Hoi Polloi Read Online Free PDF Page B

otherwise,” she says in a hushed shout.
    Jail? How could Winks ever go to jail? The denim hori was a hori. Horis go to jail. Pakehas don’t go to jail. Winks has his jobs to do in the morning, he’s a busy man. He’s my father and can’t be taken away. But what about Mr Chipper-field? He wasn’t a hori and he worked at the bus company and they still took him away. If horis are just animals, I’ve been on farms where there are animals and the sheep have their heads cut off and insides pulled out and no police put anyone in jail. Horis are not like animals at all in that case. Why all along have I been told they were when they weren’t, they were men all along. The denim hori was a man and now Winks is going to jail because of me standing at the bend in the stairs and now a man, not an animal, but a man, is dead.
    They’re still whispering. Heels is saying again to get the hori off the premises, out into a side gutter. It will look as if he and his gang friends blued. She’ll help Winks drag him, though she can’t stand the thought of touching the hori or his dirty clothes so she’ll wear gloves.
    I scurry to my bedroom before their door opens. I wait till I hear them leave the apartment, then I follow, not directly to the fire-escape via the kitchen which is the way they’re going, they’d see me, but down the staff steps which end at the door with mesh on it that leads onto Tui Street. I unsnib the latch, hop out onto the cold footpath and crash the heavy door closed behind me. There are denim horis and their old cars and motorbikes everywhere. Horis drinking from flagons, the women too, sitting on car bonnets, smoking, or in the gutter or half-leaning half-lying with their backs against the hotel wall for a pillow. They kiss with the women and put their hands into their clothes and the women do the same to them. The air stinks of stale beer, cigarette smoke and petrol fumes, and of denim with BO soaked into it.
    I sprint through it all, jumping over the stretched legs and broken glass, shutting out the hoots of those who catch sight of me. One hori tries to grab my ankle but misses and rolls on his side drunk and laughing while the fat woman with him shouts for him to fucking-well leave me alone. She herself lets out a chesty laugh then a wet cough. I run up the hotel’s liquor store driveway to the courtyard where the fire-escape slopes overhead to the ground.
    Why are Heels and Winks standing there staring at the concrete at the foot of the fire-escape? Where’s the denim hori? Winks makes small chuckling sounds as he speaks. “He was here,” he says. “Right here. Exactly this spot.”
    Heels puts her hands, which are gloved in black evening gloves to the elbow, on her hips as if waiting to do a chore. “He’s up and gone. That’s what it must be. A lot of fuss and worry for nothing.”
    What thick skulls those horis have, Winks marvels. Then he says, “What if one of his mates dragged him away dead?”
    Heels lets out a snorting sound, almost a laugh. “Who cares? They’ve done our job for us in that case.”
    Winks says it would be a weight off his mind to know the hori was actually still alive, but Heels says, “He’s off our hands, isn’t he? That’s the main thing, isn’t it?” She peels her evening gloves from her arms.
    In the darkness, over there by the beer-crate pen, a long loud sigh. Another sigh, louder, longer. The denim hori staggers into the moon and star light, shaking his cocko dry though lengths of pee still flow out and land on his boots.
    “Him!” I shout, pointing and running towards him, elated. I turn to see how relieved Wink must be. Yes, he’s smiling and pointing too. But the smile lasts only a second. He orders the hori to “put that thing away.” Heels is grimacing. She holds her gloves up to shield her eyes. The denim hori recognises me, grins and makes a stabbing motion as if holding a knife. “Little boss.”
    “Put that thing away or I’ll belt you