The Butt by Will Self

Author:Will Self
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary, Azizex666
ISBN: 9781596916388
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2009-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

10

The motel was a blockhouse of blue-grey cinder-blocks with a corrugated-iron roof. It looked like a latrine built by intelligent horses. Each of the stall doors was equipped with a coin-operated lock, into which the ‘guest’ was obliged to feed twenty dollar-pieces in order to obtain his key. There were no staff in evidence.

Tom, having left Prentice at the wheel of the car with strict instructions to pull forward if the line moved – ‘No matter what your degree of fucking astande is’ – now worked his way back along the scores of stalled vehicles, gathering the required change as he went.

Most of the drivers were indifferent to his plea. They sat in their hot boxes, oblivious to the flies dancing on their faces, and listening – Anglos, Tugganarong and natives alike – to the radio commentary on the same interminable sports fixture that Prentice was obsessed by.

As he moved from fan to fan, Tom gathered that this was being played at the Capital City Oval, between the national side and a team from Prentice’s homeland. The commentators spewed the usual trivia, but Tom did learn – with considerable pleasure – that Prentice’s team were losing by many points.

This explained the sulky expression on his face when Tom eventually rejoined him. Tom dumped the forty bucks’ worth of coin into his cupped hands.

‘Go along to the motel and check us in,’ he ordered. ‘You can at least do that, can’t you?’

Prentice stubbed his cigarette out in the car ashtray with unnecessary violence. ‘Only so long as I don’t have to carry anything, Brodzinski.’

‘Anything?’

‘Anything.’ Then Prentice tried to be emollient; it didn’t suit him. ‘Look, y’know I don’t hold with this bing-bong rubbish, but I feel, well, forced to obey it. And . . .’ He turned in his seat, eyes flicking to the boxes of medical supplies. ‘Well, if I don’t get this stuff to the Tontines, things could go very badly for me.’

It was the first time Prentice had referred directly to his own crime. Tom again felt the urge arise to force the foul man to reveal exactly what he had done. He pictured a summary execution out in the desert sunset: Prentice kneeling beside a shallow grave he had, in a break with taboo, dug himself. His face was a study in contrition; ‘Goodbye, old chap,’ he was saying. ‘Sorry for any inconvenience I may’ve caused you . . .’

‘Whatever.’ Tom snapped back to the present. ‘I’ll wait here; if we don’t fill up with gas now, things will go badly for both of us.’

The sun swelled, grew darker, its ripe bulk squashed against the horizon. The stony bled, so unlovely in full daylight, transited rapidly through a bewildering succession of poignant shades: roseate red, early-spring violet, silvery-grey – until night empurpled the gigantic mesas in the far distance, and bunches of stars dangled down from the empyrean.

The gas line had barely moved.

Prentice’s game had long since been abandoned for the night, and the radio station had ceased transmission soon afterwards.

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