Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

‘The big one. The old one with the lemon trees.’

Aleks knows it. It’s the most beautiful house on the street, directly across from the flats, like something designed to taunt them. A Nazi had lived there years ago, hung himself in the attic and now his ghost haunts the place, or so the story went. Nowadays a gunmetal-grey Porsche sneers from the driveway next to two trucks. Aleks nods to himself then stands up and hugs Grace. ‘All right; sorry to be rude, but I better get going, Grace. Gotta make the paint store before it closes.’

‘But what about —’ she starts.

‘I heard what you said. I listened. I’ll fix it, all right?’ He replies in a short but kind voice.

‘Thanks, Aleks,’ she says guiltily.

* * *

Aleks stands looking at the legal wall, rubbing his hands together. He quickly identifies the piece he is going to paint over. ‘Poor bastard, even after all these years his pieces are so toy,’ says Aleks. Solomon nods, dazed. It’d taken Aleks ages to get onto Solomon and when he finally had, he told Solomon to bring his new girlfriend along, intrigued. However, when he picked them up they were sullen and quiet. Solomon was drunk already and they’d clearly been fighting.

To Aleks’ surprise, Scarlett has brought her own paints. She shakes a tin of MTN 94 and eyes the wall, saying to no one in particular, ‘I love how these smell. Kinda like bubblegum.’

Aleks grins. ‘You must be crazy. Smells as bad as every other paint.’ He’s bought the new Ironlak Sugars and is giving them a burl. Particles of paint float in the air. It’s hot but a cool breeze is coming through, and soon Solomon is up and at it as well. He puts Spit Syndicate’s ‘Sunday Gentlemen’ on the speakers. Aleks props himself on the tips of his fingers as he paints, relishing the sun. He has no plan, but he writes JAKEL freehand in his tight, interlocking script. He has always been the best writer of the boys, a natural instinct to conceive a whole piece in his mind and execute it to perfection. He had re-arranged some letters in his surname to create that tag. He smiles to himself, thinking of his very first tag, KBAB, when he was just getting accustomed to Australia, and the ridicule he got for it.

The piece is starting to take shape, with a light blue to navy chroming effect in the middle, then black, then yellow. He’s sunburnt within an hour.

He gets a message on his phone from an unknown number. It is a photo of a hand with a finger stitched to it, dark blue and scabbed around the stitches. The message below simply reads, ‘No hard feelings, ay?’ He grimaces and deletes it, then keeps painting. The colours are really popping now and he uses a see-through paint, a black techie, to get a shadow effect on the letters so that they look 3D.

Scarlett, meanwhile, is painting a figure, a woman who is half bird, half human. Solomon is helping her and the wings are a vibrant yellow-to-white fade, like a sulphur-crested cockatoo. Aleks thinks that it’s definitely got an art-school vibe but is dope nonetheless. He is surprised to see them share a gentle, conciliatory kiss. Love and hip hop, ay? he thinks.

Once finished, they stand back from their pieces. They look so alive they could pop from the concrete and fly through the air.

* * *

Aleks stands in the garden of the house across from the flats. There is a fountain, terracotta tiles and four perfectly manicured lemon trees: a chiaroscuro in blue-black and white. A few fallen fruit on the ground. Holding something downwards in his right hand, he is rolling the blue bead with his left. He pockets the bead, steps forward and picks up a lemon with his free hand, weighs it, sniffs it, then places it carefully back on the ground. As he stoops to do so, the backdoor swings open and the owner of the house appears holding a garbage bag. The thin sound of laughter from a television inside.

Aleks steps silently back into the shadows against the fence; hidden in a darkness so pure it could be an extract of the outer reaches of space. The cricket bat in his right hand feels incredibly heavy, as if it could sink with him into the core of the earth.

The man is well put together, wearing a collared linen shirt tucked into his jeans. He has a military-style haircut. He reaches into his mouth, pulls out a piece of gum and throws it into the garbage bin. Everything he does is purposeful and his face is set severely. Aleks thinks of Grace and his hand tightens on the cricket bat handle, his palms sweaty. He swallows saliva and the man looks up, squinting towards the fence. Aleks doesn’t move.

The man steps forward into the moonlight, leaning out as if looking for land from a prow. Aleks stays in shadow, shapeless. His breathing and heartbeat has slowed right down to this moment. Too easy — jump out, three quick steps, then swing the cricket bat right into the man’s head. The weapon, the wolf, the victim, the piñata skull, each linked in a chain leading back to the bloody birth of the world. Each illuminated by a caustic falling of stars and well aware of the game’s rules — sacrifice, loneliness and violence. Who chooses their choice? he thinks.

Aleks spies something at the man’s feet. It is a child’s tricycle with a basket attached to the handlebars, lying on its side. Aleks had bought one just like it for Mila for Christmas a few years back. Aleks remembers the way she waggled her little toes as he guided her sandalled feet onto the pedals. He relaxes his grip on the cricket bat.

The man, content he hasn’t seen anything, turns and goes back into the house. Aleks leans his whole weight against the fence and exhales.

He drives away, parks on the edge of the river, and sees that the water is moving deceptively fast behind bending reeds. Often it roars, a guttural moan like a beast or a plane taking off. But tonight it is quiet and black, reflecting an almighty white swathe of stars. He looks up, squinting hard, and decides he will forget the phone number Clint gave him, he will let each number float from his mind like smoke rings.

He looks around. There is no one there. He reaches into his pocket, takes the blue bead out and pitches it into the water.

Jimmy is at the wheel.

The red bonnet is reflecting the murderous sun, throwing up vertical spears of light. The fan is not working. He hasn’t eaten since the curry four days ago and is unsure if he is awake or asleep. He feels faint as he listens to the voice on the other end. The voice — robotic, metallic — is unmistakably his father’s.

‘Magic is faith, James. You don’t trust me, I know that, but sometimes there is nothing to lose. And everything is contained in nothingness. You are on a road that is long and straight, no?’

Jimmy nods, even though he is alone in the car.

‘I want you to close your eyes and drive. You can open your eyes any time you want. Just trust. If you trust me and drive, and turn when I say, I will tell you everything you need; no, everything you want to know.’

Jimmy has the urge to hang up, to tell him to fuck off, but instead he listens and stares straight at the febrile sun, then closes his eyes to blot it out.

‘You’re on a straight road. Now drive and listen. Listen.’ Jimmy, eyes still closed, turns on the engine and begins to drive, with the phone on speaker. ‘James, all you need to know is contained in what I say. One. You come from a line of kings. They were a people who lived on the richest land on earth. They had once been wealthy, but they became poor. These people were cast from gold. Their skin, their bones were gold, even their voices. They were each other’s gods, each to each. It was a land of mirrors they lived in, everything they saw was gold. But their land, which was once abundant, was now a land of drought — desert, where there should have been water, famine, where there should have been fruit. So the golden people, they began to walk. They walked over the deserts, treetops, over oceans. Turn left now.’