What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (5 page)

T
HERE WERE WHITE
ones, red, cream, black, and that was jus’ the or’in’ry phones. And they were all different shapes, one even looked like a old-fashioned phone, on a cradle, ’cept it had shiny brass bits here and there, and a modern dialling face. (So where’s the fucken cellies?) He looked around, trying to cover his burning
self-consciousness
, that funny buzzing feeling in his head a man always got when he first came outta jail, it took ’bout a week to go away, how he was dressed, what he stood for now, in the stark of Real People’s territory, the opposite of what this place was these
inhabitants
these free to go every evening at five-thirty voluntary work prisoners, in this shop all lit up like the punishment cell in the block, where they never turned the lights off let alone down, day an’ night, it reached right into your brain and picked out the part that said sleep, held it focused in its spotlight glare so the sleep signal couldn’t escape to the rest of the body with its daily dose trickle of instruction, give respite to (any) body in its rightful
entitlement
to rest. A prisoner on punishment didn’t have no
entitlements
, ’cept to breathe. Even having a shit when a man felt like one wasn’t an entitlement, not ’nless he wanted to stink his (only) home out by having it in the pot, sitting in that corner like his only piece of furniture in the world, as each morning a man had to hand over his blankets, his foam rubber mattress (all sperm stained and with other man-stains) and empty out his pot. Then that was it, the day ahead like a desert.

He was glad he wore his shades. Real glad. Glad he had brown — very brown — skin, so they wouldn’t notice the burning. This fulla coming up. A tie. White shirt (so you’re fucken clean, mister. So?) His chest came up with his head posture — Yeah? He’d beat the cunt to it, ’fore he aksed a man in that tone they do: Can I help you? Which is exactly what the man aksed. Can I help you?

Mulla went, How mucha cellphone? Said it in one push of sullen air. Well, that depends, Mister Shirt-an’-tie came on the
attitude
on the spot. On what? Mulla shuffled his feet, feeling that embarrassment turning to its familiar anger, what all the boys did when they was embarrassed, confused, thought they’d been made
fools of: they got wild. On how much you want to spend. (Wha’?) At first Mulla Rota confused; what’d this cunt mean, what the fuck was this, how much he wanted to spend? — but then he got it: fulla was just finding out which phones to show a man, what price range. But no way, he thought again, he wasn’t being out-slyed by no straight white wanka. ’Pends on what I like. (Take that.)

The fulla looks at him, so Mulla knows he’s one up. Felt like tellin’ the fulla he’d come in here a different man ever since he called it right with Apeman — (blank) — that day. Only costim six months los’ remission for threatening behaviour and illegal
possession
of a weapon, which meant he was here right now, out one day before his prez, Jimmy Bad Horse Shirkey. Why a man was here, to get Bad what he’d aksed for, a cellie. And he didn’t mean a cell, neither! (Hahahaha!) Neither man needed one of those for a li’l while, Mulla in his heart of near-breaking (again) hearts, never. (I can’t take anutha sentence. Next time I’ll top myself.)

They went over to anutha section of the shop. Mulla the worst and most differently dressed here. Jeans, denim gang jacket
laundered
and held in plastic sealed bag storage, same brown shirt that smelled of mothballs they used to keep the moths outta the
prisoners
’ civilian clothing, and his head-kicking steel-capper boots which at least were the same unpolished, scuffed dirty as the day they walked him in from the prison van. And this was the clean version, of fresh outta jail, he hadn’t even got drunk yet, firs’ things firs’: the prez of Two Lakes Brown Fists chapter wanted to come home tomorrow to a cellphone. (To do The Family’s drug deals. Yeah, drive around in his mean machine waitin’ forim at the Quarters, selling a kaygee atta time, none a that foil bullet shit, not for the Browns.) Mulla even whispered it in his head so guarded was he on the matter of drugs and one, but usually more, of their number always getting busted. If Jimmy’d aksed a man to come in to this shop in a week’s time, after he’d been a week outiv it, then they woulda looked atim like he was from outta space (hahaha) an’ not like one a them nice planets, neither! (hahahaha! Ooo, you’re funny sometimes, Mulla Rota who c’n still motor.) He knew even this clean version of him was so different to every person in this too-well-lit shop it was a wonder they were servin’ a man, a wonder they hadn’t called the cops, a wonder the girls here don’t scream.
But that was alright, who the fuck cared? (Well I do.) I don’t. Here you are, sir. At that, Mulla leaned back, in total disbelief: no one’d ever called him sir before, let alone someone who a man’d admit (if none of the bros were listening) was his superior, like socially, like class-wise. (But not your fucken white colour, honky.) And his colour, if truth be known.

(Sir?) Hard to hide the smile. He felt good then. Real good. He flicked a woollen glove cut off at the fingers at the dude, how ’bout that one? No reason for selecting it, jus’ a place to start the, uh, proceedings. On account of Jimmy arranging for Mulla to be picked up at the Intercity bus-stop by one of the boys who was waitin’ outside in one of the gang’s rumble machines, fucken 8 big ones unner the bonnet, Jimmy’s instruction to aks for a discount seein’ he was payin’ cash, and if he got more’n eight percent Mulla could have the rest outta the three hundred. Not that he knew what that calculated to, typical Jimmy coming up with a figure like that when even Mulla could work out ten percent by just taking a nought off, and five percent by dividing that figure by two (long’s it’s not in odd numbas! hahaha) but he’d settle on some figure. Or look over the fulla’s shoulder while he was working it out himself on his machine.

There were hundreds — no, not hundreds, but scores of
cellphones
to pick from. This’s ninety-nine ninety-five, on special, the fulla toldim. You wha’? That pricked a man’s ears up. Shit, he could give Jimmy a hundred change and look good and keep the utha hundred for himself. But he decided it wouldn’t be a good move, not with Jimmy coming out tomorrow and expecting his
instruction
to be carried out and wanting a receipt. Nah, he shook his wraparound shaded head. Wanna good one.

So he settled on a cellie’t cost two-eighty so at leas’ he had a starting twenty for himself since he was goin’ out to get drunk soon’s this deal was over, soon’s it was
gone
down
— he liked the terminology, he even knew the word, terminology, liked that, too. He’d cashed up his social welfare cheque, two weeks of
unemployment
benefit at $147.50 per week, divided by going on six years made his life worth not even a buck a week, some earning life, man (some earning life); and then he aksed, How much the discount, man? Fucken near called ’im sir back. Oh, there isn’t any, not on
this phone, sir, it’s on special. (No you don’t.) Then I don’t want it. Sir, I’d love to give you our normal discount of — he hesitated just a moment too long there so Mulla thought he had the fulla, though clearly not on this deal — five percent. Mulla dared to lift up his shades, prob’ly from being called sir twice. I was afta ten. Percent. His own hesitation for a different (diffident) reason, of nerve suddenly got to him without the hide-behind of shades. So back they went to get a phone that wasn’t on special, even though the fulla tried the bullshit that the ones on special actually had twenty percent marked down on their recommended retail; seemed to Mulla Rota this fulla thought he was jus’ anutha gang member there for the taking. And he left that shop with forty in his pocket for this arvo of pissing up so he wouldn’t have to cut into his own money (man, I wan’it to las’ at leas’ a cupla days) plus the phone, plus the fulla calling him sir in parting. And he liked that.

Got into the waiting car with the pros who wasn’t a brutha, not a proper one till he’d proved himself, feeling good, too, that the pros looked up to him, gave a man respect he deserved, man had he earned it, tole the fulla, honky fulla in the phone shop called me sir. Laughing. And the pros laughed, too, and aksed, Whatchu callim back — cunt? Yeah, I did, Mulla lied. Di’n’t know why, lies fell out of a man like dropped lollies stolen in a lolly shop; lucky this young dumbarse wouldn’t know.

T
HE CEREMONY WAS
as solemn as it was deadly serious, of the welcome home for the prez himself, and the legend (he wasn’t really a ledge, they only went along with it; the thought of Mulla bein’ a legend was what they got off on, all those years inside and few of them in the gang itself on the outside. All those years of
staying
staunch to his Family, not the man himself. Weren’t Mulla — the wankah — himself they were welcoming) Mulla Rota jus’ part of that welcome home for the prez.

Fifty cut-off gloves of brown wool or brown leather (never that utha colour, ebony) and yet the shades each ’n’ every lowlife unloved bastard and their handful of patched bitches were as black as the night would be tanight when their partying, amply assisted by the voluminous quantity of dope they’d smoke, would be at its maddest, happiest peak. The shades were, well, ebony, and so were
some of the teeth rotting in the open roaring mouths to Jimmy Bad Horse near to, well, black, as he was aksing — aksing ’em! — WHO’S FIRS’? WHO’S FIRRZ! when he really meant what’s first. And they were ROARING back: BROWN FIS’ FIRRZ! BROWN FIS’S FIRST! that last quite distinctly properly said, by all of them. Like they all for that one-word moment, or the one just before it,
understood
that sumpthin’, sumpthin’ had to be done to a greater height so to do due and proper homage to their beloved leader — oh, and Mulla, too, seein’s he was here, walking behind the prez witha glow on he thought was The Family roaring for him as well. He, Mulla, didn’t unnerstan’ that it is the man who manipulates, is cruel and loving and using of the members’ emotions who gets to have his praises his qualities of (much flawed) human existence sung. There were dudes who’d had their fucken heads kicked in, their lights punched out, their li’l hearts broken but mended by the same man, Jimmy Bad Horse muthafucka Shirkey There were bitches he’d fucked, raped, sodomised, slapped around, beaten up, humiliated, at the same time he’d picked ’em up, lifted their broken li’l bodies and hearts unto his and him, the body bursting in its gang regalia with not so much muscle as fat over muscle enough to fool people who didn’t look too closely. Tha’s what leadership was about:
sticking
it to people, specially your own. Long’s you picked ’em up after and said there there, Jimmy’s here, Jimmy had to do this to you, unnerstan’? Course they understood. And even when they didn’t they sort of accepted that the fault was theirs. Same as they accepted their flaws as kinda and mos’ly their own fault, why they behaved like they did. Which is where Nig Heke’d goddit wrong but made amends (oh how he did that: jus’, you know, with his life), whose handsome photographic portrait on the wall, by the gang insignia cut out of polystyrene and painted the necessary colours, had been somehow snapped by one a the members some time before he was killed, this is where Nig Heke had made himself immortal, cos he’d accepted he’d done wrong. He’d gone and done the RIGHT thing and shot that fucken Hawk dead — dead — ’fore they blasted back and got Nig and Fattyboy whose ugly faced photo was also on the wall alongside Nig’s for these (broken-hearted) people’s belief in those two boys’ immortality. Sumpthin’ like that. Eh bro? Sumpthin’ like that is how we see those two, uh, late bruthas.

T
HE SOUNDS THAT
night: Barry White was back, Mulla and Jimmy noticed it more’n the uthas who hadn’t been away as long as they had; deep, dragging along gravel voice, in driving rhythm, the bass reaching right into their (little) brains, their truly emotional hearts — if a li’l on the fucked side — in lyrics, Practise What You Preach, which had the whole house — two of ‘em side by side,
State-owned
, the walls were knocked through — laughing, in stoned stitches at what they got from the song title, and big Barry White’s voice, a star from anutha era come again, a rezz-erection! someone laughed. And they gestured with pointing fingers as they sang the lyrics — the men at either their girlfriends or the wife or the girl in their mildly scolding minds, with mildly scolding meaning, it was jus’ bein’ part of the act they was enjoying, and showing each in mirror form how they were with Big Barry White’s impeccable timing (so’m I and we, man. So … are-we.) Tha’s what the bein’ stoned did and the, uh, potential it never failed to bring part out like a li’l shy nose poking from a dark hole, but never a black one.

When Barry White sang the cool aksing question to the woman he was tellin’ to get off his case:
real-ly
?
everyone raised a finger and sang with him:
REAL-LY?
At a female half-whispering chorus the sheilas took it over and so did a cupla the fullas with (beautifully) clear falsettoes. All ofem taken along on the clipclop horse ride on big bad Barry White’s horse through a ’Merican ghetto fulla gangstas (like us).

Mulla in particular looking at the changes (of how much I keep missing out on, even in here, this place where nuthin’ much changes only the music: they are right up with the music, man), of everyone drinking cans and not the quart bottles he used to like taking the top off with his teeth, and Sadie Palmer who could play a broken-off bottle top like a sax, now it was cans, an’ cans don’t play music, and when they were drunk the crush pop and crack of ’em bein’ squashed in aggressive hands, violent hands, hands’t craved their whole time and lives — for action, to do serious damage to other physical existences, it wrote the same story on near every members face — but a man, Mulla Rota, was happy. Oh how he was happy.

What hadn’t changed was the range of emotions the music, combined with the piss and especially the dope, took them through
in near unison. Mulla aksed Loopy Davis who was that they had on the stereo — anutha change there, too, compact discs when it was LPs when he was las’ out. Oh, an’ he had an ever eye on Bad Horse, it was habit, and now with Jimmy pissed and stoned and already, he’d boasted earlier to Mulla, fucked, that one over there, in the smoky brown shades you c’n see her (lovely) eyes through, Mulla imagining Jimmy’s sperm running out of her (lovely) twat, hurtin’ at how come a woman wasn’t arranged for him but refusing to think about it, the implications; jus’ keepin’ his distance from Jimmy case he brought up the Apeman incident: you know, of knowing he’d been outsmarted — and when he looked at Loopy’s face answering, it was like a revelation was coming. So Mulla quickly gulped down half a can, first saying, holdit, holdit, tell me in a sec.