by Alan Duff
5
Two trespassers sneaked in under cover of the night they best thrive in; poised in readiness for dog outbreak, at first probing of stone thrown from the other side, then another thrown from the shadow of the head-high fence they’d climbed over. Hands gripped to retreat at sound of dog bark and paw crush over the long, sloping lawn they were eye-keened to.
No moon. No stars. Not much light that might pick them out as braced and half turned to the fence. Faint wash of sea down the street residential distance; rhythmic sigh of ocean, and the quick takes of their own excited, fearing breathing. Not forgetting the pain and rhythmic throbbing of beating wounds but a day into healing. Least not that of the taller of the two figures. And too his heart.
Waiting in that eternity it always is; the surrounding picture of darkness and funny residue of light, which maybe is from all the little artificial glows from households, but whatever, it must be a man gets eyes in the dark. He can see things. In outline, but he can pick out tiny details. Oh, but maybe just the senses heightened by being a thief; and maybe it’s the more so when you’re both fresh and sore with the physical consequences of your social inadequacy, in that your eyes, specially Jube’s, seek out – and find – in the dark a kind of atonement? (Well, it’s done now. It don’t madda anymore, the deed’s been done.) Nope. No dogs. Let’s go. Jube in control. Jube in command. Jube making up for last night: someone’s gonna pay.
Two trespassers transgressing further; flits of swift shadows moved from the fence over black space of lawn to tree eruption. Hand rested against trunk, sharp the feel of bark texture, and Sonny registering the tiny indentations so starkly he could have been stoned. Jube moving off. Sonny in fast follow. Sonny with the rising of heroics. A comic-book star. Paused at another tree. Eyes fixed on the odd shape of house. Could be a movie, even; with them the two main stars, and everyone in the audience on the edges of their seats in admiration of them (me and Jube here). Watching them, their two heroes, as they advanced on their target, big bulk of house up the slope there, roofline hither and thither, a jumble of upthrusts and downward structural angles set against a sky greyed by the faintest of light; of all them houses, the compoundment of home lights, where all the mummies’d put their kids to bed, and daddies’d helped too, and the love’d been long made and they were separate, kind of, in dream now. And two thieves panting unfit bodies up a steep slope, intending to commit crime.
No-one home, Jube through his swollen lips coming out muffled. Like I always say, Son: no-one home at two, no-one home at all. Let’s go. Sonny not as sure as Jube, never was; even though the letterbox had circulars built up in it to tell old-hand burglars that the newspapers might be stopped, the neighbours collecting the mail, but unless you had a No Circulars sign on your letterbox, Jube’d chuckingly reminded, ya may as well stick a sign up says you’re ready to be burgled.
Off the lawn standing in the driveway catching breath, both of them hands on knees but with eyes wary, observant. Front entrance one of them richy jobs, with big overhang of roof verandah, and a little lightglow on the doorbell so could be seen the solid slab of wooden door in there under tunnel-like entrance of roof and support poles dripping with growth jagged in leafy outline. Brass knocker smack dab upper centre of door, visible in the bell light. (In case there’s a power cut?) Sonny wondering about that one as they straightened and headed for the door. Jube trying it, locked. Empty down there in the carport. This was looking a cinch.
Jube led them around the house; slowly-slowly, careful-careful, ya never can tell, ain’t nothin written as guaranteed when ya burgling: though it was looking an odds-on certainty. Man, I never seen such a weird house; you, Sonny? It’s weird alright. Hope it’s weird with the goods inside. Yeah, it’ll be, Jube confident in his tone, that mufflement of voice reminding Sonny, as if he needed reminding. (Was a fuckin nightmare. But then so is our life. This very life of right-now: creeping around this big house, looking for best way in.) Sonny not thinking what it might be like to be on the receiving end, not really. Mind not working like that. Not now.
Pausing at windows, none with curtains across, to peer in, scan for movement. Nothin. No life here, man. Jube sounding excited. The hope returned. But I ain’t never seen a joint like this shape before. Nor me, man. Check out the size a the fucking lawn, Son. No Neighbourhood Watches here, bro. Jube at the vastness of section size as well trees along the boundary lines, with just small gaps through which hardly a house light shone at this two o’clock of a starless early morning. Man, we could have a fucking party and the neighbours wouldn’t hear. I’ve got a good feeling, Sonny. A real good feeling. Yeah well, let’s wait and see, man. Won’t be no good feeling the pigs catch us on the job. Wait up a minute, I’m gonna check for a back way out. Aw, come on – No come ons, man, It goes wrong … Sonny not waiting for Jube to further scorn his caution, headed up the sloping lawn to where it levelled off.
The surprise of outlook. Of residential spots of light, and the ribboning of streetlamps in that quiet way they get of two in the morning, a stealing morning. It had Sonny catch his breath; was a stepping from one world to the other, which he hadn’t thought about till now. Brought it back in the instant too, his and Jube’s distance: from them down there before his eyes, fast asleep all the families, might be one or two couples making love. Keening his ear in the idiot hope that he might hear the cries of woman in ecstasy. Then he felt wrong. Not for the thought of love-making, but for being here.
But then it didn’t feel wrong, not when he went whoosh in his mind over his life; what else could he have been? So it felt out of balance, not wrong. At odds. With the world, as usual. Of two of society’s failures in the process of taking more of their living – the luxuries end – from the same society’t kept em alive on government benefits. And Sonny knew it didn’t fit. So he turned, not bothering with assessing a possible extra escape route, and he trotted down the slope where Jube was waiting in the shadow of one of the many jut-outs of house structure; a house of nooks and corner crannies, and why, even some of the windows were curved. Jube wasn’t going to be asking him about his escape route, Sonny knew that, so he just followed Jube in silence as he went back into burglar mode.
Back door was full pane of glass. Couldn’t be better, Jube in a whisper. Go check out the neighbours for hearing the glass break, Jube instructed. Sonny did a quick but careful scout, told Jube fine, too many trees, nobody’ll hear a thing. Good. Jube ran his gloved fingers up around the door surround for alarm wiring. Sonny flicked on a torch for the sign that declared a place was burglar-alarmed. Nothing. Jube hissed at him to turn the fucking thing off, Ya think it’s Christmas?
Jube took off his jersey and wrapped it round his right hand. Sonny stepped forward and ran a diamond roller glass cutter in a practised square adjacent to the door handle, a bit larger than fist size. Stepped back. Jube gave it a little aiming nudge first, then a short hard punch. Broke first time. Sonny waiting for the hiss of triumph from Jube as he usually did. But it didn’t come. Only a half-hearted grunt of satisfaction, as if he was preoccupied with his hurt from the beating. But more the hurt to his manpride; that Jube had and Sonny didn’t see the point of. Though Sonny knew it well enough. Was the thing that ran through every crim he ever knew: pride. But not pride pride. Just this sullen, dangerous quality, a capacity to be deeply hurt by anything and everything. Then watch out. World, that is. Made em bashers, stabbers, softball-bat clubbers, even murderers, when the pride was stepped on. Real or imagined. Sonny listening to Jube’s breathing as he fiddled with the door lock through the hole. Sonny hoping like hell then that no-one was inside, or they’d be the ones copping Jube’s simmering wrath.
Inside. That first moment. A limbo. On the way from your domain into another’s. Raced the heart, lightened the head, had the face going hot and cold with the flushes. Excited and feared. The stranger(s) on wrong territory. Ya wanted to turn and run, but your other mind was saying stay stay, this could be it. So ya stood there, and ya felt li
ke a lost child stumbled into a somewhere it shouldn’t be and not knowing the means, in the mixed-up mind, how to get the hell out. Then the same mind it started moving, rapidly, through the changes.
Sonny remembered the time he and Jube did a place and they were peering through a window when a woman sat up in bed – her shape did – and screamed. Like nothing a man’d heard before, and it’d hurt him. He wanted to yell at her to stop, not to worry they weren’t rapists, they hadn’t come to murder her, just to, like, steal some stuff from her, preferably cash. But the woman was screaming and Jube was swearing under his breath, then he got louder and next he was yelling at the woman, calling her a bitch, that she should be so lucky he was gonna rape her. Sonny took off, left Jube to his mad devices. Jube came sauntering back to the car parked some hundreds of yards away as casual could be and laughing at the woman her fear and how she oughta be grateful they weren’t there to do a bit of man’s business. Jube informed Sonny as they drove away, did he know women have a very high rate of orgasm when they’re raped? That’s because it’s a woman’s secret fantasy to be raped, it’s what they all wank emselves over.
Sound of Jube moving, the tip-toeing of his cowboy boots on a hard surface, his outline a tall, swift-moving shape. Sonny wiping at the sweat broke out over his brow and running down his face, the woollen gloves feeling like sandpaper as he wiped. Wiping and letting his mind do its processing stuff that’d give command to his scared stiff legs to move. And it was always like this. Same for others he knew, though not most. Too unmanly for em to admit if they were anyway.
It was a bit like that first chemical trickle of sleep coming on – it felt tremendous. A high on its way. The fear faded away and came great relief and a strange excitement, like some part of you was being avenged, or compensated for the life you’d been given, even the life you the adult’d made for yourself. It was still a making-up. So Sonny moved off after Jube.
Through what had to be the kitchen by the shapes and little gleams of shiny metal here and there catching light from outside, bare though it was, and Jube’s frame in outline as he moved across like a huge screen these huge windows, a row of em. And as Sonny followed suit, the city buildings suddenly rose up in his vision and repeated themselves in mirror image on a still harbour. And there ships, strung out with glowing lightbulbs, rows of majestic and bulky steel profiles. (Me, up here looking down on it, like I own this joint. Like I paid to have this view …)
The eyes adjusted and, with the added light from glittering city, the room became vast, its shape quite irregular. A big piano with its half-raised lid throwing off the building lights. This was class. What kind of people live in a joint like this? And where’s Jube got to?
Found Jube, picked up his distinctive form as he stepped past a tall, narrow window other side of the big ones that had the view. Jube’d give directions in his own good time. Sonny took his eyes back to the big windows, took a moment to figure out that the zips of lights running both ways along a well-illuminated strip were a motorway. No stars. No moon. Yet for some reason getting a thought about stars, how every little dot of twinkle was a huge body and that some dwarfed even the sun. Just dots, yet vaster than everything that’d ever been of mankind and his mad and sad and silly and hideous ways. Then he turned to pick out Jube again when –!!
Sonny sucked in a great breath of total disbelief at the grabbing of his arm in painful grip. Had to stifle his scream. Then came Jube’s chuckle, which rose to a rolling laughter, and Sonny whacked away Jube’s hand from his arm, You cunt! You cunt! And Jube still laughing. That ain’t funny. Sonny’s annoyance growing fear at Jube’s laughter seemingly out of control. He started for the door out. Got a few paces then the world flooded with light.
Sonny dropped instinctively to the floor, which brought howling laughter from Jube. Sonny stood up. Jube a monstrous sight with beaten-up face and mouth agape in laughter, Sonny had no eyes for the illuminated surrounds. Ya mad? You gone fuckin mad or sumpin? Brain damage? It’s brain damage, man, that’s what you got from the hiding: fuckin brain damage. The hell’ve you got the fuckin lights on for, man? Ya like being inside? Ya like prison cells? Man, I’m outta here. Sonny made for the door once again.
Sonny, Sonny – Sonnee! Hold up, man, whatsa big panic? But Sonny didn’t stop till he got to the door and reached for the handle. Jube, you are stark fuckin ravers – Ya are! Yet couldn’t help but be aware of the strikingness of this house now with the kitchen flooded in light, showing up the huge living-room area where stood that big black piano. And Jube moving over to this big dining table, saying, A note, a note. They left us a note. Sonny not knowing where to take his eyes – on Jube or at this new dimension of living such as he’d never seen. His body still wanting to flee, and warning Jube, What about Neighbourhood Watch, you idiot? Jube stopping at the insult to give Sonny a baleful stare before shaking his head and grabbing up the piece of paper.
Sonny racing his eyes around, but not to take in the sights; he was just scared. Jube, the pigs’ll be on their way, man. I know ain’t no-one’s here but … Had to pause to swallow the catching in his throat. Mind with images of police interrogation, of that look the D’s get of absolute superiority over you, the caught-again dumb-arse criminal, how they tell you that, in tones of contempt and scorn, and how they still play the roles of good cop and bad cop, and yet it fuckingwell works, after all these years it works. I’m going.
Sonny opened the door and stepped out into the relative night. Got several paces and was about to break into a sprint when Jube began calling him back, Sonny! Sonny! Oh, you just won’t believe this, man. Come back! Hearing the command. Stopping. Heart hammering (I don’t wanna go back inside. Can’t take one more day of it.) Yet Jube’s voice echoing in his mind.
He turned, went back and stood in the doorway, immediately struck again by the spectacular dimensions of house interior, its angles, off-white walls and timber bits and pieces everywhere, and Jube over there standing staring down at a piece of paper in his hand shaking his head, whistling a one-note expel of apparent disbelief. Jube, we gotta go – Hold up, Son. Hold up. Jube, we have to – Listen to this, Son. Jube turning to Sonny. His face grotesque in its disbelief, as it was in any expression with his swollen wounds and cuts and general puffiness.
But Sonny with the urgencies, so rushing over to Jube – even as he began reading out loud from the note – tugging at his T-shirt exposed bare arm, Please, Jube. Let’s go wait it out. Ten minutes, man, that’s all I ask. But Jube going, No, no, listen to this. As Sonny pulled at him.
Outside, the pair of them. Jube complaining it was all panic shit this coming outside to give it time, see what developed from a might-be suspicious neighbour. The fucking note, you wankah, it said there was money left for some Oliver dude. It’ll keep, Jube. It’ll keep. It’ll keep, Jube. It’ll keep, Jube in sarcastic repeat. It’ll keep says the country’s most panicky burglar. Well, it won’t fucking keep. And it don’t, Son, then I’m gonna take it out on your black hide I swear.
Waiting down by the fence, in its shadow, Jube with enough sense to hush his mouth for a few minutes as they scanned the neighbourhood – what was visible through the trees right around the property – for lights suddenly gone on. Ears anticipating the approach, the silent approach as they called it, of cops coming to the scene. Then Jube starting up that he knew it was a waste of time, but Sonny saying, Wait on, please, mate, just wait a few more minutes. My mind’s juss one big picture of a cell, man, I’m tellin ya. I’m freaked out. Wanked out more like it, Jube unsympathetic.
They gave it maybe twenty minutes. Of watching that house with the lights left on like a decoy. Then back they went, up the slope. Running this time. And Jube giggling and guessing on how much bread there’d be the note said was under the pillow of someone called Ants, of all things; pillow because, so said the strange note, she liked playing Santa Claus where her big brother was concerned.
Inside again and which way to go where the bedrooms’d be? Down them s
tairs. Jube raced off and slid down the handrails, spiralling his giggling shape down out of Sonny’s sight. A light banging on as Jube must have whacked a switch.
Sonny following down a passageway that didn’t last long before it curved off to God knows where. No time to take in much except the irregular shape and the pictures along the walls. Jube’s head going this way and the other way, he took off up where the passage curved. So Sonny went the other way where it curved again, and there was a door, to his right. He opened it. Wow. What a bedroom. Timber ceilings, the same stark white walls, windows with floral patterned curtains drawn across, two single beds with covers that kind of matched, but not exactly, the curtains, pillowcases the same. Pictures on the walls. A dressing table. Couple of chests of drawers, antique-looking, went well with the timber ceiling. The timber frames of windows. Bits and pieces that said it was a kid’s room, maybe a teenager’s.
Sonny walked over and lifted the pillow on the first bed, then the next. Nothing. He was halfway out when he heard Jube’s whoop. He went after the sound. Found Jube jumping up and down and notes – money – flying all over the place. Sonny grabbed one. A fifty. And lots of them. This couldn’t be true.
But Jube was jumping and his eyes, swollen from the beating, were near normal in their gleeful wideness, and then he was grabbing Sonny in a bearhug, lifted him up and swung him round, wouldn’t let go even when Sonny said, Easy, man. Spun him a couple of times more then flung him onto a double bed on his back and stood over him laughing and clutching a handful of notes.
We’re rich!
The note was addressed to an Oliver. Jube walked around wearing a huge grin as he read from it: Dear Oliver, Sorry we’re not home to welcome you but your father was in need of a well-earned break – What from, Jube breaking off, ripping off the poor? Fuck the cunt. Back to the note: You have the Sounds number – Hey, where’s the Sounds? Sonny shrugging he didn’t know. Maybe it means music sounds, Sonny half joking. Head still reeling with the cash find – but here it is again in case you’ve forgotten it or misplaced it. Oh, aren’t they just so fucking nice these richies, uh Sonny? In case he’s forgotten or misplaced it. Aren’t they the fucking pits, man? Jube resumed from the note: Your father says to remind you the money is repayable – Ya get that, man? Repayable. His own fucking flesh and blood and he wants his bread back. Jube sweeping an arm around the room, quite different from the one Sonny had been in and yet sorta the same in theme, or something about it. With a pad like this and he wants his own son to pay him back. Jube clicking his tongue in disgust. Sonny wondering about that himself. Oh well, least he’s got the bread to give his son. Had, Sonny. Had. Jube with a grin. Back to the note: We’re back on Sunday week, so of course make yourself at home, darling – Oh, darling, is it? The guy’s a man and they call him darling? Man, it’s his mother, ain’t it? Can’t she call her own son darling? Well of course, darling Sonny. And are you quite comfy over there on the bed? Could I get you a cushion, darling? Ya wankah, you’re worse’n this bitch, tapping the note. Jube finishing it with emphasis on the words Love, Mum.