Bastards.

He was twenty-eight, possibly going on Bastard. Skinny and lank in his melancholy, he could’ve been a poet or a fisherman. And those hands, jesus those hands, twitching to the beat of black coffee and anti-psychotics and polka-dotted with burns from a cigarette.
Another day in paradise, said he with a wink. I looked up briefly and nodded solemnly. Grey Lynn buzzed about us, the chink-chink from the obese beggar’s ukulele (like a Hawaiian Eskimo!) mixing effortlessly into the eerie hum of the bourgeoisie. Our faux-intellectual stronghold – a cafe, to add to our pretence – elevated us above the mooing crowd and offered unparalleled access to the Human Zoo. A dog walked past. Rommel, the vitiligo-afflicted Rottweiler, waggling his tailless bum in the air, chewing a pig’s ear and daring anyone to ask what Hitler would’ve thought. I think Hitler was a cat person. And what was the point of naming a dog Rommel and giving it a pink, diamante-studded collar? I remembered the owners were lesbians. Must be an ironic statement about patriarchal society, it must be.
He interrupted me: I had a dog you know, beautiful bull-terrier thing, a pig-dog. She had eyes only for me, big brown luscious ones, and her eyelashes, oh (he grabbed his chest with one of those hands) makes one weep to think on’t. My father took me pig hunting, properly and all with a knife and dogs you know. Suzy would bound in front of us, slightly shy, an ineffectual finder, mollified cur I suppose…
We grunted uniformly and were momentarily disengaged. A middle-aged lady had bumped another car in her attempt at a parallel parking, which naturally met with whoops of sarcastic approval from the other trolls of the café. You fucked up! And other witticisms ensued.
He breathed out a nasally Anyway and sucked his cigarette like a lollypop. Anyway, he loved the pig-hunt, my father, big brutish dogs sniffing after swine, ferns and bracken smacking into your dick, all that man shit. Swanni’s and shit, JUMP ON IT MATE CMON GET THE FUCKER. So there’s my girl in the midst of this crap, running up and down the hills with the boys, glimpses of bristle through the gorse, fuckin’ steam rising up off the dogs and all. Would you believe I had a beard? I had a beard.
His cigarette tap-danced on an ashtray. Pinching mine between my teeth, smoke curled into my eye and I squinted at him like a pirate. I had a watery vision of my friend running up and down those exotic West Auckland hills, free amongst the indifferent, vacant flora and chasing dogs alight with the scent of the quarry, adrenaline-stiffened heart and scrabbling legs, ears pumped full of blood and deaf.
So we’re chasing this big bastard thing, the bailer barking madly and the holders close behind. The old man has his knife out, swearing away and heaving his guts out up the hill. He smoked Park Drive without a filter. He was one of those bastards that floats in and out of your life, dispensing his fuckin’ stories and occasionally trying to get me pissed with him. Every so often I’d go and do something with him… you know, fishing, hunting, camping, whatever. Didn’t seem to matter, half the time we just ended up getting pissed with his mates in some shed.
He lit another cigarette.
Inhale.
Oh yeah, that fuckin’ knife.
Exhale.
He used to clean it on the table in his house, big fuckin’ Bowie knife. The handle was dark and worn… pig blood y’know. Wipe it down with a cloth, sharpen it on the leather - he had his routine. I remember Suzy sniffed at it once, Christ, you should’ve seen her jump… the old bastard loved his knife, wouldn’t even let the dog near it. Thought she was after it, I don’t know, but he damn well went off at her. She stayed away from him afterwards… there must’ve been something in his voice made her think that he really would have had her nipples mounted on the wall…
I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t. There was a boyish earnestness in his voice that mixed exquisitely into his usual malaise. It gave me the feeling of being on acid, this urban environment cut by this contradictory figure, I felt jungle around me and snakes in my veins, we were exiled in our tiny corner that knew only the bounds of our intellect and the dry heat of the sidewalk.
We had the pig backed against a sheer bank. It turned and faced the bailers. The holding dogs were lagging behind; they’d misread its intention and were coming fast up the left-flank. This hog is fucking staring right in my eyes.
I leaned forward. The man’s pupils were huge, his acrid, cigarette-and-coffee breath striking my cheeks.
Suzy’s right in front of my right foot, her ears were cocked up and the fur on her back raised up. BAM! The cunt charges, head down bolts towards us. Suzy goes to leap out of the way, the first holder’s reached us and he lunges like a wolf, sinks his teeth into the top of the fuckers’ neck. He’s too fuckin’ late, this big bastard boar’s tusk has gone through her ribcage, she’s fuckin’ impaled on this boar’s head, the old man’s shouting at the dogs to keep away, she’s fuckin’ howling. He rushes in with his knife, slits the pig’s throat, throws his knife away and grabs both sides of her head, scrunches his hands over her ears like he’s about to kiss her on the forehead, then puts his back into a twist. Her neck cracked like a gunshot. I picked her up, he grabbed the pig in a fireman’s lift and we walked out. Didn’t say a fuckin’ word to me. We got to the edge of the bush and he starts to make a fire. He laid the pig down. He grabbed a stick, wrapped the end with cotton from his pack and poured meths over it. He lit the end of it and started burning the bristles from the boar. That stench of burnt hair began to make me feel sick.
I thought I could smell it too, so close to him with my eyes locked onto his. I could see the scene reflected in his pupils.
Not gonna carry her back are ya? No bloody point. The farm’s ages away, he says. He threw Suzy on the fire.
And I could feel it too; I was in the fire with the dead dog and the two men and the dead pig and the barks and woofs of sad and hungry canine friends and the sobs of a man whose eyes I look into now. I could feel it. I looked down.
His cigarette was burning into my hand.