Jake's Long Shadow by Alan Duff Page B

drunk, not always but enough times to be a piss-off. He joked with Ryan that he was a violent white man you couldn’t take anywhere.
    They drank rum and cokes and looked (and leered) round the joint for a bit of easy pick-up that wouldn’t mind a booze-stinking one-night stand. Or more than that if she were all right. But the women, even the younger ones, just got classier and classier these days, they went for the more soberguys, and even then demanded they be treated right or they were off. How it was with females these days. Ryan recently made a supposed joking suggestion they get hold of a drug to spike some women’s drinks to make them an easy lay. Everyone was doing it.
    Abe got angry and told Ryan if he even mentioned it again then he’d better look out. Ryan, being what he was, said, Look out for what?
    Got the answer when he looked into Abe’s morally outraged eyes. Hey, I was only joking, Ryan lied. But he took Abe’s point.
    Without needing to put it into words, the pair signalled this would be a males’ night out. Ryan’s eyelids had a droop on and Abe was hardly in a state for romancing a woman. Didn’t help that all day Abe’d had this odd nervous feeling, like a premonition that wouldn’t state itself. Not an ‘I’m gonna die’ premonition, just a feeling that someone he knew well was very ill or there was a bad event looming.
    Tonight Abe was sick of rugby talk and he switched off to Ryan’s drone about the game; took a look around at what kind of night this might turn out, as a mere handful of troublemakers could sour it for everyone. (Like my old man used to. Busting heads. Wrecking whatever joint or house he was in. How could I ever forget those memories?)
    Trouble was staring him in the face, in the shape of four dudes in their early twenties aching for it. (I seen aching like that all my life, guys. It don’t faze me, just pisses me off, because it has to have an outlet, a violent conclusion .) So Abe turned away, but at the same time as Ryan looked across the crowded bar and managed to find these dudes’ eyes as well, except he held them and said to Abe, Those wankers are staring at us.
    Abe said, So look away and then they won’t be staring at us and they’ll find someone else to eyeball.
    Abe, you ain’t scared of ’em are you?
    He lifted his hand. Is that shaking?
    So, give ’em the stare back.
    And then what?
    And then whatever happens, man.
    Nah, man. You know it’s not my scene. I’m a lover, not a fighter.
    Ain’t it better to be both? Ryan took his glaring eyes back to the foursome.
    The booze did this, to a lot of guys: turned them into Mike Tyson, from Joe-nobody to self-deluded heroes.
    Hey Ryan, if you want trouble I know bars fulla Maoris who’ll give you trouble all night long — if you can stay standing. Which you won’t. All night, all tomorrow, every effin’ day of your fighting life if that’s what you really want. I’ll show you real warriors, who don’t know no better (like you don’t, like my old man didn’t). Come on, Ryan, give it a miss.
    I don’t like wankers staring at us.
    All of nature and genes were against Ryan. Us, he said. Roping Abe in when he wanted no part of it.
    Abe said to him, Let’s go get something to eat. I’m starving.
    But Ryan’s head was in another place, sent there by the booze, fastpost. Wait on a minute.
    No, Abe wasn’t waiting on a minute. He stood up. You know why I stayed here in Christchurch? Because it’s mostly peaceful. Did I tell you about the place I grew up in, Pine Block? You had a scrap for breakfast, two for lunch and a brawl on your plate at night. But it never fills you, you always want more. Understand me? And Abe headed out.
    Ryan came after him, moaning about what are friends for if you can’t count on them. Abe presumed Ryan eyeballed the four guys as he went past and was expecting the altercation to start behind him (and then what would I do? Leave my flatmate in the lurch?). He turned around and