Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

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.

‘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

water stain on Scarlett’s ceiling.

‘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,

fingers in her messy hair.

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,

just nods,

the look

on her face

unreadable.

I can hear a lawnmower passing outside.

This was not the Australia

Scarlett had wanted to escape to.

She had dreamed of an endless road,

a ribbon through rainforest and desert.

She had dreamed of the red heart,

coral reefs and perfect beaches.

The Town,

to her,

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,

so gently,

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.

‘Happy New Year, ya mad cunt.’

‘You too, bro.’ Aleks and Solomon clink glasses and drink down to the ice.

‘And welcome home,’ says Solomon in a lower voice.

From Aleks’ balcony, they have a panoramic view of the whole Town. Rosettes of blue, white and orange pop and sizzle in the blackness, revealing a strange and blanched suburban geometry. Inside, behind a glass sliding door, a party is in full swing, the sound of laughter, cutlery, glasses and music. Frank Ocean’s ‘Pyramids’ is playing. They watch Jimmy swig straight from a Jim Beam bottle, wipe his lips and then drink again.

‘Remember that storm we saw from here?’ says Aleks.

Solomon nods. A year ago the storm had rolled in, its body like an enormous shark rolling and thrashing across the sky, summoning other phantom monsters from the depths, revenant creatures playing between forks of pure light. As soon as the lightning grounded on the far hills, they saw thick columns of blue-grey smoke rising from the bushland.

‘Solomona. Why didn’t you come visit?’

‘Man. I didn’t have the time. ’

‘Tell me the truth.’ Aleks’ eyes steady.

Solomon looks into his glass as if more liquor will magically appear. He speaks tentatively. ‘I was scared, Atse. All that shit you were going through was like. poison. I didn’t want it to touch me. I’m sorry, uce .’

Solomon puts his hand on Aleks’ shoulder. Aleks looks down and shakes his head. More fireworks explode, a long chain scribbling love heart shapes in the air. Aleks puts a hand in the air in front of him, palm outwards, as if pushing open a door. ‘Nah. You did the right thing. Everyone wants to change.’

‘I just needed a break from it all. Needed time to think, to handle shit on my own,’ says Solomon. Aleks looks back inside. Jana Janeski has arrived. She is dressed in a cream blouse and her hair is drawn back tightly. She seems poised and confident. Aleks finds it hard to reconcile his memories of her as a child with this woman. His stomach lurches and he is surprised to feel that even talking to her will require great courage. Solomon doesn’t notice and keeps speaking. ‘It wasn’t easy to do, cos we been through so much shit together. You can’t just leave all that behind. History, bloody history.’

Aleks turns back to Solomon and clears his throat before speaking again. ‘You know, there’s a rock that looks like a runway, just below the Church of St Clement. You can see most of Lake Ohrid from there, brother, the most beautiful lake in Europe, the pearl of the Balkans. That church is where St Clement taught his disciples the Cyrillic script for the first time. Stand there on the rock and you can see all the way to Albania, wood smoke over the villages, mountains, fluro crosses, clouds like. purple angels. There’s three hundred and sixty-five churches around the lake, one for every day of the year, and crosses so you don’t ever forget God, understand? Look down from the rock and you can see right to the bottom. A million coloured rocks and light, so much light.