Thunder Road (8 page)

SOMEWHERE in the dreamy euphoria of aching sleep a noise kept registering. Deep. Throbbing. Felt rather than heard. It spoke to me: the thrum of the V8 being fired up. The
realisation
came as suddenly as a slap on the face. I jumped up and ran to the front door to see Devon stopping at the front gate. ‘Stupid, stupid bastard!’ I yelled, as I bolted after him.

‘You were going without me, you prick,’ I swore as I slid in the cab.

‘It’s not your deal, Trace. This is my thing, honest. I shouldn’t’ve told you. This is a one man op … I just wanted some company.’

‘I can’t believe you, Devon. We’re a team now. You can’t just run off, man.’

I took my jumper off and bunched it up behind my head.

‘I know it seems mad, but those bundles, lying in the gorse … it was such hard, fucking work hauling them out. It’s been pissing me off … I tried but I can’t leave them. There’s
something
nagging at me, “Finish the job!”’

He drove on. ‘Anyway, now you’re here, just get some sleep. I’m not too bad but you look rat-shit.’

My head kept bouncing off the window so I put my jumper on the seat and curled up as best I could. Sleep closed in on me.

I could hear someone talking and it wasn’t Devon. The truck was still. I opened my eyes to a blinding square of yellow sun and I lay watching the dust motes slowly floating through it.
The cab was filled with the smell of fresh cut hay. I slowly eased up and looked out the windscreen. We were on the side of the road and Devon was nowhere to be seen. There was this
humungus
trailer-load of haybales, right in front of us. Through the driver’s window I could see the forest. A bit further up I could see a ute under the trees. It looked all too familiar.

Where was Devon? I slid silently out of the cab and crept around the trailer of hay. Someone was talking. Just past the tractor was a man using a cellphone. He had a shotgun, the butt resting against his hip, his finger on the trigger. It was pointing into the long grass at his feet. I couldn’t see Devon. Then I recognised the guy on the phone. It was the farmer I had seen that morning, in the same black and orange swanndri. He seemed relaxed, almost pleased with himself, lost in his conversation.

We were stuck. Out-gunned, out-manoeuvred. There were no houses, it was a dead-end road, and we were at the end of it. Little chance of being disturbed. I tried to control my panic. Everything depended on it. There were two of us but the farmer had a gun and there was too much clear space for me to sneak up and jump him. ‘Devon, you dumb bastard,’ I thought. ‘After all our luck, all our work, now we lose the lot.’ For a moment I thought of throwing it all in, seeing if I could talk our way out of it. If we gave him back the dope would he call it quits?

I crept back to the truck. Was there something, anything, I could use as a weapon? Nothing. Not even a tyre iron. I edged forward again to the front of the trailer. The phone was gone now and the guy was talking to someone in the grass. He gave a kick and I heard a voice yell, ‘Fuck you!’ It was Devon. There was no talking our way out of this one. I needed to do something, and fast. One fuck-up now and it would be two of
us lying face down in the grass, waiting for God-knows-who to walk out of the forest.

All I had in my pocket was my Swiss Army knife, my smokes and my lighter. The keys were in the ignition. That was
something
. Heart pounding, I lit a tuft of hay sticking out from the bales on the back of the trailer. It wasn’t the driest, and took a bit to get going. Just to make sure it’d take, I lit it in four other places as I snuck back to the cab. I could see the farmer now but his attention was all on Devon in the long grass and he had his back to me. He wouldn’t see the smoke. After a slow start the fire passed some critical point. It was as though it had hit a cache of petrol. There was a crackling roar, a burst of flames, and then masses of billowing, pungent white smoke.

The guy yelled, I revved the truck, and slipped it into gear. Surprise was my only weapon. The farmer was in the middle of the road now, paralysed with indecision. His gun was trained on Devon, now sitting up, while the hay incinerated before his eyes. Time to add another factor. I dropped the clutch and hammered the accelerator. The truck slewed wildly, fighting for traction on the gravel road and then shot forward. Smoke and sparks poured in through the passenger’s window as we brushed the load.

The figure in the tartan swanndri was barely visible in the billowing smoke. I glimpsed his anguished face as I bore down on him, his hay now a ten metre fireball. He dived clear but I managed to clip him with the front guard as I roared past. The gun flew high in the air as he rolled over and over down the dusty road. Devon was up in a moment, sprinting towards the cab.

‘Get the gun, Devon!’ I yelled as he opened the door.

He plunged back, scooping up the shotgun, but then turned
to where the man lay, doubled up, holding his knee. Devon crouched over him, the gun barrel boring deep into his cheek. He looked like he was going to kill him.

I leaned on the horn and screamed, ‘No!’

Devon turned to me, his face radiating pure hatred. Slowly, reluctantly, he stood up, withdrawing the gun. I felt waves of relief as he came towards me and then, almost as an
afterthought
, turned back and gave the man a hard kick on his injured knee.

Once Devon was back in the cab, I booted, it making the truck spin in a tight circle, gravel spraying in all directions.

Devon was too strung out to utter a word.

We stopped at the end of the straight to look back. The last glimpse showed a tall column of white smoke and the small figure of the farmer dragging himself away from the orange flames.

‘What was that about?’ I asked. ‘Were you going to shoot him?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice stripped of emotion. He squinted as he lit up a smoke. ‘Didn’t you see what he did to me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘In the grass.’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

There was something about Devon’s manner that I hadn’t seen before, a sort of sadness. I felt it too. As we drove back to Johnno’s I tried to work out why. Eventually I asked him.

He explained. ‘We’ve turned a corner, Trace. Maybe we’d already done it, I’m not sure. But now, there’s no going back eh? I guess it’s not a game any more.’

He looked haggard and done in. The easy pick-up job had
turned into a disaster. He knew it. He had put everything in jeopardy – including our lives.

When we made it back to Johnno’s car farm Devon said ‘Stop here’ just before we reached the gate, so I pulled over. I noticed that his eyes were red. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m sorry, Trace, I blew it. I reckon if you hadn’t come along I’d be in a hole in the forest.’

‘Doubt it. It was worth a go. And hey, we came through.’ I tried to sound light. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I won’t forget this, Trace. I’m in your debt now.’

‘Bullshit.’

He smiled and slid out of the truck to open the gate. As we drove down the driveway he added, ‘Don’t mention it to Johnno. He doesn’t need to know.’

When we walked in, Johnno was cooking a stew in the kitchen. The smell of it filled the whole house. Rich and strange.
Neither
of us had eaten a proper meal for ages and we ate until our stomachs were stuffed tight. Later that evening Johnno let slip that it had been possum. I immediately felt a bit nauseous. It must have been the stress of the day. I slept on the couch and Devon dossed on a foam squab on the floor. Even though we were dead-beat neither of us seemed to sleep very soundly. Every time a dog barked I was sure we were under attack and stumbled over to look out the window. Devon was awake but we never spoke. When morning came, he was gone. Johnno was nowhere to be seen either.

I wandered around the yard, thinking Johnno might be
tinkering
with one of the cars. None of them looked as if they had been touched for years. Grass up through the wheels, lichen
on the roofs of some. It made me wonder why people bother to collect things. Finally, I heard a noise coming from the other side of the buildings. It was Johnno on a farm-bike. It was a great sight: a dog on the tank, the rest of the posse swarming about, bunches of possums and rabbits hanging off the bike from all angles. It had obviously been a busy morning. He waved as he cleared the edge of the shed then rolled to a stop.

‘Dinner or dog tucker?’

‘Bit of both.’

‘Where’s Devon?’

‘He was here when I left at five.’ Johnno rode off down the back of the lot where he had his skinning table. I headed to where the old bus was parked. As soon as the door was opened the smell almost knocked you over. Essence of skunk. I wouldn’t have believed you could fit so much greenery into such a small space. It had looked magical in the forest. Sort of ‘lost treasure of the Incas’. But here it seemed ominous. Like it had changed from the innocent weed to an evil narcotic. How would we ever sell this much dope? Who could afford to buy it? It was
over-whelming
. Gathering it up might have been the easy part.

A stocky pit bull barged down the aisle thumping my leg with its weighty shoulder. At the bottom of the stairs a big striped dog stared silently. Devon and Johnno appeared at the doorway a moment later.

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Out driving.’

‘Where?’

‘Here and there.’

‘You didn’t go back to the patch?’

‘I’m not that mad, I couldn’t sleep so I got up and drove towards the sea. After about an hour it was like I had to put
more miles between me and … you know … stuff.’ He had a wistful, faraway look on his face. He leaned in and looked into the body of the bus. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Just taking it all in. It’s scary vegetation. What happens now?’

‘We leave it for three or four weeks. We keep it really quiet and then we come back and clip it and dry it and bag it…’

‘… and mark it with T.’ Johnno added.

‘Then we’re high rollers?’

‘You guessed it, Trace. A chance to flash it about. Fast cars, and I mean really fast.’

‘I reckon a new Evo, twin turbo.’

‘Godzilla!’

‘Nitro boosting.’

‘Yeah, nitro, that’d do the damage.’

‘Thunder Road will have a new king. Move over Sloane. And there’ll be women. Man! Wall to wall women.’

‘I can picture that. I reckon it’s a lifestyle I could get to like.’

‘Better gather some samples,’ Devon said, clipping the buds off a Christmas tree-sized plant hanging in the central aisle of the bus.

‘For promotional purposes only,’ he claimed later, waving a big bag of primo dak.

As soon as we arrived back at Mrs Jacques’, Devon went off in the truck and I took a long shower. I seemed to be clogged with the accumulation of days of fear and tension. It was almost comforting to be smelling Mrs Jacques’ cooking and hearing Sergei thrashing away at the piano with August. Mrs Jacques seemed tetchy though. The least thing brought on one of her long-suffering, loudly voiced complaints. ‘Oh, so I’ve got
nothing
better to do than fetch your cups from the verandah?’ Or
‘Someone has been dribbling on the floor of the toilet again, and it certainly wasn’t me.’

When I heard an unfamiliar burble through the window, I looked out to see Devon returning with the Subaru.

‘What happened to the pick-up? I liked the beast. It was trusty.’

‘I had to get rid of it,’ he said. ‘It’s a marked vehicle now. I want our profile to be so flat for the next few weeks that we’re practically below ground level.’

‘The earthworm profile.’

He nodded.

‘Where’s the truck? Rebel got it?’

He looked furtive for a moment. ‘No. I’ve done another deal, I’ll tell you about it later. It’s like … it’s still going down.’

‘Oh yeah, your deals.’

‘No, it’s a good one. It’s going to mean a few changes for you and me.’

‘I’ve had almost enough changes lately. I sort of wanted the quiet life.’

‘Keep that for when you’re old and dead.’

‘Better than being young and dead.’

‘I wonder.’

At dinner that night I sensed a tension. Mrs Jacques wasn’t her usual nosy self. She dished up the casserole and mashed spud, banging it on our plates, spoon-load by noisy spoon-load. After that she ate with slow deliberate mouthfuls. There was an angry energy in the air.

‘Trace, this dinner would have been on the table an hour ago, but I was held up.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Mrs Jacques.’

‘Our routines are all over the place when August’s here for his lesson.’

I said nothing, but noticed that Sergei had stopped eating.

‘We used to have a seven o’clock deadline….’ Her voice trailed off. We all looked at Sergei: his face reddened and his eyes bulged. He squeezed his knife and fork so tightly his knuckles went white. Me and Devon exchanged glances; it was as though a bomb were about to explode. Sergei began to talk, so softly at first, I couldn’t hear it.

‘About your routines. A gifted ear is something that is
nurtured
, coaxed … oh, what is the point….’ He sat there, staring at his dinner for a few moments and then muttered, ‘
Excusezmoi
. Je me retirerai,’ and surged off to his room.

‘Excusez my French,’ quipped Devon, ‘but oui!’

After he had gone Mrs Jacques seemed to relax a little, but said nothing beyond pass this, pass that. I kept waiting for her to ask us to give an account of ourselves, or at least to ask why I had skipped work, but it didn’t happen.

Back in our room I asked, ‘What’s up with Mrs J.?’

Devon claimed she was jealous of the Boy Wonder. I hadn’t thought of that. When your own life fills out, other people’s stuff disappears into the background. In Sergei’s room there was some big piano piece being hammered out. Too much music for one pair of hands, it must have been a duet.

MAYBE SOMETHING had changed between Sergei and Mrs Jacques, but compared with how our lives had moved on, it was minor. For the next month or so going to work seemed pointless. It had been going downhill ever since Karen left. When I found out that I couldn’t be forced to work weekends, I stopped doing that too. Even old Bob’s rebuke: ‘I thought you were going places with this firm,’ had no effect.

Going places? More like crawling along in the slow lane. With Devon I was turbo-charged and Bob and his mates were just specks in my rear-view mirror. Not for me the life of work and save, and work some more. It was all I could do just to set off in the morning. Arriving late became a habit and every Thursday I barely noticed that my pay had been docked.

The first thing Devon did, though, was quit his job with the paper. He was now freelance. So he said. He sure was free. Free to spend a lot of time just hanging out. He claimed he wanted to become independent, subsidising his writing from ‘other income’. He had these cards printed. Business cards with the words ‘Euphoric Enterprises’ in embossed script. Below this was a logo of a smoking joint and the words ‘Happiness is only a phone call away’. The prepaid mobile phone, he claimed, had been invented with the dealer in mind. I thought the cards were a loony idea, like a boast, bound to cause trouble.

Devon, being Devon, didn’t stop there. He had press passes printed too. There was nothing about the card that ensured any right of entry, yet in Devon’s hands they were a magic key to go
everywhere and do anything. All it took was the enchantment of limitless confidence.

Getting into places without paying, without invitation, started off almost casually. It wasn’t that we were short of money; we did it just because we could. It grew into getting into functions and parties where not only were we not invited, we were definitely not wanted. There would be a rock concert at Western Springs stadium. We’d cruise down. Devon would flash the pass at some old dude in a white coat who would blink at it a few times and then wave us over to where the roadies’ trucks were parked. The next step would take a bit more nerve, usually because it meant persuading a couple of two-metre tall, Samoan security guards. Like this one time… .

‘What are you boys trying to pull?’

‘Press, man, here’s the card.’

They examined it for a regulation period of time and then handed it back.

‘That card’s crap,’ said the one with the little chin beard.

‘Bullshit it’s crap. You want a show with no review in
tomorrow’s
paper? OK. Great. I’ll write an article about the security guards instead. How they blocked New Zealand’s biggest
newspaper
from attending.’

They started to seem a bit unsure of themselves, looking around to see if there was anyone else to check it with.

‘Take his picture, Trace. He’s going to be the star of the article. I reckon his boss will be pleased with the publicity.’

‘You take my photo and I’ll smash ya fucken camera.’ The beard pointed at the security office. ‘See that box up there? You go there, run it by those fullas. If it’s OK by them, then it’s cool by me.’

We walked through the gates up to the little portable office.
The bouncers were watching all the way.

Devon waved back as we walked in. Inside were three of the biggest guys I have ever seen. What is it with Islanders that they get so big? They were playing cards. They all froze and looked towards us. One, the boss I guess, asked with a voice that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth, ‘Can I help you?’

I remember thinking, ‘We are going to get seriously done over here.’

Devon said, without a moment’s hesitation, ‘We were sent here by your mates at the front gate.’ They all looked out the window to where the other guys were watching. ‘They want to know when you’re going to deal them in.’

The three men erupted with laughter, the biggest one giving the ‘fuck you’ sign to his mates down at the gate. We were in. It seemed almost too easy.

We pushed this magic card to the limit. It worked for clubs too, sometimes even for drinks at the bar. Other times it got us into venues, like corporate boxes, and members’ enclosures at the races. I would shrink at how our clothes didn’t cut it, like nowhere near cut it. We always won through, held aloft by Devon’s unsinkable confidence. He would push on in, with me floating tentatively in his slipstream. It was definitely more than just the press pass. There was a sort of aura about Devon, that allowed these two 19-year-olds to go places where everyone else was pushing 50 and holding down half a mill.

In January, when the weather warmed and the days lengthened, I’d often skip work and we’d head for Piha Beach on the Norton. We hooned past the crawling lines of family cars: the white line was a highway made just for us.

After a day surfing and sunbathing we would get into the
serious business of hunting down girls. Making contacts. And our real jobs: finding out where the parties were. There were always parties, and free doobies were an absolute guarantee that we wouldn’t be turned away even from the snooty Ponsonby crowds, where everyone stood around chatting, guarding some expensive bottle of wine, and all the while trying to sound
intelligent
. They were the best and easiest places to unload dak.

Sometimes we’d head south and hang out at the funky hip-hop clubs in Manukau City and Papakura. Or, if we were hungry for something extreme, it was the gang bashes in South Auckland: hundreds of people watching dogs fighting in a warehouse, liquor so cheap it had to be stolen. With each new fight everyone pressed in close to the ring to watch their bets or satisfy their hunger for blood and pain. Minutes later most of them pulled away as one ugly, brindled mutt locked its teeth into the other one’s throat.

One night, at a rage in Mangere, one of the fighting dogs was killed. Usually the losing dog’s owner pulled him out of the fight, but this time a group of men blocked him. A huge fight broke out. It was like the tension had been building up all night, and everyone became fighting dogs themselves. There was no core, no structure, just a seething mass of people kicking the shit out of each other. At some invisible signal, fists flew, along with nearly every moveable object in the building. We just made the back door as someone took out the fluorescent lights with a shotgun. We were showered with tiny splinters falling like snow. Devon’s head and shoulders were sparkling and he was laughing in the greenish light.

‘Time to make like the good shepherd – let’s get the flock out of here.’

We jumped into the WRX and were clear of the fray as the first of the cop cars showed. Because it wasn’t even midnight, Devon said we should chill out on Thunder Road.

Things were buzzing on the strip. We could hear the roar of cars well before we arrived. This time it was different. We were real players in a beasty car. For Devon the Escort was history, as soon as it had been burned off by that yellow Skyline. We were late and had to find a place right at the bottom of the strip, down among the school kids in the D.C.s. We only saw the tail end of the burn-offs which was boring compared with the first 50 metres where it all happened. Devon went off on foot,
hunting
for the Skyline. He had something to prove.

I was just happy to sit back and drink it all in: the cars, the smell of petrol and rubber, the skittery lights of grunty cars weaving their way down Thunder Road.

Just as we were about to pack it in, Devon sighted the car he had been searching for all night. It was just ten cars up the strip, tucked in behind a Big Foot.

‘Buckle up Trace, we are in business.’

We cruised down the row of cars during a break in the races. There were all these little gangs parked side by side: three Asian guys with long bleached hair gathering around their matching Preludes and drinking beer; a whole row of Toranas with
super-chargers
poking out through the bonnets; a team of matched Mazda Rotarys and finally the lone yellow Skyline. It was the guy from Huapai who had done the business on Devon. We backed in next to it and Devon leaned across my seat.

‘This for show or for go?’

The guy in the other car had his girlfriend on board and seemed a bit unimpressed by the grey WRX.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘I used to have the orange Escort, but now I got this. You got what it takes, or are you just here to watch?’

This seemed to get the response he was after. The other guy turned to his girlfriend, they kissed, then she leapt out of the car and hurried back up the line.

Two more seventies rockets roared past, only a few metres from where we waited. Their deep honest exhaust note was opera to my ears, a reminder of how cars were before new age rocket technology took over. The laptop had replaced the screwdriver and the guy with an ear tuned for engine music. It was sad really. Some of the beauty had gone.

At the top of the run Devon dropped me off. I sidled up near the big black Mercedes which, I guessed, contained Sloane, self-elected King of the Strip. The massive figure of his minder, Mark, was visible only by outline and glowing cigarette tip somewhere in the gloom behind. I wondered what dubious activity was going down.

Then it happened. Devon’s plain-Jane, grey WRX toed the line next to the gaudy Skyline. This time his car was understated. A real wolf in sheep’s clothing. The cars cackled and snarled, perched there like sprinters, pumped up and waiting for the jump. Devon missed the start by moments and had to make up two car lengths. The little car screamed as all four wheels tore away at the tarmac.

From where I stood the two cars were instantly buried in the thick white smoke of burning tyres, their tail lights just a fuzzy, weaving glow, the weird whistle of the turbos punctuated by the kishhh, kishhh, kishhh of the blow-off valves. Even watching from the back you could tell that a moment later it was all over. The Skyline’s round tail lights a lonely sight, hopelessly
out-gunned
. Devon was way clear! A flood of relief washed through
me. He could hang out on Thunder Road with his rep intact again. He had found redemption in a nine second burst.

Devon tooled back up the strip, drinking in the glory. He paused in front of Sloane to make the slightest of waves to the darkened windows. I jumped in and we headed off. He had no interest in staying now, nothing further to prove. Once we were clear of the line of cars, he threw the WRX into a series of doughnuts, just for the sheer joy of it. When he
straightened
out, allowing the tyres to once more bite the road, we shot forward as though kicked by a giant boot. Our heads snapped back and forth in time with the gear changes. Our bodies were jammed back into the bucket seats by the G-forces. What a buzz! Better than any drug. We touched 160 ks by the end of Thunder Road.

Out of nowhere, a siren and lights forced their way into my brain. It was like being woken from a delicious dream. They had been waiting for us … for Devon. I felt a rage rising in my body. We stopped and looked back. A young cop was getting out of the patrol car, torch and note-pad in hand. I could see him adjusting his uniform, putting on his authority. He ambled over, a smug look on his face. He was nothing. What made him think he could stop us? The uniform? Some piece of paper from cop school?

I looked at Devon, straining to contain my anger and
frustration
.

‘He’s by himself, let’s take the bastard … we can do it.’

‘No,’ said Devon, holding up his hand, ‘It’s Carmody, he used to be one of us. These are the rules. We race. He chases.’

As he drew level with the back of the car, Devon floored it. We were off again fast but steady. This would be no 400 metre
burn-off. We were around the corner before the other car even started up.

‘Go on the motorway,’ I said. ‘He’ll never catch us.’

Devon stuck to the side streets. ‘He can’t catch this car but he’ll be radioing ahead. Motorways are too easy to intercept.’ So instead we wound our way back to the used car yards of
Otahuhu
till Devon said it was time to hide. After reversing onto the end of a row of cars we slouched down low. Sure enough, two or three police cars flew by, lights ablaze, before we even had our smokes lit.

He turned to me. ‘What fun would there be in a world
without
rules?’