The Broken Ones

by Stephen M Irwin

  Luke finally stopped and turned about in a full circle, looking for people. Usually, on his way to and from work at the shit farm, he walked with one hand in his knapsack gripping a length of heavy galvanized-steel pipe, for protection. After the cops, he’d left in such a hurry that he couldn’t find it.

  But you got another hard pipe, doncha?

  He giggled aloud this time.

  No one heard. Except his mother, in that tight top and short shorts. She looked at him worriedly, disapprovingly. But she was dead and he was alive, so she could just, you know, fuck the fuck off.

  Luke thought he recognized the street he was on. There weren’t many buildings left on this deserted stretch. Until a few months ago, there were heaps of Delete labs around here, but then there was an explosion and a motherfucker of a fire, and the cops came and the council flattened half the street. Tall weeds and scrubby stuff were growing between the piles of sooty brick in the empty lots. There were a couple of old houses left, and nearby was an old movie theater. Luke didn’t like movie theaters, but it was the only building with a doorway that was deep enough to afford just a little privacy, and the urgency of his throbbing crotch couldn’t be ignored any longer. He nimbly avoided puddles and stepped under the solid marquee into the gloomy vestibule. He put his backpack down beside the nailed-shut doors, leaned against the wall, and undid his fly. He licked his palm and started.

  While he stroked, he looked around. He wondered if this was the theater. When he was nine or ten, he’d sneaked away from home. Mum was with some guy, and he wanted to see that pirate movie. Mum hadn’t been able to afford to take him (bitch), but he was determined to see it. Yes, he was sure this was the very same cinema. He’d spotted a family with a heap of kids and simply tagged along with them; once inside, he’d found a seat in the dark to curl on. He’d spent the first few minutes focused more on being sprung by the attendant than on the movie, but then the story and the pictures took hold. It was brilliant and exciting, even funny, right up until the scene when the big black ship came along and the pirates all became skeletons. Suddenly, the movie stopped being fun and started being scary. Very arsefuckingly scary. The ship was long and dark and almost alive, like a shark, and covered with tattered sails. And when the pirates’ skin all melted away and they became skull and bone, but moving—undead and chasing and wanting—he’d had to look away before he gravy-trained his pants.

  Luke realized that the memory of the movie was softening him up, so he shook his mind away and looked across at his mother. She stood on the footpath, watching him. The rain passed through her, and her hair and tight top remained forever dry. Her eyes—those horrible black nothings, like grub holes in a rotten apple—watched him and her mouth moved silently. He hated to see her face, and hated to think what she was trying to say. So he looked down at her tits instead. But the sight of her nipples through the top made him think of the dead girl’s little tits. That had been fucked up, finding that girl caught in the number-one screw, chopped the way he used to chop lizards with a razor blade. His cock went slack in his hand. A waste of time. Strange. Unusual. Not to worry—he’d find a squat tonight, and there was usually some Deleted slag up for dick. Sometimes guys, too, but girls felt better. And if no one wanted it, more fool them—Mrs. Palmer and her five daughters were always ready.

  As he was zipping up, it arrived.

  When it emerged from the rain, a huge long black thing that growled low and rumbly, his heart thudded hard and he thought for a stupid, panicked moment it was that pirate ship, gliding across a dark sea. But then he saw the wheels and the shining black flanks and dark windows. A clean, new car in these parts was not much less unusual than a pirate ship, though, so as it slowed to a halt outside the old theater Luke slipped his hand into the backpack and remembered with an unpleasant shiver that he didn’t have the pipe.

  For a long moment, nothing happened, and Luke wondered if the person inside the car had noticed him at all and had simply pulled up outside the old theater by coincidence. Just as he’d convinced himself of that, the passenger-side window slid down. In the dark of evening, and with the rain, he could just make out the shape of a small elderly man with drawn-back hair.

  “Young man?”

  Luke was simple—couldn’t pour water from a shoe with instructions on the heel, his mother used to say—but he knew the sound of men who wanted to rob and men who wanted to fuck ass, and this guy didn’t sound like he needed to rob anyone and, judging by the car, could afford much cleaner ass than Luke’s. Luke caught movement at the corner of his eye and glanced that way. It was only his mother. As usual, she was staring at him with those empty eyes, and again, her mouth was pleading silently.

  “I wonder if we could talk some business?” the old man continued. “Do you mind?”

  Maybe this guy did want some cock; there was something about him that said he was no stranger to rough stuff. That was okay, if he had the bucks to pay for it. Luke stepped out into the rain. His mother was waving wildly, her mouth working wide in a silent shout. He shooed her away like a fly.

  “Okay,” Luke said. “Is it just you, or your mate, too?”

  He crouched to see the driver, but the man was in shadow. That made him uneasy. He told himself it was just the drug patches. Besides, he was nearly at the car now.

  “My friend is certainly interested in you,” the old man said, and reached into his jacket. “Take a look.”

  As Luke put his hands on the open windowsill to stoop and get a better look at the driver, the old man grabbed his wrists.

  “What the fuck!” Luke yelled. He twisted, but the old man’s grip was shockingly strong.

  The driver-side door opened, and the other man stepped out. Luke recognized him, and his heart jumped like a kicked pigeon.

  “Hold him,” the other man said.

  Luke wrenched wildly and shook off the old man’s fingers. He turned to run like hell.

  And slipped.

  The footpath was wet and slick, and he went down. A second later, the driver was on top of him.

  “I’ll give it back! I’ll give it back!” Luke yelled, although part of him, deep inside, knew it was far too late for that.

  Something struck him on the side of the head, and the edges of the world grew very dark. Before it faded, the car’s trunk swung high in the air, like a sail of that dark, dead pirate ship. And Luke screamed.

  Chapter 6

  With shopkeepers unwilling or unable to commit to lease payments, shopping malls had become as quiet as mausoleums and trade had gone outdoors. The closest markets to Oscar were in Castlemaine Street. They were a collection of canvas stalls, trestle tables, and covered wheelbarrows that trimmed the western length of the football stadium like the colorful hem of a monstrous dress. Some kiosks were impressive structures with brightly embroidered flaps; others were dark little secrets with sharp-eyed minders perched outside. Most were open-fronted benches or tables displaying goods as diverse as the people who offered them: live chickens sold by old men, pornography by old women, knives by children, lightbulbs by a blind man, rifle cartridges by twin girls. Fresh herbs, bread, jars of kerosene, cooked possums hung by their tails, disposable diapers, small bottles of drinking water, large bottles of dodgy alcohol, cigarettes, shoes, haircuts, hand jobs, crematory urns.

  Behind the stalls were the tents: colorful tents offered aphrodisiacs and puppet shows; darker tents rented sex and peddled curses; black tents in the shadows sold abortions. People wandered and sniffed samples and spun gun barrels and held condoms to the light and drank. Men wore suspicious scowls and scars. Women wore suspicious scowls and kohl. Children wore a circus-clown collection of patched clothes, handmade bibs, and trimmed hand-me-downs. The air was a rich swell of scents: dried spices and beeswax candles, fresh blood and old fish, honey and horseshit and sex.

  The morning rain was hardly more than mist, and Oscar walked slowly, letting his eyes rove over the orange blurs of fearful chickens, the blue-red of skinned rabbits,
the small tubs of ice as precious as diamonds. Oscar had spent an hour picking over fruit already turning brown, almonds as hard as horn, sugar speckled with ants, and flour shifting with weevils. But fruit could be stewed, almonds ground, flour sifted. He’d overpaid for eggs, and a knob of yellow butter had cost him two packets of Jilu. He was nearly done; all he needed now was ribbon and wrapping paper.

  A flurry of fingers snatched at his legs and jacket hem, and he spun around. A flock of children, none older than eight, circled him like ducks after bread, diving and scrabbling.

  “Hey, mister, what do you—”

  “Hungry? Thirsty? I can—”

  “… ever seen! Let me show you—”

  “… cheap, just a dollar, and I’ll take you to—”

  Oscar shook his head and batted them away with his hat; they gave him a halfhearted last salvo, then flapped off to find an easier target. He found himself in a row of tents painted with pentagrams and eyes of Horus and signs of the zodiac. From awnings and bright-colored posts hung candelabra, charms, the painted skulls of dogs, and the severed feet of cats mounted on nickel chains. Bells rang softly in air that moved and smelled now of woodsmoke and herbs. Men and women sat behind beaded curtains, reading palms, faces, eyes, bowls of water. Those without clients called to Oscar.

  “Tell your future, sir?”

  “Third eye, can give you the gift of—”

  “Love charms, true love here—”

  “Lift your curse, sir? Rid yourself of your ghost?”

  This last made Oscar hesitate. Thirty paces behind him, between the vibrantly painted stalls, stood the dead boy. Oscar looked back at the old man who called the offer.

  “Really.”

  The old man offered a solemn smile of few teeth. “Absolutely, sir. I discovered the way.”

  In the months after Gray Wednesday, Oscar had quietly tried a dozen ways to exorcise himself of the dead boy. Three psychics, baptism, Taoism, celibacy (not hard, with Sabine gone), hypnosis, fasting … The last—and, on reflection, most desperate—attempt involved a late-night visit by a middle-aged man with wild, unwashed hair and earrings the size of dinner plates. Oscar was commanded to disrobe, lift his arms to the sky, and keep his eyes closed at all costs while the feverish man marked his naked body with a foul-smelling liquid. When Oscar noticed a new aroma emerging, he glanced down to see that the would-be exorcist had put down his paintbrush and was vigorously stimulating himself front and back. As he kicked the charlatan out of the house, Oscar acknowledged that the dead boy was here to stay.

  The old man was holding open the oily flap of a tent. “Foolproof it is, sir. S’not cheap, mind.”

  Oscar shook his head. “Nothing worthwhile is. Wrapping paper?”

  The old man wrinkled his nose at the lost sale. “Try Mother Mim.” He gestured farther along.

  Three stalls up, Oscar found a late-middle-aged woman, trim and healthy-looking in jeans, white shirt, and sunglasses. In a glance, he took in her wares laid on purple silk: hand mirrors; a manicure set; a collection of highlighting pens; a framed Maxfield Parrish print; rolls of sticky tape and an old green stapler; jars of homemade jam; small fired-clay totems: dolphins, zodiac figurines, the double face of Janus; a fish tank empty of water but holding sawdust, a twisted length of branch, and a dozen small brown skinks. At one end of her bench was a little brass tripod—from its apex swung a little chain with a crow’s beak at the end, and beneath the beak was a metal plate engraved with a twelve-pointed star and symbols at each ray that Oscar didn’t recognize. The woman turned to him.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Mother Mim?” he asked.

  “I am.” The woman had a friendly voice. “Why the hat? It’s not sunny.”

  “It’s good for rain, too,” he replied. “Why the sunglasses?”

  “Same deal. Something in particular?”

  “Cellophane, if you have it, or wrapping paper. The old bloke three doors up said you might have some.”

  Mother Mim bent beneath the counter and straightened holding a box. She reached in and produced a folded square of faded red cellophane. Oscar lifted it. Its corner was torn, it had a hole in the center, and was patched with tape.

  “This is garbage.”

  “It’s slightly used,” she admitted.

  “It’s holier than the pope, look at it.”

  She leaned forward and pulled off her sunglasses. Oscar flinched. Her lids hung slack, like drapes over dark windows—there were no eyes in her sockets, and he could glimpse the purpled flesh that lined her orbits.

  “Well, aren’t we particular,” she said, taking back the cellophane and rustling in the box.

  “How did you know I wear a hat?” Oscar asked.

  The woman smiled. “Same way I know there’s leather under your left armpit. I can hear it.” Her clever fingers searched in the box. “I pulled them out myself, in case you’re wondering.” She laughed. “I know, what an idiot. But I was just seeing a bit too much of my ex-husband. Still, quite a good outcome. Now I don’t see him, but I see other things.” On the counter she placed another square of clear, virgin cellophane and dropped onto it a length of satin ribbon. “Three dollars.”

  “No way.”

  She shrugged and lifted the cellophane away.

  “Wait.” He placed a length of three unopened condoms on the bench. She felt them and smiled coyly.

  “An offer?”

  “A trade.”

  “A shame.”

  She had a nice smile. She vanished the condoms and pushed the cellophane and ribbon toward Oscar. As he reached for them, she took his wrist. “Now. Read your fortune?”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  She didn’t let him go. “A free taste. A thank-you for an easy transaction.”

  The blind woman’s grip was surprisingly strong. She ran a cool, dry fingertip across his palm. After a moment, she frowned and released his wrist.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “I’d lose the hat,” she suggested.

  Oscar picked up his cellophane and ribbon. “Why?”

  The woman replaced her sunglasses over the empty sockets. “You need to watch the skies.”

  Under rain, the cemetery was all cold grays and dark greens. Rainwater trickled down Oscar’s back and drops dripped heavily from the brim of his hat; warm water ran up his sleeves. He heard snatches of clattering, like the chatter of mechanical teeth, and could smell cut grass, soapy water, and damp soil.

  The clattering stopped suddenly and was replaced by slide-clunk, slide-clunk.

  “Stu cazzo!”

  Oscar peered over the headstone he was washing. Alessandro Mariani was drenched. His gray hair was plastered down on his clean-shaved, wan cheeks; his arthritic knuckles looked like a row of cicada husks. He was grimly shoving at the hand mower. Oscar had tried to dissuade his father from coming out here when it was raining, but Sandro was implacable. Worse, the old man stubbornly refused to let Oscar do the mowing, insisting that his son perform the less masculine tasks of washing the grave and changing the flowers.

  Sandro Mariani gave the mower another frustrated yank, and his face opened up in a surprised flare of pain. “Pezzo di merda.”

  Oscar squeezed out the sponge, pulled himself wearily up on the black marble. After nearly five years, this fortnightly ritual had gotten no easier. If anything, it had gotten worse. Vedetta had been the leavening influence in their small family; after she succumbed to breast cancer, there was nothing to warm the cool space between father and son.

  “Dad. There’s grass caught in it.”

  Sandro either didn’t hear or ignored him. “Sta migna.” He attacked the handle of the mower, shaking it harder and harder with every word: “Inutile. Iarrusu. Piseddu.”

  Oscar exhaled through his teeth and walked over.

  “Dad! There’s a chunk of grass, here in the—”

  Oscar reached for the mower, and Sandro, like a child whose toy is in peril, tried to snatch i
t away. Another electric jolt of pain grounded on his wrinkled face. “Leave it!” Sandro snapped. “I’ve got it.”

  “It’s jammed!” Oscar said, and knelt. More cold rain ran down his back. “Just don’t fucking push it while my fingers are in it, okay?”

  Sandro was an unhappy passenger attached to the machine. “Don’t swear here.”

  “You were swearing.”

  Oscar pulled at a thick knot of lush green paspalum lodged between the curved blade and the fixed edge. The thought of it biting into his fingers reminded him of the huge auger blade in the sewage plant. Christ, who could throw a child into that, dead or alive?

  “Well?” Sandro said. “Hurry up. You want to drown?”

  “Sometimes.” Oscar yanked the clump free. “There.”

  Sandro pushed the mower. The wheels turned and the three blades whirred. He grunted, then looked down at Oscar. “What are you sitting down for? Are you finished?”

  Oscar bit his tongue and went back to his mother’s grave.

  The men worked another quarter of an hour, saying nothing, until the flowers were set, the grave was washed clean of grass clippings, and Sandro Mariani had kissed his swollen fingers and touched them lightly to the polished marble. Rain pummeled the flowers. Oscar picked up the mower, weeding tools and bucket, and followed his father’s footprints back to the car.

  “Where did you get these? They’re shit.”

  Sandro Mariani inspected the fruit and greens Oscar had brought. Oscar stood at the kitchen bench that had changed little in thirty years, making up dough for ossa dei morti—“bones of the dead”—sweet biscuits. He threw a small handful of flour over the laminate worktop and pointed to lemons, basil, and spinach.

  “Those there are from my garden. Those”—he nodded at apples that were more brown than red, and a pawpaw that, like Lazarus, was three days past prime but still going—“from the markets.”