by Paul Haines
You didn't eat that, did you?
I locked the door and stayed inside. Over the next two days, I edged towards madness. I locked the cat-flap and shut the curtains. I could hear the cat outside, incessant, whining, angry.
Fucking let me in, ya cunt!
With things so strained at home, I decided to go visit the folks on the farm in Werribee. I could talk to Mum. I didn't think she'd understand, but I needed to tell someone I was losing it. As I drove down the driveway with the window down, soaking up that clean, country air, I passed the new yearling grazing in the paddock. It looked up at me with those brown, docile eyes as it chewed lazily on its cud.
I haven't seen you before.
It released a steaming stream of urine and wandered off to annoy a couple of sheep that had arrived to investigate proceedings. The scragglier of the two shook its head and spoke in a slow monotone.
Hey. Can you fix this?
A strand of barbed-wire had wound around its leg, cutting into the flesh.
Well, can you?
I turned slowly back to gaze out the windscreen as my car lurched onto the flowerbeds lining the driveway. Something fluttered in front of the car and I slammed on the brakes. Two chickens scarpered up and over the fence and off into the paddock.
The crazy bastard almost hit me! Who the hell does he think he is?
It's the son.
Oh.
They glared back accusingly and stormed off to the barn.
Mum's horse Casper wandered over to the fence to survey the damage.
'Hey Casper, do you know what is happening to me?'
Casper whinnied and turned away.
As I pulled up to the house I realised I hadn't heard Casper's thoughts. But the cow and the sheep and the chickens ...
That night I drove home confident and calm. I would've picked the pattern sooner if I'd lived in the country. There were no bloody farmyard animals in the city. Thank God for dodgy Asian food.
#
Mr Wong presents a steaming platter of pale meat on a bed of Asian greens accompanied with several dipping sauces.
'Enjoy, sir,' he says smiling. May her herpes infect your tongue.
'I think cooking her should've fixed that,' I reply, popping one of the anti-smoking pills from its foil.
'Of course.' Mr Wong nervously backs away. I didn't say that aloud, did I?
I swallow the pill with a forkful of the delicate flesh and shake my head. 'No, Mr Wong, you didn't.'
By tonight, I'll be able to understand my wife's thoughts perfectly. My marriage problems will be over.
***
Afterword: Yum Cha
Often a single idea for a story never lets me take the story away from what seems obvious for me as a writer, and because of that, I have found the story really never goes anywhere except in my head. It rarely makes it to the page, and when it does, it is often difficult to complete or meanders into predicability.
This piece had three ideas rolling around in my subconscious and they finally collided, exploding fully formed onto the page despite my involvement. Another one of those gift stories, where it all unfolds with ease exactly the way it should.
I intentionally wrote it as a puzzle for the reader to solve, where every clue is present but nothing is ever stated, but always assumed, where the age-old rule of show-don't-tell is strictly adhered to. Well, sort of. This is an expanded version of the original 500 word story, which is hopefully less cryptic yet still requires enough effort on the part of the reader.
Ironically, side effects, one of the central themes and ideas of the story now tend to rule the quality of my life as I undergo a myriad of drugs and treatment for cancer. Back when I wrote this story, I was newly wed and invulnerable to the ills of the world. Nothing bad was going to happen to me.
It is somewhat of a cliché for a writer to have a cat, and for that cat to be their muse. The cat in "Yum Cha" is the same cat that went on to star in my award-winning novelette "The Devil in Mr Pussy".
***
Her Gallant Needs
Samuel Goldstein was fat and an American. He was also the new kid in school and that gave us three good reasons to hate his guts. If we'd known he was Jewish, we could have had four, though being Jewish meant nothing to us, so three it was. He'd arrived in the spring of 1982, in time for the start of our third and final term for the year.
As Mrs Pickard introduced Samuel to the class, Tony Barnaby leaned over from his desk to whisper in my ear. 'Sammy boy looks like he's hungry. Maybe he'd like a knuckle-sandwich for play lunch? You in, John?'
'Yeah, sure, Tony.'
He sniggered and rocked back on his chair, checking to see who was looking at him. I think Nicole Wymer had glanced over, and I hoped it had been me she had looked at but knew that it would have been Tony.
Tony was my best friend. He was also the biggest kid in school as his parents had held him back two years, or he had started school late or something. Some kids said he'd been in a boy's home for bad behaviour, lighting fires or stealing stuff from the shops. I'd asked Tony once, but he'd scowled at me, fists clenched and asked me if I wanted a go. I didn't want a go. None of us did. Tony was part Maori and he could bash your brains in easy as pie. He was also the first kid in school to get hair on his dick, but then he was older than the rest of us.
Mrs Pickard gave Samuel a seat next to Nicole and she smiled at him and they said something to each other that I couldn't hear and the fat kid smiled back at her. Nicole was the fastest girl at school (both in sprints and cross country) and I was the fastest boy, so in my mind that meant that she should go out with me but I didn't really know how to go about doing something like that. And there was this new fat American kid being all smiles with her.
'Maybe he'd like two knuckle-sandwiches for lunch as well,' I whispered to Tony.
His grin widened and he nodded, rocking back and forth on his chair like King Dick. (I wasn't sure who King Dick was, but Mum used that a lot about my older brother).
#
The fat kid followed us at playtime, which made it easy. Most of the boys in our class had arrived and we circled him out on the rugby field. Tony didn't even bother saying anything. He walked right up and swung his fist into Samuel's nose.
'Harae Mae, you fat bastard,' said Tony. 'Welcome to New Zealand.'
To his credit, Samuel didn't cry. He took the punch fair on the nose, his head rocked back for a second, then he stood there, gaping stupidly at us with his big brown eyes, not saying a word.
'Well?' Tony bunched his fists again.
'Well what?' said Samuel.
'Fucken American!' yelled one of the boys.
'Punch him again, Tony!'
'Yeah, Tony! Do the fat pig over!'
'Well what?' Tony drawled in a poor imitation of Samuel's accent. Tony was pretty shit in most things really, but he was the best fighter in school.
'Well nothing,' said Samuel.
'Well how about a blood nose?' Tony smashed his fist into Samuel's face again.
His head bounced again, his eyes watered, but no blood burst forth from the nose and with punches like that it should have.
I'll give it to the fat kid—he was tough. Most kids would be crying now, but he just stood there, brown eyes wide and watery, a trickle of clear snot in one nostril. Tony smacked him again, and I moved in to trip him over. He hit the grass with a whoosh. I kicked him in the stomach.
Tony sat astride him, wriggling his arse up Samuel's chest so that he almost straddled his neck. The circle of boys chanted, baying for blood. Tony held up a hand and we fell silent. Samuel's chest heaved and I thought I heard a reedy whimper from his throat. Tony hoicked up thick, yellow phlegm, and dribbled it from his mouth, suspending it above Samuel's face. He quickly sucked it back in.
'If you cry, I won't make you eat it.'
Samuel stared back, silent.
Me and another kid, Grant, knelt and held the fat kid's head steady so he couldn't move. Tony dangled the hoick
lower, inches above Samuel's lips.
Samuel said nothing. Tony gave me the eye. Grant secured his knees around the fat kid's head, allowing me to use my hands to force his mouth wide. It popped open easily, like the lid off a bottle of milk. Tony dropped the hoick into and I clamped Samuel's jaw shut.
We held him there until he swallowed. We left, laughing and slapping each other on the back. Tony puffed his chest and we high-fived him some more as the bell rang calling us back to class. When I looked behind us, Samuel still lay on his back, not moving. If it had been me, I'd have been bawling my eyes out by now, but that fat fucker hadn't said a word or leaked a tear.
Or even let his nose bleed.
I think he went up a couple of notches in most of our estimations.
#
Samuel's mother came to pick him up at home time. We piled into the school bus, took our seats (Tony in the middle of the back seat) and checked them out from the safety of the bus windows. Tony wouldn't say so, but I knew he was nervous about the fat kid blabbing on us.
His mum was hot. She looked like an actress off Charlie's Angels or Days of Our Lives. Her hair was long and dark, real thick and she had those American cheekbones, all sharp and high. Long legs, tight jeans (man, she made my mum look like a grandma) and the shirt she wore looked like they covered nice big tits.
Tony shook his head. 'How did she have him?'
'He's probably adopted.' I instantly regretted what I said. Tony was adopted.
'Yeah, probably.'
She held open the door of a flash-looking hatchback car and Samuel climbed in. As she shut the door she looked up at the school bus and smiled. I shivered. Tony whistled quietly between his teeth.
As they drove off, Tony whistled again.
'Wow. You see that car, John-boy? That's a Ford fucken Laser! Hatchback and everything.'
I nodded, not really knowing what that meant. 'Yeah, Tony, a Ford fucken Laser. That's really cool.'
'Yeah, really cool. They must be loaded. I wonder where they live?'
Before I could hazard an answer, the bus churned into life, jerked forward noisily and dragged itself out onto the road for the journey home.
#
As it turned out they lived at the end of our road.
In the Haunted House.
There were six families, including Tony's, living on three-to-five acre blocks, all of which had been carved up from a massive dairy farm a few years ago. Some of the houses were new, while others had been transported in pieces onto their promised land and slowly and sometimes unsurely fixed up. The Haunted House was the original homestead of the Stanford's, the farming family that had owned the land for several generations. Old Mr Stanford had died of a heart attack in that house, shortly after we moved into the street, and Mrs Stanford moved out about six months later to live with her daughter in Auckland. The place had been empty since. My brother Richey and his mate Martin had been trying to grow weed out there, but it never seemed to take. He joked about the ghost of old Mr Stanford wandering around wasted, stealing all the pot and complaining about how he didn't get to enjoy all the money he made from carving up the farm, but we all reckoned there were too many possums lining up for a feed to be able to grow anything green up there. Tony and I used to hang out back of the house there for a while reading Richey's Playboys and Penthouses until a real estate agent started showing people around the place last summer.
Tony and I were perched up in the macrocarpas at the top of their property. From here we had a great view of the house, its wooden boards painted white, window frames a dark red, the double-front door a deep dirt brown, and the old stained deck surrounding the north and west sides of the house. The Ford Laser was parked in the cobbled driveway, shiny robot grey in the late afternoon sun. It was the first hatchback we'd seen apart from on TV ads. Several horses grazed in the paddock between us and the house.
Tony held his dad's binoculars to his eyes. 'Too much glare on the windows, can't see a thing. Might have to come back at night.'
I wasn't too keen on that. These trees would be teeming with possums at night time.
'Better chance of seeing her taking her clothes off, too!' Tony licked his lips, peered back through the binoculars and then handed them to me.
He lit up with his Zippo lighter and puffed away furiously, before passing the cigarette to me. I pretended to smoke it, because Tony liked to smoke. They hurt my throat, but I didn't fancy any of Tony's taunts that afternoon or his punches. He twirled the Zippo in his fingers and pocketed it.
'My real grandfather gave me that,' he said.
'Yeah, that's cool,' I replied. He told me this every bloody time, like it was a prophetic revelation or something.
We sat there for a while up in the trees, talking shit, debating who was better: Duran Duran, Madness or The Clash, while hoping to see a glimpse of Mrs Goldstein. Duran Duran had better videos and were better looking, though Madness had some funny songs, and we were both unsure about The Clash because they were ugly as, though my brother Richey kept going on about how they were the best rock and roll band in the whole fucking world. Tony tried to bring in Bob Marley and Eddy Grant, and though I liked 'Electric Avenue' I wasn't into reggae at all. I think Tony was only into it because he was part Maori and thought he should be. He was actually into Boney M but we never talked about that and I was sworn to secrecy on the fear of a hiding.
The afternoon slowly wound its way down to dusk and as dinnertime approached, we made our way back to our respective houses without having seen a soul, arguing over who would own an Atari 2600 first.
'My folks are loaded,' said Tony. 'Buy me anything I want.'
'Ha. So you won't run away from home anymore.'
Tony laughed and shook his head. 'That won't stop me. If I wanna go, I'll just go. Fuck 'em, they're not even my real parents.'
'Lucky for some.'
'Yeah.' Tony gave me the thumbs up like Olly Ohlson on TV. 'Keep cool 'til after school!'
I laughed. Olly Ohlson was such a dickhead.
My good mood soured when I saw what Mum had made for tea though.
'Oh, Mum. Not salad again.' There'd be no pudding for me that night.
#
After Richey and I had done the dishes, with Richey singing all the words to Combat Rock as it blared from the tape deck, he let me have a look at a new magazine called Electronic Games that he'd bought at the newsagent. It was from the USA, Issue #1 and only about eight months old so it was hot off the press for us.
He wouldn't let me look too closely at it, but I could tell most of the games were for the Atari 2600.
'I think I'll have enough cash saved by Christmas to buy one,' said Richey, thumbing through the glossy colour pages. Some of the games pictured look almost exactly like the arcade machines!
'That's three months away.' I could hardly wait, but I didn't want to show Richey I was excited.
'Yeah,' said Richey.
I could tell by the way he said that one word, the emptiness behind it and everything that that emptiness implied, that if he did manage to buy the 2600 he was going to make it hell for me to be allowed to play it.
I went to bed with images of Asteroids and Space Invaders spinning and marching in my head. I loved video game magazines more than Mad Magazine, even more than the Playboys and Penthouses. Imagine that! Spacies in my own house!
Something woke me.
I lay there in the darkness, disoriented. My heart beat fast. A noise. Was it a noise? Something in my bedroom?
And there it was again. A tapping at the window.
I relaxed and let out my breath. I pulled back the curtain and outside stood Tony, dressed in his black jersey and jeans, a balaclava atop his head.
'Come on, John.' He beckoned with the unlit heavy-duty torch in his hand. He held a duffel bag in the other.
'What's the time, Tony?'
'It's not even midnight. Come on. Let's check their house out. I bet we can still get in through that old window near the lau
ndry.'
I grimaced, then shook my head. The gravel driveway leading to the old Sanford's house was lined with thick casuarinas and they would be swarming with possums, absolutely swarming. And Tony had his duffel bag. I wasn't keen on stealing, but Tony loved it. His stint in the Boy's Home last year hadn't solved that one.
'Nah, man, it's too late.'
'What? You chicken?'
'I'm not coming.'
Tony stared at me, his dark eyes luminescent in the darkness. I felt the hatred in them, that brief surge of rage and I flinched. It'd be easier to take a punch in the daylight though than check that house out at night. And he had the duffel bag!
'You fucking chicken! You fucking girl!'
I closed the window and went back to bed.
#
Tony didn't show up at our bus stop the following morning, but the fat kid did. He stood there, behind the Burns boys and the Johnstone sisters, keeping his face blank and his mouth shut. I studied him, looking for bruises, but there was nothing there at all. Maybe Tony had pulled his punches?
I took Tony's seat in the middle of the backseat and the other kids piled into theirs. Samuel sat several seats in front of me. He pulled a Mad Magazine from his school bag and started reading it. I didn't recognise the cover. Maybe it wasn't an Australian version of Mad, maybe—bloody hell!—just maybe it was an American version. A proper one! I strained my neck to see but from where I was sitting I couldn't see a thing. I didn't want to appear too keen. I could wait. Plenty of time at school to have a gawk at that comic, and in a way, it was good that Tony wasn't here so I wouldn't suffer any repercussions for approaching the fat kid.
I guessed Tony was sleeping in, pulling a sickie. I wondered what he'd manage to nick. Perhaps some other Mad Magazines? Could I hope for that much?
