by Neil Rowland
“They told me to lose weight and get back into shape,” I consider. “Most likely nothing so radical as you suggest.”
“This is fucking hilarious,” he says. He’s entertained and surprised by developments.
“Let him be, Adam!” she declares.
“Come on, Noah, lets see how quickly your dodgy ticker can run.”
“Don’t hurt him!” Angela warns.
The creep’s pointing a gun at me and she asks him not to hurt me.
“You keep away from my son in future,” I warn.
“Your old bastard already knows too much about us. We’ve got to be realistic Angie. We can’t let him walk away from here, straight to the Old Bill. You hear me? I might as well think up my own sentence,” he objects.
“But what if he goes and snuffs it?” she points out.
“What about it? Know what I mean? We’ve got to be cool about this. Face it, the old bastard’s got it in for me, hasn’t he?”
“You’re not worried about shooting him?”
“I’d be more worried if he walks away from here,” he says.
“For real?
“For real.”
“In that situation how would you dispose of the body?”
“Nobody gives a toss around here...what’s going on. All they want is a place to park their grotty caravans and broken down vans, know what I mean? They’re too terrified of me and those goons...and the plods are like their enemy...know what I mean?” he considers.
My Über-muscle is pumping away without too much protest. The fragile pin regulating the reservoir of my life, for the moment, is holding in place.
“That’s another brilliant plan against the cops you have, isn’t it?” Angie comments.
“What are you talking about? Which plan?” he says.
“To get yourself a stiff on the carpet,” she replies. “After that you’ll have to carry the weight outside, in front of thousands of witnesses. Do you think they’re gonna look the other way or what? They’re not so scared of you,” she tells him.
I can only hope she’s bluffing. It’s hard for me to hold my tongue during this lovers’ tiff.
“What’s your idea then, Angie? Stop giving me mouth girl. No woman talks back to me, know what I mean?” he fumes.
The clunky weapon grows heavier at the end of his arm and begins to pull on his mind.
My daughter smarts at his attitude - her chin bobs into her neck - but it isn’t enough to alienate her. “You can’t pull this one off,” she insists. “You’re taking it too far. If this becomes personal then we risk everything. You’re breaking all your own rules, Adam!”
“I can’t let this hypocritical old bastard walk away. Do you get it, Angie?”
“Then you don’t have a lot of choice, boy,” I bluff.
“Keep out of this, Dad!” She casts a desperate look.
I stare horrified, dejectedly, into her passionately outraged face - radiant and lovely as a youthful Grace Slick, though I could be biased as her father.
“Why don’t we take him out into the woods?” Jakes declares. He shakes the two hollow fingers of death at me.
Angie’s attention dashes back to her boyfriend, this druggie degenerate. “What do you mean by that? Take him out into the woods?” she asks - in drained voice.
“You’d better wise up on reality,” I suggest.
“What do you think I mean,” he tells her. “We’ll give him a good clean kill, d’you get me?” There’s a brief snaggly grin.
“Adam, this is my Dad,” she reminds him. Her hands fall and she looks wide eyed and desperately between those dark bangs.
“I didn’t think he was your fucking ex, or something like that,” he tells her.
“You believe you can blast him and get on with our relationship?” she says.
“Do you want your own life, Angie? You said he don’t understand you...or give you the time of the day. What kind of father is that anyway, do you get me?” he says.
Jakes is staring at me with one slanted eye, as a tumbled fringe conceals the other. As far as I know that’s all you need for a good aim.
“This guy makes Hannibal Lector seem a romantic,” I remark. “Just don’t expect a card this year, Angela.”
“Dad!”
“So he’s your Dad. Are you going to let that affect you?” he suggests to her, while watching me.
Angela balances miserably, intensely nervous. You can tell that her soul’s been shattered like a windscreen, to paraphrase Paul Simon.
“How can you let this creep sell dope to your own brother?” I complain.
“I’m a better mate to that lad than you are, Noah. Do you know what I mean, you useless old granddad?”
“Best keep a grip on that firestick, boy, ‘cause otherwise you’ll find roles reversed.”
“Hear that, Angie? According to this old bastard, it’s either me or him, know what I mean?” he argues.
“Adam, you can’t just shoot him and get away with it.” She’s doing her Simone Signoret impression.
“What do you think your mother’s going to say?” I declare - outraged. Clearly I’m prepared to take a gamble.
“Why don’t you stay at home, Dad? Tinker with your motor? Potter around in the garden? Like most fathers?”
“We’ll have to get him out of here,” Jakes decides.
“Just let him run away back home,” she suggests.
“How long is your luck going to hold out?” I say.
“I make my own luck, Noah,” he retorts. “I’m not superstitious.”
“The whole site is packed with these travellers and hippie people,” she warns.
“You’re losing your fucking nut, Adam,” she protests. “You want to get the police on you?”
“Listen to yourself, Angela,” I tell her. “Do I even exist?”
“Not for much longer, granddad,” he cuts back. “Anyways chances are you’ll drop dead before then.”
“Adam!” she squeals; sounding a decade younger than her actual age. Is she afraid of growing up? Even more so than her parents’ generation?
Jakes doesn’t take any more heed of her. The narrow eye concentrates on me - I can feel as it bores into me - as the bullets (or the shot) that may pierce me.
“Stop waving that thing at me,” I argue. Yet I’m running through the hots and colds as if running through a sauna on speed.
“Get the fuck out of here, you old bastard,” he snarls, and kicks me in the small of the back.
“Don’t be an idiot Dad. Do as he tells you.”
“Even Mum’s going to be shocked if one of your boyfriends blows me away,” I say.
How in hell did I stray into this nightmare gig? It’s like the Stones at Altamont, mixing up with the chapters. This could be my final roustabout.
“You’re responsible, Dad. I didn’t ask you to chase after me. Come looking for me,” she seethes. “I would have come back home tomorrow. You wouldn’t have known anything about this.”
“Are those your expectations of me? We bring you into this world just to abandon you?” I reply.
“You shouldn’t hold me back...disapprove of everything I do.”
As the hoodlum jabs me through his mobile vehicle she hovers indecisively. I’m certain that he’s killing off her feelings with that gun. This is going to be lethal to her affections. But if the guy shoots me, what do I care if they break up?
“Just give me the back of your head to aim at...know what I mean?”
“How do you intend to dispose of the body?” Angela asks ironically.
His manic eye flickers to her reluctantly. “None of these ragbags is gonna look for a corpse.”
“They don’t have to search dummy, they’re just going to f
ind it,” she says.
“Nobody interferes in the business and threatens me.”
Angela struggles to relieve her tired astonished eyes. “But aren’t you forgetting about something else?” she asks.
“Forgetting what?” he answers - contemptuous. He takes a sprint back through his hardened mind. “Like what?”
“Like me,” Angela suggests. She opens her arms slightly towards him.
“Like what about you?” he throws back.
“What’s going to happen to me after this. If you go through with this...I know what you’re doing...I may see what you do... So do you think I’m going to watch you shoot my father and forget about it?”
Our charmless Jean Paul Belmondo gives a dry noise of amusement. Leaving my daughter in no doubt. Looking at me in panic, she knows we’re closer than she thought.
“He’s only trying to scare us,” she insists. But her trust has taken a lethal slug.
“Either he kills me in cold blood or he comes back to his senses,” I say.
Edgily Jakes adjusts his grip. He tosses the weapon about in his hand, to allow the blood to circulate back into his fingers.
“Keep your back turned to me, granddad,” he instructs. “I’m taking you out to bury your generation.”
We walk over the living space of his mobile home - or office, control centre, or other function it gives - past the dusty surfaces and bags of what looks like expensive bath salts but really isn’t so harmless.
“He doesn’t have anything against you,” Angela tells him. “He’s going right back up in his hot air balloon. You’ll never see ‘em or hear from ‘em again!”
“Let’s all get some fresh air, know what I mean?”
“Tell him Dad!”
“Tell him what?” I declare.
“That you’re not going to make any hassle with the pigs or anybody.”
“I’m not going to make any hassle,” I parrot.
Her dark emotional features crumple in frustration. Instantly she turns into an old lady. “Tell him you just want to go home and forget about everything.”
“You want me to beg for my life, with this creep?”
It’s exactly what I’m tempted to do; to get down on my pressed Levi’s.
“You want to live don’t you? You don’t want to throw your life away, do you?”
“D’you believe this two-bob con is hare-brained enough to shoot me?”
The intensity of her look impresses the gravity of our situation. Not many people are going to hear shots. You’d already think a war was going on. We’re held in a throbbing womb of rave and heavy metal. There’s nothing left but the Memphis blues again.
My James Dean pose has lost cultural significance. What are the rules for this monetised contemporary society? Put yourself ahead. Don’t let anything or anyone get in your way. A computer game existentialism.
“Your old man’s trying to buy his life,” Jakes tells her. We stand at the exit to his capsule, wondering about his next move. “He’s a crafty old bastard, know what I mean? Let him walk now and he’d go straight to the pigs.”
“Why don’t you believe us? Let him go.”
“No, Angie. I’m not going to spend years in prison. It wouldn’t be enough. I didn’t come this far with business to let your old man... to allow somebody to ruin it. My old man never gave me a chance either. Am I going to let Noah do the same to me?”
Angela turns away from him in despair. “What about all those people out there?”
“What about them?” he returns. “I don’t give a pig’s poke for all those sorry arses.”
“They might kick the shit out of you... even if they are a bunch of hippies.”
“Know anything about the American Democratic Convention of 1968?” I tell him.
“Fuck off,” he warns.
“This is my Dad.”
“Go and stand over there with your Daddy. There’s a good girl,” he orders her. He waggles the gun until she complies. “Get out of here slowly.”
Jakes picks up a sweatshirt - not a cheap one of course - which he places over his arm to conceal the shotgun. Bizarrely he finds a golf glove which he hurriedly pulls over the fingers of his right hand. Does he want to club me into the next world with a seven iron? Man, you can’t predict this guy’s intentions.
“What are you doing with that?” Angie wonders.
“Stop asking questions, will you girl? Always questions, know what I mean?”
“You know Angie’s answer if you ever pop the question,” I tell him.
“Get out of here you sleazy hypocrite,” he replies.
I feel those steel tips between my shoulder blades. “What’s the hurry?”
I negotiate the steps first. Angela gingerly follows, on her heels. She’s wearing an almost perfect replica of late hippie fashion. A leopard-skin pillbox hat can’t change its spots.
The outfit reminds her of her mother. They must have compared wardrobes. Strings of beads swing from her neck, that she grabbed with her as if for luck. The cut of clothes is too exact, as if copied from an old Vogue anthology. But there’s a resemblance. Our youth comes back to haunt me once again.
Jakes clambers back outside after us. As we three - the hunter and his prey - blink and adjust to the atmospherics, I’m surprised to see Pru still waiting. There’s not much she can do to help. I came here to save Angela, not to mix it with Jakes. Angie with her young and healthy heart.
It is hard to adapt to the open space and closing light. Such was the mood of tension developed in the confined space of the trailer. A chill wind chisels into our ears - a distant bugle call of doom. The sky isn’t out of reach to the balloonist. It’s criss-crossed with potential highways of freedom. I can easily place us up there. It’s a wish to find the safety of that poetic epiphany. Arguably I’m happiest up there. But there doesn’t seem to be an obvious take off point.
“Where are you three off to?” Prudence asks, approaching our trio. Even in her universe this is a strange assembly. What’s going on in contemporary society?
“Adam wants to go for an evening stroll,” I say.
“Pru? What do you want?” he shouts at her.
“Adam’s preparing for his trip to Paris,” I explain.
“Not any more, I’m not,” he tells me.
His nerves are exposed in the open. We’re into the migraine of a free festival. Maybe tree cover is further away than he imagined, in his rush to push me into a shallow grave.
“What the fuck are you doing with them?” Pru asks. She’s alerted by the Strangelove posture of his arm, under the shirt, with leather fingertips exposed.
“This isn’t your argument, Pru. Just keep out of my way, you unpleasant hippie bitch, and you won’t have any problem. That goes for all you head lice,” he declares. He’s referring to a gathering crowd of festival goers. They sense that something’s badly out of phase.
“You’ve got a fucking shooter on them, don’t you!”
“Out of my way, Pru. Go and trim your dirty beards, hear what I’m telling you?” he calls to the group.
The dishevelled bunch looks indignant and begins to call back.
Jakes reveals the shotgun - his deadly racquet - and scans for potential threats. More hippies and travellers are gathering to check out the fuss. There’s a feeling that Jakes is losing control. There are many off-screen distractions. Yet it’s too perilous for Angie and me to break for the trees.
“Give up your crazy ideas, Adam. Let us go!” Angie advises.
“None of these fucking skunks is gonna help you,” he tells her.
“Don’t be a total wanker, Adam!” Pru warns. There’s more West Country flavour in this than a bottle of Somerset cider brandy.
“Fuck off, Pru, you skanky little whore.�
��
“You’re best shot of him, Angie, didn’t I tell you,” I confide to her.
In the heat of the moment Prudence let’s her whippet go. The skinny creature is picking around nervously in the space between us - the no-man’s-land between Jakes and the hostile crowd.
“Put away the shooter. Have you lost your fucking marbles,” Pru asks.
Angela and I glance uneasily within nozzle aim. You just can’t predict.
“Keep your hole closed, do you understand?”
“They’ll throw away the key.” Pru tosses her multi-coloured braids; hands on hips thrust defiantly forward. “They won’t let you out into the prison yard.”
Jakes taunts, waving his weapon. “I’d waste the whole lot of you. All you do is sponge up the mud. You fucking paupers.”
People shout back at him, but the gun keeps them at a physical distance. Pru’s doggie has wandered right up to Jakes, oblivious to the dangers, and is sniffing at interesting odours around his priceless sneakers. Then, at the signal of a mysterious intense stimulus, the dog lifts a thin leg, secures a good straight aim, looks up at the sky and urinates prodigiously over Jakes’ label trouser leg.
After a few seconds the liquid seeps through the fabric. Jakes lowers his aim and stares at the doggie in disgust. It’s a miracle that Sid the whippet doesn’t get it between the eyes immediately.
“You dirty little fucker!”
Sid cringes guilty away, back to his caring mistress, as Jakes flaps his designer threads. In a split second a sizzling noise goes directly past my ear, practically burning the hairs of my lobe on the flight path. Like an intervention from an irritated divinity. A bolt from a crossbow, I gathered; the shaft embedded in Jakes’ left shoulder. The sawn shotgun has fallen to the muddy floor. He’s not surprisingly lost his grip. When I look at him Adam is staring rigidly ahead, a white mask, everything falling away from him. His fingers - including the right with its golfing glove - are clawing at the wooden stem of the arrow, trying to dig out the pain; only succeeding in pulling out a few of the decorative feathers.
Angela is horrified and wishes to comfort him. But I get hold of her and prevent her running back to him. He could pull that projectile from his shoulder; retrieve the weapon. His heavies are somewhere not too far away. They may return when their feelings are repaired. So I pull Angela after me and we cut through the crowd. Fortunately she sees my side and ends her resistance. We make our tracks on gossamer wings. A ragged legged William Tell has saved our skins. Or it might have been William Burroughs taking another misaim at a spouse with an apple on her head. I don’t hang around to watch the fall out. I’ve lost all curiosity.
