Scoundrel Days

by Brentley Frazer

  Right away Reuben starts up the silver tongue. They pour us beers from their jugs and challenge us to a game of pool. When our turn to pay comes, Reuben says we have to split for a while to go to the bank. We walk up and down the main street looking for unlocked cars. Reuben slips into a Mercedes-Benz and goes through the glove box, pocketing change. We have about fifty bucks. We get back to the bar and the American chicks in time to find them leaving. We act all disappointed and they invite us back to their hostel.

  We sit in their room in a cloud of weed smoke and cheap alcohol, and Reuben starts making out with a stunning brunette. A couple of the chicks leave about then but one asks me to go for a swim with her. We get out to the pool as dawn reverses the shadows and she strips off and jumps right in, naked as Eve herself.

  —Fuck! she squeals: Freezing my tits off!

  She swims over to the edge and offers me one of her nipples. She has silky skin like a seal. I suck her erect nipples and breasts for a bit and then I go for her pussy and she purrs for a second and spreads her legs, but then breaks away, kicking off from the side of the pool with a huge splash, soaking me.

  —Fucking hammering! she says, looking wasted.

  —Speaking of fucking, let’s go to your room and get warm. I stand there dripping, shivering, looking hopeful, I guess.

  She laughs and says:

  —Dude, that only happens in books.

  ——

  We make it to the showground right on 9 am. The carnie glares at me as I clamber up the ladder, obviously smashed. I spend the whole day catching kids trying to kill themselves on the slippery slide. The thing drops three floors down in a tight spiral. It has a bar across where the kid sits. I pull a lever, the bar lifts and the kid drops screaming out of sight. A few of them take to swinging on the bar before they sit down. They hang out above the crowd of hot-dog-munching fairy-floss-eating showground patrons below. I save about fifty kids from grievous bodily harm or certain death on the first day. Other kids get bogged in the pit of coloured balls, sucked down screaming as others come out of the rotating barrel hallway and jump on top of them. By 10 pm I feel pretty fucked up. I find Reuben coming out of the 3D cinema looking like I feel.

  —Let’s hit some clubs. I nicked a kid’s wallet today. Little cunt had a hundred bucks in there! Fucken rich kids, man … I fucken hate rich kids. Disgust lurks furtive in his soul.

  The next three days look like someone photocopied the first day. Saving kids’ lives, sitting at the top of the show ride watching everyone having fun. I have one more day of this until a pay cheque. I haven’t eaten since breakfast at Reuben’s grandma’s.

  We get off work and make our way back to her house. Reuben seems oddly quiet. We walk along a path beside a park and two young kids stop us and ask to bum a cigarette. Reuben grabs the older one by the throat and screams in his face GIVE ME YOUR FUCKEN MONEY, YOU LITTLE CUNT! The kids empty their pockets, shaking like kittens that have fallen into a fishpond. The little fuckers had a hundred and eighty bucks between them! I think Reuben might have some real malice building up in his heart.

  Anyway, fuck sleep when we have a hundred and eighty bucks. Reuben has a go at the cab driver, who says, jovial:

  —Where ya headed?

  —Take us the long way and ya’ll get yaself stabbed, cunt.

  —Settle down, mate! The cab driver sounds serious.

  —Just drive, cunt, Reuben barks.

  —Bad day then, feller?

  —Just fucken drive, mate. Don’t fucken bother with ya small-talk shit.

  —I need a destination, or I can refuse your fare. He slows, like he intends to pull over and kick us out.

  —Mate … drop us off at the clubs, will ya? I say, defusing the situation.

  We get out of the cab in the city and wander around the nightclub district, looking for pretty girls. Outside this place called Gilligan’s Bar we spot the two British dudes from Nelly Bay who gave us the ecstasy pills. We get in and drink about two hundred pots of beer each.

  The Poms tell us about this chick named Alexandra they met while snorkelling. She arrives and blows both Reuben and me away. A total honey: long sun-kissed tresses, goddess features, perky tits and amazing arse. Alexandra and Reuben flirt right away, but then, when I get left alone with her for a minute, she leans in:

  —I wanna do something outrageous tonight, something I’ve never done. How amazing … ecstasy … wow. Have you tried those tablets the Poms have?

  —Yeah. What you thinking? Late-night beach capers?

  —Where do you and Reuben live?

  —A short cab ride. We have some weed.

  —Let’s go! She leans on me.

  I try to sneak her out of there, but Reuben sees us leaving and shuffles over.

  —We bailing? Drains his pint.

  —Yeah.

  —Let’s go! Alexandra breathes and leans on Reuben, too.

  Reuben starts feeling Alexandra up in the cab and soon they pash like long-lost lovers. The cab driver has his eyes fixed on the rear-vision mirror as her bare breasts escape her singlet. I give up. Maybe I’ll get to watch Reuben fuck her anyway.

  We have to sneak in so we don’t wake Reuben’s grandma. Of course the whole damn place creaks and sways as we tiptoe down the hallway. When Alexandra sees the double bed in the room, she looks concerned, but Reuben rolls up a joint and she starts getting all liberal again, lying back on the bed, flashing her underwear, playing with her hair. I lie down beside her and she rolls on top of me and starts kissing me. Reuben sits there watching, rolling joints. After a while she jumps up and says she needs to go to the bathroom. Reuben takes her down the hall. I wait for my erection to subside before I get up and roll myself a joint. I smoke the whole thing and roll another and they still haven’t come back from the toilet.

  I get up and creep down the hall to find Alexandra on the toilet with Reuben kneeling between her legs, licking her. She holds herself steady with these steel rails bolted to the wall that Grandma uses to hoist herself out of her wheelchair and onto the bowl. I watch for a bit but the whole thing looks disgusting to me – an old lady uses this toilet. I go back to the room. Pretty soon they both come in and Alexandra says, taking off her dress:

  —Do you wanna share?

  I get behind, licking her as she gives Reuben a blowjob. I start fucking her, and then her hand gropes Reuben’s scrotum, recoils.

  —Born like that, with only one, Reuben says, and then he moans: Babe, you give great head.

  —Pull out before you come! she says over her shoulder.

  We fuck all night. Then we lie around smoking. She decides to give us both head again but the sound of a wheelchair rolling down the hall wrecks the scene. Alexandra rises, dresses all erotic in front of us, bends over, teasing us one last time. Then she says:

  —Thanks for the great night! and sneaks out of the bedroom. She bumps right into Reuben’s grandma, who doesn’t sound at all impressed.

  3

  After slumbering for a while I awake with a jolt, remembering I have to save kids’ lives at the show again today. I bail out of there, leaving Reuben still asleep, as he doesn’t clock in at the 3D cinema until midday. I run to the showground and through the gate, flashing my staff card. I make it to the ride about twenty minutes late and start to climb up the ladder when the carnie comes out of his ticket booth and says:

  —Oi, fucker, what ya doin?

  —Sorry, late, I know, scooting up.

  —Get off my fucken ride, ya little cunt. He spits and pulls me off the ladder.

  —Huh?

  —I said, get off my fucken ride, ya cunt! he screams in my face.

  —Man …

  —I don’t know you, mate … Why the fuck ya on me ride?

  —You joking?

  —FUCK OFF! And he punches me in the mouth.

  I get up, spi
tting blood into the dust. A million people suddenly crowd around. The carnie fakes a move to hit me again and goes back into his ticket booth. The crowd thins out, my swearing drowned by a loudspeaker which screams Roast beef sammidges – come and get ya roast beef sammidge – free can of drink with every roast beef sammidge.

  I wander around, sucking my fat lip, in shock I guess. The cunt totally ripped me off, tricked me from the beginning with the paying no tax thing if I didn’t fill out the form. I have no proof that I’ve worked there. Trying to figure out what he owes me makes me even more depressed, counting the money I should have.

  I get up the courage to roll a few kids for cash but, as I pick a target – these two in the crowd wearing three-hundred-dollar Nikes – I find five bucks on the ground. I get three hot dogs in a row and inhale them. Feeling a bit better I figure I’ll find some cops and tell them what happened, but as I get out to the gate to where the cops hang around every day, I see Reuben coming in. Bastard looks all refreshed. He has shaved and left some stubble so he looks sophisticated. Before I can open my mouth to tell him why I have blood all over my shirt and now talk with a lisp, he says:

  —Fucken Grandma kicked us out. Called my uncle – another cunt I want to kill. Had him come over and watch me pack up our shit and leave. Stood there slapping a shifter in his hand.

  —Fuck … What did ya do with our bags?

  —Left em under her house. We can go get em when we finish work.

  Then he surveys my busted-up countenance. Eyebrows raise.

  —He fucken ripped me off. The carnie cunt claimed to not know me.

  —Fuck me dead.

  —Yeah, man. I argued and the fucker smashed me in the mouth. I pull out my lip to show the huge gash my teeth made.

  He looks concerned – Reuben rarely looks concerned.

  —Ya know what?

  —What?

  —The fucker who owns the cinema and the cunt who ripped you off … I bet they have some game going because I didn’t fill out those fucken forms either.

  —Fuck.

  Like every cornered animal Reuben’s pupils sharpen, hypodermic and precise. He shuffles off, shouting back:

  —Wait for me out front!

  I wander across the road to a crowded burger joint on the corner. I stand around by the phone box, looking for someone to bum a cigarette from. Reuben comes out the gates and stands there, waiting for a break in the traffic. He shuffles over, shaking his head.

  —Same shit, brother.

  —You serious!

  —Yup … cunt said he didn’t know me when I tried to get in the ticket box. Had some chick in there doing my job already. Told me he’d call the cops if I didn’t fuck off.

  We sit around the burger joint, both glum as puppets in a tragedy. Reuben has ten bucks left from the wallet he stole yesterday, so he buys us a pack of smokes each. We spend most of the day there, standing around the phone box, not really talking, just trying to figure out what the hell to do next.

  —If we get our bags, I can read some tarot down the beach. I crush an empty Coke can under my heel.

  —Granny has my cunt uncle fixing her washing machine.

  As Reuben says this, lighting a cigarette, the carnie who ripped me off comes out the gates, through the crowd and across the street. He walks right by us and doesn’t look at me, or notice my rage building as he approaches. He goes into the burger joint and comes out skinning a pack of cigarettes. Still not looking at me, he goes into the phone box and starts dropping coins in the slot.

  —Fuck! That cunt in the phone box …

  —What about him? Reuben looks up from the ocean of spit between his boots.

  —The fucker who ripped me off!

  Without missing a single beat, Reuben stands, shuffles over to one of the tables at the front of the burger joint and grabs a wine bottle filled with iced water. He strides to the phone box, emptying the water from the bottle in front of, maybe, forty people, and bangs on the glass. The carnie looks over his shoulder, pushes out the door of the booth a bit and says:

  —Fuck off, ya cunt.

  Reuben punches him through the open door and, as the dude crumples down, Reuben belts him in the face with the wine bottle. After a couple of strikes the bottle smashes and the dude’s face peels open like an avocado, teeth buckled in and broken, unconscious. The horrified crowd gasp and scatter like a passel of pigeons when you run at them in the city square.

  —We should get the fuck outta here, brother, says Reuben as he calmly throws the bloody broken bottle out into the traffic. The carnie crawls from the phone box, groaning, trying to hold his face together. Reuben kicks him hard in the guts and starts running on his heels up the street. I race after him. We run for about a month, not looking back.

  We get to this overpass with a ladder down the side and Reuben scoots over the edge. I follow. We huddle up on a ledge beneath until night creeps its feelers around the edges of the concrete. Reuben hasn’t said anything for about six hours and then he slaps a freeway moth on the wall beside my head. He has the same flat half-gleam in his eye I’ve seen in all men who succumb to the burdens of life. Like when he stabbed Muddy. Not an inch of remorse. Only animal satisfaction. Reuben never looks sorry. I’ve never seen a wild thing look sorry.

  I don’t have much to say either, not out loud anyway. The malice that curls up in Reuben’s heart has darkened since Alexandra noticed his missing testicle.

  We make it back to Reuben’s grandma’s house under cover of darkness. No sooner do we get there than Reuben puts his head on his bag and goes right to sleep in the dirt by her humming washing machine and the rusted-out car she hasn’t driven for twenty years.

  ——

  Sometime during the night, lying in the dirt under the house, I awake to the creak of Reuben’s grandma’s wheelchair rolling across the floorboards above.

  I hear the bathroom door bang open and the grunts of the old lady hauling herself onto her toilet. A loud crash shakes the house! Reuben sits bolt upright, swinging punches, yelling something about a war? It sounds to me like the old lady has taken a fall, so I run up the back steps and go to bang on the door but realise she doesn’t know that Reuben and I have come back and fallen asleep under her house. I look through the window and see the toilet door cracked open, with a beam of light spilling out. A leg on the floor. Deliberating what the hell to do, I hear her feebly cry for help.

  Reuben comes up the steps behind me, rubbing his eyes, and I tell him his granny has taken a fall. He goes right ahead and shoulders in the back door. As the door breaks, we hear a scream. We rush in and find the poor old dear out cold with her skirt around her neck, spread-eagled on the floor in a pool of piss. She fainted as we burst into the house. One of the steel rails she uses to haul herself onto the toilet has come away from the wall. I really don’t want to see an old lady’s vagina, but I see it anyway as we struggle to lift her dead weight back into the chair. God has the worst sense of humour.

  Anyway, despite both of us feeling pretty good about probably saving the old bird’s life, after she makes us cocoa and toast and lets us smoke a couple of cigarettes in her kitchen, she shoos us out as the dawn fingers through the trees. We wander around, feeling pretty lost and hopeless and paranoid, looking out for cops and carnies hell-bent on revenge. We stand by the freeway in belting rain, cars roaring by with warm dry people inside, and I bet none of them have a rumble in their belly like death trying to claw out, either. Carnies learn violence from birth. If the five generations of carnies who share a caravan with the one Reuben beat until he bled clear as a jellyfish catch us, they will kill us.

  As I watch Reuben, teeth chattering, trying to light a wet cigarette with a sogged lighter, I see him snap – like one of those proper psychotic breaks you hear about. He has this look in his eyes the same as Terence Hill when he has a bar fight in one of his westerns – he fights
mean and dirty. In a scene from my favourite of his films, God Forgives … I Don’t, his buddy, played by Bud Spencer, has a go at him over some cash they heisted. Spencer dances around, shaping up, all gentlemanly, and Hill slouches there with this calm ferocity in his countenance. As soon as the dancing Spencer gets close enough, Hill jumps up, swings on a tree branch and kicks Bud right in the face with his cowboy boots.

  Reuben has this same calm ferocity about him now as he stands here by the road with trucks blasting past and headlights flashing in his frozen eyes. He turns on his heel and starts marching up the side of the freeway. I watch him get a few hundred metres until he disappears in the mist from the car tyres whizzing by. I make chase and catch him pretty quickly on account of his feet giving out as soon as he runs.

  —Brother! I shout from behind him.

  —Fuck off! he screams, not looking back, but I hear him anyway through the roaring wind and the hissing tyres and the tropical rain belting down heavy as billiards. I catch him and hold him. He shakes with rage. He turns with a demon curling his mouth into a hellish sneer. I make this kind of resigned gesture and back off a bit, dropping my duffel in the mud. He hunches down, sticks his hands in his jeans.

  —Man, where …

  —To kill my uncle … Don’t fucken try to stop me.

  —You can’t kill him, man.

  —Why the fuck not?

  —Think of all the cool shit you’ll miss out on … all the chicks and weed and living free!

  —Don’t give a frosty fuck.

  I’ve seen Reuben stab a kid without blinking and smash a dude’s face in with a wine bottle. I bet he does have the guts to kill someone, if he hasn’t already. Don’t ever take a swing at Reuben; you’ll get stabbed, or worse. I can’t think of anything to say, to try to convince him we should get out of Cairns and never come back, so I slap my heart through my soaked t-shirt and say:

  —Sorry, brother, no more for me. Tapping out.