Thunder Road (15 page)

THE FOLLOWING DAY I slept in. I had been dozing off and on since about six o’clock, kept replaying a dream of this scene from when I was a kid. I had been locked in a shed by my
father
for stealing. It was the supreme punishment: the one he used when beating wasn’t enough. The shed was full of garden stuff, stacks of newspapers, and junk that had nowhere else to go. The only soft things were a bunch of old coats which had hung on the back of the door since forever. I tried to make a bed out of these spidery clothes but there weren’t enough to be comfortable. For hours I lay there, cold and miserable in the darkness, hoping to go to sleep. Somewhere under the floor boards was a rats’ nest; they wouldn’t stop squeaking and gnawing. I’ve never minded rats but these were close to my face. Just when I realised I’d have to spend the night there, this new noise came, faint but repeated. It worked itself into the scene but it didn’t fit. I woke.

Someone was at our front door. Someone who wouldn’t stop knocking. I dragged myself out of the bed, and bleary-eyed, went to the kitchen door. We had installed a peep hole. Devon’s idea. There was this guy all in tight black leathers with a little rat’s tail plait hanging down his back. He kept peering anxiously up the driveway. When I opened the front door he turned, surprised to see me. He must have been four or five years older than me. He was Māori, had a goatee beard, impressively groomed. What stood out though, was the gold. He wore a heavy gold chain, thick rings on his fingers, and his two front teeth had been
capped with it. He smelled of those expensive aftershaves that people in offices wear.

‘Yeah?’ I stood there in shorts and T-shirt.

‘Devon home?’

His voice was so soft it took a moment to work out what he had said.

Then I realised I wasn’t sure. ‘Wait here. I’ll check.’

I went to his room and sure enough, Devon’s bed was empty. Whether he had slept in it was anyone’s guess, because he hadn’t made it or changed the sheets since we had moved in. The dude had gone when I got back. I found him around the side of the house.

‘What’s up?’ I was a bit pissed. I don’t like snoopers.

‘Is he in?’

‘No.’

‘I got this feeling someone was watching me when I arrived,’ he said by way of explanation.

‘Who wants him?’ I asked coldly.

‘Wiremu. I’ll be back later.’ He was already walking away.

It was an odd way to start the day but I hardly gave it another thought. My head was filled with Karen. Last night seemed like a dream and the only thing I wanted to do was to get back into that dream and stay there forever. I felt like one of those people who approach you in the street because they’ve found Jesus: those people who are dying to tell you how suddenly, their whole shitty world makes sense. Stoned on God.

I was hungry but there was, as usual, virtually nothing edible in the cupboards. There was butter but the bread was mouldy; there was milk but no cereals, and eggs that looked like they had been there when we bought the fridge. It didn’t matter. Nothing could dent my mood. I went to take a shower but as
I was taking off my T-shirt I could smell Karen on my clothing or maybe my skin. There was no way I’d wash that off. It was part of my happy bubble.

The need for food was urgent though, so I put my boots back on and found my wallet. The faint ringing of Devon’s cellphone sounded as I was going out the front door. It came from somewhere in the sitting room. I’d just narrowed it down to a crack in the couch when it stopped.

I pushed the last call button and redialed, thinking it would be Devon with some new instruction. It wasn’t. It was Karen. She was at Angela’s and she wanted to be with me. Right then. I got onto the Norton without my helmet, not caring about the risks; I thought I was leading a charmed life at that moment. I didn’t even care if Angela’s father was home. As it happened he was in Singapore or L.A. Somewhere far away, anyway, so Karen and I were safe.

We hardly spoke for the first hour, driven by our desperate need to climb into each other’s souls. Minutes or hours later, we surfaced, breathless, satisfied for a while that our core loneliness had been driven back a safe distance and we could relax in the afterglow. We went beyond the narcotic frenzy of lovemaking into a quiet, warm space like those pictures of tropical islands you see on travel shop walls. We lay there, nothing to say, touching and laughing, wanting to hold onto that moment forever.

Angela’s room too, seemed enchanted. Part of the wall was covered in photos, ribbons, certificates, another with the
posters
of rock groups and actors who’ve since turned out to be one-hit, one-film wonders. The dressing table had a few little girl ribbons, hair ties and tiny toys, but was being overrun with the heavy artillery of make-up, perfume and creams. I tried to
memorise every object, every colour, every smell. I wanted to lock it away in me forever. I knew I’d need it.

‘I have to go.’

It came out of nowhere. It burst out as though Karen had been holding it back as long as she had the strength. Now the spell was broken and like cold sea water through the cracked hull of a submarine, the real world came flooding in. She had to go to work. She had escaped her parents with a thin little lie: she felt sick and would be late in. They hadn’t said a word; her father left for his practice; her mother for the art school where she was learning to paint. Karen said that providing we were careful we could keep this going and that some day her parents would come around, would see things differently. That we had to be patient, and we had to be sensible, and we would have to be cunning.

I nodded dumbly but in my heart I knew that something was over. I didn’t say anything; it would only have made it worse.

We made the bed and straightened everything up. The house had a sad, abandoned quality, as though the inhabitants had died and it had become a shrine to their past lives. Nothing was disturbed. Everything positioned with a military precision.

‘How can she live here?’ I asked.

‘She wants to go. Her father drives her mad. He’s a control freak. Drove her mother mad and now she says he’s doing the same to her. I feel sorry for Angela.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She’s working in Newmarket. We’ll go and see her on the way to work.’

I started up the Norton, and Karen produced the helmet she’d somehow successfully hidden from her interrogating parents.
We wound slowly through leafy streets that were lined with big old wooden houses partially hidden from the road. Low profile money.

Angela worked in a travel agency. Something the captain had jacked up, I guessed. Before we went in Karen pulled me to one side and said, ‘Remember. She’s desperate to see Diego. That’s why we can use her place.’

‘Devon,’ I said, automatically.

‘Can you do it?’

I nodded, not wanting to lie out loud. The idea that Devon would want any sort of commitment, let alone one with Angela, was beyond me.

Angela sat at a long desk answering the phone and directing calls. There were three other girls who looked just like her. We walked past these blonde watchdogs, who were all trying to make eye contact, wanting to find out where they could send us and what exclusions were in operation. Angela had a beaten, sad look behind her smile. Something that said she had grown used to disappointment, almost expected it.

Between incoming phone calls I assured her that ‘Diego’ was out of town at the moment but that we would all make a point of going out for burgers when he came back. She seemed
satisfied
. It wasn’t the place for social calls. I could sense the hostility radiating out from the three toxic babes upstream from her.

When we emerged Karen said I had done well. I felt lousy: an unconvincing liar, promising something I couldn’t deliver. We walked back to the bike and I dropped her near her father’s surgery; she didn’t want me to stray too close.

I had this feeling that said ‘Why should we sneak about? What are we doing that’s so bad?’ I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep
up a back door-type relationship for long. There was something in me that would want to clear the air, to bring things out into the open.

BACK AT THE HOUSE things seemed much the same: no sign of Devon, and nothing had been disturbed. I made a coffee and sat down on the rear verandah wondering what to do.

Where could things go from here? All my ideas seemed to be built around running away and starting up fresh somewhere else. It felt like me and Devon had already stuffed things up so badly there was no future for us in this city.

And Devon expected something from me that I had never given anyone. A loyalty that cut deep into my independence. That bound us together like chained prisoners.

I wandered through the house looking at our rough old battered furniture. Some of it had obviously been left in the house through successive generations of tenants, outlasting them all. I supposed that we too would leave it behind when we were finally pushed out by Wes and when the wrecker’s ball came crashing through the rusty old tin roof. It gave me that hollow feeling you get when you catch yourself thinking about how small you are in the big picture. About how brief your life is. How sometimes it seems nothing truly lasts past the blink of an eye.

There was a rattle at the front door and I jumped. It was Devon. He was glowing with excitement. I knew what he had been up to before he even opened his mouth.

‘Come with me, Trace.’ He led me outside to the big puriri tree in the back garden where we had hidden the remainder of the dope. It was gone.

‘The guy I told you about came back. I met him in town. They’re mad for it. He took the lot. I’ve got all this money in the boot of the car. Blocks and wads and cashiers’ bags. I can’t even count it. They took the lot man, everything I’ve got … and for top money.’

‘I thought you were out dealing with Rebel, making some sort of arrangement. I thought it was sort of decided.’

He had this wild look in his eye. I liked and feared its
recklessness
.

‘Billy Revell and his crew will be dealt with. It’s me and you Trace. We’re the ones who have something everybody wants. We have the power. They can ask and they can wait.’

I thought about it for a moment. Like a lot of what Devon said, his enthusiasm made it sound OK, but it didn’t add up. ‘He was round here, you know.’

‘Who?’

‘Your gang mate. Wiremu.’

‘When?’

‘When I first woke up. There he was, pounding the door, and sniffing around the back.’

‘How did he find out where we stay?’

‘It’s a worry. I thought you must have told him.’

Devon looked agitated. Then he dug out the old optimism from somewhere and said, ‘It was going to happen sooner or later. I guess at least we’re ready now. We know.’

‘Ready for what? A siege?’

‘Just ready. Anyway, what have you been up to? You
disappeared
.’

I told him about last night and this morning. There was no point in trying to hide it from him any longer. I was beyond his disapproval. Strangely enough, he seemed to accept it this time.

‘Well at least you’re screwing. I thought you were going to be one of those professional virgin types. “I’m saving it till I’m married.” I was sure
she
was. Her old man, what’s he called?
Bernard
? He can’t lord it over you now. That’s something. I hated to think that you were bowing and scraping to that type.’

‘If Raymond finds out, we are going to have one angry doctor banging at our door.’

‘It doesn’t work like that, Trace. You’re a jump or two beyond that. Or short of it,’ he added.

I thought it might be time to follow up with the idea I’d had. ‘Devon, I want you to do me a huge favour.’

‘Oh yes. What is it? Let me guess.’ He fixed me with his beady eye. ‘I wonder if it’s anything to do with Karen’s little friend?’

I was amazed. ‘How did you know?’

‘Just call it masculine intuition.’ He refused to give me any other hint.

‘You made a conquest there, Devon. Now you’re all she thinks about. In fact that’s the only reason Karen and I are allowed to use Angela’s place as a hideaway.’

Devon went into philosophical mode. He sat back and lit a smoke.

‘You see Trace, everything’s a commodity. Everything has a price. The dope. This house. Your
assignations
with Karen. You’re paying a number of prices there, to Karen, Angela and now to me. Our youth and good looks have a value too. That’s why the old bastards, who run things, make everything so hard for us. Because of this thing we hold over them.’

‘A lot more years left on our clocks.’

‘That’s nothing. Just an illusion. Anyone can die tomorrow. No. It’s our fresh faces and our hard, young bodies.’ He grinned and pulled up his T-shirt exposing his brown stomach and chest.
‘We trade with these.’

I looked at Devon. He seemed almost sinister for a moment. As if he knew so much more than me. More than I would ever know. He was older than his years. I didn’t want to ask him about that. There are some things about people that are best left unknown. But it linked in with a murky feeling I had when we were on that first visit to Wes’ house. And to the same feeling I’d had when the farmer held Devon at gunpoint on the dusty road next to the plantation. I tried to shake it off by getting back to my point about Angela and Karen.

‘I just wanted the four of us to go out somewhere, do something fun. We should get out of town. I’m sick of this city.’

‘Like where, Trace?’

‘Up North. I mean the Far North. Stay in a motel by the beach.’

‘Sex and sunbathing?’

‘Sounds good to me.’

He thought for a moment. ‘Like when?’

‘I reckon the sooner the better. I guess as soon as I can
organise
something. What shall we do with the money? We can’t leave it in the car and I don’t think this place is as safe as it once was.’

That reminded him. ‘Come and look. Let’s play with it. I haven’t even had a chance to feel it.’ We wandered up the front path. Out on the street I surveyed the parked cars, looking for any that I recognised, but noticed Devon just wandered on,
oblivious
of everything. No wonder we’d been traced. The council flats where the car was kept were quiet too: just a few Island kids playing by the gate. When Devon opened the boot the shotgun was there in full view, lying on a bed of money bags.

‘Jesus, Devon. What if you get stopped?’

‘I drive carefully, man. Haven’t you noticed? The only people stopping me are going to be bad guys.’

Bad guys, I thought. It’s still a game. Who are the bad guys?

He picked up a roll of rubbish bags and tore one off. I held it open while he rapidly tossed in all his takings. I kept thinking, ‘What if someone walks down here now – what do we do?’ He slammed down the car-boot lid and we headed back to the flat. The bag was surprisingly weighty. I guess I expected the notes to flutter around like feathers in a pillow case.

Once inside, we tipped the cash out onto the dining room table. An impressive little heap. I remembered how only a few days earlier the table and half the room had been filled with bags of dak. And it had all come down to this. There were more than 20 blocks. Tight wads of money, each one soaked in pain and corruption. They weren’t like money at all. They were like some radioactive substance that would rot us away on the inside. Devon picked up one of the discoloured wedges.

‘I bet each one could tell a story,’ he said, as if he could read my mind. ‘Do you think this is real evil money, or just money that wears its true colours?’

‘What do you mean?’

He looked thoughtful. ‘Money is sort of like the source. The hard external form of what makes us do stuff. There’s no such thing as good money or bad money. It just whizzes around the country from hand to hand: sometimes earned, other times
stolen
in one way or another. Is this stolen money? Did we steal it?’

‘I dunno. It’s just, you know, money from gangs: it’s not quite like the pay packet from the hardware shop.’

‘You used to tell me that you had to do all the shit jobs while everyone else just slacked around or stole stuff. Even the other labourers. Money doesn’t flow into your hands the way it does
for other people. Do you think Wes has to raise a sweat to get a heap of money like this? Money’s like a river and he’s dug a big channel, so it flows his way. Fills his pond. Like all the other fat cats. People like you and me are allowed a little drink there every now and then. The system’s screwed. Once you realise that, Trace, everything makes more sense. You don’t sit in front of a pile of dough like this feeling guilty.’

‘I’m not exactly….’

‘You are. You don’t think that a person like you should ever have this sort of money. It’s just for the likes of Wes or your girlfriend’s dad. You’re being held back by a slave mentality.’

Devon always had a king-hit like that: personal, and right on the button. ‘Yeah, but we ripped off someone’s patch to get this. That was just straightforward stealing.’

‘Stealing a few plants from the bush. The plants are only valuable because breweries pay the politicians to keep dak
illegal
, to make sure booze is still most people’s drug of choice. It’s a mainstay of what keeps the economy ticking over.’

‘OK, so why doesn’t the government just pay the growers then, and get their money that way? The money’s out there.
People
are going to spend it getting off their faces on something.’

‘Governments don’t like dak. It doesn’t go with the idea of everyone working hard and then rewarding themselves by imbibing an easily controlled beverage. Dak is more like a trip to where you can see the whole game sucks. Top to bottom. They don’t like that. You aren’t allowed to drop out of the game. I mean, we would all be living back in the caves before you knew it.’

‘Well, not quite.’

‘Yeah, but that’s how they see it. That’s why it will never be legalised.’

‘It is in Holland.’

‘Yeah but only in some places, even there. And anyway, they’re like the exception which proves the rule.’ Devon was sorting the loose stuff into piles. He tossed me a block.

‘Hide this, Trace. Put it in a supermarket bag and go outside and stow it somewhere in the jungle.’

‘What’s the point of that?’

‘I’m going to hide the rest at Gail and Martin’s.’

‘A bit risky.’

‘A bit, but shit, it’s better than driving around with it in the boot or leaving it here. Our little fort’s not so secure now.
Wiremu’s
been here. He’ll be back. Then there’ll be others. People have a good reason to break in now.’

I found a bread bag in the kitchen and wrapped it as tightly as I could around the wad of money. There was this dense patch of ginger plant which grew hard up against the fence next door. I squeezed the tight little parcel into its root system. When I
returned
Devon had put the bulk of the money back into the sack but he had stacked four or five blocks on the mantlepiece.

‘Don’t tell me where you put it. I did the same with my block earlier. They’ll be our emergency escape parachutes. To be retrieved when all else fails.’

He saw me look at the blocks on the mantle. ‘That’s Johnno’s cut. If we’re going up North we can drop that off.’

‘So what shall we do now?’

‘I thought it was up North. For the four of us.’

‘What? Right now?’

‘Of course now. What did you think? In a few days when the weather cleared up?’ he said sarcastically.

‘No. It’s just that this is only an idea. I haven’t asked Karen or anything yet.’

‘Don’t worry. If she can’t come we’ll get some other girls. It’s not hard Trace, you’ll see.’

He was only half joking.

‘It’s a bit more than that with Karen and me.’ I felt a bit weird saying so to him.

‘You mean it’s …
love
?’ he said, mocking me.

‘Yeah, I think it is.’

He sighed and shook his head. I was a bit pissed off. ‘Christ Devon. You’d think I’d caught some horrible disease.’

He smiled and nodded, as if that was exactly what it was. ‘Come on, Trace. Let’s go out and see the hippies.’

We stashed Johnno’s cut in a bag up the chimney and lugged the other one back to the car. I couldn’t leave this place now without the feeling that a thousand eyes were watching me. It was like a mental illness. Paranoia. I hated it.