SmokeLong Quarterly

The fat man could move. Given he were a fat shite you’d a not picked him for pace, but he had jets like. He leapt the back fence, a big timber job, like a pregnant gazelle. A fucken mystery of the wild. And then me, I got a big splinter in me hand tryna swing me leg over the fucken thing.

‘Where’d he fuckin go?’ yells Macca from the back door of the fat guy’s house.

‘He done leapt the fence.’

‘He outdid ya for pace. I fuckin seen it.’

I had a standing start, didn’t I. But you don’t say it to Macca. I got hurt in the chase too, look at it. Any man can see my hand’s bloody, there’s a infection in that. ‘The man’s a wild animal can leap a fence in a single bound,’ I yells.

‘Youse are a fuckin waste of humanity.’ Macca yells.

I known Macca a long time. And he wasn’t always 6 foot 5. He usedta be just a nugget, a little fella getting in scraps, could’na kept himself out of a scrap if his life depended on it. Never a winner in a scrap till he’s hit a pubescent growth spurt you don’t often see in a boy, then he’s become a real cunt and started taking out his personal history of beat-downs onto anyone who crosses him even his own mates. His own mate what’s got a splinter big as a fucken knife wound.

‘Get in here, fucken hell,’ yells Macca.

Inside the house there’s heroin works laying on the kitchen bench. And the Herald and last week’s Big League. Surely it were a well-appointed abode once but it’s now been restyled with a minimal, heroin-chic, post pawn-shop vibe in mind. Two little tackers, ain more than six or seven, sittin cross-legged on the floor watching telly. Lillde uns just enjoying the prime of their youth.

Macca accosts ‘em. ‘Your fuckin daddy’s done a runner,’ he says standing over ‘em. ‘I lent him money, and now he’s fucked off. S’ what’d we gonna do?’ He ast’s them. ‘Huh?’ he says. ‘Huh?’

The boys look up at him, TV cartoons reflecting blue on them’s faces, and the younger’n one looks back at the telly, pretending no one’s there, a right smart boy, leaving the dire situation to his older brother whose staring at the carpet his lips wobbling. Right smart fuckin boys, these two.  Proper jam this family’s in.

‘I ain leavin without some fuckin payback,’ says Macca. ‘You hear me?

‘Yes,’ says the boy.

Macca tears through the house, getting ever more wound up, ripping stuff out cupboards, going through piles a clothes, through draws, breathing fire.

‘Yis right kids?’ I say, quiet like. They look at me knees. ‘That’s Wile that is,’ I say, looking at the telly. ‘Wile E. Coyote.’

The younger’n meets me eye and it’s like he thinks I’m the one who’s gonna save him from Macca, and ain’t the innocent of a child a frightening an terrifying thing.  ‘He ain’t so bad,’ I says. ‘Wile E. Coyote, he ain’t got no luck but he’s a fuckin tryer.’

The kids don understand that.

‘Gis a hand,’ yells Macca.

I go in the kitchen, and Macca’s got the fridge by the horns. ‘Yer takin the fridge?’ I say.

‘Just gis a hand, ya cunt.’

We carry the fridge out to the footpath. Macca tips it over and it splits open and disgorges many a used-by item, a yogurt, and whatnot onto the streetscape.

‘Carn,’ he says.

We carry out a washer, a microwave, a wood bureau, a chintzy cupboard with many a dime store heirloom crashing into shards on the sidewalk with the other destroyed goods. Neighbors looking out through curtains.

He musta destroyed a thousand dollars of shite right here, but the fat man don’t owe him more two-hunge.

‘The telly.’

‘Whar?’

‘That fucken telly, go in and get it ya minge,’ he says.

 

The boys is still watching the TV. Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff edge and there’s a second of disbelief on his face before he’s disabused of the notion that he’s anything other than a object of derision.  ‘Sorry boys,’ I says. ‘Macca told me take the telly… I don’t wanna, I’m just doing it…’ I unplug it. I don like this job, but if I don do it I gotta pay back Macca what I owe him, which I caint. So. ‘I’m real sorry, boys,’ I say.

The tackers look up at me, snot running freely.

‘Best o’ a bad situation really,’ I says. ‘I let your daddy go, didn’t I. I had him for pace an all.’

They don’t say nothing, but they got the same feeling as I, that a certain line’s crossed right here today, and a threshold of new hurt is upon us all.

I take out me wallet. I got 12 dollars. I drop the money into one of the boy’s laps and carry the telly out, and stand holding all they really got left.

Macca’s in the car. ‘Fucken drop it,’ he says. ‘Smash it up.’

Problem is you say something against Macca in the state he’s in, you’re standing in front of a freight train. It’s a fine balance bein his mate, doin what he tells you at the same time as making it seem like it’s your own self-respecting choice. Maybe he’s more myth than killer, more hype than real, what’s the cost of finding that out but? Likely more than 12 dollars. You’re know you’re gonna drop this telly, smash it up like he says. That’s why you paid the tackers, so you could be weak. In ya end, maybe you end up at neutral. You done okay. You know what you’re gonna do. What are you gonna do? The splinter in me hand hurts like a motherfuker, hurts bad, even that lill bit of pain’s too much. So whadd am I fuckin gonna do here?