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CHAPTER 1
Where are these cunts?
Too hot, bro,
too fucken long without rain.
Two by two they troop in,
the madness of summer in the brain.
In the dying light,
the crowd looks like hundreds of bobbling balloons,
waiting to be unfastened.
Sweating tinnies and foreheads –
sadcunts and sorrowdrowners the lot of them.
I stand up,
six-foot-two and shining,
yawn,
twist side to side on my hinges and survey the crowd.
It's not like the boys to be late,
especially on a day like today.
Summer,
the deepest season,
throbbing with danger and promise,
every scallywag, seedthief and skatepark wrapped up in a white hot skin.
And here come the dogs ...
Strange, smiling creatures,
lean-flanked and ready to race.
An old bloke turns around and grins with opalised eyes.
'Nothing like the ole dishlickers, eh?'
I smile and flick a fly from my knuckle.
'Fuck noath.'
The dogs' barks detonate across the track.
The trainers are gruff people,
but now they coo to the hounds,
straightening their racing silks,
crouching to check and bend their ankles.
(one says a prayer and kisses his dog on its narrow head)
A dry wind scythes across the stands and I reach up to keep my hat on.
'Bushfire weather, ay?'
The old timer is right.
The Town is a powderkeg,
a perfect altar for a bushfire –
the sole god of a combustible summer.
B-Boy Fresh
But I'm crisp tee fresh –
black on black, snapback,
toothbrush on sneaker,
throwback fresh.
But fark me dead,
the joints and muscles ache nowadays.
Sign of the times, ay?
I look at the old timer and immediately touch the muscles under my shirt just to make sure.
I grin –
Solomon Amosa, you vain, vain bastard.
The big news
Jimmy ain't hard to spot in a crowd.
With all the grace of jangling keys,
my half-brother lurches through the mass of drinkers and gamblers,
sharp Adam's apple visible even from here.
His eyes cut left to right,
paranoid and grim.
Walking behind him is Aleks,
smiling and nodding at people that he passes.
What a crew –
a Samoan, a Maco and my half-brother, a something.
The only ethnics at the dog races.
When Jimmy sits down I smack him across the back of the head,
harder than I mean to.
'Oi, what took you so fucken long?' I say, taking my cap off and passing my hand over my dreds.
'I had shit to do, bra.'
Aleks looks away and checks his bet,
already bored of the bickering.
'Like what?'
'I don't fucken have to tell you everything, do I? Jesus.'
Jimmy looks like he's gonna say something else but instead he conjures two ciggies from behind his ear,
lights one and passes the other to me.
We smoke for a minute and listen to the announcements.
'Conditions are ideal tonight, ladies and gentlemen.
We have a perfect track for racing.
Good luck and good punting –
may the racing gods be in your favour.'
Jimmy ashes his durry and then looks sidelong at me,
lips expanding into a frog-like grin.
'Oi, guess what?'
I'm watching some lads on a stag's night stumble along.
They're dressed in a bright-yellow uniform, wearing wigs.
Jimmy and Aleks look at each other and grin.
They're already wasted,
sour bourbon vapours practically hissing off them.
'What?'
Jimmy clears his throat, then announces, 'Sin One's gonna do a come-
back show. With the DJ Exit on the decks.'
My eyes cut back. 'Sin One? You serious?'
'He's moved back, brother,' nods Aleks.
I blow out smoke. 'Ohh, man. When?'
'After Chrissie.'
Sin One is almost universally recognised in the underground as the greatest rapper Australia has produced –
a prophet, nah, a god.
And he comes from our Town.
Can you imagine how fucken proud we are?
Drinks
When I bring back the tinnies, Aleks and Jimmy are embroiled in an age-old argument – who the best Australian MC is.
I take a black marker from my pocket and begin to draw on a five-dollar note as I listen. Jimmy, who loves lists, reminds us yet again of the five main criteria you judge an MC by.
1) Flow: how do they ride, bounce off, play with, sound on a beat?
2) Lyrics: how do they play with words, use metaphors, create memorable images, tell stories?
3) Voice: were they naturally gifted with a voice that just cuts through and gives you shivers, that booms or rasps or honeys?
4) Consistency: have they produced quality work over an extended period of time?
5) Live show: can they rock the fuck out of a crowd of people, big or small?
Added to this are more nebulous criteria based on online rumours, freestyle abilities, face-to-face encounters and gut feelings.
Jimmy and Aleks prefer grimier, old school Melbourne stuff, samples and dusty loops.
I'm more into synths and instruments, newer, smoother Sydney shit.
'All right, then. Top five best MCs,' says Jimmy, who reels off his list immediately. 'Brad Strut, Trem, Geko, Lazy Grey, Bias B.'
Aleks, too, is ready. 'Trem, Strut, Pegz, Delta, Vents.'
'Hm. Fucken hard one.' I think for a second. 'All right, um ... Solo, Mantra, Suffa, Tuka, Hau, Joelistics ... That new Briggs shit is heavy, too. And that dude One Sixth from Melbourne.'
'I said top five, bro,' snaps Jimmy.
'Oi, relax.'
'Storytelling, mate, lyrics, that's what it's about,' announces Jimmy.
'Yeah, yeah, you always say that. Then Solo from Horrorshow or Mantra's number one,' I say. 'Deep shit. Mad flows, too.'
Aleks and Jimmy shake their heads in unison. 'Nah, that shit's gay as, always singing and shit. That's not true school. Plus, Solo looks like a tennis instructor,' says Jimmy.
'You're one to talk, you preppy cunt! You're stuck in the nineties, bro. Music moves on,' I say.
'Now, Trem. That's an MC. Tells it how it is – graff, crime, darkness. Voice is like a fucken ... like a diamond cutter,' says Aleks. 'Strut too – apocalyptic.'
'You can't dance to it, but,' I counter. 'That shit's too serious for me. When it started, hip hop was about getting a party goin'. Sydney shit does that better.'
Jimmy is getting heated. 'Sydney shit is weird. Their accents sound American. They say "days" like "deez" and "mic" like "mark". Hate that.'
We laugh.
'What about a chick?' I venture. 'None of us even put one in there.'
'Tsk. Ya PC cunt. Been hanging with that femmo girlfriend of yours too much. When chicks rap, I just don't feel it.'
'What 'bout Lauryn Hill? Jean Grae?'
'Aussies, I mean'
'Layla. Class A.'
The boys shrug. As Aleks leans forward, a blue bead swings on a leather strap around his neck. 'The Hoods sold more than anyone else,' he says.
'Fuck sales. It's not about sales; it's about impact and the quality. If you use that argument, you could say Bliss n Eso are more important than Def Wish Cast.'
'Or Vanilla Ice is better than Kool G Rap.'
Jimmy turns his glittering eyes on me. 'Those private school boys must've taught you about hip hop, ay. That's why you're not into the hard shit.'
Cunt.
The private school thing is always Jimmy's trump card, no matter what the argument, and it always works.
Aleks frowns.
'Fuck ... I went for basketball, you know that.' I say, lamely. Then I return to the name that kicked off the debate – 'Sin One. Orphan Slang. Fire and Redemption.'
The others nod.
'Yeah, goes without saying. Should be top of every list. Pity it's been so long since he released an album,' says Aleks regretfully.
I look at the five-buck note – Queen Elizabeth now has a crown of thorns and a timebomb on her shoulder.
'You seen our dog yet?' asks Aleks.
Mercury Fire
Tonight is Mercury Fire's last race.
He's our favourite,
the reason we still come to the greyhounds.
It began as a joke –
'Oi, wanna see bogans in their natural habitat?'
But then we saw him race.
Blind in one eye with a kinked back leg,
he's smaller than the other dogs,
but somehow he beats all comers.
Every time, he starts slow but ends with power,
hunger.
We've heard that in training he's thrown real rabbits and possums to chase so that he keeps the blood lust up.
An ageing warrior,
close to the end.
We all sit silently,
drinking.
Aleks
We never get to see Aleks.
He's got a missus, a young daughter and a house he built himself.
Still, even after all this time,
he has that pirouette of smoke in his eyes.
At age five he moved here from Macedonia and despite limited English quickly established himself as king of the kids with his fast, big fists.
At age thirteen he knocked out an English teacher who tried to make him spell his name with an 'x',
not a 'ks'.
It was around this time he found another use for his hands.
One day, when a graff crew from Sydney painted a wildstyle piece under the bridge over the river,
Aleks discovered a love to replace the sweet science
(though if lessons needed to be taught,
cunts needed to learn).
From then on it was burners/
boltcutters/
blackbooks and guerilla expeditions to Bunnings to rack paint cans/
And don't forget that rush that makes your dick hard.
The Old Timer
'When I was in England,
I visited Old TRAFFORD,
the home of MANCHESTER UNITED.'
'We can hear you, mate –
we're right here.'
The old timer's been talking frog shit for nearly fifteen minutes now.
Sad bastard –
desiccated look of a dedicated drinker.
Threads from a cheap Western –
ten-gallon hat, bolo tie,
spurs on boots.
'Johnny No-Cash,' says Aleks in my ear.
I stifle a smile.
'The coach told me I had the BEST LEFT BOOT
he had ever seen.'
Bullshit artists come a dime a dozen in this town –
it takes one to know one, ay?
A message from Georgie
Good afternoon, beautiful boy.
In boring lecture having naughty thoughts about u.
Can't wait 2 c u 2nite. Luv, Porge x
Love?
I pocket the phone.
When's this race gonna start?
A little something to rev things up
I wipe the top of the cistern and bring up my hand –
there's white powder on my palm.
I love doing that.
It's almost like I've busted someone in the act.
Aleks takes out a marker and writes his tag on the cubicle wall with a flourish.
JAKEL
Meanwhile, Jimmy racks up three lines with a seasoned hand and his keycard.
My brother Jimmy, who could never even handle his beer back in the day.
Aleks does a line and blinks.
'Dearo fucken me! This is good shit, bro. Aryan white.'
I roll up the drawn-on five-buck note and hoover a line.
The cocaine hits immediately –
a cold zoom in the guts,
a perfectly timed tackle.
I backflip into a glacial crevasse.
The track
The track smoulders.
Thick lights shine down holding within them insects and motes of dust.
The dogs' feet articulate on the soil of the holding pen.
In part dieted on honey, vegetable oil and eggs,
their coats glow.
Tinny announcements over the loudspeakers.
The trainers are hand slipping the dogs now,
one hand on the collar the other arm hooked at the base of their undercarriages shuffling them forward into the traps.
Like everyone else,
we riffle and check our betslips.
In the stands,
we can hear the dogs' high-pitched whimpers and yelps as they scrape in the traps.
We begin to cheer.
The race
Bang goes the gun,
zoom goes the artificial rabbit,
off go the hounds like water out a sluice.
They are a rumbling mass at first but as they round the corner they separate into surreal, spear-headed things that lope and arch through the air –
feet, dust, sound.
The crowd rises and we do too,
ten-feet tall and charged with powder,
seeing the race in jittering frames.
Here comes Mercury Fire!
A grey streak of ribs/
sinew-lashed muscle/
light.
Right down the straight he looks like a young dog again,
propelled by furious, otherworldly energy.
He's neck and neck for the lead with two black hounds,
loping forward, urging/
and we're screaming, screaming/
'Come on, boy. COME ON!'
and Mercury Fire is straining onwards every muscle working for the one goal,
courage and conviction in the blood,
launching over the track for the last time.
He comes in third.
I realise that I've been holding my breath the whole race.
What happens to a racing dog past its prime?
Jimmy says they find them homes where they get retrained as house pets.
Aleks says he's heard of a bloke in Wollongong who's killed over five thousand healthy hounds with a captive bolt gun once they lose speed.
I say they get their ears cut off
(cos of the ID tattoo)
then let go in the bush cos owners don't have the heart to kill them.
Jimmy
Jimmy is arguing with me about money again.
'Jimmy, it's five fucken bucks, mate. I'll pay ya back tomorrow.'
'That's what you always say.'
Jimmy –
catfood-hearted,
jelly-spined motherfucker.
Cheap-deodorant, call-centre Jimmy.
No good with his fists but uses rumours like napalm.
He's family but,
so what the fuck can you do?
Outside the racecourse
Eyes tick like a stopwatch/
People head home or out/
A cop car smears by/
Then a Ninja Turtle-green Supra with two chicks hanging from one window/
techno pumping/
'Ay, boys, show us where ya piss from!'/
We're cracking up and our middle fingers go straight in the air/
This is good shit/
'Oi, I'm tilted.'
'Me too.'
I'm trying to keep it together but Jimmy and Aleks not so much.
Chewing like mastodons,
they must've taken pills, too,
the sly cunts.
People are milling around the entrance.
The old timer is rabbiting on to someone and we swerve to avoid him.
'... the best left boot he'd EVER seen.'
Gladys
I chase her down in the carpark.
Red, wary face,
god-awful turquoise windcheater and a cockney accent.
But there's something about the old duck that chokes me up.
I introduce myself,
squat down and pat Mercury Fire.
'He did good, yeah? Especially for his last race.
I trained him since he was a pup,' she says.
Mercury Fire studies me with his one good eye, grinning and panting.
'I know, I know. Me and my mates have been watching him race for the last year.
The best there was, seriously. I mean is. Was.'
I'm talking too fast. Slow your roll, Solomon.
She's looking away now –
'Yeh. Probably gonna send him to a new home, or ...
I'm moving back to England in a few weeks.'
Why at that age? Are those tears?
She keeps talking –
'They like it, you know. The dogs. They like racing.
People reckon it's cruel but we treat em better than most owners treat their dogs.'
She's looking directly at me now.
I wonder if she can tell I'm out of it but then she looks past me.
I shake her hand awkwardly. 'Best of luck, ay.'
'Yer, you too.'
She smiles and I smile back.
'Hey, can I ask you something?' I say.
A phone call
Georgie's busting my balls and it's ruining my high.
'It's cruel, Solomon.
They exploit those poor animals.'
Hasn't she got something better to do?
I thought she was studying.
'Can we talk about this later? Please.'
I hear Jimmy behind me singing 'My Cherie Amour'
like Stevie Wonder.
I throw a crushed tinnie at him.
'I'll be back at yours a bit later, all right, babe?
Don't wait up for me.'
The cypher
On the way to get chips and gravy we see a cypher –
a circle of youngsters rapping.
Seven kids, seven heads bobbing,
some of them sipping on longies as they wait for their turn to rap.
The lad beatboxing is a Koori fulla –
I used to play ball with his older brother.
He's supplying a steady, boombap beat.
A few of them nod at us and we observe from outside the circle.
I always thought that, from above,
the circle of heads would look like bullets loaded in a chamber,
each MC ready with his percussive, weaponised voice,
some rapid fire,
some jamming.
A pretty brunette is up first.
She's got a dope flow but it's obviously a written verse.
Next is an African cat who's using an American accent –
we all wince.
Someone else takes over the beatboxing and the Koori fulla starts freestyling,
clowning on people in the circle.
He's a cocky cunt, just like his bro.
His flow is a bit off but his punchlines are hitting and soon we're all laughing.
I make a mental note to keep an eye out for him.
I look up and for a second I swear I can see skulls swinging from the trees above us but then I realise it's a trick of the light.
Jimmy and I step forward and rap for a bit but we're rusty.
All it takes is a week off to lose the edge.
Plus neither of us were ever MCs.
But it's part of the game –
gotta give it a go.
Afterwards, we smoke a joint with the youngsters.
'You lads aren't going out tonight? Heaps going on, uce.'
The Koori lad and the brunette are arm in arm and he says, 'Nah, brus. Can't get in anywhere, ay.'
The brunette pipes up, 'Would rather be doin this anyway.'
We laugh.
'True.'
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Here Come The Dogs"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Omar Musa.
Excerpted by permission of The New Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
