It was half the length of my arm, sharp on the edges and old and worn in the centre. In parts it was turning brown from soil that had been caked into it.
I ran inside, paused, ran back out, fetched all the plants and threw them onto my shower floor. I was doing everything at a pace to which I was unaccustomed. I moved into the kitchen so fast I tripped over the linoleum floor covering that was peeling in the corner. I dumped the bone on the rickety round table in the centre of the kitchen then took a step back and rested my weight on the old wooden counter that runs down the side of the room. The cupboards behind me shook under my weight, all the old china rattled. A ghostly light came in through the window, passing over the dishes, the yellow floor. The bone made me feel self-conscious. It had a strangely awesome presence, like a great man. I felt I had to be presentable around it. I looked down at my jeans, they were thick with water and the backs caked with mud. My armpits stunk. I made a fart and scratched my asshole.
I needed to tell someone about the bone. It could be a murder. Perhaps the cops would rock up any day now, search the house and arrest me as an accomplice. I’d seen enough cop shows to know. But no. The bone must have been there for some time. Whoever it once belonged to is way forgotten. The case is long closed. But perhaps it could be a collector’s item. Maybe it’s worth something. Enough to see me through the next few months, a present from the gods. Yes. I had to tell someone.
In movies when people find bones, they always know who to tell. But not in real life. Not round these parts.
I needed to think clearly. I needed to focus. I went to my lounge. There’s only one window in the room and it’s covered by a curtain that looks like mosquito netting. The already pale light filtered through the netting cast the room in a light the colour of a corpse’s skin. I picked the bankie of weed off my lounge table, an item I’d made myself by placing a stop sign on top of a crate. I mulled some in my hand and let it drop on the crotch of my jeans. I had a little bag of chronic in my room which I’d been saving for a special occasion. But it now seemed special enough to me. I put the mulled weed back on the table and ran through to my bedroom. I always store my chronic weed on the bottom shelf of my table. It was a luminous green and smelt of chemicals. I’d paid a hundred bucks for a dime bag’s worth. I cut some up with a pair of scissors and mixed it up with the Swazi.
I picked up the yellow pages which had been delivered to my house a few weeks ago. I’d been using the covers as girrick paper for my joints and there was barely any left. I pulled off a final strip, rolled myself a fat joint and got unbelievably high.
In my now stoned state I was struck by a thought. I knew at once where I’d be able to track down the people who’d be able to deal with the bone. I put the coverless Yellow Pages on my lap, it flopped about like a dead fish.
I flipped to the index and looked under B: Bird Seed Merchants, Boatyards, Body Building, Body Piercing, Bodyguards. But fuck all about bones. Was this not a common enough problem? Then I remembered something else I’d been using as girrick paper in the last while. It was a flyer advertising the Observatory Fair that was being held this week at the community hall. Various groups would have display tables with information and whatnot. Surely there would be some group that would show an interest in a bone found in a garden. But what sort of bone was it? It must have been fairly deep underground. I know this because I broke the worst sweat I’d had in years trying to dig the trench into which I’d transplanted the baby plants when I’d first started growing. So it wasn’t a murder. And if it were, coming into the open about it would clear my name. But more likely it was an antique, something of value. I could sense money.
I went through to the bathroom and washed my hands. In the little freestanding round mirror I could see that my eyes were red. I went back to the kitchen and opened up all the old wooden cupboards looking to find some eyedrops. Somewhere I had eyedrops! But no sign of them. Just dust, old ashtrays, bowls I’d never used. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hands, then splashed them with water from the sink. I needed to wash my dishes.
I sat down in the corner of the kitchen, smoked a cigarette and tried to remember if there was anything I had to do with my day. But of course there wasn’t.
I’d go up to the fair and ask around. I’d play it cool. Someone would have the answer. I was so stoned that the walls of the kitchen appeared to be breathing. You get what you pay for.
I showered, and just before walking out the front door remembered that Pete was coming later that afternoon to check out the setup in my cupboard. The setup I’d told him was ready for use. The setup that wasn’t really there.
During our first meeting he’d said that he might have some business for me. But if he learnt that my entire harvest had drowned in the garden, and that I still hadn’t set up the system, I was sure his offer would be reversed.
I started getting paranoid. I walked up and down my corridor running my hands through my hair which still felt dirty. I was disgusted by myself.
I scrambled into my room and began emptying out my cupboards, starting with the shoe section. I had more shoes than at any other point in my life. This was, of course, because of Pete.
* * *
It had been a full week, maybe ten days, after placing the advert in the paper that I got the phone call. I was stoned at the time too.
‘Byron bro. Is that you bro?’ the voice asked.
‘It is.’
‘I read your advert in the Cape Ads bro. Says you got a big right and a baby left, is that the case bro?’
‘It is.’
‘No ways bro!’ He laughed a deep laugh that came from his belly, and picked up phlegm as it passed his chest on the way out. ‘That’s so mad bro. You got an 11 and a 7 bro, is that right?
‘Ja.’
‘I’m seven and a half, and a ten. But bro, I don’t reckon it’ll matter bro. Such a small difference. That’s so lank weird!’ He laughed again.
We made a plan to meet at Obs Café. I hit a bong before I left and strolled up Trill Road to Lower Main. A couple of trendy gay men were sitting at a table on the pavement, having cocktails and laughing deliberately gay laughs. Next to their table was a fern in a pink pot. On the far side of the road a hobo had passed out underneath a large signboard advertising beer. I crossed over the dirty road and walked past the bottle store. A couple of rough-looking guys were buying themselves bottles of brandy.
In Obs the roads are narrow and cars park all the way along the left hand side of the road. Traffic can’t go in both directions at the same time and drivers have to wait their turn. A frizzy-haired woman in a Beetle, who’d been waiting for too long, was banging her steering wheel in frustration as I crossed in front of her. In the big glass windows of Obs Café were some posters advertising upcoming shows in the side theatre. And there through the windows I saw a man, and knew, without introduction, that it was he.
I pulled open the glass door and entered the non-smoking section of the café.
‘You looking for a table sir?’ a waiter asked me.
‘Uh-uh.’
I made my way across the narrow alley that divides the smoking from the non-smoking section of Obs café. He was at a table in the corner, his body sunk backward and downward into the black leather couch, his knees stuck up high like exaggerated A-frames, his pants were torn at the knee. His hair was big and dirty, not dreadlocked, but almost. He hadn’t shaved in months, and his