by Omar Musa
‘Life is never simple, brother.’
‘True. But a bloke can dream, can’t he? You know, I wasn’t even sure if I should come here today. I almost sent someone else.’
The men look across the headstones at a stand of poplar trees on the other side of the river. A boy in a wheelchair rolls off an unseen track and parks beneath them.
‘But you’re here now,’ says Aleks.
‘I am, indeed. But we’re jumping the gun, Janeski. I feel like you had something to say to me.’
Aleks smiles magnanimously. ‘Look here, brother. Let’s not mess around, all right? I know you’re not here to fuck spiders. You’re a smart fella. You’d be able to tell that I’m what you call a people’s person. I meet all sorts of characters in this funny game. So recently, I made the acquaintance of some fellas in Sydney. Fellas with a bit of dash. Fellas that it’s better to be friends with than enemies, understand? More importantly, these fellas have a lot of product in their possession. Cheap. Good quality. Direct from Afghanistan.’
‘How cheap?’ the bikie asks. The man in the passenger seat of the ute is cocking his head, obviously trying to catch every word.
Aleks cracks his knuckles and says a number. The bikie nods. ‘Competitive. But what if I don’t want to meet your friends?’
‘Well. Then things get . . . complicated again,’ says Aleks. The boy in the wheelchair whirs a handline over his head and hurls it into the river. ‘But there’s no need for that, brother. Let’s be businessmen about this. Not animals. Let’s . . . how do you say? Compromise. The way nations do it.’
‘Really? I thought they do it by force.’
Aleks laughs. ‘True. But in this situation it’s not mutually beneficial for anyone to use force. Play this thing right, we can be winners. You get direct access to the good shit. My friends make money. You make money. You’ll be rich as bloody Ottomans, mate.’
‘Then why shouldn’t I go straight to them myself?’ the bikie says.
‘Because they’re fond of me, these fellas. They value loyalty. And loyalty’s a hard commodity to come by in this country. It’s at a premium, don’t you reckon?’
‘All right. Then you? What’s in it for you?’
Aleks looks across the river again. The boy is reeling something in. Carp? Redfin? The water must be so low right now. What fish would be in there? he wonders.
‘Me? I work for myself. Just a little extra cream will do me fine. A sip from the bubbler, like I said.’
‘A bit of a rogue then, ay?’
‘Fuck noath, brother.’ Aleks grins and makes a mental note to use the word later. The bikie was right – Aleks treasures his position as an outsider among outsiders, a solo operator, doing as he pleases at a mid to low level in the criminal world. Over the years, he has acted as muscle, as a liaison, negotiated drug deals, intimidated and used fraud, all the while doing his day job. He doesn’t consider himself a criminal, merely an opportunist. In the chaos of a war-torn country, he’d learned that you have to take what you can get, when you can get it. The same, it turns out, applies here. At times the urge is there to go all in, but he’s been slow and steady, ready at any point to fade into the background. For his family, all for his family. ‘A rogue. Yeh, I like that. Look, at this point, don’t worry about me. I’m just sorting them out and the rest’ll follow. We all win.’ He claps his hands together then makes an open gesture, as if releasing pigeons from a rooftop.
The bikie has taken his sunnies off and squints at Aleks, studying him. He sees something, then slowly nods. They shake hands. Aleks waits for the ute to leave then he drives slowly up the long, bluestone driveway. As he swings onto the road, he nods at someone in the tree line.
7
Jimmy and Solomon stand with Mercury Fire in between them. Gladys is talking in a torrent. The boys try to shuffle back into the shade of a tree, as the sun is burning their skin. She carries on, unperturbed:
‘He fell from the sky.
I was looking over me backyard,
making a sandwich.
The lad next door skied his cricket ball.
We both looked up
but both lost it against the sun.
I saw something moving waaay up high,
gliding,
a V shape.
I couldn’t believe the ball had gone that far.
I saw the ball drop in the corner of me eye,
but I kept looking at the V.
It turned and rose and turned.
Me head was right back.
Suddenly
it split into two and a black blob
fell
towards the ground.
I felt it hit the earth,
and maybe I heard it, too,
but I couldn’t see where it landed.
I ran towards the fence and I knew it was something important.
A change.
Even before all that,
luck had played a huge part in me life.
I was always a street fighter,
a tough old bird.
You have to be, growing up in Streatham.
South London.’
Jimmy whispers something about the rapper Roots Manuva to Solomon, who shushes him. The old lady continues.
‘It’s not all luck,
but that’s what has played the biggest part.
That’s what I think I thought.
I looked underneath the old plum tree
and saw something against the fence.
I didn’t want to touch it,
then it made a sound.
It looked like a bloody grey tennis ball.
Then I realised,
a tiny face was looking back at me.
I thought it was a possum or a water rat at first.
But it wasn’t.
It was a little puppy,
a bloody and broken little critter,
with fur the colour of mercury.
I scooped it up and squinted at the sky again.
I saw an eagle with wings
maybe as long as a man’s arms.
Could’ve been a wedgetail.
The little grey ball whimpered in me hands.
It looked as if its leg was broken
and it had one eye staring at me,
bright as a button.
The other had been scratched,
maybe even torn out, by the eagle.
Who’da known that pathetic lil thing –
lil gift of the sky –
would be a champion one day.
I could hear the kids start their game again
on the other side of the fence.
I went inside and called a vet.’
She is crying now and the brothers, one with his hand on Mercury’s head, the other on its twitching withers, don’t know where to look.
8
‘Bro . . . I’m drunk as.’
‘Me too, brother.’
‘How the fuck we get here? This place is way too posh for us.’
‘Aw, we’re celebrating, bro.’
‘Celebrating what?’
‘Buying the hound.’
‘Oh, that’s right, ay.’
The bar is brand new, the latest hotspot in town, with a line almost around the corner. Young chicks totter like fresh-born foals. The boys are smoking just outside the door. Solomon is handed an ID by a nervous teenager who mistakes him for a bouncer. All the staff wear waistcoats and the wall shows raw brick in places. Concrete and a rust wall. The couches are rich brocade and the curtains have a bullion fringe. Despite all attempts, it is a parade of vulgarity. Neon lights shine through Alizé and Patrón bottles behind the bar. Metro roidheads and wannabe footy players wear shirts printed with the names of foreign cities they’ll never visit and compare copycat tatts and gym muscles. Women with fake breasts and fake tans flick tousled hair over shoulders with manicured hands, waiting for someone to shake a bag of coke like a polaroid and lead them to the bathroom.
‘Live by the
bag, die by the bag’, says Aleks.
A woman is yelling, ‘Where’s Caitlin? I’ve lost Caitlin,’ while men stand against the wall, observing her, hands crossed over genitals, bobbing their heads to the beat. Everyone’s eyes are elsewhere, on the door especially, to see if someone new comes in, each person ignoring exes, tracing hands around waists, heads thrown back with exaggerated laughter. A small, awkward dancefloor has formed, and the DJ switches from ambient tunes to old Ja Rule and TLC. Jimmy yells at him to play some Gang Starr. The DJ is a hip hop head from way back who does this lark on the side. He smiles tiredly and says, ‘Yeh, for sure, bro, a bit later.’
Jimmy sprinkles some MDMA crystals into Solomon’s palm, and watches as Solomon licks them off discreetly. Georgie looks away. Aleks is toying with his keys, chatting to a scientist who has just been laid off in the latest round of government cuts. A man, by himself at the edge of the bar, watches them all. Jimmy begins to tell a story, his voice loud and slurring.
‘You know how Sin One became so good at rapping? He ran away from his auntie’s place when she was on the heroin, bro; ran into the bush as far as he could. He was only six. He couldn’t read or write. He couldn’t even speak, did you know that? He was mute. He ran up into the hills, chasing a feral dog, and found a cave. He sat in the cave for five fucken days straight and when he was there, a swarm of bees came in. They went in his eyes, in his nose, in his ears, his throat, but they never stung him and he sat there, still as a Buddha. When he came out, he had a different voice; his mind had been rearranged somehow. He could fit words together like a mosaic. Then his Tongan neighbour gave him a Big Daddy Kane tape. The rest is history, bra.’
Aleks, Georgie and Solomon are staring over their drinks at him. Then Aleks says, ‘Where the fuck do you come up with this shit, Jimmy?’
Jimmy starts laughing, then so do Aleks and Solomon. Solomon throws his head back and big gusts of laughter sweep through him and he’s shaking his dreds side to side with tears in his eyes. A group of women at another table all stare at him slyly, lingering over their cocktails.
Jimmy notices that Solomon’s the only dark-skinned person in the room, besides a Maori bouncer and a table of well-to-do looking Indians, who stare at the boys like they’re an unpleasant joke or a foul smell hanging in the air. Why is it that ethnics always hate other ethnics? The boys stare staunchly back at the Indians, who soon stand up to leave. Georgie looks away again and orders a lime and soda.
‘I heard your story. What a load of horseshit. How many lines have you had tonight, mate?’
The bloke on the edge of the bar says it. Jimmy squints and he comes into focus. The man is wearing grey, with husky blue eyes and light-blond hair whipped into a wave.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ asks Solomon.
The man smiles and doesn’t seem offended in the least. ‘Damien Crawford. Nice to meet you.’
Soon, a bit confused, the boys are shaking his hand. He tells them immediately he is a spokesperson for a government minister. He orders round after extravagant round for everyone, spending thousands. He begins to tell the boys that he studied law overseas, that before that he was dux of his high school, that at university he was heavily involved in student politics. Jimmy can’t catch which party he belongs to. Who’s in power anyway? Who the fuck knows?
Aleks smirks and says, ‘What’s uni? Is it like TAFE but with better cappuccinos?’
The man smiles again. Soon he and Solomon are in a debate about boat people and the attention is immediately on Solomon, and his big hands that accentuate his words in a strangely delicate way. Jimmy notices how his brother’s voice changes, the private school modulation, how he can immediately slip into the back-and-forth of argument, using words Jimmy’s never heard him say. It suddenly hits him – Solomon is bilingual.
‘What we need is compassionate onshore processing,’ says Solomon.
‘And relocation of funds,’ adds Georgie.
‘Exactly. The current system doesn’t work morally or economically. Costs the taxpayer billions every year that we could use way better —’ Solomon is about to continue when Aleks butts in.
‘My parents, they came here with fuck-all, mate; they made something of themselves. They both had two jobs. We shared a tiny flat with another family. They came the right way and no one felt sorry for us. It’s bullshit. People need to just get on with it. The government’s doing the right thing – getting ready for when there’s ten times more refugees.’
Georgie is shaking with anger. ‘Ugh.’
Aleks curls his lip. ‘Look. When NATO fucked us up the arse, we had one million Albanian refugees come across the border into Macedonia. You know how much that fucked the economy? Set us back decades.’
Solomon and Aleks have had this argument numerous times and for the most part agree to disagree, so Solomon speaks softly but firmly, using the Macedonian diminutive of Aleks’ name. ‘But Atse, we’re not talking about millions of people. We’re talking about a few thousand. Also, it’s not illegal to seek asylum.’
‘Yeah, but you let one in, you let em all in.’
‘Bro, you of all people should know how war can make people desperate.’
Solomon is about to speak again when Crawford claps his hand on Aleks’ shoulders. ‘This is a man who’s talking some sense.’ He turns to Solomon. ‘What school did you go to?’
Solomon tells him.
‘Rugby scholarship?’ asks Crawford.
Solomon flinches, but replies truthfully. ‘Basketball.’
‘Right.’
‘How you know I’m not a maths freak or something?’
Crawford shrugs and smiles again. ‘Just a hunch. Tell you what though, you’d make a good footy player. We definitely need it at the moment. The Wallabies are atrocious. No heart.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not.’
Crawford sizes them up, looking at Jimmy’s cap and Solomon’s Elefant Traks shirt. ‘I heard you talking about Sin One. You must have heard he’s coming back to town. He might very well be the only Aussie rapper who really competes on the world stage. Party, political, personal – he does it all. Pity time’s moved on without him, though.’ Crawford sounds passionate as he speaks – there’s something entrancing and terrifying about him. How does he know about hip hop? About Sin One? His eyes seem to change colour, and then he becomes suddenly dismissive. ‘Aussie rap – bit of a joke, don’t you think? Can never compare to the real thing. Boys. Let me tell you another story.’ Crawford begins to speak about boats and wars, deserts and islands. He says that truth is a metal you can bend with your will and with heat. He talks about an alley cat that tried to act like a tiger. The alley cat walked tall, it growled, it stalked through the city as if it was the jungle, but no matter how hard the alley cat tried, he could never shake the stink of the gutter. People always knew what he was and he was eventually castrated. ‘This alley cat should have known his station,’ Crawford concludes. He must have drunk a full bottle of liquor to himself but is still speaking in clipped, perfect phrases, as if he has rehearsed everything he is saying. Georgie excuses herself and leaves the bar.
Jimmy goes to the bathroom to take a shit. He scratches a tag into the toilet roll dispenser with a key but his mind is spinning. He sits with his head in his hands and spits out the saliva that is flooding his mouth. When he goes back to the bar, the place is almost empty. He goes into the smoking area and sees Solomon beating Crawford savagely and silently in the corner. The blood sparks off his face like garnets and he is grimacing or smiling. Aleks is nowhere to be seen. Jimmy joins Solomon and soon Crawford’s face is unrecognisable. ‘Wrong place at the wrong time buddy,’ one of them says. ‘They teach you ’bout that at university?’ Holding him by his collar, Jimmy looks up and sees the bouncer standing in the doorway. He nods at them. They turn back to their task and continue to punch, now crouched over him, thrashing him against the bloodsprent cement. Crawford has not made a sound and is soon so disfigured that he couldn’t even if he wanted
to.
Solomon and Jimmy look up and the bouncer is no longer in the doorway.
9
Hand tatts
There are five men in the studio,
each one bigger than the next.
A woman walks in confidently
and says,
‘Who’s Wil?’
‘Me.’
‘Sweet. Over here.’
I scan the walls.
Thousands of tattoo designs –
pin-up girls, Southern Crosses, skulls.
The tattoo artist has dark hair.
She moves to the CD player
and puts on a David Dallas album.
The man called Wil reclines in the seat
and she points to his neck.
‘Right here?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Too easy.’
She starts to tattoo
the postcode of the Town
onto his neck.
His face is emotionless.
She is mumbling along to the song –
‘From the Pacific Isle of Samoa
via Middlemore, still as raw as the day a baby boy
was delivered on.’
Delicate with the needle,
efficiently wiping away blood and ink
with a paper towel,
she is finished quickly.
‘And now?’
‘A joker. Right here.’
‘On your hand?’
‘Yeh.’
‘Can you prove you’ve got a job that lets you have a hand tatt?’
‘Ah . . . What?’
‘I don’t do face or hand tatts if you can’t prove you’re not gonna lose your job if you get one.’
