Common People

by Tony Birch

‘I care because I’m thinking of running for Council myself one day. People need to see that I have initiative.’

  ‘And a croquet lawn is your way of showing it? Fuck me.’

  ‘I’d bet the viability of a croquet lawn against The Spanner any day of the week.’

  Charlie Jackson, the Councillor responsible for the planning decision at the time The Giant Spanner was being voted on, and also the current mayor, was sitting two tables across from Pete and Hester and heard every word Hester said. Before going into politics, Charlie had been unpopular, building what he spruiked as the largest factory pig farm east of the state border. He put small farms out of business overnight. Charlie waved at Pete and Hester and smiled with genuine pleasantness. There was little that offended the man. During the election campaign he’d promised a major new attraction to revitalise this town. Posters of his smiling face and auburn toupee had been wallpapered on every street. Within twenty-four hours the posters had been defaced with a crudely painted red penis. One of Jackson’s cronies, spotting an offending dick on a poster outside the railway station, ran into Charlie’s office screaming, We gotta take them down!

  Charlie wouldn’t hear of it. Democracy in action, he called the act of vandalism when talking to the sole reporter of the local newspaper the following morning. Alongside the planned construction of The Giant Spanner, Charlie turned the slogan into his election platform.

  The decision was ridiculed and Charlie was endlessly mocked behind his back. He was called an idiot and a dickhead. But what few people understood about Charlie Jackson was that he was a political genius. The offending posters became a key talking point of the campaign. They remained in place and Charlie made speeches repeating the words democracy, democracy, democracy, over and over.

  While few in town cared for the concept of democracy, suspiciously labelling it a big city invention, Charlie had somehow managed to reinvent himself as a man of the people and was never more popular. He killed the election. The following night he had police block the main street, had the posters torn down and organised a bonfire at the main intersection. Charlie quickly reverted to type, ending his victory speech with an ambit threat: ‘If the fuckers responsible for this shit don’t think I’ll find you, you’re wrong. And when I do, the arm you used to paint the offending organ with shall be ripped from its shoulder socket and fed to my pigs.’

  What would become Hester’s final purchase from Convoy led to his downfall. He and Convoy met in the Ladies toilet at the truck-stop. Hester rattled off a list of goodies he was after, to which Convoy replied Yeah, got it, got it, without listening to a word of what was said. Hester handed Convoy a roll of notes and received a green supermarket bag in return. As was their usual method of exchange, Hester waited in the toilet until Convoy had jumped into his rig and driven onto the highway. Hester sat on the toilet, reached into the bag and retrieved a solid pouch of weed. He opened it, stuck his nose inside and drew in the scent. He then plucked a bud and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers. The quality wasn’t great and marijuana was well out of fashion in the district but once he repackaged it, he’d be able to sell it on to the young kids and ageing hippies. Hester continued to rummage through the range of lollies in the supermarket bag. He tipped the contents out of the bag and looked down at the sachets and bottles of pills of various colours, none of which were labelled. Most of the drugs looked unfamiliar. Convoy had ripped him off. Hester was able to identify no more than two slim bags of coke and what he guessed were ecstasy, on account of the ! stamped on one side of each tablet. The remaining contents of the showbag were a mystery.

  Hester dropped a couple of the tablets and walked to his van at the caravan park – Little Miami. Sitting in the van, sniffing one of the bags of coke, Hester mulled over how to best move the unidentifiable drugs. It took two further snorts of coke and another tablet for him to realise a solution. He opened several cupboards until he found a large wooden bowl. He then poured the contents of each pill bottle into the bowl, mixed them together, and beat them with the handle of a screwdriver until he’d ground the pills to a fine powder. He added the remaining bag of coke, kept a sachet of what he believed were the ecstasy tablets for himself, and mixed the concoction together.

  It was hard work. By the time he’d finished Hester’s shirt was drenched in sweat. He ran his fingers through the pale coloured powder, speckled with ruby-red grains. As he moved the bowl to the kitchen sink he noticed that the red crystals sparkled and came to life. The drug took on a hallucinatory quality without him having sampled it. Hester’s heart raced with excitement, convinced that he was onto something big. He quickly calculated that after cutting the powder further, he could produce around a hundred deals. The product would need to be sampled, not for precautionary reasons, but in order to fashion the narrative, a few of the many business buzzwords he’d picked up after watching The New Entrepreneurs on cable TV. The young presenter of the program, who’d become a millionaire by the time she was twenty-one, apparently selling heated slippers online, was forever reminding viewers about the secret of her success. ‘Whenever you have plans to put a new product in the marketplace, it is vital that you also produce a narrative and eye-catching branding to seduce the buyer.’

  Hester emptied the contents of the bowl into a plastic bag, sealed it with an elastic band and searched the van for his mobile phone, without success. He left the van and walked the pathway separating two rows of caravans. A boy on a pushbike rode towards him. Hester had seen the kid around the park. He never seemed to be at school and wore a pair of permanently blackened eyes. Each time they were on the verge of fading, fresh swelling and bruising appeared. The boy rode past Hester, turned and pedalled alongside him.

  ‘You got something for me?’ he asked.

  Hester walked a little quicker. ‘Fuck off, runt.’

  ‘Fuck off yourself. You got any drugs?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You do so. And if you don’t give me some I’ll call the cops.’

  Hester stopped on the roadway and grabbed the handlebars of the bike.

  ‘You go to the police, retard. You know what they’ll do? Your family will be put in a cage and paraded around the town, you fucken hillbillies. Piss off.’

  Hester yanked the handlebars of the bike, a little too hard, and the boy fell off. He lay on his side and cried. Hester didn’t want to attract the attention of the kid’s family. They may have been dirt poor but they could fight like bulls. He helped him to his feet.

  ‘I’m sorry, kid. It was an accident.’

  He brushed dirt from the boy’s T-shirt, reached into his side pocket and pulled out the sachet of ecstasy tablets.

  ‘Hold out your hand,’ he said, and poured half a dozen tablets into the boy’s palm. ‘There you are. Now, don’t take them all at once. And maybe stay off the pushbike. On the roads, at least.’

  The boy looked down at the tablets in his hand and smiled. ‘Ta.’ He swallowed one, jumped on his bike, screamed ‘Whoop! Whoop!’ and rode away. Hester walked to the front gate of the park, stepped into the public telephone box and made a call.

  ‘What?’ Pete shouted when he picked up the phone. He sounded like a man who’d been rudely interrupted from a matter of great importance.

  ‘Meet me out by The Spanner,’ Hester said.

  ‘Why?’ Pete shouted again.

  ‘’Cause I have something for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A treat,’ Hester giggled. ‘A real treat.’

  The Giant Spanner, stretching towards the clear afternoon sky, was secured behind a three-metre high fence topped with razor-wire. It was guarded by a CCTV camera, which may or may not have been in working order. The Council had deemed the security a necessary defence of the landmark tool following repeated acts of vandalism, including a graffiti tag identical to the penis that had desecrated the face of the would-be
mayor. When Hester arrived, Pete was sitting in the red dirt, resting his back against the wire fence. Hester strode across to him and dropped the bag of powder at Pete’s feet, then looked up and glared into the warm ball of sun. The head of The Giant Spanner resembled a prehistoric monster.

  ‘Where’s my treat?’ Pete shouted. ‘You got nothing, you fucking liar.’

  Hester bent down, picked up the bag and held it by the handles, slowly swinging it from side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

  ‘I do have it. And it’s a fucken wonder.’

  Pete licked his lips and reached for the bag. Hester stepped away from him. ‘Not so quick. Let me show you what I’ve got.’

  He took a dirty handkerchief from his pocket, unfolded it and laid it in the dirt. He untied the supermarket bag, reached in with his fingers and tipped a small mound of powder in the middle of the cloth. It glowed and sparkled in the sunlight. Pete’s eyes lit up.

  ‘What is it, Hes? It looks … alive.’

  ‘What it will be, very soon, is the newest product on the market.’

  ‘What do they call it?’

  ‘Doesn’t have a name. That’s how new it is. I’m going to break it down and sell it myself. I have to come up with a product description. Something that will stick. You have any ideas?’

  Pete moved closer to the handkerchief.

  ‘Look at the way it’s winking at us. Remember the old Angel Dust? Now that was a drug,’ he momentarily reminisced. ‘Maybe you could call it Fairy Dust. Something like that. You know, because of the way it’s sparkling.’

  ‘Nah. I want something more original than that.’

  Hester stared into the glowing powder. He waved his open palm over it and felt a sense of warmth on his fingertips.

  ‘I know. Party Lights. What do you think?’

  ‘Party Lights. Yeah. I like it. What’s it do for ya?’

  ‘You’re about to find out. Pinch yourself a decent snort, Pete. It’s on the house. Get it right up there in the membranes and we’ll see if you go off.’

  Pete hesitated. ‘Do you think it’s safe?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Hester grinned. ‘We’ll see how close you can get to the sun without burning up.’

  No sooner had Pete shot a pinch of the powder up his nostril than his eyes lit up. They changed colour from bright yellow, to red, to deep blue. His body shook for several seconds and relaxed. He fixed a dreamy smile on Hester.

  ‘What’s it like?’ Hester asked. ‘Is it good gear, Pete? Is it good?’

  ‘I’ve found it. I’ve found it,’ Pete babbled.

  Hester grabbed Pete by the shoulders and shook him lightly. ‘Found what?’

  ‘The world,’ he smiled lazily. ‘I found the world. The beautiful world.’

  Pete looked happier than Hester had ever seen him. His face radiated joy. Hester was so excited he dropped to his knees, scooped a handful of powder out of the bag and buried his face in it, sniffing and snorting like one of the mayor’s hungry pigs at a trough of feed. He lurched forward and his face slammed into the red dirt. He could hear Pete calling his name but was unable to move. He rolled onto his side and slowly opened his eyes. He smiled at Pete, who was hovering above him with a demented grin. Pete offered a helping hand. ‘Come on, Hes. We’re off.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I haven’t worked it out, but we have to go.’ He pointed along the highway. ‘Out there. It’s out there. The world.’

  Hester had difficulty hearing what Pete was saying on account of the brass band playing in his head. They decided on a second snort each before venturing on their way. Pete took Hester by the hand, like a gentle father guiding an anxious son. Some way down the road Hester looked back over his shoulder and saw a large hole in the ground, where The Giant Spanner should have been wedged into the earth. It was gone. He looked to Pete for an explanation, but Pete was busy, head tilted back, gazing into the sky and admiring the cotton clouds meeting the glow of a setting sun.

  The brass band began playing the first bars of the national anthem. Hester shook his head violently from side to side in an attempt to free himself of it.

  ‘I’m no fucken patriot,’ he shouted at Pete.

  ‘What?’ Pete shouted back.

  ‘Forget it.’

  Unable to dislodge the tune Hester had no choice but to begin marching along the highway towards the desert. Pete couldn’t hear the music at all, but fell into step with his friend.

  Up ahead they could see a yellow front-end loader working alongside a large wooden house. The windows of the house were shattered and the timber boards were splashed with graffiti. The loader moved backwards and forwards gouging buckets of earth out of the ground. The hole was around ten metres deep and twice as wide.

  As they marched closer, Hester noticed the driver of the loader possessed a remarkably rich head of silver hair. The man sat watching as they goose-stepped closer. Hester stopped and stared into the hole. Pete ignored the hole completely. Instead, he thrust an arm in the air, as if trying to grasp the final rays of the setting sun in his hand. The driver killed the loader’s engine and jumped down, standing over the hole and admiring his work.

  ‘Hey,’ Pete called to him, ‘you dug a big hole.’

  ‘I did,’ the man nodded, appreciatively.

  ‘Hey,’ Hester called out. ‘Have you seen a giant spanner come by this way?’

  ‘I did, indeed.’ The driver pointed west. ‘It was headed that way. Flying low and fast into the sun.’

  Pete was having trouble concentrating. He wandered around the edge of the hole to where the driver began rolling himself a cigarette.

  The driver offered his hand. ‘Jerry.’

  Pete shook Jerry’s hand. He couldn’t remember his own name but was happy to introduce Hester, who trailed behind. Hester also shook Jerry’s hand.

  ‘For what purpose have you dug this hole?’ Hester asked.

  Jerry was not a man to offer a word more than he needed to. ‘For filling it in.’

  ‘With what?’ Pete asked. ‘The dirt you just took out of it?’ He giggled.

  Hester thought the comment worthy of a laugh and chuckled. Jerry took the question more seriously. ‘You would be correct. Eventually most of the dirt will be returned to the hole.’ He pointed in the general direction of the old house. ‘First off, I’ll be pushing this place into the hole and then I’ll bury it.’

  ‘You’re going to bury a house?’ Hester said. ‘Why would you do that, Jerry?’

  ‘Most of all because it’s cheap and quick,’ Jerry answered. ‘I get paid to demolish and remove derelict buildings from sites. One time I used to cart these houses away on the back of a truck, find a tip that would take them and pay a large fee. One day I was looking at an old barn I was about to take down, and this idea came to me. What do they call them? Light bulbs or something?’

  Hester looked across at Pete and shrugged.

  ‘I think it must be something like that. A light bulb,’ Pete offered.

  ‘You boys want to watch me go to work? Show you how efficient the process is?’

  Hester wasn’t sure if he wanted to see a house buried in the ground, but thought it would be rude not to show interest in Jerry’s enthusiasm for his work. ‘Yeah, we’d like to see that, Jerry. Wouldn’t we Pete?’

  Pete had lost interest in Hester, Jerry, the house and the hole in the ground. He returned his attention to the setting sun.

  Jerry hopped into the saddle of the front-end loader and drove off, rumbling across the ground, the motor spewing dirty smoke as it disappeared behind the house. Moments later the sound of breaking glass and splintering timber filled the sky. Hester watched in morbid fascination as the house tilted forward, breaking free of its rotting foundations. The sides of the house opened up, leaving the body clinging to the loader. It tumbled over the e
dge of the hole, rolled onto its roof and crashed into the pit, sending a cloud of red dust into the air. Hester covered his mouth and coughed. The loader mopped up the remains of the house, pushing ends of timber, glass and broken roof tiles into the ditch. Jerry filled the bucket of the loader with dirt and started filling in the hole, repeating the process until the house had disappeared. He then used the empty bucket to level and flatten the earth above the buried house. Within minutes there was little evidence the house had existed at all except for the red-gum footings poking out of the earth, resembling a set of rotting teeth.

  Hester looked down at the disturbed patch of ground, mesmerised by what he’d witnessed. Jerry walked across to him. ‘I must be on my way, son.’

  ‘Where you heading?’ Hester asked.

  Jerry looked across the flat horizon. ‘For a man in my position, the work never ceases. I’m about to head to another house, another hole in the ground. What’s going on with your friend here?’ he asked. ‘He seems to be out of sorts?’

  Pete had been hypnotised by the late afternoon sun. He stood still as a statue, marvelling at the sky and the streaks of colour shooting low on the horizon.

  ‘Don’t worry about Pete. He’s always been curious.’

  Jerry again shook Hester’s hand. ‘I’ll be on my way.’

  He jumped into the loader and drove onto the highway. Hester rested on his haunches and watched as the lights of the loader gradually disappeared into the looming darkness.

  ‘You ever see anything like that before?’ Hester asked Pete.

  Pete scratched his head. ‘Not sure. I can’t say, Hes.’

  ‘Can’t say? I’d never forget it, if I’d seen something like that before, a man burying a whole house.’

  ‘Well, Hes. You don’t possess the skill set that I do. I can forget most things when I put my mind to it.’

  Pete yawned. He suddenly felt very tired. He lay in the dirt alongside Hester. Within minutes he was asleep. He did not wake until early the next morning. Hester was asleep beside him, face down in the dirt. Pete nudged him in the ribs. Hester groaned and lifted his head. His body was covered in fine red dirt. He sat up and looked around. ‘Where are we?’ he asked