The Legend of Winstone Blackhat by Tanya Moir

what Zane meant, but he did, and the time Bic used the jug cord to whack him and the plug went all the way in came to mind, and he wondered what Zane would have done about it.
    There was nobody home at his house, not even Marlene, and nothing to eat in the fridge but that was okay because Winstone was hardly hungry. He left the lights off in case he used up all the power again and sat on the floor in the lounge and turned on the TV. There wasn’t much on, just old-people stuff, and the house was cold and he thought about calling Zane and he might have done if they had a phone.
    He watched a show about cops and tracker dogs and then the one Bodun liked where girls in bikinis got sweaty and dirtyand were made to do all kinds of weird stuff, whatever the show could think up, and the girls cried and screamed but they did it anyway, no matter how gross it was. They couldn’t say no because it was TV. It was called a reality show but Bodun said that was shit and not even the tits were real. He wanted to see them, though, those fake tits. That’s why he watched the show every week, waiting for a big fake tit to fall out. So far none had, and they didn’t tonight, not that Winstone saw, though he might have missed it because next thing he knew there were car headlights sliding over the walls and the clink of bottles outside and a show he didn’t know on the screen and Bodun kicked his foot and said, Hey shithead wake up, we got you a quarter pack.
    Bodun dropped the paper bag on the floor beside Winstone and flicked on the lights and then Marlene trotted in yawning and covered in fried chicken grease and holding an empty bucket of KFC like it was a prize. She sat down beside him and she was excited because she’d been all the way to Dunedin and when Bodun wasn’t looking Winstone let her have one of his fries.
    Then a woman Winstone had never seen before walked in and said
Hi!
like she’d been waiting to do it all day and Bic was right behind her. Bic didn’t say anything because he had a rollie in his mouth and a six-pack of something pink in one hand and a twelve-pack of stubbies under the other arm and he was watching the woman’s arse, which was hard to miss. Winstone stared at it too.
    What’s
your
name? the woman said, slow and bright and loud, like Winstone was retarded.
    His mouth was full but he caught Bic’s look and said his name fast and a bit of chicken fell out and the woman smiled. She smiled a lot and her smile was almost as big as her arse and she laughed a lot too and Winstone wondered what she had to be so happy about and he figured it wasn’t going to last much longer.
    Bic put the drinks down and took the rollie out of his mouth and said finish your chicken and go to bed and Winstone did as fast as he could. Sure enough, the banging and moaning started up pretty soon after that and it was coming under the doors and through the walls from Bic’s room to Marlene’s to his and filling up the whole house and Winstone heard Bodun swear and his bed creak but it was too dark in their room to see what he was doing.
    Winstone got up and went into Marlene’s room and he found her down in the smelly centre of her bed under all the covers. He got her out and she held his hand down the hall and climbed into his bed and he lay between her and the wall and she pushed her bony back and bum into him as hard as she could and put her hands over her ears. Winstone put his hands over the top of hers and held her like that until the banging stopped and she went to sleep and then he did too. Later there were car headlights again and the chug of the Commodore’s motor pulling away and Marlene got up and he checked and his bed wasn’t wet but it did smell a lot of KFC.

WEST
    THEY WERE FLYING , the Kid and Cooper, along a pale road, tearing up the dark, and the moon was on their hats and the shadows fled and tumbled under their horses’ hooves and the hooves beat the night like rain on a tarp, like shower jets on glass.