Boy Swallows Universe. Trent Dalton
down like a council jackhammer.
‘Fuckin’ell, Darren,’ I barked.
Darren and Eric howled with laughter.
‘Found him in the storeroom,’ he said.
Darren Dang’s mum, ‘Back Off’ Bich Dang, and his stepdad, Quan Nguyen, run the Little Saigon Big Fresh supermarket at the end of Darra Station Road, a one-stop super shop for Vietnamese imported vegetables, fruits, spices, meats and whole fresh fish. The storeroom at the rear of the supermarket, next to the meat locker, is, much to Darren’s joy, home to south-east Queensland’s longest and most well fed dynasty of obese brown rats.
‘Hold him for a second,’ Darren said, foisting the rat into my reluctant hands.
The rat trembled in my palms, inactive with fear.
‘This is Jabba,’ Darren said, reaching into his duffle bag. ‘Grab his tail.’
I half-heartedly gripped the rat’s tail with my right forefinger and thumb.
Darren then pulled a machete from his duffle bag.
‘What the fuck is that?’
‘Granddad’s machete.’
The machete was longer than Darren’s right arm. It had a tan wooden handle and a large wide blade, rusting at its flat sides but oiled and silver and gleaming on its cutting edge.
‘No, you really gotta get a good grip on his tail or you’ll lose him,’ Darren said. ‘Really wrap your fist around the tail.’
‘You gotta hold it tight like you were holding your dick, Bell End, because he’ll take off,’ Eric said.
I gripped the tail tight in my fist.
Darren pulled a red cloth like a large handkerchief from his duffle bag.
‘Okay, now place him on the septic but don’t let him go,’ he said.
‘Maybe Eric should hold him?’ I said.
‘You’re holding him,’ Darren said, something unhinged in his eyes, something unpredictable.
There was a concrete underground septic tank with a heavy red metal lid by the bottle bins. I placed Jabba gently on the tank, my right hand gripping his tail.
‘Don’t move a muscle, Tink,’ Darren said.
Darren rolled the large red handkerchief into a blindfold and wrapped it around his eyes, resting on his knees like a Japanese warrior about to drive a blade into his own heart.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Darren, seriously,’ I said.
‘Don’t move, Tink,’ barked Eric, standing over me.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve done this twice already,’ Darren said.
Jabba, poor dumb rat, was as fear-stiff and meek as I was. He turned to me with his teeth rattling up and down, confused and terrified.
Darren gripped the machete handle with both hands and raised it slowly and methodically above his head, the unsubtle instrument’s cutting blade sparkling for a moment in the full sun that was lighting this hellish stage.
‘Wait, Darren, you’re gonna chop my hand off,’ I stammered.
‘Bullshit,’ Eric said. ‘He’s ninja blood. He can see your hand better in his mind than he can with his actual eyes.’
Eric put a secure hand on my shoulder to keep me in place.
‘Just don’t fuckin’ move,’ he said.
Darren took a deep breath. Exhaled. I took one last look at Jabba, his body cringing with fear, motionless, like he thought if he just stayed still we might forget he was even there.
Darren’s machete dropped down in a swift and violent whoosh and the oiled and gleaming blade dug into the septic tank lid with a brief yellow spark a centimetre from my closed fist.
Darren slipped his blindfold off in triumph to gaze upon the bloody remains of Jabba the Rat. But there was nothing to see. Jabba had vanished.
‘What da fark, Tink?’ Darren shouted, his Vietnamese accent more evident in anger.
‘He let him run!’ Eric screamed. ‘He let him run!’
Eric wrapped his arm around my neck, the foul stench of his armpit like an old swamp. I caught sight of Jabba scurrying to freedom through a gap beneath the mesh school fence into the thick scrub running alongside Mr McKinnon’s tool shed.
‘You dishonour me, Tink,’ Darren whispered.
Eric spread his belly weight over my back, forcing me flat onto the septic tank.
‘Blood for blood,’ Eric said.
‘You know the warrior’s code, Eli Bell,’ Darren said formally.
‘No, I really don’t know the code, Darren,’ I said. ‘And besides, I believe that ancient code was more of a loose guide than anything else.’
‘Blood for blood, Eli Bell,’ Darren said. ‘When the river of courage runs dry, blood flows in its place.’ He nodded at Eric. ‘Finger,’ he said.
Eric reefed my right arm back out across the septic tank.
‘Fuck, Darren,’ I hollered. ‘Think about this for a second. You’ll get expelled.’
Eric yanked my right forefinger out of my closed fist.
‘Darren, think about what you’re doing,’ I begged. ‘They’ll put you in juvenile.’
‘I accepted my path long ago, Eli Bell. How about you?’
Darren slipped the blindfold over his eyes once more and raised the machete with both hands high over his head. Eric twisted my wrist to breaking point and pushed down hard, clamping my outstretched and exposed finger to the septic tank lid. I screamed in agony under the pressure. My finger was the rat. My finger was the rat wanting to disappear. My right forefinger, the one with my lucky freckle on its middle knuckle. My lucky freckle. My lucky finger. I stared at that lucky freckle and I prayed and I prayed for good fortune. And that’s exactly when Mr McKinnon, early-seventies drunk Scotch-loving Irish groundsman, rounded the corner of his tool shed and stood, perplexed, by the scene of the Vietnamese boy in a red blindfold about to sacrificially sever the forefinger of the boy with the lucky freckle who was spread out across the septic tank.
‘What the hell’s going on here!’ Mr McKinnon barked.
‘Run!’ Eric screamed.
Darren fled, indeed, with the stealthy reaction powers of his beloved ninja. Eric was slower to lift his burdensome belly fat off my left shoulder but he evaded the clutches of Mr McKinnon’s thick sweeping left arm, which eventually found a hold on the back pocket of my maroon cotton school shorts, making me look like Wile E. Coyote running on air as I tried to beat a useless getaway.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Mr McKinnon said, his breath reeking of Black Douglas.
Creeping now, hunched down, to the Dang family’s fence made of tall brown timber palings with pointed ends. Lyle padding down Darren Dang’s long driveway. Darren Dang’s house is one of the biggest in Darra. Three thousand yellow bricks bought half-price direct from the Darra brickworks, shaped into a three-storey house with Italian mansion ambitions but bad-taste cheap-suburbia realities. The front lawn is the size of half a football field and lined with maybe fifty tall palm trees. I slip briefly down the long concrete driveway then peel off right among the front lawn palms to stay out of sight. Closer to the house is a trampoline surrounded by plastic princess castles belonging to Darren’s three younger sisters, Kylie Dang, Karen Dang and Sandy Dang. I scurry to the trampoline, duck behind the largest of the princess castles, a pink plastic fairytale kingdom with a brown drawbridge fashioned into a children’s slide, with castle walls big enough for me to hide behind as I watch Lyle sitting with