Here Come the Dogs (15 page)

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:

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.

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.

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 –

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.

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 –

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 –

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 –

The piece is finished.

They stand there, appreciating,

Bold – crisp – emblazoned.

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.

‘OI!'

The secca is looking up at them, white face like a coin on the floor. Only one way out. ‘Go!' They barrel down the stairs. Jimmy is zipping up the bag with one hand, making sure the bally's still on with the other. The secca is yelling something repeatedly but they can't tell what it is, with the ringing of the stairs and the sound of their breath. They get to the bottom. ‘Oi, stop!' The secca's got something heavy in his hand but he doesn't seem to know what to do with it, a snake more scared of them than they are of him, so he just stands there. Solomon's still got a can in his hand, which he aims, blasting yellow paint right in the man's eyes. The secca yells, falling and holding his face.

Another man they hadn't seen appears from the right with a torch, running and shouting at them. Light swings through the dark and he yells, ‘I called the fucken cops, you fucken idiots.' He tackles Solomon to the gravel and gets some good punches in before Jimmy gets there. Jimmy has got a can in his hand and he busts him in the side of the head with it. Red. The man pitches over and shivers on the ground, like he's having a fit. Solomon rolls away and they can see the dude's teeth in the moonlight and it's almost like he's smiling. They freeze for a second then the first secca comes at them again, with blood and dirt and yellow paint all over his uniform. Solomon twists his ankle as he tries to run and lets out a yelp of pain but Jimmy pulls him up and they're running.

Jimmy half dives, half falls through the hole in the fence, the one Solomon cut, tears his shirt, then is hurtling through the grass up a slope. He can feel blood trickling down his back, or it could be sweat. Solomon is behind him, puffing, swearing.

Neither of the seccas has followed them out of the yard, but the danger hasn't passed. They run across a big road and then hide for a moment behind a bush. They take the ballys off and they become T-shirts again. They stuff them in the bag, then the gloves, and chuck the whole lot deep into the bush. They peek out and see a cop car pull up at the intersection.

They run across the remainder of the road, leap a fence, bolting, ducking and rolling. A car screeches around and it's coming towards
them. Jimmy is sprinting now, breath rattling like a ball bearing in a can. Can't keep this up much longer – he's getting dizzy, stomach curdling, metallic bile rising in his throat.

Then the sound of the car heads in the opposite direction.

‘Thank fuck.'

They fall underneath a Hills Hoist in some rundown backyard, breathing hard. Sheets billow around them like the skirts of spectral dancers. ‘Fuck. That was hectic.' says Solomon. His face is shining.

Jimmy is still breathing too heavily to answer and he begins coughing nuggets of black.

Nevertheless, it feels good.

11

The smell of himself, a grin of moonlight, and the sound of an inmate who has been designated to sweep the floors outside the cells. The sweeper is the way prisoners trade goods, buy cigarettes and pass on messages, something the guards know but let go. Aleks can hear inmates on the lower floor yelling, ‘Sweeper! Sweeper!', a murmuring in one of the other cells and the sound of someone sharpening a toothbrush.

He takes out a little wooden prison spoon. He snaps it into two pieces and begins to plane them down with a razor that has been melted into the handle of a toothbrush, making sure to get the proportions right. Below him, Gabe sings softly to himself. Aleks feels the violent urge building, but instead grips the handle hard and focuses on planing the pieces smooth. It takes a week to get them as he wants, smooth and flawless, both with overlap notches so they fit perfectly together.

Now he needs superglue, which is harder to come by than he imagined. It becomes a full-scale, clandestine operation, and eventually he gets a glob of glue in cling film from the sweeper, as a favour from a Turkish mate. The glue would've come from the minimum security workshop. Finally he puts the pieces together and lets the final product sit there. He wishes he could show it to his cousin Nicko, who is very religious.

He concentrates and in ten minutes is able to transport himself back to Ohrid. Every year a priest stands on the pier and throws a cross over his shoulder. Hundreds of men in the freezing water swim for it, splashing up little coronas of white foam and gasping for air. Aleks smiles and looks at his new cross, thinking that, if he drills a hole in it and uses red and black string from a towel to make a cord, it would make a fine necklace.

In the yard, he is treated with deference and shows no signs of weakness. Every now and again he spies the flash of red hair and thinks about teaching Torture Terry a lesson. But he must control himself. Concrete, bars, concrete, bars, alliances and enemies, each man within ruminating his own ruin, falls, failings and loves, his place in the animal hierarchy. Though most of them would've done the air jiggle a century ago, there is even a type of brotherhood among some.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions,
Aleks thinks.

The attack he expects never comes, but he sees every variation of violence. Unlike in Macedonia, here the prisoners are the ones to worry about, not the guards. He sees a man stomped to death, hears men raped in their cells. He sees jam packets heated into napalm in kettles and flung on the faces of paedophiles. Even the recreational boxing, where mitts are made from socks stuffed with stolen sponges, is just another outlet for tension and a way to show strength.

When he returns to the dark, silent cell, the presence beneath him almost seems big enough to devour him. There are times deep in the clockless hours when the man cries out and Aleks worries for him. Then he feels disgusted. So alien, so black.

In the morning, Aleks is about to go into the visitor's area. He pulls his shirt, pants and underpants off, spreads his legs and stands against the wall as naked as a newborn. The security guard checks his armpits, hair, ears and mouth, then gets him to spread his legs, pull his dick up, squat and cough.

‘Nothing up there, mate? I found a mobile phone last week.'

‘Bullshit,' says Aleks.

‘No bullshit. Saw the antenna sticking out.'

‘Old school. Motorola?'

‘Yeh. Bloke got it up there in a condom. Punched him in the side and half the bloody thing came out.'

‘Farkin hell. You gotta a find a better way to earn a living, brother,' Aleks says over his shoulder, grinning.

‘Seriously, I've never worked around so many arseholes,' the man replies, giving him his prison whites.

Aleks is still chuckling when he enters the visitation room. Instead of his wife and parents, whom he expected, he sees his cousin Nicko. He burns with a sense of loyalty for his cousin, who has done a lot for the community and trodden the straight path. They smile at each other. Nicko, who has dark bags under his eyes, passes his hands over his eyes, nose, lips then down the back of his neck.

‘What's wrong, Nicko?'

‘Work. Don't worry about it.' He scratches at a birthmark on his arm.

‘Nah, nah. What about it?'

Nicko sighs and stares at the ceiling. ‘These people I work with, cuz . . . public service pricks. They look down on me so much, I swear. They're the cream of the dregs,
Atse
.'

‘I bet. That's how the
kengurs
do it —' Aleks is about to go on a rant, but Nicko cuts him off.

‘Ah, don't worry about it. How you going in here?'

Aleks, worried Nicko is going to go back to the community and gossip, says nonchalantly, ‘The food's good. How are my ladies?'

Nicko seems to relax and his eyes brighten. ‘Good. Mila came around for a birthday party at mine the other day —'

‘Oh, of course! Happy birthday to little Suzana.'

‘Thanks, cuz. Little princesses – they grow up so quickly, ay? Giving us a run for our money already.'

‘I know.'

‘And Sonya. You see her?' Aleks looks at him squarely.

Nicko scratches his birthmark again. ‘Yep. She dropped Mila off. Just looked a bit tired, that's all. She couldn't come today cos she had a job interview. I thought she got the message through to you. Sorry you have to see my ugly mug instead.'

Aleks grins. ‘No way. Your ugly mug makes me feel better about mine.' Then, thinking of Sonya, he says, ‘Harder to get a job than it used to be, ay?'

‘Yeah. Government's cutting jobs in the public service, too.
Atse.
If you need any help, just let me know, all right?'

‘Of course. Of course,' Aleks mutters. ‘You seen Jimmy around?'

‘Yeh. Running around with that dog of his, talking to it like it was a human.'

‘Sounds about right.' They laugh easily.

‘Rare as rocking-horse shit, your mate. That's dog's lucky to have Jimmy. I heard most ex-racers get drained for their blood so vets can use it in transfusions. Poor doggies.'

‘Yeah,' says Aleks. ‘What about Solomon?'

‘Dunno. Seems to have gone missing in action.'