Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

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.

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?’