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Repairs
(published in Cork Literary Review, December 2001)
'Where's my car, Sam?'
Sam slipped out from under some rusting heap and big-smiled me as he lay on his back in the greasy yard. He took the lollipop from his mouth, clicked his fingers like a lazy alligator catching flies.
'Where's my car, Sam? You said five days, it's been three weeks.'
In fact it was a yard of rusting heaps, most kept on the road with Sellotape, filler, sawdust and bribes to the MOT man.
Sam threw the lollipop stick into the corner of the yard.
'Had a real bad day?' he asked.
Strewn round the yard, big ends, twisted exhausts, tortured camshafts and treadless tyres like massive spots on a face.
'I need the car, Sam. Need it badly. I'm going away. Just get on with it, can't you!'
A small group of Sam's friends were sitting in a once powder-blue '78 Cadillac convertible that Sam had bought for 'restoration', though by now it looked well beyond any known form of kiss-of-life.
Two of them lounged in the back of the once white-leather bench seat. The older of the two, with long dreadlocks and a Rasta band round his head, stared at me as his tongue slowly licked tobacco from his lips.
Don't look at me like that, mate, I thought, it's Sam you should be eyeballing, he never does anything, he just....
Oh bugger all this. I was hit by the misery of the early-autumn late-afternoon, this gory strewn-with-death vehicular world. My life hit me. Hackney hit me.
'You had a real bad day,' Sam said. 'I see that.'
I sighed. Sam yawned, smiled again, picked up a spanner and slid beneath the C reg rust-red XJ6 and banged on the sump.
'I need my bloody car Sam!'
King Rasta in the back of the Cadillac scratched his chin, then lent over the front seat, rummaged with his long fingers in the wide glove compartment and took out a perfectly rolled torpedo-shaped joint.
He lay back, as grand as an African king, his white cowboy boots dangling over the front seat. Then he lit up and blew a perfume-cloud of smoke in my direction. The two other guys, younger and with shorter dreadlocks, wound themselves into coils of laughter.
The one in the driving-seat twiddled the wheel with his left hand. Then he fished under the seat, pressed a button and Bob Marley's 'Rasta Man Vibrations' echoed up the curved windscreen of the Cadillac.
'Good smell' I said.
'Too strong for honkies, man. Make 'em slip down holes' said the king.
Sam came up for air from under the XJ6 and sat carefully against the rear door.
'Give 'im a blow, Daniel. Get dis honky off my back!'
Daniel looked in the opposite direction.
'Daniel! Give me and im a big break.'
Daniel shook his Rasta locks slowly like a lion's mane.
'You a lucky man me in such good humour, Mr Sam, troubled as me be by all de cares of Babylon.'
He tapped his minion in the driving seat on the shoulder. The minion then pulled out four torpedo-shaped joints from the glove-compartment and arranged them for inspection on the palm of his hand.
The king selected one and called me over. As I walked across the yard, I just avoided the slicks of oil, and kicked into oblivion a used oil filter.
'Dat de way, Mr lily-white Englishman. You take out aggression on dat filter, not on we poor subjects of de great British Empire.'
His sidekicks whooped. The king lay the single joint on his open palm like a gift from a pharaoh. I took it humbly. The king struck a match for me.
'You light it right, honky. Dis de finest Jamaica grass.'
'Thanks' I said. 'I appreciate this.'
The yard changed colour slowly. The sumps and filters and tyres became exotic fruits on a tropical beach.
'Give a little space to our white brother, Winston,' the king said.
I slipped in the back seat between the king and Winston and my eyes looked up at the now bright blue sky.
'Positive, Positive vibrations.....'
I smiled at the king. He patted me on the shoulder.
'Maybe you a real black man in one lifetime. You ever tink dat, honky?'
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