Stonedogs

by Craig Marriner

  ‘How fucking long!’

  A dog expecting a belting: ‘… that sounded important, so I was gonna leave, but listened a bit longer just to be sure, and then decided ya’s might need my help.’

  ‘Last chance … and that’s a promise. How long?’

  ‘The first I heard was you saying “A-fucking-men”.’

  Four brains do a rapid backtrack. Four faces frown and snarl; curse hushed vehemence.

  Me, broken: ‘Get out, Lefty.’

  ‘Ah, come on, Gator! I won’t …’

  ‘Get the fuck out! Wait down the driveway, under the streetlight where we can see your sneaky arse. And fucking stay there till you’re called back!’

  Tears apparently inches away, Lefty shuffles out like Dear John personified.

  Barry, walking back slowly, growling: ‘Of all the fucking luck!’

  Steve, outwardly calm already: ‘What now? Yu guys know ’im best. What ’e ’eard might not make ’im all that dangerous.’

  Mick, disgusted: ‘Unless we torture him, we’ll never know how much he heard. The shifty prick might’ve been out there the whole time.’

  Steve: ‘What do we do, then?’

  Me: ‘Three choices: abort, kill him, take him with us.’

  Barry, instantly: ‘Let’s ice the cunt.’ I’m uncertain of his sincerity level. Seriously. ‘Let’s trick him into rounding up his cash, beat Bum’s number out of him, phone the dude for a decent murder, then send Lefty to that big singles bar in the ground.’

  Me: ‘If only.’

  Steve, dubious: ‘’E wouldn’t go tell Hemi just ’cause ’e’s sore ’bout being left out … would ’e?’

  Me: ‘Even if he did decide to fuck us over this, he wouldn’t have the guts to go through with that.’

  Mick: ‘The guts to deal with the Rabble, or to shit on us so badly.’

  Steve: ‘What’s the problem, then?’

  Me: ‘The guy’s got a mouth like a kick-start vibrator.’

  Barry: ‘You wouldn’t believe some of the things he lets fly once his tongue’s done its warm-ups.’

  Mick: ‘Just to sound hard he’ll tell some chick about these mates of his who ripped off the Rabble.’

  Steve, terminal: ‘That cannot be allowed t’ happen.’

  Me: ‘You’re not fucking wrong. If we go now he’s gotta come and be implicated. That way, when it’s done, he’ll be so terrified of exposure he won’t even think about the event, let alone talk of it.’

  Steve: ‘Yu sure of that?’

  Me: ‘Absolutely.’

  Barry: ‘I still say we whack the slippery fuck.’

  Again, I hand it off to Mick. ‘What’s the call?’

  There’s only two choices here. Given Lefty’s stability, there’s really just the one … and we both know it.

  But I sense an upheaval taking place in Mick: the usurping of prudence, a potent tool of his arsenal. It fights with valour, defying the winds. Reason and fear offer stubborn anchor … but the tempest’s ferocity is unknown to these climes.

  Leaving ragged wounds where it clung, Mick’s prudence is taken by the vortex.

  Sucked into the Quenchless Core.

  Mick, in a voice I don’t recognise: ‘Let’s take him with us.’

  I make the mistake of looking down. Viewed without a net, the hard earth seems to smirk at me.

  But a rule’s a rule, and this one has brought prosperity. Though a part of me shrieks protest — locked in a cell, thrashing like a drowner — I accept Mick’s resolution, as I’ve trained myself to.

  Fighting vertigo, I barely hear him trying to live with himself. ‘We need his money, anyway, and we can leave him at Bum’s, pick him up on the way back through.’

  Steve: ‘That ain’t a half bad idea. So long as yu’s’re positive ’e’ll keep ’is ’ole shut faweva afta.’

  Barry: ‘He won’t say shit, mate. About the only time Lefty can be relied upon is when his arse’s on the line … and then you’d bet your wedding tackle on him.’

  Steve: ‘Gatey? Yu up faw it?’

  … Calm as the hurricane’s eye: ‘Let’s get the prick in here and brief him.’

  [The daylight’s almost gone now, and the lake is in repose. No more hulls disturb the water, just a warm rippling breeze. Stars sparkle in the lapping of the wavelets. The petrol fumes have cleared, and the only raised voices belong to insects and moreporks.

  Up on the hill, though, the tranquillity is but skin deep. Up on the hill, the insurgents plot on.]

  RED [lying full-length, staring at the sky]: How can we possibly fight the Fiendish Beast? It’s intrinsic in us all. In all males, at least. Just watch a group of young boys mucking around: unless they’re playing sport, they’re either wrestling, ninjaing, or slaughtering one another with mock machine-guns. Look at adults, even: how many’ll turn away when a scrap breaks out in a Super 12 match; change channels when the latest filmed police-beating hits Three News? I reckon the psychologists’ve got it wrong: the glorification of violence is an impossibility … violence is our most glorious force by default.

  BROWN [nodding]: In this progressive environment it is. From the cradle we’re brainwashed — ‘aim for the top’, ‘if you’re not fast you’re last’, ‘excuses for losers’, ‘want it most or be found wanting’, ad infinitum. Violence, of course, is competition’s ultimate and most primal manifestation; small wonder we erect fantasies around it. But I sincerely believe that with social revolution, with the renouncement of progressive values — with the deification of living and subsistence in their place — one day we might unmask the Fiendish Beast, exile it for ever.

  RED: But how does the Brotherhood counter the reactionary argument ‘A vote against progress is a vote for barbarism’?

  BROWN: There’s no doubt the stability we enjoy as humans is owed almost fully to progress and the western ideals that drive it. But it’s time to look at the wider picture. It’s time to admit that, as a beneficial way of life, progress has planed. In fact, we’ve already hit the downward curve. An arch irony is unfolding: the immense power and numbers technology has given our species, coupled with the Western mentality of ‘bigger, better, faster, more’, means we’ve reached a place where man has become his only real adversary … and his most dangerous to date. If progress could be regulated, or put in the hands of a finite, accountable number, perhaps it would be worth preserving. But capitalism makes a mad Pandora’s box of progress.

  RED: Fucking oath it does. Anyone with money has the right now to take knowledge gleaned by responsible pioneers, hire fine minds with less integrity, and work to unleash upon the world whatever technology might appeal to a market.

  BROWN [a scoff]: And I don’t need to tell you how concerned with long-term ramifications capitalism is.

  RED: Thus ‘breakthroughs’, which nobody has had a chance to assess the impact of, are absorbed by society daily. Capitalism demands that man shut his eyes and sprint into the future.

  BROWN [nodding]: But though we name progress an enemy, the Brotherhood doesn’t seek a return to Dark Ages living and ethics. Far from it. What we’re saying is this: under western values, progress has reached critical mass; it’s become a tightening noose. But it’s also improved our lives out of sight: given us the leeway to learn ways of life far better than ‘might is right’. After we’ve liquidated capitalism, then, the Brotherhood will strive for a society based upon a marriage between the power of good that progress has brought us, and more indigenous-orientated, subsistence values.

  RED [enlivened]: Oh, yeah! That’s something worth striving for; worth dying for. How do we proceed? How to scatter the seeds of social revolution?

  BROWN [hard]: We can’t. Not openly. The Juggernaut would see us coming from miles off; would crush us unconditionally.

  RED: What then? How do we fight?

  BROWN: We of the Brotherhood are fortunate in that, to all practical intents, our three enemies inhabit the same vessel. The Careering Juggernaut is the Quenchless C
ore embodied and fitted with massive armaments. It’s also become the Fiendish Beast’s quartermaster. By warring upon the Juggernaut, then, we war upon all three, but such a behemoth can never be fought conventionally. Our weapons must be sabotage and ambush, duplicity and disinformation, arson and terrorism, chaos and assassination; our only shields audacity and total ruthlessness.

  RED [nodding, smile distant but bloody]: I’m up for that. Bring it on, Mr J.

  [Both fumble in pockets for cigarettes. RED strikes a match, holding it for his accomplice; shaking it away absently]

  RED: You do realise just how stacked against us the odds are?

  BROWN [after a pause]: Well, it’d certainly take a brave bookie to install us as favourites.

  RED [insistent]: But look more closely at these enemies we’ve named. The Fiendish Beast might not yet be universal, but its acts are so contagious, those in whom it has little footing can be brought into the fold with ease.

  BROWN: For sure. A million people from opposing sides might be suing for peace … it takes just one to plant a bomb among them. Folk collecting loved ones’ limbs will brook no talk of the two F’s.

  RED: Now look at our remaining enemies: the Quenchless Core enslaved Europe, which enslaved the world, creating the Juggernaut, gifting the Quenchless Core a stronghold in the souls of nearly all. The American Dream became the Western Dream, which is now the Global Dream: all hail free enterprise and opportunity, i.e. the platform for anyone with a ‘bright idea’ to become filthy rich at any one time. Never mind that established gamblers have the table well rigged, the masses tacitly barred from playing, the dream utterly dependent on their poverty, overwork and nobody-hood. Who has time to lament this when the dream’s spoils are waved beneath one’s nose at every passing second? With each breath the dream whispers, ‘Someday it could be you’, ensuring collective tantrum at the mention of change.

  And of the many who do recognise the fundamental flaws, few of these have the courage to advocate an alternative; we will find even apathists manning the walls.

  BROWN: Ain’t that the truth.

  RED [profound]: By declaring this war, then, we’ve effectively become traitors.

  BROWN [sudden grin serrated] Fucking oath. And it’s not just high treason, betrayal of one’s nation. That shit’s for pansies.

  RED [energised]: Yeah, we’re seeking to betray our entire fucking species! Its ruling body and brainwashed electorate, at least. Thus, in judicial terms, we’ve just pioneered the ultimate crime: Arch-Treason!

  BROWN [shaking RED’S hand]: How very well phrased! With you aboard, the Brotherhood’s prospects grow rosier. From here on let our lives no longer be our own: let our vocation be our universe!

  RED: I’ll drink to that. Long live the Craft of Arch-Treason!

  BROWN: Hear fucking hear!

  [The blaze in their eyes dulls slowly to a simmer]

  BROWN [minutes later]: Whose turn is it to roll up,

  5

  Friday, 10 March, 5.57pm, The Smoke

  Though he lives in the Smoke and sees Bum intermittently, Barry’s yet to visit the man’s new abode, and the address Lefty produces is too brief. We waste an hour or so searching, and it’s getting toward six when at last we locate the place.

  The block of red-brick flats could be anywhere in working-class suburbia. About six cars cluster out the front, spilling across the kerb. From somewhere inside, the sacred strains of Black Sabbath soothe the neighbourhood.

  As we park and lock The ’Dan, start up the communal driveway, a couple of skinheads emerge from a door, descend the steps, head straight for us. They’re out of uniform but the ‘haircut’ might as well be a stiff right arm.

  Pure poison, skinheads. Every last one of the fuckers. Few of them ply a trade in Vegas — too few rocks to hide beneath — but I’ve heard that their numbers up here are swelling.

  At the sight of them my heart does an instinctive double-take … and then wallows in the muscle behind me; the sudden violence in the air like cordite. With my eyes I play a role for the skins — Man With Itchy Fists — as do Lefty and Mick alongside. Behind a gaunt veneer of coincidence, Barry and Steve fan out across the cobbles, shoulders begging for a too-hard bump, forcing the cultural carrion to detour.

  They know what’s good for them: look down with time to spare, seem not even to consider a rearward glance.

  Pumped by our victory … we lesser three, at least.

  But god help us if we ever meet them in formation.

  Our auras shift quickly, though, as we climb the concrete doorstep the skinheads just soiled, an acute reminder of the trade that flows through this place. It shows in our hunched shoulders, our bogus benign faces — as if body language alone can communicate to the neighbours our personal ‘above-board’ status.

  Barry, for one, doesn’t seem to give a shit. I reckon he’d stroll into an LA crack-house as if it were KFC, Vegas branch.

  Without pause, he does the honours. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  The music drops and a silhouette of ludicrous contours approaches the frosted glass of the front door. A relief I contain well warms my spine. Mick’s sigh is loud to my ears.

  Bum’s home.

  A swung door and the source of the clownish shadow is made luridly clear. I think the last time brothers as disparate as Bum and Lefty sprang from some poor bitch’s womb was when Schwarzenegger played opposite Devito in Twins.

  The man before me is a living cartoon, and at the sight of us a grin splits Bum’s gaunt face from ear to ear, showcasing a couple of AWOL incisors he lost scrapping, has been threatening to have fixed for years.

  Bum, from a height near Barry’s: ‘Ah see ’em starnding before mah, but Ah dinae bellleave it. Oan mah ern fucking doerstep, they be. Llong tame nae see, llads! Enterr an’ be wellcum!’

  Bum’s about as Glaswegian as Bobby Mugabe. But as part of his job description the dude prides himself on a wide repertoire of accents; he’s prone to impromptu practice. Bum’s view is that if he moves all his pot as a Jock, his acid as a Kraut, his speed as a Cockney, his barbiturates as a Frog, his dried ’shrooms as an albino Currymuncher, should the blue squealers ever bust clients of his and sweat from them dealer IDs, they’ll finish up hunting a gang of multinational phantoms.

  That anyone who’s ever laid eyes on Bum would select him from a line-up of 300,000 doesn’t seem to trouble him unduly.

  On an arm of rope-like girth and length, he thrusts a hand into my face, and, as always, I take it with something approximating gentleness. Built like a malnourished whippet — toast-rack chest painful through the fabric of his tight T-shirt — Bum looks as though he’d struggle to knock the top off an ice-cream sundae. But, as if he’s on a constant noradrenaline fix, the man’s strength is surprising.

  ‘Gator! My favourite visionary! How the fuck are ya, bro?’

  I beam back at him. ‘Not too shabby, Bum! Not too shabby at all. Good to see ya, dude.’

  Bum’s eyes are a shade of blue so dark one might guess he was injected with Nazi dye in a master-race experiment. He’s constantly accused of wearing contacts. But the animation inside them is even more noteworthy. When Bum stares at you it’s as if the mountain of hallucinogens he’s done in his life have rewired his brain in a manner that leaves him continually gleaning insights invisible to others.

  His eyes dance with this second-sight.

  ‘Mickey! Baz!’ His hand continues the rounds. ‘Nice a ya’s t’ awwive early f’ once, innit? I weren’t expecting ya’s f’nuva ’arf ’our tops. You lot’s gotta be ’avin’ a facking larf.’

  Bum also holds the dubious distinction of sporting the largest head of hair I’ve yet to encounter on a person. Tight blond curls erupt from his scalp at near right-angles, and only through a belligerently maintained middle part does he avoid the ignominy of ‘the full afro’. Thus, more wide than high, the mighty mop hangs around shoulder level.

  Lefty, engaging grin: ‘Howzit going, Bum?’

  Bum’s f
ace freezes over … and even the weakest of nods he eventually spares his brother is a patent effort.

  I introduce Steve and Bum’s all geniality again. ‘Good to meetcha, man.’

  Steve, a touch overawed, perhaps near laughter: ‘Same ’ere, bro.’

  We’re ushered in.

  Me, to Bum, smile dulling the accusatory note … just: ‘You keeping truck with skinheads now, Bum?’

  He’s human enough to grimace. ‘You know me, mate: if there was good gear on offer, I’d deal with the fucking Vatican.’ Then, to cover his chagrin, waving an arm expansively: ‘I vould like at zis time to pwovide you vif za gwand tour. To your wight, ja, ve are haffing za bedwoom slash livingwoom slash diningwoom slash kitchen. Frew zat door ve haf za toilet slash barfwoom. Gwand tour kaput, ja?’

  Mick: ‘Nice pile of bricks, Bum. A phat crib indeed. Very … vernacular.’

  Despite the modesty of his dwelling, Bum’s managed to load it with about ten or so punters, sprawled across the bed/couch, the dining table and chairs, the threadbare carpet. Like us, they’re dressed for the heat in singlets and t-shirts. For most of them, though — also like us — it’d take a heatwave of Saharan dimensions to prise them from their black jeans. Long hair and tattoos hold sway, a shaven head or three, a couple of Maoris, and one tarted-up chick with red braids and a patch-work hippie dress.

  Stonedogs, one and all.

  The girl’s a bit plump, but the cut of her dress hides this well; bares nice cleavage. Her vacant eyes look me over, her expression dreamy — a real ‘take-me-to-bed’ face — and when she stares a bit too long a hot flush momentarily clogs my throat.

  When I’m pissed I can track these types from a mile off; sniff them down.

  The room also contains a couple of anomalies. White dudes dressed more smartly than the others: collars and cargo-pants, short hair bryled back, gold chains and rings, designer stubble painstakingly sculpted.

  Shore Boys. To them I instantly attribute the Porsche in the driveway — the one choked with stereo equipment worth roughly what the car is. Takapuna kids, backed by Daddy’s capital, skimming an exciting sideline on the wrong side of the bridge.