Playfair

by Jamie Tuck

  ~

  . . . Hash jerks awake.

  ‘Gaaa!’

  The whooshing sound flying through his head, seeking a target.

  Any target.

  ‘Jesus fuckin . . .’

  He gasps down warm air, rubs his eyes then looks at the horizon.

  The land is still there.

  ‘Jesus fuckin.’

  He needs his medicine.

  ‘Fuck,’ he says, pushing his palms into his eyes. ‘Me.’

  A spliff.

  A big fat fucking spliff, that’d do the job.

  That’s the cure.

  Then he stops, turns his head and looks up across the deck to the bow.

  ‘Man?’ he lifts himself up onto his elbows,

  ‘Fuck me!’ he jerks up onto his feet, leaving a Hash-shaped pool of sweat on the deck, and launches himself seven feet north up the boat like a startled gazelle. He reaches what looks like a big white coffin screwed into the deck up by the bow.

  The hatch that had been swung wide open when they’d met the boat is now closed, locked - with a big old rusty padlock. By Talbot’s hand.

  ‘Ah fuck?’

  For want of a better plan, he heads to the wheelhouse.

  He looks around, opens a few compartments.

  Nothing.

  He looks down at the hatch by his feet, he puts his finger into the brass ring and pulls. There’s stairs down. He pauses.

  ‘Fuck it.’

  He heads down, heels to the wall, until he reaches the bottom.

  It’s dark, he fumbles around by his right shoulder with his back to the ladder and presses what has to be a lightswitch.

  It is.

  The little room is lit by a dim bulb. It looks like a student’s digs down here, a guitar - posters on the wall. Information he really doesn’t want or need.

  He inhales.

  There’s an old metal box to his left with a white desert hat on top. He picks up the hat and opens the toolbox.

  And finds a heavy old monkey wrench alone inside, the metal long since turned a turd brown colour from its original grey.

  The kind of industrial tool you’d only ever find with very big nuts to turn nearby.

  ‘Bobby-fuckin-Dazzler!’

  He turns and flies up the ladder like he’s wearing a jet pack. He slams the hatch closed and heads up the deck. He raises the wrench, remembers the hat in his hand - puts it on his head. He again raises the wrench high over his head and gives the padlock half a dozen healthy whacks, smashing the clasps and the padlock entirely free of the wood.

  A heavy, rusted old wrench for a heavy, rusted old padlock.

  Just the job.

  He drops the wrench with a clatter and kicks the lock and its latches over the side of the boat.

  Sploosh.

  And lifts the lid.

  ‘Ffff?’

  Just a box, an empty box.

  He puts his hands in and taps the bottom, it sounds hollow. He lifts away three planks of wood and . . .

  ‘Jesus fuckin Christ!’

  A true stoner’s wank fantasy lies below.

  The entire front end of the hull is packed with brick-sized brown blocks, all neatly wrapped in water-proof cellophane.

  Packed in tight.

  Hundreds of the fuckers - thousands, even.

  Hash grabs one of the bricks, tears away the cellophane with his teeth and breathes in the sweet aroma. It smells like heaven, herbal heaven.

  ‘Woo hoo!’ he shouts across the ocean, the brick over his head like a prize.

  ‘Woo fuckin Hoo!’

  Cannabis resin.

  You could build a very chilled-out house with the stuff.

  ‘Fuck! Me!’ he jumps up and down. ‘WOO HOO!’

  He heads back to the wheelhouse for his brown Kappa tracksuit top and searches the pockets - he pulls out a packet of Rizla cigarette papers, his tobacco and the Clipper lighter with the woman in a bikini on it, bought in Amsterdam on his stagdo.

  He heads back to his spot on the deck and sits, shaded by the wheelhouse.

  ‘Hah hah hah!’

  He pulls out three papers, licks the corner of one and sticks it to the second in a straightline - making sure the folds align. Then he licks all the way along the gum of the third and attaches it halfway down the two joined skins. He folds it over.

  Skins ready to load.

  He burns a corner of the cannabis brick, a thin whisp of white smoke going directly up his right nostril. He breathes it in.

  ‘Ah man! You fuckin beauty!’

  He lifts a clump of tobacco from the green pouch and separates it between his fingers, feeding it uniformly into the skins.

  Hash looks at the size and scale of the block of dope, shrugs, and burns off a rich man’s load, sprinkling it along the top of the tobacco.

  A monster spliff - enough to floor a Rasta.

  He takes the papers between the index fingers and thumbs of both hands and starts to roll, rustling the tobacco and cannabis into shape. He gently licks the rim then smooths it closed. He nips one end of the joint, rolling the spare paper between his finger and thumb into a point. He tears a small piece of cardboard from the Rizlas then rolls it, making a tiny cardboard tube. He sticks the roach up the other end of the joint.

  ‘Fuckin right, man.’

  He gives the joint a smoothing, it’s perfect. Like a tampon.

  ‘Well earned, son. Well fuckin earned.’

  He puts it to his lips and lights up, pulls the sweet smoke hard into his chest. He holds it there to see how it feels in his lungs, then breathes it out slowly over his tongue like a sommelier tasting a fine wine.

  ‘Fuckin right, man,’ he says, giving it top marks. ‘Fuckin right.’

  He smiles, salutes the sky with the spliff. Puts it back to his lips - and smokes it all in four deep tokes, flicks the butt over the side.

  Closes his eyes.