The Glass Kingdom (2 page)

I locked the door to the stall and flopped back into my chair.

‘Hey, I've been working on some flow if you wanna hear it.'

‘Not really.'

‘A'ight—this one's a real slow beat, like
whom whom
whom
, then the drums come in like this:
tch tch tch-tch-tch
tch
. You getting it?'

He swayed back and forth, making geometric shapes in the air with his hands, rocking to a beat only he could hear.

Mekong Delta from upriver now is on the mic
Gonna tell you a story, may not be what you like
I'm a Westside emcee, don't know shit about rap
Won't blow your mind with rhymes but I'll do ya
  
kneecaps

All I want s'nuff cheese to pay my rent
Don't wanna get rich or die tryin' like Fitty Cent
That lifestyle's gotta give a man a nervous tic
Being known as the Miley Cyrus of rap music

He finished with a flourish, fingers splayed across his chest in some sort of ridiculous gang sign.

‘Honestly, I dunno what to say. You calling yourself Mekong Delta now? I thought your rap name was Q-Ball or something.'

‘Yeah, that wasn't working for me so I changed it. My cuz married a Vietnamese guy last year and he's cool so I thought, you know, Mikey Dempster, Mekong Delta, the MD thing, that'd be slick as.'

‘You trying to start a beef with Fifty Cent? He's not going to like being compared to Miley Cyrus.'

‘I reckon it's good publicity, you know? Maybe he'll diss me in one of his tracks and we'll be even. We'll make up at the Grammys or whatever.'

‘Didn't that guy get shot nine times? I don't think you want to be messing with him.'

‘S'all good, bro.'

That was Mikey's answer to pretty much everything. It's all good. He had no idea. None of the young guys do in these small towns. I see them everywhere the Kingdom goes, baggy jeans slung low, footy or basketball shirts, caps too big for their pointy little heads. They strut sideshow alley like they're dying for a minor confrontation, for some chance to prove themselves as
badass motherfuckers
, their jargon lifted straight out of bad commercial American rap.

What sort of life is that to aspire to? Having to carry a weapon to defend yourself is no joke. I did it for long enough. Sometimes I reach for it still and then remember I'm just in fucken Wagga Wagga surrounded by young dickheads like Mikey parading around pretending to be gangsters.

It's all good
. Nah, it's not, mate. It's not all good. You'll find that out soon enough.

To be fair, Mikey wasn't as bad as some, and a damn sight better than most of the shit-kicker losers that hung around the show in those country towns. He at least got off his arse and hit the road looking for work and a little adventure.

He certainly had no shortage of energy. It tired most people out but I didn't mind his constant patter. It pulled in the punters and that was good for me. If I didn't know better I'd have said he was a tweaker but I hadn't seen any of the telltale signs. The crew tolerated him, the way they did with most of the temp hires. No one went out of their way to befriend him. You had to be on the show a couple of seasons before anyone made that kind of effort.

Our ragtag convoy had pulled in to a rest stop in nowheresville South Australia a few weeks back and there he was, sitting on his tattered backpack by the kerb outside Hungry Jack's, talking to himself while grinning like a loon and puffing on a rollie. I dropped Steph off and chucked a uey so I could drive up beside him.

I lowered the window and said, ‘Hey, mate, you need a ride?'

It took him a few seconds to notice me. His hands were trembling. He had cuts on his face and the beginnings of a shiner. Someone had worked him over pretty good.

‘You with the circus?' he asked.

He was in the back seat when Steph returned with the burgers. I had to ask her to go back in and get something for him. The kid was hungry, dirty and desperate—just what I was looking for.

We were two hands down after a bad night in Mount Gambier when Diego had got himself arrested and Karen, the attendant on the Cyclone, had declared her undying love for some local boy out of the blue. Even though she'd only been out with him three times she said she was going to stay and be the mother of his child. She hadn't even missed her period yet (I found this out later from Steph) but claimed she just
felt
pregnant. She was better off than Diego, at any rate. He had fake ID and no work visa so he was probably lounging in a detention centre somewhere in the middle of the fucken desert by now.

I'd worked the Kingdom long enough to know that's how things went. I'd seen my fair share of weary people by the side of the road and behind the counter in diners and out the back of bars. They were all looking for a way out of their situation. There was romance in running off with a travelling carnival, no doubting that, but whatever illusions these people held were soon shattered by long hours on the road and constant abuse from the inevitably unsatisfied public.

Most of them didn't last a season, eloping during the night with some newfound lover promising richer horizons, or succumbing to old habits—stealing or drinking or shooting up on their breaks. Some wound up in prison. Families or bad debts caught up with others. A few got religion and were politely asked to move on when their preaching became too much for the rest of us to bear. Once in a while someone got mangled by a ride thanks to a moment's inattention, or knifed between the ribs by some aggrieved local.

Target Ball lay at the unpopular end of sideshow alley, far from the glittering lights of the big rides. I needed some manic kid to run the stall for me while I tended to business, and Mikey seemed like the sort of young fella I could just about put up with for the summer. I supposed he'd flit on out of there eventually, like all the rest. He took a shine to me straightaway, and I suppose I liked him well enough at first too.

He wasn't really that much younger than me, at least not in years. He reminded me of guys I served with, except they toted real weapons to back up their gangster talk. Just as well nine mils weren't available to young blokes in Australia. There'd be no men aged fourteen to thirty left standing. The dickheads would all shoot each other.

‘What's these lyrics for?' I asked Mikey. ‘The same song you were working on back in South Australia?'

‘Which one was that?' He had this way of blinking really fast when he was thinking about something. It made him look like he was having a seizure.

I thought back to those frantic first few hours in the car after we picked him up, when he wouldn't shut up. ‘I don't know, some shit about golf?'

Mikey closed his eyes tight and sucked his bottom lip in under his top front teeth, which were amazingly still intact, no mean feat for a mouthy kid like him.

Take out ya service firearm, point it at my head
You a mean muthafucka like Stallone as Judge Dredd
'Cept that ain't Cristal, fool, that's jus' sparklin'
  
wine
The golf course is the closest you ever been to a nine.

I clicked my fingers and nodded. ‘Yeah, that's the one. This the same song?'

‘Look, for a start they're not really what you'd call songs, a'ight? They's tracks, and a lyricalist like me, you just gotta keep on coming up with fresh rhymes until you gots enough to make a mixtape.'

‘A tape? No one listens to tapes anymore, do they?'

‘Nah, man, it's just a figure of speech. A mixtape's like a, like a digital playlist, y'know, a mix of tracks that an artist puts together so's producers can get an idea of their style and what have you. All you needs is some sick beats and mad skills on Garage Band and you're pretty much set. Plus a quality mic, obv.'

‘Obv. And a shitload of lyrics.'

‘Now you're feelin' me. That's why I'm out here, on the road with you and all the other freaks in the motherfuckin' Kingdom. No offence.'

‘None taken. I seem to remember being the one who hired you.'

‘Gots to earn me some chedda so's I can bankroll my rise to power. An' draw some inspiration from all the weird shit that goes on round here.'

‘Every battle needs a stratagem.'

‘A whatagem?'

‘It's from
The Art of War
. Sun Tzu.'

‘Wait, was he in the Wu Tang Clan?'

‘Yeah, not quite. It's an old book a lot of soldiers read.'

‘Oh, righto. Gives you advice on tactics and shit?'

‘Something like that. Anyway, you're not earning any
chedda
standing round talking to me while all these punters are walking right on past the stall. Let's see you put those lyrical skills to good use and make us both some cash money.'

‘I got your six, boss man. Stand back and marvel as I explain the rules of engagement to these Whisky Tango motherfuckers.'

His propensity for mixing the military jargon he'd heard from me in with his hippity-hop nonsense was unsettling, but he told me lots of rappers did it. I took his word for it. Some of the lingo he used, though…I asked him one time how a grommet from Freo like him ever learned the word ‘erudite', after he dropped it in one of his verses. I didn't even know what it meant. His explanation was that despite hip-hop's roots in the ghetto (I laughed at that) MCs often had excellent vocabularies, as they were always listening out for interesting words to make rhymes. They didn't necessarily have to understand what they meant, or use them in the correct context.

‘Syntactical assimilation, dawg,' he'd said. ‘Hip-hop makes you smarter! It's an education from the streets, you feel me?'

I didn't, not really, but I let it slide, half suspecting he was better educated than he was letting on.

I picked at a sliver of wood on the counter as Mikey launched into showman mode, the blue streaks of his pumped veins forming pipelines across his skinny biceps. He hiked up his pants and adjusted the laces on his Nikes, folding them carefully away behind the tongue. He took off his cap and readjusted his thick mop of greasy curls, a faint line of soft stubble above his mouth visible under the downward lights of the stall.

‘Laydeez an' gentlemen, brothers an' sisters, friends an' enemies, lookee here now an' try your luck at the easiest game on sideshow alley. Win a prize for the kiddlywinks! Three balls for a dollar, eight for two bucks! How 'bout you, sir, you look like you've got the equipment to lob one in the hole from fifty yards away! Win a giant panda for the little lady? They's an endangered species, y'know. Only three thousand left in the world, an' that's the triple truth!'

The generator spluttered, so I gave it a little encouragement with my boot. A puff of dust kicked up from the casing and settled back down on the vibrating metal as it resumed its drone. I leaned back on my chair to watch the crowd.

It was a hot evening and the smell of fairy floss and horse sweat hung in the air. I craned my neck forward to look up at the sky. The stars were hidden behind a low ceiling of cloud. Rain was on the way.

The crowd was slow: mostly bored women dragging slouching kids and unemployed husbands around the stalls. It wasn't exactly what you'd call a carnival atmosphere, and the crews all looked irritated. The prospect of making any money was slight—everyone knew it. After a while you learn how to spot it, the pinched lips of sinewy locals cruising past. Lot lice, we called them.

None of the hands tried drawing them in with a bit of ballyhoo. There was no point. No money and nowhere else to go. The kids would stare at the shiny rides with their hollowed-out eyes and occasionally risk a pleading stare at their fathers. The men would gaze into the middle distance, giving a shake of the head.

Trouble usually started just after nine, and sometimes it would be indirectly my fault, not that anyone knew. I was always careful not to give the other stallholders any reason to start a beef with me. Although my customers were far from reliable, they also depended upon me and I had made it clear that anyone who brought hassle to my joint would be cut off. I reckon most of them feared that more than anything else. They could take a hiding but if their meth supply dried up, well, that didn't bear thinking about.

For the most part, trouble on the show came courtesy of a more socially acceptable drug: booze. My customers usually couldn't muster the energy for scrapping, unless they were short on cash and desperate. They'd just take their glass home and smoke it up there. The further away from me, the better, as far as I was concerned.

As for the others, the drunks and pill poppers, the speed freaks, you could spot them a mile off. Over the course of the evening their weather-beaten faces would begin to melt. The corners of their mouths would droop. Their squinty eyes would widen at the dizzying array of lights and colours on the alley. Driven mad by obnoxious dance music (I sympathised on that front) and the gradual emptying of their already-thin wallets, some of these local blokes would make an earnest start on the activity they had really come to the show for.