The Scattersmith by David James Kane
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Half-frozen, with the wind slapping my ears like a boxing snowman, I trudged up and down the streets trilling on my silver whistle: Taubman Street, Tavistock Lane, Gloucester Avenue, Pegasus Boulevard, Westbourne Drive and Ligar Crescent. Customers, many in dressing gowns, beanies and ugg boots, dashed from their houses, grabbed their paper and tossed me coins without a word.
Mr Dixon, resplendent in a purple cable-knitted sweater, gave me $7 dollars for Yarn Yarns: a $1 tip! But in the bitter cold, no-one seemed to care for Mr Tangen's famous personal touch. Even Mrs Carruthers picked up her paper and went back inside with barely an update about Ping Ping and T-Bone, her cats.
One street remained. I turned right, walked a few metres down Main Street and turned right again into the desolate quiet of Blakes Road.
Blakes had once been fairly respectable, lined with mixed businesses, restaurants, a twin cinema, and a flea market on weekends. That had all come to a shuddering halt a few years back when Mr Barker opened his massive Barkerfield Shopping Centre on the other side of town.
Blakes Road was now the closest thing Quakehaven had to a Ghost Street. This was my first ever Blakes customer. And he was somewhat of a celebrity.
My first month in town, Joke told me the story. He'd heard it from his dad.
The story around town was that Mr Barker wanted to demolish the houses but some of the old folks wouldn’t go, so he hired a gang from the City to clean the street out. The gang - which became known as the Barker Bandits - rode into town on vintage Indian motorcycles. Night after night, they descended on Blakes Road, vandalising shops.
One shop held out: Suresh Seth's Sausages. The butcher, Mr Seth, lived in an apartment above the shop and refused to budge, despite spray-cans of graffiti, buckets of broken glass and threats.
One night, Mr Barker ordered the Bandits to burn the shop to the ground! Bandits were seen entering the shop around midnight, carting jerry cans of petrol.
The next morning, a street cleaner found the cans of petrol, lined up neatly on the pavement outside Mr Seth's shop. A small sign had been placed in the window: 'Gone Hunting - Back Later'. The shop was untouched. Even the walls were whitewashed - not a fleck of graffiti.
Several days later, Mrs Crabshank noticed a large metal sculpture perched on the edge of the butcher's roof, like a glinting gargoyle. Fashioned from the wreckage of vintage motorcycles, the installation had been twisted and melded into a double helix, from which sprouted the gnarled, giant wings of a sculpted butterfly.
No Bandit was seen again in Quakehaven.
Some of the story was verifiable: Joke had shown me a photo of the motorcycle butterfly. But like most of Mr Fisk’s stories, some of it was surely exaggerated and unbelievable.
I stopped outside the butcher's shop and blew my whistle. No response. I was about to leave, when I remembered Mr Seth’s special order and the money.
I pulled my cart up to the shop's crooked fence, and walked down the broken path to the front door. It was solid oak, with a stained glass panel in its centre. I pushed the door-bell. It bleated like a sheep. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. I turned to run away.
I should have fled.
It was suddenly hard to stay focused. The thick canopy of cloud broke open and, for the first time that day, my shadow appeared on the path behind me. A green-yellow light seeped out from the base of the oak door. Two black eyes appeared and glinted through the stained glass panel. A heavy lock clanked open like a struck anvil.
"I've got to get out of here," I whispered to myself and backed up too quickly. My cart became stuck on a rock, then toppled onto its side. Mr Tangen's walkie-talkie clattered out of its holster, skittered across the shop front and collided into the fence.
Before I could react, the door flew open and a tiny, ancient man jumped through it, stomping his feet like an embittered leprechaun swindled of his gold. "What is the meaning of this intrusion?" he hissed. "How dare you disturb me at this hour?!”
Gobsmacked, I fought the urge to giggle-cry. The midget man's leathery brown face turned tangerine with indignation. In stark contrast to his weather-beaten features, the man was resplendent in a silver-grey suit, white shirt and scarlet tie. Shiny black shoes adorned his feet, matching his glossy hair that was slicked back like an aged stock broker's.
"Sorry, sir," I said. "I tripped. My cart. I -"
"Insolence! I don't care about your clumsiness, oaf-boy," spat the old man. I jumped backed, but he leaned in, and I caught a whiff of his cologne: a mix of sandalwood masking, in part, the scent of a freshly mown lawn. "That shrill piping," he snapped, pointing accusingly at my whistle. "It stings my ears. Should be outlawed. Rude, imbecilic nut."
"There's no need for name-calling," I said, sounding a touch like Aunt Bea. "Apologies. Mr Tangen sent me, Mr Seth. I've a special order and he wanted to make sure you got it personally."
"What, what!" shouted the man, his rather sunken cheeks suddenly vaulting up his face, his features animated, like a whiskerless seal perched on the edge of a mackerel buffet. "My periodical? It's arrived? Give it to me!"
I turned to my cart, righted it and pulled out his magazine. It was heavy, and wrapped in special thick plastic. Apart from the Arabic headlines, the cover featured photos of a strange black statue of a bearded man-dog tattooed with squiggles. The sort of stuff Joke obsessed over.
"That'll be $30, thanks, mister," I said, presenting him with the magazine.
"Nonsense," clucked the old man. "I know for a fact that the magazine retails for less than $25. I will give you $25. And 10 cents extra, for your trouble."
"Sorry, sir. That's not how it works," I said, a flush creeping up my neck. "It's $30. Take it, or leave it."
The old man's face collapsed into a frown, his cheeks slipping back, like pockets of wet sand forced into a deflated balloon. He hobbled towards me, looking pitiful and elderly. I regretted my rudeness.
"I will take it," said Mr Seth, "and leave you!" With that, Mr Seth snatched the magazine from my hands, leapt back into his house and slammed the door in my face.
For a second, I was too shocked to move. Then fury took hold. I shouted, and pounded on the oak door with the palms of both hands, rattling the glass panel: "Mr Seth. Give me my money."
"Why?" sang the old man through the door, his eyes cloaked. "You have done nothing to earn it."
"I got up at five, rode my bike four kilometres, walked six streets in freezing temperatures, and made a special trip to this ghost street just to deliver your stupid magazine. Now, if you don't want to pay for it, just give me back the magazine. Otherwise, give me the money!"
"Say please," tittered the old man. "What's in it for me!?"
"What's in it for you?!" I parroted, exasperated. "You've got the magazine. Now give me the money."
Silence. The old man's black eyes reappeared at the arched panels, sweeping from side to side like spotlights in a prison, through the stained glass.
"Please," I said. "Please, sir, just give me the money. I don't want trouble."
"Why do you need money?"
"That's my business".
"Then you don't get my coin to line your pockets."
"Fine," I said. The old man was clearly crazy and I would play his game if it got me out of the cold quickly. I grabbed my calculator out of my pocket and started hitting numbers. "The magazine retails for $25, as you've said. I get 15% of the cover price, which is $3.75. Mr Tangen charges $1.25 for special deliveries. That's $30."
The old man flicked up the mail slot beneath the glass pane. "$3.75 for you," he tutted. "You look too fat and spoiled to need $3.75. Are you going to waste it all on sweets and milkshakes, plumpy?"
"I'm not fat," I said, hotly. "I'm just wearing lots of clothes. Because it's freezing out here! I'm not spending a cent on myself. It's for my Mum. Her birthday."
"I see," said the old man. "If I'm not mistaken, her second birthday since your father left you both in the lu
I wanted to kick in the door. Instead, I threw my calculator down on the doorstep as hard as I could. It shattered. "He didn't leave us, you old geezer. He was killed investigating criminals!"
"I know all about that" said the old man through the slot, suddenly serious. "I was there, in Hong Kong, you see. Your dad wasn't investigating criminals. Something much more interesting, believe me."
"I don't believe you," I said, and started to cry. Who was this old man? And why was he taunting me about Dad? "I know what I was told, and I trust the people who told me. You're just an evil, funny looking, smelly, geriatric, obnoxious, midget-man."
Mr Seth laughed and stuck out his tongue. "You are right about that, Paddy. I can't help the smell: it's called decrepitude, and that's not a perfume. But I'm right as well. I don't blame you for not trusting me. Yet. But believe me when I say I knew your father and he was much more than an accountant. Not that there's anything wrong with accountants, of course."
"Of course he - How do you know my name?" I asked, suddenly scared. My mind whirled through a cycle of random images: Mr Seth's silver and red tie, his large black pupils, the photo I'd seen of the mangled metal sculpture and its butterfly wi-. "You've been spying on me!"
It wasn't exactly a question, but he didn't deny it. It had been Mr Seth at the kitchen window flapping those puppet moth wings.
"I've been waiting for months for you to wake up to yourself. All this time squandered, moping up in your room, feeling sorry for yourself. Avoiding life by playing silly games and reading childish books. Worrying about what to wear, and who to impress. Crying yourself to sleep. This paper job is the first constructive thing you've done since you got here, and even it's still more about generating compliments for you than actually helping your mother."
"Not true," I said, weakly.
"At my most diplomatic," said Mr Seth, "I'm as subtle as a hammer in the face. But you didn't recognise any of the signs I planted. I shouldn't have to dance at your window in the dead of winter like some little match girl for you to wake up to yourself and look around. Your father would be disgusted at how self-centred you've become!"
Speechless and unbearably ashamed, I struggled to think of a retort.
"You're not alone, lad," he said, less harshly. "We all underestimated how bad things were getting. But we don't have much time. Our enemies are everywhere. Their plans for Quakehaven are advanced."
"The Barker Bandits?" I asked, dimly. "Are they coming back?"
"Those pipsqueaks!" snorted Mr Seth. "No Paddy, it's VERY unlikely to be those amateurs. It would take a mass resurrection to start with."
A bird screeched overhead, and the sun disappeared. Mr Seth pulled back from the door. "Paddy: This isn't the place for explanations. The skies have eyes."
"So do potatoes," I said. It was one of Dad's lame jokes. 'Get it?' he'd say and expect a standing ovation, even the second - or three-hundredth - time he told it!
"Just my luck,” said Mr Seth. “Another comedian in the family! Forget the stand up act, get off your buttocks and explore your surrounds - start with the trunk in your Mum's room. See what you see."
"I'm leaving," I said, smarting from the old man's criticism. But my heart was pounding and I was more than intrigued.
"We need to talk," said Mr Seth. "Come tonight. I'll cook ribs and chips. Things boys like, from memory."
"You're a stranger," I said, automatically. "I am not coming into your house without Mum or Aunt Bea."
"Sensible boy," said Mr Seth. "Though let's leave the sisters out of it for now. The library, then. Is that public enough for you?" He didn't wait for a response. "Tomorrow at four. Be on time."
I said nothing, but nodded quickly and turned to leave. Like his Winking Wings, there was something about the old man's demeanour - his plain talking for a start - that made me want to trust him. There were probably hundreds of axe murder victims who'd fallen for the same trick!
"And Paddy," said Mr Seth.
"Yeah," I said, wiping unbidden tears from my ruddy cheeks.
The old man pushed five ten dollar notes through the mail slot: $50. I stooped down and took three. Then I walked over and retrieved Mr Tangen's walkie talkie. The Viking's voice bellow-twittered my name over and over from tinny speakers.
"Good boy," said the old man, as the remaining two notes were swallowed back under the door. "There's hope for us all yet."