Free Here Come the Dogs by Omar Musa Page A

that won it,
    how I only shot the last one
    because I was too damn tired to run
    or back him down.
    From a house nearby
    I hear that ubiquitous Lorde song, ‘Royals’.
    I realise the sparkle on the blacktop
    is the remnants of a beer bottle broken long ago.
    High above is a red kite,
    twisting and turning.

    I walk away from the court,
    thinking of the sparkle and the kite.
    I feel a bit ashamed at not saying goodbye to Fred,
    but I keep walking,
    faster and faster.
    I hear yelling,
    and ignore it until it gets to my shoulder.
    It’s Fred, breathless. ‘Your dog! Your dog!’
    â€˜Ah shit, thanks mate.’

    I try to smile.

    Up close, Mercury Fire unnerves me.
    He once inspired excitement and joy
    but now he seems the portent of something dangerous,
    something tragic and shameful.
    Of failure.
    He yawns
    and the silt of resentment boils up in me.
    When I look into his eye,
    it’s my own eyes I see.

10

    Jimmy and Solomon wander through the supermarket, bored, while Ulysses squeezes avocados and raps on coconuts. First, they have a chilli-eating contest, which Jimmy wins determinedly. Panting and fanning their mouths, they go into the cold room to see how long they can stay in there. Soon bored, they move to the toy aisle and find a packet of plastic cowboys and Indians. The whole packet only one dollar.
    A voice from above, ‘I reckon I could spare a buck.’
    An immaculately dressed man is standing next to them, pencil thin with a smile on his face. Wearing fashionable sunglasses, he has light-brown skin and is of ambiguous ethnicity. He crouches.
    â€˜Hi, James,’ he says.
    â€˜Who are you?’ says Solomon.
    â€˜You must be Solomon. Big fella.’ The man offers his hand and Solomon shakes it reluctantly, by the fingertips only. The man’s hand is bone-dry. He lets go and conjures a two-dollar coin, as if from nowhere. He lets it trip down the knuckles of his right hand and drop into his left palm, then holds out the coin to Jimmy. As he does, a shadow appears over him and he is knocked to the ground by a crushing blow. Ulysses Amosa. The man stands up, bleeding from his nose onto his starched white shirt, afraid and blinking. He tries tosmile and reminds Ulysses that they were once best of friends. As soon as he stands to full height, another blow. This time Ulysses hisses, ‘Get out. Get the fuck out of here now.’ The man scrambles away. His sunglasses bounce on the tiles and a manager waddles over to berate Ulysses, who is shaking. The boys are astonished – they have never heard Ulysses Amosa swear.

11

    Aleks has a day off work and is in his basement.
    Steel, paint, chemicals, petrol. There is a big workbench jumbled with carpenter’s tools and a tall shelf behind it. Aleks picks up a ball bearing, the size of a marble, turns it between forefinger and thumb, and observes it in the meagre light, silver, before placing it on the shelf. As children, he and the boys were constantly on the hunt for ball bearings, the king cheat of marble games. He smiles, climbs on a stool, reaches up high and pulls down the gym bag.
    He opens it and takes out what is inside: a 22-calibre handgun, black snout gleaming. He lays it in his lap and disassembles it, then cleans it slowly. A .22 is light and perfect for wounding, good for hits because the bullet doesn’t break the sound barrier and lodges in the brain. Guns are nothing new to him – in the Balkans, most homes would have one.
    Tomorrow was going to be a dangerous day.
    Once he has cleaned it, he places it back in the bag and hides it on the top shelf, then visits the pharmacy to get his father’s heart medicine. When he collects Mila from school, she leaps into the passenger seat of the Hilux. She tells him about a science experiment she did in class where they put some Mentos into a Coke bottle and the chemical reactioncaused the soft drink to shoot up into the sky like a fountain. Aleks