Spartan

It was odd how Dean ate. So thought Chris, sitting opposite. e fork was all askew, waved to the left. e knife did everything.

“ ose fucking whatever-they-are in number 33. . . .” said Dean.

One of the children glanced quickly into the room, then withdrew.

“Paint job on the house. Vans, ladders, stu everywhere. . . . ”

“Polish. From Poland,” said Chris, quietly.

“ ey’re blocking the whole street.”

Chris felt around in his coat pocket. ank God. Still there, didn’t forget.

“ e whole fucking street,” Dean repeated. And then said it again.

It wasn’t the usual Saturday morning. Chris had received four letters through the post, by way of Car Craft, answering his query of a couple weeks ago. One was of particular interest: Mine looks like a minor grade but it gives a torque and speed of a hobby grade.. I’m going to do my other builds.. an RC motor with the speed of a hobby grade stock... another scale crawler, my second prototype.

“What the hell,” Chris had moaned. “Two prototypes?” He’d gone into the shed and stared at what should look like a car by this time. After ten minutes he read the letter again and realized that the person was talking about model miniatures, not a home-built vehicle. It was getting that bad.

“See you later, right?” Dean was saying, and didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ll meet in the Regent at 11. Hang on for some stomping, mate.”

Chris nodded and left. e children were sitting on the doorstep. He handed them the fake fruit, hard balls of sugar, from his pocket.

“Go, Crew!” they said in unison.

“I’ll give someone a slap for you,” Chris replied.

He walked away, thinking, how little their eyes were. How little and grey.

Fifth match of the season—against Everton—and leaves on the ground today. Chris loved this time of year, the quickening cold every morning. We (the Service Crew, I mean) get enlivened by this drop in temperature, he thought, and imagined saying it to a posh TV reporter. A right proper English tradition like clockwork, he elaborated. e rst time I got rounded up and herded back to the cop shop, I remember being congratulated by older

lads of the rm and feeling top of the world. It was great, sitting there with long-time casuals, feeling like part of them. e reporter was a serious young woman from the south, intrigued and terri ed. What a thrill, interviewing a real-life hooligan! Chris extended the fantasy to a long interview in the drizzling rain. e cameraman gave them an umbrella and beneath it they felt like friends. e main problem is getting all the lads drunk at the same level, at the same time, Chris explained further, in a con ding tone, but this silent conversation was replaced by genuine worry. All drunk at the same time? Equally snappy and wanting more, not dulled. Not staggering up bruised and happy, seven pints down before the o cial round-up. Once, Murph—Dean’s lieutenant—had appeared at the last minute with a bleating under-ager from somewhere in London at the end of his shoe. Dean had been enraged. Dean was into the ceremony of the whole thing, said it was kinky sex to the head if you just waited. Watching Dean seek out a war was something else. Remarkable, said/thought Chris to his new reporter friend. Something else. e street had that edgy yet aimless feel; the odd open door, sound of radio. Chris was home in ten minutes via the corner shop where yet another kid stared as he bought a copy of Car Craft. Outside, he turned to the problem page. His query would certainly be o cially printed this week. It was. Fourth in line, and in terrible company. People asked the stupidest questions: My break calipers have rust on them. It’s noticeable. Is it the alloy or the aftermarket rim?

Should have used high-heat engine paint to begin with, Chris guessed. True.

His own question hadn’t been anywhere near as ridiculous. Once he got home, he made a cup of tea and skim-read his advice from the agony uncle, Bob Q. Recall:

You ask what everyone’s experience with unsprung weight is, when you nally go on a test drive? Well, . . .fully laden weight. . . .most valid basis for comparison. . . .650 pounds. . . .tire/wheel assemblies (exclusive of brakes, axles and suspension linkages. . . . 1,000 pounds. Using the two-up weight. . . .500 pound unsprung mass. . . .lower. . . .acceleration forces. . . .Rgds, and good luck, Bob.

Warm and energized, Chris reread this morning’s postal replies. You daft wally, someone called “Shep” had written. It depends on road irregularity!!! Chris liked Shep’s tone—exacting yet indulgent. He liked his/ her handwriting, which was spiky in some places and looped in others. He imagined Shep also drinking tea, reading kit car magazines and letters from invisible new collaborators. He created a pressing issue for Shep which only he, Chris, could solve. Shep needed reassurance after laying out for a Locust 7 chassis. You don’t need a whack of money, wrote Chris in his head, I’m building a Spartan Roadster, and it’s slow but steady. 10:02 a.m. Chris could feel the inching of threat, his threat, his own power rising then lessening, rising again. He screwed up the other letter, the misinterpreted one about the toy car, and noticed the postcode. Derby. Blue scum, he mouthed. Weak. A weak rm. He went to the shed and peered in. ere was sandpaper and rivets all over the cold oor. e vehicle looked carved, unfamiliar.

Dean had phoned him at six a.m. asking for his Diadora jacket and so Chris had gone round and got chatting, and now time was ticking on. He felt the swell in his throat again, the anticipation. He needed this ritual— more tea, choosing clothes, revving himself up. He’d been mocked last week for wearing a Benetton T-shirt. Fila, yes. Tacchini, okay. Stone Island meant you were serious about having a ght. Benetton? Don’t bother. Chris pulled a Lyle & Scott V-neck sweater from a drawer. It was the wrong color. en a pair of Farahs. Also not quite right. He felt a bit stuck. If it was a late afternoon game, they’d all go “shopping” beforehand, mainly for Lacoste polos, but not today. Chris wondered how you could steal a buttondown shirt. Ben Sherman, to be precise. ey were always on hangers, not folded. But people had started to wear them; there was new garb on the terraces. It had started to confuse everyone including the police. Evil rioter or nicely-dressed gent? Dean had been wearing a deerstalker hat all season. It was funny to watch him slide over to unprotected groups of two or three casuals, saying, “Please do you have the time, boys?” and their nervy look of bewilderment.

Chris got the iron out, enjoying the methodical pressing up down, up across. He admired the straight seam, the hot folds, and felt better about the

Farahs. He stared in the mirror, and felt that his forehead was too small. He tried to ick up the front of his hair, was that right? Bending to slip on his shoes he pulled the leftside parting back into place. He combed it, using the blade he’d probably take along today, and then felt silly and clichéd. When younger he’d thought the Suzie Quatro posters on his wall were looking at him. He felt as much now.

Last week a van had driven into the stadium forecourt, and there was an impromptu strip-and-search. A few Service Crew members had got caught out, which was annoying since it meant they were being watched more than usual. e best retaliation—Dean had said—was not to change anything from now on. Tool-up like fuck. Always. More each week. And use what God gave you. And whatever’s lying around. A kick or a brick.

Brick. Odd how the mind works—Chris was suddenly remembering that empty patch of land years ago, where a car dealership used to be. A place of sweepings and clutter, where grass and the strangest of orange owers grew a little, fell, and became the veins of the ground. Or like marks left by the tide on a beach. ey’d called themselves a gang then, before they joined the Crew and it all became formal. ey’d wait for other gangs to pitch up. Skinheads. Chris would hold cool and jagged objects in his hand, and lope towards a body or a face like his own. Loping, that’s what it was. A slow motion control, a slight tensing of the thigh muscles. Ideal for swinging a whip cord with ve tails, then a homemade chain whip. Once, he’d pushed one of those other faces into barbed wire and made diamond shapes in the skin, watching the blood well up, then recede, then smear.

He stopped by the shed again, before he left, and brie y wondered how he would feel if the next time he looked the car was gone. Nothing left but a dusty square. I live with my mother, he told Shep. She has the bedroom. I have the room downstairs. e car of course is outside, undercover. e street was becoming restless. More people, fans moving east towards the stadium. More radio sound. rough habit, Chris quickened his pace, moving his eyes fore and back. He felt a subtle shift in his chest. Here I am. en, the slotting of recognition at Murph and the rest, arranged in a strange tableau against the white walls of the Regent. Almost immobile. Some sitting, some standing. Barbour jackets, Ellesse.

“Bad out t,” said Murph, staring at the Farahs.

“Fuck o ,” said Chris.

“It’s going to be a lively one—are you loaded up?” asked someone else.

“Not really. Light stu . Blade. Coins.”

Chris re ected on how he’d spent ages sanding down edges of two pence pieces, when the car got too much. Very e ective from two feet away, thrown and arced towards the eye. On contact with esh they’d make a sound like a wing. A delicate rustle. Something settling in its nest.

A kid on a bike was shouting that the SC-Troop boys had jumped the rst trainload of Everton fans. Nothing to be jealous about. e rst wave was usually novices, interspersed with dads and lads. Another type of community. I’m an avid soccer supporter, continued Chris, in his head, to Shep. It’s a nice way to relax after working all week. Work? I do a bit of this and that.

It was regular for Crew boys to hop on public transport at city limits and get a few scu es going. ey’d run up the aisles slapping faces. Or simply stand by the doors and chant. Chris had never done it but he envisaged the trains being like the one in that lm, e Cassandra Crossing. Filled with fear and pestilence, hurtling towards certain disaster.

Chris followed the others into the pub, where Dean was on the payphone. Mu ed voices, heads crowding. Analytical orientation. e roundup’s at Norward Street. Hand out a little treatment on the way, nothing serious, don’t crack o yet. Someone will be there with bottle crates. Tool up but not so you can’t move. When we get in the ground, nd the top rank, they’ll be at the front. ey want glory. What have you got? Darts. Blades. Put a knife to anyone’s neck who charges late, you’ll have time by then. Get into their end early but stop short of the north stand, they won’t expect that. row whatever we can tear up, it should rain down. Annex the cunts. Shout ready, aim, re. Make them look the other way. Always good to end with a severe bricking they don’t expect.

Dean put down the receiver, straightened, said, “Just remember they’re only human.” Laughter. en drinks. Pints, three, quickly. Cigarettes. ey stood, arranged as they always were, tense and foot-tapping, arguing over strategy, reliving the glory of out-of-town wars. Like the time they lost to

Shrewsbury Town with a twice-taken penalty, and ran into the English Border Front lads afterwards. ey were outnumbered when they reached the old mining shaft, but hurled railway ballast into the darkness anyway and caused some damage. And the time those mad Millwall bastards hid in a graveyard and ambushed them on the way to the station, waiting with everything you could imagine, hammers, sticks, you name it and the whole lot of them—both rms—dancing around like ghouls, tripping over urns, kicking each other in the balls. A knife went into someone’s arm. Right place, right time, it was concluded. More laughter and almost crying with it. e dinosaur bullies were propping up the bar. All in their 40s or 50s with cropped hair and denim jackets, somewhat mysti ed at the Pringle and Slazenger-wear. Dinosaur bullies were only useful for rear guard action. Some had a classic story or two, but they couldn’t really ght all morning or run with a mob, snapping antennae o cars and throwing canisters. Once, last season, they’d smacked a few civilians, including an old lady, and that was getting taboo now. ere were new rules of engagement. Violence was only legit against someone just like you— rm against rm, town against town. Splits had appeared, though. e SC-Troop faction in particular. Little plastic wannabes with their Sta-Prest trousers, like a TV advert. ere was no hierarchy, no intergroup order. ey were all talk and no action. Getting away with it, calling themselves football casuals without incurring injury or accepting that sometimes you just lost out. Weak devotees of theory, thought Chris. He liked that phrase but didn’t say it out loud. He nished his beer and immediately started another. My Spartan is on its way, he told Shep, minus the rear fenders, taillights, grille and hood ornament. en he realized how defeatist that sounded. He tried again. I saved up for an old engine that came with a carburetor from the factory I used to work at. How did you feel, Shep, when you saw that detached framework for the rst time, and knew you had to ll it with stu ?

“Listen to this,” Murph was saying. “ ree Service Crew mice are sitting in a bar, going on about how tough they are. e rst mouse says, I walk into traps, then I bench press them and eat the cheese. e second mouse says, that’s nothing, I snort rat poison pellets, I’m o my head, I am. e third slams his pint down and says, I’m o home to fuck the cat.”

Widespread mirth in the bar. Chris observed that the joke was a bit tame for Murph who was irting with English supremacy these days and not because of social credit theory either. Murph hadn’t a clue. It was more about his sister’s boyfriend Jaswinder and other personal grievances. It had to end somewhere. Chris didn’t want to think about it.

Time to go. Shut up, come on, shut up, shut up, said everyone to each other. ey made their way in single le out the side exit of the Regent. Police were milling around outside. Cone heads. Pigs. All pu ed up in their vests.

“We don’t want chaos today,” said one, as they walked past.

“Our streets!” shouted Chris, surprising himself. In formation, he and the rest instinctively spread out, making their group seem larger. It was balletic. Other casuals merged into their route, from other pubs and out of doorways: a beautiful outnumbering ow, nameless and interchangeable. at was the beauty of these times. e dinosaur bullies had been a minority group in their day. A close-knit mob where the liaison cops knew them on rst-name terms. Oh Terry, you again? Give me that knife. Get in the car, son.

“Remember when they took our fucking laces away?” Dean said, over his shoulder. Chris remembered well, a particularly good smash-andgrab day in the ’78 season, around the time that Doc Martens were still being worn. “Over here, boot boys,” the copper had said. An old bastard, committed to the rules: remove the laces, remove the problem. ey’d all stood around blankly lifting one knee then the next. en, as in one body, they all kicked their useless shoes away, turned and ran. Ran screaming towards the walls of the ground, scaling feet of terrain. Lighter and vicious, ripping the electrical wires that hung down from the fencing.

Non- rm Everton fans were out in force now, moving the same way. Lots of to-and-fro. Chris wondered how long. How long until. He felt watched again, like the posters, but it was a good kind of watching. Coins in his pocket instead of fruit candy. I’ll nish the car, he thought. It all felt like the same thing now. I really lose myself for hours, Shep.

He circled a lamppost, moved closer to Dean and felt their bodies imperceptibly ex in tandem. ere was a wedding party on Kilburn High

Road. It was very incongruous. Casuals in their button-up high-necked shirts weaved amongst the guests who smelled like violets and Lambrusco. A half sentence swerved into Chris’s head—And others it killed. Where from? Where had he heard it? Television? A newspaper? He was in the midst now. Not long. And others it killed. He heard distant shouting from streets away. Smashing. Too much beer too soon. “You’re a fucking disgrace,” said a man in a blazer as they moved by. ey crossed the junction with Norwood Street. A line of red-terraced houses, no gardens and a blind alley xed with a police car, its occupants staring left to right. A cordite aroma hung in the air, and from afar, in those other streets—audible now—the Everton Cutters, screaming their phrase, We’ll have you. Chris followed Dean sharply into a side street ere were crates and crates of bottles stacked against a fence, and a young girl handing them out, silent and watchful. Cold glass tucked into the waistband, and they were out again—running across the road that circled the town and beneath the underpass, with its dual carriageway above. Momentarily, Chris caught sight of gra ti on the inner walls: knob and pussy and born a bitch, die a seagull. He wondered if that last phrase was written by someone like him. Someone who spoke into the recesses of his own head, half-sentences, letters to people who listened with ease. And others it killed.

Upon emerging into the light, Chris felt his rm strengthened on each ank, two streams of bodies, coming down the foot-ramp and grass banks. e stadium was in front of them as were hundreds of faces, Service Crew and Cutters, locked in a world. ere was suddenly vomit and there was blood and there was pain. And wolves and scum. “Stand up!” Dean was shouting, his neck rigid. Mob up. Hook them, hook them. Chris thought no, there’s too many. We can’t. He reached for the coins, the blade. But why now? “ is wasn’t the plan!” he heard himself saying to the Crew casual next to him, who was rotating and sweating in panic. ere was an immense crush of Cutters. Nicely turned out in the best terracewear, as well. He heard Dean’s voice again: “Stand, don’t run.” e Crew never backs down. ere was something odd in the way the mounted police were poised. Motionless. Usually they’d strike at the rst hint of a riot and you’d nd yourself pressed organ-to-organ against a creature that could kill you. But

they were two horses deep, lined against the entrance, just watching. Chris felt something solid y overhead: a gas canister. His shoulder gave way and he felt the familiar surge of red-blinding rage, his wrist becoming metallike as he grabbed and hit, his own voice shouting above all the others. He saw Dean—elegant and curiously slow—bend to the ground and make a downstroke from left to right on a fallen body. e canister ignited and hissed through the crowd, skewing the surge. en another. Where from? Not the police, impassively corralling.

Chris backed leftward, towards the concrete bleachers separating the underpass from the edge of the ground. He leaned against them, taking raw painful breaths. Someone came running over with news, shouting. ey’d thrown canisters into houses as well, there were res. Chris felt a a null kind of acceptance, then exhilaration, and then guilt. He almost heard the splintering and the ssshh, threaded into his immediate surround sound. A window, a baby crying, the distress. “Got to give them this one,” he said, and wondered if he should laugh.

A pale blue ash: Dean’s jacket, as he disappeared into the underpass with Murph and a few others. Chris followed. ey were holding a young boy, de nitely a Cutter, but not valuable. He was wearing a Ben Sherman polo. “You cunt, you little cunt,” Dean kept repeating. His voice was a refrain over murmuring phrases that seemed to be on a tape loop: I don’t know where. Where are we going? Shall we bother? e match is delayed, that’s why. e cops had us, they let this happen. e boy spat in Dean’s face. Dean smiled and was quiet. He folded his hands across his stomach in an almost monk-like bene cient gesture. ere was a bloodstain around his crotch. Chris suddenly felt panic. Why do we carry bottles? en, a sensation he couldn’t place. A faint nausea. Echo of arousal. Electric. e thing is, he explained to Shep, the whole football culture is derived from instincts that have been with us for millions of years; they won’t go away overnight, and they also come in handy when war, disaster or con ict is upon us. ey have their rightful place in the modern game.

“Broad daylight,” Dean said, “Broad daylight.”

White wisps of smoke were unfurling into the tunnel. “Can you hear the dogs?” said someone to the boy. And yes, there was barking now and the sound of car horns. en, they stopped talking. Chris counted eight Crew members, some bending down with their hands on their knees. Murph was pacing behind Dean, and gave Chris a icker of a glance. Here we go. A line arranged itself in Chris’s head, from another magazine he’d not bought but icked through in the shop. It was about Bloody Mary and all those people she’d burned at the stake for going to the wrong church. On one day, the wind was slow and the martyrs su ered. He felt ashamed for being so literal. Like dreaming of your teeth falling out after a battle in real life.

“Where’s your crew?” said Dean and kicked the boy in the guts. Everyone stirred into life, but there was a mutedness, as if no one knew how to carry on. It only lasted a few seconds, with di erent gradations of thud. Chris hung back, a noise building in the depths of him. His body, such a strange machine. A tightening and then hardness. Blood coursing. Dean’s blood in that area, too. e boy was trying to crawl between peoples’ legs, grabbing calves that had kicked him seconds before. He was in tatters, he was screaming all the wrong things. Light bodies ran past, no one stopped. Fiorucci, Stan Smith, Burberry, Adidas, Le Coq Sportif, Armani, Allegri. e town had broken up, and Chris knew how the streets would seem after this. I was a right charmless little shit, a magnet for trouble but I grew up, he said/thought to Shep who was fading, as people who never answer always fade. Instead, an image of Dean and himself swung into focus. ey were dinosaur bullies, much older. ey were walking on a patch of waste ground against an illusory sky that had no day or month attached to it, just blankness, grey and deadened. An abandoned fridge was standing upright. Dinosaur bully Chris bent down and shifted his perspective so that the fridge was aligned with three towerblocks in the distance. Look, he said gently to dinosaur bully Dean. Look. It’s all the same thing, he said.

And with a slow turn, here he was. Nowadays Chris. Not there. Breathing like some kind of heavy animal, dizzy and hurting so much for the broken town, and then for the boy who needed it to stop, to stop right now.

“You want to get killed?” he, Chris, said suddenly, moving forward. He repeated it, shouting. He hadn’t meant to, it just came out. ere wasn’t an immediate knowledge of what was about to happen. But now it had to. ere was a suspended moment of confusion before Dean pushed everyone away and dragged the boy to a kneeling position, saying to him, “You think I’m bad? You think we’re bad?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” the boy gasped. His voice was high and helpless.

Dean continued, swaying slightly; the patch of blood had spread to his thighs. He pointed at Chris. “Want to see what this fucker does on a Saturday?” en, for Chris, there was little but a chorus of noise. He saw that very phrase, chorus of noise. Perhaps it would become a line spoken later, in the Regent. Recounting a story of Crew members in assent, how they’d all got carried away. Go for it. Do him. How the head of the boy was pushed and pulled closer by other hands, and then only Chris’s hands after he’d unzipped his jacket, thinking, he has a buzz cut—knowing later that would be the only detail he’d allow himself to remember, amid the, yes, chorus of noise as he threw his whole self towards the boy’s face. He wouldn’t remember that it was Dean’s blood that got him going most of all, as he acted it up for the Crew. Going like a jackhammer, st-punching at the tunnel’s ceiling, swinging the kid around and around, pulling his pants down, pants up, t-shirt o , mud in face, stones, gravel. en it was over. Someone started whistling “Start!” by e Jam. ere was snu ing laughter and an instinctive, collective, step backwards. Cars were jammed nose-to-tail on the overpass and the sound of stalling engines fused into a underground hollow note that made the space seem bigger. “ ere’s Chris for you, there’s a stand-in,” said Dean, simply. e boy became very small. Chris expected coughing or some kind of retaliation, however futile, but the mouth and the body seemed to slip away and merge underfoot. Chris was borne away by the others, his own body shuddering. He looked back but as he re-entered the light all he saw was shards of gra ti. die a. bor. kn. e sirens were veering closer. ere was still disarray, but it felt like anti-establishment de ance. Generally destructive rather than brutish and controlled. Lone gures were being

slammed against any solid surface, and Chris saw the tail end of a Crew sub-section bolt over the dual carriageway. e word “Scatter!” was rippling everywhere. Each individual dropped noiselessly from the group enclosing Chris, and each one joined the landscape of fragments, of jolted cells. Chris locked eyes with Murph before he turned away. It was strange. Murph carried no recognition in his gaze. It was null and opaque. A pre-epiphany? It was strange and couldn’t be read.

Dean was pale now, a vein was pulsing beneath a scar at the base of his left ear. Chris watched the skin swell and contract in the tiniest of ways. ey were alone. ey lay close to the ground, on the grassed bank.

“You need to get that shit out of you,” he said, guessing that small shards of glass were embedded in Dean’s groin.“I’m not getting arrested after all this,” said Dean decisively, which wasn’t the right answer but it encapsulated the conversation that would never be had.

Behind them, a crowdswell noise from the stadium. Kicko . ey got up, and cantered alone, through the straggled small sets of casuals, through the streets and byways and back alleys. e afternoon had lowered to dusk, and the ground seemed overlaid by leaves moreso than earlier. Chris waited for Dean when he had to pause a couple of times, banging his hand to his head and swearing, his mouth a pained rictus of repetition. Occasionally he said, “ anks for taking over back there,” and Chris knew he meant in the tunnel, when everyone was alone in a di erent way. His silent epistolary voice suddenly came back. Shep, he said, I take a dim view on violence. Deviance is a freedom enjoyed in a city of lightly engaged strangers. I wear my wartime jacket in the sun, rain, wind and sleet. But I take a dim view on violence.

Alone and slowing, they turned into Dean’s street. ere was no radio and the doors were closed.

“Not your usual scrap,” Dean said quietly. “Not your usual Saturday. We’ll get plenty of skin on the 15th. Smack a few more cunts to make up for it.” ey’d be playing Millwall again. “Yep,” said Chris.

Dean persevered. “Fuck stitches,” he said.

ere was a movement at the window of Dean’s house, and Chris saw the shape of a small head, contoured by a dim electric light behind it.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow?”

It wasn’t really a question.

“I’ll come round and watch the highlights,” Chris said, “Just go to hospital. Go to hospital.”

He backed away, feeling sick. He watched Dean edge awkwardly through the door and imagined the man keeling over, blasted with agony in his hallway.

And others it killed. Would there be others? Chris cupped his head down into his chest and counted the steps to his own house, thinking he might fall too. Sixty-eight, 69, 70. Eighty-three. It was 83. 1983. Many wars, and everywhere, thought Chris. And something else. His mind was ricocheting to all parts, it had to stop.

His own house was narrow, contained between two others of equal height. Chris went inside to nd it unlit. No movement from upstairs, which was normal. He sat for a while, feeling around for pieces of paper on the table, but there was only hard space. He rose and went to the shed. Okay, Shep. Best wishes from Chris, he mouthed. And PS. PS. . . .this is DIY heaven. e Spartan was weak, it looked weak. A weak luxury, a secret. If this were a lm, I’d be hitting it with an iron bar, not unscrewing the whole thing, he said to himself. He began to lay it out in fragments on the oor, and did so for hours. 3x white leds, 16 pin and 18 pin base, burg strips, double tape, 1x red led and 1k resistor, 16 gauge wire, soldering rod, soldering ux, 4-volt batteries. He put his hands around his own throat. He ran the coins from his pocket across his face. It began to get truly dark and he rubbed sawdust into his eyes. e car nally became just a shape. He moved to sit inside the frame of the chassis, and the space-within-the-space of other types of wall. Should he begin again? Or end? Whatever is next, he said without sound: whatever is next, is next, is next.