Here Come the Dogs (3 page)

The plane is low now, about to land.

In a glance I observe an extraordinary scene

in Munro Park.

A man is kneeling on the kick-off line with

his arms behind him.

Another man is standing close, one arm outstretched,

and a sudden flash leaps from his hand.

The kneeling man jumps backwards

and lies with his arms outflung as if crucified.

It takes a second to see this.

I try to scream to Georgie

but I make no sound

and I see that I am tied to the seat

and can't move so I bang

my fists on the tray table.

The gin and juice bounces in one motion

all over my lap and the smell of it becomes intense,

more like diesel than liquor.

My hands are shaking

and I stare at them for a long time.

When I look up

I'm standing outside the airport.

There's nobody else

and it's cold.

Eventually a cab pulls up.

The Pakistani driver opens the door.

He smiles

and I see that his mouth is full of gold teeth,

his scabs gone.

The drive isn't long into town

and when we approach Munro Park,

I tap him on the shoulder.

I walk to the centre of the rugby field.

There is no body, no blood.

Just a briefcase lying on the cold soil.

I open it

and see that it's full of colourful birds of song –

nightingales, swallows, babblers.

They are all dead.

2

The morning is waiting to be created.

Coffee on stove; toast, eggs, pickles.

A shot of
rakia
to take the edge off the hangover.

Shot, shudder, smack of the lips.

Aleks' grandfather Mitko sent a bottle last week straight from the village, made from cherries, strong enough to clean wounds with. Aleks smiles.
Dedo
Mitko has had a shot every morning of his life, before heading to the fields to plough and plant. ‘Get the blood going before you face the day, Aleksandar – a shot of
rakia
is a good friend, but someone to be treated with respect!'

He thinks of his grandfather, so frail now, next to the window in a sweat-heavy room, his big, calcified hands the only testament to a life's labour. Ten years in a German factory, the rest in the fields the family had ploughed for centuries. He would be watching the tomcats stalking through the weeds of the garden and the cars passing intermittently on the way to Ohrid; his eyes shining with frustration. Poor old
dedo,
waiting all day for news from town, from Australia, from anywhere really, and exclaiming ‘Mashallah!' if the news is good. Aleks would have to make up some good news and give the old man a call.

He puts J Dilla on the stereo at a low volume.

His hands are huge and hairless, the knuckles scabbed up; they move efficiently, with resolve. He scrubs the stove, then the pan. Streaks of egg and pickled green tomatoes. Then he packs a lunchbox – an apple, a packet of chips, a ham sandwich and an orange juice popper. He sets it on the counter and calls out in Macedonian:

‘Hurry up, sweetheart. Gotta get ta work.'

‘Yes, Dad.'

He moves swiftly, blue bead swinging, and soon the cupboards and marble kitchen top are shining. He proudly observes his kitchen (which he built with his own hands), lights a cigarette and opens the blinds. Aleks can see the whole Town from here, mostly low-lying houses in orange brick or white stucco, with flatblocks in between like dice tumbled randomly from an unseen hand. Everywhere is construction, trucks and scaffolding, and cranes like predatory birds and, winding throughout, the shining body of the river.

The sun whets itself on distant hills and comes in low and mean.

Aleks' own street curves down a hill in a new part of Town, covered in a scribble of burnt rubber. Several houses down, standing out against the monotony of suburbia, is a phone box with tags all over it, various shades of dripping red and black, Poscas and Molotow flowies. An endless cycle of scrawling and buffing, buffing and re-scrawling – the signatures of generations. He imagines a magic machine stretching out every layer in 2D planes like an accordion.

Down the bottom of the street, a boy is throwing a pair of sneakers over a phone line, sending a gaggle of sulphur-crested cockatoos squawking. A cluster of shoes already there, like grapes on a vine. Aleks smiles, turns and takes a gym bag from the top cupboard, well out of reach of little hands.

‘Come on, Mila!' he yells.

‘Coming!'

He reaches for a pair of old boots, caked in clay and spattered with paint, and thinks for a second of all the brand-new sneakers in Solomon's room. As he slips his boots on, he looks through the bedroom door at
his wife Sonya, still asleep, her blonde hair halfway across her face. He tiptoes in, bends down to clear her face of hair, then kisses her forehead. She doesn't wake.

As he ties his laces in the doorway, his daughter appears at his shoulder with a mischievous grin. He wipes a smudge of Vegemite off her cheek then pinches it. She squeals when he tickles her and then bounds out the door ahead of him. ‘Hurry up, Dad.'

‘You should eat
ajvar,
not that Vegemite crap,' he says half-heartedly.

He throws the gym bag into the back of his white Hilux with the cans of paint and rollers. It's suffocatingly hot inside the vehicle and the belt buckle burns his hand when he touches it. ‘
Pitchka ti mater
!' he swears, then immediately looks around to make sure Mila hasn't heard him. He picks up a stack of CDs, stops to look at the Souls of Mischief one but instead throws on a Tose Proeski album that his cousin Nicko burned for him. These are the rules he has made – Macedonian at home and in the car. Australia, the outside, takes care of teaching her English. He stops at a petrol station to fill up and chats about the World Cup with the owner, an enormous, shaved head Samoan man with big teeth. Aleks has always loved how Islanders can convey so much with a simple arch of the eyebrows. He speaks to the man in a soft, ingratiating voice and claps him tenderly on the shoulder. The man once tried to converse with Solomon in Samoan. Solomon looked like a child and couldn't answer the simplest questions; how impotent and ashamed he had seemed. Aleks heads back to the car, chewing a Mars Bar.

‘
Tat
?'

‘
Da
?'

‘Mum's birthday's coming up.'

‘I know, baby.'

‘Can we go on a holiday? Pleeease?'

He turns his head and sees that her eyes are on him, an unnerving, mirror-like blue. She reminds him of his sister Jana. Aleks passes a hand through his sandy hair, winds down the window and drums his fingers on the side of the door. She's right – the family needs a holiday. Soon. Somewhere tropical with long beaches and rosewater sunsets where Sonya can have some time to get better. Or maybe even back to Macedonia to
see the family. He knows it's unrealistic, unless he can find a way to earn a lot of cash, quickly.

‘Maybe we could go to Madagascar,' says Mila.

‘What's in Madagascar?'

‘Lemurs. Chameleons.' She says the words in English with a broad Aussie accent. Aleks smiles.

‘You know, you look like a little lemur. Where's ya tail?'

‘Daaaaad!'

‘All right, all right, relax. I'll see what I can do. Maybe we can build a raft outta coconuts to get there.'

‘Would that even work?'

‘Well, you won't know until you try.' He winks.

‘You're the best, Dad.'

‘Hey, you know the rules. Macedonian only in the car.'

‘
Da
,
da
.'

A police car drives by and Aleks turns his cheek, his whole body tightening. He's driving on a suspended licence. Shouldn't have had that shot in the morning; in fact, he might still be a bit pissed from the night before. He has to be more careful, for his family's sake.

‘What's wrong, Dad?' Mila is cocking her head. Nothing escapes this one.

‘Nothing sweetheart. What are you studying at school today?' He ruffles her hair.

As she speaks about assignments and the upcoming swimming competition, he passes the courthouse. He sees two people he knows smoking outside, looking uncomfortable in suits. They wave at him as he passes. He gives them the thumbs up.

When he pulls up at the primary school, Mila is already unbuckling her seatbelt. ‘Don't forget your lunch.' She kisses him on the cheek and clambers out of the Hilux. He leans across the seat and yells, ‘
Te sakam, Mila
!' She looks back once with those neon-blue eyes and yells back, ‘I love you too, Dad!' in English. Then she turns and becomes another eight-year-old streaming into the schoolyard. Aleks exhales and opens the glove box. He sifts among the papers and takes out a crumpled packet of
durries. There is one left, which he lights.
Ahhh.
He reaches into his shirt and rolls the bead between his fingers, lets the strap fall over his thumb, middle and index. A thrill goes through him.

‘Goodness me. Fucken lovely,' he says.

He starts up the engine and drives off. As he drives, he passes an abandoned building that was supposed to be demolished years ago. A yellow crane crouches next to it. He looks up and sees something he painted at the top of the building almost fifteen years ago. Tall, dripping, black letters: ‘Greece is Macedonia,' and a yellow Vergina Sun next to it. Amazing that it's still there.

He and Solomon had scaled the heights of the building and twice they nearly fell to certain death. The building had been a general store in the early 1900s and was falling apart. It was two-storeys high and the wooden beams they climbed were rotten, the iron railings rusted. Neither would admit their terror, so they had egged each other on. They had to crawl on their bellies over the corrugated iron, staining their shirts yellow and red, to get a good position to spray-paint the slogan on the streetside wall, starlit.

Solomon had asked what the slogan meant. Aleks tried to explain it the way his father had explained it to him: that Macedonia had been at the centre of a tug-of-war since time immemorial, that heaps of people claimed it didn't even exist. However, he had found it difficult to explain and had become tongue-tied.

Solomon had shrugged and said, ‘Sounds good to me,' then started plotting how to rack some tins of paint. They were twelve at the time. Aleks wishes he could explain it to his mate now, properly, but Solomon always seemed so uneasy discussing nationality.

Back then, Jimmy had been too scared to climb, so he stood below and kept watch for cops. Solomon had ridiculed him mercilessly, even though they needed a lookout. Jimmy turned away, and afterward they didn't see him for two whole days.

No one knew where he'd gone.

Aleks considers Jimmy and Solomon's relationship to be one predicated on a struggle for power and Jimmy had been born into a losing war. It was bad blood, Aleks was sure of it.

He passes a small block of flats that sits next to the river.

He keeps driving at a leisurely pace. Dead grass, eucalypts, low river, even the empty driveways: all seems bare and hungry from drought. Some gardens have been planted with the drought in mind, and bloom with tough plants like wisteria, sage and bush sarsaparilla, their lilacs and purples slurring in the heat haze. A Christmas beetle drops onto his bonnet.

Aleks is closer to the heart of Town now. On the main street he passes several redbrick pubs from the early 1900s, a small war memorial shaped like an obelisk, a dry fountain and a bronze statue of a bearded man carrying a book. There is a TAB, several kebab shops, charcoal chicken joints and pide houses, and on every block is the scaffolding of construction. He stops the car at a traffic light and an African girl in a hijab crosses the street. They catch eyes. Aleks nods at her but she looks down and keeps walking, books close to her chest.

Unlike many in his family, Aleks has always liked Muslims. He even has a grudging respect for Albanians.
They may all be criminals, but at least the proceeds of their crime go back to their country, back to the cause.
He thinks with shame of some of the Macos here, who are Macedonian by name only, so eager to become like the Aussies, the
kengurs
(based on the word ‘kangaroo'). Like Julian, the local car dealer. Aleks can't stand people like him: Macos who won't speak their own language, who know no music or folklore, who never go back, who keep stacking money higher and higher as if it would make a staircase to God.
If every Maco in Australia went back to the homeland with even $20,000, it would save the failing economy,
he thinks.

Aleks pulls up at a nearly completed block of new apartments next to a barren soccer oval. He gets his gear out and climbs the stairs, nodding at the foreman on the way up. A day of hard work ahead, but he looks forward to it. His work ethic is what ensures his and his family's survival.

His partner is already there; a young skater in his late teens, who Aleks knows had some problems with heroin but is now on methadone. He works for half the price but twice as hard. Aleks lets him play his own
music on a paint-splattered radio, because it helps him keep up with the latest shit. Today, it is mostly a jumble of Odd Future's lo-fi, off-kilter horrorcore and Yelawolf's mercurial drawl.

‘Seventy-five per cent of painting a room is prep – always remember that,' says Aleks. The boy nods.

They lay plastic sheeting on the floor, check the wall for discrepancies with a light and sand away the few they see. They put down the base coat with a paintgun. Then they begin painting the trim of a bedroom. Aleks is careful but moves with ease and is soon finished. He stands back, admiring his work with pride. Flawless.

His phone lights up with a message. Number unknown.

Well well look at the big boy comin in2 the playground. how dare u come here and steal all my friends?

Aleks smiles. It could only be one of two people. He pauses, then types back with two thumbs.

I dont giv a fuk whoz playground it iz. Ne time I wanna drink from the bubbla, Ill do it and theres fuk all u can do bout it.

Send.

Then he starts to paint the dry walls with a roller, keeping a wet edge to avoid lap marks. Where these apartments now stand there was once a big block of land where an old Croatian couple lived and tended to their flourishing vegetable garden. All summer there would be a grapevine covering the whole fence, free for all who passed. The boys would gorge themselves and do chin-ups on the old plum tree that hung over the fence. All of that was gone now.

His phone lights up again, this time with the message,
we'll see bout that cunt.
He texts back immediately –
lets talk pursonaly. meet me tmorro at the old cemetery. i got a proposal for ya.
He clicks send then switches the phone off. He'll deal with all of that later – there's work to be done.

At lunchtime, he makes an excuse to his co-worker and drives a few blocks to meet Solomon. There are barely any people on the street, and those few cast no shadows. A red-brick pub stands on the corner and Solomon is lounging outside, in the middle of telling a story to two Tongan blokes.
Aren't Samoans and Tongans supposed to hate each
other?
Solomon is wearing a singlet and honey-tinted sunnies and is gesticulating as precisely as an orator, his face serious. The two men are rapt, eyebrows knitted. Suddenly Solomon says something with a final jab of the index finger and the two men begin laughing hysterically. He leans back in his chair, smiling, rubbing papaya ointment into his lips and then his elbows.