Here Come the Dogs (22 page)

3

Jimmy is at the wheel.

The red bonnet is reflecting the murderous sun, throwing up vertical spears of light. The fan is not working. He hasn't eaten since the curry four days ago and is unsure if he is awake or asleep. He feels faint as he listens to the voice on the other end. The voice – robotic, metallic – is unmistakably his father's.

‘Magic is faith, James. You don't trust me, I know that, but sometimes there is nothing to lose. And everything is contained in nothingness. You are on a road that is long and straight, no?'

Jimmy nods, even though he is alone in the car.

‘I want you to close your eyes and drive. You can open your eyes any time you want. Just trust. If you trust me and drive, and turn when I say, I will tell you everything you need; no, everything you
want
to know.'

Jimmy has the urge to hang up, to tell him to fuck off, but instead he listens and stares straight at the febrile sun, then closes his eyes to blot it out.

‘You're on a straight road. Now drive and listen. Listen.' Jimmy, eyes still closed, turns on the engine and begins to drive, with the phone on speaker. ‘James, all you need to know is contained in what I say. One. You
come from a line of kings. They were a people who lived on the richest land on earth. They had once been wealthy, but they became poor. These people were cast from gold. Their skin, their bones were gold, even their voices. They were each other's gods, each to each. It was a land of mirrors they lived in, everything they saw was gold. But their land, which was once abundant, was now a land of drought – desert, where there should have been water, famine, where there should have been fruit. So the golden people, they began to walk. They walked over the deserts, treetops, over oceans. Turn left now.'

Jimmy does as the voice says. He's parched, and when he speaks, it sounds like he has a mouth full of dead bees. ‘The golden people. What were they called?'

The voice doesn't answer, and all Jimmy can hear is the engine and the wind before the voice speaks again. ‘The thing is, James, the golden people kept walking and along the way the elements tugged at them, their skin, their golden muscles, their bones. And they resisted. For a time. But they were hungry, and knew a thirst you and I hope never to feel. They began to sell pieces of themselves, bit by bit. First it was an eye, then an ear, then a tongue, a heart. Soon it was a free for all. Within no time, all that was left were golden voices on the wind. Turn right.'

Jimmy follows orders, sharply. There is silence and he drives onwards and onwards. The sweat drips down his nose and onto his lips. He hits something, hard, but doesn't open his eyes. Instead, he keeps the wheel steady. The voice speaks again.

‘The second thing you must know is the most important: the truth is not real. Sometimes all we have are questions and no answers. So we make up the answers.'

‘Stop talking to me in riddles. If you are who you say you are, then why can't we meet in person, face to face?'

‘Because I had an accident.'

‘What kind?'

The voice coughs. ‘I was burned.'

‘How?'

There is a long pause and Jimmy waits patiently before the voice finally speaks again. 'I was living in an abandoned car, somewhere on the coast, could've been Port Macquarie, or maybe further north. It doesn't matter. It was an old Holden, cleaned out by rust and scavengers looking for parts. Two side windows were shattered but somehow the driver's side windows were intact, as were the seats and roof. During the day, I would walk along the beach. I would get high up on the cliffs and look for changes in the horizon. I saw schools of dolphins. One day I even saw a whale, although it could have been a submarine. Mostly, I just watched the restless sea. I soon began to notice the smallest variations in its moods. It's the same with music, isn't it? To a trained ear, the wrong snare on a beat becomes as obvious as the carcass of a dead elephant on a suburban street.'

‘What did you eat?'

‘I caught fish and prized shellfish off the rocks. I ate them raw with seawater. At night, I huddled in a blanket and listened to the thin fingers of rain drumming away on the roof. The rain would wiggle down the window in patterns, throwing shadows, like moving scripture, onto my lap. I swear I could read messages in them.'

‘Like what?'

‘Turn right.' Jimmy does as he is ordered. The voice continues, as if it hasn't heard the question. ‘On the dashboard, someone had pinned the photo of a young boy. He was skinny and wearing a Mickey Mouse jumper, staring straight at the camera. The boy seemed so full of longing my heart felt fit to burst. He looked like you, James. Since I had no photos of you, I began to imagine he was. I would tell him jokes, teach him recipes, tell him about my travels, my childhood. I apologised to him, James, I apologised for not being there. I told him I was ashamed.'

Jimmy can feel a bodily presence next to him in the car now. He can smell the sweat and breath of a man. The car is excruciatingly hot and he resists the urge to open his eyes or reach out to touch the man in the passenger seat, whose voice is now only half a metre from his ear. Instead, he drops the phone and takes his foot off the accelerator. The voice keeps talking, alive, present, close.

‘One night, when I was sleeping, I heard voices. I smelled petrol, I saw flames. There were men dancing around the car, laughing, shouting. I nearly died, James. They left me for dead. I don't know how I got out of the car, but I did. I have burns on most of my body. I look like a fruit that has been peeled and left to harden. That kind of pain is . . . unbearable. My eyes don't work, my legs. I am so ugly that I am glad I have no eyes to see. Nowadays, I just lie in bed and dream of rain. Not a light sprinkle, but something heavy and sweet and soulful, silver droplets, fat as coins or bullets. I raise my face and imagine the rain hitting me side on, from above, from below, turning this skin into thick mud that flowers can grow from. But it is a long, long time since any of us have seen rain, isn't it?'

Jimmy can feel the car slowly coming to a halt.

‘So. That is the
how
. But you surprise me. You didn't ask the most important question.'

‘Which is?'

‘
Why
?'

Jimmy clears his throat. ‘Why?'

The voice doesn't reply. Jimmy lets the car stop. When he opens his eyes, he is facing the lake. He is alone in the car. The bonnet is steaming, as if it just passed through fresh rain.

He wakes up in hospital, a drip connected to his arm.

‘You're badly dehydrated, mate. You should stay overnight,' says a nurse.

‘Nah, nah, I can't.'

‘You have to.'

‘I gotta feed my dog.'

‘Can you get someone else to do it?'

‘Nah. I have to. I have to. Please.'

She smiles softly. ‘I understand, mate. I can't live without my dog for more than a couple of hours.' She pats him on the hand. ‘You're a nice bloke.'

At the bus interchange, Jimmy comes across a crime scene. The cops are pulling a tarp over a bloke and a woman is crying. A hand is stuck out from underneath the tarp and the cops are shooing people away. One of the younger cops looks scared. Jimmy watches from across the street. He's never seen a dead person before, besides Ulysses Amosa, waxen and well dressed at the funeral. The arm that sticks out, resting palm up on the concrete, has a tattoo of a swallow on the wrist.

The evening goes from pink to purple to black as he walks home, the night full of shapes and shadows. Jimmy can smell tinder and see the moon through the powerlines, blind and lost. He stumbles forward, as if drunk. When he gets home, he'll sleep for ages. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he'll go shopping. Stock the fridge.

In the light of a streetlamp, objects begin to appear: a car, a shopping trolley, a sofa, a jumble of sticks and leaves. He moves forward, as if through a fog, although he's walked this street so many times before, too many. The Town is a maze, with a beast at its heart, like that ancient Greek story Ulysses Amosa used to read to the boys. Or maybe the Town is a thousand-roomed madhouse, built by a psycho, and somehow he's meant to find his way out.

A final shape appears in front of him, magically, in the gutter. He runs to it.

He's crouched in the gutter at first, patting the fine fur. He traces his right hand over the hound's muscled legs, touches his paws, rubs his thumb on its nose – dry already. His hand rests on Mercury Fire's belly, which is still vaguely warm, though it could be the sweat from his palm. He shifts his weight and his knees crack like buckshot. He cradles Mercury Fire in his lap then holds him to his chest. The body is almost completely stiff. Lights come threading through the darkness. He's aware of car horns, and maybe even a person talking to him, but he doesn't reply. At a certain point, he lies next to the dog, still holding him. Eventually he stands and carries him to his house. The door is open.

He gently places Mercury Fire on the couch and begins to brush him. He sniffs his fur, which is mostly odourless, but now has a tinge of dust. He tries to feed him some water, but it dribbles onto the couch,
a spreading stain. He sends signals with his brain, messages of love, but there is no reply now.

He talks to him the whole night.

At dawn, he showers, dresses as if for church, and then takes the hound in a blanket down to the river. He has a shovel. He covers him with dirt, beneath a willow tree. In the morning light he sees a crow land nearby. He shoos the crows away, again and again. Jimmy cries for a long time.

4

Jimmy is awake, the mattress beneath him warm with sweat, the dark room compressed. He is eleven. Pinstripes of light on his upturned face from the closed venetian blinds. His lips tremble. He cannot breathe; he almost moans at the heat. Jimmy rises and looks through a chink in the blinds. An owl sits on the branch of a plum tree.
Hello, owl,
he says in his mind.
Hello, little owl, my friend.

The owl swoops away in a bellying trajectory, surreal.

Jimmy eases the door open and goes into the kitchen, walking on tiptoe. Scale disappears in the darkness but he knows his way instinctively. He feels around inside a cupboard. He touches a screwdriver, a hammer and a light bulb before his hand lands on what he's looking for.

He goes down the stairs, past the potted flowers on the landing – freesias, geraniums, irises, all colourless in the moonlight – past the second floor that has no pot plants just pools of water, past the first floor (leaving wet footprints now) with its jam jar full of ciggie butts, then onto ground level, the concrete cool on his bare soles. He almost considers throwing some rocks at Aleks' window but is afraid of his father. He army-crawls under the stairs and through a space that leads into the carpark underneath the flats. There is a 4WD and a busted Datsun, covered in spiderwebs and drawings in its
dusty windows. He goes deeper into the carpark, feeling his way along the brick wall when it gets too dark to see, until he is in the corner. He squats on his haunches.

When the first match lights, it flares in front of his face, lighting it up like an animated mask, the contours of cheek and chin, eyes glistening like a Kathakali dancer, until it burns to his fingertips and submits him back to blackness.

The second match he examines, turning it, watching how the feminine flame drips upwards, ancient gold, so steadfastly committing to wood and oxygen. He looks at it from beneath and from above before it dies. ‘Hello, flame. Hello, little flame, my friend.'

He lights ten more matches before he thinks he needs something to set aflame. Gathering dry leaves into a mound, he grins at how quickly they burst into flame, sending smoke into his face. As the flames grow, an emptiness fills momentarily. A question is answered. He stares and stares and the fire pushes outwards in a circle like the iris of a glowing eye.

Jimmy strikes match after match and flicks them onto the dry leaves. Each match his own private explosion, his own handheld Hiroshima, a mini sun, consigning the leaves to the nothingness of things forgotten. Here in these new flames, the most ancient, an atavistic energy that absolves him of all sin, all recent memory, all he feels and is, all he knows and is never to know. Jimmy sees himself within them, trying his best to mirror the flames' forgetfulness and, for a moment, succeeding. As the flames lower to a lambent murmur, he wonders how it might burn with petrol on it.

He looks up, feeling the sensation that someone is watching him. Anger spikes within him that he has been robbed of this moment. It morphs to fear, realising that nobody is there. He stamps out the fire and goes upstairs. Everybody is still asleep. He tucks himself into bed and drifts into slumber, fingers still humming from where the matches burned them.

5

‘Move with me to Perth, Solomon.'

‘And live with all those sandgropers?' I try to smile.

‘I'm being serious. Make up your mind.'

I don't answer.

I just stare at a cat-shaped

‘Kush and Corinthians' by Kendrick Lamar coming from the speakers.

‘You want it to be easy, don't you?' she says at last.

‘I don't know what I want.'

‘You do. You want it uncomplicated. But it doesn't come like that – it

only comes rough and broken and weird.'

I'm lying on my side now,

We're face to face. ‘This place is all I know, Scarlett.'

She is almost pleading. ‘You said it yourself. The Town is changing.

There are Toby's in Perth; there are basketball courts in Perth.'

‘But if I don't come to terms with this, I won't come to terms with anything, with the whole lot. Just give me some time, Scarlett. Stay.' I muster the courage then add, ‘I checked out a space today. I'm thinking of renting it. Maybe turn Amosa's All-Stars into a drop-in centre for kids.'

She doesn't reply,

I can hear a lawnmower passing outside.

This was not the Australia

She had dreamed of an endless road,

She had dreamed of the red heart,

The Town,

is small and mediocre.

But it's mine

and fuck it,

sometimes you don't have to move outwards,

you can burrow down and plant roots.

She nods again as if she's read my mind,

then kisses me,

on the corner of my mouth,

and when she draws away,

there's a faint smile on her lips.

Now I understand.

To her I'm fading –

a memory, a ghost already.