by Omar Musa
‘He beat her?’
Solomon shakes his head vigorously. ‘Nah, nah. I don’t think so. There might have been the threat of that, but I don’t reckon it ever happened. More like a constant torment, she said. Jealousy. Saying she’d lived the life of a whore before him. He used to take her credit card and buy and buy and buy. A closest full of unworn clothes. A hoarder. Mum told me once that he grew up real poor, so she kinda forgave him for all of it, you know? Until my dad came along and said enough was enough.’
‘Your dad knew him?’
‘Hell, yeah. They were best mates. When Dad first got here from Samoa, they worked in the same kitchen. He even gave Jimmy’s dad the nickname The Prince, because he said he was descended from royalty. At first it was affectionate, then it became a bit of a gibe. Then Dad started to notice how his stories weren’t consistent, how manipulative he was, how he treated Mum. The cunt wasn’t even by her side when Jimmy was born. So Dad began to console her, like, just as friends. The rest is history.’ He smiles, looking away.
‘But when did he tell you about the waterfalls?’
‘So one day, after Dad died, The Prince comes around and he’s real excited. He tells us there are these waterfalls just out of town, only a forty-minute drive. He said he’d take us there. We’d never heard of any waterfall near the Town, thought it was another bullshit story of his; but for some reason Mum says we should go with him, so that was it. When we got here, he could name every plant, every bird. He told us as an Aboriginal man it was important to know the language of your forefathers, even if everyone said it was dead. Flowers – gambarra. Ironbark – thirriwirri. Stone – gurrubang. He showed us these axe-grinding grooves.’
‘So Jimmy’s dad’s Aboriginal?’
‘Doubt it. He said he was at the time, but.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Aw, man.’ Solomon exhales and speaks slowly. ‘Jimmy’s dad . . . is a mystery. Nobody knows what his background is. Sometimes I wonder if he even knows. A born liar, like I said. He changes his story all the time. The next time I met him he said he was Pakistani. When we were kids, he said Greek. Once the story was even that he was Irish.’
‘Pretty different, aren’t they?’
‘Totally, but his looks are ambiguous – he could pass for anything. A chameleon.’
‘Like Jimmy,’ Scarlett nods.
‘Exactly. The weird thing, though, was that all the shit he said about the land, the names of trees, this place, I looked it up and he was spot on. And later with Islam – he knew it all. I still don’t get it. But back then, to me, it was kind of a novelty. I never liked him, but I realised I could learn shit from him if I just listened.’
‘And Jimmy?’
Solomon laughs, but it sounds like a snort. ‘I can’t begin to tell you about the hatred Jimmy has for his old man. The shame. It consumes him. Always has. A lifelong obsession. To find out what his ethnic background really is.’
‘He can just do a DNA test, surely.’
‘That’s what I say. But to him, it’s more than that. He wants to hear it from his dad’s mouth. And Mum could never understand why; why wasn’t he content just to know her race, why did he have to know his dad’s? But Jimmy couldn’t let it go. Not knowing what he is has become what he is.’
‘Wow. That’s a paradox. Like your only home being homelessness.’
‘Exactly.’
24
Jimmy is thinking of every movie he’s seen about prison and wonders if anyone has escaped from this one. The security guard can’t stop yawning. The jail smells freshly painted and the overwhelming feel, beneath the boredom and mundaneness, is of fear. Jimmy passes through security and is told to remove his belt. He gets thumb-printed and searched. He wonders if someone might check up his arse. Do they actually do that in jail? He hopes he wiped properly. The security guard pulls the two photos out of his pocket and examines them, suddenly attentive. One of the photos he hands back, the other he holds up. ‘What’s this?’
‘Um. Art.’
‘Did you get a permit for this?’
‘Yes.’ Jimmy tries to hold the guard’s eyes but can feel himself wavering.
The security guard examines it again and then bends it back and forth, back and forth. Jimmy wants to snatch it from the cunt.
‘It’s a present . . . A special present for my friend.’
‘Looks like graffiti to me. Graffiti’s illegal, mate. Not allowed in here, I’m afraid.’ The man smiles.
‘But I —’
‘Sorry.’
Jimmy looks away so the man can’t see that he’s on the verge of tears. He drags his feet as walks into the meeting area, shoulders slumped, but smiles when he sees Aleks.
There’s glass between them.
‘What’s going on, mate?’ Jimmy shifts in his seat uneasily.
‘Same shit.’
‘Been doing anything fun?’
‘Fun?’ Aleks smiles. ‘Nah, just trying to sort shit out. Bloody lawyer finally came through. Ten thousand bucks later. He’ll get me out of this mess, but.’
‘Dope.’ Silence. Two other men are talking with low voices. Jimmy grins crookedly, then quotes one of their favourite lines from Chopper. ‘Well, ya really landed on ya knees, didn’t ya, mate?’
They both laugh so hard they’re nearly crying. The security guard comes over and quiets them. Rubbing tears from his eyes, Aleks says, ‘So, what ’bout you?’
Jimmy raises his eyebrows, grins and produces the remaining photo.
‘Bullshit! Fuck, that looks nice, bro. Muscle car! Dodge Coronet?’
‘Yep.’
‘Fark. Where’d you get the cash?’
‘Saved up. Drove it here even. Goes like a dream.’ Jimmy’s never looked so proud.
‘Fark me dead. Good on ya, cuz.’ They sit grinning.
‘Solomon loves it.’
Aleks stops smiling. Silence, then, ‘Any good music coming out?’
‘Heaps. Young gun from Melbourne called Dr Flea. Raven. Prime. Bunch of gangsta shit from Sydney.’
‘Gangsta shit, huh?’ Aleks looks away.
‘Yeah. And there’s heaps of tours happening. You gonna be out for the Sin One show?’
‘Should be.’
‘Me and Solomon gonna try go but he’s always with his new missus.’
‘How’s Solomon?’ Aleks is still looking away, seemingly distracted by something on the wall.
‘Good. He’s trying to start this youth basketball team. Dunno. Never seen him like this before.’
‘Good for him.’ Aleks looks back and Jimmy can see that he’s hurt.
‘He wanted to come, bro. Serious.’
‘Yeh.’ Silence again.
‘So. Made any mates in here?’ Jimmy asks, at last.
Aleks is about to snort but then he looks thoughtful. ‘Actually. My cellmate. Sudanese bloke. Tried to top himself a while back. He wouldn’t stop crying, bro, for hours. Eventually calmed him down, got the story out of him. Walked all the way across Sudan, in and out of reffo camps. Poor bastard swallowed ten condoms of heroin in exchange for a plane ticket. Got caught in Sydney airport, shat the bubbles out. They gave him a bunch of time, then they’re probably just gonna deport him.’
‘Jesus. No wonder the poor cunt tried to top himself.’
‘Tell me about it. Been talking to him every night, telling him everything will be all right. He’s good to talk to, brother. Good listener.’
Jimmy doesn’t know if this is a dig at him and Solomon, so he doesn’t reply. They both sit thinking, then Jimmy smiles. ‘We did a piece for ya. Security guard confiscated it.’
‘Cunt.’
‘I know, ay?’ Jimmy shakes his head. ‘Was gonna be a surprise.’
‘All good, brother. Cheer up. Where?’
‘You know that place on the edge of town? Fuel depot?’
‘Ooooh, good spot. Killer,’ says Aleks.
Jimmy, with his right fingertip, draws the piece on the glass
, going through the process, explaining the colours, the fight with the seccas. Aleks lets the piece appear in his mind’s eye. It is radiant, shining outwards like a multicoloured sun.
* * *
‘One bottle down, another bottle down, GO!’
Tornts’ aggressive voice is bursting from his headphones.
Jimmy is sitting by himself
at a bar in the City,
a glowing metropolis
of empty glasses and bottles
in front of him.
He thinks it looks like something
from a sci-fi movie.
He stands up
and shakily goes to a table
of people who went to school with Solomon.
They’re all dressed in suits,
having been to a wedding.
He hovers at the edge of the group
until one of them recognises him
and waves him into the group.
The man is gym-built,
the tux fitting like cloth pinned over blocks of stone,
smoothing down a merlot tie.
‘This is Amosa’s brother!
Amosa was the best basketball player ever, remember?
So athletic he could’ve been in the 1st XV.
A Samoan who doesn’t play footy.
First time for everything, ay?’
The man raises a beer to the light,
drains it,
and the rest follow.
He continues,
‘Yeah, he was always going on about all that culture stuff.’
‘Where is Solomon?’ someone else asks.
‘Fuck Solomon,’ says Jimmy.
He means it as a joke but it comes out harsh.
Mutter, mutter, mutter.
Jimmy is watching a leggy, tanned brunette
in a saffron dress,
holding a glass of red wine
with three fingers and thumb.
A creature from a world Jimmy has no passport to.
The clean-cut bloke whispers out the side of his mouth:
‘She’s a newsreader in Sydney now, mate.
Looks good, ay? Talk to her. Seriously,
she likes tall guys.’
Jimmy scrolls through his phone then stumbles over.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi.’
It takes her half a second
to scan him and figure out
all she needs to know.
She asks anyway, ‘What school did you go to?’
Jimmy replies and she nods,
before turning her head,
ever so slightly,
away.
He looks puzzled,
and asks in a loud, clear voice
‘Do you like cars?’
holding out a picture of the Dodge on his phone
in one hand like a child cupping a butterfly.
She continues to stare away,
at a point somewhere far in the distance –
something of intense interest there.
He puts the phone back in his pocket
and stumbles away,
hearing laughter in the background.
He feels someone run up next to him.
It’s the clean-cut guy,
who drops a hand on his shoulder.
‘Sorry about that, mate. She’s a snob.
No hard feelings, ay? Say hi to Solomon for me.’
Jimmy shrugs the hand away.
The game’s wired,
just like Dialect said in his song.
But Jimmy strides ahead with one purpose in mind.
He goes down a set of stairs
with a single halogen globe swinging
and he’s in a small club.
The beat
of ScHoolboy Q ‘Man of the Year’
uncoils beneath him like a serpent,
then wraps him up,
swallowing him.
He is drenched in wave after wave of frosty synth,
bouncing, running his hand along the skittering drum pattern,
falling headlong into the bloodstream.
‘I’m the man of the year!’ he yells.
* * *
Jimmy’s in line for burritos
behind an enormous figure,
whose head is nearly at the height
of a light fitting.
Jimmy’s eyes are closing,
tiredness and liquor
taking hold,
and he trips into the man,
who turns sharply
and catches him beneath the armpits.
Jimmy is suddenly looking into a pair
of surreal, bright eyes,
so green they could be Ironlak Cameleon.
Sin One.
Before he realises it,
he’s shaking the man’s hand,
reeling off his favourite moments from Sin One’s career.
Instead of freaking out,
the enormous man smiles kindly,
‘Wanna sit down, bro?’
Jimmy nods.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Jimmy. Well, James.’
They begin to talk.
Sin One tells Jimmy
he can see pain in him,
but resilience too,
that he has to work hard
and leap the hurdles in front of him.
Sin One tells him of his own struggles in America,
where people treated him like an idiot or second-class citizen,
reminding him constantly that the US
was the mecca of hip hop.
Jimmy tells him about his troubles with his father,
about buying the car.
He scrambles in his pockets for headphones,
and plays one of his beats for Sin One,
who bobs his head.
Sin One tells Jimmy that he is true hip hop,
someone who has made something from nothing,
made beauty from the bricks.
Jimmy grabs a napkin,
a perfect white square with a cactus logo on it,
and hands it to Sin One.
Sin One signs it with a flourish,
and the ink soaks into the paper,
but the tag is still visible.
SIN ONE
On the way home,
Jimmy can’t help smiling
and keeps reaching into his pocket
to touch the napkin.
He tries to remember
the reason Sin One named himself that –
it wasn’t a graff thing,
even though it sounded like one.
It was something about the original sin of Australia.
In the morning,
dozens of hellish belltowers
are clanging in Jimmy’s head.
Then he remembers the signed napkin
and smiles.
It isn’t on his bedside.
He leaps up,
unsteady, still a bit drunk,
and begins to turn his room upside down looking for it.
Eventually,
he finds a similar napkin
a perfect square with a cactus on it,
but it isn’t signed.
25
The night before he dies, Ulysses dreams of a great va’a, a huge dugout canoe full of men carving moonlit iridescent waves led by a navigator on the prow. Ulysses is one of the oarsmen, his muscles full of their previous strength, hauling a massive wooden paddle. Jimmy and Solomon huddled at his feet. He hears the navigator yell that there are no clouds to guide by, that he is searching for the perfect channel but can’t seem to find it. Ulysses is sweating, sweating so much that he thinks he will pass out. It is inexplicably hot. He looks up and sees that where there should be ocean there is only fire.
26
A biro sketch
When she hands it to me,
her eyes are green flags –
fear? love? warning?
It’s me
on a black sand beach,
clouds roiling,
the whole drawing black and white,
red paint drips on the border.
No chick’s ever done something like this for me,
besides a sickly R&B song
a girl made in high school
called ‘Big Brown Boy’.
Jimmy says it looks nothing like me.
Can’t let him get me down, but.
Not today.
I’ve got a plan,
a present for the kids
for their hard work.
I fold up the picture neatly.
Scarlett and I have never been to the beach together.
Dead bees
The streets are covered in them.
No one knows why.
Jimmy says that madness is a snowball.
My lungs are growing
Tar and nicotine out,
the world in,
the summer sky and all the good that’s in it.
My bro reckons I’m walking different, talking different.
I wouldn’t eat Oporto’s with him yesterday
cos of my diet
and he almost tried to fight me.
The kids are practising layups
and I’m kicking pegs out of the earth
on the sideline.
What are these things?
Toby’s not here much.
When he is,