Civil Twilight

by N.H. Van Der Haar (May 2026)

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Artie ran ahead of me. I watched him tear off, howling like some wild animal over the small green hills towards the brightly coloured playground. I took my sweet time and stumbled carefully behind him. Not that I could even think to outrun him. I doubt I could match his speed, given the heavy lunch we all took part in. It was actually a rather nice little feast. Oysters, prawn cocktail, devilled eggs, porchetta, roast chicken, lamb, ham, roast potatoes, corn, beans, pumpkin, zucchini, som cauliflower in a cheese sauce, a hot tomato ratatouille kind of thing, a kind of nut loaf Jeff’s sister brought, several generous glasses of wine, concluding with a rather nice trifle if I do say so myself. Pamela did well with the dessert. Considering. It was a bit of a shame about the cream. I shouldn’t have made that sassy comment. It was not like me. Unbecoming. About it being from a can. Besides, as Pamela said to me, I wouldn’t know the first thing about making proper cream. Is it done with milk or butter? Both? It was also a bit of a shame the Chardonnay also really wasn’t that cold. I know that Pamela blamed the fridge being so full already, but if they had just quieted down for a second and listened to me. Just chucked it in the freezer for a couple of minutes, it would have made a difference in the temperature. Nobody listens anymore. The Riesling was fine, I suppose. A day as hot as this one, you gotta get yourself a cold, bitter Chardonnay. This breeze is quite nice. I can almost smell flowers on the wind. I need a proper drink. Pamela did make me this mixed drink nonsense. It’s not too awful a cocktail. She tells me it’s supposed to have gin in it. All I can taste is flat lemonade.

“Keep in sight, my good champ!”

“Yes, yes, of course, yes, yes!”

Then again, I am quite certainly inebriated. If not drunk. I was always a standing drunk, I could drink glass after glass, bottle after bottle, and so long as I stood up, I would be fine, more than fine.

“I am over here if you need me.”

“Yes, yes.”

Look at him go. I really love the little fool. He really is always sprinting around. This way and that. You know, he looks kind of like a chubby lizard, the ones that can run along the water. His long hair sticks up kind of like a crest, and he waves his arms around behind his chest like a little lunatic. He should get a proper haircut. If I had my way. I can’t remember the name of the lizard. Ah, bugger. Artie is a funny kind of kid. I told his parents, I told them. It is not his fault he cannot emote with strangers. You have to consider the lack of similarly aged fellows in his short life. I mean, you just have to think about it mathematically. The poor fella was born eight years before his nearest cousin and ten years before his parents produced little Lisbetta. Silly name Lisbetta. Poor, silly Lisbetta. He doesn’t play sports. He gets driven to school, he stays in his room all day. He’s strong, I will say that much. Built like an ox, Artie is beneath all that fat. He is just a very sheltered young boy. How is he supposed to be blamed for that? For his mother and father not wearing a condom thirteen years ago?

“Look at this stick, Grandpa!”

That said, Artie is a little sullen sometimes. He refuses to wear leather shoes. He flosses after every meal. Brings those little floss things to a restaurant and picks his teeth at the table. Doesn’t even think to do it in the bathroom. He’s always been an odd cookie. Artie is sweet but also spoiled by his parents. Not ruined by it. Not yet. I don’t blame him. I adore the kid and probably make the spoiling problem worse. The poor kid could have been born in another time or just in another country and would have been left to die on a hilltop. Despite loving all my grandchildren, I will always prefer him.

“That looks good, Artie.”

“I do like this stick! Grandpa!”

Quite often I will look at my oldest grandson and he will be a bit downcast for no particular reason in mind. Just flatly depressed. He should sit up straight more often.

“That, that is lovely, Artie, my good fellow.”

It really has not been a bad Christmas. In the end, I am glad we did it at Jeff and Pamela’s. They did the garden up quite nicely, and the pool was good for the youngsters to have a splash in. Jeff is quite a nice guy, say what you will, he tries his best despite his hairline and teeth. Trying is sometimes admirable enough in a fellow human being. Bugger me, it is hot today. These shoes are feeling a bit tight, but I won’t be taking them off. Simply because I know they’ll be a fight to get them back on. Serves me right for wearing leather. Black leather at that.

“Do not, don’t wander off, Artie!”.

Artie’s a fine name. I mean it’s alright. Not what I would think to name my kid that. What kind of father, what kind of parent thinks to name their child MacArthur? Their first child as well. I think it’s a touch perverse. I think to give your child your last name as his first name is just perverse. Mind you, this could be the lunch talking. I appreciate Jeff taking my surname, odd as that in itself may be. But giving your child your surname as its first name seems to be a compromise too far. It always struck me as odd beyond reckoning, if I do think so. Odd beyond reckoning.

“Look at this, no, Grandpa! Have a look at this stick!”

“That looks like a much more appropriate stick, Artie, my lad!”

“What, Grandpa?”

“It’s a very appropriate choice, my lad.”

“I like this stick the most, Grandpa.”

That does it. I am going to need to get myself a stick. Something substantial. To lean on. My feet are absolutely killing me. This gin cocktail is digesting poorly. Probably too much acid from the lemon juice. Also, I need something to toy with so the kid doesn’t think I am supervising him too keenly. Which I am doing, but he doesn’t need to know that. Besides, Artie is smart enough to look after himself nowadays. My gut is killing me. A heavy lunch does nothing for my digestion. Too much sugar and too much salt. Not enough fibre. If I’m not careful, I am liable to fall over and burst. I ate far too much too quickly. I am a silly bugger sometimes.

Listen to that birdsong. Charming. This is rather a nice park. Quite fetching. It has all been kept pretty tidy and green. They have a small playground balanced out with some pretty greenery. The classic native shrubs and trees. Something weedy here and there. A small sweet potato vine has been weaving its way up a great gum tree. Somebody should remove that. I notice that somebody has mowed this whole park recently; you can see the clippings spread along the walking paths. They have a couple of picnic tables over there. Covered in graffiti and cigarette burns but nothing dreadful or rude. They could do with a varnish if I had them in my backyard. I set my drink down on a wooden bench. It’s essentially empty anyway. This will do as a nice, strong stick. It’s a good length about, just above waist height. All relatively the same thickness with a bit of knobbly bits to form a handle grip kind of thing. A lovely, good stick.

“What do you reckon of my stick, Artie?”

“What, Grandpa?”

“I said, what do you think of this one, Artie?”

“It’s much too big for me, Grandpa; that’s a ‘you’ stick.”

“You think so, Artie, my lad.”

“That’s a big stick, Grandpa. Look at what I can do!”

“Super buddy”

I have to agree. It is a Grandpa stick. I think it suits me quite well. If I angle it correctly, I can put it on the ground and put the handle on my back. It makes a kind of seat.

“Shit.”

“Naughty word, Grandpa!”

 Ouch, no, it does not; that bloody hurt. I’ll survive. Ahh, bugger. Now I will have a bruise on my back and a cut on my hand. That bloody hurt.

“You just keep that naughty word between us, alright, Artie?”

That hurt.

“Ha-ha! Rude word, grandpa!”

Sometimes, not all the time. I wonder who will bite my nails after I die. Only because the idea of my nails being unbitten horrifies me. Ever since I was Artie’s age, hell, even younger, I have bitten my nails. The idea of my nails growing after I die kind of drives me a little bit crazy. Hair, I’m not as worried about. I’ll get it all shaved off after I die. No worries. But the idea of having long, yellow, and discoloured nails. The nails of some old freak. It sends shivers down my back. I hope that the coroner who has to slice me open or the mortician who prepares me notices how long my nails have grown and takes a small nibble of my nails. At least trims them and keeps them at their expected length. I have never trimmed somebody else’s nails. I wonder if it would be particularly difficult. I have a good think about this on occasion, late into the evening. After a couple of glasses of wine.

“W-w-who will cut my nails?”

“What did you say, grandpa?”

“N-nothing, champ, just muttering my thoughts out loud. You have fun, Artie.”

It’s not that I am scared of death. When it comes, I will be ready. I hope I’ll be. I’m nervous about being ready rather than dying. Death is something I have no control over. If it happens on the toilet, at the supermarket, or in bed, I won’t be too concerned. It’s making sure everything is tidied away nicely and is all organised. I want to die having thought all the thoughts I could ever think. I want to be ‘ready’ ready. No, no. I want to be ‘empty’ ready. I want to feel empty of everything when I die.

need a new stick, grandpa. I am going to make a pile of good sticks.”

“G-great idea, Artie!”

“Can you look after my pile?”

“O-of course, Artie. It would be my pleasure.”

Maybe not empty, that sounds a bit grim. I want to be fulfilled and concerned about the future. I want to live purposefully. I just am not quite sure how yet.

“Careful, Artie.”

“I have to build my pile up!”

“Of course, my young champ. Just be careful.”

I should have learned magic. I always said to myself, if I ever became a grandfather, I would learn magic to entertain and distract. It might have given him structure or at least something to entertain the young fella at functions. Some simple card tricks, maybe some sleight of hand nonsense. Nothing to be done, I suppose.

“Do you like my sticks, Granpda?”

“W-what did you say, champ?”

“Grandpa! Look! Look at me, do you like my pile of sticks?”

Artie is an alright kid. I am an alright grandfather. Everything is pretty alright. I am too hard on myself sometimes. I will admit openly to myself that I could have been a better father. A much more involved dad. I had a good example of one too. My father was the best father you could ever want. Strong, disciplined, and not a chatterbox. Always ready to offer a polite sentence of encouragement. He never swore. Even when I grew up. He never, ever swore. At me, my brother, my sister, at the car in front of him, or muttering under his breath at the beloved mother of his children. He was a disciplined man. He worked bloody hard all day, and on Friday evening he sat in his armchair and drank a single pint of beer at home in a singlet. Then he would go out on a Saturday and mow the lawn or hang the washing on the line or prune the roses. He was busy every day of his life and died with tools in his hand. I miss my father, but Christ, he was a better man than me in almost every way you can imagine. That’s what it bloody was. His mind just censored out any possibility of abstract thought. I remember when they legalised gay marriage. They passed that plebiscite thing in parliament, and he was just dead against it. Didn’t despise gays or homosexuals. It just didn’t make sense to him. They even lived down the road from a lesbian Italian couple for close to a decade. A couple of elderly Italian nonnas who had nephews and nieces living with them part of the year. My parents even had them over to the house one evening for coffee. I remember coming over, long after he stopped working, to drop something off. Probably some old lasagne or fish dish. I marched through the house and sitting in the kitchen at the table is my father, mother, and two kindly-faced Italian nonnas smoking inside the house. He let these neighbours smoke inside the house at the kitchen table. Something normally only extended to my mother after a particularly busy day. My father lived with horse flaps on his mind. What is the name of those flaps called?

“It looks great, Artie, champ, really, really great.”

Blinders. My father lived most of his whole life with horse blinders on. Christ, my stomach is on fire. I am sweating badly. I feel it trickling down my knees and shins. My socks feel damp. Why is it so hot all of a sudden? Where has the wind gone? Damn it all, my drink is empty, and I can’t just walk back without Artie. This tie is far too elaborate and tight around my neck. I loosen the thing and stuff it into my pocket. I’ll get myself more into the shade.

“Where are you going, Grandpa?”

“Let, just let me rest a moment, let, let.”

God, I feel so sick. I can feel bile building in my gut. It feels like something rotten. A yellow and green sludge filling my stomach and climbing up my throat. It all feels ready to ooze from my mouth and nose.

“Can I have your stick, Grandpa?”

“Not right now, champion.”

My head is pounding. Sweat is collecting on my back. My stomach makes several painful growls. The muscles on my legs shudder painfully.

“Grandpa!”

“W-w-what, champion?

“Grandpa, I want your stick. You look very pale.”

“What? My what?”

“Your stick! I want your stick to add to my pile!”

“No, no, no, try the sticks over there, just give me a moment, champion.”

This kid just doesn’t let up. Artie must have his way. We have to go to the park. We have to collect sticks. I was never like this. I wasn’t spoiled like him. He pushes and prods all the time. Just stares at you with those squinty little fish eyes. My grandson has the eyes of an angry fish. Christ, if I don’t sit down, I shall have the stomach of a gutted one.

“Let your old Grandpa sit down a second.”

Why? Why do I suddenly feel like eating a lasagna? Must be how sick I’m feeling. How odd, considering all the food we ate earlier today. I feel exactly like eating a big plate of pub lasagna. With one of those really awful salads they always tack on to fill the plate up. Four crisp leaves of lettuce, a cucumber chopped with a sharp spoon, and a whole tomato cut into thirds. I had a lasagna exactly like that once. Years ago. Oh, it was sublimely awful. Truly foul. I remember spearing a piece with my fork, cutting it, and on the way to my mouth, the whole thing would just collapse into sheets of poorly cooked pasta, burnt mince chunks, wads of cold cheese, and shredded carrot. Awful. It was divinely awful. Who was I eating it with? Who was I seated in front of? Beside? I must have been sitting beside them because I commented on the ferns in the walking part of the pub. It had a white metal and glass roof, this pub. When was this? How old was I? How old am I now? I feel awful.

“Why are you smiling, Grandpa?”

“L-lasagna?”

“What, Grandpa?”

“Fetch us a lasagna, but not a fall-apart one. Fetch us a good, solid lasagna with plenty of meat!”

“Grandpa?”

“Ah-h”

My pain is fading now. Slowly curling in on itself and beginning to shuffle away into a throbbing pain. Spreading down to my legs and feet. My stomach has begun to settle. I flex my legs and shake off a shiver on my spine. Christ alive, I feel ancient. My vision is a little blurry now.

“Grandpa!”

My back is sore. My feet feel numb. I am so goddamn old. Even my fingers look and feel like raw sausages. Wrinkle-less and wobbly. That’s why they left me with Artie. Bastards, let the aged fool look after the young kid; he’s got nothing better to do. Even worse, they just assume I’m a lazy drunk and will just fall asleep on somebody’s bed or couch. That I wouldn’t naturally want to entertain and socialise. I watched some of the people at this goddamn party being born. Held them in my arms. I am an adult human being.

“Grandpa, your face looks very red and hot. You should sit down. I will hold your stick for you.”

“They shouldn’t have! No! No, Artie, I’m fine. I am fine. Go play.”

I like this stick. It makes me feel sturdy and strong. It feels like it’s the only thing keeping me upright. I am strong and bold like a warrior. It makes me feel strong. I am a warrior. No, no. I am a feared chief astride a monstrous horse. A hideous animal with tusks and a blood-soaked mane of hair. I wish I could grow a long and bushy moustache. I would grow something luscious like a wise master of an ancient and primeval craft. Or a swordsman from a Japanese movie.

“I am strong, the strongest.”

“What, Grandpa? I am collecting my sticks.”

This kid. This motherfucker.

“Y- you– you collect your stick”

“Sticks, Grandpa! I am collecting multiple sticks”

My mind feels clouded and busy. Like a wasp has gotten into my brain through my ear and is nibbling away furiously at all my insides. I am smothered in sweat. I feel horribly drunk and sober all at once. The sun is too bright and the playground too colourful. My breath escapes my lungs before I even think to take a breath. My hands vibrate. A chasm opens in my brain. Old ones seal up, never to reveal themselves again, and a new channel opens into which pours my blood and energy. I am invigorated through wicked thought alone.

“Can I have your stick, Grandpa?”

This goddamned kid. God I feel so clammy and hot. My brain feels like it is on fire.

“No, not yet ch-champ”

“I need to add your stick, Grandpa!”

I’d have been a king once. I must have been. A savage pagan ruler able to command respect and fealty with just a stick or a staff to rule, rather than a brutal weapon of violence. I was a bush warlord who travelled to this distant land on longships with a throng to colonise this land. I must have been a mighty warlord. A kind but fair master of his lands.

“Can I have your stick?”

 I brandish my stick, holding my weapon high over their head. I must be the warlord. It is inevitable.

“Grandpa, your face is very red, are you okay?”

I cough and spit on the tanbark of the playground. I swing the weapon wide and stumble forward a few steps. Artie looks up to the hills and his house beyond that. Coward.

“I am a warrior.”

“What are you doing, Grandpa?”

My vision is a blurry mess. I swing again and again. A joint in my back cracks and pops. On a wild swipe, I make contact with what feels like the monkey bars. The wood-on-metal sound is a harsh scrape. I feel the impact deep in my hands and arms. I swing again now in a wider circle.

“You okay?”

I stumble forward a little and spin to shove my back against the bars. I swing my stick in a wide circle. I hit myself in the shin and fall forward. I have started crying and thick tears dribble off my nose.

“W-warrior!”

A pair of strong, youthful arms catches me around the chest and heave me up onto my feet.  I sprain my ankle as my foot twists unnaturally on the tanbark. I let out a howl of animalistic pain. Birds in the trees scatter at the sound. The world itself should scatter at my howls. A wad of snot shoots out of my nose and onto the hands on my chest. Released, I stumble for a bit and swing wildly this time. I get him hard in the chest and on the bottom of the chin in a single swing. Spittle shoots from both of our mouths. My second blow is across his chest and my frenzied third is on the very top of his head. I have slain my foe. My vision is blurred and hurried. The world streaks past me in bright colours. Everything is lurid and viscous in colour. Before my eyes clear, I flee the battlefield, my weapon held high over my head. I have beaten my grandson, presumably to death. At the minimum to serious injury.

 

Part 2 – The Khan of St Clems Park

Strictly between you and me, of course. Hush-hush, as the saying goes, and keep in mind that this is just what they tell me, and I tell you. They say, god don’t I sound grand?” I know this bit for a fact, so I don’t know why I start with ‘they say’, silly of me, honestly.”

The Khan lives in the park. That’s just what the kids call him; it’s just a little nickname. I didn’t name him that. Of course, I didn’t. If I had my way, he would have been evicted from the park years ago. I don’t know his actual name. I’ve only seen him maybe three times the whole time we have lived here. Mojo runs over to his little home every time I take him in the park off the lead. He doesn’t particularly like dogs because he had a cat there for a while. Don’t you think Mojo is such a good name? It was my brother’s idea, actually. We were just batting around names at the kitchen island, and he picked the dog up and said,

“Mojo, that’s a mojo alright.”

The dog seemed to like it, we liked it, so we thought, why not? The Khan lives in the park off Saint Clems Road. Not right in it, obviously, or where the walking track is, or where the playground is. He’s tucked away a bit, far enough from the playground and the benches to not warrant an immediate call from the police. You wouldn’t see him straight away, particularly if you didn’t look for him. He has some kind of encampment set up, in the middle of two overgrown thickets of bamboo. He has this tatty, yellow tarpaulin with a hole cut in the middle of it, suspended over a small bed and campfire. Smoke will emerge on occasion from the hole when he cooks.

A couple of years ago, around Easter, so they say, Mrs. Doremus was supposed to have dropped off a bachelor’s handbag, that’s what my husband calls it, by that I mean a whole roast chicken from the supermarket, near his tent. Well, the Khan strip most of the meat off it, he eats it and feeds the small bits to the neighbourhood pests. Then he dumps the whole carcass into an old pot and boils it for weeks on end. The weeks roll along. He picks the bones out of his horrible soup that’s now full of who knows what. He hangs these bones around his encampment on bits of string. Mr. Doremus thinks he attracts pests, rats, and cockroaches. I thought it was hideous. Mrs. Hafner complained to the police and the council after her greyhound snatched one of the bones off the ground and got horribly ill. They told her they could issue him a warning about food scraps but that technically it was waste and you couldn’t take ‘someone like that’ to court over something like this.

The Khan sleeps on a bed of old books, surrounded on almost all sides by torn and twisted umbrellas. The books he permanently borrowed from the community library Mr. Waxman set up a couple of years ago. Nobody knows where he got all the umbrellas from. Mr. Spivak’s daughter said he must have floated down from the sky like Mary Poppins. Miss Moredock’s daughter reckons he invented the umbrella and has an endless supply of them. Kids these days have such an overactive imagination. Every evening, he squashes himself on top of stacks of poorly folded John Le Carré’s, Jodi Picoult’s, Dan Brown’s, and Robert Ludlum’s. The Khan dreams noisily. If you walk through the park in the evening, sometimes you can hear him. His voice bounces off the trees and upsets the possums. He tosses and turns on his makeshift bed, like a child with an overactive imagination. He told Mrs. Ridenour once that when it rains, he says that he dreams of being trapped in an office. Endlessly and repeatedly being fired. Over and over again. Without a single shred of emotion or empathy. Mind you, he also asked Mrs. Ridenour for twenty dollars so he could buy shoes, and she gave it to him, and all he did was buy two large boxes of wine with it and then wrap his shins in the cardboard they came in.

His feet are permanently swollen. He never wears shoes. Not a wrinkle from the knee down. Just rubbery, puffy flesh with a few long patches of hair. I think he’s infected with some kind of parasite or rash. Perhaps both. Well, that’s just what the paramedics told me once, and I’m not one to nay-say the ambulance people, am I? He doesn’t smell nearly as bad as he looks. Because he does look awful. The stink was best described by Ms. Mooney as:

“The smell of raw mince left out on the kitchen counter too long.”

Everyone at the neighbourhood watch meeting agreed with her. She works for an ad agency in the city, so she has a real way with words. The Khan does exude a warm and fatty smell about him. Like a poorly cooked steak. If you get close enough. Mrs. Cobbin claimed she watched him once from the bushes while her dog was relieving itself. She watched him clean his feet. She said he did it with a sharp piece of slate he picked up when they were demolishing the old McNeil house. Mrs. McNeil is in a retirement home now, out near Wonthaggi.

Mrs. Cobbin said she watched sheets of dead skin fall off his feet as if it were old paper. He would slowly pick at each cut, scar, and bruise. The little sores on the top of his feet are swollen with fluid and puss. He cuts his toenails back to a nub. He would shave and chip at his feet with a piece of slate until each foot became bloody and raw. Then he would dip them in hot water, boiling away on his small fire. Then he would scream and howl as the water cauterised his wounds. I don’t think it did him any good. Mrs. Cobbin thought about going over and saying something to him but decided against it. She said it looked like something a Khan would do.

This is funny. I think this is funny, don’t I have such a warped sense of humour? The Khan is almost always drunk, but we never see any bottles or jugs or anything. Turns out, he buried a whole esky nearby his little encampment! Mr. Catano found the lid while he was walking his dog, Capsicum. Apparently, Capsicum was scratching and digging at the ground near the little river that runs along the walking track, and the Khan runs over waving a stick and hooting at both of them. Mr. Catano stages a quick retreat, and the Khan begins digging out a full esky from the ground where the dog was digging. Loudly complaining about having to find a new hiding spot. He does keep the park very clean, I will say that much. All the council has to do is trim the occasional tree back and mow the lawns every once in a while.

Apparently, some paramedics had a look at the Khan’s feet once. On the insistence of Mr Flint, who has always had a soft spot for the Khan. Apparently, he was having trouble walking, and Mr Flint became seriously concerned. They said the best thing they could do in the moment would be some kind of antiseptic bath. The Khan loudly announced that’s what he had been doing this whole time. Then one of them found the pot of what looked like steaming blood and decided to high-tail it out of there. They gave him some tablets and general antiseptic wipes and left him in his encampment. Apparently, it was just Panadol or Aspirin. They may not have been paramedics, mind you. This is just what Mr Flint told me a couple of months ago.

They say the Khan had a family once. Miss Einhorn, the old lady who lives alone except for her three-legged dog, told me once at the supermarket that about three or four years ago, some family came through asking every house on the street about him. She reckons they must have been a daughter or granddaughter. Mr. Einhorn, her older brother who lives a couple of streets over, suspects it was a council care worker.  Mr. Mannheim has seen his wallet. His ID was scratched beyond any recognition but noticed some old photos of young women. One older with a short brown bobby kind of haircut and a younger one sitting on her lap with long blonde hair and a man’s chin. His words, not mine. He asked who they were, but by then, the Khan had shuffled back to his encampment. Mrs. Mannheim thinks he must have had an ordinary job and life because he has all of this stuff with him that suggests he must have had a regular job or even a house at one point. Old bits of chairs and tables, dirty ties, and a big folder of old, stained documentation. She claims to have seen it once, but it was written in another language. Mr. Mannheim thinks she’s lying to sound like she has the inside track. I can see now why neither of them married.

He is fond of a drink, but I think that’s because some of the neighbourhood teens used to leave bottles of cheap wine around for him. Oh yes. The offerings. How he earned the name ‘Khan’ to begin with. It all started over one summer, probably three years ago now. Mister Singh’s youngest, I think his name is Harry or Henry. Anyone, little Mister Singh Junior who lives on the corner, had been a history nut from the time he could speak. Over the summer, Singh Junior was devouring anything to do with Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. Fiction and non-fiction, according to the daughter of Mrs. Hafner. Well, Singh Junior notices the old wretch living in the park across the road. The thick beard and moustache, the sunburnt skin, the heavy clothes, and muscular build, and just starts calling him ‘the Khan’. As in the Mongol leaders Genghis, Kublai, and Ögedei Khan. So Singh Junior, Mrs. Hafner’s daughter, the Berman twins Janet and Jaqueline, and a couple of other kids around that difficult teenage age, start leaving the Khan gifts of fealty. Singh Junior makes a kind of religious totem and plants the thing outside of the Khan’s encampment. This all escalates until an altar is built by Caleb Melnick’s son, Isaac, who visits his father for a fortnight while his mother is on holiday in Vietnam. Isaac takes all of this automotive junk from his father’s front yard and builds a kind of Mad Max-style altar right in the middle of the park. Some kind of hideous table covered in all bits of junk, metal pipes, wire, and spikes. Who knows how he got a bag of cement but seals the thing right in the middle of the walking track? Mr. Logan says when he’s walking his dog past it, the altar reminds him of the barbecue pit from that episode of The Simpsons when Homer tries to build one in his backyard.

Then the teenagers all got into the idea properly. Singh Junior and Mrs. Hafner’s daughter raided their parents’ fridge and cupboard and left a couple of hundred dollars worth of groceries on the altar for the Khan. Little do they know he’s asleep for the past two days after drinking a bottle of gin given to him by Isaac Melnick. The council got involved and spent the better part of a week removing the altar. Mr. Barsky, who was a lawyer before he was made redundant, threatened to submit a formal police complaint. The Khan had no idea what was going on. Ultimately, Mrs. Hafner’s daughter and Singh Junior laid the blame on the real masterminds, and Janet and Jaqueline Berman had to apologise to the Singhs, Mr. Melnick, and the Hafners. Just another messy, chaotic summer in the neighbourhood. Nobody knows exactly what the Khan’s real name is. Some people think he may have been local at one point. Lost in house in the recession. Other think he wandered into the park from the free doctor’s clinic on Haversham Road near the old bus stop. He won’t tell anybody anything, just rants and screams. He’s just a bit of a suburban legend. Relatively harmless if a little eccentric.
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