’t want them talking about him. Hated people talking about him all the time.
David P poured a Fruity Lexia and looking at the back of the box said real loud that it was a ‘delicate and fruit driven wine with luscious aromas and a sweetness on the palate.’
Fruit, wine, sweet.
Hopper thought they wanted him to say something back. Something smart. The way it went quiet after that.
So he goes, ‘Sure this here is modern love. Pills and goon.’
And everyone went calm, stopped moving, stopped their lives. Hopper felt a shake coming into his hand. They were looking at him and he got scared they’d take the piss out of him but then in a big mad group they looked at each other and they laughed. Laughed for ages. Patted him on the back. Told everyone else that passed. Said he was a witty bastard. He was real clever. He was a hero.
A fucking hero.
About four goons in, they dropped some of the caps. Super strength. Very good shit.
The night went ntz ntz.
Hopper and Irish. Look at them here in Australia. Bunch of legends.
‘Love you.’
‘Love you more.’
Ah fuck.
‘Do you know where I’m from?’
‘Do you know me cousins?’
‘Who do you know?’
‘You don’t know anything.’
The night rocked, rolled, raved, rode.
Dark skies. Pink skies. Morning skies.
All of a sudden, it was Saturday, like it had passed in a minute.
‘It’s way too early to skag?’ Hopper said to David P. ‘What ya reckon, we keep it going for the whole weekend?’ If he didn’t mind Hopper staying, the Adelaide bikies shouldn’t mind much either.
David P nodded yeah, okay, and Hopper nodded dead on.
They dropped more caps. Buzz. Jaw. Mouth. Heart. Feet. Hands to the sun. Moving, moving. Inside the music. All morning. Remix. Hardhouse. Trance. Hear this, hear this.
They said it, ‘Pills and goon, Hopper. Pills and goon.’
More ntz, hands to head, hands to the sun. Water. Wine. Jesus.
But in the middle of the day, they played Amy Winehouse. She’d just passed away. Her songs, the words – they were written for Hopper. He was in front of a mirror and his face was all fucked. His face was telling him the real truth. He missed his girlfriend and son.
But they weren’t his. Neither of them.
He wanted his life to be better. He wanted his life to be okay. He wanted to be on this buzz without thinking like this. Of them. Of his parents. All the bad.
The fizzing started. He was losing the run of himself with anger. It made everything fizz. All around his fingertips, in his ears, his eyes. Fizz.
Her and the baby. The only ones that had ever loved him. Everything taken away from him.
He was back in Ireland. It was straight after ‘the news’ was going round and she called him in to their bedroom and sat him down. Her face white. The wee fella in the cot.
She said it, and he’d never known a sentence to do what that one did to him, even after the years with his parents, with the shades and the social workers. With the teachers and all the other bastards that’d be trying to get him.
That sentence came from her mouth, she said –
And her lips were soft and pink, her tongue was pierced, she said –
Tears ran down and off her cheeks but she didn’t touch them, she said –
‘It’s true Hopper, he’s not yours.’
And he had to move out in that moment or he’d have crashed all the house to the ground around them. The fizz would have him convinced to burn the place down with the three of them in it. The wee fella, the whiff of baby powder off him and his chubby hands, the gold earring they got him on his first birthday, he wasn’t Hopper’s kid and her – the love of his life – she wasn’t his girlfriend but he couldn’t cremate them no matter what was done. He loved them with his whole heart even though he didn’t want to anymore. With all his breathing and thinking and movement, he loved them.
He was in front of the mirror in the outback hostel in Australia and it was cracked. Another twenty-one years of bad luck. His hand bleeding. His fist all bits of skin loose. His face wet. Her and the baby. The only ones that had ever loved Hopper back. Gone.
Him left with nothing but himself. Like always.
He went outside into the sun.
Someone told someone.
David P came over. ‘Hopper, what’s wrong, man? Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ Hopper said. ‘I’m fine,’ he said but he knew David P could see his red eyes, him trying not to think. To feel.
‘Hopper, boy, what do you want? What do you need?’ David P asked.
Hopper pinched the top of his cheeks, rubbed his face roughly. ‘Play some Van Morrison. Please?’
‘Who?’
‘Into the Mystic. It’s a song. Play it. Here will you play it? Will you put it on for me? Play it. Play it now.’
‘Sound, Hopper. Anything you want.’
David P warned the others to move from the controls. It went quiet. Guitar and piano and saxaphone and Van.
Sun was sky high. They were sky high.
And they could set the world on fire. Watch it burn. Burn it all. It made it easier. When you burn it, it’s gone. Then it starts new.
Hopper put the cushion off his chair into the middle of the courtyard. They were watching him. He pulled another cushion off. He put it on the other one.
‘What ya doing, boss?’ someone asked.
‘Going to spark it. Going to fucking spark it. You in?’
And someone brought his cushion over. And someone brought h
is. And someone got their mattress from their bunk and next thing they’d a bonfire going. New chances wearing hot orange silk. Dancing with them.
But yer man, the hostel fella, he got wind of all his furniture and beds being on fire and he came over fucking raging.
‘What in the –? You fucking cunts. You stupid Irish fucks,’ he said and had his hands together on top of his head.
It was a bad auld buzz. He might have thrown a slap on one of them. He shouted words in between the thundering. ‘Bushfire.’ ‘Cops.’ ‘Losers.’ ‘Money.’ ‘Kill.’
He was stabbing the buzz with hate.
And so David P did it first. He rolled his neck. He cracked his knuckles. Then he squared up to him.
‘What you going to do about it?’ David P asked and he was jawing. He was off his tits.
The hostel fella stopped. ‘What?’
‘I said, what are you going to do about it?’ And David P tensed and relaxed his fingers. Then someone was beside him. Squaring. Then someone else. Then someone else. And Hopper followed and stood beside them.
And they fucking showed him.
There was fourteen of them altogether. There was one of him.
The fire blazed on.
★
Back in Adelaide, after the skagging, Hopper took a breath before walking into the bikies’ club. Bikies. He’d have fucking laughed back home at a gang of motorcycle heads, their silly jackets with crests and writing on them but here there was no messing. These men were mad into guns, meth, explosives.
They were into torture.
Hopper was shitting it but maybe they’d be impressed with him. Maybe they’d give him more work. He’d got the drugs up to the lads. They’d got their pay, David P had deposited it in, all in. Hopper knew that, he had the bank statement. But Hopper also knew that the rest of it was not in the plan. He was supposed to keep a low profile. Be a delivery man. A professional. He took another breath.
The club was a strip club, it smelt of jizz-stains and drink and Hopper couldn’t help look at the women swing round poles, their bodies tight and their eyes glazed over. One or two of the waitresses seemed like they were having fun, flirting with the customers, winking and jiggling their way around the tables. The rest of them looked how Hopper felt most days.
He saw the Hulk Hogan-looking bikie getting a lap dance. The boss man. He didn’t want to interrupt. He could have the raging horn and Hopper’d be in his bad books even more for ruining that. Instead, Hopper stood at the bar and waited for Hulk to notice him.
The bartender was fully clothed and to Hopper’s surprise, she was Irish. Hopper usually knew Irish people, not just by the skin or haircuts or accents, the hold of them was the same, the stand of them. But this one, he’d have never guessed. Maybe it was because she was working here. Because of the Catholic in them that made places like this feel dirty as fuck, even if they were a good buzz.
‘What can I get you?’ she asked.
‘Anything,’ Hopper said.
She gave him a small smile and filled a tumbler with whiskey and ginger ale. ‘Have this. Are you the kid they sent to David P?’
Hopper gulped. How’d she know?
‘Yeah,’ he said.
She took the glass back and free poured the spirit on top of the drink until it was up to the rim. ‘You’ll need this so. Good luck.’
Hopper thanked her and began downing it in quick sups.
An old man stood beside him. ‘Nice place here,’ he said in an English accent.
‘Suppose.’
‘I just come for the company really, I’ll miss it.’ The man turned to the bartender. ‘And I’ll miss you most of all.’
She giggled. ‘You’re a charmer, Norman.’
Hopper could feel the drink swirl his blood.
He switched his attention back to the boss. He couldn’t be standing around here making shite talk. He needed his pay. He finished his drink, slammed it on the counter and stomped over towards Hulk who was leaning back on his chair, the stripper’s arse grinding him.
‘Here, what are ye going to do to me?’ Hopper asked.
Hulk looked at Hopper, the lust fading out of his eyes. He pushed the girl away and patted his crotch. ‘I was wondering when you’d show, drongo,’ he said. ‘You were due here last week.’
He curled his handlebar moustache with his fingers. The girl sighed and put on a neon pink bikini. Hopper noticed her ribs, the way they pushed out underneath her skin. Looked like his old girlfriend’s when he used to kiss her every morning after her shower. Kiss her ribs. Her chest. Her neck. The smell of the coconut gel she washed with. What he’d fucking give for one of those mornings, before she went off to work in the petrol station, before the baby woke. Her hair wet. Her skin fresh.
Hulk stood over Hopper and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. ‘Come on,’ he said and dragged him to a door past the stage, up some stairs and into an office that stunk of weed. It had a giant screen for CCTV on the wall. Hulk sat at a desk messy with papers, books, a laptop, two empty tills and a cardboard box of baggies.
‘You fucked up,’ Hulk said.
Hopper squirmed. ‘I did. I’m sorry. Things got out of hand.’
‘Yeah, well the fucking narks might be on us and if they are—’
‘They won’t be. It was too far away. I’m Irish. The boys were Irish. Won’t get linked to ye. Sure how the fuck would I know ye?’ Hopper was talking real fast. ‘They only gave a shite about the fire ’cause the way it spread a bit.’
‘The bushfire, that’s another bloody headache. Why?’
Hopper dropped his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re not getting paid for that balls up.’
Hopper’s eyes opened as wide as they could go. ‘Here, what?’
‘You heard.’
‘Ye have to fucking pay me. I did what ye asked me to do.’
Hulk rose from the desk. ‘No, you minda, you messed the whole thing up.’
‘We had a deal there, we shook on a deal,’ Hopper said. The fizz was coming.
‘You’re getting bugger all.’
‘A deal is a fucking deal.’
Hulk shook his head.
‘We had an agreement,’ Hopper said through his teeth.
‘Agreement went up in smoke with that fucking bushland.’
Fizz.
‘Fuck ye.’ Hopper punched the CCTV screen. ‘Stupid fucking beards. Stupid denim jackets. Big gang on yer bikes. Big men.’
Hopper went for the laptop on the table and tried to throw it at Hulk. He missed and it crashed to the office floor. He tried to break the CCTV screen with his fist. He tried to pick up the desk.
Hulk was roaring but Hopper heard nothing. He felt nothing when Hulk grabbed him and restrained him. Hopper bit and screeched. He resisted as much as he could but he couldn’t get free from Hulk’s grip.
Inside his mind, he was blank.
No noise, no pain. Only fizz.
Hulk fastened Hopper’s hands behind his back with a cable tie and pulled him off the ground. He pushed him towards the door and gave him a kick to send him tumbling down the stairs. Hopper’s head hit the steps. His body folded over itself. His shoulder got loose. At the bottom of the stairs, Hopper spat out blood and shouted, ‘Give me my pay.’
Hulk stomped down the steps and pulled Hopper up by the hair, in through the club. Some of the hair came out and Hopper fell on the ground. The girls were looking down at him. Their pointy tits. The customers were afraid to look. Hopper knew the song playing, Party Rock Anthem. He knew it because he knew the baby’d love it. He’d bounce in his bouncer to that beat. Hopper’d shuffle for him.
‘You get the fuck out of Adelaide and never come back,’ Hulk shouted over the music.
Hopper saw Hulk’s boot come. Then Hopper saw nothing.
★
‘You okay?’ she said. ‘Come on, wake up.’ She was sawing at the cable tie. His hands got free.
The stretching of skin from Hopper ope
ning his eyes made inside his head, inside his cheeks, ache.
It was the middle of the day, Hopper forgot. The club had been so dark. The sun out was savage. And this was supposed to be winter time. Hopper moaned and tried to sit. The Irish bartender was over him holding her bar knife.
‘Will I call the ambulance?’ she asked.
Hopper shook his head. ‘I’ll be sound,’ he said and gurgled back some grit and slime in his throat.
‘Do you have somewhere to go?’
Hopper shrugged.
‘They’ll kill you, you know. You have to get moving. There’s no fucking around with them. I’ve seen what they can do.’
‘Why are you in there? What are you doing there?’ Hopper asked.
She took a noisy breath. ‘I’m married to one of them.’
‘Fuck.’
She scratched her ear. ‘It’s not the worst. Needed to go de facto. And my husband, well, he’s got his moments. Can you walk?’
‘I think so,’ he said and she put her arm out to support him.
She looked around. ‘You’ve to get moving. Fast. Do you know anyone?’
Hopper shrugged again.
‘Yer man, Norman,’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘You chatted to him didn’t you?’
‘Who?’
‘He was leaving today. Road trip and setting up somewhere outback. I’ll ring him, he only left a few minutes ago. Let me make a call, okay?’
Hopper didn’t know what she meant. He spat more of the gunk out from his mouth and lightly fingered his face, see what was swelling, what was wet. He could hear the cars on the main road. The wall in front of Hopper had posters with naked girls and music bands advertised. Vents steamed. The frying vegetables and clatter from an Asian restaurant’s back kitchen filled the hot air outside.
Hopper was limping when he tried walking. His shoulder though. He’d have to get her to pop it.
She came back outside holding her phone. ‘Norman – he’s a customer here but he’s good to the girls. Never touches them. Tips well. He’s going to come back for you. He’s driving through the Nullarbor. You have stuff?’
‘Stuff?’