Smoke Break

The bush began where the estate gave up. You went down the south footpath past the last back yard, past a drain full of frog opinions, and the ground opened into a rough red field with two goalposts made of bamboo and a great deal of hope. Beyond the field stood the unfinished building: two floors of bare concrete, rusty iron rods sticking out of the top like the hair of a man just woken up. Beyond that, if you kept walking, the beach.

This was the bush, and every afternoon three police officers took their smoke break here, on concrete blocks in the shade of the building, as if it were an office with very poor air conditioning.

The oldest of them carried a hand radio. Nobody on June 12 Street used his name; everybody called him Oga Radio, "oga" meaning boss. The radio hissed and spat all day and never once said anything urgent. He held it close to his ear anyway, the way some men hold a rosary.

The second was Biscuit. He had crumbs in every pocket. Nobody had ever seen him buy biscuits, but there they always were, in his shirt pocket and his trouser pockets and once, alarmingly, in his cap. He was the joker. He was also, though he would deny it, the one who noticed if anybody looked unwell.

The third did not have a nickname, because nicknames need talk to stick to and he hardly talked. He set up the bottles. He swept the shell cases. He watched the street footballers with a small expression that might have been affection.

The smoke drifted up thin and slow between them. Biscuit studied it. "This cannabis is doing more paperwork than we are," he said. "Even the smoke is taking its time."

Against a concrete block, within reach of Oga Radio's hand, leaned the shotgun.

It had become, without any meeting, the bush crew's shotgun. Bottles and cans were set out along the ledges of the unfinished building, and on a slow afternoon one of the officers might fire at them, and the sound would bang off the bare concrete and roll away toward the sea. It was the only place in the whole estate a gun was ever fired. Oga Radio made sure of that.

The afternoon Chuks brought AJ down the footpath, the football was paused for a goat.

"Easy, AJ," said Oga Radio, without lowering the radio. "You came for football, or is our little smoke break that interesting?"

AJ looked at the ball, which was patched in three places and had lost most of its shape. "The ball looks retired," he said. "Can I try that shotgun?"

Biscuit nearly lost a biscuit. "Listen to this one," he told the third officer. "Two minutes here and he wants the expensive toy."

Oga Radio considered AJ for a while. He considered Chuks, who stood behind AJ in his apron with his market bag, nodding encouragingly, as if vouching for a nephew at a job interview.

"You can borrow it," Oga Radio said at last. "Shoot only the bottles and cans by the unfinished building. Keep it pointed at those walls."

"Targets only," said AJ. "I understand."

"Bring am back o." Bring it back, he meant, in Pidgin, the "o" at the end doing the work of a raised finger. "It stays here in the bush. Return it to us before you go into the estate."

That was the rule, and AJ was not the first to hear it. He was, as it turned out, among the few who listened to it the first time.

Later, when AJ was out at the building and the bottles were going one by one, Biscuit asked the question everybody asked eventually. "Why so strict? It's only a shotgun. He's not going to rob the Afternoon Store with it."

Oga Radio lowered the radio, which was itself a sign.

"Out here," he said, "it shoots bottles. Past that footpath, it becomes a story. On June 12 Street there are children. There's that family at No. 8 with five of them and three dogs. There are soldiers from the training facility who will ask questions with their whole bodies. There's the clinic. There's that club with the purple sign." He put the radio back to his ear. "A gun in the bush is a toy. A gun in the estate is the newspaper."

The quiet officer, sweeping cases into a little heap, said the only thing he would say all afternoon.

"Bottles don't have mothers."

Nobody added anything to that.

Down on the field, the match had restarted. On a weekend it would be the real thing: Creek Rovers against Palm United, the two street sides, with a crowd on the verge and a bookie called Tunde Lines taking bets from a plastic chair. He was not Officer Tunde from the north gate, a fact that had to be explained to every newcomer and caused Officer Tunde a great deal of suffering. "One man leans," Biscuit liked to say. "The other man lies. Both of them take your money."

When the ball went into the ditch, AJ jogged down and fetched it. When it went into the drain, he fetched that too, holding his breath. The footballers paid ₦1,000 a break for a ball boy, and he was quick, and he did not complain about the drain, so by the end of the afternoon they were shouting his name.

"Next football match, I am the referee," Biscuit announced, to nobody in particular. "My running days ended before this building got its second floor."

"You'll need a whistle," said Oga Radio.

"I'll borrow Niyi's. He has been blowing it at Sarge's radio for a month and losing."

At sunset AJ came back from the building. He held the shotgun pointed down at the dirt, the way he had been told, and handed it to Oga Radio, stock first.

"Here," he said. "Your shotgun, just as promised."

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

"Full honors."

Oga Radio took the gun and leaned it back against its block. "Good man," he said. "We have it back. Go on; the estate is waiting."

When AJ and Chuks had gone up the footpath, the three officers sat for a while without speaking. The sky over the beach went orange, then the color of a ripe pawpaw, then grey.

"He brought it back," said Biscuit. "Without being chased."

"Some of them do," said Oga Radio.

"Name one other."

Oga Radio did not name one.

The radio at his ear hissed, then, for the first time that day, said something that mattered. It was Niyi's voice from the main gate, crackly and grumpy: party night, Prizm opening early, every spare officer to the gate by seven.

Biscuit brushed crumbs from his shirt. "Will there be stout?"

"There is always stout," Oga Radio said, standing up with a groan. "That is the problem."