Thunder Road by Ted Dawe Page A

who believed you.
    After breakfast Devon suggested that we go visiting, so we fired up the Escort and headed west. He wanted to know what I’d been up to while he had been away. I told him about the shop fight, the dinner party, the drunken escape. He hung on every detail. We drove on in silence for a while, then he turned to me and said, ‘You’re not tough enough to hang with the richies … specially try-hard doctor richies. You see, Trace, they’ve got where they are because they’ve played the game. Every fucken twist and turn. They were raised carefully, tried hard at school, worked hard for their quals, grafted hard for their money….’
    ‘You reckon being a doctor is hard work?’
    ‘
They
do, that’s the main thing. Then they slowly and carefully claw their way up so that their kids will have a shorter distance to claw. It’s a bit like evolution.’
    ‘So you reckon they’re tough?’
    ‘Shit yeah. They love the game. Anyone who doesn’t play it or doesn’t play it their way … they’re shit. You’re shit man.I’m shit too. You had this curiosity value, because of the fight in the shop, but that was it. Don’t think for a minute that you were ever in there. In with a grin. You never blew it, Trace: there was nothing to blow. You were just the floor show for the night and you played it to perfection, right down to guiltily skiving off with the sheets.’
    I said nothing. I was feeling scungy and small about what had happened anyway but hearing Devon talk made everything so much worse. I was stupid, a real country hick, just when I thought I knew a few things. I sat staring miserably straight ahead as we wound through the nameless, bleak suburbs.
     
    Rebel was our first stop. Mr Midnight Autos lived out at a sort of half-country, half-town place on the western outskirts of Auckland . It was a house that had been lifted up on concrete blocks with the whole downstairs made into a garage and workshop. There were two more big sheds out the back. The section was huge and overgrown, with a corrugated iron wall all around. Something like a gang headquarters crossed with a wrecker’s yard. A lively Rottweiler was tied up by the gate. It seemed to know Devon but gave a couple of obligatory barks. He walked over and patted it as it stood up on its hind legs.
    ‘Hey Boris … good dog. This is the Bunker,’ he said, turning to me.
    ‘Why does he call it that?’
    ‘Well, Rebel, he’s a bit of a Hitler fan. He’s read
Mein Kampf
for Christ’s sake. The Bunker was where Adolf and Eva finally bought it when the Russians closed in on them. You should get him talking about it one day.’
    We tracked Rebel down in one of the big sheds and I saw what Devon had been on about. It was full of Nazi bits andpieces, most of it crappy replicas, but there was a big red flag with a black swastika hanging from the roof and Rebel had a real bayonet stuck into the surface of the desk.
    Two identical MR2s side by side were getting the attention. It looked as if some serious mixing and matching had been going on. At the other end were a hoist, gas bottles, grinders, racing seats, sets of spotlights and piles of engines and mags. You could have built several cars with the bits. Rebel sat at a dirty old desk talking on a cellphone.
    ‘What are we after?’ I asked Devon.
    ‘Man, we’ve got to get you a car. People aren’t meant to walk.’
    ‘I’ve got to get some bread together first. I haven’t saved anything yet.’
    He turned to me. ‘Let me tell you something.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You never will.’
    ‘Yeah? So when do I get my car? I’d fancy a motorbike instead , I reckon. A big, old, oily Triumph. Something that really rattles and roars.’
    ‘Oi! It’s Jig and Trace,’ Rebel said, finally tossing down the phone onto a torn, detached car seat.
    ‘Hey Rebel, I need wheels for my man Trace here. He was on a date and had to catch a taxi.’
    Rebel winced in mock pain. ‘It shouldn’t happen to a dog.’