Open Decks

‘My Aunt will be down presently, Mr Krunk,’ said a very self-possessed 16 year old B-Boy, ‘in the meantime you can chill here with me baby boy.’

Frampton Krunk endeavoured to offer the correct slang term in reply, thus flattering the B-Boy’s colloquialisms but only managed, ‘Ok’ and ‘Yo’. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits to the Bronx Ghetto, or Planet Rock on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure he was undergoing for his fear of Hip-hop.

‘I know how it will be,’ his sister had said, ‘you will bury yourself beneath the Strokes engine rock and your nerves will be worse than ever from mopeds. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know from my Avon round and hopefully you’ll gradually overcome your fear.’
‘Do you know many people in the hood?’ asked the B-Boy.
‘Hardly a soul’, said Krunk, my sister used to deliver Avon Wu Wear to the good folks round here and she gave me the letters of introduction.’
‘Then you know practically nothing about my aunt then?’ pursued the self-possessed B-boy.
‘Only that she lives here in the Bronx.’ An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation not least from the two empty Technics decks in the corner, wide open and glowing red from the lights.

‘Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,’ said the B- boy; ‘that would be since your sister’s time.’
‘Her tragedy?’ asked Frampton, already fearing a hip-hop related ‘beef’ which had turned out for the worst.

‘You may wonder why we keep those decks open, with the lights on, all day what with no one around using them,’ said the boy, indicating the two Technics 1210s and a mixer in the corner.
‘It does seem strange,’ said Frampton; but have the decks got anything to do with the tragedy?’
‘Off from those decks, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the basketball court to their favourite vantage point they were all three engulfed in a treacherous ‘beef’. It had been that dreadful hot summer, you know, and places that had been safe in other years gave way. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.’ Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. ‘Poor Aunt always thinks they will come back some day, and walk up to those open decks and cut up good in a hip hop stylee just as they used to. Poor dear aunt she has often told me how they went out, her husband forgetting his bulletproof coat, and MC Ron, her youngest brother rapping ‘Straight Outta Compton’. As he always did to tease her because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know sometimes on still quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that door.

He broke off with a little shuder. It was a relief to Frampton when the aunt bustled in with a whirl of apologies for being late.
‘I hope Vincent has been amusing you?’ she said.
‘He has been very interesting,’ said Frampton.
I hope you don’t mind the open decks,’ said Mrs Sappleton briskly; my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting; and they always go for a mix-up fix up before dinner. They’ve been out for a ‘beef’ in the Ghetto today, so they’ll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn’t it?’ She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of peace in the ghetto. To Frampton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate effort to turn the talk onto a less ghastly topic; he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open decks. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid a visit on this tragic anniversary.

‘The critics agree that the new Strokes record is a masterpiece, a sonic cathedral of fuzzy guitar heaven and it has caused me much mental excitement each time I have listened to it. Have you heard it?’ asked Frampton.
‘No!’ said Mrs Sappleton in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention – but not to what Frampton was saying.
‘Here they are at last!’ she cried. ‘Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they were bloody up to the eyes!’

Frampton shivered slightly and turned towards the B-Boy with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring at the open decks with dazed horror in his eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Frampton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.
In the deepening twilight three figures walked through the door and assembled next to the open decks, they all carried Glocks under their arms and one of them was rapping, ‘Straight outta Compton, ******, ****** named Ice Cube, ******* ******* Attitude ******’

Frampton Krunk grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the door, the tenement staircase, the basketball court were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat.

‘Yo, yo, me and my crew is back ho. Like, who was that ridiculous homie who left like a dirty dog?’
‘A most extraordinary man, a Mr Krunk,’ said Mrs Sappleton, ‘could only talk about The Strokes and dashed off, without a word of goodbye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.’

‘Probably your baseball cap!’ said the B-Boy calmly; he told me he had a horror of baseball caps. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs all wearing baseball caps, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve’.

Romance at short notice was his speciality!

(With apologies to Saki)