One Night Out Stealing Read online

  “Duff’s great strength as a novelist is that he ventures with pugnacious gusto where others fear to tread … Duff’s extraordinary prose moves with dizzying momentum and crackles with compressed energy”

  Iain Sharp, Evening Post

  “Duff hits the nail on the head again”

  Mike Crean, Christchurch Star

  “One Night Out Stealing is brutal, foul-mouthed, violent, despairing and real … it can’t be ignored”

  Jack Sulzberger, Hawke’s Bay Herald Tribune

  “One Night Out Stealing has many of the strengths of Once Were Warrious – the dialogue, the pub culture, the reckless abandon of those who live hand to mouth and the rules which bind them together…[Duff] is doing something original and important”

  Geoff Chapple, Sunday Star

  “I found it compulsive reading”

  Clarke Isaacs, Otago Daily Times

  “…this is one novel you won’t forget in a hurry”

  Paul Baker, Wairarapa Times Age

  Alan Duff

  One Night

  Out Stealing

  To my sister Josie and her husband, ‘Dee’ Walker.

  And all the other unsung heroines and heroes of love and humility like them.

  As always, to my father, Gowan.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  To my publishers Bob Ross and Helen Benton for their continued faith, and invaluable advice and support.

  Chris Else of Total Fiction Services for yet again steering me in the right direction. No better advisor than he.

  Ray Richards for his literary agent role.

  Richard King for his repeat editing services and friendship.

  Manu Smith for the cover design.

  1

  Dangerboy Hapi, wearing his face-tattooed snarl, plonked his empty beer jug down on Jube and Sonny’s table. Buy me a jug. To Jube.

  Jube sort of grinned, made out to scratch his head as he took a quick, sweeping look of how much support Dangerboy might have. Back at Dangerboy he put his hands out, palms upwards, Come on, Danger, it’s Wednesday, man. How many round here’ve got bread to spare on a Wednesday? So what’s Wednesday got to do with it? I asked for a jug, not the day a the week. Cos it’s day before doleday, Danger. You should know that. Everybody round here’s scratching, just like you are, to hang in till tomorrow. Dangerboy’s half-mad – the other half dull – eyes bored into Jube’s unflinching own. His jaw trembled, like it does with dullards and half-dullards; it’s their massive miscomprehension of the world showing through. The jug banged again. A jug, man. But Jube shook his head, Can’t. I can’t, Dangerboy. In a softer tone that a fool might’ve read wrong, but not Sonny, who was Jube’s friend and flatmate. He knew. Sonny knew it might even be the opposite.

  Brown to blue eyeball Dangerboy and Jube locked into each other. Though it was Jube had the softening approach. Sonny shot his own eyes round the mid-afternoon bar they’d been in several hours already, for what support might be for both sides. Not many of Jube’s likely allies here, and fair enough too: this was a Maori-dominated bar, and Dangerboy was one of them. So was Sonny, cept he weren’t exactly most popular in this downtown Auckland bar. But then it didn’t look like a lot of Dangerboy’s buddies were thick on the ground or, Sonny then figured, he wouldn’t have had to demand a freebie jug in the first place. And wasn’t as if Dangerboy’d stepped over from a mob, or even a little group of drinkers. He’d just arrived from over in the far corner where he usually camped, up on a stool he thought was his own, like it had his name on it and just you try and be sitting on it if he wanted it. Sonny saw an old cellmate of Dangerboy’s, Ted Roberts, but he wasn’t showing much interest in the eyeballing, not one that’d have him running over to join in if it broke into a fight between Jube and Dangerboy. Plenty of ex-cons who’d know both parties, so it mightn’t be such an uneven contest, as Sonny might’ve first thought, should it turn to a group brawl, as things did when they erupted in here. How the place was. People got excited easily. Excited full stop.

  One jug, man, Dangerboy in a whining tone. Nope, Jube with a voice on the rise. One fuckin jug, man. The dullard tried to regroup. So Jube was open in his casual cast around the bar for likely supporters. Back to the tank-like Dangerboy. Jube told him, I put a jug in your gut, boy, it’s one less in mine. Then he lifted shoulders in a huge shrug, Which’d make me pretty stupid, now wouldn’t it, Dangerboy? But Dangerboy only banged the jug again, A jug, man. And Sonny could see Teddy Roberts stiffening with another kind of interest; as well, Teddy had company of a couple of real toughs. Sonny got worried; he didn’t like violence, even if he’d been surrounded by it and its results his whole life. (I ain’t hit no-one and I don’t intend to. Fighting’s for mugs).

  Sonny knew how much he had in his pocket; on Wednesdays everyone in the Tavi knows how much he or she has, as they do on a Monday and a Tuesday, cos they’re the worst days if you ain’t scored at sumpin criminal, of hanging out till the dole gets paid into your account. Wasn’t a day went by when someone round the regular place hadn’t scored at something, but it never happened that a good proportion did and so there was always a closeness of money early week. But Sonny didn’t want trouble – and it’s always worse when trouble happens when you’re broke, for some reason – so he fished out from his total in his jeans pocket of eighteen bucks plus coinage, a five-dollar note. Here. He gave it to the thickset Maori with his penal past inked in blue all over his face in stars and wording and other obvious signs, as if a man like Dangerboy needed more attention drawn his way.

  Dangerboy leaned right back on his heels how many Maoris do, with mocking gratitude and yet part of it really genuine. (Maybe they dunno how to show their real appreciation?) Hey, man – he thrust out a tat-covered hand and exposed forearm – puddit here, Sonny. And Sonny took the hand in a limp shake, that not being his scene all this incessant handshaking went on around here, as if being mostly ex-criminals they were forever doomed to forming bonds of friendship, making promises (that they never keep), expressing emselves the better (they think) for it but mainly when they were drunk or several parts thereof. As for you – whiteman, Dangerboy dropped Sonny’s hand like a hot cake as he turned to Jube with a snarl. But Jube looked away, waited till Dangerboy was gone and up at the bar getting his jug filled.

  Okay, Son, just don’t be asking me to make up for your stupidity. Wha’? Hey, Jube, whassa pr – You’re the fucking problem. Givin that standover merchant five bucks like that; whyn’t you leave it to me? Peace, brother. I was only trying to keep the peace. The peace? Yeah, the peace. Like in this, Sonny giving the two-finger sign the passive way. Listen, wanker, only peace you’ll get from Dangerboy is on a Thursday when he’s got his dole. From hereon in, man, can’t ya see he’ll have your number every time? Well, man, who wants a fight over a lousy – I wanna fight. Ya hear? I wanna fight if some arsehole’s gonna stand over me. Shit, I thought you woulda learnt that from all your spells inside, surely? Forget it, Jube, I was only trying to keep the peace. But was I backing down to the man? Was I, Sonny? Jube leaning his face from greater height down to Sonny’s face. Till Sonny told him quietly, You better watch it or I’ll call my pal Dangerboy over. Holding back his grin till the same broke from Jube, who conceded a chuckle
and ruffled Sonny’s hair and told him he weren’t so bad for a too-kind wanker.

  They drank steadily. Not fast, but steady as she goes, in keeping with a near-to-broke Wednesday in downtown Auckland city, where all hell could be breaking loose outside for what it mattered in here.

  House of wild dreams and dumb schemes, eh Jube? Sonny at a conversation both could easily hear at the table behind them. Of some scam that no-one’d ever done before, just ripe for the taking, and who was gonna be first cab off the rank before it was too late, the dude was asking. Both men knew the dude, that he was no different to anyone else in this place of jabbering, gesticulating men covered in tattoos to show who and what they were just in case it got missed, in deadly facial and total earnest about some government department scam, how to rip off Social Welfare in one easy pub lesson, long as you’re paying for the drinks.

  Yeah, well, Jube with a shrug at Sonny’s observation. Don’t mean that some ofem ain’t good ideas but. Come on, Jube, here’s you tellin me I shoulda learnt from being inside, what about you? What about me? Least I don’t give away my money to standover merchants. Maybe you don’t. But how many round here you know’s been out of jail, out of trouble for longer’n a year? And Jube showing he was prepared to consider Sonny’s question as he looked around at the human scenery of crims; everywhere you looked it was crims. With their obvious histories tattooed all over em, and the rare ones that had none or hardly any, like Sonny here who only had a very old boob dot under his right eye from his first borstal lag at age sixteen, no more since.

  Jube went, Alright, alright, so there aren’t any faces who’ve managed to stay out of trouble for a year or more – so what? A year’s a long time anyway, you know, to be having a good time on the outside till you have to do your next sentence. That’s the price ya pay, ain’t it? For what, man? For being crooks, hahaha. Ha-ha-ha, I don’t see the joke in it, not anymore I don’t. No? No, man, I don’t. Really, Sonny? Jube trying to make a joke out of it, or else take the piss. (Fuckim.) Yeah, really, Jube. Well, I’ll be. So what do you propose to do about it? Hey, I never said I was gonna do – Ya did, ya know. I did not. You may as well’ve said it. So you gonna come up with a once-in-a-lifetime burg, maybe, that’ll set us up for life? And, like, who says you gotta do sumpin with your life in the first place? You don’t like this life we live? Well, you know, it ain’t exactly a holiday on a tropical island, is it? Oh, I dunno. Dangerboy over there could easily be the monkey in the palm tree, so there’s a start, hahahaha!

  That’s funny? Funnier than what you been so far. Know your trouble, Sonny? You think too fucking much. And know what that does to a man? It confuses him, that’s all it does.

  Each man took his turn to refill the jugs. At four ninety a pop times two. The bar filled steadily, the beer went steadily down. Different dudes came in with sly eyes and whispered to others that they had things for sale. A colour tv, only two hundred. You ain’t got two hundred? How about twenty now, the rest over, what, couple a months, you take it tonight? Not even twenty? Okay. Try someone else. Stereos, watches, women’s jewellery: Now, this piece’d look real good on your missus, Pete, I can juss see her. Fifty bucks and it’s yours. Make it forty then. Alright, break my heart, gimme ten down and the rest tomorrow on a rock-bottom price of thirty. Deal. Puddit here, bud.

  But only the desperate sell on a Wednesday. And besides, it’s best to take the stuff out of your own social environment, any crim worth his salt knows that. Cept even the wise ones get desperate, cos that’s the life. Ain’t it, Sonny? Jube at a couple of dudes they knew trying to move some jewellery they were claiming were real diamonds, and they might well’ve been but it didn’t mean a scrap, not in here, specially not a Wednesday. Better to take the stuff to a fence; plenty of them about. They might be rip-offs but least they have the cash to pay on the spot, eh Son? Right, Jube; they must be mad expecting to sell here tonight. Oh well, they’ll learn. Jube as if he was the wisest dude in here, when everyone knew he wasn’t. (Hell, might not be a single person in here who’s wise. Or what’d he be doing here in this low dive?) Sonny thinking. (I’m all the damn time thinking about things.)

  Air thick with cigarette smoke and obscenities and waitings of dope from some group huddled up at a table passing a joint or three around; it didn’t matter in here the law; only law was the Boss, Mr Reid, Dave Reid, and he was okay, he let things go that would have other publicans on the dog and bone as soon as look at a dopesmoker. Not Reid. He knew where his bread was buttered. Lettem smoke the odd joint and it makes em want to drink more of his piss. Real simple.

  The air pungent with smokes from both sources, and the language, the inadequacy of verbal expression having the gaps filled and stoppered by fuckins and cunts and fuck-ings by the few white guys around the place, cos that’s how they say the word that their race must’ve invented. Though who could speak Maori in here? No-one, that’s how many. This weren’t no cultural gathering place, this was Tavistocks. Where the bus terminal ended – or began – right outside the back-door entrance. And losers and workers – they’re just about one and the same – sat forlornly on benches waiting to be transported to some miserable home, to and from some arsehole of a demeaning job, who wants to fuckin(g) work, eh Sonny? Who the fuck wants to fucking work, as broke as we get on Wednesdays?

  No-one, that’s how many here in the Tavi, you’re right, Jube. Who wants to work? I mean, where’s the future in it? Hey, who said anything about a future, man? – hahahaha – and it’s your buy, boy.

  Where the bus terminal ended right outside the door, right there where Sonny was heading up to the bar for refills, where you stepped out at closing time and your voice, your laughter at times, echoed in the roof overhangs where the buses rumbled in and out to drop off and take up the thousands of loser straight workers; the world, it ended there too. No sign, though, up at the back entrance said you can’t enter if you aren’t one of us. But the atmosphere did. The one that lurked outside the back door and told all but a blind fool that this weren’t no place for angels or even fallen ones; it just said so in its own atmosphere surrounding the door. Back and double fronts.

  Specially the front, cos that’s where the payphone was situated, in the sort of foyer space between entrance and bar, where people got to ring taxis, and taxis refused to come. Didn’t they know that? People never did learn that they had to go round the corner to the rank, because no-one came to pick up from Tavistocks, too rough, or else the fare got distracted and no-one else wanted the cab. They headed for the phone when they wanted something, money mostly.

  Hey, Mum, can you lend me? Hello, is that you, Aunty Poll? Hey, long time no see; It’s me here, Gary, your nephew, member me? Yeah, you too. Look, I was wanting a favour … Calling up dumb aunties, estranged lovers, ex-spouses, relations, friends, enemies. It didn’t madda, it don’t madda, only that it’s a lifeline. It’s that connection of plastic mouthpiece and telephone cable from here in this dark hole of a world to out there where you believe it ain’t so dark, and that the callee has that stuff he’ll lend you, let you have, called bread in this place; to keep you going, sustain the lie. Of how your life has become; how far it’s fallen.

  But your kindness, long-lost aunty of mine, my dearest mum, who I know I only borrowed fifty from last week and shoulda paid it back this week as I said, but, Mum, Aunty, you gotta unnerstan I was on my way round with the bread – honest to God, I swear – when the landlord turned up wanting the arrears of rent I’d been paying off till it didn’t suit him, the black Indian bastard; they’re all the fuckin same, no trust, no morals. It’s just your money they want; they’re greedy landlords not satisfied with being rich, they wanna be richer. But, Mum, I’ve got this money coming next week, and it’s guaranteed, so I’ll be able to pay you back both lots – Mum? You still there? Aunty Poll? Oh fuck the bitch. Who else can I try?

  So how’s your bread holding, Sonny Santa Claus? Oh, you know … No, man, I don’t know. So tell me. Jube, do you hear me begging you fo
r any? Nope, not yet you ain’t, but you will. I mightn’t. But you might. Wait and see. Oh I will, Santa, I will. Though don’t expect me to be understanding, will ya? And just take a look at Dangerboy over there; I think that was a twenty he just passed over for his next jug. Oh well, he’s your mate I spose, couple of hours back he was. Jube chuckling. And I notice he’s looking everywhere but at this table. Now why would – Okay, Jube, you made your point. But I ain’t crying about it.

  Another jug, a few more Jube exaggerations and lies of past criminal exploits, or car episodes from his catalogue of crazy driving incidents. Till Sonny cut him short. Jube? I’ve never been interested in cars, you know that. They make me wanna go to sleep, honest. All this stuff about differentials and torques and stuff, it don’t do anything for me.

  How about sex then – hahahahaha! The tall Jube bent over with laughter. Straightening to find an unamused Sonny staring at him. Oh but you Maori boys are sure prudes. Ya know that? Jube in a voice not too loud that might get taken the wrong way. Better’n being sex maniacs, man. Hey, who’s one a them? Jube all mocking innocence. You are. And here’s Benny coming our way.

  Hey, Jubesy boy! Puddit here, bud! And Jube no better in going along with the act; anyone’d think they were being filmed for the television, this hand-slapping, hugging, whooping, ain’t seen you in, what, must be going on a year now? Lookin at each other with that self-conscious, hope everyone’s lookin at us manner. It’s the beer does it. Oh, and plus the fact these kinda people are eggs, as they call it in the vernacular here. Sonny at the pair with pity and contempt.

  So where ya been, Benny? You remember Sonny, don’t ya? Hey, Sonny, taking his hand. Howzit? Sonny forced a smile, How ya going, Ben? Long time. Yeow, long time is right, you know how it is – Can I borrow a smoke? Helping himself to the packet before an answer. Yeah, you know, I been around, like. Not as if I been inside or nothin, just laying low, you know? Yeah, we know, Benny; been there done that ourselves. We know how it gets, you know, you feel the fucking world sucks, so ya juss go to ground for a bit, but ya come round, don’t ya? Oh sure, Jube, a man comes around. Not as if I walked around with my eyes closed neither. Benny looking at both of them, then at the jugs just filled, licking his lips, dragging on the helped-himself smoke and eyeing the beer. And when he smiled his loaded smile, the tattooed spiderwebs round his eyes made him look old and wrinkled long before his time, as he wasn’t more’n the thirty mark, younger than Sonny and Jube. And I did get onto something, I do know that. But it’s, like, it’s bigger’n I can handle, you know?