The Real Thing by Brian Falkner Page A

although Tupai had asked him for it reasonably politely considering the circumstances. The young man sat down in the pile of hay he had been pitching, blood streaming from his nose, while Tupai snapped the end off the pitchfork and tossed the pole to Fizzer.
    The older brother looked a bit shell-shocked at that, and he wasn’t the one who had been hit in the face with a power hammer, which is what Tupai’s fist must have felt like. Maybe he was shocked at the sight of someone breaking a pitchfork across his knee (which is not exactly easy to do).
    ‘Hell in a bucket, Curtis,’ the older one said. ‘What’d’ya let him hit yer fer?’
    Curtis stood back up then, and, to use an American phrase, he was madder’n a cut snake.
    Tupai stood still, clenching and unclenching his fists. You need to understand that Tupai had been learning the art of diplomacy over recent months. Frequently, he had found ways to avoid a fight, rather than charging in full throttle.
    But he’d just spent a week and a bit in a storm cellar, eating nothing but cold beans, sawing at a wooden post with a length of chain. He wasn’t exactly in a diplomatic mood. In fact Tupai was feeling downright ornery.
    Fizzer swung the pole a couple of times around his back and shoulders. It was a bit heavy, a bit long, but it would do for a bo at a pinch. We can handle these two, he thought.
    ‘Bobby,’ the older one called, ‘them fellas is escaped ferm the twister shelter.’
    The door of the barn opened in a rush and big brother came out. He was wearing a cowboy hat and had a metal belt buckle with the Harley Davidson logo on it.
    That wasn’t Bobby though, nor was the next one who might have been a twin of the first, although that was nothing to be proud of. Bobby was the last one out, the oldest, the biggest and the ugliest member of the family, and that was saying something, as they weren’t exactly The Backstreet Boys.
    ‘So yer got out, did yer?’ Bobby drawled, and spat on the ground in front of him. ‘Well, I know some people ain’t gonna be too happy about that. What did they tell me to do?’
    He paused and stared for a moment at the ground, thinking, or maybe just looking for his spit.
    Fizzer hefted the bo and shifted his weight forward on to his toes.
    Bobby looked up. ‘Oh, ah remember now. They tole me ter cut out yer tongue.’
    A long utility knife appeared suddenly in his hand from a sheath on his belt.
    ‘Guess I’d better earn ma pay check.’
    He was big, gangly, wide across the shoulders and strong in a kind of loose-limbed way. He was fast too. He stepped forward quickly, trying to grab the bo away from Fizzer with his free hand, the knife held dangerously in his other.
    Fizzer spun the bo back out of Bobby’s reach and gave him a tap on the side of his head for good measure. Then Tupai stepped in and grabbed the knife arm, and a fierce struggle developed as Bobby tried to avoid having his arm twisted slowly around and up behind his back.
    Despite the age and height advantage, Bobby was no match for the squat, stocky packet of power that was Tupai White.
    The four other brothers watched in amazement as a teenager twisted their senior sibling into submission.
    Tupai twisted a little further, and Bobby gasped. The knife slid out of his hand. Tupai caught it and tossed it to one side, where it vanished into the depths of the haystack.
    That broke the spell on the other ugly brothers and they all charged in at once. The bo flashed, and the first twin found his feet weren’t where they ought to be. He dived face-first into a deposit from the horse bank.
    The other twin caught the back swing from the bo on the side of his head and dropped groggily to his knees.
    There were five of them, ranging from Curtis at about eighteen, to Bobby, probably nearing his thirties. They were all big, strapping American lads, raised on a diet of beef burger and rawhide. But they had never met a pair like Fizzer Boyd and Tupai White.
    Fizzer found,