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"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
Winston Churchill

 

‘Got the explosive, Mono?’ Macka whispered.

‘Yeah!’

‘Shhhhhhhhhh, put it in the bloody boot before some dong comes along and sees ya,’

‘Yeah.’

The two blokes in daggy, faded blue stubbies, each wearing a pink tee-shirt, climbed into the old, faded yellow, Torana 1974 SLR. Clanger had had a shot at painting it Ferrari yellow using a box of spray paint he had found at the tip. Didn’t work out. The motor cranked over, then died.

‘Shit.’

‘Didnya check the bloody battery?’

‘Nah.’

They both got out of the car again and Loopy fiddled with a wire above the bonnet. There was a faint click and the bonnet sprang up a little, and then gave up and sagged back down again. There was another faint click.

‘Shit.’

‘Hurry up ya dopey bastard, it’s bloody hot out here.’

‘Yeah.’

Loopy fiddled with the wire again. There was a faint click and the bonnet sprang back up again. He quickly put his hand into the small slot between the radiator and the bonnet.

‘Fuck!’

‘Wotsthematter Mono, didthe bonnet getya?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Here, I’ll lift it and y’ cin get ya hand out.’

Macka grabbed the edge of the bonnet and lifted it a little way.

‘No! don’t take ya hand out! Changedmebloodymind, spring the bloody catch while its still in there.’

‘Yeah.’

Loopy wiggled his hand and there was a louder click. Macka lifted the bonnet and Loopy snatched his hand out. He jumped around a bit, sucking his knuckles.

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Wheresthebloodythingtoholdthebonnetupwith? No, don’t tell me, grab that bloody stick over there and jam it in.’

‘Yeah.’

Loopy ran over in the direction Macka was nodding his head. He found the stick, ran back and jammed it in at forty-five degrees. Macka let go the bonnet, it sagged a little, the stick started to bend, then it stopped. They waited a few seconds to see if the stick would hold. It did.

‘Go and turn her over mate.’

‘Yeah.’

Loopy got back into the drivers seat and started to crank the motor. It whined and whirred and every so often the motor would cough like a consumptive corpse with an electrode up its arse, then it died.

‘Its the battery!’

‘Yeah.’

‘Got another one somewhere?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, where the fuck is’t. No, don’t tell me, its in the bloody garage that we just locked, in’it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You got the key then?’

‘Nah.’

‘It’s under the f’king gnome isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’
Macka walked to the gnome that sat in the middle of the front lawn. It’s nose had been broken off and it right hand, which was supposed to look like it was in the gnomes pant’s pocket, instead looked like he was playing with himself. The blokes would sit on the front verandah and laugh. Reckoned when a sheila went by you could see it move. Clanger grabbed the gnome by its hat and lifted it. He stooped down and picked up the single bright blue key, then walked back over to the garage. With a furtive look around, he slipped inside.

The garage was full of drums of nitrate and bags of sulphate of ammonia. Macka had read about how to make explosives on the internet. He’d bought enough to fertilise a medium sized farm. The smell was overpowering. He looked around and then walked back out.’

‘Can’t find it, sure its in there?’

‘Yeah.’

Macka went back in and rummaged around the back again. ‘Found it!’ he exclaimed, his voice muffled by the bags.

‘Yeah.’

Macka carried the battery to the car and after taking the old battery out, he put the new one on the steel plate and connected the leads.

‘Get back in and give it whirl wouldya.’

‘Yeah.’

Loopy got back into the car. The motor leapt into life and started to grumble and purr like a cat dreaming it wus chasing a bloody big rat. Macka held the bonnet up with one hand, snatched the stick away and then let the bonnet drop. It landed with a metallic crunching clang and then sprang back up again. Then the motor coughed, farted and stopped. Loopy tried to crank her over but she just sat there, silent, like a sulking Sheila.

‘Shit!’

‘Yeah.’

Macka pulled at the bonnet.

‘Fuckn catch is busted.’

‘Yeah.’

Macka was trying to prise open the bonnet with one hand and stick his other hand in the slot as Loopy got out of the car and walked around to stand beside him.

‘Can’t get me fingers in. Wish me girlfriend was like that. Go and get sompin flat and strong wouldya,’ said Macka, whose face was starting to turn red with the heat and the exertion of trying to insert his fingers into the car.

‘Yeah... if you had a fuck'n girlfriend.’ Loopy grinned broadly, showing his missing front teeth.

Loopy then went out the back and hunted around the back verandah. The back verandah was used to stack everything that had been accumulated at the house since Loopy’s parents had died, four year ago. Shortly after their deaths, Macka had moved in because Loopy, his mate, was lonely. They had a strong friendship based on their mutual interest in drinking, horses, football ................. and girls. The only one they were good at was drinking. The rest remained out of reach, a dream, usually wet. On the verandah there was a replacement motor for the Torana that Macka had picked up cheap.’

‘Never know, mate, never know.’

It was under a torn and faded green tarp, held down with bricks. A can of VB sat on the top like a cop’s blue light. When the two blokes were drunk enough they would stand at the window and try to piss into the can. One day the next door neighbour’s cat had been sleeping beside the tarp when the blokes were pissing at the can. Loopy looked at Macka and grinned. The cat shot off the verandah with a plaintive yowl, scrambled through the grass and clawed up the paling fence, then disappeared like a ginger comet. Macka and Loopy had fallen to their knees laughing.

‘Jeez, didyasee its arse as it dissappeared over the fence. Like’a freckle in a gingersnap.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Fuckn’ funny eh?’

‘Yeah.’

Loopy walked around the tarp to where several tool boxes where heaped in the corner. He opened the lid of the red plastic one and looked inside. He grunted and then opened the lid of the green metal one beside it.

‘Yeah.’

Loopy picked up the flat steel tyre lever and walked back to the Torana.

‘Give it here, mate.’

Macka pushed the tyre lever into the gap below the bonnet and poked around, after a while he smiled and exclaimed, ‘got it!’

There was a click and the bonnet lifted slightly.

‘Don’t just stand there, hold it open!’

‘Yeah.’

Loopy rushed to stand beside Loopy, he gripped the front of the bonnet with his fingers. Macka fiddled about a bit more with the tyre lever and there was another click. The bonnet gave way suddenly taking Loopy by surprise. He jerked it open a short way and then it slipped out his fingers and fell down on the tyre lever, causing it to fly up in the air, catching Macka on the chin. Macka lept up clutching his chin, which was spouting blood. The tyre lever fell down onto Loopy’s bare toe. He always wore thongs. Even in winter, which could be bloody cold, but he didn’t like shoes, they made his tinea play up. The gaps between his toes would turn bright, blotchy red and the skin would peel off. Unfortunately, the tyre lever landed on Loopy’s little toe at just the wrong angle. Loopy swore later that he heard the snap of the bone.

‘Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!!!!!!!!’

‘Jeez, me bloody chin. Is it bleed’n Loopy? Wots the fuckn matter?’

Loopy was hopping about clutching at his foot, eventually he over-balanced and fell over into the garden bed. His mother had spent years on that garden bed. Roses had been her favourite flower. She had lavished more love and attention on them than she had on Loopy. Since she died, Loopy had tried to keep it going, but he knew absolutely nothing about roses, or flowers of any kind for that matter. So, it didn’t seem fair that he had landed in the thorny bushes that were all that was left of the rose garden. After all, in the competition for his mother’s affection, the rose garden had always won. They embraced him like a long lost brother, which, in a strange way, he was.

By this time Macka had realised what was going on and had doubled up laughing. As Loopy rolled, in slow motion, into the rose bushes, Macka groaned. His sides hurt. Yeah, I mean it. His sides really hurt. You can only laugh so much. A proven scientific fact, and Macka had pushed the boundaries of all human endurance.

‘Betty.’

‘Yes Bert?’

‘You should see this.’

A battered green Holedn EJ drove slowly past. It stopped just outside the next door neighbors house, then reversed, then stopped.

‘Wot are you two clowns up too!’ yelled a voice from the car.

Macka looked up.

‘Jeez,’ he gasped. ‘Is’, gasp, ‘that’, gasp, ‘you, gasp, Baz!?’

 

The EJ nosed into the curb and the motor stopped. A very fat man wearing tight red stubbies and a loud Hawaiian shirt, with a giant frangipani pattern, got out of the car and walked over to the Torana. Baz looked down at Macka and then across at Loopy who had got himself out of the rose bush and was sitting holding his toe. Loopy’s pink ti-shirt was torn and he was scratched on the arms and his neck.

‘Did the ginger cat come back to claim its revenge?’ inquired Baz, his face deadpan.

‘k’off’

‘Don’t be like that Loopy.’

Macka had stood up. He was standing and holding a dirty hanky to his chin. He walked over to Baz with his hand extended.

‘G’day, Baz.’

‘G’day, Macka.’

The two men shook hands.

‘S’pose we should look at Loopy’s toe,’ said Macka. ‘You al’right Loopy?’

‘Yeah.’

Macka and Baz walked over to Loopy, who was still seated, rubbing his little toe. Baz squatted down and looked carefully at Loopy’s foot.

‘How’d you do it?’

‘Bonnet catch was buggered,’ answered Macka. ‘Had to use the tyre lever to prise it open. F’ckn thing fell back down and the lever flew in the air. It caught me a beatty on the chin then dropped onto Loopy’s toe. Didnit Loopy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then he fell in the bloody rose bushes. Fuckn funny though.’

‘Jeez, you two are clowns,’ observed Baz, shaking his head. ‘Y’ like a couple of old kookaburras trying to root a snake.’

‘Com’n in for a beer?’

‘Nah, just slipped our to give the Mrs a quick one in me lunch break. Better get back. What are you two up too?’

‘Gunna check out how to make a bomb from fertiliza, aren’t we mate?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Read about it on the internet. Gunna go down to burly’s farm. Should be fuck’n spectacular, eh mate?

Burly got his name because he was a big bastard who always threw up when he was pissed.

‘You two bastards make a bomb? Fkn idiots.’

‘Nah, it’s really easy, you should see. Wanna cum?’

‘Nah, gotta gotta root the Mrs and then get back to work, see’s ya both.’

With that, Baz walked back to his car, hopped in, cranked over the motor and screeched away.

‘They always squeal the tyres Betty, always.’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘I’ll slip inside and get y’ a bandage and sum mecure-achrome Loopy.’

‘Yeah.’

Macka walked over to the gnome, picked it up by the top of its red cap and reached down to pick up the bright, iridescent green key.

‘How they hanging mate?’ he asked, as he put the gnome down. ‘Seen any good looking shielas walk past?’

Macka put the gnome back into its little brown circle of dead grass and walked over to the front door. He fiddled about for a while. The key had never worked properly since they had had the new one cut down at the local hardware. The hardware shop had just got in a new batch of coloured blanks. The old key had been swallowed by Crusher for a bet, and no-one wanted it back.

‘I’m not going to look for it t’morra,’ said Crusher.

‘Not asking you to.’

Loopy had walked back into the room, smiling broadly, with a torch in his hand.

‘F’koff,’ said Crusher.

‘Yeah,’ said Loopy, smiling.

After jiggling for a while, the key worked and Macka opened the door. He turned to check that Mono was OK, then he walked inside. Some people had called the place a brothel. But they were wrong. Brothel’s are clean and tidy, and smell of cheap perfume and condom oil. Macka and Loopy went to the brothel in Hobart sometimes, whenever they had a win at the races, which wasn’t often. ‘F’kn gnome gets it more than we do,’ said Macka once. The brothel had a waiting room furnished with two red vinyl double settees facing each other with a coffee table in between. There was an untidy stack of magazines, selected to encourage the male libido, on the table. Loopy would flick through and giggle. Macka would look at the voluptuous and beautiful young women in the magazine and wonder why the ones at Gloria’s didn’t ever look as good. There was usually a dirty movie playing on a TV set bolted to the ceiling. If you weren’t watching, the grunts, moans and squeals sounding more like a farmyard programme. The carpet had a loud floral design that reminded Loopy of catsick. It smelt of beer, tobacco and vomit. It had been bought secondhand after the local RSL had closed down.

Anyway, it wasn’t like a brothel, because brothels are clean and the blokes always scored when they went there. No, their place looked more like the local garbage tip and smelled of stale beer, an unsanitary toilet, aftershave, damp clothes and sexual frustration. They had picked up some carpet from RSL too.

‘Least we can smell it,’ said Macka once, when they hadn’t had a win for a while.’

‘Yeah.’

Macka picked his way through the mess to the laundry where Loopy kept his fishing gear, which contained his canary-green terry-toweling floppy hat. Macka grabbed the hat and went back out to Mono.

‘Here, bung y’ head in that,’ said Macka, throwing the hat to Mono.

‘Yeah.’

Macka went back inside and looked around in the bathroom for a bandage that he had used when he sprained his ankle playing touch footy a couple of years ago. He found it at the back of the cabinet, under a packet of lifeboy soap that hadn’t been opened. The bandage was a bit mouldy, and smelt, but it was serviceable. Macka hadn’t cleaned it since taking it off and thrown it into the back of the cabinet. He rummaged around some more and found the mercurochrome lying on its side in a pool of red where some had leaked out. He took the bandage and the bottle out to Mono.

‘Here mate,’ said Macka. ‘I’ll bandage your foot up first. You OK?’

‘Yeah.’

Macka wound the bandage around Loopy’s foot with a surprising expertise gained from several weeks of a sprained ankle. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to bandage a broken toe, so it was left bare, sticking out from the perfectly wrapped ankle bandage. Macka then smeared the mercurochrome over the cuts until Loopy looked liked a landing pad for red-arsed flies.

‘That should do it. Wanna stand up now?’

‘Yeah.’

Loopy gingerly stood up and walked around a bit. With his torn shirt, the ankle bandage and the smears of mercurochrome he looked like he had stepped on a landmine. He winced whenever the weight went onto his toe, but otherwise he was fine. He walked over to the Torana with Macka. They stood looking at the bonnet for a while.

‘Rekon we should grab donkey dick and give it a whirl, wot d’ y’ rekon, mate?’

‘Yeah.’

Macka went around the back and rummaged though the tool boxes. He came back with a screwdriver the size of a telegraph pole. He made a couple of obscene gestures with the screwdriver before inserting it into the front of the Torana.

‘Did you see that Betty, disgusting.’

‘Yes, Bert.’

Macka poked and prodded for a while and eventually he gained a leverage and forced the bonnet open enough for Loopy to get his hand in. Loopy lifted it while Macka had a look.

‘Didn’t fix the battery lead properly. Hang on. There, that’s it. Here, I’ll hold the bonnet while y’ give it another whirl Loopy.’

Loopy went around, climbed into the drivers seat and cranked over the motor. It spluttered and farted a couple of times before bursting into an arthritic coughing fit. Black smoke bellowed out of the exhaust pipe and the motor backfired a couple more times causing Macka to jump back and drop the bonnet. The breeze blew the cloud of poisonous black smoke back over the car to envelope Macka. The motor started to splutter and threatened to give up the ghost.

‘Keep her go’in mate! Keep her f’king go’in!’

‘Yeah,’ coughed Loopy.

The Torona backfired again, a particularly large and bilious cloud of black putrid smoke belched out from the exhaust pipe, then all was silent.

Slowly the cloud of poisonous smoke dispersed.

Macka was standing at the front looking down disconcertedly at the bonnet. Every so often he coughed. Loopy climbed out of the drivers seat, very slowly, and walked around to stand beside Macka. He pulled a large, dirty hanky from his side pocket, blew his nose, looked into the hanky, coughed, stuffed it back into his pocket.

‘Blew the f’kin motor up, eh mate?’

‘Yeah.’

 

 

 

 Story VI - 'Abe'