The maskeys, p.8
The Maskeys, page 8
Rodney closed the door again and returned to the ensuite, where he cleaned up his front and filled a glass for a drink. He checked himself in the mirror and dabbed again at the tender lump beneath his matted hair.
He went back to the door and startled Leanne when she saw him open it.
She cried out to Gayle. ‘He’s escaped. Gayle – he’s out.’
‘I’m not escapin nowhere,’ he said, feeling dizzy.
‘No, you don’t,’ Gayle said, descending the fold-out ladder with a rifle. She pushed him into the room and locked the door from the outside.
Rodney stumbled back to the bed and further assessed the situation he found himself in. A short time later, he heard the ladder being pushed up into the ceiling. It was soon after that, that the yelling between Jay, Leanne and Eric began.
Rodney listened. A door slammed, and then all went quiet. He went to the window seat and watched the young couple storm over to their campervan and drive away. He heard Gayle vacuuming outside his room.
After vacuuming, she entered with Eric. Still recovering her breath, she pointed her rifle at the grubby little man sitting on her window seat and directed Eric to tie him up.
The weasel stood with his hands behind his back. Eric found the ropes and resecured his wrists. ‘Kidnappin, Mrs Reynolds?’ the weasel said.
Gayle noticed the bent strut on her bed.
Rodney noticed her notice. ‘The chuck were burnin me throat. I had to free meself somehow. He can straighten it for you.’ He looked at Eric.
Gayle glared at him silently.
‘You’re lookin good, Mrs Reynolds,’ Rodney said. ‘Your hair is nice that way,’ he went on, registering her disapproval of his flattery. ‘I’m runnin away at the mouth. Sorry. I got whacked pretty hard on the head.’
‘You had a rifle shoved in my face,’ Eric snipped.
‘You was thievin somethin of mine.’
‘Of George Maskey’s,’ Gayle said.
‘I guessed this were about Mr Maskey,’ Rodney said. ‘You sure he lit that fire? I wonder why he’d do that again …?’
Gayle looked at Eric. ‘Go down and open up.’
He went.
‘So, you plan on selling all those plants?’ Rodney said. ‘Kidnappin, drug-dealin – Duncan wouldn’t recognise ya, Mrs Reynolds.’
Gayle’s rifle drooped. ‘You smell – I’ll find you a clean shirt,’ she said, going from the room.
‘I wouldn’t mind a coffee. I usually make one about now.’
She closed the door on him.
‘Mrs Reynolds,’ Rodney said, before she locked him in, ‘I heard on Mr Maskey’s scanner, there’s gonna be a raid.’
Gayle was confused.
‘The blues,’ Rodney elaborated. ‘They’re coming to town, to do one of their searches of the hills. Naples is gonna be crawlin with em.’
She didn’t believe him.
‘I was on me way to tell Mr Maskey what I heard, when whiteteeth lit up the valley like Ashton’s Circus. I ain’t lyin, Mrs Reynolds. Today, Mrs Reynolds. They’ll be here, any time now.’
Gayle slammed the door. Out in the passageway she locked it and then, worn out, slumped against the wall. Catching sight of her son’s framed portrait, she went to his old room to find a clean shirt for Rodney, pausing briefly at a mirror in the passageway to look at her hair.
The first tiny green leaf of a dandelion appeared to Rodney so long ago it was not even a memory to him. He’d been left locked in a room by his mother, Lucy, in a house where she was squatting without water or power. She had meant to return home with juice and cake for her son, immediately after offloading her methadone on Main Street. But no plans can ever really be made in a life such as the one his mother lived. The lives of addicts are for the service of the present alone – and so, when she did not show up, her four-yearold infant was resigned, accustomed as he was to being forgotten about while she got busy providing for her drug habit in the service of a heroin dealer: George Maskey.
Thirsty and hungry, Rodney had been asleep on the floor in a corner of the room that was cooler, when his eyes opened upon a buckled green shoot poking its way through a crack in the wooden floor. Looking closer, he knew straight away what it was.
It was company he could keep.
It was a friend.
Plants did not grow indoors, he knew that, and even if they were to be found indoors in pots sometimes, in some houses – not his, but in other houses – where they might be found with furniture and with lights that worked, they never, ever grew through the floor. Not unless they were very lonely. And desperately in need of company.
The next day, the shoot grew taller. And in the days that followed, taller still, and to those who know such things, it was clearly a dandelion. For the briefest time, late in the day, the sun would stream into the bleak room and cause the dandelion to cast a shadow. A shadow that the dreamy, malnourished Rodney would lie beside, in wonder.
At night when his mother brought her friends by, to laugh and fight with, sometimes his door would be flung open and he would be invited for cuddles. But Rodney would reject the advances of his mother and her different friends, and instead would sit by the doorway to his room, to keep vigil for his solitary friend. Who he knew for certain was very scared.
Outside, by a wild overgrown thicket of oleander, privet and dumped prams – that gave the house that Rodney and his mother were living in secrecy from the road – he began to leave out plastic containers to collect any rain that might fall. And, with a suitable level of gravity, he would dribble it carefully through the crack in the floor.
Soon, with all the care he was showing it, the twisted stem of the flower had grown several inches above the floor, and a golden bloom had formed. Watching this miracle happen before his eyes – and soon after, its transformation into a bearded white seed cluster – was not something Rodney even remembered. Except deep inside of himself, the same way he remembered the loss he had experienced the morning his mother discovered his lonely companion’s existence.
Joining him on the floor in his grim prison, in a brief show of hopped-up affection before she locked him in for the day, his mother, Lucy, exclaimed in surprise, ‘Look – it’s a Santa Claus!’ The remark was squealed to her son, like Rodney had never till then noticed the plant. And that he did not even care for it – more than he cared for her. She released a throaty cackle and, with no warning, ripped the plant’s head off. She blew hard onto the beard-like cluster of white seeds, and captivated, she watched it float, like a distant memory of her own, above the face of her horrified son.
He followed after its journey down the hall and right out of the open front door, and stumbling down the stairs onto the garden path, he hurried past the overgrown oleander and dumped prams onto Main Street’s footpath.
Despite his best efforts he soon lost sight of the Santa Claus, but he continued to run into the sunshine – as fast as he could from his mother, who was in frantic pursuit of her dirty, naked infant.
As fast as he could, Rodney ran and ran, until he crashed very hard into four-year-old Duncan Reynolds.
The impact of the collision knocked the youngsters to the ground. Duncan’s young mother, Gayle, anticipating the impending collision too late, watched helplessly. Duncan began to cry. ‘What are you running from?’ Gayle asked the strange boy, as she collected the pair up.
Lucy arrived on the scene. ‘Little shit.’ She panted.
‘Haven’t you got any clothes to wear?’ Gayle asked him.
‘About to wash the little grub,’ his mother lied, shame-faced. ‘Hates the water.’
Gayle recognised the local junkie immediately and was concerned to think she was a parent to the child, given the state she was often to be seen in.
‘Come on, Rodney, you’re makin me late,’ Lucy said, grabbing his hand.
And though neither of the boys recalled the event, it was rooted like a weed in Gayle’s memory: the sight of Rodney burying his tiny milk-teeth as deep as he could into his mother’s wrist, and causing her to whimper, as he was dragged away.
2
Sitting on his verandah, George Maskey entertained himself watching an Arson Squad officer, in a white coverall, having a scratch about at the ashes of Eric’s cottage. George wondered what they might turn up. They had found no clues the first time there was arson on the property, George recalled with pride in Rodney.
A green campervan turned off the Naples Road and drove past. The van and the couple driving it were not familiar to George. It entered Eric’s property.
Inside the van, Jay and Leanne bickered. ‘Tell me again why we’re staying here?’ Jay said.
‘We haven’t been paid yet,’ Leanne said.
‘And you think we will?’
‘We’ve got a place to stay … For twenty years, we’ve got security – if we want.’
‘What about him, Leanne?’ Jay asked, of George Maskey, whom they had noticed sitting on his verandah. ‘What happens when he finds out his weed’s been stolen?’
‘We had nothin to do with it.’
They turned into Eric’s and slowed as they passed the Arson Squad van; Jay offered an awkward wave for the officer. ‘And we’ve kidnapped some guy – I don’t know how you can be so calm,’ Jay said, correcting his volume to a whisper.
‘I want what we’re owed, fair and square, that’s why,’ Leanne whispered back, with her own uncomfortable smile for the Arson Squad. ‘But it’s definitely a whack situation to be in.’
‘Can you stop calling everything “whack”!’
‘I trust Gayle. I’m a good judge of character – I am, Jay, you know that. If we can just lay low here, by the creek,’ she said, as they neared it. ‘We’ve got everything we need – when we get paid, we’re off.’
‘My life is fucked,’ Jay dry-sobbed to the steering wheel as he pulled up.
3
Gayle re-entered her hostage’s room with one of her son’s t-shirts slung over her shoulder. She directed Rodney to turn about so she could untie his wrists. He did so, and when his hands were free, she threw the new shirt on the bed. Rodney, still with his back to her, removed his messy shirt and vest, and – swallowing down hard on his uncomfortable feelings – picked up his dead friend’s shirt: a Guns ’N Roses tee that he recognised.
Gayle watched him change, gun in hand.
‘I like me clothes too big,’ Rodney said. He straightened the garment about his thin neck and narrow shoulders. ‘They suit me,’ he added.
She smirked at the remark.
The weasel ignored the amusement. ‘You won’t need your gun, Mrs Reynolds,’ he said. ‘I promise I won’t try nuthin. I mean you can tie me up if ya want, but you’ll just have to keep untying me all the time.’
‘Turn around,’ she said.
He turned his back and offered her his wrists for retying.
She put down the gun and proceeded to bind him.
As she knotted, Rodney found interest in an unhealthy plant on the windowsill. ‘Streppocarpus,’ he said, mispronouncing the Latin name. ‘It’s dyin,’ he added.
After securing his wrists, Gayle observed that the strut on the bed that Rodney had earlier bent was straightened out.
He saw.
‘I used me feet,’ he said.
She pushed him onto the bed and rubbed her temples.
‘The plant,’ he went on, ‘ya Cape primrose, it’s dyin. That window’s west facin. It’s too hot for it there.’
From very early on in her son’s friendship with Rodney, Gayle had learnt he had opinions about everything. Opinions beyond his years. Opinions that were like his clothing: oversized. She was not surprised that they should extend to an insignificant plant at a window.
He recognised her annoyance. ‘I don’t like to see plants suffer. I know they ain’t supposed to feel things – but there’s some believe they can.’
‘How do you explain that entire city of slaughtered marijuana bushes in my attic?’ she said, taking up her rifle again.
‘They lived their cycle. Out in the sun. They’re beauties – musta been happy. How do you explain em?’
‘You’re feeling smug, are you? With your drugs safe from the cops in my attic.’
‘Are they safe?’ Rodney said.
‘My boy changed when he started going around with you.’
‘He were a daredevil alright. I didn’t change him. But you can blame me if ya want, Mrs Reynolds. I got nuthin against you. Ya hurtin – like that plant over there.’
‘My son came back to town, didn’t he?’
Rodney’s eyes stayed fixed on the plant.
‘George Maskey has seen him.’
Rodney felt a blush appear on his face. ‘I don’t think so, Mrs Reynolds.’
‘You’re a liar.’
He shrugged.
‘George Maskey destroyed my son. The pair of you did.’
‘Mr Maskey was more of a support to Duncan than you was,’ Rodney said, frowning. ‘I’m sorry to have to say that,’ he added, looking down at his clean shirt. ‘You never showed up at his court appearances, when he could’ve done with a bit of support. It were Mr Maskey. He got him legal aid, made sure he looked alright; presented.’
‘You’re just a weasel.’ Gayle enjoyed the slight that had dogged Rodney since adolescence, after he had gained a reputation in the town for petty theft.
‘I know you don’t like me, Mrs Reynolds,’ he said; hurt or unhurt by the badge, he could never decide which. Surely it was something to be known as something. Though he had never much read up on the animal not favoured by Walt Disney Studios to learn whether the good of them outweighed the bad.
‘He was living in a house that I gave him,’ Gayle said defensively. ‘But he hated me. There was nothing I could do for him that wasn’t wrong.’
‘I saw him treat you badly, Mrs Reynolds. I know he weren’t no angel. But we ain’t seen him.’ Rodney glanced up at the ceiling.
‘His girlfriend was seen in town, a couple of months back.’
Rodney turned a greenish shade and struggled to get up from the bed. ‘I gonna be sick —’ Unable to hold a hand to his mouth, he tried to stem the reflex by forcing his lips shut. It sprayed out through his clenched teeth.
Gayle dropped the gun and ran to grab him a towel. She got it to his face too late, though, and he and the carpet were left in another mess.
At the ensuite basin, Rodney tried to pull himself together. ‘I always been a vomiter,’ he said with a burp, his nose in need of blowing.
While cleaning the floor, Gayle asked the weasel if she would need to keep him tied up.
‘I won’t try nuthin, I promise, Mrs Reynolds.’
Sighing, she decided it would be more convenient to trust him than not. And when finally the mess was cleaned, she found him another one of Duncan’s tees. Throwing it at him and locking the door, she was unable to get away from her hostage fast enough. She went to the kitchen and slumped on a chair, some words of her long-dead father playing in her head: ‘I didn’t bring you up to be an I’m-in-trouble kind of girl.’
She reached out to touch the cold pot of tea before her.
4
Once again, the three young mothers – Stacey, Tika and Celeste – were spreading out a rug on the grass in Civic Park, to make themselves comfortable for a morning of supporting their boys dealing weed. When a PolAir chopper soared close to their heads, their hands flew up to their ears, and the babies began to wail.
The sight of a police chopper was not such an unusual event in Naples. And though they watched it descend at the nearby showground with caution, it was only on seeing several police wagons driving up Judith Street, on their way to Main, that they guessed the town and all its surrounding hills were about to be raided. Scooping up their crying infants, weed and things, they ran for the car. Many others in the town similarly altered plans for the day.
Serenade – who sees everything – was sitting with a customer at her little Tarot table and paused in a reading to watch the commotion that the arrival of the police vehicles caused: bags of weed, fits, deals of hashish and panicked hands all flying into the air, as street dealers emptied their pockets and piss-bolted for the creeks. She watched it all with some amusement. Events were set in train, she realised.
On hearing the chopper’s approach from his captivity, Rodney leapt up from the bed to look from the window. Down below, he saw Eric and Gayle appear out front. They watched a line of police vehicles drive past in convoy. Gayle was shuddering about the contents of her attic – and of her guestroom.
Over at Longwhile, Hilda Maskey viewed the same chopper through the kitchen window. She went out onto the verandah. George was feeding the dogs. Holding an empty can of Pedigree, he watched the convoy of police vehicles drive past on their way to town.
Hilda wiped her hands on a tea-towel. ‘Rodney,’ she said, concerned.
George looked back at his wife and forgot the dogs. He dropped the can, picked up his sticks and re-entered the house. He was rolling himself a cigarette at the kitchen table when barking signalled the return of the girls from town. ‘Here they are,’ he mumbled to his cigarette.
The screen door slammed, and Celeste barged indoors. ‘The town is crawlin with cops,’ she ejaculated. ‘Crawlin!’
‘I know,’ George drawled, looking at Hilda. ‘Where the fuck is Rodney?’
‘I don’t know,’ Celeste said. ‘Have you seen him, Mrs Maskey?’ she asked, with a right-to-know expression on her face that Hilda filed away, like a tile to be broken, for later use.
‘No, dear, I haven’t,’ the mosaicist replied.
‘You saw him the other day, though, didn’t you?’ Celeste said. ‘While Dad was in town.’
‘He would have heard nothing about a raid back then.’
Tika and Stacey entered with the babies. Stacey handed Hilda a nylon sports bag contact containing unsold weed and money. The women shared a friendly smile – not lost on Celeste.
‘I need a lift into town,’ George said.
‘I’ll take you, Dad,’ Celeste said, squeezing the car keys tight in her hand.
