Here Come the Dogs (17 page)

16

The next day in the remand yard, Aleks falls in step with Clint, who is pacing back and forth, smoking. There are high winds, so strong that the men almost lean into the wind diagonally. The fellas behind them are talking about selling the Bupe medicine they have scored from the prison doctor and managed to regurgitate. A skinny bloke is moving swiftly among the pacing feet, picking ciggie butts off the ground to scrounge himself some tobacco.

‘Ah, you're back, mate,' says Clint.

‘So. What's the job?'

‘You strapped for cash?

Aleks keeps his face straight. ‘Nah, just wondering, brother.'

They continue struggling against the wind as Clint speaks. ‘Janeski, you're straight-edged, you're a businessman. I know you wouldn't fuck it up. If you want work, I got a cousin up in Sydney with the rock.'

Aleks nods and they quicken their pace. ‘I'll keep it in mind. Thanks.'

The smell of a barbecue floats to them from one of the other yards, who must've spent their buy-up on it. He can't tell which. Aleks looks through the fence and can see that they've been cycled next to the Viet yard. There is an almost military formation around a certain man, who is
immaculately put together, hair parted and shining, looking both bookish and stylish. He has his hand to his chin and his nails are trimmed. Aleks wonders if he has known war. He's quite young, so maybe he came in a boat as a baby. Aleks and Clint stride past.

‘So what else is new, mate?' says Clint.

‘Dunno. Been thinking I might go back to Macedonia.'

‘That's what they all say.'

‘I'm serious.'

‘Well, you'll need money for tickets.'

17

Toby hasn't worn the jersey the last few days.

I finally ask him about it.

‘I lost it,' he says.

‘Lost it?' Some of the kids look around at the sound of my raised voice.

‘Yeh.' Then he repeats it, like a mantra. ‘Lost it. Lost it.'

I look away, spit, then turn to him and grab him by the shoulders. ‘You've got to take more care with other people's . . . with
your
shit.' It takes all my effort not to slap him.

‘Fuck you, cunt,' he says and runs away.

I can't help myself and my voice explodes out of me. ‘Fuck you, too, ya ungrateful little shit.' He's already around the corner. I'm almost shaking and even shooting hoops can't get my mind off him. The other kids watch me as I shoot for a while then slope away. As I'm walking home, Muhammad jumps out from behind a bush, and I throw my fists up straight away. Seeing who it is, I awkwardly rub my hands together then let them hang by my side.

‘Mr Amosa.'

‘Solomon.'

‘Solomon. Don't be too angry at Toby.'

‘Why not?'

‘It's not his fault. His mum gave the jersey to his stepdad.'

‘What? Why? It's way too small for a grown man.'

Muhammad shrugs and he looks down.

He knows more,

I think of Jimmy's dad, The Prince,

The torment in those sort of homes

Toby's back the next week, though,

18

Aleks is waiting in line for the phone. A man in front of him is yelling instructions to put bets on the Canterbury Bulldogs. It usually calms down after twelve p.m., once people's phone lists have run out. The man swears, hangs up and walks away. Aleks picks it up and Sonya answers after several rings.

‘How you going, baby?'

‘Good, good. I miss you, Aleks.' Her voice sounds clearer.

‘I miss you so much, too, baby.' He's smiling and he can tell she is, too.

‘And Mila?'

‘All right. At school. Getting excited for you to come home.'

‘You still on the job hunt?'

‘Yeah. Still no luck.'

‘I'll be home soon, baby. I promise I'll sort everything out. Call that bloody lawyer of mine, all right? He hasn't even visited yet.'

‘I will.'

He has a thought and then says, ‘Categories?'

She laughs out loud. ‘Sure.'

The last real holiday they had as a family was in Shellfish Bay, when Mila was only three. When she was asleep, he and Sonya would unfold
an old card table on the tiled balcony and play drinking games with the two harmless stoners who lived next door. One of the games they'd play was Categories. Name a category (European cities, Olympic sports, etc.) and list things until there are no more. They'd play for ages, smoking ciggies and listening to hip hop and old rock. Once the neighbours left, he and Sonya would lie on the tiles, side by side, watching moonlight leaping from tile to tile like a fish and, more often than not, make love right there.

‘Car brands,' she says, and the smile in her voice almost makes him weep.

‘Toyota.'

When they finish the game, they're both laughing, but a line for the phone has built up. ‘I'll be back soon, sweetheart. Don't stress.'

‘I know. I won't.'

‘I love you, baby.'

In bed, he holds his cross and tries to think of God. But other things take in the darkness above him: knives, fangs, men with the faces of wolves. He can almost hear the snicker and pop of their teeth. He imagines himself running with them, running together through a big, broken city.

Maybe these are his gods. Solomon didn't believe in God. Aleks felt he had to.

What will he do if he moves back to Macedonia? Start the vineyard his father always talked about? Maybe run a tour company. All these things, he figured, he could gain an understanding and mastery of. The Balkans were chaos, but there seemed to be some inner reason to it, perhaps, the energy that propelled it even less opaque than in Australia. Mila would kick up a fuss, but she'd come around. He's getting ahead of himself, though – first he has to concentrate on getting out.

Gabe wheezes and puffs and moans, and Aleks is sure the man is going to jump him.
Animal,
he thinks.
Fucken black bastard.
The man's disquieting eyes, his narrow presence, surely it was the portent of something murderous. Who knew what he was truly in for or what he'd done in his own country. Something savage, no doubt. Aleks had seen what war did to people, how it could be used to excuse the most hideous acts.

Even as he sleeps, he swears he can hear it, the breath like hellish bellows. He wakes several times during the night and begins to clench his fists, open and closed, open and closed, thinking he will first hit the man with a short arm, an elbow to the nose bridge, hard enough to break it, then he'll sit on him and beat him until the screws come. Maybe use the razor a bit. No, that wouldn't do. It'd mean more time. It might mean solitary. But the question remains – what if the man gets him first?

He falls asleep and has a dream. In it he shivers. The darkness around him is absolute and unquestioned. He hears a door opening but still there is no light, just murmuring voices. He's being guided through a corridor by a hand made out of smoke. He steps down and can tell by the uneven rocking beneath his feet and the sound of the water that he is in a boat. The boat moves swiftly, but he hears no oars or motor. He thinks to himself that there is a beauty, even a lustre, to darkness this entire.

A light appears on the front of the boat and it is soothing, diffuse, like the spoors of a dandelion. It is being cupped and protected carefully by a bearded man who seems very ancient, and Aleks thinks he might be a soldier or a priest. Surroundings are starting to appear in the meagre light and he can see small dwellings on the shore, and grapevines, and willows, and he can tell he is on a river; but which one, he can't be sure. Is it the Drim River, which flows through Struga and is black and full of eels? Or the river in the Town where he and Solomon used to fish? Whichever it is, it's flowing rapidly, and Aleks clutches onto the side of the boat. He is being propelled towards an enormous whirlpool, bigger than the eye of God or the throat of the devil.

He hears a sound and emerges from the dream upwards, as if from a pool, and is off the bed and on his feet. There's a streak of movement
and Aleks is ready. He sees Gabe upright and twisting with a great energy, dancing even, eyes bulging. Aleks then sees a strip of bedsheet around the man's neck, self-tied and looped into an air vent, and how the man gurgles and fights against himself with a will to die that overtakes the will to live. Aleks leaps up and holds the man by the struggling legs, grunting. He feels very scared and tries to yell but the man hisses, ‘No, no, no', and for some reason Aleks becomes silent. He grabs his razor from beneath his pillow and cuts the man down, who falls, gasping and crying. He pulls Gabe up and makes him drink water.

Aleks thinks to himself that somewhere, at that exact moment, someone had succeeded. But not here, not this time.

19

Toby's mum

Grubby chin and port-sour breath.

‘What do you want with these kids, ay?'

‘I'm teaching them to play ball.'

‘Why?'

‘Just giving something back. I used to be a proper ball player.'

‘Couldn't make it, ay?'

‘I had a bad injury.'

Toby is hovering behind her,

The other kids continue to shoot.

Her pig eyes,

black and watery,

but she doesn't seem present somehow.

‘So now you teach kids?'

‘Yep.'

‘And give them presents?'

‘I gave Toby a jersey. It was a one-off thing —'

She leans in close. ‘You saying I don't know how to look after my son?'

‘Not at all. I —'

‘Then why not buy them all presents?'

‘I don't need anyone else to look after my boy.

When the kids leave,

I sit on the court,

and cup my face in my hands.

The next day

I get all the kids' addresses.

Over four hours,

on foot,

I visit each house

(well, mostly flats)

and tell every parent what I'm doing,

that it's on public property,

that it's not illegal

Most of them are single mums,

who seem confused at first,

wondering what's in it for me,

but are generally pretty stoked.

One of them

offers to help out as an assistant.

Used to play for Queensland,

When I get home,

Mum's cooking something delicious,

but I head straight to bed

and collapse onto it.

The next morning

‘I call it the Ulysses,' says Jimmy. ‘An adventurer. Feel like an

adventure?'

‘Chur bro!' I say in a Kiwi accent.

‘Red like fire, red like the devil,' says Jimmy.

Red polished to a high gleam.

Headlights perfect in design and shape.

I squat,

My bro Jimmy.

Dad loved this car.

Tears in my eyes,

I'm trying to quit smoking

but this is a special occasion —

I hold it like a dart,

Soon we're driving,

just towards the ocean somewhere.

We pass antique towns,

The Dodge doesn't have a proper system,

New Aussie shit –

It's not Jimmy's style but he smiles and lets it go,

seeing how I'm yelling the words.

We head towards Shellfish Bay.

It's a coastal town that swells

The southern beaches,

are the most pristine you've ever seen,

as if they've been forgotten by time and humanity.

‘How's Scarlett?' Jimmy asks tentatively. We don't often discuss my

women.

‘Good. I think.'

‘Getting serious?' asks Jimmy.

‘Nah, man. True playa for life.' I laugh.

‘Don't fuck it up, bro.'

Instead of getting annoyed,

We pass through rain,

bizarre rocky outcrops and green fields,

We stop to smoke at a place

where a white cross is wreathed with flowers.

A little girl and her dad died here in a car crash.

As we wind down the mountain,

we can smell the ocean for the first time,

the saltwater tang.

Jimmy says, ‘The beach. That's the true Australia.'

‘Fuck noath.'

As we approach Shellfish Bay,

we're practically bouncing in our seats.

Jimmy is driving with one hand

and he looks at the sky.

It's restless,

Mercury barks out the window.

We pass stores

that advertise bait and the catch of the day,

scallops and grenadier and gemfish

We cross the long bridge into town.

There are heaps of people on the streets,

shaved skulls, boardies and wife-beaters or shirtless,

lean and sun-dark, pockmarked and tatted,

some with sun-bleached curls,

heads ballooning and enlarged –

as we drive past and some of them yell

and we realise that we've passed no cars on our way here,

nor were we overtaken.

We are the only car going into town.

We see the first burned-out shop

when we get to the main street.

A middle-aged man

is leaning against the blackened doorframe,

There are burnt sneakers swinging from lampposts

Inside the obscene shattered maws of shopfronts,

graffiti drips with no rhyme or reason:

Cops, cops everywhere,

The riots.

We get fish and chips regardless.

‘Animals,' he says,

Kids wandering along in groups of five or ten,

with eyes flashing from beneath hoods.

There are still fishermen along the water,

lines feeding into the black tides.

I stop a kid.

‘What's all this about?'

The lad eyes me, then says, ‘Cops bashed a young Koori fulla. There's

video of it and everything.'

‘You seen it?'

‘Nah, but me cousin reckons he has. Boy died this morning.'

We drive further down the coast in silence.

Take a sandy track off the main road

and at last – the beach we're looking for.

It's long and windswept,

subtly curved for what seems like kilometres

The fish and chips are still warm and we eat,

Mercury Fire hurtles down the sand,

We walk down the beach

and soon come across a cluster of sheds

just over the sand dunes,

fishing shacks, at least eighty years old,

made from odd bits of rusted metal.

Latrines out the back

and the smell of trapped seaweed and bait.

‘Look like they're from another world,' I say.

The stink somehow comforting.

No way this type of place will last.

‘James. Jimmy,' I say, looking at him seriously.

‘Yeah?'

‘Trust me, bro, if he reaches out to you, don't meet up with that cunt.

Nothing good will come of it, bro.'

Jimmy looks pained, cornered, trapped. He won't meet my eyes and

doesn't speak. I persist.

‘Seriously. He's lied about everything else. What'll be different now?'

Jimmy clears his throat and finally looks at me. ‘Now, I'm a man.'