who played it. He said that he was trying to give the kids back their childhood and the game took that away. He didn't stop them. That wasn't his way. But he'd try and talk them out of it. In a subtle way so it didn't sound like preaching. Robbing was safer, he'd say. And dealing, that was the thing. That was the present and the future. Dope was the biggest growth industry going. Along with computers. Another thing he didn't like was the youngsters taking the drugs. Drugs are for selling, he'd say. But he understood that some of them were well hooked by the time they got to him, so the least he could do was make sure their gear wasn't spiked.
Take Ruth, for instance.. She was eleven years old and she'd been on the game for over a year. She was quite philosophical for her age. Her father and her uncles had been having a go since she was six. If she returned home it would carry on so she might just as well make some dosh out of it. And there was a lot of dosh out there. Paul had asked her about her mother. Apparently, her mother simply didn't believe her. Called her a wicked liar. Said she was trying to come between her and dad. Said she was making excuses for wetting the bed and bunking off school. Powder Pete got hold of a rubber sheet to cover her mattress and until it was sorted he changed her blanket every day without saying a thing. And he boiled her underwear to get shot of the stains. Got it clean as new. And he never said a thing to any of the others. As far as he was concerned it was their little secret, not important at all, not even worth talking about. It was Ruth who told Paul. And for a while back there, the sadness of it all got to him and he forgot all about the people in Africa, a lot of them Ruth's age.
For a while he thought of Ruth and nothing else and the way Powder Pete looked after her, bedwetting and all. Paul snivelled, “When you hear something like that it makes you realize what a wonderful world it is. That black guy was right. What a wonderful world.”
Powder Pete looked after the kids that society didn't want, the kids that had fallen through the net. He was fighting a battle against everyone and everything to give them a future. He was up there with the good guys like… like Prince Charles, David Bowie, people like that.
One night, when Paul cuddled up to Ruth – no sex or anything – he explained to her that Pete, in a sense, was the social worker for the children of the night. The children that no one else cared about. He didn't give them rules, save the one, don't go into the end house, and he let them do their own thing, run wild, make a noise, make a mess, eat what they wanted, when they wanted. Play their music really loud. It was the best sort of home you could have. Outside a real one. With a mom and dad who loved you. And not the way your dad loved you. At the time Paul hadn't known about her bedwetting. Not until the morning.
She had a beautiful little face and a smile, with crooked teeth, that was contagious. It made you want to hug her. But she died. Just like that. Like the best people did. Like…like Frank Sinatra and Prince Charles. Just like that. Before he went inside the last time. Pneumonia, or something. Powder Pete dropped her off at the hospital. He'd found her sweating and all his remedies made no difference. So he took her to the hospital but it was too late. She died two days later aged eleven and a quarter. And apart from the few months she'd spent at Powder Pete's, she'd never had a childhood.
Powder Pete blamed himself. You could see it in his wild eyes. Even now, eighteen months later, you could see it. He should have realized how serious it was, that it wasn't just a heavy cold, and so on. The sadness had pulled down a veil, like, and the colour, even the red rage in his eyes, was dulled.
Enough to make you cry. And when Paul heard it that’s what he did and Powder Pete had to console him. “Pull yourself together, Paul. When life's had enough of you, it doesn't care whether you're innocent or not, young or old, see? Life's a bastard judge that'll sentence you to death at the drop of a hat. Just like that. No point in making long-term plans, Paul Knight, because life's got a cruel sense of humour. You gotta be rich for God to love you.”
Some said, and Paul believed them, that Powder Pete never really got over it. That her death had galvanized him into more drastic measures. Cooking, perhaps, because that started in earnest after she'd died. Maybe concentrating on the recipes took his mind off the guilt. He still took flowers to a little nameplate by a white rose in a garden of remembrance. His were the only flowers. Probably cos the guy in charge didn't like flowers in that part of the cemetery. They were allowed on the graves, but not on the nameplates. Cremation, obviously, was second best. Stupid, really. That's why Powder Pete broke the guy's nose and promised him something worse. That's why the guy didn't mind the flowers anymore. He probably knew that when Powder Pete made a promise he kept it.
One other thing that stood Powder Pete from the rest of mankind, the kids had noticed, was that whenever he went out and, that was mostly at night, he wore a waistcoat of steel tubing. A dozen tubes about nine inches long, fastened together around his waist. The kids accepted them as part of Powder Pete. A new fashion, maybe. Beneath his black jacket, of course, once he'd buttoned it up, you wouldn't know the difference. Apart from the lumps.
A girl named Jenny had taken Ruth's mattress. She was older, fifteen maybe, and streetwise. And she had a foul mouth. But she was like, seven months pregnant, so she wasn't all that. Maybe it was all talk. Maybe she wasn't so streetwise after all. Her hair was all over the place, brown streaked with blond with mousy roots, in need of a wash. Bit of a stale smell. Smoke. Once she started to swell she started to roll her own, for the baby's sake, she said. Increased the weed and cut back on the tobacco. She was going to be one of those conscientious mothers, one of those green friends of the earth. Pity there weren't more like her, really, then the world would be a better place. She'd got a tattoo on her arm. Barbed wire, like, all the way round. Maybe that said something about her life. Maybe she was, like, being kept in, or out.
“Feel that,” she said.
Paul hesitated. “No, I don't think so.”
She showed him her belly, and a little ring in her bursting navel, and a trace of dark-brown hair until she pulled up her pants. “Go on.”
Tentatively, Paul reached out.
“See,” she said.
“Fuck!”
“Yeah.”
“Fucking right.”
“See? Told you.”
He felt some more, the ends of his fingers slipped under elastic. She said, “That's far enough.”
“Right. Just checking.” He withdrew his hand. “Amazing that is, though. Makes you think, dunnit?”
He found Brian Lara in the shadows, tube of fuel in one hand, in the other a paper funnel to help with the huff.
“All right, Jay?”
“It's Brian Lara now.”
“Fair enough, but you ain't black.”
“You can have a black white man, if you want, if you ain't prejudice. I mean, no one's white, are they? They're red, they're pink, they're lightly cooked or they're well cooked. No one's white, except the Irish.”
“Fair enough. How's it going, Bry?”
“Dick, dick, dick, dosh, dosh, dosh. You know?”
“Yeah. Waiting for Powder Pete, see?”
“Yeah. Powder Pete’s OK.”
“He knows everything, about the universe and important stuff. The scientists should talk to him then they wouldn’t waste their time with telescopes and writing on blackboards. Powder Pete reckons it’s all crap. He says you can’t have something inside of nothing so that proves it goes on forever. The universe, everything. And that means it never started. That’s it then, innit? No God.”
“Who cares? Why bother? Waste of time thinking. It don’t stop the sore throat, does it?”
“Good point. No point.”
“Dick dosh, innit? Nothing else matters. Never did.”
“Yeah. That stuff's probably done your throat.”
“Gotta be done, though.”
“Yeah, suppose.”
“Tick tock, tick tock, dick dosh, dick dosh.”
“Yeah, it's a living innit? I heard you was with the kozzers.” “Yeah, was.”
“Fuck that.”
