The Legend of Winstone Blackhat Read Online Free

know? Push a button and you get a different colour. Bic-click. You know?
    Fuck off you cunt. In the kitchen, Bic slammed the fridge door. How about you tell them how you got your name.
    Suit yourself mate, said Grunt, but not very loud, and he picked up his smokes and his keys and knocked back his beer and stood up. You kids want to go for a drive?
    Shotgun, Bodun said, and gave Winstone a dead arm.
    Grunt backed out and fishtailed into the shingle road and they drove up past the McCutcheons’ place and turned left along Quarry Road and they passed the old transport yard and the closed-down service station and the Ford’s exhaust burbled low and nobody asked where Grunt was going.
    Who called him that? Bodun said.
    Bic? Grunt shrugged. Everybody did.
    When did they? said Winstone.
    We started in high school I spose.
    Who did it first? Bodun wanted to know.
    Shit I dunno. Some teacher I think. Yeah that’s right – this real old-school cunt we had for PE.
Bic-click,
he’d say,
what colour are you today?
How about we try a different button?
Then we all started doing it and it stuck.
    What did he do? Winstone asked.
    He was stoked about it. Thought it was really cool. He used to dare people.
You make me red, I’ll make you black and blue.
He went round at interval grabbing Third Form boys, making them pick a colour.
What’ll it be, turd, red black blue or green?
    There was silence while they thought about this. Bodun twisted his neck to look at Winstone and Marlene in the back. He looked excited. What was green?
    Green was the rubbish bins. He’d stand the turd up in one of the cans and they weren’t allowed to get out till after the bell rung. Grunt laughed. Shit man. That was their best option.
    Bodun laughed too. He picked Grunt’s packet of tailor-mades up off the dash and turned it around and studied the photograph of a shrivelled heart on the front.
    Can I have one?
    No. Shit. How old are you?
    Nearly thirteen.
    You smoked one before?
    Shit yeah. Heaps.
    Yeah?
    Yeah. Didn’t you smoke when you were my age?
    Shit. Well I spose one more won’t kill you.
    Winstone looked across at Marlene. She had her back to him, watching the side of the road go by, kneeling up among the empty cigarette packets and soft drink bottles and RTD shots and used serviettes and screwed-up burger wrappers on Grunt’s back seat. She hadn’t put on her shoes or brushed her hair and the soles of her ankle socks were black and the back of her head looked like a whole family of rats had made a nest in there and gone to sleep with their long tails hanging down all curled together and it smelled a bit that way too. Marlene hadn’t said a word since they got in the car but Winstone knew she was listening.
    What was he called before? he asked Grunt. What did you call him before he was Bic?
    Shit. I forget. Grunt laughed. No wait. I got it. Brian.
    Brian, Winstone thought, through the bedroom wall that night. Your name is Brian. It helped a bit, but not as much he’d expected.
     
    There was a lot in what people called you.
    Winston. What a very illustrious name, said Mrs Clarke, the ancient relieving teacher, as she wrote it up on the board.
    It’s got an e on the end, said Emma Lynch.
    No, said Mrs Clarke. It hasn’t.
    Why did you call me that? Winstone asked his mother,when they went to visit her in Christchurch.
    Shit babe I dunno. I just liked the sound of it I guess. She leaned across the table and put both hands over his. Strong, you know. Rock-hard. Like concrete.
    Then she sat back. I got to go now babe. Time’s up. You take care of yourself eh. All of you. You boys look after your sister. And the corrections officer came and opened the door and she went back to her cell.
    Aunty Ruth drove them back to her friend’s flat a different way past the gravel pits and the diggers and hard-sided trucks mean-faced as Optimus Prime in a storm-trooper suit and
Winstone
was written all over everything and Marlene pointed and held his hand and