Free Mele Kalikimaka Mr Walker by Robert G. Barrett Page B

or driving around in tiny white mopeds — and the usual hookers who avoided Les like the plague the moment they laid eyes on him. At least now Norton knew it wasn’t because of his looks. The only difference tonight was a dedicated mob of black hot gospellers, preaching to a crowd that had formed on the footpath outside Liberty House. Les had seen black gospel singers on TV and in films, but never in the flesh, and they blew him out. There was one big, happy, black man in a white shirt and tie, seated at a small, portable organ, surrounded by about six men wearing the same and six or so soberly dressed women. All they were doing was clapping their hands and singing choruses to the man on the organ, yet the rhythm and energy they generated was amazing. There was that much beat and soul in their voices you wanted to jump up and start dancing — especially if you had several stiff Bacardis pumping through your bloodstream like Les had. The big man rose from the organ and started jumping up and down and running backwards and forwards in front of his fervent, eye-rolling followers, everyone singing perfectly at the top of their voices. Then, after the applause had died down, they’d stop singing and the big man would go into his spiel praising Jesus to the skies while his followers would back him up with plentyof ‘Oh yeah! Uh huh! Right on, brother! Hallelujah!’ It was the full-on, showbiz, Bible-bashing hype, but it was great. So great, Norton almost got carried away in the arms of the Lord and wanted to join in with one from his schooldays: ‘I don’t care if it rains or freezes, I am safe in the arms of Jesus. I am Jesus’ little lamb. Yes by Jesus bloody Christ I am.’ Then he decided the Norton religious fervour might not go over too well with the soul brothers. He stayed for another couple of songs, till the curse of the demon drink overpowered his soul, and then headed off to the bar he was looking for.
    Les decided to put his head in Bison Jacksons first, mainly to get a T-shirt because he liked the one the bouncer was wearing with the goofy-looking bison on the front. There was a small crowd of blokes at the entrance, laughing and carrying on, and tonight it was a dollar entry going towards some charity. Les dropped a buck in a large tin and went upstairs.
    The T-shirt and souvenir counter was closed and you could have been the ugliest woman in the world and still got yourself a man in Bison Jacksons that night. It was nearly all men, mainly jarheads, nodding and boogying drunkenly to the same band who were slowly torturing to death Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’. There wouldn’t have been more than a dozen women in the place and the best sort there you wouldn’t have taken to Taronga Park Zoo and fed to the yak. Oh well, thought Les. I’m here now, I may as well have the one, I s’pose. He bought a bottle of Millers and drank it near the top of the stairs. The band was woeful, the crowd very ordinary and it was smoky and boringall round. Les downed his beer pretty quickly and left. But not before he was watched intently by two marines standing near the band, one with a fat lip, the other with a slight black eye and a bruised back. They stared at Les standing near the stairs then watched him from the windows as he crossed the street and walked into Mahias.
    There was a different bouncer on the door and the girl on the till scarcely looked up as Les handed her the three dollars, went straight across to the bar and got a bottle of Millers. The place had roughly the same size and shaped crowd as the night before and there was just a friendly looking couple seated where Les had been the previous night; he pulled up a stool and sat a little down from them just as the band started. Tropical Honey were again quite enjoyable to have a cold beer to and this time Norton’s view wasn’t blocked by two drunken wallies. He finished his first beer,