The Legend of Winstone Blackhat

by Tanya Moir

  Winstone Haskett will never change.

  No? Hey. The teacher’s voice going soft. Hey mate it’s okay. I’ll help you. We’ll use mine.

  Short sweeping curve of a concrete drive and the automatic door coming down and there they were, in the white pooling garage light, going into the teacher’s place. His arm an arch over Winstone’s head.

  What’s your name?

  Runt Shit-Stains Nit-Boy Ass-Shit You Little Fucker. Winstone Haskett.

  Winstone. I’m Zane. Hey look at that we’re only two letters apart.

  Behind venetian blinds Zane fast on the keyboard. Breath whistling wet through his teeth. Little fuckers, excuse me you didn’t hear that did you.

  But Winstone had and it must have shown on his face because then Zane raised his eyebrows and smiled and said, They are though, nasty little fuckers.

  Can I see?

  I wouldn’t bother mate, this is all about them not you. This time tomorrow it’ll be gone.

  Gone for good?

  Like it never existed.

  Winstone Haskett has been erased.

  Excluded from cyberspace. It figured.

  If you want. Zane talking, Winstone watching the video camera lying there on the desk, the sheen of it, his warty fingers itching.

  If you want we can make you a new Facebook account. A real one.

  But I’m not thirteen.

  I won’t tell if you don’t. Just don’t put your picture on.

  What will I put?

  Anything you want.

  Anything.

  Whatever you want people to see. Hey. You want to watch a movie?

  WEST

  RIKERS WATCHED them coming. Between rotting sheets of iron, low, from the eyeline of resting dust devils and skinks, from the tumbled stones, and the Kid and Cooper rode up slowly out of the wavering blue, the narrow pale between shadows and cloud, and they were no taller than a lizard’s tail skittering its sss through the dust, and the lizard flicked its tongue and the iron creaked and the wind ran over it shuddering like a stick drawn down the teeth of an old jawbone.

  The palomino’s hoof stirred the dust and his creamy tail swished and the Kid’s boots rested easy in the stirrups as they followed Cooper and the grey on up towards the tin shack with its sagging porch and a dull glass eye either side of a gaping doorway.

  A sign hung crooked over the hole, ugly white letters wandering over rough board, a thing a child would paint to spite its teacher. RIKERS HOTEL.

  The Kid shifted in his saddle. This is the place?

  This is it.

  Silently they swung down, and Cooper knotted the grey’s reins over the rail and the Kid cast about but could see nothing more solid or straight and so he tethered the palomino likewise and the porch step creaked under Cooper’s boots and the dry boards rang below their heels and together they walked inside.

  In the shadows at the end of the room was the pale of a shirt and a face and a cloth and the paleness moved and a man said, Cooper.

  Reichardt.

  A mostly thin man coming out of the gloom, a damp sheen on his skin and his shirt, a man unable to spell his own father’s name, a small paunch hanging over the waist of his trousers. Vat vill yer have?

  Water. For us, and two horses.

  One-fifty. If yer fixin on stayin der night.

  You got room? Coop asked, and if it was a joke Reichardt didn’t take it that way, he just nodded slow, wiping out two glasses with a cloth that had seen a good stretch of time since last it made anything clean.

  I got room.

  How’s business?

  Steady. Two last week. Now you.

  The Kid leaned forward. Two?

  Cooper didn’t look up or turn his head but the gloves he’d been pulling off came down with a soft little thut on the bar beside the Kid’s elbow and the Kid shut his mouth and Reichardt said, Yer vanna see der room?

  They followed him into the lean-to through a sticking door and he pushed open the shutters on a window that had no glass and the heat and the light fell heavy into the room and spread across two bunks and an unswept floor. The Kid put a hand to the mattress of the bottom bunk and felt the prickle of straw and as he raised his eyes to the base of the bunk above he saw, caught in the splintering wood above his head, a scrap of ribbon and two blonde hairs.

  Winstone rolled over, away from the wall. On the other side of the shadowed hut the window was bright as a TV screen, and it held a flat rectangle of dam and grass and day blue and gold and baking in the sun. He read the names again, in his head, without looking over his shoulder. India, Mia, Daniel, George. Jason, Charlie, Kimberley, Scott. His favourite, Alexandra, which was the name of the town his tracksuit pants had come from. Then the two princes, Harry, Will. Rolling back, he pressed the mattress down and in the space below the last name on the wall, with his finger, he wrote Winstone.

  Then he slid down off the bed and crossed the floor with its three lifting layers of vinyl and looked out the window on the other side and opened the cupboard and stole a tin of fruit cocktail and squeezed back through the hole in the floor of the room where they kept the wood and the nets and the fishing rods and crawled out from under the Scout Hut.

  As he did so, away to his right a ripple ran through the long grass beside the hut, which was strange since there was no wind. He watched it make its way down to the beach. Too slow for a rabbit. A rat, maybe, scared out of its nest. Winstone had always felt a bit sorry for rats, which couldn’t help being ugly and dirty and getting diseases – how could they wash, with only their teeth and their tiny rat paws? So he followed the ripple, tracked it, just to see if he could, to see if the rat was going to have a drink or a bath, maybe wash its rat hands in the dam, and because there was a lot more left of the day than there were things to do in it.

  The beach was empty, except for a couple of lengths of four-by-two, a crawly pot float on a yellow line, a faded chip packet, some feathers. But on the other side of the beach the grass was moving again, so Winstone tracked across it, bending low, soft-footed as an Indian scout, and in the mud beside a feather he saw, clear and deep and fresh, the print of a small paw.

  A cat. A little cat. A kitten. The bean tin kitten? Winstone crept through the grass to the next bay, his progress silent except for an occasional slosh from the fruit cocktail tin. And there it was, below the rocks, a scruffy brownish-grey scrap of cat, crunching up dried crawly shells on the sand.

  The Jacksons had a cat. It was a pretty, shiny, silvery thing that this cat did not at all resemble. This cat was thin, and parts of its stripy fur were long and stood up while others weren’t and didn’t. Its ears were matted and flat and its tail was too long for its body and twitched as it crunched and from the bedraggled state of its face it might very well have been stuck in a bean tin.

  Carefully, Winstone settled down in the grass, watching the kitten hunt, turning the tin in his hand, feeling the comforting shift of its weight, and he thought about the pale sweet chunks of fruit and how many cherries there might be and being hungry.

  THE KID SANK a fork into the yolk of his fried egg and watched the yellow spill over the plate and then he loaded the fork up pretty good with corned beef hash and swirled it around in the egg and shoved it quickly into his mouth before it dripped or the hash fell off and while he chewed he loaded the fork up again and he still had another egg left to go and no complaints about Reichardt’s cooking.

  Them two boys came through here last week, Coop said, like it was nothing at all and he didn’t care one bit if Reichardt answered or did not, they anybody we know?

  One boy. Reichardt put the coffee pot down and above his own chewing the Kid heard it crunch in the gritty dust on the table.

  My mistake. Cooper pushed his mug forward. I thought you said there was two.

  Yer thought right. A boy und a girl.

  The Kid’s fork paused for a second between his teeth, but then he took it out and kept his eyes on his hash and went on chewing.

 
A girl, Coop said. Well that explains this here ring I found under the bunk. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the little gold ring with the red stone he usually wore on a chain round his neck and held it out for Reichardt to see. She must have dropped it down there, he said.

  I don’t know, Reichardt said, and he looked hard at the ring and went to take it out of Coop’s hand but Cooper didn’t let go. That don’t look like der sort of ring a little girl got any call to be vearin.

  Cooper brought his hand back and he looked at the ring himself, real close, like it hadn’t lain on his chest three years or more. Maybe it was her momma’s, he said.

  I don’t know, Reichardt said. I didn’t see her vearin no ruby ring.

  You had any other ladies in here? Cooper closed his hand around the ring and put his hand back in his pocket. She probably had it hid somewhere safe. She’s probably missing it sore.

  Yer can leave it here, Reichardt said. Maybe they’ll come back lookin for it.

  Maybe we’ll catch up to them on the road, Cooper said, like it didn’t matter a damn either way. They say which way they were goin?

  West, said Reichardt. Over der pass. His eyes still on Cooper’s pocket.

  That’s where we’re headin too, Cooper said. And we’re how many days behind them?

  Vat’s today? Reichardt said.

  It’s Monday, said the Kid.

  Three days, den. They left Friday. That der day I wrote on the bill.

  Three days, Cooper said. Well I reckon the Kid and me ride fastern a little girl.

  I don’t know, Reichardt said. The cowboy she vas vith, he looked to be in some hurry.

  The kitten looked over its shoulder, straight at the spot on top of the bank where Winstone, close enough to see its yellow slitty eyes, was lying in the grass. It had no idea what he was, you could tell, and though Winstone had been looked at that way before, the kitten did it better. The kitten had a big grey crawly pincer hanging out of its mouth and it crunched it, twice, while it thought about what Winstone was. Something you ran from or something you didn’t.

  Winstone, awaiting judgement, kept very still. Puss, he said.

  Puss, puss.

  Because when Debbie Jackson said that to their cat it made the cat happy, it made the cat love Debbie so much the cat couldn’t get close enough, rubbing and rubbing its whole body over hers like it was trying to push itself under her skin, and she’d pick it up and hold it to her big squishy chest like people hold a baby.

  The kitten dropped the crawly shell and fled.

  Winstone got up and climbed down the bank to the beach. He wished the kitten had taken its dinner at least. He poked at the pincer. It was light as a leaf and crackled under his shoe. Nothing in it to feed a lake fly.

  Life could be tough up here on the range till you figured out how things worked. Winstone looked up the slope at the rock tors towards which the kitten had run and he wondered how old the kitten was and where it had come from.

  It had taken him two nights to make it up here, walking the white dust road when the moon came up, hiding under the rocks by day, in the pines or the gully away from the road, so hungry his ears hurt. There’d been no sleeping bag back then, not even a wet-dog blanket to roll himself in, just his pyjama top and hoodie and tracksuit pants and the man-sized khaki fleece with the lace-up front that he’d nicked from a washing line near the turn-off. But he walked through the cold of the night and it was uphill so he kept pretty warm and the hunger was the worst part.

  He could have caught crawlies, but he didn’t know that yet, and anyway he’d have to have eaten them raw. He hadn’t come prepared. All he had in his pockets was a Moro bar he’d stolen from the pantry of the last house he saw. He’d taken two packets of chocolate biscuits as well, but he’d already eaten all those because he’d got sick of carrying them and they were melting in the packet. He was living hand to mouth in those days. He could see now that he should have taken more stuff, and a bag, but how was he to know how long it took to walk to the top of the ridge and that there were no more houses?

  He was just learning the ropes. That’s what Zane would have said.

  The day after he finished the Moro bar he might have tried raw crawly. Maybe a day or two after that, if he hadn’t found the huts, even an empty shell.

  Winstone picked up the pincer and threw it back into the dam. It didn’t make much of a splash, so he threw a stone in as well. A flock of Canada geese yammered up from the opposite beach, and he wondered if they’d lay their eggs out there on the island in spring and whether they’d taste good boiled and how he could get to them other than swim or row, neither of which he was very good at. He wondered what corned beef hash was and how it was made and if maybe sometimes it could come in a tin or a packet.

  A gust of wind pushed past him and onto the dam. It was late getting up. That or the sun was going down early.

  He didn’t see the kitten on the way home, though he walked around all three rock tors. It was a long way for a kitten to come, but that night, just in case, Winstone saved three of the sausages from his spaghetti-with-sausages can and almost half his vanilla creamed rice and put them on a flat rock outside the cave.

  EAST

  Zane would have known about corned beef hash, for sure. He was always making stuff to eat, and he knew a lot of things, even though Winstone had been wrong about him being a teacher. It had just been lucky, Zane being there, parked outside school that day. Lucky for Winstone.

  Lucky for both of us, Zane said, or we wouldn’t have got to know each other. Hey you want some cheesecake?

  Zane worked for the council, he wrote reports and ticked boxes and filled out forms, and he started at seven o’clock and worked through lunch so he could finish early. Which was why he was hungry when he got home and ready for something good to eat, a toastie with Mexican beans and onions and cheese, or a potato-top pie or oven wedges with tomato sauce and sour cream. He knew Mexican like in the films and even though it wasn’t his job he taught Winstone some. Salsa. Tortilla. Guacamole. Si senor which sounded hard but just meant yessir. Vamoose, which wasn’t anything to do with a moose but meant go away and John Wayne made a lot more sense when you knew that. Winstone learned to say a whole phrase. Hasta la vista, baby.

  Winstone was always amazed at the stuff other people knew.

  Don’t let him touch you, Courtenay Thomas whispered to Kelly-Anne Jones as she handed out their maths tests. He’s had his hand down his pants. He plays with himself.

  Winstone didn’t put out his hand for the paper but let Kelly-Anne put the test on the edge of his desk while he stared at a spot in the opposite corner. Bic was working for Courtenay’s dad and Winstone wondered if he’d told her.

  She knows, Zane said, because she does it too. Everybody does.

  But Courtenay’s a girl.

  Yeah them too. Don’t they teach you this stuff in school these days?

  Winstone shook his head. Not at any school he’d been to, but then he was forever missing stuff on account of all the moving around and he was just about to ask Zane how and what girls touched when he thought of something important.

  Does John Wayne play with himself?

  You bet he did.

  Do you?

  Zane blinked. Yeah. Sure.

  Why?

  I told you, everybody does.

  But why do we?

  Because we’re lonely, Zane said, and he looked a wee bit funny.

  Winstone thought about that for a while and it felt true.

  Because we need to practise, Zane said. Because it feels good.

  Practise for what?

  For when we meet someone we love. So we know how to do it right.

  Winstone was lost. You mean they’ll see us?

  Yeah, sort of. Sometimes. Yeah.

  Winstone knew about sex, of course he did. He’d seen it, and not just on TV. At parties, through the windows of cars, sometimes late at night when he got up for a piss and Bic was too wasted to have clos
ed the bedroom door. One time Grunt had come into his room all slurry and giggly and said hey Winnie are you asleep and when to be on the safe side Winstone hadn’t said anything back Grunt and Kirsty had done it right there on Bodun’s bed. But he hadn’t seen anyone touching themselves, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to do what he had seen them doing to anyone, especially somebody he loved.

  Zane said touching yourself didn’t always happen and everybody felt that way at first.

  So why do they do it then?

  Because when you love someone you want to make them feel good. Touching yourself feels good yeah? Well it’s even better when somebody does it for you.

  If Grunt had been making Kirsty feel good she’d had a funny way of showing it, but Winstone didn’t want to argue with Zane, so he didn’t say anything more about that. You’re talking about girls, he said, and he thought about Marlene and her smelly pinkness. I don’t want to touch girls.

  I’m talking about someone you love, Zane said, and he was nothing like angry with Winstone but not very pleased. It doesn’t matter who, he said. And it’s not always about what you want. That’s what love is, not being selfish.

  Winstone was pretty sure he’d heard that before, on TV, or Wednesday mornings at Brownburn School from the Bible lady or a poem Mrs Clarke had read out and maybe all three, and it seemed like everyone had already agreed and it was decided.

  How do you know if you’re doing it right? he asked Zane.

  Doing what right?

  Winstone looked down over the crotch of his tracksuit pants at the toe of his sock and scuffed it on the carpet. When you touch it, he said. You know. When you play with yourself.

  Well. Zane put his spoon down on the coffee table and sat back and shifted a little on the couch. Why don’t you show me how you do it?

  Winstone felt himself go very still like when you’ve grabbed an electric fence by mistake and you’re waiting to see if it’s on and Zane laughed and said, Hey it’s okay. We’re mates aren’t we? Mates do this kind of stuff all the time. Haven’t you ever had a pissing contest?