Horsehead Man

by Rory Barnes

  ‘Over there,’ I said, pointing at the van.

  Poldarski took a long, cold look. Then very slowly he started to walk across the road to the van. The van rocked. You could hear Staxa Fun’s hooves drumming on the floor. There was a wild whinny. Luis hung out of the driver’s window and started waving. He wanted me and Easter to get a move on. But I was in no hurry. And nor was Easter; he seemed far more interested in chatting to Mrs Chandor. Poldarski had reached the van. He stood on the road and looked up at Luis. Luis ignored him.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to Tanya. ‘I want to hear this.’

  We scuttled across the road, dodging a couple of cars. We stood just behind Poldarski. Luis hung out of the window and said to me, ‘Come on, Scalp, you’ve seen the movie. Jump into the truck.’

  ‘Just one moment, driver,’ said Poldarski.

  ‘Shut up, you,’ said Luis.

  ‘I have to caution you —’

  ‘I haven’t got time for caution, buster. I live life to the full. Come on, Scalp, send that girl back to her mother and get in.’

  Poldarski said, ‘I have reason to believe —’

  Tanya said, ‘I have reason to believe you’re not in uniform, officer.’

  Poldarski looked round at Tanya, then down at his clothes.

  ‘Neither I am,’ he said and pulled a wallet out of his jacket pocket. ‘Police,’ he said to Luis, flashing the wallet. ‘Would you please step outside the vehicle.’

  ‘What is this?’ said Luis.

  ‘Do as he says, Luis,’ said Alex from somewhere in the depths of the cabin. ‘Jump out.’

  Scowling a bit, Luis opened the cab door and swung himself down to the road.

  ‘Now then,’ said Poldarski. ‘May I ask you what you’ve got in this van?’

  ‘Er … furniture,’ said Luis. ‘It’s a furniture van. We do removals. See, like it says on the side.’

  Just then Staxa went for a little canter round the interior, whinnying and snorting like a steam train.

  ‘Very lively sort of furniture,’ observed the cop.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Luis. ‘You know how it is. When people move house they take everything with them. And I mean everything. Tables, chairs, beds, the kitchen sink and the family pets. This mob have got a dear little Shetland pony for the kiddies. I mean they couldn’t leave it behind, could they?’

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind,’ said Poldarski, ‘I think we might just check this dear little Shetland pony out.’

  ‘Yeah, give us all a dekko,’ said Tanya.

  Luis said to the cop, ‘I don’t think this would be wise, it’s, er … very sensitive to light.’

  ‘It’s night,’ said the cop.

  ‘Yeah, well, headlights. Traffic. Sudden movement.’

  ‘We’ll just take a little look,’ said the policeman. ‘I must ask you to open the back doors.’

  ‘Well, just a little peek,’ said Luis with reluctance. ‘I’ll just open them a crack.’

  We all trooped round to the back of the van. Easter and Mrs Chandor had come across the road and joined us.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mrs Chandor said.

  ‘We’re going to check out this pony,’ said Tanya as Staxa gave the side of the van a good kick.

  ‘Sounds more like an elephant,’ said her mum.

  ‘Might be a prohibited species,’ said the cop. ‘There’s an awful lot of smuggling of prohibited species. Cockatoos, galahs, snakes, numbats, turtles, Tasmanian thingamajigs …’

  ‘Tasmanian elephants?’ said Mrs Chandor.

  There was a space of about three metres between the back of the truck and the next parked car. There was a couple necking in the back seat of the car. They stopped when we all crowded into the space between the two vehicles and Luis produced a key and undid the padlock. He hesitated with his hand on the lever.

  ‘I still don’t think this is very wise,’ he said.

  ‘Get on with it,’ Tanya said. ‘Slide the bolt in its groove.’

  The girl in the car unwound herself from her friend and stuck her head out of the window.

  ‘What’s the big deal?’ she said. ‘This isn’t a loading zone. Clear off.’

  ‘This guy’s smuggling an elephant,’ Tanya said.

  ‘Wicked,’ said the girl and got out of her car. Her friend stayed in the back seat, tidying up his clothes.

  ‘Right, now just the tiniest peek,’ said Luis. ‘No frightening the horses, eh?’

  ‘I thought you said there was only one,’ said Mrs Chandor.

  The back doors opened a crack and Luis put his eye to it. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s too dark. You can’t see anything.’

  ‘I think I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Poldarski, and he put his eye to the crack.

  Then the universe exploded.

  When I’d come bursting out of the doors of the van on the Trackmaster, I’d had a bit of a power-assist from the seesawing ramp. I’d flown. I’d had air. Until I hit the fence.

  But Staxa was something else again. The van’s doors slammed open, knocking the cop and poor Mrs Chandor to the ground, but missing the top of Easter’s head by a millimetre. Staxa came out of that van like spit from a camel. He soared out high over the reeling bodies of the onlookers. The streetlight flashed on steel hooves and crazy eyeballs. Man, that horse flew.

  And then he landed. No steel mesh fence for Staxa; he landed on the top of the necking couple’s car. His hooves beat a quick drum-riff on the tin. Then his back legs collapsed and his great muscle-bound bum came down with a crash.

  ‘Hey, that’s me old man’s Kingswood,’ yelled the girl.

  The dude inside was yelling too. Trying to get down between the seats, away from the rapidly lowering roof. But Staxa was already on his way, sliding down the back of the car and onto the road. Then he was up and running. Going like the clappers. Hurtling through the traffic, frightening the pedestrians.

  ‘I don’t think that beast will be attending the cinema tonight,’ said Poldarski as he picked himself up.

  ‘How very true, officer,’ I said.

  ‘You madman,’ yelled Luis. ‘That’s a good racehorse. That’s Staxa Fun.’

  ‘I have reason to believe that you were intending to commit the crime of unlawful entry into a place of public entertainment on a prohibited animal …’

  ‘Oh shut up. Come on, Easter, after him.’

  And Luis was away and running, following the horse.

  ‘If that’s the famous Staxa Fun,’ Mrs Chandor said to Easter, brushing down her skirt, ‘You’d better go and round him up. You’re meant to be his jockey.’

  Easter seemed a bit reluctant to follow Luis.

  ‘Go on,’ said Mrs Chandor. ‘Piss off.’

  Easter went. Scuttling along in his silk suit.

  There was a bit of a shemozzle around the back of the van. The girl with the squashed Kingswood chewed Alex’s ear and demanded the name of his insurance company. Her boyfriend crawled out of the wreckage and started gibbering about being traumatized for life and needing a disability pension. Poldarski told us all not to go away and went off to phone his superiors. A small crowd formed around the squashed Kingswood and started giving advice. Tanya demanded to know what was going on. Mrs Chandor demanded to know what was going on. I tried to explain everything as best I could. I told them Rachel and Gazza were planning to do radical surgery on the horse. I didn’t say what sort of surgery.

  ‘That true?’ Tanya said to Rachel, who’d climbed down out of the cabin.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Rachel said, shrugging. ‘That’s assuming they can catch the damn thing alive.’

  ‘You taking it to hospital?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Rachel. ‘Alex has got these special facilities. You can come too if you like.’

  ‘Far out!’ Tanya said. ‘Hey, Mum, let’s go and help Rachel with her operation.’

  Just then there was a clattering of hooves and a beeping of car horns and a cheer from the small crowd. Staxa Fun came hurtl
ing back up the street with Easter on board. Easter was riding bareback and without reins. There was an arrangement of straps round Staxa’s head with a short rope dangling from it. But there was nothing in Staxa’s mouth and nothing for Easter to steer with. He was just hanging onto the straps for dear life. He wasn’t in control. And the horse was going at a hundred miles an hour.

  ‘Stop!’ yelled Alex.

  But Easter had no way of stopping the animal. The pair of them shot straight past and disappeared up a side street.

  ‘What a goer,’ said Mrs Chandor. ‘I reckon I might just have a little flutter next time it races.’

  ‘Mum!’ said Tanya. ‘I’ve told you and told you: the bookies always win.’

  ‘Get on board,’ yelled Alex. ‘Into the van. Quick, or we’ll lose them.’

  ‘But the cop said …’

  ‘Drat the cop. Into the van.’

  Everyone piled in. Some into the front, some into the back. Last on board was Luis, puffing fit to burst. He lay on the floor of the van next to the ramp like a fish in the bottom of a boat. In the cabin, Alex started the engine and we roared away. The van rocked and rolled. I was getting quite used to it.

  Alex finally cornered Staxa Fun in a small park with swings and a slide. The horse was exhausted. So was Easter. We got the pair of them back into the van quite easily. The real fun started when we got to the warehouse.

  Chapter Twelve

  Actually, we got Staxa out of the van and into the warehouse without too much trouble. The disaster occurred when we were trying to get him down the stairs. Horses are not famous for descending flights of concrete stairs into the bowels of the Earth. Staxa was no exception. He went down ten steps and stopped. Stopped dead.

  Easter was riding him, kicking away with his ten centimetre heels. Luis was in front hauling on the rope attached to his head collar. Staxa was trying to dig his horseshoes into the concrete. The rest of us were standing around at the top of the stairs looking down.

  ‘This is a shambles, Greystone,’ Rachel said. ‘A typical, four star, fair dinkum, five hundred percent, Greystone shambles.’

  ‘Well, you think of a better way,’ Luis yelled from in front of the horse. ‘You think of a better way of getting the damn nag to move.’

  ‘I didn’t build this hellhole,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Spook him,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean? Spook him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s what happens to horses. You read about it in books: they get spooked.’

  ‘Make like a spook, Luis,’ Rachel yelled. ‘Do a ghost impression.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Luis shouted.

  ‘We’ll try at this end,’ Rachel yelled back. ‘Right everyone. On the count of three. One, two, three …’

  We all started to make ghost noises. Yowelling and whoooing and going eeeeiooo iooeee waaa. We were having a ball. Tanya got quite carried away.

  I started leaping up and down, yelling my head off. Rachel shouted, ‘Make like a ghost horse.’ But I didn’t know what sort of noise a ghost horse would make, so I had a go at being a ghost donkey — doing the eeeyore, eeeyore bit.

  And what’s more: it worked. The horse took off like a shot. Galloping madly down the stairs and into the stainless steel forest. Luis fell backwards the moment the tension came off the rope and Staxa went stampeding over him, trampling him to death.

  Just like that. One minute Luis was alive and shouting. The next minute he was dead.

  At least, that’s what it looked like. We all stopped yelling and tiptoed down the stairs to where Luis lay mangled and lifeless. Rachel knelt beside the body, opened her black bag and pulled out a stethoscope and pencil torch. She shone the torch straight into Luis’ eyes and ran the stethoscope over his body.

  ‘Well, that simplifies matters,’ she said. ‘I was planning to slap a cloth full of ether over his face. As it is, the horse has done the trick. Come on, give us a hand. We’ll have his brain into the horse in a jiffy.’

  The horse, meanwhile, had disappeared into the stainless steel forest. You could hear Easter cursing and shouting as he tried to get the beast under control. The steel cylinders made an eerie ‘thunk’ every time Staxa bounced off one.

  Up on the stairs, Alex said, ‘Hey, wait up, you can’t put Luis in the horse. It was Scalp that was meant to be …’

  ‘Change of plan,’ Rachel said. ‘Unless we get this lad into the horse quicksmart, he’s a goner. Deadybones. Kaput.’

  ‘Luis’ not going to like that,’ Alex said. ‘I don’t think he’s going to like it one bit. He’s meant to be the mastermind. He’s not meant to be the horse.’

  ‘Luis has got no choice,’ Rachel said. ‘This is his only chance. Go and help round up the horse.’

  The rest of us gathered round poor Luis and dragged him off to the operating table. Rachel whispered to me, ‘We’ve lucked out here, Spud. Now no one can blame us for the substitution. We’re doing it for Luis’ own good.’

  Of course, I’m no stranger to brain transplants. I’m an old hand. Rachel and Gazza once installed my brain in a vat of warm soup. Then they went and put it in Bluey Doig’s old body. But on both those occasions I’d been out cold. I just woke up at the end of it all. This was the first time I’d ever witnessed one of their dodgy operations. This was the first time I’d ever assisted in one of their dodgy operations. Jeez it was fun.

  It was also hard work. It took us all weekend and we hardly slept, just snatched naps on a pile of styrofoam that we’d brought down from the warehouse.

  Tanya and I went out for pizza every now and then. Sometimes it was day when we went out, sometimes night. Down in the City of the Provisionally Dead it was always bright with artificial fluorescent daylight. Sometimes everything was so tense you thought your own brain would blow a fuse from the concentration, and Rachel’s face would go dead white behind her mask. She’d speak to Gazza in grunted words that only he could understand. But half the time Gazza seemed to have understood her before she’d even spoken. The probe she wanted inserted, the clamp she wanted clamped, the neural interface she wanted interfaced. Whatever it was, Gazza had done it within seconds. It was wonderful to watch.

  Poor old Alex had a rough time of it. In a normal operating theatre, there are heaps of trained nurses to assist. But all we had was Alex and he was a debarred vet. Vets don’t normally do brain surgery. If your poor old dog gets a tumour in its head, the vet will just send it off to doggy heaven for you with a quick injection. So this Staxa Fun caper was a bit out of poor Alex’s league. He had to play the role of theatre staff. Rachel called him ‘Nurse’ every now and then. When he started to complain, mumbling behind his mask that he was a doctor too, Gazza started addressing him as ‘Sister’.

  When things were going well, Gazza and Rachel joked and fooled about. They didn’t bicker anymore. I could see what Rachel meant about boring old brain surgery in a boring old hospital driving a girl nuts. There was a bit of an argument at one stage about how much of Luis’ brain should be transplanted. Rachel wasn’t trying to just whip out Staxa’s complete brain and ram Luis’ brain into the space. Staxa knew a lot more about galloping and cantering and trotting than Luis could ever hope to learn.

  ‘The trick,’ said Rachel, ‘is to connect Luis’ personality and intellect to Staxa’s motor neurones. There’s no way poor old Luis could learn to gallop and jump by Elmbank Cup time. We’ve got to leave the galloping bit to Staxa.’

  ‘Can’t we leave a bit of Staxa’s personality in as well,’ said Gazza. ‘Sort of augment Luis’ character a bit, give him a bit of horse sense.’

  We all groaned, but Rachel said, ‘Sure, why not?’

  Easter and Mrs Chandor sparred with each other for the whole weekend. Mrs Chandor kept referring to Easter as ‘Wee Jock.’ Easter said he was of Italian descent, not Scottish. Mrs Chandor pointed out that he was (a) small, and (b) a jockey. Therefore he was Wee Jock and there was nothing he could do about it. Once, when Tany
a and I were out in the real world, buying the pizzas, I said to her, ‘I don’t know how much more of your mum’s teasing Easter is going to be able to take.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Tanya said. ‘He’s getting the message.’

  ‘What message.’

  ‘Mum likes him. That’s why she keeps teasing him.’

  When we’d finished the swap, Gazza and Alex put Luis’ old body in one of the cryonics cylinders for safekeeping. Staxa Fun was still unconcious and it was thought best to take him out to the farm for his recovery. Getting him into the furniture van was simplicity itself. Alex backed the forklift from the warehouse down the concrete stairs, picked up the comatose horse and drove him back up to ground level. It was a bumpy ride, but Staxa wouldn’t have known anything about it. Alex and Easter left for the farm in the van. The rest of us went in search of a taxi.

  ‘So how does it feel,’ Rachel said to me as we ambled dozily along in the late Sunday sunshine, ‘how does it feel not to be a horse?’

  ‘Marvellous,’ I said.

  ‘Thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘I wonder what Luis’ going to think when he wakes up,’ Tanya said. ‘He might go ape.’

  ‘Most likely,’ Rachel said, ‘but we’ll leave that to those two crooks. It’s their problem. I’m going home to sleep for twenty-four hours straight and then I’m going to be Miss Goody Two Shoes again: hyper-respectable pillar of the medical establishment.’

  A taxi cruised past and we flagged it down. By the time I’d got my seatbelt on and had given the driver the directions, the rest of them were all asleep in a heap on the back seat.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Life returned to normal. Well, about as normal as my life ever gets. The bike shop was doing all right. Rachel and Gazza went back to being respectable brain surgeons. They started bickering again, of course, but not very seriously. Tanya and I got to see quite a lot of each other, and Easter and Mrs Chandor got to see even more of each other. Easter and Mrs Chandor became a bit of an item.