What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (12 page)

S
HE KEPT GIVINIM
glances which even behind her shades bothered him, cos he sure as hell wasn’t givin’ ’em back. The music from the stereo was being pumped out, peeled back, near overwhelming the emotions whenever it surged to a peak in the club-house hall, which original members had built ’emselves and not a bad effort for a buncha untrained rough dudes if, sure, some of the inside
painting
was pretty rough, it was still sound and whoever’d dream’d the carpet had got it started with about a quarter of the floor done, who was complaining. But that sheila member’s glances were bothering Abe Blackie standing there in the Hawk clubroom bar where
virtually
all of their gang life took place, he and Mookie knew this already from jussa few months in the gang, and didn’t mind in the leas’.

He wasn’t wearin’ his shades, felt they kinda had to be earned if a man, a new member, wanted to wear ’em inside like the older bruthas; he’d tole Mookie earlier, Man, I wouldn’t be wearing the shades, not yet, bro. Might be a rule of, you know, seniority with shades. So Mookie’d taken ’em off and slipped ’em into his jeans pocket. Yeah, man, you’re right. Thanks, Abe. Love ya, man. I mighta got in trouble.

All night he’d tried to steer the conversations — if they c’d be called that, which even he knew they couldn’t, more like bursts of yeahs and nahs and swear words between periods of silence and clicking fingers to the music, singing along with it, not yet time of being freed up enough to dance to it, talking fights, social grade rugby league games cos some a the bruthas played league (and made out they were playing this Aussie Winfield Cup stuff when all Abe saw las’ Sat’day was fat, outta condition dudes with the dreadlocks, with their tats, running puffing around a field trying to take a opposition player out with a big hit or a coathanger — ooops, man was jus’ waving out to his mutha, hahaha, on the
sideline
— round the fucken throat and who cared if the ref sent a man off, might even stick one on him he wasn’t too tough which this ref was, he musta been cos he sent two of the bruthas off — You! And you — you’re both off! jus’ like that when the two bruthas
started punching up a fulla and the members on the sideline were off their faces yelling and that got their dogs goin’, but no one exactly ran onto the paddock and smacked the ref; Abe heard uthas on the sideline saying the ref was one of the Douglas
brothers
and you hit one of them you hit the whole family, meaning about nine brothers and the fifty-five cuzzies, too, which made the Douglas family, even the dumbest Black Hawks could figure that one out, bigger than their own gang. And with the law on their side, seein’ as they were straight, it meant the bruthas, if they were gonna take it further which they usually did (cos they hold grudges sumpthin’ terrible and they’re jus’ kids’t heart, made wild, turned rotten, so they’d go so far as kill a man on jus’ the way they think he’s lookin’ at them) they’d have to use guns on this referee and his reputed staunch-as family, which jus’ wasn’t worth it, not killing straight fullas who weren’t the avowed enemy, it was them the Blacks wanted to waste, maim and kill, the Brown Shits, so they had to cop their sending off with jus’ some bluff and bullshit noise and hollering, and (secretly) hope the rugby league board officials didn’t ban them for too many games) — well, everywhere Abe Blackie moved to in the community-like hall of about smalltown dimensions, so they, the players sent off, wouldn’t have to go too long suffering — HAHA! — at having no one to hit, dirty tackle, stare gangster’s stares at and, you know, show off to the boys, he jus’ couldn’t get anyone off the game, which they’d taken their bull terriers and rotties along to, to scare everyone, specially the straights who were whites, specially them cunts — Abe
wanting
to get onto the avowed enemy, them, the fucken Brown Fists. Brown Shits they called ’em round here, and then some. Abe wanted to get the talk to the Shits’ prez, Jimmy Bad Horse, an’ what he’d done to Abe’s (Heke) real brutha, Nig. Why Abe’d joined and changed his name to show the ultimate staunchness, on account of his late bro. Who Jimmy set up to be killed by this gang, ’cept Abe forgave them that, they couldn’t help it, jus’ doing their job their life-chosen code of duty, the opposite of the duty Bad Horse was sposed to owe Nig (ya don’t set up one of your own members). Abe wanted to find out who of his bruthas here was ready and willing to take the Shits’ prez’s scalp. Tha’s what he was trying to find out: who’d go do the bizniz with him.

But that patched-up sheila kept looking atim. And he knew who she was with; and if he walked in and saw this going on Abe’d have to take what came, which’d be something terrible done against his person ’nless he wanted to fight for her; and her man’d fight to the death, Abe knew that, the whole fucken world did. So he wasn’t returning her looks, no fucken way. Even if inside he felt he could give her man a run for his money. Maybe he could. But not why he was here. And anyrate, she wasn’t his type. Truth was, he preferred white sheilas. (Gonna get me one, too.) Dunno why. Maybe I like a woman to be more like one and not like the ones around here, specially the patched-up bitches.

Then fuck me, if she don’t drag her pretty arse over to a man. Givim the handshake. Hey, man. Hey, sis. Howz it? I’m cool, bro. I’m cool. You too? Yeah, sis, I’m cool. I’m cool. But not so cool he still wasn’t hoping she’d jus’ fuck off leavim alone. Pretty thing, too. But wrong colour. No class. Wrong vibes coming off’er. I know someone you know, her voice a million cigarettes and joints croaky, as well this definite sadness about ’er. Oh yeah — who’d that be, sis?

She sucked in breath for no reason, ’nless she was stoned, which she could be, yet she didn’t seem in that space. Di’n’t ya know? Know what? Who I am, who I knew? An’ she glanced over her shoulder, he thought nervously. Nah, I don’t know anything. Then she started up chewing and he definitely hadn’t seen her put nothing iner mouth. He waited. Then she toldim, I used to go with your brutha. Nig. And it was like an electric charge’d gone through ’im.

That right? He kept his cool. Yeah, she nodded. He was
starting
to shake all ovah. What, like his …? Yeah, we was close as. Abe fought to gather himself. What, when was this you an’ him were …? She sighed again. When he, you know — Abe’s turn to suck in breath. Died? Yeah, it was then. Her voice’d gone down to this whisper. And she was ready to move back to where she was leaning, on a elbow-height table jus’ like at a real pub, waiting, he sposed, for her man, Apeman.

He went, Listen. Can we, uh, like talk sometime? She wasn’t even looking at him when she asked, Why? What’s there to talk about? He’s gone. I’m outta that shit gang and here with the best one. An’ so’re you.

Abe downed a fresh can to calm himself. Sis, he was my bro. I, you know, I never loved someone like I did him. (Why I’m here. Why I joined up with this outfit.) That right? Looking atim turned side on. You know what happened? Yeah, I do: fucken Bad Horse? thought he’d turn it into a question case she had more to add. His anger welling up something terrible: (I loved my brother.) She nodded — witha scowl — No, it ran deeper than that, this was sumphin’ else again. Not even jus’ hatred, though hatred was the bedda part of it. He set my bro up? Yeah, she nodded again. Set me up, too. Why I went and, you know, hugged your mother at the, uh, the fun’ral. You see me there? No, he shook his head using the gesture to hide his swallowing. She gave a sad smile: You mussa been too busy crying, eh? He gave it back, a kind of stress-relieving chuckle: Yeah, I musta been. Fucken near choked on the words.

She turned three-quarters from him tole him ovah her leather jacketed shoulder, Talk to you ’bout it. One day, eh? Yeah, you do that. He felt like crying. But of course didn’t.

H
E DIDN’T UNDERSTAND
it, standing here drinking with them and fucken five of ’em at that, the Douglas brothers, and Gary’s got that tease in his tone, after the number of times he’d been out hunting with ’em. (And I showed ’em didn’t I?)

What position? Gary was asking Shaneyboy one of his other brothers, you say prop? Jake a prop? Nahhh. Looking at a man like he was a small pig not worth all the trouble, like he’d let a man go rather’n waste his time considering him. Ko’i, can you see a prop in Jake? Kohi shaking his (ugly fucken) head. Nope. Prop’s gotta be what they call immovable. And he’s too tall to be that. I’m a prop. What, a lock then? Yeah, maybe a lock — nahh. Kohi shaking his head again, tall enough, an’ we know he’s got the strength, but too fucken old, Ga’. What, you’d be forty-five now Jake?

Two, Jake straightened up in a huff. Forty-two. Same age as you, Ko’i, he’d taken to dropping the h in Kohi’s name as much as a sign of their friendship (or so I thought till now) as how the name naturally came out. Yeah, yeah, you’re right on that one, Jakey. But, you know, I’m playing. Been playing my whole life, or since I was about five when the football was’s big as my li’l body then. Not that it is now, hahahaha! Jus’ remembering back, Jake, at how long I
been playing that game. Still get excited before a game, too. Then he looks at Hepa. That how you feel before a game, Hep, like you do before, uh, making love? Or having a fuck, Hep drawled back, laughing: shet, it’s better’n that — lasts longer! HAHAHAHA! the table erupted. How about you, Shaneyboy? Same, bro. And Haki and Gary nodding yeah, they felt the same way about playing the game: excited. See, Jake? Ko’i lookin’ a man right in the fucken eye. Tha’s how much we enjoy it. Then running his eyes all ovah a man, clicking his tongue, then tapping his chin as though really giving this some thought. Oh I dunno, Jake, I can’t see where you’d fit, fulla your size … not quite tall enough to match those big Pakeha locks in the lineout, ’nless you know how to do the business on them which you wouldn’t, not if you haven’t played the game in — How long you say it was since you’d played, Jake? Fifteen, Jake said. And immediately Kohi shook his head, You see? You see? (Does he have to say it twice?) What I’m saying, they’d eat you alive on the field I’d say, Jake. All, you know, due respec’.

Jake pulled himself up to full (fighting) height. I don’t remember bein’ eaten by no one, Ko’i. At anything to do with — he stopped. Fuckit, may as well say it: to do with body, Kohi. Formalising his name to keep the record straight.

S
O
T
HEY HAD
him at practice, an’ a cold, wet Tuesday night it was too; running these impossible-to-unnerstan’ grid lines, scooping up a ball here, gotta put it down there, run around a fulla here, catch a ball there, run up the line of team-mates, pick up another fucken ball, now drop down and do twenty press-ups, now spring! and run to the halfway —
le’s
go
!
le’s
go
!
Man never knew such a short distance to feel so long. Back though an’ not the last. Take a breather. Okay, that’s enough now, twenty sit-ups — Oh, all night long, or two hours feeling like all night, this shit went on.

A man dragging himself into the huge (nice) thermal bath with the team-mates, too tired to hardly smile. You right for Thursday practice then, Jake? Who else but Gary. A whole lot of smiling heads in a steaming bath as though they were laughing at a man. But he’d showem. (I’ll showem.) Looking back at ’em with big asking eyes, Wha’ no practice t’morrow night?

M
ULLA THINKING IT
muss be the cellphone’d made Bad Horse so fucken sure of himself, when normally Mulla could see that flaw inim, that secret lacking of manhood — he firs’ saw it that night in the bar when Jake The Muss confronted Jimmy and Jimmy blew his arse — he could see it in Jimmy Shirkey like a crack going throughim. But, lately, the crack seemed to have closed.

Engine roared out front of ’em, shuddered their
smelly-socked
feet sitting sticky in steel-capped head-kicking boots, Mulla an’ Horse in the back, Chocky driving and Chylo (where’d he get a name like that?) with his tensed, murderous (wanting to) existence ’side Chock as they sped through anutha suburb doin’ the
roundabout
way case there was cops to shake off and drama denied.
Brrr-brrr
Jimmy took it firs’ ring. Yeow? Mulla able to observe his leader because he was sitting in a pretend-relax slump against the door (hoping it don’t fucken open on a man!) not wanting to be seen to push down the lock cos that’d mean he was a fucken wimp being sensible, that familiar profile of hair explosion like that Negro fulla the ’Merican boxing promoter — King, tha’s right, Don King — hair like his. ‘Cept Jimmy hadda beard and Mulla swore it had its own colony of insects in there cos it moved, Mulla’d seen it, and that was inside the Quarters, no fucken wind in there an’ only breeze coming was from dudes’ mouths shooting off at sumpthin’ the same or other of (admit it, man) their fucked-up condition; Jimmy Bad Horse is colonised! was the thought Mulla got when first he saw the beard moving, inside pissing himself at the thought.

Bruth-
ahhh
, I godd it, Jimmy sneering in a fast passing
street-light
casting on him. Sound of him pushing a button on that
contraption
; he toted it and used it like a gun. Cunt tryin’ ta gimme di-rections, as if I don’t know my own fucken town. Chocky, it’s Matai Street, up by that church they light up’t night. Church? Chocky laughing. Yeow, bro, ch-hurch. You know the one, down by where Rubie used t’ live — Till she died, Chylo couldn’t wait to cut in with. Have to be Chylo on the subject of death. Yeah, till she up an’ died, Chy. On smack, Jimmy as if he had to remind ’em that smack, even for them, Brown Fists, was out. Ya know why we don’t do smack,
boys? Cos it makes our sweet life short, Chocky knowing what to answer (refrain) now. Yeah, bro, you goddit: cos it makes our sweet life short. Now
dope
— HAHAHAHAHA! the car exploded
spontaneously
, affected by the same stuff smoked back at the Headquarters. Though Mulla’d kept his intake low, on account of where they were going tonight, the smoke made him too mellowed out; Jimmy might order ’em to do some bizniz when a man was feeling like smelling a flower, or sumpthin’ (nice) stupid like that. Or smelling Gloria’s sweet twat, or jus’ her toothpas’e breath’d do as she tole a man sweet things. Man, had she grown on a man.

Brrr-brrr Jimmy got the cellie call firs’ time; like when a man was waiting around for Gloria t’ ringim at the Quarters, hanging around the phone, starting to have jus’ a few vague doubts about the company he was keeping, and talking of keeping, he was
keeping
those thoughts to ’imself, not even’d tell Gloria of such,
what-they
-call-it, heresy thoughts, Mulla ’membered the word and its meaning fitting here from a crossword even dumb jailbirds learn to do cos they’re such an effective way of passing away the time —
Br-rruhh
-br-rruhh a orn’ry phone rang different (please let it be Gloria) he’d got her call jus’ before they left tonight, ‘nough time to hear her say take care and stuff like that, grabbing it firs’ ring (oh Glor) Gloria? Yeah, it’s me. Let her do the talking, a man’d done his bit jus’ by being there to answer. Jimmy across from him on his
cellphone
giving instructions to the utha carload a bruthas where to be positioned and so the excitement in the car air, maybe danger, to go with the cigarettes, sock odour and someone’s week-old armpits’t hadn’t seen water ’n’ soap, mean to say, even a Brown has a shower a few times a week, even a Brown. It was that murder-wanting Chylo, he and water was like him and people he took a dislike to — didn’t go.

Mulla thought the kid, Gloria’s young fulla, looked like Chylo would’ve when he was the same age: kinda handsome, in that Maori way of if only they’d clean up their act a bit. But the
comparison
ended there. Chylo’s growin’ up years musta been worse than even Turi Jones (till I came along and rescued it. I got plans for that boy) or so Mulla hoped in his internal window-demisting changing view of this world, that Gloria’s kid didn’t end up like this (or me, come ta think of it): wanting to be a murderer.

Chylo was tall and lean an’ not jus’ mean but bad; Chylo hated the world, everyone and thing in it, he only liked his bruthas and even some a them he hated and for no other reason than he took a dislike to certain members the way Mulla’d seen some deaf mutes do, of taking one look at even a stranger and hatinim on the spot. Cunt carried knives strapped to each leg, a Stanley knife for cutting faces not lino in his jean jacket pocket, and he was the firs’ if they were going out on a serious madda to haul out the sawn-off shottie and whatever gun was going down. He’d come from anutha Brown Fist gang, up pas’ Auckland somewhere, where he said they had white women for breakfas’ an’ lunch an’ tea and fucken supper, too, if they could lure a slut into their pad. He’d moved down to Two Lakes cos, so he said, he wanted a change of action. No more fullas left t’ rumble with up there, boys! I beat ’em all! (’Cept you didn’t beat yourself, Chy) Mulla did get that thought. He did now he was experiencing, uh, love.

He called out from the front seat — cos he never turned around and faced people when he was sitting in the front, case it was the moment the Hawks were hitting on the bruthas with a driveby how they do in Ameri-ca, our ebony bruthas, bet they’d love us — Man, I hope these cunts’re gonna try and rip us!
Hahaghhahagh!
Cunt had his own laugh, too, always with that menace married to hope that the menace could cut loose. Weren’t a day went by when Chylo didn’t tell everyone, Man, I wanna
wa
ste someone. Lately he’d changed that to smoke cos tha’s how the niggers in the ’Merican ghettoes talked, he’d seen it on video and once on a late night movie, all the boys’d happened to be up
drinking
when it came on and at the end — well, during it — they had tears in their eyes when the fulla’s mate who was gonna be
someone
in the better straight world got wasted. Was Chylo jumped up when the fulla in the movie was dying with his chest blasted out by a shottie, screaming he’d be smokin’ any man who did that to one a his bruthas. When, if he’d looked, he’d a seen the bruthas having a quiet li’l weep, seen the point of the movie. Oh, but then plenty of people don’t see even when it’s right in front ofem.

Yeah, man, hope they do, man I hope they do. Chocky. Jus’ showing a face, how staunch he was. Man couldn’t fight for shit. But he could drive like a racing-car driver, why Jimmy keptim on.
Jimmy aksed: Chylo, you put some artillery in the boot? For the firs’ time ever Mulla saw Chylo turn his face. This head and
shoulders
outline saying in a hollow voice, No one said … Man, no one tole me … With a back echo of, what else, murder therein.

He swung Chocky’s way in not panic so much as it was his shame (and the smoke) in maybe not getting an order right. Chock, you sposed to tell me, man? Were ya? No fucken way, Chyl. Jimmy, did you tell us to bring artillery? And Jimmy taking his sweet fucken time in answering: I might’ve. When he coulda eased their fretting an’ tole the truth he hadn’t given the order. Instead, Jimmy was dialling anutha number.

I got my Stanley, Jimmy, you want some cunt’s face opened up. You tell me, I’ll give you a gap in any face you c’n put a truck through, Chylo trying to make up for what’d already passed. And Mulla in the back, right behind Chylo, thinking: Well no one can drive a truck through my existence no more. When it used to be a fucken highway for all of life’s woes to come through, or the hole I tried to stop up with my lifetime’s acts of stealing stuff and hurtin’ people. Not now I got Gloria. Which is why he was shaking a bit, case the bizniz really cut up rough with these honky dealers from outta the bush, tough as, and a man was gonna lose his firs’ love in a — till her — rotten life an’ go back to fucken jail. (Can’t do no more time, God. Jus’ can’t.)

Don’t worry about it, Chy. Utha car’ll have sumpthin’. Get one of their guns when we get there. But stick it your side, on your seat, seen’s you’re the one wanting to use it. (And the one who’ll cop the biggest sentence if this goes wrong, as it does more often than not, Jimmy Cunning Horse.) But you use it when I say, unnerstan’? Town lights going by outside, it could be the inhabited moon.

H
E WAS DIALLING
one after the utha. To move this big deal of stuff bought from the Bushies, ten fucken kaygees. And they grew good stuff and they weren’t too greedy about it neither, their leader’d tole Jimmy, We got a saying in our organisation — he said that word crystal clear and very firmly — when you do business, leave room for the next bloke to make his profit. And never rip anyone, Jimmy, that’s one of our laws we live by, too. This Trev’d given Jimmy what Mulla knew was a knowing eye when he tole him that. But Jimmy,
how he is, rocked his shoulders, scratched his (colonised) beard and went, Yeah, yeah, I always tell my boys, don’t be ripping no one, man. When he toldem no such thing. Fact, he tole his boys rip anyone who can be ripped even if it’s your ole lady. But this deal’d gone smooth as. And Jimmy knew it.

Chocky chuckling. As for Mulla (man, inside I’m in
ex
stasy!) he was happy at the deal going down jus’ fine. No hassles. (Means a man’s love is saved to fight — I mean love — anutha day.) The tough white cunts from the bush in their thick, checkered bush shirts, a few with them hunting Swanndris, belts with hunting knives sheathed to ’em, and no doubt rifles close’t hand in this place they used when they came to town in their jeeps and Toyota hi-luxes like that Barry Crump fulla on the teevee ads does, Mulla knew all ofem with beards and Mulla — at one stage once he knew the deal was not gonna turn ugly even though Chylo was doing his best to eyeball every manjack of ’em to make a fight of it, the shottie out at where his stinking feet’d been ready to run to an’ come back blasting, aks no questions, not of the dead — finding himself looking for insect life in any of the beards; it mus’ be his relief and the residue of the dope effect turning his mind like that, and of thinking of it as them,
whiteman
the same as Maoris, being colonised and how fucken funny it all was.

The Bushies even brung out a cupla cases of beer, the right brand, too, Waikato stubbies, so the fullas waiting outside in the back-up car ready and hoping for their call had to sit out there while the prez’s carload got to enjoy some, uh, social-ising, hehehe, with white men from Mars if on Mars they all got big fat beards and bush-green woollen hats and stand staunch and unmoving with hairy, whiteman arms quite unafraid of Maoris when Maoris are tough cunts. And if Marsmen’ve got wild eyes that don’t flinch, don’t blink firs’ even witha madman like Chylo trying to stare ’em down, but having to move onto the nex’ set of eyes and he’d kept going like that, the whole time, then the Bushies — what they called ’emselves — were Martians.

But not bad ones as one of their bitches — pretty as, too; Chylo’s eyes lost some a their murder and got lusty instead — came out iner tight-fitting jeans, big tits like them country ’n’ western
singers and (stink) fucken music they listen to, brung out some strips of meat she said was venison and wild pork marinated in something, steaming-hot grilled, with stripes where they’d been seared, and Horse said, Hey! This’s good meat, man. Got any for, uh, sale? The uh was him hoping they’d offer it for free. But Mulla knew they wouldn’t; these were tough cunts and tough cunts don’t fall for that shet.

Not even for sale, mate, their leader tole Jimmy in the way they talk, the mouth more open than a Maori’s (and how
unbelievably
cold their eyes look, being blues and greens and greys and hardly any browns, and the whites of ’em so clear even when they’re stoned which these were, they’d started proceedings by bringing out some joints, just thin ones so everyone wasn’t wasted off their faces — even stoned they had clear cold eyes). It’s our secret recipe.

Chocky, his stoned state doubled by the Bushie’s joints, broke out giggling; and when he got it out he had everyone smiling and laughing ’cept for Chylo who never laughed at nothin’ in front of enemies. Chocky aksed the whitemen from Mars out in the bush, How bout swapping some pork bones and watercress for some of that meat! Since that’s what the boys lived on, mostly, big huge pots of it on the permanent simmer out in the kitchen no one
remembered
whose turn it was on the roster to clean. But the laughing leader — they never introed him as prez — tole ’em, Whyn’t you blokes come out and try hunting ’em for yourselves? You’ll enjoy it, tell ya. But the boys took one look at each utha saying the same thing: Fuck that, man. Might tas’e good but nothing’s that good have to go out walking through the fucken bush. Might be lions an’ tigers out there, too! It was funny how that same thought seemed to be in each Brown’s face, three of the four anyway, that there might actually be wild beasts out there even if New Zealand didn’t actually have lions and tigers. And how Mulla confirmed this in telling ’em in the car on the (victorious) way home: Man, firs’ thing I was thinking when they said go out to the bush — oh yeah? What about the fucken lions and tigers? HAHAHAHAHA! The laughter explosion even joined by Chylo, specially when Chocky said toim, Chylo, you’re laughing cos you got your share of meat tanight, right? Right.

HAHAHAHA! Another laugh bomb going off, started by Chocky for no reason than he felt part of this success, this ten in the boot fast being sold by Jimmy there on the cellphone to the bullet and bag dealers round town — holdit a sec, fucken batt’ry’s goin’ down. Gimme a batt’ry‚ someone. Mulla dug one out from a plastic shopping bag that had several spares in it. Jimmy dialled the number again, Now, where was we? One kaygee? For you, bro, only cos it’s you an’ I like you — well WE like you — here, lizzen for yourself, my boys tell you how much they like you. Tellim, boys. BRO, WE LIKE YOU! Three ofem, in chorus. Di’n’t even know who it was on the utha end — who the fuck cares? Jus’ buy a kaygee and piss off till we need you nex’ time, Chylo whispering to Chock. You wanna hear it again, cuz? No? Aww, you’re spoiling my boys, you know, ex-press-ing ’emselves. So, you a buyer or what? … One of those moments of silence and circumstances in which all the factors come together and each man, even Chylo, thinking — no, realising — where and what he was and what’d gone down and what a bigger slice of meat they had that they’d never let on they hit onto in moments like this — broken by Jimmy Bad Horse informing ’em in his tone gettin’ more and more riddled with arrogance: He’s a buyer. YEOWWWW! the chorus in unison once more. Jimmy showing he was cooler in his muttered, yeah-yeahs. But the utha three, even Chylo, maybe especially Chy‚ they were bruthas. Soul mates. Straightsville, boring fucken Straightsville going by in all them li’l glows and floods and spears of houselights (homelights) catches of utha people, Real People, in their kitchens, sitting rooms, cars with the interior lights and open doors of people come back from wherever they’d been, wherever Real People from Outer Space go to on a Sunday that has ’em coming back after nine. Cunts don’t know what they’re missing, eh boys? Chocky to the company of the pardy coming up, and in denial, as they heard Jimmy move anutha half a kaygee, then his dit-dit-dit-dit-dit dialling of anutha number, informing ’em: Only three an’ a half t’ go, boys. Any wonder he was their leader — the influence, the
biz
niz contacts the man had!