And De Fun Don't Done (50 page)

The kid piled in the Honda and placed his precious bag of bottles carefully at his feet. He didn't smell but he had to be the greatest chat Les had ever seen in his life. Norton never wore Ermenegildo Zegna when he went to school, but if he'd turned up looking like this poor little kid they would have either sent him back home or had him working at the incinerator all day. He had on a pair of shorts that had been hacked from a pair of men's grey pants and which were tied round the waist with a piece of cord. His sandshoes were several sizes too big, had no laces and were more holes than canvas, and round his scrawny shoulders were the remains of a shirt that could have been white at one time. He had close-shaved hair and brown, artful dodger eyes set in a world-weary sort of face, and although he didn't look as if he'd been eating too many T-bone steaks lately, he had a ballsy presence for his size and Les wouldn't have fancied trying to steal his bottles off him.

He pointed Les back towards town then just before they got to that one-way street again made him take a steep, hairpin left that climbed up and away from the town centre. The kid directed him left and right past more houses and trees and some old white hotel with a sign out the front saying Badminton Club, then onto another street and before long they were on the Queens Drive then
the A1 back towards Rose Point. Les told the kid he was okay now, but the little Jamrite said he'd go with him all the way. Fair enough, thought Les, I think I can handle him if he pulls a knife on me, and got a bit of a mag on. The kid's name was I'rold, he was eleven and lived in Mo' Bay with his ten brothers and sisters. Les didn't ask Harold who his tailor was, but out of curiosity he asked how much the bag of bottles was worth. It was about twenty-nine cents and almost his second haul for the day. By the time Les calculated it all in Australian dollars and took a quick time and motion study, on a good week, working seven days dawn to dusk, Harold would net around $3.85. Norton couldn't help but laugh. Yet at the same time something inside him wasn't laughing at the poor little kid doing his best.

A little further on, not far from the garage Les had noticed on Saturday, were two young girls hitchhiking. ‘Hey, I'rold,' said Les. ‘Why don't we stop and give 'em a lift? What do you reckon, mon?' Harold gave a noncommittal shrug and Les pulled up. The girls came running up alongside. ‘I'm going as far as Rose Point Resort.'

‘Ire mon. Tenk,' said the taller one, and they jumped in the back.

Les swivelled round and gave them a quick perusal. They both had short crimped hair, reasonable bodies and faces, though they were definitely no oil paintings. One wore a white Yellowman T-shirt, the other a blue Sugar Minott. Both girls were into supertight black shorts with their teds poking out that far you could have hung clothes pegs on them. Neither would have been a day over fifteen and both looked very, very streetwise.

‘So where have you been, girls?' asked Les, taking off again.

‘Mo' Bay,' replied the one in the Yellowman T-shirt.

No sooner had she said that than they got into a conversation with Harold. Norton would need more than his one book on patois to understand what was going on, they were just too fast. But by picking up a word or two here and there Les figured they were asking the kid
about Les and how big a mug was he? The kid said Les was a tourist and he was just getting a lift. They rattled off some more patois and a bit further on Harold turned to Les.

‘Hey, mon. De girls a nen nuf danza. You got, say… twenty Jam?'

Twenty Jam, thought Les. What's that, about a dollar? Not much of an ask. ‘We'll see what happens,' he smiled back at Harold.

A bit further on the one behind Les in the Sugar Minott T-shirt caught his eye in the rear vision mirror. ‘Hey, mon,' she crooned. ‘Yu lik some swedyang Jamaican tunti? Tri hundrit Jam. Bot us.'

Les smiled back at her. It wasn't a bad offer. An afternoon's porking with two little fifteen-year-old girls for about fourteen dollars US. Wouldn't you have a great time, and wouldn't you feel proud of yourself afterwards. Not counting all the creepy-crawlies you'd probably finish up with as well. Sick wid heetch and full a fassy. And going by the way the girls' sweedyang tuntis were poking out from their shorts, Les conceded they might only root for their friends. But wouldn't have an enemy in Jamaica.

‘We'll see what happens when we get back to the resort,' he said.

Young Harold's ears pricked up. He was probably in on the earn and had just pictured himself as Mo' Bay's number one pimp with a nice sideline in bottles as well.

They arrived back at the intersection in front of the resort. Les leant over and opened the back door. As he did, he handed the two junior hookers a fistful of monopoly money.

‘Here you are, girls. Get yourselves an answering service and a new pimp.' They took the money and mumbled a kind of disdainful thanks. Les handed Harold some more money too. ‘Here you are, I'rold. Get yourself some shares in ICI.' Les scrabbled the kid's frizzy head and winked. ‘See you later, mate. Thanks for your help.' Before they could say anything Norton left them and drove through the boomgates.

Back in his room Les tossed his sweaty T-shirt on the bed, got some more ice from the machine then poured himself a glass of 7-Up and took it out on the balcony. Happily he gazed out at the ocean and the hills behind the resort and thought what an amazing old day it had been. He had plenty of time and there was a lot more of Jamaica to see, but he couldn't wait to get back to the manse and start sniffing around again. Even discounting the buried treasure it was still interesting and a lot of fun. And what an old villain Eduardo must have been. I wonder what the full SP on him would be, mused Les. I wonder what else he got up to? It'd be interesting to find out, that's for sure. In the meantime, it's still bloody hot and my air-conditioned room is quite pleasant. But I think a nice long swim and a few beers would be well in order. He got a towel and his sunglasses and strolled down to the pool.

It still wasn't all that crowded; a couple of Japanese and pockets of motormouth Americans. There were plenty of empty banana lounges; Les dropped his gear on one and dived in the deep end. Again the water was delightful and Les did pretty much what he did that morning; swam a few laps, dived up and down and generally just splashed around on his own enjoying himself. After a while he towelled off and decided to attack the pool bar. Part of the bar was at the edge of the pool and the other part was built out into the shallow end where you sat on these stools with your legs in the water and ordered your drinks. Norton found an empty seat, ordered a bottle of Red Stripe and charged it to his room. Whether the local brew was any good or not Les wasn't sure. But the first one slid down his throat like chilled honey, barely touching the proverbial sides. The barman hardly had time to ring it up on the till when Les ordered another one. He settled down a little with number two and had a look around.

There were only about six people sitting round the dry part of the bar; all yanks and all boring the tits off the barman about how wonderful life was in Slop Bucket,
Iowa, or Brucellosis, Idaho. In the pool, some more seppos had strung a net across part of the shallow end and were playing some kind of water netball as if their lives depended on it. There were two teams of around seven a side and every time someone scored they'd scream their lungs out, jump up and slap each others' hands in typical ‘we're Americans and we're not gonna enjoy ourselves we're gonna win at all costs' style. The only things missing were two all-girl cheer squads waving pom-poms and a twenty-piece Marine band waving half a dozen American flags. For a muck round in a pool it was all ‘hey, ho, whoa, yeah, right on, alright, wow, yo'. One particular Chucky boy stood out from the others. He was about six foot one, with a big fleshy face and his blond hair braided into tourist dreadlocks at the back. He was about sixteen stone and looked like a bodybuilder starting to go to fat. Somehow he managed to be louder than the rest, but what made him stand out was the gold-coloured G-string he was wearing that went right up his arse, as if he was trying to show the world, especially the smaller Jamaicans, what a hunk he was. Every time he'd score he'd wave to his girl sitting on a banana lounge and she'd clap back and whistle. Paradoxically, she was as skinny as a rake, with tits like two rusty bottletops and no arse. A pair of round-framed glasses were perched on her nose under a bush of mousy blonde hair and she reminded Les of that anorexic hen Miss Prizzy, who's always trying to pull Foghorn Leghorn. Lucky boy, thought Les. Lucky girl, for that matter. Four beers later Norton decided to go over and lie on his banana lounge, get away from the noise, catch a few rays and check out what other punters were in the hotel.

About five minutes after Les sat down the World Series finished in the pool. Muscles dragged his arse out and with a great flexing of pectorals and biceps swaggered over and sat down about two seats away from Les, where his dutiful wife started wiping his back. After that he started snapping his fingers at the waiters both for drinks and to let them know he was around. Norton avoided eye
contact as if his life depended on it. But it wasn't too bad sitting where he was, a bit of shade had come over plus the outdoor kitchen was open and looking for customers and Norton was sorely tempted. However, he remembered what those two guards said about the band and the banquet later that night so he thought he'd save himself. The food smelled pretty good too; mostly Jamaican tasties with heaps of local fresh fruit and vegetables. Muscles snapped his fingers for a menu, A waiter brought one over and Muscles looked at it like he'd been offered dog shit cooked fifteen different ways instead of the succulent local cuisine. He gave it several very disapproving once up and downs while the waiter stood there in the sun like a stale bottle of piss, before dumping the menu in his girl's lap.

‘You know what I could go right now?' he bellowed. ‘A good burger deluxe and a root beer.'

‘Yeah, me too,' replied his girl. ‘And a plate of fries with ketchup.'

That was enough for Norton; he got up and left. Before he went back to his room he strolled around for a while and checked out where the night's festivities were being held. They were a few hundred yards away from the pool on the right. The band area was set up under some palm trees with quite a number of long tables and chairs about fifty yards away on the grass. It looked like a nice setting and Les was looking forward to it. Shit, he smiled to himself. How would another smoke of that rubbish go before I came down? I reckon it'd give you the munchies in a big way. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll get zonked again before I come down and go through that banquet like a school of Bronze Whalers. Les had one more Red Stripe, watched the ocean for a while then walked back to his room.

After the heat and the punishing seppos it was quite pleasant lying back on his bed with the air-conditioner going. Les poured himself a lazy delicious and pondered what to do. There was no TV and the radio was still pumping out gospel. It was an ideal time to go through
some more of Elizabeth's poems and see if he could work something out. It was getting dark, Les was cutting into the Sangsters and 7-Up and was none the wiser when he put the book down. He'd marked a few with biro he thought might mean something, but by and large they were all too obscure. Christ! If old Betty baby wanted to make it hard for anybody to find the loot she sure did a good bloody job. You'd have to be Einstein. Look at some of these I've marked.

Gold and diamonds cast their shadow in my heart
,

To measure the chrisms of love beyond meed
.

That could be a clue though. Maybe when the sun's at a certain angle it points to somewhere in that joint and there's the treasure. Yeah, but where? And what time? What about this one?

I stand upon the glistened cobblestones where eternity lies unreproved
,

How deep does measured time sink its jewelled troth
.

That could be it. The treasure's buried under the cobblestones out the front. Yeah, but whereabouts again? And you'd need half a ton of TNT and a front-end loader to move those bloody things. Forget about home made jelly and a pick and shovel. They weigh a fuckin' ton. Ahh, stuffed if I know. I reckon what I'm gonna have to do is take a run over to Kingston and see that heritage mob. The Laurecian or whatever they call themselves. That's where I reckon I'll get some clues. And I can forget about hiring a metal detector. According to that book, someone from the
National Geographic
went over the place and all he found was an old clay jar with a copper bracelet in it and a voodoo doll. Les took another sip of his drink. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just got a sudden rush of brain to the head and there's nothing there. Norton shook his head vehemently. No! It's there alright. I know it is. In the meantime I have to ring home.

Les sat up on the bed and blinked around the room. Now what made me think of that? I rang the oldies just before I left. Shit! I've only been gone about a week. It's not a bad idea though. Les rubbed his hands together.
Heh heh! Wait till I tell them what I've found in Jamaica. They'll shit themselves. He picked up the phone and booked a call to Dirranbandi. Ain't it funny how things just come to you out of the blue? A few minutes or so later the phone rang back and the operator connected him.

‘Hello?'

Les loved that familiar digger voice at the other end. He could just picture his father, old Joe, sitting there in his moleskins, having a cup of tea or reading the paper. Lillian, his mother, wouldn't be too far away either, shelling peas or baking lamingtons for the CWA.

‘G'day, Dad. How are you, mate? It's Les.'

‘Oh. Oh hello, Les. How are you, son?'

The smile quickly evaporated from Les's face. Something was up. Generally it was ‘how are you, you big goose,' or ‘hello woodenhead'. Whenever Dad referred to him or Murray as ‘son', something was wrong. Either that or they were going to get a good boot up the arse or a clip under the lug like when they were kids and got a bit too clever.