Here Come the Dogs

by Omar Musa

  ‘Mr Crawford, we understand that you are in support of recent calls to change the Racial Discrimination Act. Don’t you think, given the race riots in Shellfish Bay, that this is a rather inflammatory proposal?’

  ‘On the contrary, I think this is exactly the time to take another look at it. The mood of the electorate is one of understandable frustration. The Australian identity is being contested as we speak and I believe that one essential part of the Australian identity is being forthright and honest, something that political correctness has been white-anting for quite some time. Amending the Act is not, as some contend, a green light for prejudice; rather, it is a green light to express ourselves more fully as Australians.’

  ‘Mr Crawford, is there any truth to the claim that it was police brutality that started the riots?’

  ‘Absolutely none. It is merely the actions of a few thugs and should be condemned as such.’

  ‘And do you have any more information on the young man injured in the riots?’

  ‘He remains in a critical condition. I grieve with his family and I am praying for his swift recovery.’

  9

  Jimmy slowly gets into bed and knows the hound will follow.

  ‘Good boy.’

  He tucks the pillow beneath his head and his eyes are aching from the twelve-hour shift. His inner thighs are chafed raw from the shabby material of his cheap suit – inexplicably, as he sits at a desk all day. He is so tired it feels as if the bed is radiating outwards around him, stretching like a desert. He feels something running towards him. Soon the hound bounds onto the blankets with him, lightly arranges itself – snuffle, pad, pad, snuffle – then twists into a ball with the motion of water spiralling down a drain. Jimmy rubs the dog behind its ears and Mercury Fire makes a sound of satisfaction, deeply reverberating in his throat, almost a purr. Then he yawns, and in the near darkness his teeth appear like some fine rock formation. His breath, the smell of dead meat, somehow pleases Jimmy. A warm-blooded, loyal, gentle being so close. Closer and more affectionate than Jimmy had ever been with a woman. The night is strangely cool. Jimmy draws the blankets around himself, moves so that their bodies can share some warmth, then falls asleep.

  His bed stretches outwards

  and becomes an enormous limestone plain.

  He stands and begins to run.

  Mercury Fire keeps pace with him,

  running towards a body of water

  in the distance.

  With each step Jimmy can feel himself getting stronger

  and he wonders if he is taking on

  the animal’s spirit.

  The dog is saying,

  ‘Run on, my friend, run on, run on, my master.’

  When he reaches the water’s edge,

  he doesn’t slow,

  but leaps perfectly into it

  and becomes at one with the lithe body of a river.

  He swims and can hear the dog’s voice,

  encouraging him forward,

  but he can no longer sense him at his side.

  Jimmy swims deep down,

  into a grotto

  where there are thousands of voices

  and golden lights.

  He swims through a doorway

  and finds himself standing at the back of a crowd,

  completely dry.

  Run DMC is performing

  and through the drift of dry ice

  he sees Jam Master Jay’s gold ring

  as he scratches on vinyl

  as black as his leather jacket.

  Jimmy pushes through the crowd to the front

  and he is holding a pair of Adidas in the air,

  waving them from side to side.

  Jimmy is hauled onstage

  and joined by Rakim, Ghostface Killah,

  who pours him a tall glass of Hennessy,

  and a young Jay-Z,

  who hands him a mic.

  Jimmy faces the crowd;

  lights and mirror balls are floating like seraphs.

  He starts rapping,

  freestyling flawlessly, intricately,

  catching whatever beat DJ Premier

  (who is now behind the decks)

  is spinning.

  When he finishes,

  someone takes the microphone from him.

  It is Sin One,

  standing almost seven-foot tall,

  rapping a famous verse from ‘Orphan Slang’.

  The crowd is on its feet

  and Jimmy is leaping up and down,

  his hair in his eyes.

  He goes offstage

  and is ushered down a hallway to a door

  covered in dripping blue paint.

  He opens the door

  and it takes a moment

  for his eyes to adjust

  to a concentrated darkness.

  When he closes the door behind him,

  there is sudden silence.

  He sees the figure of a naked woman at the window,

  overlooking a big, broken city.

  He cannot see her face.

  Without turning,

  she beckons to him with a sweet voice

  and her body is gilded in moonlight.

  He goes to her and she undresses him

  and gently kisses his ears and neck and eyebrows.

  It is Kayden Kross

  and she is wearing no makeup.

  She whispers secrets to him,

  revealing her authentic, tender self

  that nobody else has seen.

  He kisses her eyelids

  then she climbs on top of him,

  but as she does,

  her face changes

  and starts scrolling through the faces of other women –

  Hailee, Scarlett Snow, other pornstars.

  Her pale belly is twitchy when he touches it.

  Her ribs look like a pharaoh’s headdress.

  As she begins to move,

  he looks down at his body

  and sees that it is Solomon’s.

  Blonde hair falls in a wave around him,

  drowning him,

  and her lips become as big as the night

  and swallow him whole

  like a pill.

  In the morning,

  he is incredibly hungry.

  No graff and music blogs to wake him up today:

  the hunger alone

  has made him alert and sharpened.

  At McDonald’s,

  the cashier is talking about church.

  Her eyes widen when he makes his order.

  ‘All for you?’

  Two schoolkids

  watch him eat three hash browns

  and two servings of hotcakes.

  ‘Hey, kids. Ever seen a greyhound?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘Like em.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘You know they can reach up to seventy k’s an hour? Crazy, huh?’

  One shrugs,

  One smiles.

  As he leaves,

  the cashier is talking about cleavage.

  He feels light,

  and stops to lick dew

  from a blade of grass.

  At work,

  he is called into his boss’s office.

  ‘Look mate,

  we’ve been monitoring your calls

  and sad to say, you’re not doing a good enough job.’

  ‘You firing me?’ says Jimmy, hopefully.

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Didn’t think so. Impossible to get fired from public service, ain’t it?’

  ‘I think you’ve got the wrong attitude, mate.’

  Grey walls.

  A spray can would change that.

  With several callers,

  he holds the phone away from his ear

  and has to pinch himself so he doesn’t scream.

  Count. Breathe.

  On his lunchbreak,

  he sees a fabric shop.

  Colourful beads, cloth.
>
  He buys a piece of felt

  and keeps it in his pocket

  as he answers calls,

  stroking it from time to time

  to remind himself of Mercury Fire’s ears.

  As he walks from work

  to the bus interchange,

  he sees a protest in the centre of the City.

  There are signs with Damien Crawford’s

  smiling face crossed out.

  A handsome Aboriginal man in a suit

  is speaking into a megaphone.

  Jimmy walks past.

  As he leaves the City on his bus,

  he sees a man sitting on top of a street sign,

  dressed immaculately with a scarf

  around the lower part of his face,

  watching him.

  10

  ‘Secca?’ asks Solomon.

  ‘Yeah, there is one, but he’s a lazy cunt. Only patrols once every two hours, if that. I saw him wanking in the office the other night,’ says Jimmy.

  ‘I’d do the same if I was him. Boring as,’ says Solomon. ‘Camera?’

  ‘Haven’t seen one.’

  ‘Word.’ Solomon nods. ‘If we time this right, it’ll be easy as.’

  Jimmy is leaning on the wheel of their mother’s car and Solomon’s sunk deep in the seat, playing with a lighter, smoke filling the car. Jimmy looks up, scoping the spot, moonlight outside turning everything bone-coloured. Trem album on real low, sampled snares cracking.

  Solomon thinks to himself for a second that he’s getting a bit over hip hop. Most of what he hears in Australian hip hop is either glowstick-wielding, fast-food pop or purist garbage stuck in the nineties. Jimmy reckons there’s heaps of good stuff out, but Solomon doesn’t have the energy to dig for it anymore. On a night like this, though, doing this, it’s perfect.

  Jimmy is rapping along and points to the right. Solomon nods. The grass is thick and nearly as high as the barbed wire. Sick. It’s the fuel depot on the edge of town, a big cylindrical building next to bushland and a set of traffic lights on the highway. They see the spot they want from here – freshly primed concrete, real high up roadside exposure, at the top of some stairs that wind around the building. Holy grail. Every cunt going to work in the morning is gonna see their masterpiece. But that’s not even why they’re doing it. Jimmy lights up another ciggie and they sit listening to Trem’s voice winding up with the smoke.

  ‘Borrowed time’s got expiry dates/

  Vindicated with a choice of either wrought iron or fiery gates.’

  Jimmy rolls down the window and flicks the butt out. Heat, insects, the smell of gum trees. The CD changes and the paranoid anthem ‘They’re Watching’ by Ciecmate and Newsense comes on. Jimmy rolls the window up and they drive off.

  The next night they’re there again, this time on foot.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  They take out T-shirts, pull them over their faces and tie the sleeves at the back of their heads, eyes peeping out their neck holes – instant bally. Gloves on, bag over shoulder. Executioners. Jimmy stays low, so low that the top of the grass is well above him. The secca just patrolled. Should give them a good hour, maybe even two.

  Boltcutters out.

  Jimmy cuts a big hole in the wire and passes the boltcutters back to Solomon in the tall grass. Jimmy waits quietly and a minute later Solomon appears at the fence on the other side of the compound and cuts a big circle out of it so they have another escape route. A nod, then simultaneously they creep through the tears in space and time.

  Their feet crunch on the gravel. Keeping low, creeping towards the stairs, the smell of petrol and steel. A light is flickering in the secca’s office. They climb, trying to stay quiet on the iron stairs. It’s higher than they thought and by the time they get to the top they’re sweating. They stop, look at what’s below: the whole town, the roads, the bush.

  Then they unzip the bag, take a can out and mark up first with the dregs of a Matador. Big, block letters:

  FREE JAKEL

  Jimmy hands Solomon a can – Soviet Red. Concrete like this is porous, soaks up paint. Ironlak is hard to buff, leaves a scar, like Killrust back in the day. Jimmy takes out his can – Pineapple Park Yellow.

  ‘You do the top fill,’ he whispers.

  ‘Yep.’ Solomon begins.

  Ghost fatcaps on both cans. Used to be so hard to get fatcaps, so you’d stock up on nozzles from out of town. Fatcaps were worth their weight in gold, and Rusto’s were the shit. A writer from Melbourne once told the boys they used to call Rusto’s ‘whistlers’ down there cos of the sound they make. They begin to fill the letters in.

  Yellow to red fade.

  The ghost cap goes hohhhhhhhhhhhhh, projecting a wide circle of paint.

  ‘Careful it doesn’t drip,’ Jimmy whispers.

  Solomon nods and leans back to get maximum coverage, emptying the can quickly.

  The brothers had argued over colours and design for ages. Jimmy sketched a few ideas in his blackbook, which has one of the best photo albums of anyone they know. Solomon was bouncing a tennis ball off the wall with his left hand, smoking a joint with the other. Jimmy sketched the letters first, then the characters – he wanted the piece to be red and yellow, Maco colours, for Aleks. Solomon, always vaguely uneasy about Aleks’ patriotism, agreed only if they put black in it, ‘like an Aboriginal flag,’ even though he knows Aleks isn’t all that fond of Kooris.

  Red. Black. Yellow.

  Strong colours but difficult to make work in a piece. Back in the nineties they wouldn’t have even tried. A red to yellow fade is really extreme and good reds and yellows were hard to get. Yellow, especially, was watery. Pastels were always better with the paints available. Now that they have access to good, cheaper Ironlak paint they might as well try it. Nothing like a challenge, even though they know that Aleks, the best writer of them all, would warn against the colour scheme. Jimmy then argued that they should rack the paint, like the old days, but Solomon dismissed the idea straight away. ‘And run the risk of doing community service or some shit? Fuck that. Too old for that.’

  ‘A real writer racks his paint,’ said Jimmy in an imperious tone.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. And they only paint trains, I know. Who are ya, Jisoe or something? You can afford it now anyway, Jimmy.’

  Now, they start the characters.

  A skeleton smoking a ciggie.

  Bushfire flames and a Vergina Sun.

  Then the piece de resistance –

  a muzzled greyhound with a patch over

  one eye leaning against the ‘L’.

  Perfect night for a mission. The Town turns ghost come Sunday night. No cars, the air warm and clear, stars above like grapeshot. Winter time is a bitch to paint in, so they leave that to the Lads and the young writers now. How did they do it all those years, heading out every night for weeks on end in minus-five cold, fingers freezing stiff as the propellant comes out, paint all drippy cos of the temperature. Solomon wonders what it would be like to grow up in Sydney – good weather and a proper trainline.

  The outline now –

  Montana Black. New York fatcap.

  Ssssssssssss.

  This is the real shit. The pretty boys can keep their preening for the stage. No MC has ever died holding the mic. Writers are a different breed though – gotta be a bit crazy, a bit wild. People die on train lines everyday around the world, dying for their art. Dying for something that’ll be painted over in a day.

  Cutbacks.

  Sss. Sss. Sss.

  A car pulls up at the intersection. They crouch low in the shadows, hugging close to the stairs. Solomon coughs into his hand. The car sits there for what seems like hours, a house drumline pulsing from it. It’s a done up Vectra, some terrible chameleon paintjob. The light turns green and it drives off. They look down. No sign of a secca.

  Background now –

  dark purple.

  Fumes.

  There’s no way they could
count how many times they’ve done this. Bus seats to drains to tennis courts to underpasses. The planning, the risk, the art, the pride. Jimmy wishes Aleks was here. He thinks back to when they did a door-to-door full-colour burner. It ran all the way to Sydney Central before it got buffed.

  Now the highlights –

  Aspen White.

  Like Trem says, icing on the fucken cake.

  Solomon is thinking what a liability Jimmy can be. One time, early on, he capped a dope piece by WERSE from Brissie, who’s a king. Jimmy went over the top of it with this shit chromie but was all proud of himself. Toy.

  A bird cries. They both look up sharply,

  then it’s silent again.

  Now the keyline –

  light purple makes it pop right out.

  The piece is finished.

  They stand there, appreciating,

  grinning,

  breathing.

  Bold – crisp – emblazoned.

  Best they’ve done in ages.

  Solomon looks at his watch. It’s been just over an hour.

  ‘Beautiful,’ whispers Jimmy. He pulls out his phone and takes a photo. The flash is blinding.

  ‘Dumb cunt!’ Solomon hisses.

  ‘What did you want me to do? Fuck,’ Jimmy whispers back with equal vehemence.

  ‘Ay, you can see the mountains from here,’ whispers Solomon, looking over his shoulder.

  There they are, paperfolded mountains, far off. Soundless chains of lightning burning like filaments in between them.

  ‘Fuck. That’s dope.’

  They stand up straight, stretching, looking over the lights and the blackness to the far mountains. Suddenly a voice rings out.