spy, travelling 30 centimeters every ten seconds.
Vish thought he might die. He thought about God. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, running through this gravel- floored hell of bright painted things.
Howie and Cathy were pushing Granny back towards the fire escape. He hollered to them, ‘No, she lit them off already,’ and then he remembered he was not thinking of God, he must think of God, that all that was necessary was to think of God.
He prayed Benny would be safe. He was in the cellar with some woman. He did not know he would be safe. How could he know?
Cathy and Howie were now walking towards him. They had left Granny Catchprice standing alone at the bottom of the fire escape. Cathy had seen the plume of blue smoke coming from a fuse. She was pointing at it, stamping at it.
‘It was her,’ he pointed back at Granny Catchprice.
Behind Cathy and Howie’s shouting faces he could see his grandmother in her severe black suit. She had walked across the car yard to the workshop wall. She was working her way along the side of the wall, stooping, like a gardener weeding. She was lighting fuses. She had damp matches from her kitchen. Sometimes, he could see, these slowed her down.
Howie was panting and shouting at him. It was a moment before he saw what he wanted – the matches.
He pointed across the yard at Granny Catchprice. ‘It’s her,’ he said. He handed Howie the matches. ‘I took them off her, the crazy bitch. There she goes again.’
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Not die. Not go to jail.
‘Where’s Benny?’ Cathy yelled.
‘You can’t go down there,’ he said. ‘You’ll get blown up.’
She tried to. She ran for the steps.
Howie grabbed Cathy. She had no underpants. He picked her up and carried her bare-arsed across the yard. She struggled and hit his head.
‘Mort,’ she called. ‘What about Mort?’
‘He’s O.K.,’ Vish said. He did not know he was O.K. He had fucked it up. He had changed the plan. It was Benny’s fault. He had tried to murder him. It was Krishna who came to punish the people who hurt the followers of Krishna.
Vish walked slowly across the yard. He felt heat like a furnace in his wounded arm. He did not hurry. The Lord would decide when it ignited.
He had reached the front gate when the first explosion came. It spat out bricks and showered them over the cars. They rained down, bang, bang, bang.
He turned and saw a hole, like a tunnel, in the wall of Spare Parts. Nothing more. Granny Catchprice was fumbling with her matches at the Front Office. Then the next one went. It made a deeper ‘crump’ you could feel in your feet, in the earth. When Vish turned to look, he found the wall of the workshop was missing. The yard lights shone into the dusty rafters. A brush-tailed possum stood on the great iron beam above Mort’s desk. Its eyes shone bright yellow through the mortar dust.
Then many things happened at once. Vish lay down on the ground and felt it move beneath him. He put his head under the Audi radiator. There was some fire, flame. He felt the heat in his bare legs and saw the orange light across the gravel. There was a ‘Whoomf’ noise.
It was then he thought about the petrol tanks beneath the cracked concrete at the front of the front office.
He stood up and started running towards the street.
59
Howie raised himself from the ground beside his wife. The yard was filled with lime dust and petrol fumes. The lights stood on their tall poles, sloping, twisted on their stems like Iceland poppies. Granny Catchprice, dressed in a tattered black, white and red clown’s suit, moved into their beam, dust still swirling all round her.
As she turned, she looked as though she came from hell: she had put on a mask, like a witch with long, carved, wooden teeth. She stopped to pick a lump of brick from the bonnet of the Commodore. It was too heavy for her. She pushed it off, scraped it across the duco, down the slope of the bonnet and on to the ground.
Cathy was sitting on the gravel beside him. She said: ‘I got no pants.’
Howie helped her to her feet. She tugged down on her T-shirt, more worried about her arse than everything around her. He put his arm round her shoulders and felt she was shaking like a leaf.
‘Come on, honey,’ he said. ‘Come on baby, it’s O.K.’ He walked her towards the street, towards Granny Catchprice who was now pushing at a clump of bricks which had fallen on the Audi’s sleek black hood.
‘I need a dress,’ Cathy said. ‘Where are my shoes?’
‘I’ll get the truck out,’ he said. ‘All the gear is in the truck. Once we get the truck out we’re O.K.’
It was then he saw the flowers on the gravel, a line of them from the crumpled Spare Parts Department wall to the buckled Cyclone gates, splashes the size of carnations. They fell from Granny Catchprice’s face – fat drops of bright blood.
There was a noise like a calf bellowing. Howie turned to see a black track-suited figure running over the rubble of what had been their apartment. The noise was Mort. A figure in yellow robes was also stumbling towards them. The noise was Vish. They were both the noise, coming towards Granny Catchprice. She recognized the noise and turned. It was then Howie saw how badly hurt she was – the gelignite had ripped her face back to the bone, up from the gums and teeth to the nose. In the middle of this destruction, her eyes looked out like frightened things buried beneath a muddy field.
‘He touched her breasts,’ she said.
Howie put his hand around beneath her ribs to steady her. There was nothing to her – rag and bone. As he lay her down upon the gravel, she trembled and whimpered. It seemed too cruel to lay her head upon the gravel. He placed his hand beneath her for a pillow and squatted down beside her.
‘It’s O.K., Frieda,’ he said.
‘Rot!’ she said.
Howie felt himself pushed aside. It was Cathy, Mort, Vish – the Catchprices. They pushed him out like foreign matter. Cathy took her mother’s head and cradled it. Mort held her hand. They made a clump, a mass, they clung to her, like piglets at an old sow.
‘Come on, honey,’ he pulled at his wife’s shoulder. ‘Come on.’ But they made a heap of bodies which left no room for him.
Howie walked back to the Big Mack truck alone. The engine was new and tight, but it started first off. He threw the long stick back into reverse, and edged the truck back until he felt resistance. Then he squeezed it forward, manoeuvring between the dust silver Statesman with black leather upholstery and the Commodore S.S. with the alloy wheels. It was a tight fit. He edged slowly past the red Barina Benny nearly sold to Gino Massaro.
But when he came to the Audi, he knew there was no longer room. He felt the resistance as the truck tray caught the Audi’s right-hand rear guard, nothing definite, but soft, like a sweater snagged in a barbed wire fence. He increased the pressure on the accelerator just a little. There was a drag, a soft ripping sensation. He knew he was cutting it like a can opener.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ he said. It felt as good as shitting.
It only made a small noise, a screee. The diff caught momentarily on a pile of bricks but the old Dodge lifted, lurched and rolled on like a tank, out across the crumpled Cyclone fence and arrived, its front tyre hissing, out on to the street.
