Part 3
Friday night saw the Gangreen Gang kicking their heels in the tumbledown shack that passed for their 'hideout', situated amongst rancid piles of garbage down at the Townsville Dump. Now, the five members of this gang - Ace, Snake, Grubber, Big Billy and Little Arturo - particularly Ace, their leader, rather fancied themselves as leading buccaneer lives of excitement and adventure beyond the reach of the law. They certainly considered themselves greatly superior to the ordinary, law-abiding residents of the City, whom they despised for their boring, humdrum suburban lives. Yet it was remarkable how many evenings found them, as now, playing cards and getting slowly drunk and slowly stoned in a ramshackle timber hut furnished with nothing more than a rusting stove, a deal table and five rickety chairs saved from a bonfire.
A feeble, flickering light from the flames just visible through the grille at the front of the stove added its contribution to that of the paraffin lamp that hung over the table. The air in the hut was fetid and over heated, the cracked chimney of the stove adding a steady stream of wood smoke to the fug, and the card game was being played in a depressing silence punctuated only occasionally by giggling from Little Arturo, who had been partaking rather too heavily of the spliff that was being passed around the table.
'Hey Ace' sniggered Arturo as Snake dealt a new hand, 'are we going to this presentation tomorrow?'
'Yeah, Boss, can we go?' The dull, heavy voice that thundered across the card table was that of Big Billy. 'There's gonna be a carnival and fairground rides and everything.'
'Yessss,' hissed Snake, dealing out the last card and reaching for his can of beer, 'can we goesss?'
The four subordinate gang members looked pleadingly at Ace, who was leaning back against the wall of the hut, his chair propped on its two rear legs. He belched.
'What?' he sneered, scrutinising each of them in turn through half-open eyes, 'You creeps wanna go and watch the Powerpuff Girls get a medal? You wanna see the sworn enemies of the Gangreen Gang given the freedom of the City of Townsville?'
There was silence.
'Dontcha think you'd choke on your ice cream, Billy?' he added, contemptuously.
'Gee Boss, I just thought…'
'You just leave the thinking to me, Billy.' It was a laughably clichéd thing to say, but no-one made a sound, such was the vehemence with which Ace spat out the words. 'Geez, it makes me sick,' he continued, in the same vein, 'I'd like to put a bomb under the whole f***ing lot of 'em and blow 'em to Kingdom Come! Freedom of Townsville! The Powerpuff Girls have already got the freedom of the city – freedom to kick our asses!'
To emphasise his point, Ace kicked the table, sending cards, poker chips and beer cans flying.
'Gee, Boss!' moaned the dim-witted Billy, with an almost comically hurt expression on his face. The others joined in a chorus of whining.
'Shaddup!' shouted Ace, 'You know what I'd do if I had the Freedom of Townsville? I'd kick you morons out of town, that's what!'
'We're sorry, Ace,' piped up Little Arturo, 'We don't want to go to the presentation. We want to stay here with you.'
It was the wrong thing to say.
'What?' exclaimed Ace, leaning forward and bringing his chair back onto all four feet with a crash. He leapt up, but somehow got caught between the table and his chair and ended up kicking the chair across the room in frustration, so hard that it broke. 'You think I wanna spend my Saturday hanging out with a bunch of freakin' losers like you?'
He stormed across the hut and flung open the door as if to leave, letting in a freezing draught of night air, but as he crossed the threshold something made him stop and turn, and he looked back. Like lost puppies, Snake, Arturo, Billy and Grubber were watching him, their plaintive faces miserable almost to the point of tears.
For a moment, Ace stood looking at them with the same expression of disdain, almost of disgust, that had been the most noteworthy characteristic of his face all evening. Then, suddenly, a sort of convulsion or spasm swept over his features and he lashed out, striking the door frame so hard that the whole creaky hut shuddered, so hard that his knuckles began to bleed. For a second or two, he stood with his eyes closed and his fist still pressing against the woodwork, his forehead resting on the door frame. Then, slowly, he opened his eyes and looked dispassionately at his battered hand. With a sigh, he glanced at the others.
'Well, what the hell're you doing sitting there?' he asked, in a calm and level voice, 'C'mon. Let's get outta here and do something destructive with the evening.'
It was a moment almost of poignancy. The relief of the other gang members was almost palpable. Another storm had passed. They were used to Ace's moods, in much the same way as they were used to the weather. There was nothing they could do about either; nor did they understand what caused the wind to blow first one way and then the other, and to change with such speed and violence. They were used to it; but, like the ancient Aztecs, they had always a lingering fear that one day their particular sun would not rise again. Ace was the one solid, unquestioned point of reference in their lives, the one thing that gave each of them a tenuous hold on a bewildering and inimical Reality. The thought that one day he might leave was as terrible to them as was that ancient fear to the Aztecs, and they were willing to make a similar level of sacrifice to ensure that it didn't happen. With some alacrity, and with their faces now lit up with smiles, they followed Ace out of the hut.
It was a clear, frosty night, and a light mist was creeping over Townsville Dump, its long, clammy fingers probing between the heaps of rubbish as the gang began to walk towards the city. Their spirits were much higher now, and a lively conversation centred around what each of them would do if given the Freedom of the City, which they seemed to equate in some way to being given the power to do absolutely as they pleased within the city limits.
Townsville was not a City That Never Slept. On the contrary, very few places were open much beyond eleven at night and the streets were largely deserted as the Gangreen Gang headed downtown. In order to reach the subway that would take them into the city centre, where they knew a couple of disreputable bars that would still be open, they had to pass through some of the sprawling suburbs, and they contrived to do this making as much noise as possible, shouting and kicking cans and calling out names to any of the good folk of Townsville who stuck their heads out of their windows to complain. Feeling the effects of earlier beer consumption, and urged on by Ace, Grubber, who needed very little encouragement in the first place, relieved himself to much merriment in one of the gardens that they passed. This went on in much the same way for a mile or two, each gang member trying to outdo the others in mischief making, and dustbins were overturned, car tyres let down and a child's bicycle, inopportunely left lying on a driveway, was flung into a stream. It was a kind of ritual, the gang pulling itself together again, that went on until Ace suddenly called an abrupt halt. He had caught sight of a large rectangular sign positioned in front of a low, flat-roofed building.
'Well, Well! Pokey Oaks Kindergarten,' crowed Ace, reading the sign out loud. 'You know, it would be really nice to see what those darling little Powerpuff Girls get up to all day. Whadda you say, guys?'
'That would be real nice, Ace,' sniggered the gang with one voice.
Pokey Oaks had no alarm system. Who would imagine that a kindergarten could be a target for crime, least of all the kindergarten attended by the Powerpuff Girls? The gang broke into the classroom with ease, through a window at the rear. Inside, they found the room illuminated by orange light streaming in from a nearby street, and they could easily see the children's drawings pinned to the wall, the chairs and desks neatly stacked and tidied for the weekend, the boxes of toys and games, the shelves of books and the row of little lockers arranged along one wall, each one marked in best schoolteacher handwriting with the name of one of the pupils. Like a kid in a candy store, Ace scarcely knew where to begin. His first impulse was simply to begin kicking the chairs and desks, but that seemed too simple, too crude. Instead, suppressing this instinct, he inspected the lockers individually, until he came upon one marked "Blossom".
'Billy,' he called, 'open this will you.'
The locker was designed for five-year-old use, not for security, and with what amounted, for him, to a gentle tap, Billy wrenched the door open.
'Well, what have we here?' mocked Ace, as he pulled out the contents. 'What's this? "Conversational Chinese - a Primer". Grubber, you look like a man who needs to brush up his Chinese. Maybe you can do something with this?'
He tossed the book to Grubber, who immediately began tearing out the pages and eating them. The others chortled.
'Hm! Not much else in here, just some work books,' continued Ace, throwing the slim books one by one onto the floor. "My! Look at all the gold stars in here! Snake,' he called, 'why don't you enlighten us all with the contents of these wonderful books?'
Sniggering, Snake caught the drift of Ace's words. He held one of the books at arm's length and, pulling a cheap disposable lighter from his pocket, set fire to one corner. He held on until the heat became uncomfortable, then dropped the book to the floor and kicked Blossom's other books on top so as to create a small bonfire. Ace, meanwhile, got Billy to break into the locker marked "Bubbles".
'Crayons!' he exclaimed, 'Now, Billy, an artist like you could really do with some good drawing material, right?'
Unlike Snake, Big Billy required some prompting. Ace whispered a few words in his ear, and Billy's face lit up.
'Billy do graffiti!' he exclaimed, and lumbered off with the crayons to begin writing the words "Miss Keane stinks, signed Bubbles" on the wall, in a spidery handwriting very appropriate to the location, grinding the wax into the paintwork as hard as he could.
'Hey, Snake, the fire's going out,' said Ace, 'Lucky there's these drawings!'
With that, he pulled a handful of Bubbles' treasured paintings from the locker and threw them on to the flames.
'Help yourselves, guys,' he added, with a dismissive wave towards the lockers, bored now with this game.
As the others began breaking into the lockers and strewing the contents around the room, Ace looked for something else to do. He found it on a table in a corner: a small clear plastic box with wood shavings lining the bottom. Twiggy, the class hamster, was sleeping peacefully within. Sleeping, that is, until the box was hurled to the floor and shattered into a dozen pieces. The poor little dazed creature scuttled out from the wreckage, and the sight of it seemed to enrage Ace. With an almost maniacal frenzy, jumping from place to place, he attempted to stamp on the animal as it started to run to and fro looking desperately for hiding place. Several times, Twiggy came within a hair's breadth of death until finally, and fortunately, the little rodent found refuge down a hole in the floor where a pipe came into the classroom. After kicking violently at this pipe for several seconds, his face contorted with hatred, Ace realised that Twiggy had escaped, and he turned and vented his anger on one of the desks instead, lifting it and hurling it to the ground so that the legs broke. The noise was so great that the others, who had been happily wrecking the contents of the children's lockers, looked around in surprise.
'Let's trash this dump and get outta here!' Ace shouted.
A quarter of an hour or so later, the gang crept away, laughing and giggling, leaving an ominous light flickering on the walls and through the windows of Pokey Oaks Kindergarten.