End Game

Old Pete was the local storekeeper at the beach end of a little West Coast township I once lived in. On each of my visits back he would bring me up to date on local happenings, as well as his own war with the local businessmen's association over his petrol pump franchise. A communist in his youth, he refused to join the businessmens' organisation, and took special delight in tweaking their collective noses whenever he could.

"Just one of Life's little contradiction,that's me, " he responded when I queried the rather capitalist occupation he now enjoyed. "And anyway,who was it said that it's a sign of great intelligence to embrace contrasting ideas simultaneously?"

Pete got out the chess board and put on the coffee, telling his wife, Ella, that she could keep an eye on the shop out front. She did not seem to happy about the idea. Pete saw me watching this.

"One ship,one skipper matey," he said with a wink.

As he set up the chess pieces, Pete continued the saga of Theo the fish and chip shop owner and his feud with his neighbour Mac, the local publican. Mac had recently turned his back yard into a beer garden, much to the annoyance of Theo, who objected to what he called the "Maori orchestra and general racket " from the outdoor drinkers.Town planning objections had not worked, so Theo had moved to Stage Two.

Stage Two involved Theo setting fire to cut up car tyres in a forty-four gallon drum in his back yard, adding a dash of sump oil, and then listening with delight to the howls of protest from patrons as the thick, black smoke drifted over the fence and across their tables. Mac retaliated with a hose over the fence into the heart of the fire, but Theo looped a wire over the drum and pulled it clear of the hose's range accompanied by a barrage of abuse that "would have curled the hair of any brothel Madam this side of the black stump."

"Theo's wife hopes Mac will win,so he's fighting on two fronts," Pete added. " She hates it here. Wants to go back to the big smoke.Been working on him for a year."

"Doing what"?

"Oh, the usual female tricks - nagging,night starvation."

From the front Ella called out that they need more bags of coal. Pete didn't move.

"But now there's a new trick," Pete continued." Involves making him go broke. She's been dishing out an extra free piece of fish, and huge scoops of chips with every order. The word is out all over town. Theo can't figure out why customers are up but profit is down.Nobody is telling him of course."

Ella stalked through to the back, collected a bag of coal and marched out front again, tight-lipped. Pete moved a pawn and sat back.
"Your move," he said, and lit up a cigar.

Two hours and several beers later I got up and made my farewell noises. Pete headed out the back and I left through the front. As I walked through the shop I noticed Ella was serving a queue of kids. The one in front was being handed the biggest ice cream you ever saw.

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