The Alchemists of Kush

by Minister Faust

Stopping, guard holding him up.

  Standing on the other side of the portal, an emissary from the land of the living.

  The man who’d gotten him out.

  A trick? A kot-tam Pyrite scam to make him grateful, make him lower his guard?

  Shuffling forward, legs jellying with each step.

  Tripping, falling forward, and the man caught him, and trying to climb up and away from his saviour turned into holding onto him and then grinding down his teeth so hard they hurt, just to keep the screams inside.

  But he couldn’t stop the shudders.

  A wary hand. On his shoulder.

  When Raptor didn’t let go, Maãhotep dropped his briefcase and hugged him tight with both arms.

  Driving Kushward, south from 186th Avenue. Didn’t even know there was city this far north. Practically the arctic. Expected polar bears.

  First week of September, two in the morning, and enough stars above the empty freeway for every one of his ancestors.

  Maãhotep’s ride ran so smooth it felt like gliding. From the front seat, the Infiniti smelled like fancy coffee and cleanliness.

  Back seat: Moon. His mother. She’d hugged him out. Never’d seen her like that. Furious, happy, relieved, giddy. Moon faked calm, tried to be reassuring, but Raptor could tell he was furious. Plotting. He could almost see a sword in his Master’s hand.

  But both kept quiet so Maãhotep could continue interviewing his client.

  Raptor answered every one of Maãhotep’s questions, but Maãhotep asked him only about the case.

  3.

  “Damn, boy, locked up with Nazis? Fuh real?” said Jackal, magnetised.

  The two brothers sat drinking hot chocolate around Moon’s kitchen table. Jackal’d insisted on coming over at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. Moon and Araweelo’d said it was okay, since they hadn’t slept, anyway.

  So while Raptor answered Jackal’s questions, the adults sat in the living room to break from Raptor’s case and talk about Moon’s upcoming Wednesday night national cable news interview about the proposed Africentric school.

  “Those boys are crazy,” whispered Jackal. “Shit, all a buncha dial-a-doping meth-heads, transform? High school drop-outs. Mosta those fools grew up in townhouses across from Safeway with lowlife ‘uncles’ coming over to fuck em while their moms were drunk—”

  Raptor turned death-ray eyes on him.

  Jackal shut up, then said, “Bruh, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  A knock at the door. Raptor must’ve looked scared, like he was expecting cops or Nazis to break it down.

  Jackal: “Chill . . . it’s probably just ’Noot. Told her to meet me here.”

  Raptor ran to open it.

  She flung her arms around his neck, tippy-toed up to press her cheek and ear against his. Crushed her tears there. They smelled like apple juice.

  He started to say her name and she closed his lips with her own.

  Sheet lightning, flaring across the skies of his eyes.

  This wasn’t pain at all.

  From a million miles away, a voice:

  Da-a-a-a-yum!

  Both broke away, mortified, glimpsing Jackal jumping back, also mortified.

  4.

  The Street Laboratory, that afternoon. Five of the streetest Street Falcons clapped Raptor on the back like returning from lock-up meant he’d just earned his black belt or Master’s degree or something.

  Shook their hands off like rats. “Don’t even think that shit!”

  Their eyes widened. Room went quiet. If Raptor was swearing, he meant bidness.

  “All that wack ‘graduation’ shit is just a played-out Pyrite trap! Why else you think these khetiuta want us hearing it a million times on every CD? While they’re making billions?”

  Jackal replaced-elevated the subject to an all-styles martial arts tournament coming up. Across the room, ’Noot went back to talking with Moon and Seshat. Logistics for their next-Monday demonstration at City Hall.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” said Seshat to Moon, “but you know this’ll cost us, right?”

  ’Noot: “What does it cost us not to do it?”

  Both adults fell silent, smile-frowning.

  Raptor, watching her over there. Proud.

  Kept glancing at each other since that kiss.

  But neither knew what to say.

  Her, a muhajabah , and him . . . .

  Couldn’t get her out of his mind.

  S, Simultaneous: felt like laughing and crying at the same time.

  Baton bruises were still yelling across his body, and the thought of next Monday’s rally made him want to sidekick everything in the universe or hide away in a cave. Or both.

  But kot-tam. ’Noot. She tasted just like a Red Delicious.

  5.

  “The woman’s unhinged,” said Seshat.

  Sunday night. While Raptor did his Social Studies homework at the kitchen table, Seshat held a battle-briefing with Moon. Moon poured her more tea while she sat across from him on the couch.

  “Ever since we had to fire her daughter from the Kush Party, woman’s been wearing war paint instead of mascara.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Seshat, really? She had her chance to throw down some craziness. Probably just gonna go away now.”

  “Brother, I’ve known the woman since we were in high school. She’s not just some drama queen. She’s Waiting to Exhale meets The Shining.”

  “You’re saying she’s gonna throw away my clothes, burn my car and put an axe in my chest?”

  “You’re laughing, but it’s not funny. She’s left ten crazy messages on my machine. She’s saying she’s gonna go after all of us: in the community, in the media, mess up our situation with City Hall . . . and you heard her, she practically threatened to burn down your store.”

  “What, you think she actually meant that?”

  Raptor glanced up for the answer. Saw Seshat, tilting her head and shrugging.

  Moon: “So what do you recommend?”

  Again, tilting and shrugging.

  “Let’s just hope she’s not at the rally tomorrow.”

  Nodding. Gravely.

  6.

  “How many more of our young students, scholars, children, have to have their heads beaten in by the police?” yelled Brother Moon, amping his call-and-response groove.

  Four hundred people between him and City Hall’s reflecting pool shouted back:

  “How many?”

  “How long these Destroyers gonna keep electrocuting our people with Tasers?”

  “How long?”

  “How come these Destroyers think they have a right to abuse us and misuse us?”

  “How come?”

  Uniformed cops, flanking the reflecting pool. Not like a phalanx. More like stragglers.

  City Hall’s security armed with walkie-talkies and armoured in ill-fitting polyester uniforms glanced nervously everywhere.

  Civilian “peace officers.” Looked like highway cops outta some American TV show. Fronting, trying to look hard, but nobody was even window-shopping.

  Beyond them, camera-men grabbed crowd shots or got “streeter” interviews, ignoring Moon at the podium.

  Same image on the hundreds of pre-rally posters was on their placards: Constable Babyface.

  Someone’d cell-phone photoed his picture, but the blurry low-rez made his face even more disturbing. Not a man anymore. A storm.

  Raptor and Jackal, standing on the side, pumping their fists, cheering every time Moon dropped a verbal bomb. Raptor, pointing to his favourite placard: Spank Babyface. Both of them laughed.

  A White dude in a windbreaker and a thick mustache. Standing close to the boys, listening to the speeches or looking for somebody.

  Raptor, low to Jackal: “What do you think he’s doing here? He one of those anarchists or whatever?”

  Jackal: “Naw. Too clean. Watch this.”

  Soon as the man crossed their path and they were just beyond his peripheral vision, Jackal said quickly, “Co
nstable?”

  Dude stopped and turned without thinking—maybe half a second—then cranked his face like he was about to make something up.

  “Just checking, officer,” said Jackal.

  The man moved off, grinding his jaw. Jackal and Raptor fist-bumped and laughed.

  “—and this one vicious, disgraceful, low-life cop, Mr. Babyface—” railed Moon.

  “Speak it!”

  “Oh, no, he didn’t!”

  “Go on and tell it, bruh!”

  “He’s out here, running wild like a mad dog, biting and snapping and barking and howling, assaulting our young people! He took our young brother, the Supreme Raptor—you all know him from YouTube and the Kush Party, I believe—”

  —cheers—

  “Officer Babyface brutally punched him in the jaw over nothing! And when our brother defended himself, this same deviant, despicable Destroyer Tasered him, Tasered an unarmed eighteen-year-old youth!”

  —boos—

  Raptor, loving Moon’s rap, wishing he’d taken Moon’s offer to speak.

  But he wasn’t ready. Sweating all weekend just thinking about coming here. Figured the cops were gonna beat em all down, throw em all in jail. And how was Brother Maãhotep gonna spring the entire Laboratory?

  “Don’t be thinking this is all about Mr. Babyface,” said Moon at the mic. “Cuz you know and I know . . . these storm troopers and rent-a-cops in malls and the LRT . . . are harassing our people three hundred and sixty-five days a year . . . insteada solving crimes against us . . . . Am I right?”

  “Yes sir!”

  “Am I right?”

  “Right on, Brother Moon!”

  “Tell it!”

  “We have Somali men getting gunned down like it’s hunting season, and what are the police doing about it?”

  “Nothing!”

  “That’s right. Nothing. But you know who else I blame for all this?”

  “Who?”

  “You know else who I blame?”

  “Who?

  “You want me to tell you?”

  “Tell us!”

  “Each . . . and every one . . . of you.”

  “Speak it!”

  “I blame you!”

  “Tell it!”

  “I blame you! Because you let these Destroyers come into our community! And run wild like wolves! Ripping us apart—I said ripping us apart—until the streets are slippery with our blood! You let these Destroyers, killing our Somali men, get away with it. You do!”

  “Tell em!”

  “And then what you think these Destroyer cops gon do . . . after they witness that disgraceful behaviour? They kno-o-ow we aint gonna protect our own! Defend our own! So they come in . . . swinging, shooting, and electrocuting!”

  —applause—

  “They did it to me! Beat my legs and Tasered me to the ground! Just last year . . . when I was doing their job for em! And now . . . they do the exact same evil deal to my young Falcon! Electrocuting him, too!”

  —boos, curses, shame-on-thems—

  “Who the hell these Destroyers think they are? The electric company?”

  —laughter, applause—

  “Maybe their problem is, rope’s just too damned expensive these days.”

  —laughter, applause, cheers—

  “But we got our brother out. Because we’ve got one of the best legal minds in the city on our side—” (cheers) “—and meanwhile, they’re releasing killers, actual killers, back on the street! The exact same ones I turned into breadsticks like you saw on YouTube—”

  —laughter, cheers—

  “And let me tell you! All of you, all of everybody! If these Destroyers . . . inside the Somali community . . . if these Destroyers inside the police . . . if they think they can attack us and get away with it anymore . . . let me say it, it’s a new day dawning!”

  —CHEERS—

  “Falcons! Assemble!”

  Twenty Falcons double-marched it up the stairs and flanked Brother Moon, flicked their coats off into the hands of other waiting Falcons, revealing their martial arts uniforms.

  Suddenly every TV camera there was aimed at the front.

  Moon: “Ready!”

  Ten feet behind the podium, twenty bodies clanked into attack stance. Raptor saw a camera-man grinning like it was Christmas morning. A security guard next to him looked like he’d just shit his Fruit of the Looms.

  “Strike!”

  Twenty right fists—sleeve-snapping strikes sounding like the bolt action of a shotgun.

  “Strike!” Twenty left fists, hitting air the same second—

  “Strike!” Twenty right feet at the end of sidekicks—

  “Strike!” Twenty left—

  “Transform!” Twenty two-punch combos, twenty frontkick-roundhouse explosions, twenty axe-head elbows slamming down onto twenty invisible skulls, twenty voices crying out, “HAI!”

  “Transformed!”

  Crowd screaming, cameras spinning, cops on the perimeter lining up, security jabbering into walkie-talkies.

  Raptor: mind-whirling, fire and ice. If those cops moved in, what were they gonna do? Did the cops have snipers up on any of the rooftops around the Square?

  Brother Moon: “And we don’t just want Babyface disciplined.

  “We don’t just want him fired.

  “We don’t just want all the Babyfaces fired and thrown under the jail.

  “And we don’t just want an end to police brutality.

  “What do we want?”

  “Justice!”

  “What do we want?”

  “Justice!”

  “When do we want it?”

  All Falcons, on cue: “FOREVER!”

  “As of today,” said Moon to the crowd, “we are filing suit . . . against Constable Babyface . . . and the Edmonton Police Service . . . for fifteen million dollars.”

  Hollers, cheers, applause like cannon-fire—

  Raptor, stopping dead: Huh? Why didn’t Moon tell him? What about all of Babyface’s other victims? Was this gonna be a class action suit?

  Saw Seshat and Maãhotep. Faces: beige. Looking at each other like they were in a speeding car headed into a Mack truck, and their driver was whacked out on meth.

  Ninety minutes later. Up at the Palace of the Moon. Seshat and Maãhotep burst in. Seething.

  Raptor got up to head to his room. Moon told him, “Stay. This affects you.”

  “You’re damn right it affects him!” said Maãhotep.

  Seshat: “You can’t just, just not even discuss something of this magnitude with us, Moon, and then go ahead and announce it to the world during a rally!”

  “How’m I supposed to do my job and get taken seriously,” said the lawyer, “if you’re blind-siding me on the six o’clock news?”

  “I just got off a twenty-minute phone blast from Alderman Brothers!” said Seshat. “This could cost us everything—the job grants, City amenities access, the Street Laboratory itself—”

  Moon: “Guess he’s not much of a friend, then—”

  “Who said he was a friend? Who needs friends? We’ve got a million friends who won’t lift a finger for us! Brothers was an ally! The man delivered!”

  “Listen—”

  “No, Moon, you listen! You cost us and you napalmed my bridges. And for what?”

  “Maybe we even would’ve gone for this,” said Maãhotep, “but for you to just unilaterally spring this on us in a public forum, no less, when none of us is ready, when we haven’t even X-rayed it . . . and what if we can’t do this? Then we look weak and disorganised! And you know what happens then!”

  Seeing someone talk to Moon like this—even Seshat and Maãhotep—it rocked Raptor. Why wasn’t he hitting back? Was he just rope-a-doping? Exhausting them?

  But Moon’s eyes were all wrong. Like he was seeing something none of them could see.

  Raptor’s guts: bright ash, angry red coals.

  “—and in light of today’s performance,” said Seshat,
“you should seriously re-think that interview tomorrow—”

  “Agreed,” snapped Maãhotep.

  Seshat: “The Africentric school’s got plenty of very capable advocates—”

  Moon’s eyes blinked into darkness. “Oh, I’m doing that interview.”

  7.

  “Oh, snuh-ap!” barked Jackal at the Street Laboratory’s TV.

  Sbai Seshat shushed him.

  “Yeah, but you hear what this ho just—”

  Glared. “Excuse me?”

  “I mean—this heavily mistaken lady—”

  “We’re trying to watch!” chirped Sister Ãnkhur.

  Jackal grimaced and shut up.

  A dozen or so Falcons, magnetised by the battle on-screen. Raptor: feeling like he was at the Roman Coliseum. Within smelling-distance of his warrior friend raising shield and swinging mace, fighting for his life on the bloody dirt.

  And any time the Pyrites who ran the death-ring wanted to finish making their point, they could just send in eight or eighty gladiators, plus an elephant and a couple of lions.

  The national cable news host was some middle-aged blonde woman Raptor’d never heard of. Had a nailed-on sneer that broke off the top half of her face from the bottom. A crack in a vase.

  In the weeks leading up to this night, Moon’d been calling her “that Nancy Grace wannabe.” Seshat just called her “Nancy Graceless.”

  Three other guests—a couple of academics and a “concerned parent”—joined Brother Moon by satellite link-up, and another one shared the host’s Toronto studio.

  But the Moon vs. Host firefight barely left a second for the rest of the guests to launch a single word.

  HOST

  —Mr. Ani, as head of the Street Falcons gang—

  YIMUNHOTEP ANI

  Appalling. We’re not a gang—

  HOST

  You are called the “Street Falcons,” are you not? Certainly sounds like a gang name—

  YIMUNHOTEP ANI

  Our football team’s called the Eskimos, and not one of them is Inuit—

  Jackal: “Kaboom!” Seshat smiled—at Moon or at Jackal, Raptor couldn’t tell.