Here Come the Dogs (21 page)

31

It is Aleks' last day in prison.

He wants to wish Gabe good luck, although he knows the man needs much more than that. He thinks of giving him the cross or a hug, but instead he speaks. The words a cascade.

‘Violence.

‘Anyone can do it, brother. Just depends on the village you grew up in. And chance. Dunno . . . When I first got to Australia, I used my fists because no one could understand me, because they used to point at me and say, “Wog! wog! wog! wog!”

‘It became power, but I was powerless to control it. Figure that fucken riddle out. But that doesn't explain everything. I've always had it. It starts as a feeling in your neck, in your spine, tingles all the way up and then it burns, uncontrollable, and it has to get out somehow.

‘All of a sudden you're bashing some cunt and, if there was no reason to, you make one up; you can't stop, you don't want to. And when you're finished, brother, your hands are bloody, your dick is hard. The closest I've ever got to poetry.

‘But that's changed in me now, brother.

‘I won't sell my soul for no one again. Not my wife, not my daughter.
Before, my soul was out for rent. If it was for my family it didn't matter how bloody my hands got. Hell exists here. I've burned on earth, many times. And I won't do it again.'

He looks up at Gabe and his eyes are grief-filled. His voice lifts.

‘No more, brother. Cos there's only three types on this earth – the winners, the losers and the dead.'

32

I'm walking up the street,

ball against my hip,

watching an African woman

carry her washing on her head.

Daniel Merriweather in my headphones.

What happened to that dude,

so soulful with all his angel-headed devils?

Scarlett just told me some news.

‘I've been offered a full art scholarship in Perth.'

‘What are you gonna do?'

‘I'm gonna take it. But what are you gonna do?'

Fuck, man.

Cherry-blooded summer,

maybe the perfect time for a new start.

A sheer wall –

the whole year

Do you climb it and peek over?

Graff every inch of it?

Knock it the fuck down?

The court will give me an answer.

All I have to do

turn my limbs into a Kevin Durant-style

lava-hot slingshot,

and hurl shooting stars at the basket.

The smile drops off my face.

A bloke is hammering a sign

into the earth.

‘Development Notice.'

‘What the fuck's this?'

He looks at me like an idiot. ‘We've been surveying it for months,

mate.'

‘What's it for?'

‘Block of flats.'

‘Why here?' My voice high-pitched.

‘Not my decision, mate. It's business.'

I haven't cried in years,

not since Dad died,

but there it is.

I turn away, head down,

and I feel like a shuddering prow,

and I can hear him back at work,

then laughing into his phone

as if I'm not even there,

and I'm walking away, away

and I hear him yell at me from afar:

33

Jimmy is lying in bed, imagining that he's a swinging door between a room lit by a blinking red light and a garden filled with limbless, headless statues. His phone rings and he answers it with eyes closed.

It is the voice. ‘James?'

‘The fuck do you want?' Jimmy's voice is slow, not yet awake.

‘Are you hungry? Are you hungry, James?'

Jimmy touches his belly. As if by magic, he is overwhelmed by hunger, a massive expanding balloon in his gut. He nods.

‘I thought so,' the voice says. ‘What do you have in the fridge?'

‘Nothin.'

‘Well, get up. I told you I would teach you how to make curry. Do you like curry, James?'

Jimmy wants to hang up but the hunger is unbearable, so instead he nods. He gets up in his sweaty clothes and puts on shoes. He walks to the supermarket and it's open but empty. Despite the bright colours, it reminds him of a desert. The voice directs him down the aisles and orders him to buy vegetables and spices. Jimmy pays for it all at a self-service register. As he walks away, he realises he didn't see another person in there.

‘I want you to put the rice on, James.'

‘I've never cooked rice before.'

‘Never cooked rice?' The voice is horrified, but turns jovial. ‘No worries. It's a piece of cake, as long as you cook with love.'

Jimmy moves robotically, taking orders, pouring the rice into a pot, adding hot water, turning on the stove. His movements are sedate but precise, as if he is popping and locking in slow motion. The voice continues: ‘Now usually I'd trim the meat, but with the fat it tastes better, and this is a special occasion. So, cut the beef into cubes. After that slice the onions – rough is fine. Got it? Then, mince the garlic and ginger, really fine. It's important to bring out the flavours.'

Jimmy carefully starts cutting the meat, surprised at how easily the knife goes through it. He cuts the larger potatoes into equal quarters, the smaller ones in half, places them in a bowl.

‘I learned this when I was a kid growing up in India,' says the voice.

Jimmy doesn't reply, his mouth too dry to conjure words.

‘If you know how to make a basic curry, it'll serve you well throughout your life. My mother told me that.'

‘I thought you said you grew up in Mexico,' Jimmy manages to say.

The voice grows faint. ‘I've been around.'

Jimmy keeps cutting.

‘Now. Heat the oil. Fry the onions until they are not quite golden. Leave them a bit pale. Add the ginger and garlic after that, then all the spices. Turmeric, garam masala, coriander seeds, cloves, cardamom. Now, leave them to fry. Put on some music in the meantime, maybe. You can keep these spices now, see? Build up a nice spice rack – annoying at first but worth it. Remember this recipe for later so you can impress your lady friends. You got any lady friends?'

‘A few things on the boil,' mumbles Jimmy. The curry smells delicious and his mouth fills with saliva.

‘You know they usedta have greyhound jockeys?' Suddenly the voice is fleshed out, human, colloquial.

‘What? What's that?'

‘Monkeys that ride greyhounds. Here, in Australia.'

‘Bullshit.'

‘Seriously. They had water and hurdles, too.'

‘I don't believe it,' says Jimmy, stirring the curry.

‘How could I make that up?' the voice laughs.

‘Well, where can we see em?'

‘Ah, they stopped doing it in the fifties. The monkeys had a strike cos they weren't being paid enough.'

Jimmy laughs, despite himself. Then he grows serious. ‘Tell me the truth. Where are you from? Who are you?'

There's a click, silence and when the voice returns, it's distant and urbane again.

‘Check your rice. It should be almost ready to eat.'

The line goes dead.

Jimmy wants to call back but it's a private number. With both hands, he pats down his body, as if looking for his wallet. He can feel his ribs, and his skin is gross. He wonders if he can touch his spine through his belly button. When he starts eating, he can't stop. It is a demonic hunger. He has cooked enough for four people, but he eats and eats until there's not a single grain of rice or spot of curry. Resting the cutlery on the plate, he looks around then jumps up, food swinging in his gut, and runs to the door.

The night has turned incredibly cold. Mercury Fire is shivering in the back yard, freezing or terrified or both. Jimmy hugs him close then brings him inside and feeds him. The dog eats fiendishly, as if he too is fuelled by the same hunger. Once satisfied, the dog looks at him with its shining eye, kind and hopeless. Jimmy pats him and whispers, ‘Hello, little dog. Hello, little dog, my friend.' He brushes him with the cat brush and pats his flanks. Mercury Fire curls up at his feet. Is this the only real love possible? The dumb love of an animal? He looks into Mercury's eye and swears he can hear a voice saying, ‘Don't worry, Jimmy, you are going to make it. Even if there's no one else,
I
am here with you.'

Jimmy smiles weakly and falls asleep.

PART THREE

‘What was I saying? Oh yeah. So . . . years ago, a spaceman came to our hometown. Landed right on the outskirts. Wearing a massive round helmet, he walks straight to a pack of feral dogs sitting under a tree, bro. He speaks in their language, and teaches em how to dig up bones. Then he leads em to a kink in the river and tells em to start digging. They do it, and what they unearth are the graves of blackfullas. A massacre. The dogs dig em all up – femurs, skulls, ribs – and begin dragging em to the doorstep of the mayor and the town councillors at night. These old white cunts, right, they wake up to get their morning paper, or milk, and what do they find? Blackened old bones piled on their doormats, bro. They wonder, where did they come from? But this mayor, he's a sharp one. He knows. He tells em, “Don't whisper a word to anyone about this or by God you'll be doing the air dance in no time.” So they get some other blackfullas from the outskirts of town and force them to bury the bones far away, down in the gorge. But the spaceman? He'd taught those dogs well. They found the bones again, dug em up and brought em back to the doorsteps of the town. This went on for two whole weeks, mate, till eventually the mayor gave an order: shoot every dog in sight, cremate them on a pyre with the blackfullas' bones and crush the whole fucken lot to powder.

‘As he watched the pyre burning, the mayor's eyes turned into two black opals in his face. That fire burned so bright that you could see redness in the sky all the way down on the south coast.'

1

Midday

A redblood sky.

Here I fucken am, ay?

Booze on booze,

every cell liquor-filled,

the sun crushing me like a can,

pavement so hot

my sneakers leave sticky tread marks.

I call Scarlett.

‘I love you, baby. You know I do.'

Slurring.

Laughter.

Is that her or someone else?

Battery. Dead.

The Leagues Club.

Cricket. Who's playing?

Fuck cricket.

Schooner on schooner.

A bar chick.

I wink but she turns away.

The basketball court,

Bulldozer teeth.

Blacktop skinned.

Tears,

hot as napalm.

Another court maybe?

Fuck the court. Fuck the kids.

And fuck Scarlett if she doesn't wanna call back.

Maybe she'd stay if I got her pregnant . . .

‘Oi. When's the boxing on?'

‘We're not showing it.'

‘What? It's the bloody world championship.'

‘Well, yeah. Nothing I can do. Sorry, mate.'

‘A pub's gotta show the boxing. If it doesn't —'

‘Look, I've got work to do.'

On the balcony,

looking over the river.

Fuck I've missed you.

The river roaring.

A little girl drowned in there,

remember?

A day later a boy was bitten by a tiger snake.

They find bodies in there sometimes.

Dangerous, snakey river.

But I love it.

The river doesn't change.

The river goes on and on and on.

I scrape together shrappers,

only a few gold coins in there now.

Let the liquor carry me.

No drugs today.

No, no, no, just little golden clouds,

my limbs are treacle.

What'll those kids have left?

And me?

Something. There's always something, ay.

That something is change.

A couple,

down by the river,

hand in hand.

Georgie!

With a new man.

They are in love, for sure.

I'm happy for you, Georgie,

I really am.

I'm sorry.

They don't see me.

Eyes closed.

Many women,

faces melting,

then it's just Scarlett there,

sunlight and Scarlett.

Yes I can love,

I know that now,

but can I hold onto her,

I don't know, I don't know,

some things aren't meant to be,

but fuck it,

it's all love,

all love that I'm thinking of,

the fury of, the triumph of,

the madness of,

I wake up in the old graveyard

How the fuck did I get here?

My head is ballooning with pain

and the sun has dried me out.

Skull full of moths.

My phone charged, somehow.

I can see a call to Scarlett

that went for thirty minutes.

What did we talk about?

Maybe I could head to the court?

No more.

Maybe I can use the other one.

I just stare at the sun

2

Aleks stares at a bowl of glossy green apples for a long time, arms resting on the marble kitchen top. In his bedroom, all of his clothes are folded and clean. He holds a shirt to his face and closes his eyes, wiggling his toes on carpet so soft and thick he could sink into it like quicksand. In the basement, he looks at the crates of empty spraycans. A few are unused, but not enough for a whole piece. He spies a length of yellow rope, which he picks up, loops around his neck, thinking of Gabe's suicide attempt. Holding it in one hand from above, he leans forward slightly, feeling the rope bite into his neck.

He hears the doorbell, distantly. Aleks takes the rope off, folds it up and climbs the stairs. Through the frosted glass, he recognises the silhouettes of his parents. He opens the door and they're holding shopping bags full of groceries. He swears they look smaller and older than he remembers, even though it's only been a couple of months. He tries to usher them in but his father hugs him in the doorway. They stand, holding each other on the threshold. Finally, Aleks says, ‘
Aide, tat
,' and guides them in. They head to the kitchen immediately.

Sonya comes out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her hair and Aleks kisses her briefly in the hallway. She has just got a new job
working in a medical clinic. Her eyes are different, he can see that now. Something of loss, something of tenacity. A long way to go, yet.

When he comes back into the kitchen, a culinary operation is underway. Petar pushes a tulip-shaped glass of yellow
rakia
into his hand and they drink. Biljana is fussing over the stove. He can see they are preparing many of his favourite dishes –
tavche gravche
(beans in a skillet),
polneti piperki
(capsicum stuffed with rice and meat), and a variety of meats ready for grilling.

He tries half-heartedly to help them but they wave him away, moving as a team. He recognises for the first time that his mother's face is inscribed with something like a timeless pain, which is perhaps contained within every Maco, every person from the Balkans, who at some point has just had to cop it, again and again. The lines on her face like infinitesimal divisions and subdivisions of anger, trauma, loss – a tumbling alphabet within the DNA. When Aleks and Jana were children, Petar sometimes recited lyrics that were taken from a song called ‘The Orphan' by Konstantin Miladinov of Struga. The last lines come to Aleks now:

‘And I feel a pain in my heart

Which reduces all to dust and ashes,

It's as if I had only winter before me,

As if I were always walking in a dark fog.'

Aleks looks outs the window but it is still summer, clear as diamond.

Mila gets off school early and isn't as inquisitive as usual, just overjoyed to see him. Sonya had told him on the phone that Mila had taken to hugging his work overalls to her body in his absence. Aleks takes her by the chin, kisses her, then presents her with a brand new iPad and soon she is watching Beyoncé and Rihanna film clips on it. As he and his parents eat, they discuss Jana's imminent return from Brisbane. Whereas previously the thought of her filled him with a sickening nervousness, he is now calm. The fact that she agreed to come to New Year's is a good sign. She will see him changed, cleansed, ready to face the future – against all odds. People drop in throughout the day. Nicko. The local Orthodox priest, who, wearing purple, holds him by the shoulders and smiles benignly. ‘May God be with you.'

‘And with you, father.'

‘I hope one day to see you in Ohrid. I am going back there soon.'

‘God willing.'

Each one of his visitors keeps stealing elegiac looks at him and he wants to yell, ‘It's not like I died or anything, for Christ's sake.'

But instead, he pours another
rakia,
and thinks that what he would love most of all is to go for a paint. Then he silently recites the number Clint gave him.

He's preparing to go to the paint shop when he has a final, unexpected guest. Grace is standing between the twin plaster lions at the top of the stairs, fidgeting. When he sees who it is, he breaks into a big grin and gives her a hug. He busies himself making coffee and hunting through the pantry for cakes, but Grace insists he needn't bother. She looks at his big hands holding the coffee cup.

‘Long time no see, Aleks.'

‘Too long, too long. Cake?'

‘Sure.'

The conversation starts with Jimmy and Solomon, and moves onto how quickly the Town is changing, then it draws to the inevitable, the reason she has come.

Grace begins to tell a story, breathlessly, of how she has been having trouble with a pair of neighbours. One of them, a truck driver, has taken to teaching people how to drive trucks in the carpark behind the flats from as early as seven a.m. on a Saturday. One day, after a long shift, Grace had had enough, and approached them to tell them off. The response had been swift and vituperative. They told her she was an ugly old slut, a coconut fucker, and mocked her for still living in the flats. There are tears in her eyes as she finishes the tale. Aleks looks at her with his head cocked like a bird. A dog barks down the street. He takes a neat sip of the coffee and says, ‘Which house is it?'

‘The big one. The old one with the lemon trees.'

Aleks knows it. It's the most beautiful house on the street, directly across from the flats, like something designed to taunt them. A Nazi had lived there years ago, hung himself in the attic and now his ghost haunts the place, or so the story went. Nowadays a gunmetal-grey Porsche sneers from the driveway next to two trucks. Aleks nods to himself then stands up and hugs Grace. ‘All right; sorry to be rude, but I better get going, Grace. Gotta make the paint store before it closes.'

‘But what about —' she starts.

‘I heard what you said. I listened. I'll fix it, all right?' He replies in a short but kind voice.

‘Thanks, Aleks,' she says guiltily.

Aleks stands looking at the legal wall, rubbing his hands together. He quickly identifies the piece he is going to paint over. ‘Poor bastard, even after all these years his pieces are so toy,' says Aleks. Solomon nods, dazed. It'd taken Aleks ages to get onto Solomon and when he finally had, he told Solomon to bring his new girlfriend along, intrigued. However, when he picked them up they were sullen and quiet. Solomon was drunk already and they'd clearly been fighting.

To Aleks' surprise, Scarlett has brought her own paints. She shakes a tin of MTN 94 and eyes the wall, saying to no one in particular, ‘I love how these smell. Kinda like bubblegum.'

Aleks grins. ‘You must be crazy. Smells as bad as every other paint.' He's bought the new Ironlak Sugars and is giving them a burl. Particles of paint float in the air. It's hot but a cool breeze is coming through, and soon Solomon is up and at it as well. He puts Spit Syndicate's ‘Sunday Gentlemen' on the speakers. Aleks props himself on the tips of his fingers as he paints, relishing the sun. He has no plan, but he writes JAKEL freehand in his tight, interlocking script. He has always been the best writer of the boys, a natural instinct to conceive a whole piece in his mind and execute it to perfection. He had re-arranged some letters in his surname to create that tag. He smiles to himself, thinking of his very
first tag, KBAB, when he was just getting accustomed to Australia, and the ridicule he got for it.

The piece is starting to take shape, with a light blue to navy chroming effect in the middle, then black, then yellow. He's sunburnt within an hour.

He gets a message on his phone from an unknown number. It is a photo of a hand with a finger stitched to it, dark blue and scabbed around the stitches. The message below simply reads, ‘No hard feelings, ay?' He grimaces and deletes it, then keeps painting. The colours are really popping now and he uses a see-through paint, a black techie, to get a shadow effect on the letters so that they look 3D.

Scarlett, meanwhile, is painting a figure, a woman who is half bird, half human. Solomon is helping her and the wings are a vibrant yellow-to-white fade, like a sulphur-crested cockatoo. Aleks thinks that it's definitely got an art-school vibe but is dope nonetheless. He is surprised to see them share a gentle, conciliatory kiss.
Love and hip hop, ay?
he thinks.

Once finished, they stand back from their pieces. They look so alive they could pop from the concrete and fly through the air.

Aleks stands in the garden of the house across from the flats. There is a fountain, terracotta tiles and four perfectly manicured lemon trees: a chiaroscuro in blue-black and white. A few fallen fruit on the ground. Holding something downwards in his right hand, he is rolling the blue bead with his left. He pockets the bead, steps forward and picks up a lemon with his free hand, weighs it, sniffs it, then places it carefully back on the ground. As he stoops to do so, the backdoor swings open and the owner of the house appears holding a garbage bag. The thin sound of laughter from a television inside.

Aleks steps silently back into the shadows against the fence; hidden in a darkness so pure it could be an extract of the outer reaches of space. The cricket bat in his right hand feels incredibly heavy, as if it could sink with him into the core of the earth.

The man is well put together, wearing a collared linen shirt tucked into his jeans. He has a military-style haircut. He reaches into his mouth, pulls out a piece of gum and throws it into the garbage bin. Everything he does is purposeful and his face is set severely. Aleks thinks of Grace and his hand tightens on the cricket bat handle, his palms sweaty. He swallows saliva and the man looks up, squinting towards the fence. Aleks doesn't move.

The man steps forward into the moonlight, leaning out as if looking for land from a prow. Aleks stays in shadow, shapeless. His breathing and heartbeat has slowed right down to this moment. Too easy – jump out, three quick steps, then swing the cricket bat right into the man's head. The weapon, the wolf, the victim, the piñata skull, each linked in a chain leading back to the bloody birth of the world. Each illuminated by a caustic falling of stars and well aware of the game's rules – sacrifice, loneliness and violence.
Who chooses their choice?
he thinks.

Aleks spies something at the man's feet. It is a child's tricycle with a basket attached to the handlebars, lying on its side. Aleks had bought one just like it for Mila for Christmas a few years back. Aleks remembers the way she waggled her little toes as he guided her sandalled feet onto the pedals. He relaxes his grip on the cricket bat.

The man, content he hasn't seen anything, turns and goes back into the house. Aleks leans his whole weight against the fence and exhales.

He drives away, parks on the edge of the river, and sees that the water is moving deceptively fast behind bending reeds. Often it roars, a guttural moan like a beast or a plane taking off. But tonight it is quiet and black, reflecting an almighty white swathe of stars. He looks up, squinting hard, and decides he will forget the phone number Clint gave him, he will let each number float from his mind like smoke rings.

He looks around. There is no one there. He reaches into his pocket, takes the blue bead out and pitches it into the water.