by Alan Duff
He tried to laugh it off, her change of attitude but she rolled him right off her. And told him: Know why I play the field now as it suits? Because I promised myself I’d never let another man hurt me.
She didn’t say it, but he could see in her face like he was hurting her now, though he still wasn’t quite sure why. Hurting her, anyone for that madda, was the last thing he wanted. (’Nless they out to hurt me firs’. Then I’ll waste ’em.) Hey, he grabbed her — admittedly a little too hard, why she pulled away from him quite violently and looked atim like those sixteen years ole familiar eyes of Beth’s — Mister, please don’t grab me like that again. (Fuck!) This was turning from being Two Lakes’ best lover to the country’s biggest arsehole. Ri, I’m sorry. Okay? Jake is sorry. (Goddamit) but she shook her head. Don’t say to me Jake’s sorry. Why not? Thought tha’s what you wanted me to say. Why not? Because it removes yourself from responsibility, if you can spell the word, she near spat those words atim she did.
He took a moment to figure it. Alright: I’m sorry. Ri, please, come and lie down again. Shit, I only wanted to know if this house was, you know, by the standards a — a — (Fuckit). Oh, fuckit. Can’t a man ask a simple question w’out you jumpin’ onim? And he got up. So they were both standing, naked, on opposite sides of the bed. Glaring. Well, he was, then she was, then he wasn’t, but he was about to turn and get dressed and fuck off outta here, fuck this, fuck women, fuck the world, fuck wanting to know how good this house is — Next time, Jakey baby, we’re doing it at your house. She smiled all ovah him. All fucken ovah.
He said, Wha’? Which in the ole days woulda meant, what’d you say, followed by the business. Fists. But here in this softly lit, lampshaded room — a kinda pale red-wine colour they were, not that Jake made that comparison, he made it with blood — a woman iner mid-forties, three grown-up children left of their mark in zigzag stripes around her lower belly, a bit of a pot there, but the whole picture held together pretty tight, the tits nice an’ big an’ still firm, a stripe of pubes’t ran like a dark, promising tongue from up underneath her where it counted, a picture on the wall behind her of colour splashes in that modern style a man couldn’t be expected to unnerstan’, in here in her bedroom he meant only to express simple surprise. And now his head running with making sure he’d have the place spick and span and maybe, jus’ maybe, he’d get Cody to buy some flowers for that vase sitting like a unwanted, unloved mother without her only purpose in life.
Her real tongue came out and licked the top lip. Where he’d a li’l while back had his mouth planted, but there had been more gentle moments of just lingering butterfly kiss, or whatever they called it in the books a man never read. You heard, she told him. Your place, to say it again, Jake Heke.
He found a smile back. My place, eh? Yes, your place. How many times I gotta say it? (A few more’n that, lady, if you’re to reassure me.) I got no sheets. That took her back a step. She lifted a finger atim, Jake Heke, you’d better have some when I get there or … (Or what? She won’t come see me? Is that what I want?) Asking himself was he really trying to discourage her and if so, why? (Cos I’m afraid, the voice jumped out at him before he could ready himself against hearing it. And it kept going. Cos I’m frightened of getting close to someone. I’m frightened of —) Fuckit. He got back on top of the inner voice, or enough to move this on without turning it back to the hopeless point it was at.
I don’t get much pay. Really? She cocked the eyebrow with a different gun. Then you’d better ask your boss for some overtime and a raise while you’re at it. Now that was a thought. But he got pictures of his rented-from-the-State place compared to this and started shaking his head. And thinking if he got his clothes on he could fight this a bit better. But then she was nude, too. I got that young fulla Cody, and mosta the time his mates, staying. Really? The fucken eyebrow again. A man felt like ducking just in case it fired bullets. (Hahaha.) He lifted his proudly muscled chest and not too much protrusion of stomach down there for forty-two, told her, I got rugby on Sat’days now. His first game yet to come. And: I tole you ’bout the pig hunting yet?
She shook her head. No. No, you haven’t told me much of yourself, about anything you do or think. Why I’m giving you the opportunity, Jake, in the comfort of your own surrounds. He exploded in laughter then. What surrounds is this, lady? But she only smiled from her repertoire of them, The surrounds I expect you’ll be making for my visit, Jake … (Jake the what?) You might like to buy pale blue sheets, they’d suit you. Ya think so? He shifted his naked weight from one foot to the other, somehow she’d got on top of him without any effort. Yeah, I think so.
He looked at her yellow sheets, at her, back at the sheets. She inclined her head, jus’ the once, in a nod. And lay oner back like she was giving birth to him, that’s what it felt like.
SIXTEEN
MICHAEL JACKSON CAME struttin’ toward her from the screen, all skinny existence of weirdly wonderful dancing blackness, an ebony creation she was imitating — and well, too — of his every step and snapped arm and torso and legs and (hehe) balls-holding poise, I’m bad! I’m bad! he was telling the world whoever had a video player and the price of a hire. And she telling her world, her bedroom and those bitch pack of girls who’d beaten her up for the last time now Hu had stepped in and so had her mother and so had Charlie — but all without violence, though Mum’d got close to threatening it in her protective way of her kids. And when the chorus and Michael asked the question, Who’s bad? Polly Heke danced as she shouted back, They’re bad! meaning those girls. And she danced on, knowing in a most self-breathless way that she was good, at dancing she was, if not Michael Jackson then one of his support dancers (I could do it, I know I could.)
She flung onto the bed, quite drained, at the end of the video experience and her mirror of it; and rather in one of her strange moods, where anything went of her thoughts. Her daring mood, of wanting to take that extra step outside of normal life for no other reason than instinct told her there might be answers there — Oh, and for excitement, too. So she got up, turned the video off with averted eyes in case she wanted to dance to Michael’s next number which was already well on, and dressed for the cold outside.
IT WAS NOT only boring but getting embarrassing walking past his house, trying different acts to make herself look legitimate, like looking at her watch as she strode, one eye for the house, that window there with the vase sitting in it, empty, surprised to see a flower vase, but it was there and so was he and so was his female company, just sitting on couches opposite each other talking, the occasional — but only that — lifting of a beer glass by him and, by the glass, wine in her hand. White wine. She, the bitch (she must be a bitch if she’s with him), must’ve brought her own wine glass then, Polly figured. In fact, it was likely she brought her own wine because he sure as hell wouldn’t’ve thought of buying it. Boring, embarrassing, but at least it was night and cold enough to keep any smartarse sniffy-noses away from asking her what she was doing, and taking two trips to the shops and buying an iceblock (in this cold?!) first time, which she took one bite of and threw away, a packet of chewing gum the second and ignoring the suspicious look from the shopkeeper no doubt thinking she was casing his grotty little shop for some lifting, the gum chewing making her look tough should anyone want to approach her, meaning homies; taking a standing position that gave her a direct line look at that curtainless window and the two figures sitting on blanket-draped couches, so he must’ve thrown them over the tatty things from the last time she did this, spying on her father. Fancy him even thinking to do that; cover up his old couches with blankets which made them look not only obvious but worse in appearance since one was grey and he must think that patterned one looks classy!
Half an hour, maybe more — she’d left her watch at home in case she got accosted and it was taken off her by bullies, since this area was just one step up from Pine Block and about one, maybe two, down from where she lived — she’d hung around. (Don’t ask me why.) He
’d got up a few times, come back with a can of beer and, surprise-surprise, to fill the lady’s glass, though once she’d waved him away. So clearly she wasn’t a pisshead like he was, even if on this occasion he seemed to be on his best behaviour (the deceiving bastard. Can’t she see through him?) The house behind her standing position was, thank God, without lights on so she had some leeway.
There he goes again, saw him get up, disappear, come back (whooo, he’s big alright) trying to deny to herself that he was a rather handsome man even for an incestuous rapist.
Then she saw him put his arms out to the woman, herself rather pretty if a little plump, helping her up off the couch. And then they danced. Oh how (he) they danced. And she knew good dancing when she saw it. Her mother’d always said, and in that voice she gets for the bastard despite what he’s done: Oo, your father could dance. Ball bearings under his feet. Which she’d changed from saying it was air.
He moved that plumpish woman around the room in one continuous flow, twirling the bitch, easing her teasingly from him, pulling her back again. A master in charge. But the woman holding her own. (Spose he’ll whack her one if she steps on his toes.) Though it was far from that likely happening as it was that she could just stand here trespassing with her eyes without someone asking what the hell she thought she was doing. Another minute, she’d give it another minute.
But dammit, the tears just wouldn’t hold back, so she took one last look and walked off down the street, cursing herself for being an emotional girl, a spying girl, a strange girl, an always wondering girl, even in knowing she was going another night to spy on other people, she just couldn’t help herself; as if something (or someone) was driving her.
SHE TOLE HIM, You can have me ya want. Which made his heart jump but with fear, which she picked — smiling reassuringly atim. He gave awkward smile back.
Ape? Ya worried ’bout Ape? I wouldn’t say nothin’. But that wasn’t it anyway, not for Abe. It was her eyes: looking into ’em was like looking at two bits of glue — no, not glue, more gobs of spit, infected spit what you cough up when you’re sick. That’s what the whites looked like. The browns had this sheen across them, like a veil. And he’d already looked harder on utha occasions to know that beyond those veils — two quite separate ones, as if what’d happened took place at different times — was grief beyond anything even he, inside forever crying for his bro Nig and his li’l self-taken sis Grace, had known. Beyond even his every moment aching to get revenge against Jimmy Bad Horse for setting his bro up. Sure, he was hearing her sad-eyed, sexless offer of sex with fear of her man, Apeman. But then again he weren’t so in awe of even Ape that he would exactly tremble in his boots if Ape up and got jealous (at my innocence) ovah Tania and steppedim out or jus’ plain wastedim from behind, the side, front-on, or tried to wastedim, that is. Not as if a man was gonna be standing there taking it. And it did occur to Abe that if won then he’d be sergeant-at-arms. But he didn’t know he wanted that responsibility, hard enough jus’ knowing what the rules were around here, kind of amazing really for a buncha roughies, how complex and layered the li’l ways and rules and unnerstandings were to learn.
Nah, I’m cool, Tarns. You don’t have to, you know (offer yourself when I don’t even want you). But, like, wouldn’t say no to a talk. Wondering why she’d out of the blue offered herself like that.
She dropped her shades back over from atop of her head, she looked bedda withem on, even though anutha layer of veil, anutha cover-up, shrugged her skinny li’l shoulders, Okay, suit yaself. Thought you might feel like some, uh, comp’ny. Which he did, any young man did. But not with her. (I’m waiting for my chance to grab me a white woman.) Abe thinking of the extra sexual purity of screwing with a white. Tarns, it ain’t worth it. But — But, she cut him short. Alright, how about we go somewhere have that talk? What I really mean anyrate. And he could see she did.
Upstairs in one of the rooms would be compromising, so they settled for taking a third party out withem, Rambo The Dumbie, the deaf mute, so Apeman’d know there was no hanky-panky and Rambo wouldn’t know what was being said. They made it a cigarette run to the local dairy, taking the bruthas’ orders and their laughing requests to buy ’em some as they had no money. An’ that was anutha thing: the word out that the fucken Brown Shits were making dough lef’ right and centre selling dope, the Hawk boys in their (confoundment) lack of unnerstan’ing at the mystery of money, even illegally made money, the process of its making and never mind its accumulation into a capital fund since they, the unknowing, ignorant, untaught stupid fuckers, they thought money truly was solely for consuming. The money from the ram-raid that’d got Abe and Mookie their patches was, so the prez reported, near all (consumed) gone. On piss and dope buys when they shoulda been growing their own, some of the bedda heads thought to ’emselves, not paying out for it; the bedda heads even knew they were giving their gov’mint unemployment benefit money to the Brown Shits the roundabout way of it coming indirectly, through anutha outfit also putting their profit on afta buying it from the Shits. Might be that they had thirty and more benefits the stupid gov’mint were payin’ the collective ofem, and that they ate together far cheaper than what it’d cost living alone or in small groups sharing a flat and tho there was a guaranteed surplus to spend on beer and dope, it was never enough to put out a Hawk’s fire, douse his emotional flames, they had to do crimes or, bedda still, get the young prospec’s to do it forem and the patched-up members to spend it (hahaha!) Forgetting when they’d been prospec’s. Eighty-one thousand six-hundred and sumpthin’ that ram-raid (man, it was excitin’!) had brung in, now all of it pissed and smoked up, though Abe and Mook didn’t really give it a thought, where their entry money’d gone, only that it earned them their patches and an immediate much higher status, not as high as killing someone, but about the same as hurting badly an enemy — no, not that high. But the nex’ tier down, yeah. They didn’t think of the money being wasted so much as their chances of being arrested for it (who cares, eh Abe? Who-gives-a-fuck?) which so far hadn’t even resulted in a sniff from the pigs. Confirming to the pair of the gang’s near invulnerability to the law, even if that didn’t add up to the numbas of Hawks doing time at any given, uh, time.
It was getting on dusk when they were walking back, an area jus’ like the Pine Block Abe’d been formed in, or so he assumed: wrecks of cars sitting on front lawns, down on kerbside on wooden blocks going nowhere like the area’s inhabitants, tagger-paint scrawls on the shop fronts, the sides of houses, anywhere they could apply a can of spray paint, life boiled right down to the basics, like the food cooking in near every big pot, boiled and boiled until it was a fat-flavoured, sweet-tas’ing mush of meat falling off the pork backbone, and spuds crumbling and cabbage or watercress boiled soft and mopped up with bread with plenty budda on. Rottweilers and bull-terriers and dobermanns at every second house with owners jus’ as fierce and yet they could hear laughter, everywhere it broke out, spilled, emerged like haunting melodies of the theme every member knew of: we don’t laugh we’ll do murder. Rambo happy to be carrying the cupla dozen packets of cigarettes cos he’d get some smiles and warm touches from the boys when he handed ’em out and the change’d be his cos he didn’t smoke an’ nor did he do dope — the boys thought cos Rambo was afraid the smoke’d make him start talking which’d take away his unique status and who’d want that in this tough world — and nex’ minute Tarns was suddenly talking like this was ’er las’ walk …
… gabbling about kids growing up with fuck-up muthas and fathas, stabbing her black leather cut-off at the houses with their lights coming on, kids running around, even near at their feet asking were they really Black Hawks, made a man feel proud to be looked up to like that, but not Tarns, she kept stabbing that finger an’ saying about parents not giving two fucken fucks about any cunt ’cept ’emselves. She was infected alright. And the dumbie, Rambo, silently padding along behind ’em like a muted puppy dog; ’n fact he was a stray the gang’d picked up jus’ t
o use but, give ’em their credit, at times jus’ as someone to love who couldn’t give back, or not in words, what they secretly wanted which is why they found him a convenience to express ’emselves out on. Then she stopped Abe, grabbed him by the elbow. Listen. Felt the more meaningful that word at Rambo not being able to listen. Oh how he listened. So.
So he’s walking back with his ears hearing the crackling of fire, as if one of those houses they were passing was set alight right in front ofem. He could hear the sounds of young voices — near unbearable it was. She’d tole him a story that explained everything, her skinniness, her haunted sunken features, her veiled eyes with all that backtale of weeping. She tole him she’d tole it to only two utha people and Apeman wasn’t the utha. Abe’s late bro Nig was one though; the third she did not mention. Her words spoken so softly yet like razor slices to his hearing; of looking after her kid bros, two ofem, and a li’l sis … their mutha away all fucken weekend, boozing …
Nuthin’ ta eat — nuthin’! Then my bro Mark finds five bucks so we, you know, we’ve got a feed at leas’. At leas’ we gonna get food in our bellies … So I’m off, tole ’em big sis won’t be long, Tarns’ll be back with some fish ’n’ chips. Well. Well. Her li’l black-leather-clad breasts started heaving in the dying day and she wiped with the cut-offs, both ofem, ater eyes, an’ a sigh hissed out’f her like she’d been punctured — again — and Rambo behind musta seen it and sensed it cos he was starting to make funny sounds like a dog whining. And all these kids running around the place, like li’l flowers drinking in the last of day, li’l potentials closer to the monsters they were gonna grow up to be, or at the very leas’ uncoping fuck-ups (jus’ ask Tarns here tellin the las’ of her terrible, terrible story, or one awful chapter of it) all that life, and here was this female life finishing off to a man: Mark, my bro, musta foun’ some matches, too … I came back an’ the — an’ the — (Jesus Christ! I can’t stand to hear no more!) But he had to. Or else run off. Abe had to hear the last even though he knew what must be coming.
