The kid hadn’t been working there long but he knew the weight of a monkey wrench like he’d been born with one in his hand. His father was a mechanic. Had his own work shop on the outskirts of Boarville, in a village called Arno, but what with so many emigrating to the city for work and there being absolutely no way he was going to stay in Boarville, he moved to the city and McCormick’s was the first job he found.
    McCormick was self made. Opened his first workshop in the city way back in the 70s. Now he had a monster of a workshop, servicing upwards of twelve vehicles at one time with a small outfit of eighteen employees all loyal to him to the core. McCormick’s philosophy on that was simple: if you take care of your employees they’ll take care of you. 
    One Friday night the sun bathed the car park in glittering promises of gold as the neon of the amethyst city began to emerge like the dark soul of man rising from an ancient underbelly. The sound of birds twittering began to fall apart and give way to the mist filled hum of the serpentine files of vehicles wheezing and whirring a wretched race away from the confines of another working week. Friday always gave way to feelings of dread and expectation. Expectation for the wild ferocity, the letting loose of inhibitions, nights they said they’ll never forget but inevitably drift into purple moments of poor recollection. The Dread is for those who’d inevitably get hurt along the way, upon the roads of misused time, the ones paved with bittersweet fruit the gods of good times grow and demand a price for their picking, a price that we all must pay from time to time, a price some must pay more and more often than others. 
    The kid was yet to go out on a weekend and McCormick noticed it. Whilst Marge, the secretary and all the other lads had already clocked off from work to head out for the night the kid was staying behind to work under the hood of an old Dodge Challenger that kept stalling whilst idle. McCormick hobbled over. 
    “Home time, son, we’re closin’ up” he lilted. Despite the many years he’d spent in Caine Town he hadn’t lost anything of his Irish heritage. 
    “Just need a little longer, sir”, said the kid, “I’ve been working on this thing all day but for the life of me I just can’t seem to work out what’s wrong.”
    “You checked the airflow?” 
    “Yes, sir” 
    “Gaskets all functioning fine, fuel injectors clean?” 
    “Yes sir! I really can’t work out what’s going on...”    
    “Hmmmm...maybe a time out will help us gain some perspective. Here,” he offered him one of his Chesterfields, “have a smoke.” 
    “Thank you, sir.” 
    They both lit their cigarettes. 
    “You know, you don’t have to call me ‘sir’. ‘Mac’ is fine.” 
    “Ok. Mac.” 
    “So you’re from Boarville?” 
    “Around there, yeah.” 
    “Where’s your family originally from?” 
    “France originally, sir. My grandfather came during the oil rush.” 
    “Yeah, well, if there’s one thing this area is known for it’s its rushes. The oil rush, the silver rush, the iron rush, the lead rush, the rush of the Marque Mile. You’re not one of them types, are ya kid? Stage types. Got dreams of the stage?” 
    “No, sir. Uh, I mean, Mac.”  
    “Good. The Marquee Mile...Caine Town’s answer to Broadway, ya know! What a load of old codswallop. I don’t know why those kids don’t just head to New York or London and be done with it. Anyway, this area has certainly had its share of booms. We’re a little overdue one, if you ask me. Been a good fifty years since the last one. From what I hear the Old Outposts are drying up like nobody’s business. Ain’t much work around for the younguns like you.” 
    “Not really, sir....Mac!”
    “So what’s your plan?” 
    “Oh I don’t want much. I’m not someone who dreams big. In this day and age I don’t think there is much room for that sort of thing. I’m happy with a job I enjoy, covers my rent.” 
    “You got yourself a girl?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Want one?” 
    “Of course. But I’m sure the right one will come along.” 
    “Not if you’re spending all your time in the work shop she won’t! Why don’t you go out tonight, son? Enjoy yourself. Might meet the girlie you’re looking for.” 
    “Thanks, but I ain’t looking for that type of girl, sir...uh, Mac.” 
    “What? Nice girls don’t enjoy a drink with their girlfriends on a Friday night after work?” 
    “Well no, I’m not saying that...”
    “Relax, kid. I’m just teasing you.” 
    Mac looked at the kid and saw so much of himself in him. For some reason he felt something he hadn’t in a long time not since his own kids had left for university.
    “You know, son,” he began, “you seem like you’ve got a really mature head on your shoulders and I admire that. I used to be a lot like you. When I was growing up they used to call it ‘all work and no play’. I mean, I did my fair share of playing, don’t get me wrong, but you know running a business like this, well...you don’t really have the same cut of time that some of your friends have for leisure. And I was alone, here, for a long time. Was doing it all, really - at least all of the administration side of things once I hired my first couple of lads. Even then I was still under the cars. Took me a long time to learn to wind down and let someone else in the office, take the pressure off a little bit.” 
    “What brought that on?” 
    Mac gazed into nothing. An image welled up in his mind like an oasis flooding through the cracks of a concrete desert, an image of her lying, sleeping on the sofa in their first apartment with the TV on, the dinner she’d cooked sat on the kitchen top, a bowl covering it, awaiting his arrival so that he could heat it up. He wrestled with the tears and pushed them down. He hadn’t spoken of her in so long. 
    “My wife,” he said. 
    “Yeah, my dad had something similar with my mom. He could be a bit of workaholic himself.” 
    “Ah yeah?” 
    “Yeah. My mom told him he was missing me and my brother grow up. I think I must have been about three. From there he started spending more time at home. He’s a good father.” 
    “Sounds like it. Sounds like he realised it in time, too.” 
    “Didn’t you?”
    Mac paused. “My wife never nagged me about it. Sometimes I wish she did. God knows I would’ve listened. But she never used to say a word. We always knew that, whilst I was building this business, there was going to be this period of working my arse  off. I had years of sixteen, seventeen, even eighteen hour days building this business, son. You know, she always used to wait for me when I finally got home in the evening. The boys would’ve  already gone to bed. 
    Most nights I’d get home and she was there asleep on the sofa waiting for me, dinner just waiting to be microwaved. I’d heat it up and we’d sit and talk into the final hours, well -  usually hour - of the day. She’d tell me all the outlandish stuff the boys would come out with at the dinner table, how their studies were going, the gossip from her work at the school where she worked. She’d tell me about the books she was reading. The film she started watching while she waited for me. I didn’t realise it at the time but, those hours listening to her were some of the happiest of my life. Not once did she tell me I was never around. Even after I collapsed on the bed only to wake up again in four, five, six hours just to go and do it all again. She knew there was only one place I was going to be if it wasn’t our first workshop: there. Home. With her and those boys. 
    The goal was always to get the business to the point where someone else could run the damn thing a little bit more, so that I could be home a little more. But by then it was too late. She was diagnosed in ’89. I hired Marge to come and work in the office so that I could come be at home more, take care of her and the boys. We had six months like that. Then she went. It was only then that I realised we could’ve reached our goal years ago. If only I’d been willing to get out of my own way a little bit, if I could’ve just let go - I could’ve been around more. 
    We could’ve lived.”
    Silence reined, now, as the slow rhythm of trees re-awakening in the evening wind hushed and attempted to soothe the hearts of the broken looking to listen. 
    “Kid, it’s good that you want to work. It’s important. But don’t forget what work is for: building a better life. Work? That’s for working. Life? That’s for living.”
    Mac stood up and scruffed the kids hair. He went back in the office and began to finish off some paper work. As he did so he watched as the kid was again bent over the hood of the Dodge but his eyes were darting around as if tracking an invisible fly. Finally, after a few minutes, the kid closed the hood. It was dark now. He went and washed his hands, dried them and then cautiously walked over to Mac’s office. 
    “Is it ok if I head home, Mac?”
    “Of course it is, kid! Get yourself out of here. I’ll see you Monday. There’s a good lad.” 
    “Thanks Mac.”
    “See ya kid.” 
    The kid walked in a way that almost seemed to suppress running. Mac watched the kid as he stopped before opening his car door to take in the evening breeze, the moonlight shining, the amethyst city beyond, before getting in his car and driving away.
    Once Mac had finished the paperwork he began to close up. He put the paperwork away, locked the office, switched off the lights. But before he switched off the main light in the workshop he saw the Dodge there. Mac opened the hood and took a guess — throttle body adaptation. Ten minutes later, the Dodge purred like it always should have. He smiled to himself, then turned the ignition off. 
    Some things just need a moment to breathe.    
    
    

Everyone wants some sort of stake in Caine Town, the town that fratricide built, especially if they’re born and raised in one of the Old Outposts - Bonehill, Boarville, No Man’s Heath, Harlow’s Hall. There you’re born with the original sin of wanting to get out, of wanting more, to see what it’s all about and the only waters that’ll baptise that kind of fire away come from storms reserved only for the brave.


Many a sorry sailor has seen their best efforts spewed out by old Caine Town. Very few prodigal sons have returned triumphant. Fewer wannabe prophets stay that way and, even fewer still, strike a Byronic silhouette that casts shadows over the indolent.


Slim used to drink himself half to death each night just trying to create something that seemed monotone out of all the stimuli waging ungodly war upon his senses, from that crummy Caine Town flat. LED lights spouting substance-less sermons, labour allergic acolytes in Neon violet, news as honest and Edenic as an adder, the humdrum of the city beat, one too many apostle of the digital epoch telling you what you should and shouldn’t do.


The truth was out there.


He saw it each day from the prophet crazy man who’d scribe his message upon the streets. He felt it each time he visited Sandrine. He smelt it each time he sailed passed Ivan cooking his famous Morning Beef Stew Breakfast down by the river bank. He heard it when Hercule rapped his double bass and lead his gypsy trio to Gypsy Heaven on the corners of Canaan Square. He tasted it in Massimo Valentino’s home brewed banana wine he cooked on his barge out there along the canals, the dried, old bloodlines of the city long gone by.


“They’ll break you down and shake you down”, Sandine’d say, “here you lay it all on the line and pawn all the riches that only true love can buy”.


“Not me”, Slim said.


Nights were long in Caine Town and the days were always humid as Hell. A real Unholy Vatican. A place of pilgrimage for the desperate, the crooked, the corrupt, the conniving - the hopeful.


It was Europe’s answer to Vegas, only more Vaudevillian and a Hell of a lot more blood stained throughout the annals of its past. Sinatra had it right, though, he just had the name wrong. If you could make it here you could take over The City That Never Sleeps without anything more than a glare and the right posture - a posture that said one thing - you’d cut your stripes out there in the neon wild, breathed fire in a vacuum of prayers.


But Slim had had enough. He was ready to hang up his spurs, meet the promises Violet made of the settled life in old Boarville. Her eyes had sobered his mind and tempered his wild but it was only after he’d given everything that he’d realised even young villainous Violet lived by the same lies. She was just like the other sirens disguised as wives, a girl of snares and graces, a girl infatuated with heights but no taste for the climb, preferring to be carried up life’s unforgiving flights.


And, like always, the truth was out there.


This truth was laced with adultery and the spendable riches only fading beauty can buy, the perishable heat of a monkey branch upon which blind and unsatisfied eyes have a fearful grip clambering for wet soap. With broken heart and tired bones, Slim made his way from the cold warmth of Violet’s so called ‘truth’ and ‘promises’ and back into the dusty fray of the Hustle and Grind, found an apartment in downtown Boarville and set to work re-soldering the parts of a broken heart.


There were those who tried to provide insight, like Dark Annie god bless her eyes, god bless her precious sighs. Sweet Dark Annie with her wildfire and her talk of sweet getaway, her arms of warm lavender, her soft embrace of young womanhood. But the wars waged with love in mind need not only the soldering iron but a surplus of dwindling time.


At night, alone in the blaze of the flickering street lamp piercing the apartment window, deep at work on the soldering iron, he heard the couple above in yet another lover’s war. The young Napoleon had been drinking again.


“Come on, baby! It’s the Last Time!” He was pleading again.


‘The Last Time’.


God knows Slim had spent his fair share of arguments spouting the same line. The Last Time is one step down from Tomorrow in that it so rarely ever arrives.


“Come on, baby! It’s the Last Time!”


It almost sounded like a sermon, some idyllic utopia if only every man, woman and beast of burden and vice could find and build their own little taste of paradise.


“Come on, baby! It’s the Last Time!”


Slim had even offered words of comfort, the many nights and raging fights prior, to young Napoleon. “I’m sure she’ll come around”. And she always would.


But tonight that seemed like the Last Time...


Slim had long conquered the call of the liquor. He’d found his Last Time on that road. Now it was another Last Time he wrestled with. It was the Last Time he’d give his labour, his love, his syllables, his blood, his heart and every earthly thing he ever owned to lies, deceit, dust and bones. Now, in the midst of reluctant and renewed Hustle and Grind, he’d tame the wild of Caine Town and return to Bonehill prodigal and triumphant.


“Come on, baby!” Cried young Napoleon above, “it’s the Last Time”.

The changing of the guard shines no light upon
The limestone where the passing of global climes
Has no say, brings no surprise, like that of a criminal mind 
That should rise to position of top rat racing for the prize,
“surely it can’t be?  Same as the old boss?” - only in disguise. 
The ideas chime like broken taps dripping 
In the distant misuse of The Hustler’s precious time
As Slim Jim, at once a scribbler of verse, slave to the rhyme,
Poet’s brigade in his prime, soon hung up his dreams 
Left the scene to build the beams of a respectable future 
By any means. Fell in with The Hustlers, 
The prize fighters training by rhythm of night
Made deals with the Caine Town Rats,
Sheltered from the rain beneath many different hats
To find the blight of good intentions has a might 
That beats the will of all well-meaning men’s insights. 
The changing of the guard shines no light, 
Only whispers in the dark that we are right
To keep our money in our sights and our skins out of the fight. 

​Caine Town, and its surrounding areas, were once part of various squabbling kingdoms. It sits deep in a mountain range 100 miles North of the Aegean Sea and is surrounded by the remnants of its past; haunted fortress ruins and the Old Outposts - such as Bonehill, Tusk Valley, Gravelly Hill and Harlow's Hall to name a few - that guarded trade routes leading to the old mining settlements we know today as Caine Town. 

It served as one of the most important mining communities in the region during the 15th Century where it was known as Novas Mont at which time it became a melting pot for various cultures - something that has remained until this day - who sought their fortune. Sometime around the 18th Century the mines had all but dried up and the settlement, like its shadowy haunted fortress, had all but faded into memory. 

However, in the late 19th century two blood brothers, seeking their own fame and fortune, discovered a wealth of untouched silver in the mountains surrounding the settlement. The mines were rejuvenated and the settlement gave birth to a bustling boomtown attracting all manner of investment and trade. 

The blood brothers governed over the town and region with the younger of them displaying a real visionary talent for economic infrastructure and sociopolitical design. He wanted to turn the settlement into a truly free society; a libertarian promised land. 

He named it Canaan Town. 

For his realisation of this libertarian paradise the young blood brother was adored by all those who came to the town. But the elder brother, who was as envious as he was in need of assurance, began to despise his younger counterpart for his talent and the adoration he received. One night, in an argument, he killed the young visionary in a fit of rage and, once disposing of the remains, he and his goons, took control of the city where he declared himself in charge giving birth to a near feudal rule, presiding over the growth of the city’s  institutions and setting a tradition of oligarchical control that has persisted through the generations to this day. 

Although officially recognised as Canaan Town, the city would go on to be nicknamed Caine Town to mark the betrayal and fratricide that lead to its forging.

During the Second World War the city was a refuge and hotbed for all manner off black market trade and resistance factions during Italian and, after their surrender, Nazi occupation. This era marked the rise of local crime families who traded supplies and intelligence eventually evolving into powerful organised crime syndicates. These groups would later shift into narcotics, vice, gambling, prostitution and arms dealing forming the basis of the city’s criminal empire. 

It also marked the Arts Revolution where grandson of the founding family endorsed and imported big band jazz, cabaret and various Vaudevillian and Broadway attractions giving birth to an artistic tradition that remains in the city to this day. During this period these attractions brought together all manner of folk from disgruntled foot-soldiers to liberal freedom fighters.

During the Cold War, the city’s isolation allowed corruption and smuggling to grow exponentially. Leaders in the government and members of the founding family colluded with organised crime to build vast wealth and infrastructure like lavish government buildings, casinos and high-rise towers that stand in contrast to the impoverished outskirts not to mention the largely rural Old Outposts. Political and military ties from the Cold War still linger in the shadows, with corrupt officials and ex-mercenaries still maintaining their presence in the city.

By contemporary times, the city has become rough, with various factions vying for control: corrupt politicians, wealthy heirs, old organised crime families and corrupt lawyers. Its secondary nickname, The Unholy Vatican, is reference to the city’s unchecked criminal activities and the fact local governments won’t go near it. It is literally and figuratively cut off from the rest of the world both by the mountain ranges that surround it and the ruling classes that run it. The central family and political figures hold influence over a police force that struggles with its own level of corruption and warring factions between the idealists and those who are hungry for power.

​The population is disillusioned, forced to live under the thumb of those who hold power but, for many, it is also a place where rags can certainly lead to riches and life can change for anyone willing to hustle. 

Slim Jim swept Dark Annie
 Like the tide,
“Let’s brave the lies
You and I”, he cried, 
“Should we find ourselves
In the killing fields
Where old values go to die
Where old costs are paid
In powder, narcissism and wine, 
Where cold hearts kiss, 
And no broken mirrors shine.
Where we’re work day bound, 
To the dreams that only
Let us down,
With few Errol Flynn
Or Clarke Gable’s meant,
To rise amongst the crowd”. 
“You’re more Brando anyway”,
she frowned,
“For there are no Abel men
In Caine Town.”

The National Mental Health Service 
Is experiencing technical difficulties 
The notion that everything will be all right
Is on another line. 
Your taxes are better spent
Unwasted on these faculties
But don’t worry your position in the queue
Is fifty five million
Nine hundred, seventy nine thousand,
Nine hundred and ninety
Nine. 
While you wait it might be wise to think
About popping into your local public house
Boost the economy with a drink
You’ve floated this long 
Its doubtful you’ll sink
Here’s some Ed Sheeran while you wait, 
We hope it don’t tip you 
Over the brink. 

Golden hour more a dour
Unpolished brass hue,
Piercing through these little else’s to do
Frozen in the lifetime of a day;
In Small Heath snow and dew. 
Churning the Earth, for what it’s worth,
In treaded role of digging holes,
As young Kabir practises his boles
In bread crumb betterment 
And full view of our safer bet.
Behind laughter battlements
That brace the elements
You make your stand 
Against the shift for 80 quid, 
In your pocket quick, 
That should keep us liq’d
In pubs of brick, 
Til hairy Monday reigns again. 

Hands that kink under their sores,
On the edge of real and imaginary wars,
Use splintered wisdom to barricade the doors, 
As time sharpens the lead of good men worn. 
No man here is to be bested,
Not even by dull aches from winters tested,
Stood on the footings of the trade they've invested,
The ale, the laughter and the soul well rested. 
Underneath a tyrannical sun, 
Time takes no holidays,
and Scrap Iron Men make the most
​of a days ghosts pay. 

The Odds.
They’re always against you.
And when they aren’t, you better act like they are.
Stand your ground. 
Steer the course. 
Eye on the prize. 

There’s nothing
More agonising & sustained, 
Than the long, 
Slow toll 
& ruthless decay 
Of regret 
And remorse.
The gentle, silent erosion of you,
Behind sweet veils of contentment,
Is enough to wear even the strongest
Down into most silent,
Catastrophic suffering,
Deep inside the abyss of their
Most silent
Moments. 

But the Odds, 
The Odds are always there to remind you. 

The Odds are always there to remind you
That glory is not at your fingertips,
But on the other side of the eternal
Mud crawl.

Once you've smashed the false window
From which you see yourself
Awe will be inspired,
Tears will be shed,
But the Odds will remain
Like a bully beating you over your soul.
The sting of the struggle will be bearable
But the rage of regret is everlasting. 

The odds are always there to remind you that
The other side holds
Rewards and riches far beyond 
Any material thing your narrow material mind
Can comprehend. 

The Odds are always there to remind you that 
You're not subject to one
Race, sex, colour or creed.
That you'll prevail
In spite of those things.

The Odds are always there to remind you
Of what it really means, 
What it really feels like,
What it really means

To be alive. 

The Odds. 
They’ll love to remind you of them. 
They’ll revel in the maths,
These masters of sugar and sand. 

Your job is to laugh,
Loud like a lion,
At the thought of someone bringing up something 
So irrelevant and insignificant 
As The Odds.