Black Ant

One of the abangs caught up the road slap-bang in the middle of the hot-spot over Aljunied Road tonight. We must have left Labu Labi simultaneously, one aboard the No. 2 it must have been while the tracker took 21. When he was found the fellow was bent over his bag and rummaging through. A firm hand on the shoulder produced only a slight reflexive twitch.
         — Show me what you have in that bag there, lah.
         Earlier in the night there had been a frustrated impulse to ask the chap how long his dye lasted. Either Friday or Saturday night the fellow had performed the operation himself out at his flat at Choa Chu Kang. Everyone seemed to be living out there at present, a long way to travel to Geylang Serai. Not too long for a home-boy of course. What would Choa Chu Kang hold for this man?
         In answer to how much the dye-job had cost him the man explained he had bought a three dollar pack and managed the whole thing without trouble. That was no doubt best while a fellow was still fit and able, flexing at the mirror over the basin, rinsing off properly and all the rest of it. Since the tint this chap has hardly covered his noggin with his chap, which he still carries from habit, perhaps against the rain. Usually the dye held decently for a fortnight (three weeks the snowy strands began to poke through). Around the corner from Labu Labi the green-grocer made do with monthly visits to his Malay barber out at Bedok, ten dollars for full-service. In almost two years this other home-boy had never been seen jet previously. Something was possibly in the wind. Tonight's capture supported the idea.
         Was he up at this end buying cigarettes? (The weed off the back of the truck, or the night bum-boat more like, could be bought at half a dozen sites around this middle part of Geylang no problem at all.)
         At first Yes, that was his mission. Almost immediately revised though in a kind of confession for the purchase of Black Ant.
         This was new. It didn't need too much guess-work. The thinking could only develop from the Eagle Pills which the author had discovered early in the term.
         — Make healthy, make strong...
         —…. Oh yeah…
         —….That one too.
         The universal hard-bar, fist twitching a little in the air.
         Buying for a dollar it was possible to sell for two. The older chaps, the old Romancers down in Geylang Serai in their seventies and eighties, would not blink at two dollars for genuine Black Ant. One could credit that.
         The dedicated, industrious, easy to under-estimate old ant, as good a totem in its own way as the mighty soaring lord of the sky. In a battle of the species possibly to come, in a Toto or 4D lottery winner-take-all, the smart money might be better placed on the earnest little guy, never say die.