The East Nuke

We came back to the house to cap a night off, late some time in April. Mart was with me, Craig had declined as usual. Fife Park was dead to him, apparently.

Frank had been away with medics all night. We couldn’t see in the kitchen as we came over the lawn; the windows were all steamed up. But there was movement. There were raised voices. One raised voice, anyway.

Mart ran upstairs to use the john, and I went to investigate. In the downstairs hall, one of the Randoms had his door half open and was peering round it. Kitchen door was shut, as were the other two rooms. If the other Randoms were home they weren’t showing.

‘Hey Dylan,’ I said.

‘I think Frank went crazy,’ he said.

‘Mmm.’

‘He broke half of everything, I reckon.’

‘You been in there?’

‘Almost. Look, can you speak to him, before he breaks everything else?’

‘I don’t know what to say. Did you speak to him?’

‘He wouldn’t answer me.’

‘I don’t know what I can tell you,’ I said.

‘Just, he might listen to you.’

I stepped up. My hand reached out for the handle, but I couldn’t bring myself to open the door.

‘You fucking cunting bitching fuck.’

With each expletive, there was a bang. As if someone were hitting something in time with their own rage.

‘You cunting fucking mothercunting shit fucker!’

‘Who’s he shouting at?’ Mart asked, appearing behind me. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It is what it is.’

‘Very Zen,’ Mart said. ‘You should get in there. He might hurt himself.’

I pushed the door open, and a spray of porcelain flew past my nose, right to left. It was my porcelain. Another mug hit the door before it was half open. I poked my head around the door.

‘Hello,’ I said.

Frank was standing over by the cooker, with half a plate in his hand.

‘This fucking plate,’ he said. He threw it at the floor, where it shattered, the fresh pieces mixing with the wreckage of half our crockery.

‘And this mug,’ he said.

He hefted it into the air almost gently, but quickly spun the golf club round to intercept it. I pulled my head back into the hallway just in time. I could hear tinkling pieces of it hitting the floor. I shut the door.

‘Fucking bastarding shiteating cuntbreathing fucking cocksores.’ Frank’s voice was muffled, but still loud.

‘Cocksores, huh?’ Mart said.

‘Are you alright in there?’ I shouted through. No answer.

‘Hello?’ Mart called.

I looked in again. The cupboard doors were off, lying on top of a pile of broken bowls and plates. Frank rested his hands on the work surface for stability, and then kicked out at the drawers. It took one kick for each of them to lose their facades. Pots and pans spilled out onto the floor, and crunched onto broken porcelain.

Frank turned around, angry wildness in his eyes. He scanned the room, and found his golf club leaning up against the table. He grabbed it, grimaced for a moment, and then smacked it into the counter.

‘OK, Frank,’ I said. ‘OK.’

I stepped out of the room, neatly, and shut the door for the last time. There was nothing in that room I cared about apart from Frank, and he was on his own path.

‘We’re going to let him work it out,’ I said.

Mart nodded.

‘Whatever it is. I don’t care about the kitchen,’ I said.

I never knew what drove Frank, and I never knew what he cared about. One night he went crazy with a golf club, and I still don’t know why. I asked him about it later, but he was coy. He was embarrassed. God, that took the edge off things. The man who didn’t give a fuck getting shy on me.

He didn’t want me to talk about it, he didn’t want it to be his story, didn’t want it to be in this story; the night that Frank went nuts and trashed the place. I wouldn’t even write it down, except that it is so much a part of my story. How much it changed my own perception of the place.

Once that happened, there was no way that things were how I thought they were. And though I’ve thought about it for years since, I still don’t know how they were. It’s just shit that happened.

‘I reckon he caught his Dad cheating with another woman,’ Craig said, later.

‘He probably failed another year,’ Mart said.

‘Could be a girl thing,’ Dylan said. ‘I mean, we don’t know.’

‘I don’t think we really know at all,’ I said.

‘You never really know people.’

‘You could take someone apart piece by piece, and still never know them,’ Craig said. He looked like he thought it might be a good side-project.

‘Maybe that’s Frank and Fife Park,’ Mart said.

‘I hope he found what he was looking for,’ Dylan said. ‘If not, I reckon it’s probably in pieces by now.’