Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

‘And everyone is loud and hysterical. All your mates egging you on and you’re shouting back I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it! But fuck me dead, you’re scared as shit. You take a run up along the rock, sprint hard and jump out as far as you can — there’s only a bit of leeway cos there’s two rocks just under the water on either side. If you misjudge, you’ll crack your leg or your head. My mate Vladko saved a man’s life down there. The bloke knocked himself out on a rock — Vladko had to swim down till he nearly drowned himself and carry the bugger to the surface. You’ve got all that in your head and the noise and the beauty and then you jump. You fall for three seconds, joy and fear and oxygen and your heart going da doom .’ Aleks pounds his fist on his chest. ‘Then you hit the water, it slaps you right on your rib meat, and it’s cold, all bubbles, cold, the weight of water right on you, your heart about to burst. And you’ve never felt so good in your fucken life, swear to God, brother.

‘We’ve all been falling. And who knows where the fuck we’ll land.’ He drinks. ‘When I first got inside, I thought it was a test. Not just for me, to see if I could get through it, but to you, as a mate. And I lay awake every time you didn’t visit, thinking that you’d failed the test.’ Solomon goes to protest, but Aleks holds up a hand. ‘But maybe it was what we needed, brother. Both. All.’

The last of the fireworks fade, revealing the Town’s pulsing catch of lights, driven by more than electricity, by some raw and essential turbine, a galaxy within each window. Even from this far away they can see the smoke drift and hear faint cheers.

* * *

As soon as they go back into the room, the music hits them.

‘Bloody boiling in here!’ says Aleks, and busies himself hauling another fan into the room.

The evening is edging towards the countdown. Aleks’ Pakistani neighbour, Amjad, is nibbling a chicken wing, admiring an icon of St Clement that Petar Janeski has finished. Sonya and Biljana bring in more and more food, every surface covered by pizzas, smoked fish, pickles, chicken. Aleks has never felt so blessed, so lucky. Jana is picking at a salad and Aleks walks up to her, but he doesn’t know what to say. All he can muster is, ‘You look beautiful.’ With tears in his eyes, he hugs her and feels her stiffen. When he pulls away, her eyes are bright but her mouth is still set and severe. It is then he realises that certain things loom larger than forgiveness and reconciliation: memory, for one, and history, bloody history.

He is about to say so, when all of the room comes alive with cheering and the clinking of glasses. ‘To Aleks!’ they yell. Solomon is sitting on the lounge, eyes shining, laughing with Scarlett on his knee. ‘Aleks! Come here, come here, bro,’ he slurs. Aleks pinballs between people, accepting kisses and hugs and punches on the shoulder. There is a pop rap song on, the bass bleeding. He sits down next to Solomon and Scarlett. Sonya sets food in front of him. He tears a piece of skin from the chicken breast and chews it slowly, the grease shining on his lips. His daughter jumps on his lap and kisses him. She smells like berry cordial and she, too, has grease on her lips. ‘Hey, sweetheart.’ She smiles, staring, searching his face like a puzzle. He cannot bear her eyes. He looks away and sees Jimmy, alone in the corner, watching him. Jimmy nods slightly, his eyes full of some kind of longing.

The hip hop beat changes and there is silence. Then, as if by magic or design, a gajda, the Macedonian bagpipe, wails an ancient note. A moment later, a heavy bass drum kicks in. The song is a traditional oro , somehow mournful and jubilant at the same time. The partygoers are in a trance. Aleks rises to his feet; all eyes are on him. He slowly shuffles side to side, raises his arms and begins to dance. His feet are clumsy at first but the music is moving like clouds beneath him, buffeting, carrying him. The note was birthed far, far away, in a resonant goatskin. The note expands and in it are mountains and crosses and boats full of countrymen, navigating their souls to places unknown. It holds the bones of soldiers and sailors, Ancient, heaped on the floor of Lake Ohrid and the Aegean. It contains their strange, small town, the bushland surrounding it, each and every one of them. His eyes close.

As he dances, he thinks of lost dogs, who snarl and pant in alleyways; those that race and are put to death; of all the pretty birds that fly so fast but never fast enough; of dignity born from suffering, only to be translated into madness and bone; of endurance; of sad fires lost in space, flapping like tattered flags.

The flutes kick in and then the tempo begins to speed up, insistent. For a man of his size, Aleks is nimble, he is moving, he is dancing, he is moving, a frenzy. He opens his eyes and sees that everyone has joined in, they too with closed or joyous eyes. He is with his family, blood and chosen, and he has made his choice. He will leave Australia.

The countdown begins.

The day after Ulysses Amosa’s funeral, Jimmy walks to the river and sets fire to a patch of grass. The flames rush outwards, catching on every dried blade and burr. The sound of cicadas is soon smothered by the snicker of flames. It blows low towards the river where a stand of poplars rises, opposite the old graveyard. He kneels before the flames to watch them shear across the grass. They move out evenly, an expanding diadem of flames. Then he lies down, watching the flames rise like the points of a moving crown, fluid, completely consuming all thought and concern. The flames grow more mesmerising the larger they become, beating an awesome rhythm, the perfectly malleable and self-creating edge of flame. The sun bears silent witness, watching a distant relative washing its thousands of hands over and over and over. It is quite a fire.

In the flame haze he can see his stepfather’s funeral, the Samoan community singing, their hymns binding into something utterly ethereal. He can see Grace crying, Petar weeping for the first time in anyone’s memory, Solomon expressionless, Aleks full of impotent fury. And maybe it is a trick of the light or his blurry eyes, but he thinks he can see his father standing in a suit, slightly removed, with a crooked smile, escaping the blinding heat under a tree. He can see his own skinny, shaking hands, aching to strike a match.

As he lies on the ground and watches the flames, he begins to smile and he isn’t sure why. There are tears in his eyes, but there is some sort of release and connection between his tormented heart and the rippling flames. He is hauled up by his collar, so hard that his neck twists and his knee is wrenched. It is the man who lives in a ramshackle house near the river. He drags Jimmy away while his wife dumps buckets of water on the fire. They sit him in their lounge room. The woman calls the cops while the man drinks port wine and watches Jimmy until Grace and the cops come. Grace’s eyes make Jimmy cry; but in the years to follow, Jimmy will be locked up four times for graffiti and firestarting. Something unstoppable has come alive in him.

You, Jimmy Amosa,

walk down the path,

grass, twigs and stones,

a million fibres scattered

by flood,

clay drought-cracked.

There are wild oats,

blonde and bending to your right,

the ochre of barbed wire,

and lower in the valley some green beneath the muted tones.

The black of previous fires,

the warp and arch of trees,

ragged branches and strange shapes that hang like lanterns.

The bluestone path abraded to reveal the dirt beneath,

the jacaranda purple and brilliant.