Roadman Read online

  Jonesy sniggered, clocking in his timesheet. “Fucked her yet, Max?”

  “LEAVE IT OUT!” Bill shouted. Now his ruddy face was flaming and sweaty.

  Jonesy kept ignoring his boss. “You haven’t, have ya? What’s wrong, scared she won’t like it?”

  Max could feel his heart thumping his ribcage like a sledgehammer—Bam! Bam! Bam!—a sledgehammer he’d very much like to take to Jonesy’s face and smash it to pieces right there and then. Hell, there were a dozen of them lying around the site. One would do, the nearest one. Just pick it up and swing it into the fucker’s head like he was swinging a baseball bat. Too fuck’n easy.

  “Chicks I fuck purr like kittens,” Jonesy said, just as the door to the site office opened.

  Kevin Sharpe walked in and stopped, immediately sensing the tension between Max and Jonesy. “Bark like dogs, more like it,” he said.

  Jonesy grinned. “Listen, Max. If you’re not up to it, I wouldn’t mind show’n her what a real man’s like.”

  Max gritted his teeth even harder and clenched his fists. His heart was thumping faster and stronger, now more like a fuck’n jackhammer than a sledgehammer. BAM!BAM!BAM!BAM!BAM!BAM!

  Kev clocked in, donned his hardhat, then took Jonesy’s elbow and said, “Come on, Jonesy, we’ve got work to do.”

  “Damn bloody right!” Bill O’Driscoll said. “Get out of me office! Do some work or I’ll dock it from ya wages! You’re wasting me bleed’n time.”

  Max watched Kev lead Jonesy out of the site office and disappear behind the rubble of the demolition grounds. His jaw was still clenched and his heart still beat at a million miles an hour, but it had lost the feeling that it was going to smash its way through his chest. He heard Bill say something about not letting Jonesy get to him, but it was lost in the numbing fog of rage that had settled around his mind.

  “Did you hear me, Max?” Bill said.

  Max turned to his boss, letting the tension unwind, relaxing his fists and jaw, and nodded.

  “Good. I won’t be having any trouble on me site, you hear? No matter how much the bastard deserves it.”

  Max exited the site office thinking any trouble that happened today would not be his fuck’n responsibility.

  No sir-ee. Not one fuck’n bit.

  Max bided his time to get even with Jonesy until the first smoko break. He didn’t bother talking to anybody, not even Gazza, mainly out of fear he’d let slip what was churning through his mind. He kept to himself shovelling the loose rubble into the container units and tearing up the larger concrete slabs with the jackhammer. Jonesy was working the Bobcat, picking up the heavier pieces of concrete and metal sheeting, dumping it in the waiting trucks that were parked in a line toward the rear of the factory.

  Around 11 o’clock Max heard the Bobcat engine switch off and the clattering of shovels hitting the cement floor. Through the scratchy lenses of the safety glasses he saw Jonesy, Kev and Gazza gathering at the side of the site office, lighting cigarettes and pouring hot coffee into dented tin mugs from battered thermos flasks. Other guys he didn’t know, casual workers, began to assemble in groups nearby. Jonesy leaned back against the wall of the site office and slid down to his haunches, cigarette in one hand, coffee mug in the other. Kev and Gazza did likewise.

  Max figured he’d missed his chance to confront Jonesy, but he knew Jonesy and he knew his weaknesses. There’d be another opportunity later, and not too far away at that, he reckoned. He settled back over the jackhammer and began chipping away at the cement flooring. Almost straight away he thought he heard muffled laughing over the pounding of the jackhammer. He released the trigger, slipped the ear muffs around his neck and turned to the source of the laughter. Bill O’Driscoll had joined Jonesy, Kev and Gazza at the side of the site office, sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey, Max, why don’t you join us?” Gazza called out to him.

  Max shook his head and waved away the invite. “Too much to do,” he said, and readied himself to start jackhammering the cement flooring.

  “Strange bugger,” he overheard Bill O’Driscoll say. “Never rests.”

  “He’s crawl’n for a promotion,” Jonesy said, loud enough to make sure Max heard.

  “Nah, he’s just a hard worker,” Kev said. “Just like you Jonesy.”

  Bill and Gazza burst out laughing. Jonesy said nothing, just grinned and sucked on his cigarette, all the while glaring at Max.

  Max readjusted his ear muffs and squeezed the jackhammer trigger. Grey dust lifted from the floor and chips of cement clattered into his shins, some into his neck and face, but he was happy to be cocooned in a cloud of choking dust and deafening noise. At least it kept him isolated from the unwanted attention of his colleagues. Plus, it gave him all the time he needed to plan his move on Jonesy.

  The opportunity came soon enough, as he knew it would. He was glad Jonesy was such a predictable dipshit. Not more than fifty minutes after the smoko break had ended, Jonesy slipped out of the Bobcat, its engine still running, and hurried toward the portable latrines at the southwest corner of the factory. Max knew he wasn’t going for a piss. The pile of cigarette butts between the factory wall and the rear of the latrines had grown steadily into a mound over the weeks they’d been demolishing the site. A mound nurtured and fed by only one termite.

  Max lowered the jackhammer, rested his safety glasses and ear muffs next to it, then picked up a shovel that was leaning against a pile of rubble. Jonesy was so nonchalant and cocksure of himself he didn’t even bother to look behind to see if anyone noticed him take yet another unofficial smoko break. But Max did. He glanced around the site to make sure no one was watching him either. He needn’t have worried. Bill O’Driscoll was in the site office. Kev and Gazza were somewhere on the other side of a mound of rubble and all the trucks were gone, loaded up and off to dump the rubbish at the landfill. Another worker was jackhammering in the distance with his back to Max. Other casuals were shovelling rubble and were paying no heed to what he was doing. Besides, if anyone did notice, he was just taking a piss.

  All good, but he reckoned he only had a minute to reach the latrines and give the prick his just desserts. He had to hurry to catch Jonesy, not with his pants down, as he would’ve liked, but while he was still sucking on his fuck’n death stick. Yet he couldn’t rush for fear of attracting the attention of anyone else.

  Twenty metres from the latrines he hurried into a trot, careful to tread lightly and not make a sound across the rubble. He wanted to catch the prick totally unawares. Now at the latrines, he gripped the handle of the shovel like a javelin, raised it above his head, and slipped around the back.

  Jonesy was exactly where Max expected him to be, cigarette mouth, hardhat still on. What he didn’t expect was Jonesy tugging his cock over a neatly unfolded Playboy centrefold. Max blurted a laugh, which alerted Jonesy. The cigarette fell from his mouth onto the Playboy centrefold, right between her shaven pussy, which then started to smoulder and burn a hole through the glossy paper.

  “What the fuck?” Jonesy said, his hand frozen on his cock.

  Max gathered himself together, now grinning. He thrust the shovel towards Jonesy’s stomach like a bayonet. Jonesy raised his hands, as if surrendering, his now semi-limp cock hanging out of his unzipped overalls. Max, though, was in no mood for taking prisoners. He kept advancing, the tip of the shovel now inches away from Jonesy’s gut. There was no turning back now. He was going to give this prick a lesson he’d never forget. He had to be quick. Had to be ruthless.

  Jonesy stepped back between the confined space between the rear of the latrines and the factory wall, mumbling something about Max being reasonable and not to do anything he’d regret later on. But Max kept advancing, thrusting the spade in to his belly. Jonesy tripped over a crack in the floor, falling back and cracking his head on the cement. His hardhat rolled off next to the latrine and his limp cock shrivelled back into his overalls like a turtle’s head retreating back into its shell. Max ju
mped forward, stamping his boot down on Jonesy’s chest, pinning him to the floor.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Jonesy said.

  Max then shifted his boot from Jonesy’s chest to his throat, exactly where he wanted him, now in total control. Jonesy began to choke, gagging for air. He grabbed Max’s ankle in both hands to try and relieve the pressure, but Max pressed down even harder.

  “Not so fuck’n smart now, are ya?” he said. Then, raising the spade above his head, he made to bring the spade down onto Jonesy’s head.

  “Don’t… please,” Jonesy said, half choking, shielding his face with his arms.

  Instead of slamming it into his skull, Max released his boot from Jonesy’s neck and brought the sharp edge of the spade onto his Adam’s apple. Jonesy didn’t budge for fear any slightest movement would slice his windpipe in half. He didn’t even gulp, just stared back at Max like frightened rabbit caught in a trap.

  “Find your own fuck’n girlfriend!” Max said.

  Jonesy still didn’t move or say anything until Max lifted the spade from his throat. “Did ya hear what I said?” Max asked.

  Jonesy kept lying on the ground as he had, now rubbing his neck, as if checking to see his head was still attached to his body. Then he nodded, imperceptible at first, then more confidently when he was sure his head wasn’t about to detach itself.

  Max turned and went back to jackhammering the factory floor. Pricks like Jonesy didn’t stay quiet forever, but Max was happy to have silenced the fucker’s dirty mouth for at least a while.

  The next few weeks were the happiest Max could recall since his childhood, if he could actually recall any happy days from Serena. Still, even though she was a vague blur of snatched and disjointed memories, he was sure he’d been happy when his mother was still around, before school had begun, before the dark days of his father’s beatings and the opportunistic visitations of his drinking buddy, Rhys Fynn. Quite possibly these were the best days of his entire fuck’n life.

  He and Lorraine spent most evenings together after work, always at her house, never at his. Even when her shifts at the factory meant she didn’t get home until after nine or ten at night, he’d wait in his living room, TV off, listening to her footsteps trotting down the street, the occasional hop over a sidewalk puddle, watching as she checked the letterbox, flick the water off her umbrella and open the front door. Then in a flash he’d be across the street through the rain, eager to hear how her day at work had been, and just as eager to settle down on the sofa with her, arm in arm, watching the telly with a hot cuppa until both drifted off to sleep, tired and exhausted.

  He even suffered through Lorraine’s favourite movie, Xanadu. She had plucked the DVD from the shelf one evening and proceeded to tell him to forget about anything else that night, they were going to watch the greatest movie ever made. To say the least, it was not his cup of tea at all. The singing, the acting, the dancing, and of course the gut turning endless fuck’n roller skating made him cringe and wish he had one of those magic universal remote controls like in Click, where he could just fast forward through all the boring shit and get to the good bits, like maybe getting into Lorraine’s pants. Still, bad acting and singing aside, he put his discomfort aside and tried to hide how he thought about the movie for Lorraine’s sake.

  “You know, you kinda look like that chic, Kira,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Lorraine said, looking up at him, then back at the TV. “I get it all the time, especially from my old school mates.” Then she looked back up at him, a cheeky smile on her lips, “But I’ll only let you call me Kira if I can call you Sonny.”

  “Yeah, right. In your dreams,” and he leaned over to kiss her, but she had already turned back to the TV, engrossed.

  The Beijing Olympics came and went. They watched the opening ceremony with Lorraine’s father, who barely lasted halfway through before slumping in his sofa and snoring throughout the rest of the broadcast. Max kind of liked the choice of dates: 8.8.8, the eighth day of the eighth month, 2008. It had a simplicity which attracted him, a neatness, a purity. Kind of like the woman next to him in his arms.

  “Oh, that’s interesting,” Lorraine said during the ceremony. “I knew they invented fireworks but I didn’t know the Chinese invented paper? Did you, Max?”

  Max had no fuck’n idea who invented paper. Didn’t give a rat’s arse if it were the Russians, the Jews or the fuck’n Chinese. Meant noth’n to him, but he said, “Nah, didn’t know that.”

  “I thought the Egyptians invented paper from the papyrus reed,” she said, then shrugged. “Ah well, could be wrong, of course. Never did pay enough attention during history class.” She lifted her head and pecked a kiss on his cheeks, then nestled her face into the crook of his shoulder.

  “You’re prob’ly right, though,” Max said. “Prob’ly just Chinese propaganda bullsh… er, stuff.”

  By the end of the games the Chinese had tallied fifty-one gold medals, even more than the Americans. He and Lorraine watched Michael Phelps swim his way to a record eight gold, even cheering him on against the Australian swimmers, happy to watch a piece of history with her, eager, if not impatient, to begin an album of joyous memories they might one day share in the future.

  He, of course, kept his cards close to his chest. Didn’t want any chance of scaring her away by coming on too fast. She deserved to be treated right and he was going to do this the right way, the gentleman’s way, take things as they come and not force himself on her. Which meant although they’d kissed and cuddled, they had yet to make love.

  On the Sunday night of the closing ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, he and Lorraine were lying together on the couch underneath a tartan woollen blanket, she nestled in his arms, an empty bottle of wine and two wine glasses resting on the floor. The house was dark and the only light was the fluorescent glow of the TV set, shrouding d the room in soft electric blue. Lorraine’s father had long since excused himself and gone to bed. Max could hear the occasional hacking cough echoing down the hallway from his bedroom. The old bugger had appeared to improve somewhat over the past few weeks, but in recent days had slipped back into some kind of malevolent remission. The hacking was incessant, like the end days he’d seen with his own father. Yet unlike the German prick, Lorraine’s father didn’t deserve it. His fuckhead father had smoked himself to the grave, but the guy down the hallway had only been doing his job, trying to put food on the table and a roof over his family.

  Nah, the poor bugger didn’t deserve it by a long shot. But that’s life, isn’t it? Shit happens. You gotta play with the cards you’ve been dealt.

  As the closing ceremony climaxed and multi-coloured fireworks burst across the TV screen, Lorraine snuggled closer to him, lifting her leg over his, her warm slender thighs rubbing against his groin. She lifted her face to kiss his neck beneath the angle of his jaw and took his right hand, placing it on her breast. He could feel her nipple hardening with arousal and her hot moist breath on his neck. She started to rub his groin with her thigh, shifting closer to him, her breasts pressing into his chest. Her breathing became deeper, her nipples harder, but Max wasn’t responding, couldn’t respond. He sat up, extricating himself from her wrestle-like leg grip.

  “What’s wrong?” she said, but Max said nothing, just held his head in his hands. “Don’t you want me?”

  “’Course I do,” he said.

  “Well?”

  “I… Let’s just slow down a bit.”

  Another dreadful hack echoed down the hall from her father’s bedroom. Lorraine got up from the couch, readjusted her sweater and jeans, and said, “Is it my father?”

  Max looked up. “What? No. Of course not. I think he’s great.”

  Lorraine crossed her arms and stared out the window across the street to his house. “That’s not what I meant,” she said after a moment. “Perhaps you should go.”

  “Lorraine. Please, I didn’t mean to…”

  “Just go,” she said, her arms still crossed as sh
e had. “I’ve got work tomorrow. I’ll see you later.”

  Max could tell he’d blown the opportunity. The moment was gone. He got up and went to Lorraine to peck a kiss on her cheek, but she brushed him away with a flick of her hand, saying nothing. He left the house and crossed the street to his front door, thinking he and Mr. Jack Daniels were going to get to get acquainted with one another as soon as fuck’n possible. Maybe then he could forget about how fuck’n useless he was.

  When he looked back at Lorraine’s lounge room window, it was pitch black. The TV had already been switched off and Lorraine had gone.

  Three hours later, Max was in his backyard shed sitting at the workbench and mulling over the trinkets and trophies he’d taken from his unwanted (and now dead) visitors to the humpy. From where he sat, he could see through the shed’s glass-panelled window across the black void of his backyard to the rear of his house. The kitchen light was on and the sliding glass door was still open from when he’d burst outside to get to the shed.

  He gingerly rubbed his right hand, still throbbing from when he’d punched the hallway wall on his way in from the fuck’n disaster at Lorraine’s house, despite the best anaesthetic attention of Dr. Jack. He eyed the near empty bottle of bourbon on the workbench illuminated under the desk lamp, next to which was Sal’s silver locket. The delicate silver chain had broken at the hook when he’d ripped it from her perfect private school neck, but he’d fixed it a couple of weeks ago with a secret intention in mind. Also on the workbench were the zippo lighter, maps and digital camera he’d pocketed from the stupid backpacker who’d had the gall to threaten to go to the authorities and dob him in.

  Lot of fuck’n good that threat had got him, huh?

  In shadow near the shed door, another of the stupid fucker’s possessions, his didgeridoo, was propped against the wall like a wooden drainpipe. He knew these trinkets would send him straight to prison for life if the fuck’n coppers ever found them here, but it was a risk he was willing to take. For some reason he couldn’t part with them. He actually liked them. Liked the memories they evoked.