Free Breach by Olumide Popoola Page B

the sea for you or me, no boy and girl with satchels waving from the gate on their way to school, no big chair for Grandmother and no maid to help her to her feet when she wants to check the pots in the kitchen or go to prayer. Who do you think we are, Mouse? For you and me, there’s only now.
    I don’t even like alcohol but I swallow the whisky in one gulp, my head back like a thirsty man.
    When I follow him out of the casino it’s not quite dawn so the streets are grey with black shadows, likesmudged photographs in a textbook. His breath sends puffs of mist above his head. The heels of his leather shoes hit the pavement and echo. And still he doesn’t feel me, his shadow. Not paying attention. He’s Ghostman, unassailable – that’s what he thinks. That’s what I used to think about him too. Right now, though, he’s focused ahead. She’s reeling him in like a fish on a line.
    We walk a long way before he stops, rings a doorbell again and again. She opens, standing in her bathrobe inside the door. She’s no babe, man, she looks old to me. And fat. Not sexy fat – Mama-fat. Old, soft, kind, comfortable like a sofa. I know him. I can feel him lean to her, yearn for her.
    Weakness.
    From the step below, he reaches his hands to her, both hands holding on to her waist where the cord of her robe ties the big sack of her. She looks at him. Not smiling. She says something. She cups the back of his head in one hand and draws him inside her house.
    Two minutes. Three, tops. I read it all.
    While I’m watching the closed door, sunlight arrives. The wall was grey, like pencil shading, then suddenly it’s brick orange, just the one wall facing the light.
     
    What he taught me from day one: be feared. Long before he started telling me things, he showed me that. Strike fear. I won’t lie – I did fear him, Ghostman, like everyone else feared him. Like most of them still do. Andnot only him: I feared many people, I feared the world. I was Fearboy, back then.
    I don’t remember the beating itself. I remember him unbuckling his belt.
    He never hits them, though. If one of them needs hitting, we do it. Only twice have I seen him hit them. Anyone try to hit him back, we’re all there to stop that person. They have to fear him. It’s the only way to get them out and the only way we make money. If you mess around, we tell them, if you make a noise, if you talk to a stranger, if you vomit or scream or trip or cough, you’re taking money out of his pocket and he doesn’t like that. We find you a truck, you better get in it, fast and quiet. And you make it across, you better pay up.
    We menace them. It’s the only way.
    He tells me I learned fast. He tells me it took him years to get as tough as I got in a couple of months, as mean.
    Weakness, telling me that. I hate it.
    Mouse says to me, ‘You’re like a son to him.’
    ‘Please,’ I say. ‘Does a rock have a family? Does a knife?’
    ‘Sure,’ Mouse says. ‘A rock’s son is a stone, a sharp stone. And you’re Ghostboy.’
    He thinks he’s funny, Mouse. Plus, he thinks he’s going somewhere. He thinks he’s like them, getting out of here. Mouse, you stupid fool. No destination for us, man.
    You want to talk about gambling and chance? We’ve lost the game already, I want to tell him. If they’ve gotyour fingerprints, you’ve lost. If you’re on a crime list, you’ve lost. No chance. OK, say it’s a lottery, and you know what? We got the dud ticket. Our country is just plain out of date. Ten, twenty years ago, sure – asylum, refuge, future. But the roulette wheel spun round and round, and some other country’s landed in the lucky spot. Ka-ching .
    Meanwhile, they arrive in the camp with their hopes and plans and backpacks and justifications and family phone numbers. They think they’ve reached the finishing line after a long race, a marathon. They’re from the right country, they deserve the next step, OK? Someone promised them safety. Now, they want to