Jacko

by Keneally, Thomas

  On the one hand, I assured myself, she seemed a smart enough girl to work it out herself. But on the other, Lucy hadn’t, not until great grief had been done.

  —I appreciate you being here, cobber, Jacko told me. I know your missus doesn’t approve of me any more.

  Most polite Manhattanites, even honorary ones like me, avoided the Bronx. It was a mystery you did not want to enquire into. Stories returned from there and fantastically lodged in the pages of the New York Times or the Post or News. Brave documentary teams kitted up and plunged into it. Safe in numbers, people went to the baseball there, to see the Yankees, but skittered home as soon as the result was clear. It was the Third World just across the Triboro Bridge, inhabited by a race named the underclass. As Livingstone had disappeared in Kenya, Manhattanites could disappear in the Bronx. There had been novels about the mishaps which could befall the best people who mistakenly took an exit here.

  This morning Jacko and Angela and I were taking one by design. We ran all too briskly at this hour along the FDR and made the crossing, in fact, at the 138th Street Bridge. We found ourselves almost at once in the Grand Concourse, a superb nineteenth-century faubourg, designed a hundred years past in the belief that the Bronx would ever flourish as a centre of bourgeois urbanity.

  No street on Manhattan stood up beside the Grand Concourse. Park Avenue was a boring conduit by comparison, Fifth too narrow. We took a turn at a shopping centre with steel and mesh chain shutters, and turned again into a narrow street of old apartment buildings. Here burnt-out cars sat hunched in the gutters, and black-lipped windows spoke of someone’s dangerous fury.

  —Jesus, said Jacko. You could rent a few blokes from Actors Equity, put ’em in camouflage, give ’em Armalites and do a documentary on Belfast up here.

  —We might do that, conceded Angela, but her smile was tight and she was watchful.

  With another right turn and then a left, and a few other little dodges, the driver soon had us lost in streets where apartment blocks had given way to houses, which stood in their own gardens of litter and weeds. The front car seat, set in the garden as a form of al fresco settee, was one of the area’s favourite items.

  We were pleased to see the microwave truck with Vixen Six marked on it and the technicians standing by its back door drinking coffee with good old Clayton.

  Our car drew up.

  —You got a gun, driver? Jacko asked the chauffeur.

  —Better believe it, sir.

  —Good to know, said Jacko.

  We got out and Jacko and Angela had a conference with Clayton.

  —House on the corner’s burned out, said Clayton. I don’t know which of the others. Good if we could find an honest Bronxer who’d talk about what it’s like out here.

  —Or a dishonest bloody Bronxer.

  Jacko nodded across the street to a house whose windows were boarded up.

  —Give that one a miss, said Clayton. Crack house.

  —That’s the one though, said Jacko. Isn’t it? Haven’t done one of those …

  —Don’t be stupid, Jacko, said Angela.

  —Didn’t you hear the judge yesterday? He said no more fucking game shows, boys and girls. But I’m game for that bloody place.

  —Jacko, reproved Angela.

  —You’ll come in with me, Clayton.

  —I might. But will the cable man?

  Jacko put a hand on my shoulder.

  —My mate here won’t mind pulling the cable. He’s been in war zones in Africa.

  Angela said, Clayton, I really don’t want you two to do this.

  Jacko turned to me, stooping to look me in the eye.

  —Will you handle the cable for me? Can’t ask the blokes on the truck. Or I can, but Angela’s under a duty to tell ’em they won’t be covered by insurance.

  —I’m not covered by insurance, I argued.

  Yet I was utterly and irresponsibly ready to go. I was strangely and exultantly ready. The last of the night’s toxins were urging me and would be burned up by such an exercise. I had the same self-indulgent but delicious sense of inevitability, of lightly playing with fire, as when I had climbed in a dawn party to the front trench-line in the Horn of Africa four years ago. Since I knew there was a sort of indecency in these euphoric impulses, I said nothing further. I stood still. Yet I knew I might be used by Jacko.

  Jacko, Angela and Clayton went to talk to the technicians at the truck. I could see people nodding, Angela shaking her head. I should back her up. If I added my judgement to hers, it could no longer be argued – as Clayton and Jacko were arguing – that her caution was purely a female thing. But Clayton had already shouldered his camera and Jacko was being wired up.

  Angela cried, I’m coming anyhow. I’m your producer.

  But Jacko kept saying no. This was a special case. There was a time Dannie hadn’t come, and everyone knew what a hot shot she was. The bitch.

  —When didn’t she come?

  —It was when I took on an apartment block in a cherrypicker.

  —We ought to talk to Durkin.

  —We’ll talk to Durkin in a second. We’ll tell him we’re just doorknocking in the Bronx.

  He pointed at Angela, Don’t bugger this up, love.

  I had been in a demented state. Now I remembered Lucy. The unborn child entered as a factor into my primal thought.

  I walked closer and put my hand on his coated shoulder to signal I wanted a last word before we tried this grotesque thing. Because he presumed that I had something cautionary to say, he took some time to turn, and when he did I saw a certain weariness in his face. He pointed to the cable which snaked out of the truck and was connected to Clayton’s camera.

  —It’s pretty much like dragging a hose. You make sure it doesn’t snag on the gates or on the doorway. Keep it right up to him, feet of it. Clayton’s got to have plenty of cable behind him to allow freedom of movement once he’s inside. Okay?

  —Okay. But listen, I have some news.

  He was not going to suffer equivocation. He lifted the plastic cable and put it in my hands. He was distracted then by something he heard in his ear: Durkin was talking to him from the studio.

  —No, he said, with that peculiarly beefy, resonating laugh. The mike on his tie would have conveyed his words to Durkin.

  —No, Eddie. She’s exaggerating, old son.

  He listened further, and Clayton swung his camera to film the house across the street. This of course would allow Durkin to see the proposed target of today’s doorknock. I could dimly hear Durkin protesting in Jacko’s ear.

  —Eddie, Eddie, said Jacko soothingly. Where’s the well-known Durkin sense of humour?

  —And then, Look mate. You can boss me around, but unless you get out here within five minutes … Listen, don’t go soft on me …

  Angela, paler even than all our foolishness could possibly have made her, yelled, Ninety seconds, to Jacko.

  —Durkin says pick another house, she added.

  —Who’s robbing this bloody stage coach, Jacko called jovially.

  —Oh Christ, she cried, since Durkin was giving her orders, telling her to stop Jacko, telling her not to go in with Jacko, and that time was so close. Early-riser Jacko-ites waited along the great littoral to be told where Jacko Emptor was this morning, to see his frantically wakeful face, and to be encouraged to believe he would do anything.

  Jacko began walking briskly across the road.

  —Come on, Clayton, come on.

  And to me, Keep that cable up.

  I heard Clayton murmur, We’re on.

  We went in the wire gate and up the path and to the door. I was sure we weren’t meant to proceed at such a pace. Generally Jacko’s broadcast began in the street and then moved to the door after the first commercial break. We were galloping to make contact with the residents. I hauled on the cable just to stay near him.

  By the three steps leading up to the little front porch, Jacko turned to Clayton’s camera.

  —We’re in t
he Bronx, my friends, and we’ve got a funny one here.

  He mounted the steps and put his shoulder to the front door.

  —Feel this door, he invited us.

  He did a rat-a-tat-tat on it and it dully and metallically answered. Thud, thud, thud.

  —A security-conscious neighbourhood, ladies and gentlemen.

  He put a hand to his ear.

  —Oh, oh, my producer-in-chief, Ed Durkin, wants us to get out of here. We can’t get out, Ed. If these are people of any professional standards, they know we’re here already.

  Jacko took one of his gloves off and began to hammer at the door, raising an unresponsive yet resonating thud from it, somewhat like Buddhist temple bells.

  Angela had appeared on the pathway, careless of maintaining the illusions of television. She was calling, Jacko, Durkin says No! Come on!

  If she could be reckless, then perhaps I was entitled to be also.

  I went up to him, holding my cable, and, whether in shot or not, said, Come away, Jacko. Listen, Lucy’s carrying a child.

  —What? he said.

  I told him again. It took no time. But all through it, he kept knocking and knocking, and we could all feel, in that frozen morning, the imminence of someone opening to him.

  Thomas Keneally

  Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and was educated in Sydney. He trained for several years for the Catholic priesthood but did not take orders. In a distinguished writing career he has had four novels shortlisted for the Booker Prize, which he won in 1982 with SCHINDLER’S ARK – since made by Steven Spielberg into the internationally acclaimed film, Schindler’s List. He has written many works of non-fiction, the most recent being MEMOIRS FROM A YOUNG REPUBLIC. His latest novel, A RIVER TOWN, is also published by Sceptre.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Gordon Elliot kindly told me many tales of TV Gothic in America. Some of them appear transmuted in this account.

  Copyright © 1993 by Serpentine Publishing Company Propriertary, Ltd.

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3804-1

  Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution

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