puzzled look on his face, something like a panther, I realise just now, making way for a donkey.
Mum appears behind me at the window.
‘Go back to the room, Fran,’ Dad says quietly.
‘Fran?’ Teddy shouts. ‘Fran? Is that what he used to call ya, Frankie? You think you might shack back up with this loon?’
The man in the grey coat has now moved to the two steps that lead to our small front concrete porch. He sits down and studies the scene, a thoughtful forefinger over his lips.
Mum squeezes between me and August and leans out the window.
‘We’re done, Teddy,’ Mum says. ‘No more. I’m not coming back again. Never again, Teddy. We’re done.’
‘Nup, nup, nup,’ Teddy says. ‘We’re not done till I say we’re fuckin’ done.’
I grip my Gray-Nicolls harder. ‘She said fuck off, Teddy Bear, are you deaf?’
Teddy smiles. ‘Eli Bell, bein’ the big man for his mummy,’ he says. ‘But I know your knees are shaking, you little cunt. I know you’ll piss your pants if you have to stand at that window any longer.’
I have to hand it to him, his insights are spot on. I’ve never wanted to piss so bad and I’ve never wanted more to be wrapped up in a warm blanket slurping Mum’s chicken soup while watching Family Ties.
‘You come near her I’ll stab your fuckin’ eyes out,’ I say through clenched teeth.
Teddy looks at his goons. They nod at him.
‘All right, Frankie,’ he says. ‘You don’t want to come out, I guess we better come get ya.’ Teddy and his thug friends march towards the steps of the front porch.
That’s when the man in the grey coat stands. That’s when I realise how broad the man in the grey coat’s shoulders are, how much the grey coat hugs the muscular arms of the man in the grey coat. His gift stays sitting on the first step to the porch.
‘The lady said you’re done,’ says the man in the grey coat. ‘And the boy said fuck off.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Teddy spits.
The man in the grey coat shrugs.
‘If you don’t know me then you don’t want to know me,’ the man says.
I’m starting to love this man like I love Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider.
The two men stare at each other.
‘Go home, mate,’ the man in the grey coat reasons. ‘The lady said you’re done.’
Teddy shakes his head, laughing, turns back to his two goons, who are gripping their baseball bats, spoiling for action, speed-thirsting for water and blood. As Teddy turns back he sucker swings his aluminium baseball bat hard and fast at the head of the stranger on our porch steps and the stranger ducks like a boxer, not taking his eyes off the threat, and he drives his clenched left fist hard into Teddy’s fatty right ribcage and he pushes up from his feet beneath Teddy, transferring the power in his calves and his thighs and his pelvis into the fury of his right fist that uppercuts the bottom of Teddy’s chin. Teddy wobbles on his feet in a bash haze and he finds his focus just in time to see the stranger’s forehead butting into the tip of his nose, making his nose bones snap, crackle and pop in an abstract splatter painting of human blood. I know this man now for what he is. A prison animal. A freed prison animal. The panther. The lion. I cry tears of madman happiness when I see Teddy’s mangled face lying unconscious on the ground and a name reaches my dry lips.
‘Alex,’ I whisper.
Teddy’s goons reluctantly move closer but they’re stopped immediately in their tracks by the black handgun the stranger whips from behind his waist belt.
‘Back up,’ the stranger says. He points his gun at the head of the closest goon.
‘You,’ he says. ‘Driver. I got your licence plate number so I got you now, do you understand?’
The van driver nods, dumbstruck and frightened.
‘You drag this fat piece of shit back to the hole he crawled out of,’ the stranger says. ‘When he wakes up you be sure to tell him Alexander Bermudez and two hundred and thirty-five Queensland chapter members of the Rebels say he’s done with Frankie Bell. You follow?’
The van driver nods. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bermudez,’ he stutters. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Alex looks across at Mum, watching the surreal scene from the window.
‘You still got some things of yours at his place that you need?’ he asks Mum.
Mum nods. Alex nods knowingly, looks back at the driver