More Wagga Wagga West

Wagga Wagga 2

The place I currently called home was a corridor in Houdini's house.
Terry and Julie had offered their sofa but I didn't want to be seen by
young Liam in such a state of decline. Uncle Gay of the Sofa was not a
soubriquet I wanted to pass under. Not today. Not even tomorrow. I was
godfather and I meant to fulfil whatever meanings that word had in our
morally redundant hypocritical hippomanic world. Some things just have
to be.

So Houdini's corridor it was. And to be Frank, Anne Frank would have
called it a palace. She could have done her Jew thing here and been as
happy as a kosher pretzel in a kosher pizza parlour. It was nice. It
had wooden floorboards. It had doors. It even had a bed on wheels. The
only thing it was lacking was a little width. But hey, it was a
corridor. And who was I to call this singing kettle black? It was true
I was going up in the world, I had four pairs of underpants and a tea
towel but on the grand scale of things I was still a nobody, a nothing,
I couldn't have been a contender, not even if I'd wanted to be. I was a
lone ant.

I was also a tired ant.

You see, Houdini was big black and recently arrived from deepest
Ghana. Those bare facts coupled with the internet phone link in
Houdini's bedroom added up to one thing and one thing only. Sex.

Houdini had only to enter his profile in our local gay.com chatroom
and the people were queuing around the block. Around the block and up
to my bed. One by one people stepped over me and into Houdini's room.
And always it was the same noise.

"Wagga wagga wagga wagga oomph." On and on it went, nearly all night.
It was enough to keep someone awake. It did. Me.

One morning I had questioned Houdini about it. We had been sitting on
opposite sides of the breakfast bar. Houdini had been squeezing oranges
in his famous armpit and I was sipping the fruits of his labour when I
had gone for it. I had bitten the bullet of my guest-like
position.

"Houdini?" I said.

"Yeah?" he said, rolling orange pips around his teeth with his big
pink tongue.

"That noise you make?"

"In de toilet man. Soz about that. It's all the fooking." Houdini
always pronounced fucking 'fooking'. It was one of the things that had
first endeared me to him that day we met in the station caf?. That and
his two suitcases hanging around his neck like a boxer's gloves tied
with string. "The dust gets up me nose. Yous people in this country are
mighty dusty. That's de fact."

"No not that," I said. Although the way Houdini blew his nostrils of a
morning was enough to wake the partially deaf. One day I had to conduct
a tour of the house to a pack of angry zookeepers. "You may have lost
an elephant," I had said, "but he's not here. Check the butter if you
like."

"Not that," I said to Houdini again, as he squeezed a particularly
stubborn orange and the rind shot off and landed in an arc behind the
fridge freezer. "The other noise you make."

"What's that?" said Houdini raising his big black head and fixing me
with the whites of his eyes.

"That wagga wagga wagga oomph," I said.

"Ah," said Houdini practically beating his big black chest in joy.
"Ah."

"Yes?" I said.

"That," said Houdini, "is the language of love. The language of
love."

"Oh," I said. "Tell me more."

But he wouldn't say another word about it except sometimes when I was
sitting on the toilet he would put his nappy head around the door and
give me two wagga waggas very quietly and then disappear before I had
chance to reach for the paper and ask for more.

So every night it was the same. "Wagga wagga wagga oomph." Always
three waggas and one oomph. The language of love. Whatever that was.
And this night was no different, no different at all.

But this night I had things on my own mind. I was thinking my own
thoughts. I was thinking about Terry's question. I was thinking about
dildos. So when the small weasely looking man with the ratty moustache
came out of Houdini's room I barely paid him any attention at all. He
was just another face. Another suitcase. Another town. That's
all.

Oh yes.

****

The next morning at breakfast Houdini was in a philosophical mood. He
was sitting with a towel bunched around his waist. It was white and
fluffy against his black skin and somehow it seemed as if it wanted to
get away, it seemed as if it didn't belong there. I knew how it felt. I
had been living in Houdini's corridor for three and a half weeks. That
was quite enough.

"Do you believe in positive discrimination?" Houdini asked as I pulled
up one of the barstools and pulled off a ratatattat on the bar
top.

I liked the way he asked that, with the whites of his eyes as well as
with his pinkish lips. It was the way he always asked questions.

I made another ratattat on the bar top. It was the bebop way we
usually started the day.

"Come on," he said. "Do you? I'm serious."

"I believe in any kind of discrimination," I said. "It's the negative
by which we define ourselves. We'd never know who we are if we didn't
know who we weren't."

"I know that," said Houdini quickly, as if he really did, "but all
those men, they're keeping me up all night."

"I second that," I said. "They're keeping me up too."

Houdini shook his head. "But what can I do? No sooner have those
internet junkies seen 'big black and recently arrived from Ghana' than
they want to come over."

"Oh," I said.

"WHEN can we meet m8?" they type.

"You could always say no," I said.

"You don't understand," said Houdini sorrowfully. "I want people to
come over. In Ghana things are different. I live in a shack and I spend
my time looking after the elephants on my mother's enclosure. Every day
it is dung dung dung and more dung. My mother sits there on the porch
with her knitting, rocking backwards and forwards, dreaming of banjos
and always she says 'Come on Houdini, there's another one' on and on,
day after day."

"Your shack has a porch?" I asked. In my mind, I couldn't see it.
Although I could see the mother. She had white hair in a bun and only
four teeth.

"It's more of a lean-to than a shack," said Houdini, "but yes, we have
a porch. It is long and has a white rail. But what we didn't have was
internet access."

"You probably don't have men who want to come over either."

"Not that exactly," said Houdini, "but there I'm one of a type.
Everyone is big and black. Just like me."

I reached across and realigned Houdini's towel. "So go with the flow,"
I said. "You like all the sex, don't you?"

Houdini grinned. "Sure man. De fooking is great."

There wasn't a pause but still somehow I felt that I was expected to
say something. "But you want something more?"

"No," said Houdini, "well, yeah." He smiled.

"What?" I said.

"More sleep," said Houdini, "this fooking is keeping me up all night.
I want more sleep."

"We're going round in circles," I said.

"What I need is a new job," said Houdini. "Starting at seven in the
banana factory every day is killing me. I need a job with more
respectful hours."

Now I smiled. It was a smile that didn't usually surface at this time
of the day.

"What?" said Houdini. "What you smiling for man?"

"Hold onto your hat," I said. "I might just have the answer to your
problems."

Houdini shook his head, then nodded, then shook it again so his head
was going around in circles. "What man?" he said. "Tell me no
lies."

"Not yet," I said. "It's all a bit hush-hush."

Houdini slid down off the breakfast stool and rearranged the corners
of his towel.

"Is that why you all dressed up like a duck's dinner. Something going
on man. I can smell it in the air."

"Not one word," I said.

"Ahhhh man," Houdini said.

"OK," I said. "One word. No, two."

"What?" said Houdini. "What?"

"Wagga wagga," I said. Then I left the room.

****

The man was there at the appointed hour. He was holding a pencil in one
hand and a clipboard in the other. Either the man was very short or the
pencil was very long. Maybe both. It was sure only that there was a
discordance between the two.

"Mr James?" he said in a voice that was both at once that of a man who
wished to be superior and of one who was born to never amount to
much.

"Call me Jesse," I said holding out a hand.

For a moment there was confusion. The man looked first at his pencil,
then at his clipboard, then merely nodded his head curtly. He turned
his back on me as if a victory had been won.

"Is this the scene of the so-called accident then?" he asked.

I took a step forward so that I was standing alongside the man. Before
us was a patch of blackened earth. The only object among the debris of
fire damaged objects that was of any discernable shape was the fridge
freezer. I clearly remembered the fireman's words. "Amazing. It still
works. Look! Ice cubes."

"It was an accident," I said. "And yes, it happened here."

The man made a movement over the clipboard with his pencil and then
held the clipboard close to his chest. He hadn't been fast enough. I
saw that in fact he had written nothing.

"Just give me the bare details again," he said.

I took a deep breath. The smell of burning had at last diminished and
now it was only damp embers that I could smell. I was happy now. I
didn't really want to think about that night.

"I had been babysitting Liam. We had been carving horses out of teak.
He had made a small one and I had made a large one. We put them on the
mantelpiece. Then Julie and Terry came to collect him. He went home and
I went to bed. The next thing I knew was fire, FIRE! I gathered up a
pair of shoes and leapt out of the window. The neighbours raised the
alarm and the fire truck was here within minutes. But it was too late.
The house was wooden. It went quickly. Everything was gone."

"Except the fridge freezer."

I wasn't sure if it was a question or not, but I answered anyway.
"Yes. Except the fridge freezer."

"Have you any reason to think that someone might hate you so much that
they would want to burn you to a cinder?"

The question caught me off guard. I took a step forward and then not
sure of where I was going took a step to the left. I turned around so I
was facing the man again.

"I don't think so."

"Because we don't pay out in attempted murder cases. If someone is to
blame then we like to blame them."

I shook my head and tried to speak decisively. "No. No one would want
to kill me. I'm Jesse James. I was a hero once."

"Yes." The man spoke quickly and seemed to make several more notes on
his clipboard. "We've heard all about your past. Strange about the
fridge freezer though."

I turned again. I looked at the fridge freezer and tried to look
puzzled by it. I scratched my chin. "Yes. It is strange."

"Don't think we'll be paying you for that," said the man. "It was in
the fire department's report. Fridge freezer. Undamaged. And that has
been independently checked. So you won't be getting any compensation
for that."

I scratched my chin again and sighed as if I was conceding a point.
"OK then," I said. "We can scrub the fridge freezer from the claim. No
fridge freezer."

The man gave a little wheeze that I realised was a laugh. "The fridge
freezer has already been taken off believe me." He shook his head.
"This is a check for the rest. But no fridge freezer mind you. I want
to make that clear. And if you decide to fight it, I warn you now we
have a pretty damn hot lawyer."

"You got me," I said. I looked down at my shoe and scuffed it against
the blackened grass. "I know when I'm beat."

"Good," said the man. Now he nodded his head. He reached into his
pocket and brought out a check. He handed it to me and I took it. "We
don't expect to hear from you again."

"You won't," I said. I looked at the check and allowed myself a smile.
"You won't. And by the way."

"Yes?" said the man.

"You've dropped your pencil."

"What?" said the man.

"Look," I said. "Your pencil, it's on the floor."

"On the floor? Oh, yes. I see."

Then we both stood looking at the pencil. I don't know if the man
expected me to pick it up but I wasn't going to. As far as I was
concerned that was the end of the meeting. As far as I was concerned
the next part of my life was about to begin.

****

Houdini was sitting next to me on the sofa. Liam was opposite and Terry
was standing. Julie apparently was in the kitchen. It was rumoured in
certain quarters that she was making chips. It was the kind of rumour
that, for once, was backed up by hard evidence. I could hear a constant
sizzling sound. Meanwhile something was up with Liam. I could
tell.

"What is it Liam?" I asked.

"Nothing," said Liam. He made a zipping motion in front of his lip.
Then he said, "Stum." He looked at Terry and then back at me. "Stum,
stum, stum," he said.

Houdini giggled and nudged his elbow in my side. "He's keeping stum,"
he said.

"Come on," I said to Liam. "What is it?"

"Nothing," said Liam.

"Go on," I said. "Tell me. Please."

"OK," said Liam. He unzipped his lips. "Who's the n*****?"

Terry pulled back his lips so that I could see all his teeth. Houdini
laughed. Terry hopped from foot to foot. "Sorry mate," he said to
Houdini.

Houdini shrugged. "At the end of the day," he said, "I am a n*****, a
no good cotton-picking n*****."

"A banana-packing n*****," I said. "Don't forget."

"Former banana-packing n*****," said Houdini.

"Oh yes," I said. "Granted. Former banana-packing n*****."

"Ho ho ho," said Houdini. "I ain't no banana-packing n***** no more. I
forgot. What a dumb n***** I am."

"Can we stop it with all the n******s?" said Terry.

"I'm only one n*****," said Houdini.

"Four little n******s all in a row," sang Liam. "Bangbangbang. Three
dead n******s. Let's lynch the last one."

"Liam!" shouted Terry.

"They sing it at school," said Liam. "Every morning in assembly. Mr
Caruthers leads and we follow. Jimmy gets to keep time with the
tambourine. Miss Despesto says that next week if I'm good then I can
have a turn with the tambourine. Depends who shouts n***** the loudest.
That's what she means when she says being good. Although she says she
doesn't."

Houdini shook his head. "There's saying n***** and there's saying
n*****," he said.

"I've got an idea," I said.

I told Terry to get some paper. Then we made a list. We wrote down all
the bad words we could think of and then we gave each one a number. We
told Liam that if a word had a ten next to it then it was out of the
question, he couldn't say it, but if a word, on the other hand, had a
one then it was OK. Some of the words we put a smiley face next to just
for fun. Therefore in this way 'damn' was deemed to be fine and
'n*****' to be no way. Gonads had a smiley face next to it.

"But you said n***** yourself," said Liam to Houdini.

Houdini sat on the sofa for a while. He was as still as an ox. Then he
scratched his nappy head and smiled.

"When you go to the toilet," said Houdini to Liam, "who holds your
willie."

Liam stuck out his tongue and pulled a face. "Me of course," he said.
He looked at Terry and shook his head. "These two are a right pair of
?." Quickly he glanced at the list. "Donkeys," he added.

"Well," said Houdini, "the word n***** is like holding your willie.
You can do it yourself but you wouldn't want others to do it."

"I see," said Liam.

"Good explanation," I said.

Terry pirouetted around an occasional table.

"Cool," said Houdini.

"CHIPS!" shouted Julie and we all jumped because we hadn't even seen
her come in. "CHIPS ANYONE?"

****

Later, I told everyone about my shop. Liam had gone to bed so I was
able to be free. I felt happy to be in good company and I had a full
stomach. Also I knew I was going back to a place of my own. I wouldn't
be in a corridor and there would be no cowboys around. Things had
turned around.

"Anyway," said Julie just as finished, "do you think that Alphaville
is ready for the kind of shop you're proposing?"

Terry stood up and clapped his hands. "They're going to sell
dildos!"

"I'm serious," said Julie. "You know what Alphaville is like."

"Well," I said, "it's time Alphaville changed. We're supposed to be
the frontier. Surely that means something."

"It does," said Julie. "It means people are scared. When they are
faced with something new they cling all the more determinedly to the
old ideas."

"That doesn't explain the cowboys," I said.

"You're wrong," said Julie. "It does explain them. It explains why
there's no place for them in Alphaville anymore. They're
outlaws."

"I don't know," I said.

"I'm sorry," said Julie, "I'm not trying to be negative. I just don't
want you to get hurt again."

I looked up. "What do you mean 'again'?"

Julie stood up. She started clearing up the plates, lifting forks from
off the floor.

"Julie," I said.

"Your house was burnt down."

"That was an accident," I said.

Terry clapped his hands. "Course it was."

"And now," said Julie glancing at Terry and then at Houdini, "you're
harbouring a fugitive."

"Me," said Houdini, "a fugitive. I never thought of that."

"I just want to change things," I said.

"Perhaps you can't," said Julie.

"And perhaps I can. If I don't try then I'll never know. You've got
Liam. What am I going to leave behind when I'm gone?"

"You're not going anywhere," said Houdini. "You promised me some
fooking."

I laughed. "You'll get your fooking."

I felt a small tug on my shoulder. It was Terry.

"You'll get you're fooking too," I said in a small voice. "And we'll
have some fun."

"Promise," said Terry.

"I promise," I said. "I'm a man of my word."

"He is," said Houdini. "Look at me. I'm free."

Freedom.

A fugitive from the chain gang.

A burnt down house.

Things were starting to add up.

END

The first part of this story, When The Chips Are Down, appeared here
and is now over on www.pulp.net (in a different form). Other chapters
have also appeared here until the title Wagga Wagga West.

Watch out next time for when the sex shop finally opens and Bo Schmo
and his neo-social realists (from Ismael Reed's Yellow Back Radio Broke
Down and my own Darts) hit town.

There's a shoot out at the Hokey Corral, a simuntaneous bank robbery,
an attack of indians, and it is up to The Loop Garoo Kid and his band
of Darts players to save the day.