One Night Out Stealing (18 page)

Eyeing the Prez for a signal of approval that he was alright, show he was a black-hater like they were. But the Prez gave away nothing, just nodded. Then a sheila came in the front door. A real looker. Enough to give a horny dude like Jube a hard on the spot. Blonde, with tight black trousers that showed her great legs he could see the shape, slight protrusion of her fanny shaped there, her breasts didn’t have no bra under that near-see-through white blouse; she had a smoke in her mouth which had her squinting one eye, which caught Jube in a withering glare of question so he looked away. And she, the looker, stepped up to the Prez and kissed his big bushy beard. He ruffled her hair, Hey, babe. Slid a big hand down her back and held her in a hug as he asked Jube, So how much ya lookin to buy, pal? I forgot your name. Jube. Jube, that’s it. How much were you after then, Jube?

He took his time in answering straight away. Just let it drawl out, Oh, bout, what … Pulled out his wad, looked at it, up at Prez, then without fear or a sense of inferiority, Four thousand bucks worth? Had to fight to keep himself from breaking out grinning so proud, so
big
did he feel.

Or he did till the Prez merely shrugged, looked at his woman, tweeked her chin, rubbed his fuzzy face playfully on her face, she giggled, and Jube caught the Prez’s big mit grabbing a handful of bum cheek. And he envied the guy sumpin terrible, wanted that babe for himself, to bury his nose in her cunt, shove that laughing gear down on his equipment (fucking choke the bitch ta death on it …) pretending he had his eyes on the floor but he was fixed on that V of twat outline. Okay, Prez breathed near in his ear. Four buys you a pound. Aw, come on. Four buys you a pound and two ounces.
I thought it bought a bit more’n that. Jube not worried, this was just negotiating, he knew the score.

One pound five ounces they settled on; so two ton an ounce with an extra ounce thrown in. They shook hands on the deal. Prez invited Jube to stay on for a few more drinks; anyway, someone had to go and get the dope. Only a dope’d keep it on the premises, the Prez joked, had Jube in stitches. The Prez ordered a round of drinks for the half-dozen or so who were at the bar servery; one was introduced as the sergeant-at-arms, and, man, did he look like one, the ugly prick, worse cos he wouldn’t remove his shades even in here so Jube couldn’t read the man’s eyes. But what the hell, he was with the Prez himself so what was he worried about? Yet the voice kept whispering away inside him.

The Prez liked rugby league, used to play it, years ago when he was a bit younger, but sure, he loved the game and yeah he thought that fight between the Aussie and Kevin whatshisname, the coon cunt, was a real humdinger, though as a rule he hated blacks, hated em. So do I, Prez. So do fucking I. So Jube confined his league anecdotes to white players. The night came in.

At some stage the Prez gave whispered instructions to Billy, who then left; Jube assumed to get the dope. He offered to pay Prez the four g, but good ole Prez, he smiled, no, wait till we got sumpin t’ give you in exchange. How’s your drink?

Billy returned, came straight up to the Prez and said something in his ear. Prez didn’t give nothin away in his face; he’d make a good poker player Jube assessed in his getting-drunk state. Prez heaved a big sigh. He looked for some time up at the ceiling then asked Jube The Tavi’s your watering hole, right? Jube nodded, Sure is. Ya been there? Prez shook his head, Hardly, bud. Place’s fulla blacks. Looked at Jube, them friendly blue eyes now lancing into a man’s watering own. Jube gulped; wished he had a smoke going to hang onto, hide his nervousness. The eyes boring into him. Nowhere to look cept into them; he couldn’t look away, not with every set of eyes on him; he knew why, too, this guy was the Prez. Why he was the one in charge of the show, of all this lot, there’d be plenty of nutcases amongst em, yet he was in charge. The president. Though for the life of him Jube couldn’t figure out what he’d done or said to turn the situation like this. He just couldn’t.

Prez jerked a thumb in Billy’s direction – Billy was stood with folded arms adding his bit to the evils Jube was getting, and Jube
hurt, hurt and hating Billy, even in the brief glance he caught Bill eyeing him like he was, he
hated
him – Billy here’s juss been down to Tavistocks … he was telling Jube in a fairly ordinary-volumed voice, though not so the tone. And Jube was understanding what leadership is about. You know, to check you out, case you was an undercover, mean ta say – Man, do I
look
like one? Jube with outspread of hands and appealing face. The Prez shook his great head, shrugged huge shoulders, So what does one look like, man? Jube in an instant stabbing a finger at his tats right down his arm. Them, man. How many undies ya see with them. Angry. Hurt too. Then it struck him that if Billy had checked Jube out at the Tavi, then surely he woulda come back Jube’s crim credentials all sweet as? A weight seemed to half lift off his mind, even though the Prez seemed to be building to sumpin that weren’t necessarily gonna go Jube’s way. (Hope. We all live in hope.)

Then the eyes, with bearded outburst encasing them, and
reddened
with booze or whatever, boring into Jube’s eyes. But not sayin a thing. Not one word that’d explain why this shift and what’d Billy turned up with from the Tavi.

Uh, Prez …? Like – like Billy here musta found out, you know, my form? Looking to Billy. Billy? What’d people tell ya, man? But Billy’s hostile features tellin Jube right away what information he’d got weren’t what Jube could possibly have expected. So alarm bells ringing in his head, his half-aching half-murderous heart. (Man, I could poke Billy’s eyes out, I could.)

Then Prez bellowed out to his men, and his deep voice echoed and boomed in the hall-like room, cavernous of sudden perceptive change: He’s white, right? A murmer of yeahs. He grapped an arm of Jube’s rammed it ceilingward. For an absurd moment Jube thought it might be a welcoming ritual, that maybe they were so impressed with him this was the Skull Rider way of showing a man they liked his form, his style. Jube felt close to giggling. The grip on his arm tightened, and Jube could feel the man’s strenght, hear him telling his men in that booming voice, He’s white, He’s white like us. The grip tightened painfully. Yet he’s living with – now get this, guys – he’s flatted up witha – witha – And Jube knew what was coming. He didn’t understand it. Not in the context. It didn’t seem fair. Or right. Not when he’d deliberately chosen this white gang for being just that. Because he thought they’d have the principles he perceived the Maori gangs as not having. He understood, though,
leadership, what it was, what made it; it was a voice that
summarised
. The voice that put the direction in these ordinary guys’ their hatreds their unsure classifications, this is what leadership is about: they sum up the followers, they – he, this leader, he sums up any given situation for these thickheads to understand. He says, this is a Thing, and we don’t like Things, says I your leader. Then he orders the Thing to be attacked.

So Jube didn’t hardly hear the Prez calling out his
summarisation
of Jube, Jube the Thing. Who is flatted up with a nigger.

Just as he didn’t feel, not really, not as a painful beginning to a series of pains, inflicted pain. Just a thud. Boom. Sorta muffled. Like cannon fire in the distance. It mighta been thrown by the Prez, seein as how he was the most wild-eyed ofem in that split second of situational sum-up that man gets when he is under attack, or it coulda been Billy threw a king hit because of his own hurt at warming to this Thing, being fooled by It. Didn’t madda who it was; only that Jube was still standing, and thinking, Don’t they know Jube McCall can take a hit? All my life I been hit, and never have I gone down from the first blow, ask anyone. So Jube tottered. And punches flew at him from everywhere. And voices were yelling through clenched, enraged, fucked up teeth,
Geddim!
Geddim!
Kick
theniggerloversheadin
!

Then he fell from his six feet and three inches of gawky height. (I fall down …
And
we
all
fall
down!
hahahahaha!) A childhood nursery-rhyme line came to him, with it children’s laughter, from out of the mind blue yonder; as did the adult voices chatter this mad cacophony that he wassa niggahlover come to him, and he
wondered
about that one: if he might not be in the wrong country? Maybe I been in America my whole rotten life and now known it till now? This ain’t New Zealand. We don’t have niggers. And anyrate, I’m one of the good guys?!

They didn’t hurt. Not the punches. Not the boots. Not a one ofem. Just jolts, is all; jolts of electricity going off in a man’s brain. Sparks, yeah. Lectric sparks of brain signal, thought event, word connection in the squiggle of brain mass with its highways and
off-roads
and backroads of tracks and unmapped ribbon routes of message conduit. Tha’s all. Tha’s all ‘t’ happening to me: it’s a brainstorm. It’s an event happening from the outside to the inside; sumpin good’ll come of it … sometime. Some day. (Oh …)
Ohh!
(… I’m sure it will. Sumpin good’ll come of this –)
Ohhhhhhhhh.

Boots stomping, heeling at his protective hands covering his face. (Sumpin good …) And: My, is that Sonny I can see? Hey? Sonny? Oi, Sonny, lookit what you don, man. You did this. You’re why they’re doing this to me. And me, all I was trying to do was help us. Me and you, Sonny. I was trying to double our bread. (Oh, but sumpin good always comes of even a beating – don’t it?) Jube fixing on something in his mind. A thought. An idea. A notion – yeh – a notion, that everything gonna be alright, Jube boy. Everything.

Juss like Daddy tellin me. (Or did he?)

Sing to us, Boris. Sing to me and Jane, Sonny with the tape labelled in hand-written black ink on the box, ‘Music from the Slavonic Liturgy’.

The snow fell. Frozen icicles suspended from the church eaves. Shingle roof was only just visible in edging of otherwise total snow cover, though the spire broke clear of it because of the angle. And snow whipped up in flurries from some deeply cold Russian wind, as worshippers hurried to the warmth of church inner sanctum, hidden behind thick fur hats and upturned collars and oversize coats, hurried to the window glow of candlelight in a semi-gloom of probable morning over there in that climatically terrible country. Sing to us, Boris, and choir.

Sonny having woken with a start to a just-before-midnight troubled dream where he was struggling to hold onto a kite for all he was worth, and Jube was on the other end trying to tear it away from him. Woke and immediately ached from the dream effect as well the voice of imaginary Jane in his mind as clear as if she was there, beside him. And wanting to hear, to see that music.

And, in time, to he sitting on the edge of his bed, the big man with the big voice and backing choir sang like at a dozen funerals of everyone Sonny ever knew, was close to, gone; transported by voice and voices alone to both that church in far-off Russia and to the gravesides, a dozen of them, and like in dream all at once, staring down into coffin-bottomed holes at life irretrievable, life forever gone (without having lived in the first place) so a man not sure what he was crying for: that or the thought of their twelve deaths, or for that snow-swirled cold village in remote Russia somewhere and nowhere; wanting a hand to hold, a woman’s (my mummy’s?).

So come to me, Jane, come to me. You’re here and Sonny’s here. Come, let us cry together for them lost two lives of ours, and for the
dozen lives now being lamented by Boris there, and his choir of good true men and women. Amazing, eh Jane, how they can put so much meaning and musical order into so much apparent grief. But it’s not grief you say, Jane? But I know that: it’s glory to God, to the god they worship in secret Russia. Like we have our secrets, Jane, in this country.

But it ain’t God so much, Jane, you unnerstan? It’s the god in them, in his voice, Boris’s, that he sings to first. Ya see? It’s his voice, the creative outpour from himself, his own special inner workings that has him, you know, like singing praise to himself. To the fact of him having such a beautiful voice. And then, then, dear Jane, he next sings to us and for us; so he can represent of us and for us what we’re feeling. Our own inner understandings, ya know? It’s God but it ain’t God. You unnerstan? Sure you do, Jane, you and me, we’re peas from the same discarded, forgotten pod, aren’t we?

Ya see, he and they, the choir, the collective of em are singing glory to being alive, as much they are to God if even to God. They call it God, sure they do. It’s the excuse they use to strive and then reach those heights. Some ofem might be atheists, ya unnerstan, Jane. Like me and you, we’re standing at these gravesides in our same sad minds and we’re crying, right? But who’re we crying for? Them one dozen lined up down there in each his and her separate hole? Or for us? For us do we cry? Oh, but now the women have changed it, ya see now, Jane? How things shift? How life itself has shifted on us? But we missed it before, didn’t we? Didn’t we? Oh but, Jane, not now, not now, it doesn’t have to be like that anymore does it?

Burying himself in his hands. As the voice and voices throbbed on.

The times, Jane. The number of times I, Sonny, have sat here and soaked up what’s going on on screen. Now you, you’re sharing it with me, Jane. Even though you don’t actually exist, yet you are real in my mind. I can hear you. You have a voice, it’s a husky voice – from too much smoking, eh, hahaha – you have a face, your hands are soft, we’re just a meeting away from loving each other. Looking at the screen again. Thinking of twelve funerals, of a dozen deaths of everyone a man (and a woman) ever loved, and twelve might be an exaggeration, a convict’s cell-practised lie, though any number less didn’t give the experience sufficient meaning, such was the huge grief Sonny felt inside.

Twelve good people, Jane. Taken by the same catastrophic event.
What would it be, an explosion? Yes, an explosion. Dead. So all of em dead. And yet, Jane …? You know? And yet not dead, or how this tremendous mourn of song-voice rising up and above even death times twelve? It’s the possibilities, is it not, Jane, of life ascending, rising above death? It ain’t hope so much as it’s triumph; triumph even in our darkest moments, lifting us above the grief even as we grieve. We know this now, Jane, don’t we? It’s the possibility of life triumphing over the goneness of life. And that’s what this tape, these tapes, are: just one of life’s possibilities put to me – no, us, Jane. Put to us – no. Stolen, Jane. Be honest. I’ll be honest. It’s life’s possibilities found to me one night when I was out stealing.

The bells tolled then the screen went blank, but the bells tolled on in Sonny’s (and Jane’s) mind. Then outside a car arrival. Jube’s familiar engine roar. Sonny keen-eared to what followed. For several minutes he listened, but no sound of doors slamming closed, and the engine was still rumbling. Sonny figuring Jube and someone or ones were talking. Having a joint. Picturing them, hearing the gaudy laughter in confines of car. Smelling the dope. Listening to the breaths, of intake, of held breath, of final exhalation. Imagining that, and adjusting himself for their soon entry, of having to laugh at their inane and mad comments and unfunny jokes and remarks. At having to be one of them when he wasn’t, and had never been. Nor certainly, not now, could possibly hope to be. He was just Sonny. Sonny who was out one night stealing when – When the horn sounded.

And had urgency in it.

The two of them; suspended, two closed-up figures in a night frame. Of overhead streetlight. Stars arena-ed around. Bowled above. It’s always the stars, even when the clouds’re covering them: lights down on man his wretched condition. And too his moments of beauty.

An unevenly heighted picture of physical statures. And
postures
. The smaller frame supporting the taller, the head slumped taller. Hey, Jube … Hey, man, it’s Sonny. Sonny, bud. It’s Sonny. (It’s alright, Sonny’s here. Sonny’s here, pal.)

A suspension of locked, entwined figures, shapes converged under lamplight. Just another night scene, man, ’t’s happening all over. Here. There. The city. The country. The fucking world. Of creatures of the always night screwing up. Fucking up. Happens
every time. (Everytime, Jube.) Man, it’s alright, Jube. I’m here. Can ya walk? Wanna get on my back? I think I can make it. Hey, what’s money, man? Don’t be talking bout no money. We never had it to start with, did we? And we ain’t got it now. Gotta get you inside, man. Who did this?

Juss another night. Another streetlight. Another pair done blown it again. Cos one man’s blowing is his friend’s blowing too. How it goes. Juss another night.

Of hurt sobbing and heaving breath in the lamplight dark. A possibility happened, Jube, tha’s all, Sonny whispering and not meaning for Jube’s ears. Though his voice rose as he continued – couldn’t stop it seeing as it’d started – When sometimes the poss’s’re good, sometimes they’re bad. Huh, Jube? So it wasn’t our turn tonight, uh? So what? Come on, let’s get ya inside, cleaned up. How it goes, eh Jube? Ya know? Holding Jube closer to him. How it works out sometimes, Jube. Ya win some, lose some, okay? Holding Jube tighter. And feeling love cos love was all he and Jube got right now. Seein as how the possibility had already been reached, and this was its bloodied outcome. Plus the money, Jube was mumbling out through teeth-broken mouth, was gone. Stolen. Robbed. I got mugged, Sonny, he was mumbling, by our own kind. And sounded so betrayed. So betrayed.

Getting Jube indoors, on the sitting-room floor, on his back, but he rolled over on his side because he’d started to gurgle with blood probably running down his throat. Is alright, bro, Sonny’s here. The mess they’d made of the man. It was unfair. Criminal. Not right. And the fucking money’s gone too, Sonny. I’m sorry, I’m s – Hey don’t worry, man. Who’s talkin money? I’m not. Get you cleaned up, man, we might have to take you to hospital. No, no hospital, no hos … The word fizzed out in a hiss of blood bubbling up out his mouth. But then he lifted himself to a sitting position. And he looked the more hideous. It was the fight left in him: it looked so pathetic at the same time it had this mad pride, this crazy will of effort and determination. Oh Sonnee! he groaned, No, he didn’t groan, he cried it out, as he did again: OH SONNEE! Man, it’s alright, Jube. I’m just getting a wet cloth. Oh, tha’ssa mean cut, Jube, you’ll have to get it stitched. No, man, we’re going back, the madman was protesting in his monumental courage.

Back? Man, you ain’t going nowhere. And I ain’t getting involved, you know I never liked drugs, and I always hated violence.
Look what it’s done for you, Jube. Oh man, no, don’t say you’re going back. Please?

But Jube was shaking his barely recognisable head, the face part. No. No, Son. No, Jube. No! Ya hear me? Sonny getting angry, and maybe some of it was upset at what’d been done to his pal (the only pal I got). No Jane any longer in his mind, not at sight of this face-pulped hideosity. We ain’t goin –

– To the house, Sonny.

The what? What house? Where they already done this to –

– The big house. Oh, don’t be si – Man, you’re hurt bad. You’ll be better in a few d – well, a little while anyway. Sonny dabbing at the face with a wet cloth, but no matter where he wiped, blood kept springing forth from another source or the same place. (God, I hope it ain’t his life leaking out of him.) The big house, Son. We’re going back there. Member? Member what it did for us, Son?

And the penny dropped. The Harl – You mean – Man, Jube, you don’t know what you’re saying.

But the man hauled himself to his feet, staggered for a moment. Managed, somehow, to break out in a kind of macabre smile, as if despite it all he’d still triumphed. It didn’t seem possible. Nor probable. Cept it was happening right in front of Sonny’s eyes.

Back to where it all started, Sonny, the man was saying through his broken-tooth smile; these words, this seized hope in his world of bloodied abjectness croaked from his hugely swollen lips: Back, Sonny. We’re going back. Soon’s I’ve healed up a bit. Member, Sonny? How it was the same thing, near? And how it turned around?

But they’ll have alarms now, man.

Back to that big house, eh Sonny, hahaha.

And why’d they have money sitting around now?

Then we’ll see. We’ll show em, Son. We’ll fucking show em.

And one smiled with a mad triumph as if already he was on his way back. And the other fell eyes to the floor, and shook his head. Then lifted them. I’m getting you a doctor.

We’re going back, Son, the voice harsh in its pained delivery. The smile bizzare for the hope Jube had vested in his promise. Let’s get you into bed. Back, Sonny. Ya hear? Back to get ourselves on the high road again, uh? Sonny not answering. Uh Son? Maybe. Not time to be talking – It is!

Jube’s swollen eyes the same slits of vision they’d been from the
other beating. The total of it adding more to the macabre, to the fucking unholy mess they were in – again. (A-fuckin-gain.) Slits that the madness was able to glisten through. Or maybe it was just hope born of desperation, and of wanting to change things. To swing this life back on course that the original crime seemed to have promised, but it was now in ruins. Bloodied, face-pulped ruins.

Then Jube started coughing, and it sounded bad. Looked bad as blood came dribbling out his mouth. Like a statement. On both their behalfs.