What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? Read Online Free Page B

copied words and copied facial expression with conviction. Not with a tough cunt down there having to be taken out by serious means as no utha way’d work, that was the Hawk sergeant- at-arms down there and he was in here by prison authority mistake for sure, even they wouldn’t do such a thing deliberately as to send the mortal enemy into the Brown’s wing, just as they wouldn’t deliberately do it to a Brown. They were arseholes, but they weren’t cunts. But seein’ he was here, Apeman — blank, cos he was so mean and tough and with total consuming hatred for the Browns he’d changed his surname by deed poll to that word, starting with B you weren’t even allowed to think it, though that of course was impossible cos the world, existence, was full of references to that word and so were a man’s natural thoughts since he woke up middle of the celled nights seeing and thinking — blank, meaning black — thoughts, and the night was that colour and so was some of his own gang member mates, their skin colour, and so was Michael Jordan and mosta that basketball team and so was Mike Tyson himself ( and he’s just out of jail and all their singing heroes) and so … Mulla stepped over and looked down below again, but mainly to get out of Horse’s too-knowing eye stare … so was Apeman with the changed surname that colour and tauntingly changed surname. And if Ape happened to glance up in this instant he’d be carving Mulla Rota’s face into his bl — his dark dark heart and his even darker (ebony) mind. So Mulla didn’t look down for long, just long enough to dig even deeper within himself so he could say to Jimmy when he stepped back alongside him, with mop in hand, If tha’s what’s, uh, required.
    Why’d you say, uh? Jimmy accusing now. Huh? Why’d you say, uh? He knew why Mulla said uh and so did Mulla but fucked if Mulla was gonna own up to that, fucked if he was. (I volunteered didn’t I? What does he want?) Jimmy, I gotta blade in my mattress, nice ’n’ sharp for Ape’s arse, that what you want, what you’re aksing?
    In the eternity of Jimmy looking at him with those burning, always bloodshot eyes from too much dope (making him permanently paranoid, or giggling at nothing, or thinking his dancing along the landing with his mop like a mike was anything like the Negroes — a word they agreed was alright since virtually all of theirmusic, their sounds, was by Negro artists — he saw on the teevee, let alone sing like one of ’em) it seemed to Mulla his own life flashed before his mind’s eye, jus’ like he’d heard it did people who thought they were going to die. Not that there was much life to flash by, not with sixteen inside and that wasn’t counting the borstal and the boys’ home, add anutha three for that, it was childhood which he remembered only in seemingly unconnected glimpses and smells — stenches, more like it — of pain unbearable, of this deep missing, this deep aching inside, like a fucken dirty big hole inim, like a fucken big truck up and punched a hole through him, which he’d stuffed with stolen stuff from houses and properties he broke into from a young age, when the hurting registered, when he looked down at himself and saw the hole, and masturbated several times a day every day of his damn(ed) life, and laughed with sick irony at a hole trying to be filled with thoughts of filling a hole, oh how he laughed sickly inside at that. And when they threw him into a boys’ home, a Children’s Court did, he knew even then it was the start of his life as he would ever know it, he knew this more than anything he’d known in his entire life, that his would be one of slamming and locked doors. And uthas jus’ like him. Jus’ like him. (I’m in here, aren’t I?)
    Sharp, you said? Yeah, man, sharp. When Mulla really wanted to scream at the top of his voice that it wasn’t sharp it was blunter than a boxer’s broken nose, it wouldn’t cut nothing, not even budda. But he