Warrigal's Way by Warrigal Anderson

Author:Warrigal Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/General
ISBN: 9780702250293
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2009-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

14

I get the fright of my life

A couple of days later, we fronted up to the gate as usual, but although Mick got up, me and Stumpy missed out. So Mick gave Stumpy the car keys and we headed for home.

“Aw, bugger it,” said Stumpy. “Let’s go for a drink up the Royal by the markets. It’s an early opener. What do you reckon?”

“I dunno. I only get in the Plough because Claude turns his head. These buggers might biff me out on my head.”

“Nah, you’ll be right. I’ll buy the beer.” So we fronted in, and nobody paid the slightest attention to us. We spent a couple of hours there, then headed for home. Going through St Kilda Stumpy said, “Let’s drop in to the snake pit at the George.”

The snake pit was a cellar bar and a set of stairs led down from footpath level. It was fairly big—it would hold forty to sixty at a crush—but there were only fifteen to twenty drinking there when we came in from the back car park. The management didn’t like you to come in this way as it involved walking behind the bar, but that didn’t worry us unduly. We got a couple of beers off the barmaid, whose name was Teresa, and started having a yarn about nothing much. She reckoned St Kilda footy team were going to win the premiership and we cried her down with Carlton. We were having a great time, and Stumpy reckoned Teresa was on to me. I wasn’t real experienced with the ladies, but I got to feeling he was right, as she would make a beeline back to us after she’d served a customer. She was anywhere from nineteen to twenty-four, only five foot tall, with a pale complexion, big brown eyes, long dark-brown hair and a nice figure.

There were two well-dressed Italian blokes drinking next to us. They looked like models out of a David Jones window. They were having a ripper old barney, all in Italian. They were so loud we could hardly hear each other. They started to wave their arms about, really getting into it, when one bloke accidentally copped Stumpy, who was a fiery little bugger. He spun around and growled, “Watch where you’re throwing your arms, you Dago bastard.”

He was getting ready to blue, when one of the blokes dipped his hand under his coat and came out with the biggest gun I’d ever seen. I didn’t even stop to think, I took the bar with one bound and headed for the stairs. There wasn’t a sprinter alive who could have beaten me to that car that day. I was first out and I think Teresa beat Stumpy to the top of the stairs by a nose. We didn’t stop until we got to the car, and when we got home Teresa was still with us. She just sort of shifted in with me—told me I needed looking after and she would do it. There was no way she would go back to the snake pit, not even for her pay.

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