Nisbet hated Ropata and wanted to kill him real bad. He didn’t like his clever-dick smartarsedness and the way he always seemed to be in control. Wanted to see that brown boy’s blood leak out a bit, show him who’s the real boss here.
Nisbet poured another whiskey down his garbled throat and farted derisively at that thought of fat Margaret giving him a blow job last pay day in the back office.
Fucking Ropata had to get the big whack, no doubt about it. Nisbet smiled a bit into himself and wiped the dribble from his scarred chin where he’d nicked it earlier that day when trying to shave with his shaky hands fornicating over the cheap plastic razor.
Better have a piss and go back to the front office — been too bloody long away today, eh.
He climbed into the new white Rover and rode back down the back track to Mt Wellington. Straightened his tartan tie into less of a snake replica and filched up the rear wooden stairs like a crafty thief.
Margaret lusted a smile after him as he went into his own room and sheaved a few papers into some sort of salience.
Soon, Marshall and Lewis came in together: a comedy duo without any jokes in their repertoires, mediocre Loman clones already balding and permanently encased in sweaty incompetence. They wanted to tell him, their ‘boss’ — even although he was younger than both of them and had left Kaitoki High School during Form Four — that the boys were demanding locker room space and that the boys were going to see Hobson about it.
Nisbet went more scarlet than scarlet is allowed and shouted splenetic. ‘I suppose that black cunt Ropata is stirring again, eh. Fucking cunt. Fuck him, I say what’s happening around here and I said no locker space.’ Nisbet raked his metal ruler through the innocent files awaiting his benison and they flew off in tangential spasms.
Outside, later, Marshall turned to Lewis and said ‘I said not to tell Barry nothing about that shit.’ Lewis just shrugged his stooped soccer goalie shoulders and flicked a glance at Angela’s big tits throbbing like unlicked gobstoppers over there by the water cooler.
Marshall was already flicking through Best Bets.
Lewis lit up a smoke.
+ + +
Couple of days passed. Ropata was—as usual — wearing his shades even tho’ it was 7 a.m. Lex Doctor had arrived early on his Saturday off and wanted a koha to take back up to Coopers Beach for the big fishing derby, eh.
Ropata turned a couple of blind eyes as Lex hoisted a mighty chain block carton into the boot of his Cortina, lowering the lowered chassis to an obscene degree, and then swerved off with a mighty grin all over his stubbly face. Ropata didn’t much care — wasn’t his stuff, eh. Why not let a bro’ have a bit of the profits anyway.
He worked thru’ the morning serving the thin spatter of customers in their grime-ridden overalls lurping over the hydraulic store’s sheetmetal bench, and making a few fittings as required. Pretty quiet morning, although one of the Nuie guys hadn’t fronted for work ’cause he was going to his sister’s wedding feast out back of Manukau Town Centre somewhere.
Ropata had indeed seen Mr. Hobson — sort of the big boss — about getting some locker space for the boys to store all their gear. Nisbet — that stupid little prick — had not been interested and had said ‘no need, no room’ and Ropata knew right away that Hobson would be the man because at least he had some brainpower and was a hell of a lot more straight up than the little prick. Besides, Ropata was union rep at the Company. Someone had to stand up.
He never thought about it anymore and spent the afternoon dragging a fork hoist around the courtyard out back, burning a bit of rubber and filling in the right amount of time until he and a few of the boys would shuttle off to the Trust for a few quiet ales — with Angela, of course. She and him had been a bit of an item for a while actually, tho’ Ropata sure as Hell knew it wouldn’t be anything serious—he already had kids with Makere, who’d shot back up North a couple of years before to tend her sick Nan, and who had just never come back to this shitty boiling city.
+ + +
Couple more days passed and everything was same same, eh. Lenny Wihongi, the toothless Ngapuhi from out back of Waima, got into a slanging match with Gary, the sole Pakeha in the engineering shop, about some sort of shit and Dave had come back happier than ever after his sister’s betrothal. Angela had flashed her electric blue eyes at Ropata a few more times. Nesbit had been his usual chain-smoking huff ’n’ puff. Frank King — the sole Maori in the front office — merely shuffled papers around and gleamed inanely behind his desk, muttering the requisite inanities as he played the game toward retirement before he could downshift even further and go back home to Ohiwa to spend his dotage fishing. Hokinga ki te kainga, ne ra.
You wouldn’t have guessed that there was trouble brewing. Whatever that actually means, eh.
+ + +
Nesbit was yelling louder than usual and his face was a preternatural crimson. He was banging and clanging around behind the glass as if he was doing an impression of a New Zealand politician: you know, stereotypically overacting, over-reacting, inanely bluffing, urbanely shuffling. Margaret was crying and wringing her hands—whatever the fuck that means, eh. Dave and his cousin Lefi were chortling quietly to themselves. They were happy boys. No bullshit schooling for them—learning more in the school of hard knocks here in Cartridge Road than crammed into makeshift hand-me-down uniforms, listening to Mr. Ponce at the College shit on about ‘racial equality’ and about ‘how lucky we all are’.
Ropata saw Andy Andrews, the grimaced Pommie old hand who made sure he escaped every day in the service van, raising half an abbreviated eyebrow at the tumult within.
‘Hey Andy, what’s the problem with Nisbo’?’
Andrews just frowned deeper, wanting to get out as soon as his order was ready. He spat out the last few shreds of his roll-your-own and muttered something about ‘Margaret being up the duff’. His unshaven visage was grey, his eyes were gaunt. He would have passed for a dungareed skeleton if he wasn’t still alive.
Frank later whispered to Ropata pretty much the same thing — ‘that she was six months pregnant to Barry’, but more — that ‘the accounts department had said business was poor’ and that ‘Mr Nisbet had better get a move on’. Christ, even ‘Dickhead’ Stewart, the Head Sherrang in Auckland Central, was in the plot now—pressurizing Nisbet to ‘meet the monthly schedule’. ‘Profits were down and heads will roll.’ Frank straightened his yellow tie, the one he had clasped crudely with a gold RSA pin, and picked his nose.
Dave and Lefi kept on laughing. Gary kept on saying in a monotonic drone ‘I just want to go home and sleep.’ Lenny kept up his usual manic prattle about kina sandwiches.
+ + +
That night Mavis caught Ropata and Angela in her bed and it was the beginning of the end, eh. Gave him notice a coupla days later saying it was time for him to find another place. Ropata suspecting with some certainty that she was jealous of Angela and that that was the final straw. Another bloody cliché, but that’s a bit how Mavis Horne spoke. ‘Time to move on.’ ‘Your number is up.’ ‘Call a spade a spade.’ ‘Typical bloody Maori’. Of course she wouldn’t have ever said that last one to him, only to her fellow middle class Pakeha cult members. Sort of like there’s two disparate leagues in this country eh. Different sets of rules but all set by the same settlers if you know what I mean.
After Makere and Ropata had sidewinded, Mavis had offered him board—and more—except he had mused, that she was too old for him to be amused — and had been a good landlady, giving him pretty much free rein. But now, the fat lady was indeed singing.
Shit — he’d have to find another place — another space. Probably time to move on all right. Angela had also asked him full on one night after too many drinks if he was going to ‘support her’, so he sensed it was time to bugger off completely anyway. Just had needed a bit of impelling. Had it now.
He gave his resignation to the pay clerk, but didn’t tell Nisbet. Why should he? That freckled little prick would find out sooner or later. Ropata saw no need to tell his junior of about ten years anything much at any time.
Friday would be his last day there — sixteen months was long enough. Take the boys down to the Trust—be his shout. Shit, even Lewis and Marshall would be welcome to come — they’d never done him no harm. And if they brought in Nisbet, so what—Ropata didn’t really care. No skin off his nose. Kaore he raruraru. The more the merrier, eh.
+ + +
Friday was usual packed public bar. Samoan contingent fresh off the boats over in one corner, playing with a broken-stringed ukulele. The brothers Mangukaha with their Once Were Warrior clone shades and leathers doing no one any harm in another. Couple of Pakeha bus drivers off duty. Some members of the dressed for less kuia club stringing out their dole-bought shandies at one table, mascara-eyeing up the three kaumatua who could still stand and walk with free will, even if they korero’d bullshit exponentially the more piss they spilled down the fronts of their singlets.
Ropata plunked down a few dollars on the bar and told his mates the drinks were on him. No sweat eh. Folded up further the brown pay envelope and stuck it into his own leathers and drew back on a cold Lion Red as Angela stroked one of his arms and Lenny spat into the plastic ashtrays you couldn’t use inside anymore, except as spittoons. Cuspidors. Shit — he must have learnt something at the College after all.
The jukebox was indeed plunking out Ten Guitars and Lex Doctor was singing along in unison. Piss flowed into one orifice and poured out of another in the butt-strewn disaffected disinfected urine stalls out back. One lesbian couple was dancing as though they’d had too much Viagra and a toothless fairy was by now clapping along proudly to Proud Mary.
Marshall and Lewis came in later on, eating limp hamburgers they’d ordered from the bistro over in the other corner. Lotsa shit-talk between workmates, everyone happy sort of, although who really knew what was going on behind the watery eyes, the wraparound plastic shades courtesy of a Woolworths’ sale, the rampant eye shadows?
Later, must have been about nine o’clock, Ropata sensed Nisbet was nearby, because he also had just seen Nisbet’s new van driver Bobby Gopher go to the shithouse, the whare tiko. Looked about 14, also freckled. New tattoo fresh outta school type. The ink hadn’t dried sort of thing, you know what I mean. Looked well outta place on his boney white arm. Mind you, the kid would’ve beaconed like an albino lighthouse there even at the brightest of times.
The sounds were good all night. Someone had put on Marvin Gaye and Lex and Lenny were singing up a storm with Heard it through the Grapevine. Lewis was trying to chat up Angela, and Marshall had his eyes on the night trots flickering in some unknown dimension on the widescreen TV up above the bar. The place seemed to be getting noisier and more free-form. Rangi Rizzettori, the hydraulic press engineer — residue of a mixed marriage and residual of mixed motives — was munching on a pizza and drumming his hands on the back of a Maori warden who happened to be passing through. A few fat doobies were dealing to themselves in an anonymous pass-the-baton parade around the back walls. Some drunk in a faded tunic and AFFCO gumboots knocked a full jug onto the threadbare carpet. Tama Renata was guitaring himself and everyone else who was listening to the jukebox, into psychedelic nirvana.
Everyone was piss happy. No fights. Even the Samoans seemed settled and one of them — an old mate — had come over to tell Ropata about the party round in Civic Crescent later on. Fantastic. Fucking fantastic, eh. Man’s got to have some little spasms to enjoy in this life, he thought with an internal grin. Won’t be life insurance policies or killer mortgages, eh. Won’t be holidays in the sun. Sure as hell won’t be permanently working in the grime and clime he was in.
Gary was munching on French fries two sizes too big for their boots and Nisbet was now over there by Lewis, and smiling quite broadly for a man with the weight of the world on his skinny shoulders. He kept on disappearing outside for a smoke, Ropata guessed, shrugging off Nisbet as a minor irritation in his life’s passage.
More important things to do eh — he’d have to find some more mahi somewhere, for a start.
Anyway he was getting tired and a bit drunk, so made up his mind to vanish. Pay for another round and go off on a lone gambol ‘home’ to Mavis’ apartment. Bit of a hikoi, but no sweat for him — he’d done it what seemed a million times. Didn’t say nothing to Angela either. Just went.
Nisbet hated Ropata even more just now. Well over 100 on a 1-100 scale. How could that bastard just resign, not tell him, and walk away from the Company with a bloody smile on his face? ‘Fuck it,’ Nisbet sneered into his whiskey, ‘that man’s gotta learn how to be controlled. Too many of his sort screwing up the place. He was the boss.’ He scratched his arse a bit more and gooned gormlessly into the tepid bar thrall.
+ + +
Half way home, striding not so steadily down the footpath under the mocking yellow streetlights, Ropata felt sure he’d seen the white Rover with the company logo emblazoned all over its backside pull up, and three shadow figures lolly-scramble out, and then loll towards him.
He couldn’t be sure, eh, because he didn’t wake up until 24 hours later in the public hospital with evilly black eyes and a detective taking photos of his face. His lips felt puffer-fishy and burned sort of and his tongue was a complete and utter stranger to him. His eyes hurt like fuck, too. Stinging tasers of pain sprinted deeper into his brain when he tried to open them.
He had been dressed in a hospital nightshirt where it gets tied up at the back and he felt bruised all over his spine too, eh. What the fuck had happened, for he sure couldn’t recall? Felt like he’d had the death kick, eh. Was dribbling mucus too. Blood congealed around his teeth like dry curdle.
Seemed he’d been beaten up badly and the cops wanted to know why. And by whom?
Ropata knew that bloody Nisbet would have been involved and vaguely remembered seeing him and Bobby Gopher and some other brawny dude with a big hunk of wood spotlighted under the strident kowhai streetlights. Could they have been that bloody dopey to attack a man on a well-lit main street at 10 o’clock on a Friday night? Plenty of cars would have been zooming on by, too…Seemed so. Dopey that is. Clowns escaped from a one-ring circus.
+ + +
Later, long after when his eyes distilled to only yellow and a bit green and he could walk without much pain, after he had found a new job in a Pakeha suburb and a unit reasonably close by, Ropata had had to go to High Court as main witness against Nisbet. Bobby Gopher hadn’t been charged because the D’s hadn’t any witnesses to him doing anything much other than mooch, while Willie Hemara had got stuck into him with the fence baton and Nisbet had landed a coupla kicks with his borrowed steelcaps. They’d even taken his shades off him first. ‘Take that you bastard, eh.’ ‘Want your eyes to be black. We’ll do it for you.’
The D’s had snapped some close-up mug shots as ‘evidence’, one of them muttering they’d never seen anything quite as bad as Ropata’s face job. And yes, there had been blood, and lymph, and spit, and snot — most all of it Ropata’s congealed life focus whacked out of him and lambasted around his dusty clothes in a spoof of modern ‘art’. Took a while for the lip blisters to heal enough for him to talk to anyone too. Never did see Angela either. No money, no honey maybe.
Willie Hemara was a Mongrel Mob prospect who had started at the Company only last month. Skulked around a bit out in one of the winding rooms and had had nothing to do with the storeroom boys. Seems that Nisbet had hired him for fifty bucks to deal to Ropata, who was probably one of his cousins anyway. Willie already had a bit of a record and several boob tats speckled his face. Fifty bucks to him would be Heaven. Especially after being tempted by a few free jars from the Trust taps.
His mother and father had limped sadly into the courtroom. Eyes-down-all-day sort of fellas, you know. Only a derelict duty lawyer for their boy. They looked more guilty than him.
He got two years for what the judge said was one of the nastiest attacks he’d had to deal with, while his puppeteer, Nisbet, got a mere six months ’cause it was a ‘first offence’. And Nisbet’s old farmer father back up North had forked out for some semi-hot shot had-been in a suit. Least he could do for a late-born son who always fell of horses, even when sober.
Ropata got $38 as witness appearance costs. And a few more scars. Headaches that lasted for months and attendance at concussion clinic for a few more months, where he learned to connect up some of the missing spots of his life. Like a paint by numbers game where some of the colours didn’t quite match and some of the figures were also awol.
Angela fronted one time with paternity papers from Southern District Court for him to sign. Which was a bit of a laugh as he’d been nicked a couple of years before. Couldn’t actually start a family, eh.
Ropata chuckled out loud. At everything. What else could he do?
+ + +
Fuckin’ strange country we all inhabit here, eh. White man hires a brown man to whack another brown man black ’n’ blue. First brown man goes to Paremoremo for a long apprenticeship session to sharpen his skills in dumb cunt violence so he can keep up the trade even better when he gets out. White prick goes to Borstal type holiday camp down country so that he can continue to be a complete arsehole when he gets off after two months through ‘good behaviour’. Fed and clothed and exercised. Just what we all need.
And all paid for by the taxpayers, ’cept they wouldn’t even know just what was going on in this dystopian universe so remote from their rotary lawnmowers, Tupperware gambols, PTA meetings and battened batches down the beach.
Ropata felt sort of like being in one of those alien snow scenes behind thick glass when you turn it upside down and which he had been given when he was a small kid by a remote auntie down country. All looks lovely and serene until a big non-brown hand snaffles it and shakes and looks on in awe with its pale eyes at there actually being chaos. And confusion. And the miasma of their myopia is shown by their blinks of shock.
Fantastic. It’s fucking fantastic really when you think about it.
Don’t you just love living here.
Suppose you might if you had a choice, eh.
Just as he rotated all this, he thought he glimpsed in some prehensile fashion the small backside of Nisbet pushing a pram over there at the new mall. Margaret was even more obese, if that were possible, and she had re-dyed her hair an incandescent yellow. Nisbet appeared even further slumped. His neck seemed to have turtle receded.
Maybe it had been a concussion too many, but Ropata stirred, and sliding his twitchy forefinger on the blade he now carried de rigueur in his leather’s pocket, he snuck off across the road, playing snakes and ladders with the rich cars. His being thrummed like he was number one pick for the firing squad.
Anything could happen next…
Fantastic.
