‘What is it with you kids? Can’t you just tell me a story. Facts. What, Who, Where, When and Why. How many. It’s been a long time young man. What has Tommy the Car been up to?’
‘Well yeah, all right. Keep your hair in place.’ He laughed as Eddie adjusted the battered fedora sat on his head. ‘But a boy getting cooked on a grill can’t be just ignored. You know what I mean.’
Eddie sighed and looked at his watch. Sam the snake charmer cried out, his hand gripping his forearm and the whistle in the dirt. People backed away from the sight of blood, afraid the snake might escape. The big black head hovered and swayed before lowering, recoiling at the bottom of the basket.
‘Well you know Tommy’s mother,’ Tyson said. Eddie shook his head as Tommy’s mother had never felt a need to share a scoop with him. ‘Well she’s well sick like, and she gives Tommy big grief, but he come up with a plan one night. You aren’t going to believe what Tommy tried to do.’
‘No, my reason for sitting listening to you is that I might hear something I am not going to believe. Sometime soon, eh?
// // //
Tommy & the Poppy Seeds
Tommy lived with his mother in a rickety house at the end of a dirt lane on the outskirts of the town of Ostere. Ever since the death of his brother, little Billy Two Guns, Tommy’s mother had confined her life to the dark attic. She slept the days and paced the long frigid hours of the night. Nightmares plagued her shallow sleep pattern. Little Billy had been charred alive and the visions of his burning body tormented her mind. Tommy held her hand and mopped at her brow. He apportioned the pharmacy of prescribed pills, and fed her a meager broth flavored with onions, swede and the scent of chicken claw.
One cold night, the black from the forest out back blocking the meagre rays of the moon, Tommy woke to a low mournful wail from upstairs. He ran from his bedroom on the first floor, the stair rail wobbling as he turned to climb the narrow wooden steps to the attic.
‘Tommy, oh god Tommy.’ His mother reached a trembling hand for his spotted pajama top.
‘What's the problem Mum? You seeing little Billy again?’
‘I have no pills.’
‘Sure you do.’
Small pots covered the bedside table. Orange, blue and clear containers cluttered the wooden surface. Lids lay scattered across the floor. Tommy picked up each pot and threw the empty containers into the small bin against the wall.
‘Maybe it’s time to give the pills up, you know. It’s been a couple of years since Billy died. And as you’ve got nowt, why not stop.’
Tommy’s mother scrabbled through her drawers, throwing old scripts, photos and more pill pots to the floor. ‘I can’t. I can’t. You don’t understand. I can’t.’
She turned to Tommy and grabbed his hands. Chilled bones squeezed his fingers tight. ‘You’ve got to get me something.’
‘No.’
‘Billy would’ve done it for me, but he’ll never do anything for me again.’
She shoved a golden ring with a glittering ruby red stone into his hand. ‘But you can, Tommy. You can do this for your mother.’
***
Tommy stood at the entrance to the Lanes holding his mother’s ring tight in his left hand. Folk brushed past his tall lithe figure, buffeting him left and right. Shoppers toted bags full of fresh produce, spices and the odd skinned beast for the pot. Tommy’s Stetson sat crooked and his coat buttons sat cockeyed. The crowd stretched into the night. Fairy lights glittered and swayed in the chill wind.
Stalls lined the street. Baskets of live chickens squawked and flapped. Freshly skinned rabbits hung from awnings and dead naked pheasants lay on benches, the plucked feathers drifting and floating into the dark. Voices shouted and argued. A baker threw bread over a gaggle of frantic shoppers to a crippled lady with a trolley. Old boys played a game with marbles against a pockmarked wall. Card games dotted every corner, and small counters served treacle like coffee in cups no bigger than a thimble.
Tommy eased through the crowded passageways, pushing against the flow, and shaking his head to the aggressive vendors. He turned right out of the shopping frenzy, into a narrow quiet lane dotted with dour faced men holding shotguns. He felt their eyes on his back as he turned and took the next right. He hurried to the end of the alley and turned into a covered market of rugs, reams of silk and taffeta, and tea shops. Men sat outside smoking. Women stood in groups, their heads close, their chatter a cackle. Vendors reached to his coat, pinching and tugging, demanding Tommy enter their shop and spend.
He stopped at a narrow door. H’s Herbal Emporium was stenciled across the barred frosted window. He’d been told to talk to a man with a milky white eye, and only that man. A bell rang as he stooped and entered. Darkness greeted him and a strong pungent aroma stopped him at the door. A candle burnt on the counter and an old lady sat on a stool smoking a long thin pipe with a bulbous bowl. A thick sickly sweet smoke curled from a single red ember. Tommy stepped up to the counter and dropped the ring on the rough wooden surface. A man appeared from behind a curtain of dark velvet and peered at the ring. His right eye wore a patch. His left eye was milky blind. He was tall and heavy set with a dark face and serious facial hair. A small fez type hat clung to his large forehead with a tassel hanging long down his back. His King’s English didn’t quite come up to scratch but communication wasn't required. Boys like Tommy didn't come to his store to buy rhino horn or tigers whisker. Tommy needed opioids. Anything with morphine or oxycodone would suffice.
Long slender fingers reached for the ring and held it high. He produced a torch and fitted a monocle to his milky white eye. The man placed the ring on a small set of scales. He pushed the abacus aside and pulled a brown paper bag from a hook and shook it open. Weights balanced the scales and the man clicked his tongue in appreciation of Tommy’s offer. He pocketed the ring and took the bag behind the curtain.
The woman cackled for no good reason. A gust of wind blew the door open and a legless child on a skateboard pulled the door shut from outside. Tommy shrunk into the dark and his tall body hulked against the counter. The old lady spat and sniffed and leered at Tommy.
‘You be better with bats knob,’ she said. ‘Dem opioids be the devils work.’
She removed the pipe from her mouth and barked in a language from the hot climes well south of Albion Minor. The lad on the skateboard snuck inside the door and helped her stand. She pointed at Tommy and they laughed at her guttural commentary. She flicked her fingers and stamped her foot and the lad helped her from the shop.
The man returned and shoved the paper bag at Tommy. ‘How many should my mum take a day?’ he asked. The man pointed at the door and growled. ‘But …’ A guttural sound and an angry glare explained nothing to Tommy. ‘I’ll give her one tablet after meals. Yeah?’
Tommy pocketed the bag, stumbling forward as the man shooed him from his stall.
***
Tommy’s mother paced the attic, constantly peering out of the window set into the slanting slates of the roof. She cried out when Tommy approached the gate, running the stairs two at a time. As Tommy entered the house she snatched the paper bag from his hand and dashed into the kitchen for water. Her arthritic hands fumbled with the bag and the glass of water. Fluid splashed and she dropped the bag.
Tommy retrieved the bag, the acrid aroma of its contents causing him to sneeze. He picked out two brown pills and dropped them into his mother’s gaping mouth and held the glass as she sucked at the water. For a moment they both stood in silence. Tommy waited for the glaze to pass over his mother’s eyes. His mother waited for the ache to cease and the spasms to lessen. She took another pill and popped it in her mouth and took a sip of the water.
‘While you’re up mum, maybe we can keep you up, you know. Walk about. Let the dog out.’
She nodded and followed Tommy and the hound into the back yard. She took another tiny pill, held it out, watching it with a quizzical look before popping it in her mouth.
‘They’r
e not touching me.’
‘Give it time.’
‘No, Opioids work quick, and these aren’t touching me. And they don’t look like pills. They don’t look like my pills. They don’t look like any type of pills.’ Her blackened fingernail played at the contents and buried her nose into the bag and sniffed. ‘Smells funny.’
Tommy picked a pill from the bag and held it to the light shining from inside the house. ‘They look like seeds.’
‘You bought me seeds to dull my pain. Seeds,’ she squawked. ‘You pawned my wedding ring for seeds, you stupid boy.’
She stepped to the stairs leading to the garden and threw the seeds into the night. ‘You got me seeds to cure my pain. What am I supposed to do now?’
She stormed inside, into the kitchen, and took Tommy’s vodka from the freezer. The steps echoed as she attacked the first floor. The house shook with each angry step.
***
Tommy didn’t leave his room the next day and his mother sat upstairs sleeping and wailing through a hangover. Around midnight she woke and called for Tommy. He didn’t come out of his room, choosing to hide, knowing he couldn’t help his mother with her pain.
The next morning Tommy woke to sunlight brightening his room and shadows wafting on his wall. Tommy lay in his bed watching the blurry images dance on his wall wondering why he’d never noticed them before. He stumbled into the kitchen for coffee, and stood at the window, filling the kettle and looking out on a garden of tall green stems with bright red flowers. Thousands spread across the garden and beyond the fence. He stepped into the poppy field, the red flowers standing tall above his head. The fence had disintegrated beneath the mass of plants, and they stretched to the woods and beyond.
With each step more petals fluttered and left naked pods exposed. Tommy cut into a pod and watched the milky liquid ooze from the wound. He scraped the gum from the plant and took it back to the house. By the time he breached the narrow stairs into the attic the gum had darkened.
His mother lay in bed, the covers pulled over her head. Her body shivered beneath the bedding and a soft mewing noise sounded. Tommy nudged his mother.
‘Taste this mum,’ he said. ‘I’ll think it will help.’
He pulled the blankets back, brushed the thin grey strands of hair from her face and offered the blade of his knife to her lips. A slither of tongue licked at the knife. Her face screwed at the taste, but she licked it clean.
‘Thank you son.’
***
Later that afternoon Tommy ventured further into the poppy field. Bees buzzed and a light breeze caused the heady aroma to enter Tommy’s thoughts. He skipped forward, his hands playing at the stalks, his face grinning at the hot sun, until a shadow consumed his path. Tommy had stumbled into the forest. Ivy clung to gnarled branches. Moss and rocks covered the ground with ugly weed tufts dotting the dark area. Tommy thought about heading back, but a door slammed, and caused him to jump. He crept forward and stopped at the edge of a withered clearing, surprised to find a tired crooked house deep in the woods.
Footsteps approached and the ground shook. The leaves on the trees quivered from the harsh rasping breath. Tommy hid behind a tree and witnessed the tallest, ugliest man stride through the forest. His back was stooped and he wore a massive wart on his forehead and it leaked bloodied pus-like fluid. He had too many teeth and not one of them sat straight. Tommy cringed as he passed. ‘Hum diddly de, to work we go with glee, hum diddly da, then backward home to ma, Hum …’
Tommy walked around the house to the front door. He peered through a window and saw a room with large rough cut furniture. A fire crackled in the hearth and a long table ran across the far wall with a machine churning out hard currency, the notes falling into a deep metal chest. A basket sat by the fire full of kindling. Rough cuts of tree sat to the side of the hearth. A large metal chest kept the door open, its lid shut on coins, golden shekels that overflowed onto the black slate floor.
‘Boy,’ a voice cried.
Tommy jumped backward. A large round head stuck out of the first floor window. Greying hair ran wild. She had a large round flat face, the nose squashed and crooked.
‘What you doing here boy?’
Tommy backed from the house, ready to run. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘Come inside Boy.’
‘No, that’s okay. My mum don’t like me being out to late.’
‘How old are you boy? Get yer sorry arse inside the house and I’ll make you some cocoa and feed you cake.’
He kept backing away. ‘You don’t want to be running into Him,’ she said. ‘He don’t like strangers. Yer be bigger than most, but he likes to crush the bones of snoopers and make stew from their sorry arsed carcass.
‘Why don’t you wait inside, wait for him to come back then I can sneak you out while he sleeps.
‘He be coming back soon.’
***
Tommy sat in the kitchen, helping himself to a second piece of cake. The room spun, the utensils hanging above the cooker danced and chimed. The woman stopped stirring the large black iron pot and held a finger in the air. Tommy’s plate wobbled and then jumped. The slate flooring began to rock and jars of insects and curious animal parts jumped on the shelf.
‘That be Him coming up the path.’
‘Where’s he been?’
‘Harvesting the crops.’
‘But I saw all that money. You’ve got a machine printing money. How much money do you need?’
‘He be liking to count the gold.’ She ran into the large room with the coins and the printing press and returned with a wedge of notes wrapped in plastic and a bag of gold coins.
‘You must go now.’
Crockery bounced on the shelf as the door slammed shut and the tall hideous man stepped inside. ‘Please you must go. Don’t ever come back. He will throw you in the pot and eat you.’
‘Hi diddly do, I can smell my woman’s stew, Hi diddly doy, be that the blood of a native boy. Hi …’
Tommy snuck through the back door and ran into the forest with the heavy coins jingling and the wedge of money clutched to his chest.
***
‘Serious,’ Tommy said. ‘It stretches to those woods and the house with the gold is sat in the middle of the forest.’
‘All that from a tub of seeds,’ Tyson said.
‘There was loads of seeds.’
‘Overnight you grew a crop of dope.’
Tommy pushed open the back door and his little friend stopped at the threshold, his jaw flapping low. Tommy led him into the mass of plants, the pods smacking against their heads. Below on the ground a bed of red flowers stretched three-sixty degrees. Bees and butterflies and all manner of bugs partied in the utopian field.
‘And it’s cured your mum.’
‘I don’t know about cured, but she’s well asleep. Sleep is good.’
‘This is opium. Heroin. The big H. Do you know how much money we could make from this crop?’
‘It can’t stay. If the army finds out about this crop, me and my mum will be hanging from the gallows in the town square.
‘And it don’t belong to us, you know. It belongs to a really tall ugly dude. He has this wart in the middle of his head and he sings silly songs.’
Tyson had run ahead, his hands flapping at the stalks. Tommy followed, pleading with Tyson to keep quiet. He caught up with Tommy at the edge of the forest.
‘Is that the house?’
The door opened and a man stooped beneath the lintel and unfolded as he stepped onto the path. His grotesque head wobbled on his long thin neck. A trickle of blood seeped from his wart. Tommy pulled Tyson back into the forest, allowing foliage and trees to hide them from view. As the man clomped along the path, he stopped, his bulbous nose held high and sniffed. ‘Hi diddly doys, I smell the blood of native boys. Hi diddly doo, they’ll cook good in Ma’s homely stew. Hi diddly …’
Tommy pulled Tyson along to the house and pointed in the first window at the
machine. ‘That’s printing tenners. Serious.’ He pointed at the chest by the door. ‘That’s full of the gold coins I showed you.’
‘We can be rich.’ Tommy nodded. ‘So we just go in and take it.’
‘No, we need to plan this, you know. I want to take that coin back to the man who give me the seeds and see if it’s real. And we need to spend a tenner, make sure it’s legal.’
Tyson nodded. For sure, like. It’s not like it’s going anywhere.’
***
The boys returned when the moon was high, the forest still, and the house dead of light. They carried petrol filled canisters, having soaked the ground of the poppy fields. Loud rattling snores exited the top floor window. Tyson found a window at the back of the house and jimmied it open. The back room contained stacks of cash wrapped in plastic. The second room was awash with coin. The snores stuttered and a voice grumbled a high diddly tune, the song echoing throughout the house before the snores resumed.
‘This is going to be easy,’ Tyson said.
‘Yeah, but let’s just get the machine and get out.’
Tyson pulled canvas bags out of his back pack and shoved two at Tommy. ‘Fill them up and I’ll get the machine.’
They climbed over the window sill, keeping their movements calm and quiet. Tommy set to the packets of notes, filling his bags with a manic grin to his face. Tyson ran for the second room and to fill his bags with coins. With his first fistful of gold in his hand the coins rattled and slid to the cold slate with a loud clatter. He scooped, but the jingle of coins flittered and echoed about the room. The snores continued upstairs, but the pattern had changed. A cough brought a shower of dust from the rafter. A rumble and a grumble jiggled the coins. Tyson hurried, scooping and thrusting the coins into his backpack. He kept looking at the money machine, ready to grab it and run.
And then it started.
A thump sounded above their heads. The snores had ceased and the floorboards creaked.
‘Hi diddly doy, I smell the blood of a native boy. Be he a thief, or be he fiend, I will crush his bones and boil him clean.’
Tommy froze with hands full of booty. The house shook, creaked and rattled. A squeal from Tyson jerked Tommy from his stasis and he ran to the front room. The monster held Tyson by his leg, high in the air, shaking him so his bones rattled. Tommy ran for the fuel and splashed the hem of the monster’s thick nightgown. He struck a match and the monster dropped the child to the floor as the flames caught and grew. Tommy ducked out the front door as the monster gave chase, his footsteps shaking the house and causing the ground to tremble. Tyson collected the machine and packed it in the bag on his back. He ran from the room, heading straight for the field, striking matches as he ran through the poppies.