The Glass Kingdom Read online

  PRAISE FOR CHRIS FLYNN’S DEBUT NOVEL

  A Tiger in Eden

  ‘If ever Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) and Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) had a love child, then A Tiger in Eden would be the result…Hilarious and wholly surprising.’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘Excellent…A voice that is blue-collar, profane, naïve and funny.’ Saturday Age

  ‘Filthy, smart and unconventional.’ Claire Bidwell Smith

  ‘Frequently very funny…A quick and engaging read, with an oddly tender streak.’ Australian Book Review

  ‘Hilarious and confronting.’ Nick Earls

  ‘Terrific.’ Susan Johnson, Australian

  ‘A joy to read.’ Adam Levin

  ‘The business: brutal, funny and surprisingly uplifting.’ James Bradley

  ‘Often poignant…a cracking first novel.’ mX

  ‘Involving…Likeable, even loveable.’ Big Issue

  ‘Not for the faint-hearted, but unmissable.’Courier Mail

  ‘Destined for immediate cult status.’ Sunday Territorian

  Chris Flynn is the author of A Tiger in Eden (2012), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize. He edited ‘Terra Australis: Four Stories from Aboriginal Australian Writers’ in McSweeney’s 41, and his writing has appeared in Griffith Review, Meanjin, Paris Review Daily, Monster Children, Smith Journal, Age, Australian, Big Issue and many other publications.

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © Chris Flynn 2014

  The moral right of Chris Flynn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in 2014 by The Text Publishing Company

  Cover art and design by WH Chong

  Page design by Text

  Typeset by J & M Typesetting

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Author: Flynn, Chris, author.

  Title: The glass kingdom / by Chris Flynn.

  ISBN: 9781922147882 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781922148889 (ebook)

  Subjects: Carnivals—Fiction.

  Dewey Number: A823.4

  This project has been assisted by Arts Victoria.

  It’s not like it’s impossible to win a prize. It’s just hard. There’s a certain technique to beating the game. All you have to do is land three balls in the same circle. The first one’s a bit of a shit, true dat, as Mikey would say. Nine times out of ten the throw bounces back out. That’s because there’s half a tennis ball glued to the rear of the board. But if you float it in there real slow and soft, it’ll rattle around some and stay put. Then you have to avoid hitting it with your second and third throws. Most people figure it out after a dozen balls or so. By then they’ve spent ten bucks and if they win a plush wallaby, well, I don’t give a shit. Money in the bank for me.

  About ten per cent of the time the mark can’t work out what he’s doing wrong. He (it’s always a him, and they always look the same) keeps throwing exactly the same way, not altering his action even though he’s not winning. To avoid trouble I usually throw my leg over the counter and step outside to demonstrate. Most times I can tell they’re intimidated that I’m suddenly right there beside them. It’s all very well when the freaks are on one side of the counter and you’re on the other, but not when I’m grabbing you firmly by the wrist and showing you what you’re doing wrong.

  The burns on my throat prickle every time. I can feel their eyes crawling over me. I know what they’re thinking. I know what they’ll whisper to each other as they walk down sideshow alley after. Holy fuck, did ya see that guy’s neck?

  I probably should’ve stepped in earlier but watching Mikey deal with this guy was a lesson in how to irritate someone.

  ‘Yo, it’s all in the wrist, dawg.’ Mikey sniffed and winked at the mark’s girlfriend, who snorted. ‘Come on, come on, just stick ’em in there, it’s easy, just roll those balls in there real smooth like y’all is teabaggin’ your little lady here.’

  The guy watched with mounting fury as Mikey performed a grinding motion with his hips, eyes closed, biting his lower lip.

  ‘Do you fucken mind?’

  ‘What? Oh sorry, bro, my bad.’ Mikey leaned against the counter, resuming his bored stance. ‘Go ahead, white bread, let’s get this over with.’

  I knew the mark was about to snap. I’d seen it happen a hundred times before. He lined up his shot carefully, concentrating to make sure it went in. He knew what he had to do.

  As his arm went back Mikey muttered something I didn’t quite catch, but I’m pretty sure I heard the word ‘pussy’.

  The guy threw the ball at Mikey instead. It whacked him hard on the cheek. That’s gonna leave a mark, I thought. Mikey was shouting, ‘What the fuck, man?’ when the guy grabbed a handful of his Dockers shirt and dragged him over the counter.

  I let him get a few digs in before I stood up from my chair at the back of the stall and unlocked the door. When I stepped outside the guy had Mikey down on the ground and was trying to kick him. Mikey was flailing around madly and scrabbling at the guy’s shins, not a bad technique if you’re down. Best thing to do, if you can, is to lock your assailant’s leg in the crook of your arm and roll over. He’ll fall hard and you can drive an elbow into his chest or face if you keep rolling. Then you’re up and he’s down.

  Mikey didn’t have enough sense for that, or enough weight. He’s such a skinny little fucker, all veins and bones, Freo shirt about five sizes too big for him.

  The mark’s girlfriend clocked me first. She went a little pale at the sight of me, her eyes flitting, just like everyone’s do the first time, to the spider web of scar tissue snaking up over my throat and chin.

  ‘Uh, Darren…’ she said, before stepping back out of the way. This was obviously not the first time little Dazza had lost his temper.

  ‘What?’ he said, then looked around and saw me. ‘Oh.’

  His hands went up immediately in the universal gesture of surrender. Smarter than he looked, our Darren. Mikey used the break in hostilities to wrap himself around the guy’s legs.

  ‘I’ve got him, Ben, I’ve got him. Lay into him, mate!’

  I could have king hit the bastard but what would be the point? We’d end up calling an ambulance and then the cops would come round, and the Kingdom would have to move on in the morning and everyone else on the show would be on my back for making their lives more difficult. Besides, I didn’t want anyone sniffing around Target Ball, so I just poked the cunt hard in the forehead four times with my index finger.

  ‘No…hitting…the staff…Darren.’

  He nodded, mumbling an apology. I stretched an arm across the counter, took a plush wallaby down from the prize shelf and handed it to his girl. She accepted it with an arched eyebrow.

  ‘You can let go now, Mikey.’

  As he scrabbled to his feet, I flashed a grin at the departing couple. ‘Thanks for playing, folks.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mikey called after them as they were swallowed by the evening crowd, ‘and if I see you here again it’ll be blam blam, fucken glockjaw for you, a’ight?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re saying half the time, Mikey.’

  ‘That’s ’cos I’m straight up gangsta, yo. Nice double te
am on that hick, man. He stepped the fuck off when he saw you coming at him and no mistake.’

  ‘Get back in the stall.’

  He brushed himself down and vaulted the counter, pumped from the altercation. It wasn’t great for business but I needed him there to deal with the customers out front while I tended to my own clientele. Anyways, a kid like Mikey gets used to being roughed up by those he’s pissed off.

  I locked the door to the stall and flopped back into my chair.

  ‘Hey, I’ve been working on some flow if you wanna hear it.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘A’ight—this one’s a real slow beat, like whom whom whom, then the drums come in like this: tch tch tch-tch-tch tch. You getting it?’

  He swayed back and forth, making geometric shapes in the air with his hands, rocking to a beat only he could hear.

  Mekong Delta from upriver now is on the mic

  Gonna tell you a story, may not be what you like

  I’m a Westside emcee, don’t know shit about rap

  Won’t blow your mind with rhymes but I’ll do ya

  kneecaps

  All I want s’nuff cheese to pay my rent

  Don’t wanna get rich or die tryin’ like Fitty Cent

  That lifestyle’s gotta give a man a nervous tic

  Being known as the Miley Cyrus of rap music

  He finished with a flourish, fingers splayed across his chest in some sort of ridiculous gang sign.

  ‘Honestly, I dunno what to say. You calling yourself Mekong Delta now? I thought your rap name was Q-Ball or something.’

  ‘Yeah, that wasn’t working for me so I changed it. My cuz married a Vietnamese guy last year and he’s cool so I thought, you know, Mikey Dempster, Mekong Delta, the MD thing, that’d be slick as.’

  ‘You trying to start a beef with Fifty Cent? He’s not going to like being compared to Miley Cyrus.’

  ‘I reckon it’s good publicity, you know? Maybe he’ll diss me in one of his tracks and we’ll be even. We’ll make up at the Grammys or whatever.’

  ‘Didn’t that guy get shot nine times? I don’t think you want to be messing with him.’

  ‘S’all good, bro.’

  That was Mikey’s answer to pretty much everything. It’s all good. He had no idea. None of the young guys do in these small towns. I see them everywhere the Kingdom goes, baggy jeans slung low, footy or basketball shirts, caps too big for their pointy little heads. They strut sideshow alley like they’re dying for a minor confrontation, for some chance to prove themselves as badass motherfuckers, their jargon lifted straight out of bad commercial American rap.

  What sort of life is that to aspire to? Having to carry a weapon to defend yourself is no joke. I did it for long enough. Sometimes I reach for it still and then remember I’m just in fucken Wagga Wagga surrounded by young dickheads like Mikey parading around pretending to be gangsters.

  It’s all good. Nah, it’s not, mate. It’s not all good. You’ll find that out soon enough.

  To be fair, Mikey wasn’t as bad as some, and a damn sight better than most of the shit-kicker losers that hung around the show in those country towns. He at least got off his arse and hit the road looking for work and a little adventure.

  He certainly had no shortage of energy. It tired most people out but I didn’t mind his constant patter. It pulled in the punters and that was good for me. If I didn’t know better I’d have said he was a tweaker but I hadn’t seen any of the telltale signs. The crew tolerated him, the way they did with most of the temp hires. No one went out of their way to befriend him. You had to be on the show a couple of seasons before anyone made that kind of effort.

  Our ragtag convoy had pulled in to a rest stop in nowheresville South Australia a few weeks back and there he was, sitting on his tattered backpack by the kerb outside Hungry Jack’s, talking to himself while grinning like a loon and puffing on a rollie. I dropped Steph off and chucked a uey so I could drive up beside him.

  I lowered the window and said, ‘Hey, mate, you need a ride?’

  It took him a few seconds to notice me. His hands were trembling. He had cuts on his face and the beginnings of a shiner. Someone had worked him over pretty good.

  ‘You with the circus?’ he asked.

  He was in the back seat when Steph returned with the burgers. I had to ask her to go back in and get something for him. The kid was hungry, dirty and desperate—just what I was looking for.

  We were two hands down after a bad night in Mount Gambier when Diego had got himself arrested and Karen, the attendant on the Cyclone, had declared her undying love for some local boy out of the blue. Even though she’d only been out with him three times she said she was going to stay and be the mother of his child. She hadn’t even missed her period yet (I found this out later from Steph) but claimed she just felt pregnant. She was better off than Diego, at any rate. He had fake ID and no work visa so he was probably lounging in a detention centre somewhere in the middle of the fucken desert by now.

  I’d worked the Kingdom long enough to know that’s how things went. I’d seen my fair share of weary people by the side of the road and behind the counter in diners and out the back of bars. They were all looking for a way out of their situation. There was romance in running off with a travelling carnival, no doubting that, but whatever illusions these people held were soon shattered by long hours on the road and constant abuse from the inevitably unsatisfied public.

  Most of them didn’t last a season, eloping during the night with some newfound lover promising richer horizons, or succumbing to old habits—stealing or drinking or shooting up on their breaks. Some wound up in prison. Families or bad debts caught up with others. A few got religion and were politely asked to move on when their preaching became too much for the rest of us to bear. Once in a while someone got mangled by a ride thanks to a moment’s inattention, or knifed between the ribs by some aggrieved local.

  Target Ball lay at the unpopular end of sideshow alley, far from the glittering lights of the big rides. I needed some manic kid to run the stall for me while I tended to business, and Mikey seemed like the sort of young fella I could just about put up with for the summer. I supposed he’d flit on out of there eventually, like all the rest. He took a shine to me straightaway, and I suppose I liked him well enough at first too.

  He wasn’t really that much younger than me, at least not in years. He reminded me of guys I served with, except they toted real weapons to back up their gangster talk. Just as well nine mils weren’t available to young blokes in Australia. There’d be no men aged fourteen to thirty left standing. The dickheads would all shoot each other.

  ‘What’s these lyrics for?’ I asked Mikey. ‘The same song you were working on back in South Australia?’

  ‘Which one was that?’ He had this way of blinking really fast when he was thinking about something. It made him look like he was having a seizure.

  I thought back to those frantic first few hours in the car after we picked him up, when he wouldn’t shut up. ‘I don’t know, some shit about golf?’

  Mikey closed his eyes tight and sucked his bottom lip in under his top front teeth, which were amazingly still intact, no mean feat for a mouthy kid like him.

  Take out ya service firearm, point it at my head

  You a mean muthafucka like Stallone as Judge Dredd

  ’Cept that ain’t Cristal, fool, that’s jus’ sparklin’

  wine

  The golf course is the closest you ever been to a nine.

  I clicked my fingers and nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s the one. This the same song?’

  ‘Look, for a start they’re not really what you’d call songs, a’ight? They’s tracks, and a lyricalist like me, you just gotta keep on coming up with fresh rhymes until you gots enough to make a mixtape.’

  ‘A tape? No one listens to tapes anymore, do they?’

  ‘Nah, man, it’s just a figure of speech. A mixtape’s like a, like a digital playlist, y’know, a mix of tracks that
an artist puts together so’s producers can get an idea of their style and what have you. All you needs is some sick beats and mad skills on Garage Band and you’re pretty much set. Plus a quality mic, obv.’

  ‘Obv. And a shitload of lyrics.’

  ‘Now you’re feelin’ me. That’s why I’m out here, on the road with you and all the other freaks in the motherfuckin’ Kingdom. No offence.’

  ‘None taken. I seem to remember being the one who hired you.’

  ‘Gots to earn me some chedda so’s I can bankroll my rise to power. An’ draw some inspiration from all the weird shit that goes on round here.’

  ‘Every battle needs a stratagem.’

  ‘A whatagem?’

  ‘It’s from The Art of War. Sun Tzu.’

  ‘Wait, was he in the Wu Tang Clan?’

  ‘Yeah, not quite. It’s an old book a lot of soldiers read.’

  ‘Oh, righto. Gives you advice on tactics and shit?’

  ‘Something like that. Anyway, you’re not earning any chedda standing round talking to me while all these punters are walking right on past the stall. Let’s see you put those lyrical skills to good use and make us both some cash money.’

  ‘I got your six, boss man. Stand back and marvel as I explain the rules of engagement to these Whisky Tango motherfuckers.’

  His propensity for mixing the military jargon he’d heard from me in with his hippity-hop nonsense was unsettling, but he told me lots of rappers did it. I took his word for it. Some of the lingo he used, though…I asked him one time how a grommet from Freo like him ever learned the word ‘erudite’, after he dropped it in one of his verses. I didn’t even know what it meant. His explanation was that despite hip-hop’s roots in the ghetto (I laughed at that) MCs often had excellent vocabularies, as they were always listening out for interesting words to make rhymes. They didn’t necessarily have to understand what they meant, or use them in the correct context.

  ‘Syntactical assimilation, dawg,’ he’d said. ‘Hip-hop makes you smarter! It’s an education from the streets, you feel me?’

  I didn’t, not really, but I let it slide, half suspecting he was better educated than he was letting on.