Here Come the Dogs (7 page)

mishandle and bounce the ball off my shin.

It shoots over the dry grass

and rolls down a ditch next to the dilapidated wooden fence.

As I jog to retrieve it,

I'm suddenly filled with a deep sadness

and I feel tired.

I wish I were alone.

Fred shoots and misses.

I finish it off with a feathery jumper that he praises exuberantly.

‘Mad shot, bro!'

As I drink deep from my water bottle

I notice crumbs of light sparkling on the edge of the court,

like the glow of treasure.

I stand for a moment,

half bent,

staring,

thinking about how it was luck that won it,

how I only shot the last one

because I was too damn tired to run

From a house nearby

I hear that ubiquitous Lorde song, ‘Royals'.

I realise the sparkle on the blacktop

High above is a red kite,

I walk away from the court,

thinking of the sparkle and the kite.

I feel a bit ashamed at not saying goodbye to Fred,

but I keep walking,

I hear yelling,

It's Fred, breathless. ‘Your dog! Your dog!'

‘Ah shit, thanks mate.'

I try to smile.

Up close, Mercury Fire unnerves me.

He once inspired excitement and joy

but now he seems the portent of something dangerous,

something tragic and shameful.

He yawns

and the silt of resentment boils up in me.

When I look into his eye,

it's my own eyes I see.

10

Jimmy and Solomon wander through the supermarket, bored, while Ulysses squeezes avocados and raps on coconuts. First, they have a chilli-eating contest, which Jimmy wins determinedly. Panting and fanning their mouths, they go into the cold room to see how long they can stay in there. Soon bored, they move to the toy aisle and find a packet of plastic cowboys and Indians. The whole packet only one dollar.

A voice from above, ‘I reckon I could spare a buck.'

An immaculately dressed man is standing next to them, pencil thin with a smile on his face. Wearing fashionable sunglasses, he has light-brown skin and is of ambiguous ethnicity. He crouches.

‘Hi, James,' he says.

‘Who are you?' says Solomon.

‘You must be Solomon. Big fella.' The man offers his hand and Solomon shakes it reluctantly, by the fingertips only. The man's hand is bone-dry. He lets go and conjures a two-dollar coin, as if from nowhere. He lets it trip down the knuckles of his right hand and drop into his left palm, then holds out the coin to Jimmy. As he does, a shadow appears over him and he is knocked to the ground by a crushing blow. Ulysses Amosa. The man stands up, bleeding from his nose onto his starched white shirt, afraid and blinking. He tries to
smile and reminds Ulysses that they were once best of friends. As soon as he stands to full height, another blow. This time Ulysses hisses, ‘Get out. Get the fuck out of here now.' The man scrambles away. His sunglasses bounce on the tiles and a manager waddles over to berate Ulysses, who is shaking. The boys are astonished – they have never heard Ulysses Amosa swear.

11

Aleks has a day off work and is in his basement.

Steel, paint, chemicals, petrol. There is a big workbench jumbled with carpenter's tools and a tall shelf behind it. Aleks picks up a ball bearing, the size of a marble, turns it between forefinger and thumb, and observes it in the meagre light, silver, before placing it on the shelf. As children, he and the boys were constantly on the hunt for ball bearings, the king cheat of marble games. He smiles, climbs on a stool, reaches up high and pulls down the gym bag.

He opens it and takes out what is inside: a 22-calibre handgun, black snout gleaming. He lays it in his lap and disassembles it, then cleans it slowly. A .22 is light and perfect for wounding, good for hits because the bullet doesn't break the sound barrier and lodges in the brain. Guns are nothing new to him – in the Balkans, most homes would have one.

Tomorrow was going to be a dangerous day.

Once he has cleaned it, he places it back in the bag and hides it on the top shelf, then visits the pharmacy to get his father's heart medicine. When he collects Mila from school, she leaps into the passenger seat of the Hilux. She tells him about a science experiment she did in class where they put some Mentos into a Coke bottle and the chemical reaction
caused the soft drink to shoot up into the sky like a fountain. Aleks doesn't think it sounds like a very educational experiment, but wonders whether he ought to get her an iPad to help her study. He pulls up at her ballet school and, before she jumps out, he smoothes her hair back and kisses her on the forehead, then arranges her collar, which has flicked up.

‘I love you, sweetheart.'

‘Have you thought any more about the holiday,
tat?
'

‘Of course. We'll go soon, don't worry.'

‘Promise.' Those eyes again. She adds in an almost professional voice, ‘Could help mum get better.'

This time, he doesn't point out that she has dropped into English, but stares straight back into her eyes and gives her hand a squeeze. ‘I promise, baby. Go on. Mrs. Hua will drop you home, all right?'

When he arrives at his parents' flat, his father, Petar, is watching the Macedonian news. There are flags waving and a man at a podium speaking hoarsely into a microphone. Petar is a dark, lugubrious man, wearing a white singlet at a table covered in paints. A half-finished icon of St Clement is on an easel by his side, eyes staring out gravely, gold background glowing. Petar is pinching at a faded tattoo above his elbow. It reads
Sloboda ily Smrt
– Freedom or Death. He stands up to shake his son's hand. His mother, Biljana, appears from the kitchen, smiling. Aleks hands her some flowers before clearing a space on the table and dividing his father's medicine into a pillbox.

Petar Janeski had grown up in Communist Yugoslavia with a photo of Marshall Tito on his wall, like every other family. His home life in the village had been one of crushing poverty, his father a poor farmer and secret Macedonian patriot who sold vegetables in the market. One day, as they tilled the fields, his father was telling Petar folk stories and reminding him that Macedonians were descended from Philip of Macedon, and a great line of warriors and kings. Cultural and church expression were repressed; spies were everywhere. A passerby, who happened to be listening in, reported him. The family was blacklisted by the Communist Party and, as life got harder, Petar's father became more and more harsh towards him. Petar didn't consider his father a bad man, but he grew up knowing the
discipline of knuckles and fist. The blacklisting clung to his family name like a curse, meaning he could never get a proper job, just menial labour from time to time. He dreamed of a life that would offer him more.

One day, digging up a garden for his neighbours, Petar overheard the couple talking about emigration. The Party had eased travel restrictions in the 1960s and many people were heading to Australia, where it was said you could earn great wealth. There was already a community there, and the church had sent priests to educate the Macedonians abroad, so the transition to a new country would not be so difficult. As he dug, the field in front of him changed from dark soil to sunlit sand in his mind.

Weeks later, he met a young woman, Biljana, at a dance. She too had heard of the opportunities in Australia and after several years of marriage sent Petar off to
Matica,
the agency for emigration in Skopje, and then to the Australian Embassy in Belgrade. After countless interviews, letters and months of waiting, he, Biljana and their boy Aleks, were winging their way from the crumbling body of Europe.

Once Aleks has divided up the pills, his father leans back, satisfied. His hands are covered in paint. How fearsome those hands had once been. Petar lights a cigarette. ‘You should quit those things,' says Aleks, reaching for a cigarette himself. ‘Bad for your health.'

His father raises his eyebrows and says, ‘I will when you do.' He speaks in Macedonian. Before relocating to the Town, they had lived in Wollongong. When they first moved there, Petar would have liked to learn English, but almost straight off the plane he had started working alongside other Macos in a steel factory in Port Kembla. He soon got a second job to help keep the family afloat, meaning he went years without learning a working use of English.

The Macedonian news then changes to some footage of Bitola in the summer. Petar turns to Aleks, grinning. ‘Bitola girls – good for the circulation.'

‘I heard that,' calls Biljana from the kitchen.

‘I don't know how women put up with us,' says Aleks.

‘So, you know Nicko has bought his parents a new house?' says Biljana, setting down two cups of coffee in front of the men.

‘Really? Good for him,' says Aleks, bristling. He loves his cousin, but Nicko always seems to be two steps ahead. ‘I'll do that for you, soon. Just have to handle my business, that's all,' he says, patting his mother's hand.

‘Oh, yeah? How?'

‘Got a big job coming up. Real big.'

Once home, Aleks dreams of the blue bead on his neck.

The blue bead is obsession and power –

He dreams it is a blue galaxy,

On each planet, tableaux of moments in his life

He floats among them.

In his dream,

Running around him,

This blue bead,

Isn't that what she'd said,

Before . . .

‘Aleks. Aleks. Jimmy's here.' Sonya is shaking him softly in the darkness.

‘Fuck. Forgot about that. Let him in.'

Jimmy's watching TV in the lounge room already and rises to embrace Aleks.

‘You hungry, brother?' Aleks asks.

‘Starving,' says Jimmy.

Sonya is already sprinkling salt and pepper on some chicken breasts on the marble kitchen top that overlooks the large lounge room. Aleks leaps up. ‘You leave that, baby. Go and sit with Jimmy.
Fala.
I'll handle that.' Aleks rubs her neck, kisses her behind the ear, then guides her to the couch. Massaging her with one hand, he flicks through channels, fussing over finding the right program. He decides on
Chopper,
a movie he and Jimmy have watched numerous times and quote endlessly. Once back in the kitchen, he knows what he is doing. As the chicken breasts fry in a pan, he throws together a salty salad. ‘Helps with a hangover, this one,' he says, slicing cucumbers. ‘
Rakia
?'

‘Fuck yeh.'

‘May you walk naked in the house of your enemies, brother.' They drain shots and Aleks smacks his lips, then exclaims, ‘Good grief!'

Jimmy laughs. Aleks has a hotchpotch vernacular, pieced together out of rap music, woggy slang, movies and Aussie colloquialisms, but Jimmy's favourite is when he uses old-fashioned expressions, something you might hear a grandma saying – ‘dearo me' or ‘goodness gracious'. He says it whenever he's about to do something dangerous or bad for his health. Aleks pours another
rakia.

‘What'd you do today?' Jimmy says, eyeing him keenly. Aleks knows what Jimmy is up to. He loves to feel in touch with the criminal world without having to partake in any of it. Aleks once enjoyed telling him, but now throws him red herrings – close to but never the complete truth. Betrayal is in the kiss.

Today he doesn't feel like talking about crime. It'll bring down his delicately balanced mood. ‘Ah, just painted a house on the other side of town, brother. Nothing too much. The couple were happy with it.' He keeps his eye on the television but can see that Jimmy is scratching his Adam's apple in disappointment. On the TV, it's the scene where Chopper is trying to convince his mates to kidnap the prison guards and lay siege to the jail. ‘What a plan. Dumb cunt,' snorts Aleks. ‘You'd get fucken forty more years.'

Jimmy looks at him again, trying to glean some insight from his mate's offhand comment. Aleks places plates in front of his wife and Jimmy. ‘
Pileshko
,' Sonya says shyly, gesturing at the chicken with her chin. ‘
Fala mnogu,
Aleks.'

Sonya is Anglo but she's been with Aleks for so long that she speaks Macedonian almost fluently. She took immediately to the structure and Aleks' obsession with all things traditional. He beams with pride and kisses her, then says to Jimmy, ‘Not too shabby, ay? Come on. Eat up, both of you. You're all skin and bone.'

Sonya begins to tell Jimmy a story. He listens to her, almost childlike, experiencing each emotion as she tells it, eyes shining when hers do. Aleks knows she's always had a soft spot for Jimmy, that he reminds her of a hurt dog she once found on the side of a street, all kicking legs and wounded eyes. She regards Solomon as flashy and shark-like, and feels as if Jimmy is someone who could flourish if given the oxygen. Or explode?