‘Fuck yeah,’ he says proudly. ‘Bought it at the pawn shop. Been sharpening it for six straight hours today. Reckon I could take your head off in one slice. Wanna see?’
‘How would I see it if I don’t have a head?’
‘Your brain still works even after it gets chopped off. It’d be cool. Your eyeballs looking up from the ground, me waving at you, holding your headless body. Fuck. What a funny way to go out!’
‘Yeah, I’m laughing my head off.’
Darren howls.
‘That’s good, Tink,’ he says. Then, on a dime, he turns serious, pushes the blade harder against my neck.
‘Why are you spying on your dad?’
‘He’s not my dad.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s my mum’s boyfriend.’
‘He good?’
‘Good at what?’
The blade isn’t pushing so hard against my neck now.
‘Good to your mum.’
‘Yeah, he’s real good.’
Darren relaxes the sword, walks over to the trampoline, parks his backside on the edge of the trampoline, his legs hanging over the steel springs connected to the black bounce canvas. He’s dressed all in black, his black sweater and tracksuit pants as black as his bowl haircut.
‘You want a smoke?’
‘Sure.’
He moves his sword, spears it into the ground, to make room for me on the trampoline’s edge. He takes two smokes from a soft white packet with no branding, lights them in his mouth and hands me one. I suck a tentative drag and it burns my insides, makes me cough hard. Darren laughs.
‘North Vietnam durries, Tink,’ he smiles. ‘Kick like a mule. Good buzz, though.’
I nod heartily, my head spinning with the second drag.
We look up through the living room sliding doors at Lyle and Bich and Quan talking over the Styrofoam ice box.
‘Won’t they see us?’ I ask.
‘Nah,’ Darren says. ‘They don’t notice shit when they’re doing business. Fuckin’ amateurs. It’ll be their undoing.’
‘What are they doing up there?’
‘You don’t know?’
I shake my head. Darren smiles.
‘C’mon, Tink. You must know. You might be full Aussie but you’re not that fuckin’ dumb.’
I smile.
‘The box is full of heroin,’ I say.
Darren blows cigarette smoke into the night.
‘And . . .’ he says.
‘And the purple firework was some kind of secret alert system. It’s how your mum lets her clients know their orders are ready.’
Darren smiles.
‘Order up!’ he says.
‘Different coloured fireworks for different dealers.’
‘Very good, Flathead,’ Darren says. ‘Your good man up there is running for his boss.’
‘Tytus Broz,’ I say. Tytus Broz. The Lord of Limbs.
Darren drags on his cigarette, nodding.
‘When did you work all this out?’
‘Just now.’
Darren smiles.
‘How do you feel?’
I say nothing. Darren chuckles. He hops off the trampoline, picks up his samurai sword.
‘You feel like stabbing something?’
I dwell on this curious opportunity for a moment.
‘Yes, Darren. I do.’
*
The car is parked two blocks from Darren’s house in Winslow Street outside a small low-set box of a home with its lights out. It’s a small jelly-bean dark green Holden Gemini.
Darren pulls a black balaclava from the back of his pants and slips it over his head.
From his pants pocket he pulls a stocking.
‘Here, put this on,’ he says, creeping low towards the car.
‘Where’d this come from?’
‘Mum’s dirty clothes basket.’
‘I’ll pass, thanks.’
‘Don’t worry, they slip on fine. She’s got fat thighs for a Vietnamese woman.’
‘This is Father Monroe’s car,’ I say.
Darren nods, hopping quietly onto the car’s bonnet. His weight makes a dent in the car’s old, rusting metal.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I ask.
‘Ssssshhh!’ Darren whispers, one arm down on Father Monroe’s windscreen to prop his weight as he crawls up and stands in the centre of the car’s roof.
‘C’mon, don’t fuck with Father Monroe’s car.’
Father Monroe. Earnest and ageing Father Monroe, softly spoken retired priest from Glasgow via Darwin and Townsville and Emerald, in Queensland’s Central Highlands. Butt of jokes, keeper of sins and frozen paper cups of orange and lime cordial that he keeps in his downstairs freezer and gives to permanently thirsty local kids like August and me.
‘What did he ever do to you?’
‘Nothing,’ Darren says. ‘He did nothing to me. It was Froggy Mills he did something to.’
‘He’s a good man, let’s just get out of here.’
‘Good man?’ Darren echoes. ‘That’s not what Froggy says. Froggy says Father Monroe pays him a tenner every Sunday after mass to show him his dick while he whacks off.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘Froggy doesn’t bullshit. He’s religious. Father Monroe told him it’s a sin to bullshit but it’s not a sin, of course, to show a seventy-five-year-old man your bat and balls.’
‘You won’t even get it through the metal.’
Darren taps his shoe on the car roof.
‘That’s thin metal. Half rusted out. This blade has been sharpened for six hours straight. Finest Japanese steel all the way from—’
‘The Mill Street Pawnbrokers.’
Through the holes in his balaclava, Darren closes his eyes. He raises the blade high with both fists gripping the handle, concentrating on something inside, like an old warrior about to ritually end the life of his best friend, or his favourite Australian suburban getabout motorcar. ‘Shit,’ I say, frantically pulling Bich Dang’s unwashed stocking over my head.
‘Wake up, time to die,’ Darren says.
He drives the sword down and it stabs into the Gemini with a shriek of metal on metal. The first third of the blade pierces the car roof like Excalibur in stone.
Darren’s mouth drops open.
‘Fuck, it went through.’ He beams. ‘You see that, Tink!’
A light goes on in Father Monroe’s house.
‘C’mon, let’s go,’ I bark.
Darren