Will Self - The Butt

Prentice fussed about like an old maid. From the pile of trash that had accumulated on the back seat of the SUV he retrieved a square of whitish cotton that he spread on a flat rock. He found the sandwiches Tom had bought during his night-time provisioning and arranged them, together with two bottles of mineral water, on top of the cloth.

Tom said listlessly: ‘Shrimp cocktail or coriander chicken, Prentice? The choice is yours.’

Prentice unsealed the cellophane pouch of the shrimp cocktail sandwich and recoiled from the smell. Then he dutifully commenced chomping.

Tom took his time, feigning picnicking leisure. He raised one of the hot water bottles to his chapped lips, then held it away so he could scrutinize its label. ‘Deep in the desert wastes of the Western Province,’ the copywriter had written, shivering in a smoked-glass fridgidaire in Capital City, ‘Lake Mulgrene stretches for a thousand kilometres across the land, a crystalline expanse of health, purity and hydrolytic balance.

‘Here, the Entreati people make their winter encampments, on the shores of what they call “The Great Mirror of God’s Face”. And, employing technology perfected throughout millennia, they refine and distil the precious fluid you are about to imbibe. They call it entw’yo-na-heemo , “The Tears of Paradise”. We call it, quite simply, Mulgrene Mineral Water — because we know you like it straight.’

Tom laughed sourly and took a swig of the brackish water. Prentice left off his chomping. ‘You ought to watch that, Brodzinski. We’ve only got two or three more litres.’

‘I got,’ Tom said, and took another long, defiant swig. He wiped his sore mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I got, Prentice — you don’t got nothing, feller. You wrong grade of astande, yeah. You ain’t got nothing but fiddling about, fiddling about.’ He sang: ‘Tra-la-la, fi-fi-fiddling about!’

A vacuum opened up inside Prentice’s head, and his features prolapsed into it. ‘What’re you implying?’ he bellowed. ‘What’re you bloody well implying?’ Then, recovering himself, he added, ‘Old chap.’

‘Nothing.’ Tom was appalled by the way he backed down. ‘Nothing at all. Calm down, Prentice. Eat your fucking shrimp sandwich.’

The rest of the repast passed in silence. They sheltered in the sharp shadow beneath the bank of the wadi. Could it, Tom wondered, get any hotter? Unlike tropical Vance, this was a dry heat. He yearned to sweat more freely — but only leaked. He felt his organs boiling in their own salts.

Prentice finished his sandwich. With vulgar fastidiousness he applied a soiled handkerchief to the deep dimples in his neotenous face.

‘There’s one thing I can do,’ he said.

‘Oh, and what’s that?’

‘Fire a gun — Jethro said that would be fine.’

Tom laughed, but Prentice was already up from the rock where he had been sitting and waddling over to the SUV. Tom scooped up the picnic litter and joined him. Together, they took down the rifles, got out the automatic pistol and found the ammunition.

Hefting the naked Galil rifle in his bare arms, Tom felt right and whole. He lifted the warm stock to his cheek: it smelled, suggestively, of oil. He peered into the telescopic sights. Through a notch in the wadi’s bank a patch of bled 500 yards distant sprang into thrilling proximity: a flipper lizard’s neck wattles shook as it panted in silent congress with its own rightness and wholeness. Tom wanted to touch the wattles with his finger. He slowly crooked it, feeling first a solid click, then a firm shove to his shoulder.

‘GEDDAWAAYWITHYOUeeeeeeouuuuu!’ the rifle sang. The lizard was on its back, hind legs bicycling, claws snatching dirt.

‘Excellent shot, old boy!’ Prentice cried in delight. ‘Excellent bloody shot!’

‘Your turn,’ Tom said modestly, and Prentice took up a stance.

If the Galil sang, the handgun roared: a shuddering boom that echoed through the dry river bed. Arms and knees flexing, Prentice rode out the big Browning’s recoil. The mineral-water bottle he had aimed at was obliterated: plastic shreds lay in the Tears of Paradise.

‘Didya see that? Didya? Didya?’ Prentice was cock-a-hoop. He snatched the bush hat from his head and slapped it against his leg. He hoed down on the sandy ground, his boots kicking up little dust devils that the breeze waltzed away.

A whoop sprang unbidden from Tom’s own chapped lips: ‘Woo-hoo! Way to go, Prentice!’

Suddenly, Prentice was serious, the steely automatic aiming at the ground in front of Tom’s boots.

‘Brian,’ he said. ‘Please, Tom, call me Brian.’

‘Uh, OK.’ Tom was inveigled by the informality of their mutual gunfire. ‘Brian it is, then, uh, Brian.’ And he completed the outbreak of peace by taking the pack of fifty Greens from his shirt pocket and handing it to Prentice.

Tom was utterly seduced by firing the Galil: it all came so easily to him. Taking the shells from their cardboard boxes, slotting them into the magazine, fitting the magazine to the breech, lifting the stock to his cheek — these were rousingly instinctual actions, as, with his pulse quickening, Tom manipulated himself towards ballistic consummation. The two men resumed their stances, and soon the evidence of their lust lay smoking on the rumpled rocks — yet they continued to blast away.

Tom shuffled up a rubbly mound and fired into the mid distance, aiming for rocks that flaked and whined. Prentice assaulted the foreground, loosing off shots with total abandon. The automatic’s magazine emptied before the rifle’s and he called out: ‘I say, Tom, whoa!’

Tom ceased fire. His cheekbone burned where the Galil had delivered an uppercut.

‘How about a photo?’ Prentice was giddy with excitement. ‘My lady wife will get a real kick out of seeing me like this.’

Reluctantly, Tom fetched his camera from the car, and, as Prentice did a macho dumb show, he shuffled more images into its memory card, where they interleaved with Prentice at Bimple Hot Springs, Prentice in the cloud forest, Prentice on top of the Giant Sugar Sachet.

Then Tom’s cellphone rang. He hadn’t even realized it was switched on. How, he stupidly wondered, could its battery not have drained away, as they drove for day after day into the interior?

Tom thumbed the button and the puny carillon cut out. Hand shaking, he brought the clam shell to his ear. Nothing — or, rather, a foamy hiss on the sands of a terminal beach. He slid it back into his pocket.

Prentice’s mouth hung open. ‘What the—’ he began, but was cut off as the cellphone began trilling again. Tom took it out, hit the button, listened to the hiss. Then he held the cellphone away from his face, interrogating it with his stare.

‘Must be a glitch of some kind,’ he said to his companion. ‘I mean, there’s no network coverage out here, is there? Look, I’m gonna switch it off.’

Prentice resumed his stance and loosed off a shot at a sandstone pinnacle. It crumbled.

Then the phone rang yet again.

‘What the fuck! What the fuck!’ Bellowing, Tom wrenched it out and dropped it. It lay on the ground at his feet, peeping like a wounded bird. Prentice walked over and, picking up the cellphone, switched it off again.

‘I don’t know what all this means, Tom,’ said, handing over the cell. ‘But I don’t like it. I think we’d better strike camp.’

Tom walked over to the SUV. He was about to open the door when an unfamiliar voice said — distinctly, although not loudly — ‘G’day, mate.’

The owner of the voice was standing a few feet from the car’s fender. He must, Tom realized with adrenalized clarity, have worked his way along one of the gulleys that led down into the wadi. He was a very tall, very muscular Anglo. He held a rifle so as to suggest he had Tom and Prentice covered, even though he wasn’t pointing it directly at them.