The Bush

Chuks believed every lesson went better with a plate at the end of it, which was how AJ came to be running down June 12 Street at seven in the morning, chasing a plate of rice that did not exist.

"First, run for a few seconds," Chuks had said. "Imagine the last plate of rice is getting away."

AJ ran past the canteen at No. 1, where the soldiers from the training ground were eating breakfast and had opinions about his form. He ran past Iloro House and the clinic at No. 5 and the house at No. 8, where somebody's guard dogs barked at him through the gate as if he owed them money. He made it about sixty yards before his ribs filed a formal complaint.

"There you go!" said Chuks, walking up behind him with no hurry at all. "Save a little breath for eating."

Then the knees. "Kneel down, then stand back up. Take your time; these knees aren't fresh from the market." Then the map on AJ's borrowed phone, an old one Chuks had found in a drawer, with a pin dropped at the bottom of the street. "Even my snack trips need a plan," said Chuks. It was, AJ realized, a test. Chuks wanted to know whether the cell had broken anything that food could not fix.

"Verdict?" said AJ.

"You'll live. But you'll eat more. That's my professional opinion."

At the bottom of the street a narrow path led south between two walls and out of the estate. The rain the week before had turned it to a long brown puddle with stepping stones of broken blocks in it. Frogs plopped into the water ahead of them. Then the walls ended and the grass rose up on both sides, tall and green and loud with insects, and Chuks said, with real pride, "The bush."

It was a clearing, really. A sandy football pitch with bamboo goalposts, one of them leaning like it had been out late. Beyond it stood an unfinished building, two floors of bare gray concrete with steel rods sticking out of the top like it was still asking permission to become a house. Past that, somewhere, AJ could hear the sea.

In the shade of the building, on three plastic chairs, sat three police officers on a smoke break. The sweet, heavy smell of it hung in the still air. The oldest of them had a hand radio on his knee that crackled every few seconds with news he ignored. Everybody, AJ would learn, called him Oga Radio. Oga: boss. The second had crumbs in every pocket and was eating from one of them. That was Biscuit. The third said nothing at all.

"Talk to the officers here," said Chuks. "Their shotgun, their permission. I'll wait over there."

"Easy, AJ," said Oga Radio, who apparently already knew his name. On June 12 Street, everyone did. "You came for football, or is our little smoke break that interesting?"

AJ looked at the football lying by the goalpost. It was flat on one side and patched on the other. "The ball looks retired. Can I try that shotgun?"

"Listen to this one," said Biscuit, delighted. "Two minutes here and he wants the expensive toy."

Oga Radio looked at him a long moment, then lifted the shotgun from where it leaned against the wall. "You can borrow it. Shoot only the bottles and cans by the unfinished building. Keep it pointed at those walls."

"Targets only. I understand."

"Bring am back o." Bring it back, with that little "o" on the end that turns a sentence into a warning. "It stays here in the bush. Return it to us before you go into the estate."

Bottles

Somebody had lined up empty bottles and cans along a low concrete ledge in front of the building. AJ took his place on the open patch of ground facing them, Chuks a careful distance behind.

The first shot missed by roughly a whole building. The kick punched his shoulder so hard he thought for a moment the shotgun had shot him back. Behind him, Biscuit laughed so hard he dropped a biscuit, then picked it up and ate it anyway.

The second shot hit the wall. The third hit a can, which spun away into the grass with a sound of deep personal offense. AJ breathed, aimed, and hit two bottles in a row.

"Three hits!" said Chuks. "Those bottles have had quite a morning."

AJ stood there with his shoulder aching and his ears ringing, and he did not feel like a hard man. He felt like a man who had been allowed, for five minutes, to be good at something. It had been a long time.

"Take the shotgun back to the officers," said Chuks quietly. "Borrowing ends with a thank-you, not a disappearing act."

AJ walked it back across the sand and held it out to Oga Radio. "Here. Your shotgun, just as promised. Thank you."

"And the bottles?" said Biscuit. "I hope you gave them a proper retirement."

"Good man," said Oga Radio. "We have it back."

The third officer, the quiet one, looked at AJ and nodded once. It was the first thing he had said all morning, and somehow it counted for more than the rest.

The match

At ten the footballers came: two teams of young men in mismatched shirts, Creek Rovers in faded blue and Palm United in what had once been green. Biscuit stood up for the first time all morning, produced a whistle from a pocket of crumbs, and sat down again.

"Next football match, I am the referee," he announced. "My running days ended before this building got its second floor."

A man with a notebook and a pencil behind his ear came over to AJ. He introduced himself as Tunde Lines. He was the bookie, and he was not Officer Tunde, the policeman at the north gate. He said this immediately, in the voice of a man who had said it every day for years and had stopped finding it funny around the second week.

"You want work? Ball boy. Ball goes in the grass, you bring it. Ball goes in the drain, you bring it faster. ₦1,000 a break."

AJ fished that ball out of the long grass eleven times in the first half and out of the drain twice. By the break he had ₦1,000, wet sneakers and a deep understanding of why the ball looked retired.

"Creek Rovers are two-to-one favorites," said Tunde Lines, licking his pencil. "Palm United pays three."

AJ looked at Palm United. They were smaller, slower and arguing among themselves. He looked at his ₦1,000. He thought about the drawer under the cutlery in London, where his mother put the problems, and how none of them had ever been solved by waiting.

"Five hundred on Palm United."

Palm United scored in the eighty-ninth minute, with a shot that hit Biscuit's plastic chair, rolled along the line and dropped in. Creek Rovers appealed. Biscuit, chewing, allowed the goal. "The chair is part of the field," he ruled. "Everything is part of the field. Play on."

Tunde Lines paid out with the expression of a man who had just been robbed by furniture. AJ walked off the pitch with ₦2,000 and the warm, dangerous feeling that Lagos might, if you were quick and lucky, give a little back.

Behind him, Oga Radio's radio crackled, and this time he listened. He listened for a while. Then he looked up at AJ with an expression that was hard to read.

"Sola and Tunde at the north gate," he said. "They want to see the Libya man. They say you owe them for the desert."