Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

Pinned biro sketches and photographs, built up over a few years. She peels a sketch back and it reveals two old Polaroid photographs, which she unpins. They’re both of a young Maori man with dreadlocks. In the first, he is standing shirtless out the front of the Early Bird bakery in Ponsonby, holding a potato-topped pie and grinning. His eyes are feminine and long-lashed. It’s the height of a temperamental Auckland summer, and around him pollen is drifting like gold dust. In the second, she’s holding him by the waist on the black sands of Piha Beach. Behind them is Lion Rock and two brave souls slicing through the surf. It has rained and the black sand is mottled as a jaguar’s back. She carefully puts the photos into a drawer, then shakes Solomon.

‘Hm?’

‘Solomon.’

‘Yeh?’

‘Wake up. Let’s go on an adventure.’

‘A what?’

‘Come on.’

He showers and dresses, smiling at her spontaneity. Scarlett packs a thermos of coffee and two sandwiches. On the highway they pass an industrial suburb where local crews have run rampant on the freshly primed concrete. Solomon names the Ironlak colours as they pass them — Smurf, Guacamole, Pose Sushi, Sofles Violence. Daily Meds are playing on the stereo. The industrial wasteland soon gives way to scrub and then there are hills, spotted with granite tors, immense boulders and outcrops that bubbled up like a molten gift from the earth. They turn off the highway down a set of smooth valleys, where black cows escape the heat under gum trees and a single white colonial cottage stands far off. Their phones lose reception.

They park at the end of a short gravel road off the main stretch, next to a sign that warns not to light fires. Scarlett slings her bag over her shoulder and stares at the trees, tapping on a front tooth with a red fingernail. Far off is the snarl of a dirt bike, but somewhere nearer they can hear a steady roar. They go down a trail through the bush and on either side are granite boulders, nobbled eucalypts and black she-oaks that wimple in the breeze. They emerge into a clearing and beside them is a waterfall, fifty metres high, each droplet visible and singular as a crystal on a chandelier, connected into a chain of water that lands on rock below before flowing off to pool in calmer hollows.

Directly opposite them are sheer cliffs, segmented into squares and rectangles by rents in the rock, streaked with bird shit and waterstain. Almost impossibly, out of the rock, shrubs and flowers grow, interspersed by dead eucalypts, their branches blackened and sharp, pointing upwards like minarets. These were burnt during the bushfires ten years ago, and all in between is new growth. Another ten years uninterrupted, they would be crowded from sight. Despite the numberless tones and transformations of colour, there is a unity to the landscape. And above everything, a fierce, blue sky.

Other people are there already — two women in hijabs, smiling as they take selfies, two bikies in sleeveless leather jackets leaning against a fence, and a redheaded man setting up a time-lapse camera on a tripod. Nobody speaks. Solomon motions for Scarlett to leave and she stares at him.

‘We just got here.’

‘Relax. Come ’ere. Supposed to be an adventure, isn’t it? My second in a week, actually.’ He smiles mischievously.

She follows him back down the track. He jumps a fence. She looks at the no trespassing sign for a second then shrugs. They walk through the bush, watching for snakes, taking their time. Scarlett rubs her hands over the subtle bodies of eucalypts as she passes and breathes the aromatic air. When they arrive at water, they follow it and are soon at the lip of the waterfall. They can see the couples below them, and the valley where the creek runs. Solomon stands dangerously close to the edge of the waterfall, arms outstretched. He looks like he is going to dive off but instead he sits. She joins him.

The summer heat has dried the moss on the rocks into white rosettes. A bearded lizard dances past them and over the edge of the rock into space. Solomon pours two cups of coffee from the thermos and sets them down. He takes Scarlett’s left hand and places it in a groove in the rock. ‘Feel that?’ he says.

She nods, feeling the smoothness of it, the depth. ‘What is it?’

‘An axe-grinding groove. This is where the blackfellas came to teach their boys customs and to make axes out of stone. Grind the stone, wash it in the water as you worked, bind it, fix it with gum. They liked to use diorite. It’s a type of green stone.’ Scarlett looks at him sideways, surprised, but says nothing and continues to rub the groove with her thumb. ‘And see down there? Those caves? That’s where bogong moths hang. Millions of em. Someone once told me when they leave the caves and fill the sky, it goes black, that’s how many there are. And hundreds of blackfellas would come up every year and feast on em. Imagine that. This country, right here, this feeling — must’ve been what it was like everywhere. So much beauty, so much loss. The land has a soul. You can feel it, right? A memory. I guess like all of us it wants to forget, but it can’t.’ He looks shy and splashes his hand in the water. ‘I dunno. What the fuck do I know?’

She places her hand on his and points with the other. ‘Are there cave paintings down there?’

‘Nah. Well, there might be. Doubt it. Not many in this part of the country.’

‘Too bad. Still, it’s cool you guys learn about this stuff at school. My ex told me that Aussies barely teach any Aboriginal history.’

‘They don’t.’

‘Where’d you learn then?’

Solomon doesn’t speak. It is as if he hadn’t heard. The waterfall roars and cockatoos screech high up in the leaves. Then he says, ‘Jimmy’s dad. He taught me.’

‘Jimmy’s dad?’

‘Yeh. After my old man died, Jimmy’s dad appeared. He just kept hanging around. He’d visit Mum when we were at school and mostly she’d tell him to fuck off; but sometimes she’d give in and he’d stay for a cuppa and have a yarn. There was something she couldn’t resist, even after all the shit he put her through.’

‘He beat her?’

Solomon shakes his head vigorously. ‘Nah, nah. I don’t think so. There might have been the threat of that, but I don’t reckon it ever happened. More like a constant torment, she said. Jealousy. Saying she’d lived the life of a whore before him. He used to take her credit card and buy and buy and buy. A closest full of unworn clothes. A hoarder. Mum told me once that he grew up real poor, so she kinda forgave him for all of it, you know? Until my dad came along and said enough was enough.’

‘Your dad knew him?’

‘Hell, yeah. They were best mates. When Dad first got here from Samoa, they worked in the same kitchen. He even gave Jimmy’s dad the nickname The Prince, because he said he was descended from royalty. At first it was affectionate, then it became a bit of a gibe. Then Dad started to notice how his stories weren’t consistent, how manipulative he was, how he treated Mum. The cunt wasn’t even by her side when Jimmy was born. So Dad began to console her, like, just as friends. The rest is history.’ He smiles, looking away.

‘But when did he tell you about the waterfalls?’

‘So one day, after Dad died, The Prince comes around and he’s real excited. He tells us there are these waterfalls just out of town, only a forty-minute drive. He said he’d take us there. We’d never heard of any waterfall near the Town, thought it was another bullshit story of his; but for some reason Mum says we should go with him, so that was it. When we got here, he could name every plant, every bird. He told us as an Aboriginal man it was important to know the language of your forefathers, even if everyone said it was dead. Flowers — gambarra. Ironbark — thirriwirri. Stone — gurrubang. He showed us these axe-grinding grooves.’