The Deadly Serious Republic

By Dave Crawford

Max and Memie are the two principle characters. Max has an Irish father, Harry (Dingle) Bellman, and Latin American mother and grows up in desperately poor circumstances. He is a very bright, level-headed young man with natural social skills.

Memie comes from an enormously wealthy background but is orphaned at the age of twelve. Sent off to the Defrugals Graduation School for the Super-Rich, she hates it and rebels against all and everything. Being taught that God is good and communism is bad, she chooses to take an opposing view. She is fearless in the face of danger and spends much time looking for revolutions of one sort or another. Max thinks Memie politically naive but, as friend and bodyguard, is forever trying to pull her back from the brink. By nature, she is difficult and neurotic but shows her caring side from time to time.

Throughout there is an underlying sexual tension, but in the end, Maxs efforts at keeping Memie safe comes to nothing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jun 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483648965

Dave Crawford

Born in England, I migrated to Australia at the age of seventeen. Early employment included five years on a sheep station. Later, I was employed as a field assistant on the rice research station at Humpty Doo outside Darwin. While there, I restarted my school studies, battling with my childhood dyslexia. In time, I gained a place in university and later added a master of science degree to my BSc. In the meantime, I was married, started a family, and worked as a technical officer in agriculture research. Moving on, I gained a teacher’s qualification and taught school science. My first teaching position was in the town of Hay, not far from where I mustered sheep all those years earlier. I have retired from teaching, but at the age of seventy, I am still work in a high school.

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Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Dave Crawford.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013910046

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4836-4895-8

Softcover 978-1-4836-4894-1

Ebook 978-1-4836-4896-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 02/05/2013

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 The People of the Volcano

Chapter 2 Darwin and the Devil

Chapter 3 The Richest Communist in the World

Chapter 4 Kidnappers: Wholesale and Retail

Chapter 5 The Great Red Mountain

Chapter 6 The Kingdom of the Convestas

Chapter 7 Hello There, Mr President

Chapter 8 The Mad Communist Bitch

Chapter 9 Girl in the Dark

Chapter 10 The Return of the Pig

Chapter 11 Golden Gate Opens the Way

Chapter 12 Seeing Double

Chapter 13 Holograms and Big Bungles

Chapter 14 A Sporting Chance

Chapter 15 Bombs Galore

Chapter 16 The Smell of Revolution

Chapter 17 The Road to Enfilado

Chapter 18 Assassins on the Road to Recovery

Chapter 19 The Minister of Mushrooms

Chapter 20 The Island of Rum Bagel

Chapter 21 Duraka’s People

Chapter 22 The Conspiracy of Greed

Chapter 23 Holman Nice Uncovered

Chapter 24 That Minor Inconvenience

Chapter 25 The Pig Is Dead: Long Live the Revolution

The maintenance of infinite economic growth in a world of finite resources can only be achieved through the suppression of the less fortunate. However, there is no contradiction in saying that anyone who fails to make his or her way in the world is ultimately responsible for his or her own failure. There is no such thing as luck—merely advantage rigorously pursued towards a rational conclusion. The presence of ineffective governments, with their stultifying taxes and ruinous social policies, must, nevertheless, be seen as conferring great freedoms upon those who are bold enough to seize the moment. The freedom to pursue any advantage, by either an individual or a corporation, must outrank all other ethical or environmental considerations. Those who cannot or will not take up the challenges must be content with the meagre dregs left in the wake of those who make things happen—those who devise the magic. Adam Smith was right; only in this way can the incredible economics of market forces operate to full effect.

Milton F. Trickledown

The Rationale of Free Capitalism

Philistine University Press

CHAPTER 1

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The People of the Volcano

M ax’s earliest memory was of being taken shopping by his father, Harry Bellman, whom everyone, for some totally obscure reason, called Dingle. For young Max, this was a character-forming event, a lesson in hard-nosed economics and the wondrous workings of God. Quite apart from all that, it was a sorry tale of how not to conduct oneself in a civilised society.

‘Here we go, Son,’ declared Dingle, holding Max’s small hand as they made their way across waste ground between tall buildings. ‘Shopping in a supermarket of cars, all waiting to be taken by someone clever enough to know how it’s done right. In the words of the great economist Milton Trickledown, there is no such thing as luck—merely advantage rigorously pursued towards a rational income.’

Max, at the time understanding none of this, tightened his tiny vice-like grip on his father’s hand. But sensing an underlying tension in his parent’s unusually verbose language, decided there might be better things to do. ‘Dad,’ he piped up, ‘can I have ice cream?’

‘Later, me boy,’ replied Dingle. ‘We’re approaching the tantalising target zone, and that means staying rigorous and rational whilst at the same time being on the lookout for, amongst other things, God’s guidance. So given the green light for go, a wink and a nod from the Almighty, nothing, including ice cream, must get in the way.’

Max was instantly disappointed. He would wait, like about half a minute, and then try again, for when it came to things as good as ice cream, persistence sometimes, yes occasionally, paid off.

The man and the small boy reached the hard road, disturbing a team of industrious sparrows picking through last night’s leftover. Above was a cloudless sky that threatened to become hot as the day wore on.

Only much later in life did Max discover that his father had very little knowledge of cars and barely knew how to drive. That this particular spree was motivated by a strand of economics known to the technically minded as being flat broke—a situation brought on by a currency crisis and, for Dingle, a desperate lurch back to old ways, having been more or less honest and fairly straight for several years. Never one to entrust his money with any sort of bank, Dingle had been in the habit of stashing his worldly wealth, such as it was, in an old leather suitcase under his bed, and all might had been well if it wasn’t for a sudden change in the money system. Overnight, the old pesto had become officially redundant, defunct, and valueless to be replaced by the reelatto. The reason for this was, over time, the pesto had become almost worthless; it cost over a million pestos to buy a loaf of bread. The highest denomination in the old currency had been a five-hundred-thousand bill. As a result, people were having to cart around great bundles of near-worthless paper. During the switch, ten million pestos could be exchanged for one reelatto, with one hundred attos to the reelatto, and all this pegged to that most unshakable of currencies, the deadly serious dollar.

Dingle, knowing about this change for months, had been in a quandary. The problem was how to exchange his old currency without declaring his wealth to certain interested parties, such as those to whom he owned money and others with the power to make a difficult life even more demanding. As was typical of him, the issue had been put aside for a bit and then a bit more, but finally all bets had been placed on a last-minute scheme. The plan, though absolutely brilliant, had failed, and now it was simply too late to exchange old for new. So with utter bankruptcy looming, the time had come for daring deeds and a lesson for young Max on the hard realities of the world.

‘Opportunity is definitely knocking today, Son,’ announced Dingle in a cheery voice that hid his nervousness as they crossed the road. ‘Sunday early is good, but we aren’t going to be greedy, take more than is needed to restore the family’s fast looming fiscal imbalance. That means very big bad money problems, which the two of us are about to sort of fix up. Yes, Son, God always punishes the greedy, and it’s never good, getting into sinful deficits with the Almighty.’

‘Dad, can I have an ice?’ asked young Max for a second time.

‘We looks up and down the line,’ continued Dingle, ignoring the latest heartfelt plea. ‘Now you see that pink car, a Scragget, with supercooled pre-ignition ice burners, exterior shower curtains, woolen wheel wobblers, and special handcrafted doughnut maker… give it a miss. Poor resale value. It’s a good car, Son, a lovely car, someone’s pride and joy, but believe me when I say difficult to find a buyer… You always have to think hard knock-nails economics in our business. You know what the word economics means? All about money and stuff like that. Make a mistake, and we could be sleeping in cardboard boxes out on the mountain side. Yes, we see that every day, don’t we, people sleeping rough… really, really bad when it rains?’

‘Dad, can I have an ice cream?’

‘Now to the next, a Purple People Eater with just take me written all over it. Move on, my lad. Avert the eyes. Like as not it has a double dodgy motor, trashed transmission, hydrogen hiccups, and sprung spigots… real technical bubble trouble. Now here we have a nice little wheeler stealer. Yes, indeed, sir, one of them fifty-eight Jumble Jacks with wheels, round and neat. A double-barrelled spin drier, underhanded cam drivers, and, as extras, shiny brass twangy handles. Resale prospects, absolutely first class. Now, me lad, there is one thing we have to consider afore doing a quick snaffle on the lock. Sometimes very inconsiderate people… with no real economic sense can…’

‘Dad, can I have…’

‘Thoughtless bad citizens attach super alarms to their cars to make it hard for honest thieves, the likes of you and me, to make a decent living.’

‘Dad, can I have an ice cream?’ persisted the little boy, pulling his father’s sleeve with his free hand.

‘Be quiet, Son, think of God, and ask him nicely to look the other way whilst we’re looking up and down the street. All deserted except for that lady taking her little tiny dog for a walk way off over there. So not even a single cop to interfere with the tasks of honourable gentlemen-thieves going about their business. Everyone that matters is a sleeping or doing other Sunday morning thing I’ll tell you about when you’re older. So we carry on like true professionals and never let anyone tell you different. We are free capitalists, that is people who play around with money, lots and lots of money, but don’t tell Mum, will you? Yes, proper capitalist, but not like those stuck up on some fancy office on the hundredth floor of a New Pork skyscraper. To use that well-known Latin proverb, opus daius et siezus, which means seize the day with God’s blessing, and that, Son, is just what we’re about.’

This said, Dingle let go of Max’s hand and took one last look around before pulling out an odd shaped screwdriver, which, with trembling hands, he attempted to push into the vehicle’s door lock. But the car, sensing it was being broken into, suddenly came alive and started to scream, ‘Help! Help! I’m being stolen!’ in a loud pre-emptive voice. Then a contraption that looked to Max like a skeletal umbrella sprang from somewhere and opened out like a Christmas tree, red, white, and blue lights flashing along the rapidly extending branches. At this, Dingle went quite pale, swore, and then, whisking the terrified little boy off his feet, dashed away down the street. A wild run of pure panic took them over a narrow footbridge and on across the wide grassy expanse of parkland. Only when they reached trees on the far side and the shelter of a concrete subway did Dingle stop.

‘Oh, boy, oh, man,’ he proclaimed, battling hard for breath whilst lowering the trembling Max to the ground. ‘Heaven bless us, and hail Mary twice over, but that was a near nasty thing. I think we’ll go home. You were very good back there, Son, yes, showed a real cool head under fire, but God, I think, has sent us a sign. Not today, He says. Yes, that’s the message. So now it’s home for both of us, and as for the dire fiscal problem, think about that later. Yes, yes, must be another way.’

Home was in a slum called Las Sulfrido, a place of dilapidation, jumbled jerry-rigged corrugations, old car tyres, and plastered mud-brick walls and plastic sheets—a world, to an outsider, that would seem to struggle with a complete lack of almost everything. All this was clinging tenuously to the sides of Bramido Loco, a volcanic peak that towered smouldering over the riverside city of Puerto Superl. Here on the crowded slopes were narrow walkways with rickety handrails, all zigzagging between squat walls and tiny fences in vegetable gardens dug with much labour and little hope. The few thoroughfares, wide enough to be called roads, were often too rough and elevated for anything but handcarts. The occasional donkey was used around the slum, but most of the carrying and lifting was done with human muscle power. Despite Dingle’s best efforts to procure a motor vehicle, such transport was few, beaten-up, rust-ridden, and mostly confined to the lower slopes of the mountain.

Here, wafting over Las Sulfrido, was the smoke from small cooking fires whilst the washing hung out to dry, and, of course, there was the inevitable merry pong of open drains. When it was hot and windy, the volcano’s fine grey dust would smother everything. When it rained, the-everything turned to mud, and during the not-infrequent downpours, fast-flowing trickles soon transformed into mad streams that waterfalled down the slopes. It wasn’t unusual for people to wake on dark, wet nights to find themselves and their flimsy shacks in danger, as hasty water diversions higher up became a real problem for those below.

Being on higher ground was definitely an advantage but for the mountain’s other dangers. The volcano had not become unpleasantly angry for over two centuries, but lest anyone think the dragon was truly dead, it would, from time to time, spit out a bit of gas and the odd lump of hot rock and send seismic waves tumbling across its precipitous slopes. These little grumpy eruptions, the firework lava bombs, kept the encroaching slum at bay, whilst the tremors added to a sense of periodic mayhem. At other times, a fumarole would open up on the notorious eastern side in what was known as Death Valley. When this happened, a shack or two would be destroyed whilst clouds of toxic gas wafted through the chaos. But such was the demand for space, for real estate; however impossibly steep or threatening, people would soon move back to stake a claim and rebuild.

Dingle had been buried once, not the result of an earthquake, but by a landslide during one particularly rainy monsoon. Trapped in a lucky air pocket, he’d been able to claw his way to freedom, or at least this was the story he liked to tell his son.

The real stabilising influence in young Max’s life was his mother, Izzimma or Izzia, as she liked to be called. She was a large woman with a strong sense of right and wrong, but whose frequent laughter hid a tragic past. In the years before Max was born, she’d lost her entire family, six children, two in-laws, and her first husband in a tragic fire that had swept through the over-crowded slum one windy summer’s night. Hot cinders blown from the volcano’s main crater were mostly blamed for starting the conflagration, but no one seemed completely certain.

Dingle, a family friend, had taken in the deeply distraught Izzia after she’d lost everything. Over time, the casual cohabitation had turned into a marriage of sorts, though the pair had never actually got around to being formally united. This was despite Dingle’s often-expressed, though somewhat questionable, Catholic values and Izzia going to church at least once on Sundays. Izzia would have married when she became pregnant with Max, but three decades earlier, Dingle, then aged fourteen, had been thrown out of his local church school in his native Ireland. On that day, he’d proclaimed himself an ardent believer but one totally divorced from all church institutions and that he would never set foot in an official place of worship again.

On leaving Ireland, Dingle had arrived in the New World, having jumped ship. With just a few euroleeks in his pocket, he’d set out with high hopes of making his fortune. But wealth had eluded him, and troubled by the law, he’d finally sought shelter here in the shadows of the volcano.

The shack where Max was born sat high on the mountain’s western spur. It was more substantial than most—a type of structure known locally as an establo, a grand title for a building that seemed little more than a cowshed. The establo had cement stonewalls on three sides and hardboard planks with a neat cut-out window on the other and all set on a rock floor. And here under the rusting corrugated iron roof were beds, asbestos cupboards, and a squat iron stove set centrally in the middle of the room. There was even the added luxury of a cement-lined water tank that caught the precious run-off from a lean-to roof.

As a small child, Max came to see the world as being in two halves. There was the Bramifo slopes, Las Sulfrido, a place of make-do innovation borne out of grinding poverty and violence of both the natural and man-made kind. A place where the utterly desperate had been known to seek shelter under make-do cardboard boxes and many children did not live to see their fifth birthday. But by standing at his establo door, young Max could look out at that other world, the city stretching to the great winding river. For there, beyond the high barrier walls designed to keep the Sulfrido’s disorder at bay, was a land of parks, playgrounds, real roads, and multicoloured roofs. Then, off in the distance, there were the tall towers of the CBD (central business district) that nightly glowed with a myriad of magic lights. Here was the promised land of wealth and true living. In those early years, Max ventured into the city suburbs on only a few occasions and, with the exception of his father’s failed car-stealing escapade, remembered these exertions in a positive light. Though bought the occasional ice cream, he was never taken as far as the CBD and could only imagine what it was like to go there and to stand looking up at the great towers.

His mother Izzia was one of an army of poorly paid that daily migrated out of the slums to work in the city. Unlike many such commuters, she once had quite a good education with training as a secretary, but with the lapse of time and the taint of the poverty about her, real advancement became out of the question. After being left a widow at thirty-six, she’d toiled for long hours in one of Puerto Superl’s many textile factories, but later with the pregnancy and Max’s birth, Izzia had found part-time work as a domestic, a cook, and cleaner. As Max grew into childhood, she instilled in him the notion that his destiny, his duty, when a grown man, was to move out into the wider world to escape from the hard life and the crushing endemic poverty. His father, who sometimes spoke wistfully of his native Ireland, also thought this a good idea but cautioned against some of the less-obvious ways of the world. On occasions, he hinted at the reasons that kept him hidden here in Las Sulfrido. ‘Your daddy is doing purgatory for being youthful, over keen, and over hasty,’ he would say. ‘Yes, Son, poor economic planning and ill-conceived haste were my undoing, and it was only a direct and decisive act of God that saved me from spending far too many years in jail. But come twenty years and with a little more help from the Almighty, I reckon the world will have forgotten.’

So it was that Max grew up, believing that he was somehow different from the neighbourhood kids, the de la calle as his mother called them. In some ways, he was different, being the only fair-haired, blue-eyed kid in a community of dark-haired people.

For Max, schooling started at home with both his parents taking turns as teachers. Only when he was eight, did he start attending the two-room school on the lower slopes of the volcano. On that first day, he found a seat, a hard bench, at the back of Sister Zapallio’s class. At first, he hated the whole idea of being there and would have stayed away in the following days if it hadn’t been for his mother’s absolute insistence. A bright but shy child who spoke both Spanish and English, Max was already well on the way to mastering his arithmetic and the art of reading, and his new teacher seemed pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t long before he was sitting towards the front.

Over time, he came to love Sister Zapallio with her strict ways and inner gentleness. But, in other respects, the school remained a trail, for his excellence in the classroom made him a target for the larger rougher children, the bullies. During playtime, he preferred staying in a quiet corner of the classroom, reading, than going outside, kicking a football.

School had other dangers of which Max started to become aware. Why, for instance, were there always men with machine guns, lounging about outside, watching the building? His mother explained that in this deeply troubled land, teachers, particularly those who went into the slums to instruct the poor, were far too often the targets of violence. Sister Zapallio went in constant fear of both communist assassins and right-wing murder squads. To teach, even at God’s calling, was to be accused of filling young minds with altogether the wrong thoughts. Ideas that might be contrary to strict Marxist doctrines or from a right-wing perspective threatened the society’s status quo. To be shot as a revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary really amounted to the same thing; someone somewhere thought a bullet in some teacher’s head would be for the betterment of society. So, whilst in school, Sister Zapallio and the children were under the patronage and protection of the Bruto Brothers, whose guards had attracted Max’s attention.

There was little that went on in the slum that the Brutos didn’t know about, for they were the police, the judges, the tax collectors, and, when necessary, the executioners. But they operated, so Max was told, with the support of most of the inhabitants, for it was they who kept other criminals out and maintained some sort of order amongst the home-grown youth gangs who would have otherwise run amok. However, the thug-kings were much feared. One day, when Max was nearly nine, he sensed the tension when two of their henchmen, Nick Degross and Horca Boxador, appeared at the establo door, demanding to see Dingle on a matter of some importance. Max’s father actually worked for the Brutos, not as a career criminal but as a maintenance man, a fixer of plumbing and drains. Max never did find out what the serious matter was, only that after the visit, he didn’t see his father for two days.

It was soon after this Max had his first encounter of a sexual kind. By this stage, he was well aware of the slum’s many prostitutes and the places where they would hang up and hang out to ply their trade, but this was something entirely different. A girl he only knew as Una appeared at school one day. Young Max was immediately attracted to her. Through the day, he shyly glanced at her whenever the opportunity arose, taking careful note of the curve of her nose, pale shin, delicate hands, and the long dark hair. That afternoon, on the way home, he resolved to find someway of speaking to her, if only to say hello. A year or so younger than himself, he somehow saw himself as her helpful guardian, her protector. But the night that followed was a bad one, first with rain and then, in the early hours, some sort of sporadic gun battle breaking out along the lower slopes. Next day at school, there was no sign of Una, and Max was never to see her again.

Las Sulfrido had its serious wars as distinct from the more light-hearted forms of everyday violence. In the years before Max was born, the communists of the Red Boot Brigade infiltrated the slum and tried to gain control. The story went that there was much murder and mayhem and two of the Bruto Brothers, along with many of their foot soldiers, were killed, but in the end, the red menace was driven out. It seemed that when the trouble started, Dingle tried to remain neutral, arguing that the maintenance of drains was more important than politics, but it wasn’t long before he too was recruited to the Bruto’s diminished front line. Later, Dingle, a great one for thoroughly suspect stories, used to tell Max of his role in the war and over-dramatic tall tales that seemed designed to hide the grim reality of those times.

Even now, the Reds would sometimes reappear, announcing their presence with a sudden whizz-bang of a rocket grenade in the night, and on such occasions, Max would desert his own bed for that of his parents. Such fighting was often over the drugs trade or other equally important aspects of higher politics.

The other scourge, right-wing death squads, rarely entered the slum. Max heard that the Brutos had a long-standing territorial agreement with them. But for those who ventured beyond the mountain slopes to work around the city, there was the ever-present threat of being snatched by someone. If disappearances took place, they most often occurred when commuters were going to or from work. If the primary motivation was criminal, abductions could be followed by a ransom demand or a message, a plea for help, but in far too many cases, there was simply nothing.

CHAPTER 2

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Darwin and the Devil

Y ears had passed, and now Max, a young man, not quite eighteen, had set out to find his father, Dingle, who had left Las Sulfrido the previous year. In the first four months, there had been a couple of letters and some money sent home to Max’s mother, Izzia, but after that, nothing. When last heard from Dingle had successfully crossed the southern border of the Deadly Serious Republic and found work picking fruit. He’d planned to make a better life for himself, with the long-term objective of having Izzia and Max join him. But after five months, with no word, and it was decided that Max would go north in the hope of solving the mystery.

Max had left home with almost no money. As a result, his first objective had been to reach the seaside tourist resorts, north of Puerto Superl, and, with his good English, look for work. This he had done, finding a job as a waiter in a small cafe overlooking one of the better beaches. It did not pay much, but he had a place, a tiny room, to sleep, over the premises, and here was a start.

It was late one night, with the moon casting a silver path across the calm waters beyond the sand exposed by the falling tide. With the cafe empty, Max was thinking of closing up when two men came in. Both were obviously tourists; one was young, wearing an open shirt hanging over purple pants and a yellow baseball cap turned backwards. The older man was taller and was also wearing shorts and sandals and had the words BE HONEST BE FRANK emblazoned in white across his black T-shirt.

The pair ordered coffee, the imported more expensive stuff, whilst continuing with an argument that seemed to have started elsewhere. At first, Max paid them little attention until voices started to be raised. The older man was a Dr Franks and was being addressed as such.

‘The Bible, the heart of Christianity, has played a very significant role in the development of western culture over the last two thousand years, and perhaps still has something to teach us,’ stated grey-haired Dr Franks.

‘Not perhaps it does have,’ insisted the younger man with the yellow hat, clearly irritated.

‘Okay, but what is at the centre of science?’ asked the Doctor. ‘What is the bit of science that’s set in concrete has effectively not changed since Galileo? . . . The scientific method, right? The theories of science are always subject to the riggers of the method and…’

‘How can you have a method at the centre of anything?’ replied Yellow Hat.

‘I’m repeating myself,’ stated Dr Franks, putting his elbows on