Once Were Warriors Page 9

  And inside, at the bar servery, this young man was complaining loudly about his records not playing and the jukie eating up his fifty cents, five bucks’ worth and nuthin. And what the fuck was the head barman gonna do about it? Gonna do sumpthin bout your mouth is what, the barman giving a secret signal to the bouncers to come remove this cunt. And a bouncer there in a flash, Whassa trouble, man? No trouble, bro, just want my dough back I put in the jukie. How much, man? the bouncer’s tone lying to the poor fool. And Poor Fool lying: seven bucks. Seven bucks? At least. So? So whatcha gonna do about it? Whatcha want me to do about it, brother? call the cops? a doctor maybe? an ambulance? Come on, man … the Fool looking at the bouncer, trying to appeal to what reason he might have. It’s the principle. And the bouncer incredulous: The wha’? The Principle. Bouncer laughing. Fool muttering to Bouncer not to treat him like a fool. So Bouncer not treating him as a fool but an enemy.

  Jake catching the movement of the punch out the corner of his beady eye, thinking, Wow. Not bad for Sam. His punches don’t usually hurt no one cept the old codgers. And he watched as another couple of white-shirted bouncers came a running like dogs and Sam marching the poor young prick out. Fuckim. Not my lookout. No mate a mine.

  Young man was out on the street, bleeding from the mouth and aching from several other punches. His heart ached too. From cynicism. He saw the line of drunks at the taxi stand. He eyed em up first for any toughs before he vented his frustration. Ya packa old cunts!!! He spat on the ground at the feet of one old fulla. Hey! Go fuck yaself. Then Fool turned to the hotel and yelled, I’LL BE BACK!! and the bouncers at the big double doors just grinned and kept standing with their arms folded and sleeves rolled up high so everyone could see their muscles. So the emboldened young man repeated his promise and it echoed down the canyon of two-storey buildings, as stars twinkled overhead. And he farewell snarled at the old drunks and they did the furtive same, and the night soon swallowed him, it was only a small town.

  Time. It passed so quickly in this place. One minute you had the whole sweet night in front of you, next it was nearly over. Like a weight dropping down on you. And this voice in your head, like a little kid’s, saying I don’t wanna go home. And you mixed it up in your (befuddled) drunk head, thinking it was some kind of joke your beer brain was playing on you. And you felt strange. Then you didn’t. And the world it kept surging back and forth from darkness to light and you couldn’t fuckin figure it. But you went along with it because what else could you do, go home?

  Change. Everything kept changing. Mood, thoughts, emotions, visual feedback, (aural) even ya fuckin ears started playing tricks on you. The pisser, your attitude’s range of change seemed to bring itself out in the pisser, all of you. Feeling full of friendliness for the world one visit, hatred the next. So fullas shaking hands and putting arms around each other as well as eyeballing one another. The fuck you looking at, man? Wha’? You heard. I asked what the fuck you lookin at. At your ugly fuckin wanker face, man, that’s what I’m lookin at. Yeah? Yeah. And someone throwing one and another hitting the deck, or coming back with a better one of his own. And blood all over the show, and wasn’t the bouncers’ job to clean it up, they never went near the fuckin toilets, not unless there was a scrap to break up and/or someone’s head needing busting.

  So come the end of the night the lavatory floor was near awash with blood; and sick too, and missed piss. So it stunk to high heaven, and got worse as men emptied emselves of bowels rotten and liquid with piss and pies and a lifetime of pissing up, eating junk food.

  And Jake finally got his chance when the stranger with the king-hit went to use the toilet and it coincided with Jake being ready for the man, so out he went after the dude.

  The two ofem standing there at the stainless-steel urinal each taking a piss, and Jake making no secret of eying the fulla’s arm muscles, how they were exposed unnecessarily with the sleeves of the guy’s sweatshirt cut right off, annoying Jake, presenting itself as a threat to him. Seeing the tats on the dude’s (well-muscled) arms probably signifying he was a crim. A crim, eh? A bigtime crim comin into my pub thinkin he c’n blow away people and not invite some himself. Same height, maybe an inch shorter. Solid, not lean like Jake. Bit of a paunch there, so musta been outta the boob a little while to grow that beer belly. Jake fixing on that slightly fat belly, telling himself the fulla must be soft as butta. Soft as.

  Asking him casually, When’d they let you out, man? And getting an instant, None a your business, bud. Jake shaking his penis. Only asking, brother. And I’m only telling — bru-tha. The guy giving Jake the real eyeball and Jake thinking, I could take you right now but wanting to enjoy it.

  Whassa name, pal? What, you a cop or sumpthin? Nah. Do I look like a cop? Jake grinning at the fulla. Ya sound like one. Nah, not me, bro. Y’been doin some weights in the boob? The fulla frowning at Jake, puzzled at his nerve, but not the slightest bit intimidated. (Good.) Jake feeling very nervous in his gut. A rapid sorta throbbing, but which wasn’t painful. And his heart thumped. Wonder the cunt can’t hear it banging against my chest.

  Jake reached over and touched, ever so gingerly, the fulla’s bicep muscle and went, Ooo, now that’s hard. And he saw the glint in the man’s eye as he must’ve made up his mind to smack Jake one. But Jake did it first. A left hook you woulda thought’d been made in heaven, honest to God.

  Standing over the fulla — moaning the useless prick was — tellingim, I don’t like heroes come into my patch, man, thinking they own the fuckin show. Jake’s eyes slightly teary, as if the fulla’d really done him a wrong, hurtim. You wanna stay on side with me, man, you keep your dukes to yourself nless it’s with my sayso. Then out he sauntered.

  He told his table of friends, Had to give that fulla thinks he’s a tougharse a tickle up in there. And they all broke out in at first a collective sigh of awe then laughter. Cept Jake, he juss stood there acting like it wasn’t that big a deal. Fuckim. But his fists had that lovely tingle of wanting — aching — for more.

  So the big man swept his hungry eyes over the world and hoped. For action to walk in before the morrow came.

  People doing scenes all over. All ov-ah. As though last throes, last-minute acts before the curtain fell; or to complete something, satisfy sumpthin. A man could see this. But he couldn’t put words to it.

  Crying, bawling, howling on each other’s shoulders in each other’s arms; or might be slow-dancing or fast-dancing to some imaginary beat in their heads because being drunk can do that to you sometimes, make you feel sorta like you’re an artist or sumpthin, a singer, a dancer, a something of special talent and quality if only life’d given you the breaks, the chances. So Jake could see some were of some skill at dancing, and the odd one real good, like that dude over there by the jukie with the frizzy hair doing a break dance. Man, was he good!

  Singers too; breaking out in last-minute song before the bell’d soon start going and the bouncers start shoving em (that lot, not Jake Heke) outta the place like fuckin sheep. And the clock creeping closer to eleven o’clock closing. As people they did their thing: artisting, fucking up, arguing, crying, struggling, punching, bleeding, yelling, staring, glaring, trying to think, doing a think, trying to put words to it (thinking those flashes in their heads were flashes of, you know, wisdom or sumpthin) and you could hear those ones because they were the ones saying, Wow, I c’n see for miles, brutha. With that look in their eye that had a man wondering if they really couldn’t see for miles, or were they just talking that dope shit? Then in walked the answer to Jake’s aching fists.

  A line-up ofem, they came in wearing their fuckin black shades you’d think the fuckin sun was shining in here at this near on eleven at night, so you couldn’t see (and read) their eyes only the way their heads moved: lookin this way and that giving off that, You bedda not be in my shaded gaze, mutha, or I’ll fuckin deal to you. Jake taking it as read that assumption of what the Brown Fist arrivals were thinking. (Yet vaguely aware they were just kids, really, eve
n if they were past the age of consent.) Fuckem. Comin in here swaggering like that thinking they own the joint. I own it. I’m king a this castle. That hurt coming on.

  A wide path opening up forem. Tats under the front one’s eyes, stars, Jake could see; and the others the same but a couple ofem with tats everywhere on their shaded dials. And blue bandanas with white what-they-call-it, polka dots on em. And every person knew what was imprinted on their backs: BROWN FISTS TWO LAKES emblazoned in black capitals around the outer edge of a big red circle on the cutaway jean jacket. A big bunch a fives filled the centre circle. Everyone was wondering who’d let these arseholes in, complaining about the bouncers again for being useless bastards only good for beating up weaklings and old people.

  A buzz that’d gone through the crowd’d turned to a low murmur scarcely believable in this normal cacophony. Jake Heke was getting madder and madder at the sight of people fallin over emselves to make a pathway for the gang members. Seven of the cunts. (Oh please, please come my way.) Jake not the slightest bit fazed by em. Soon, his table of mates could hear Jake’s teeth grating together. And lots could see his jaw muscles twitching.

  You could see the power coming off em, the front one especially. Jimmy Bad Horse he called himself. Just look at how his scowl’s grown since he knows everyone’s lookin atim. Jake asking his table, You with me? And instantly a murmur of yeow, bro. Warriors, see.

  The Browns were all over the country and you could see they knew it. Even the cops didn’t go outta their way to gettem for anything, only when they did murder. Which was often. But so glaringly public even a fool knew it had to be something other than straight criminality drivin em, had to be. And they took the rap for each other for crimes done. Even murder’d be claimed if the fulla was a desperate prospect willing to do anything to get in. They were also the children, many ofem, of these people, the older ones amongst The People. Sprung from the loins and wombs of many of these bastards and bitches. Yet they, The People, were looking at strangers. Because you could read it on even their dark, shaded faces the mad loyalty given to being a gang member. It was funny, being drunk and therefore somehow wise, you could just see why these young warriors’d joined up with the Browns: it was love. Being loveless. As well as something else missing … but what was it …? sumpthin to do with race, with being a Maori and so being a bit on the wild side when you compared with the other race, the ones running the show. It was sumpthin closely linked with that but damned if you could figure it.

  Leader had star tats under his eyes. You could just pick em from the bottom edge of wraparound coal-black shades. (A middle-aged man not one kilometre distant from this distant social world had stars in his vision as he trained his instrument, his beloved telescopic instrument on the heavens up there, happy — happy — with the purchase he’d scraped and saved for years to buy; satisfied with the sacrifices necessary to acquire the thing; deeply satisfied with its purpose and his application of that purpose. It brought things out there just a little closer to a man’s mere pulse-beat of understanding. Ah, yes, the stars, the stars. Star stuff; from which man (astonishingly) did come, by and billions of years by. Oh, just look at it out there and now at the end of my telescope’s marvellous eye.)

  And the big man with the bushy beard and stars tattooed under his eyes had the surge of gang leadership jolting through him like an electric charge; and he felt his own star in rapid ascendency; and, too, felt like a rough’n’tough Maori Moses, or whoever that Bible fulla was, at the human waters parting before him. (And then there was Dooly Jacobs, running hot with the flushes of, man, felt like enlightenment — and he knew the word, its meaning — at Jake Heke and then at the Brown Fists, feeling his insight spring forth like a mushroom rising up out of his mind’s deeper workings, the voice in Dool’s head going: I know you, Jake Heke. I know all of us. Through and through your troubled bones, Jake, I know you.) And it was so simple, or that’s how it seemed to Dooly Jacobs standing there with a slight sway on but his mind as clear as the stars through the other man’s telescope. (You are warrior, Jake Heke. And these arrivals, they are warrior too. You threaten each other. That is why you are maddening, O great but crazy warrior amongst us; why you come furiously from your lair. To protect your mad warriorhood without knowing that you do. You — most of you — live only in the volatile moment of warriorhood.) Whilst the man with the telescope kept gazing starwards never ceasing to wonder — wonder — at that unimaginable moment way back in unimaginable time gone by that did (or may have) create such unimaginably far-flung fiery space stuff which would create, in turn, the explosion called Man. He wondered hard and long about this. All this universe from a single event of supposedly Big Bang? But how? As an event took place in a bar he read about in the evening local (when he deigned to get the third-rate backwater rag, and when he bothered to read the sordid goings on of the court page, committing their assaults and unseemly deeds against one another, occasionally spilling their filth over into society, and mostly done by a race he, Mr Telescope Man, knew not a single member of since he perceived of their interests their miserable social condition nothing in common to his own, innocuous, mostly nightly doings.) Over and over in his mind he did ponder this question of Beginning. Nor was he of vanity sufficient to mind in the least realising that man, himself therefore, all of humanity and its ludicrous condition, was probably meaningless in the random Scheme of things. As Jake Heke’s voice reverberated across the virtually silent bar of three hundred and more souls whose perceptions, sodden and weighted and yet partly lightened by what they’d imbibed, looked on at what they’d heard in a mix of astonishment and delight and fear for Jake the Muss. And his challenge echoed in their minds … MAKE WAY FOR THE KING AND HIS MIGHTY WANKAHS! … make way for the … oh, man, such mad courage.

  Jimmy Bad Horse swung his head in exaggerated fashion to the insult; face impossible to read because of all the factors: poor light hazed by several thousand cigarettes, the wraparound shades, the dude’s thick bushy beard and a similar wild frizz of hair (though some would claim they heard Jimmy Bad Horse gulp, and another that his eyes’d been wide with fear.) Halted, leader of six ofem; fuckin ugly mirrors of each other, sticking out from the subdued crowd because of the space made forem and those distinctive polka-dotted white and blue headthings, and their air of heaviness, you know, as much put on, forced, as it was anything scary. Though they, The People, were scared enough.

  You talking to us? Bad Horse had Jake challenging the institution, clever clever. Yet he alone was a massive bulk of a man made bulkier by that big jean jacket — filthy it was too — and the tree-trunk arms sticking out from where the sleeves’d been cut off at the shoulder. Arms black and purple with tats; like a chart of his troubled childhood and early adulthood written all over him.

  And Jake making a show of looking around, each side, at the floor, even up at the smoke-yellow ceiling. Back at the gang leader: Well. Paused. Well, he said, I can’t see no one else round here playing like king and with a buncha wankahs withim. A titter sighing up from the crowd. Silence again.

  So what’s th’ idea, man?

  Of what, man? Jimmy Bad Horse’s mouth breaking into a gappy strip of white snarling teeth. Six more doing the same, as though the cunts’d rehearsed it.

  Of pushing your way in here like you own the fuckin joint?

  Wha’, you the owner?

  So Jake took a couple of steps forward (from his lair) as answer. And the six mirrors of leader did the same, though their leader did not.

  So what’s your hassle, man?

  You. Jake pointed, then swung the finger of the big mit at the six-spread of young warriors (pretend ones, Jake certain.) And your fuckin — spat the last out — pups. Another step. But no counter.

  I were you, man, I’d leave us alone. Bad Horse playing his group ace. Too soon, The People knew. Ya don’t threaten Jake with his own strength, ya don’t.

  Jake closed the space separating him and Bad Horse and the crowd went, OOOOO! unable to
contain their excitement. And five of Jake’s friends stepped out from their table, stood with arms folded or at their sides hanging loose but ready. And the crowd were pressed tight against each other with hardly room to fuckin breathe. And Jake at the front there’d built to his HATE state: a steady, mad burning inside of hatred — hatred — HATRED! and this funny, deep-down hurt. It boiled inim. It even had these regular sounds like the crash of thunder. So it was all Jake could do to keep himself from attacking. (Easy, boy, easy. This ain’t no ordinary rumble, this is revenge stuff. These arseholes’ll come after you with guns, remember that, Jake.) But even that was just barely enough to control Jake.

  They were near face to face. And everyone in the crowd near pissing emselves with excitement. They’d never known this place so quiet. Not ever. This was unbelievable. Indescribably sweet. It was like seeing your private fantasy being acted out — it was just that.

  Back off, man.

  So Jake pressed his face closer.

  I said: Back off.

  Closer. A left — a dozen lefts — from heaven ready to machine gun in the cunt’s face, a dozen rights ready to slip in between lefts (left-left and a RIGHT! And a LEFT HOOK! it was going in Jake’s mind.) And so was everything else going bzzzzzz and thunder crashed in his inner ears and yet he could see and hear everything so clearly it was unbelievable, but then it always was this clearness that came over a man when he was in a tight, tough situation.