Hope: An Anthology

by The Brotherhood of St Laurence Hope Prize

  ‘It’s like you holding on to a rope and dangling over a pit with spikes and all pain things in it, and you just gotta hold on,’ Kamban said, eyes scanning the road ahead. ‘You can’t tell yourself, “Only five minutes, or five hours, then you’re safe.” You gotta hold on forever. And lots of people can’t hold on. Too much for their mind; they hurt themselves.’ He twirled his finger beside his ear in the universal sign for ‘crazy’.

  ‘What time does your shift finish?’

  ‘Four thirty. When we get to Moonee Ponds, then done.’

  The bus’s digital display read 15:52.

  ‘You wanna come and eat something at my place? It’s in Fawkner, not too far . . .’ Kamban’s voice trailed off.

  Tommy paused. Ordinarily he’d say nah, no worries, thanks mate, and he and Kamban would separate into drops like the thin streams of rain that swept up the window. And that would be that.

  ‘Yeah. I’d like that.’

  Kamban grinned. ‘Cool.’

  The rain had stopped, the sun hugging the rooflines on Kamban’s street by the time he pushed the sagging gate back on its hinges. He led Tommy down a narrow path to the side of the house. To the rear of the scrubby back garden was a lopsided bungalow, pastel pink paint flaking from its walls.

  ‘My place,’ Kamban gestured with a grand sweep of his arm and mock bow. Tommy stepped inside and looked around. A single bed stood in the corner, its covers pulled taut. A shelf held clothes, several plates and mugs, and a handful of shells. Balanced on a chair was a travel hotplate with two elements.

  ‘Is this your family?’ Tommy asked, pointing to a photo pinned to the wall. Men in well-worn starched shirts and navy sarongs clustered around dainty women in bright saris.

  ‘Yes. My parents, grandparents and some aunts and uncles.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw them?’

  ‘My parents were killed by the army in 1995 . . . I was seventeen. Grandparents died in 2002. This uncle and this one still alive, and this aunty.’ He jabbed at the photo. ‘I haven’t seen them since I leave Sri Lanka seven years ago. I talked to my uncle on the phone couple times.’

  Rootless. Stateless. Tommy felt the same, despite living in Melbourne his whole life.

  ‘Take these outside, brother,’ Kamban said, handing him two plastic chairs. ‘I’ll make us some snacks.’

  Tommy arranged the chairs under a heaving lemon tree, its branches weighted down with fruit. The grass was dewy from the day’s rain and the air felt rinsed and fresh. Tommy liked being outside after it had rained – the world felt unburdened, like that sense of release you had after a big cry. He sat back in the chair and looked up at the sky. It was darkening and the few low-hanging clouds were precariously placed, as if sewn to a deep purple blanket.

  Kamban emerged from the bungalow with two plates of light brown fried patties.

  Tommy bit into one and felt a shock of salty spicy warmth spread across his tongue.

  ‘What is it?’ he mumbled through a mouthful.

  ‘Vadai. Made from split peas, same as dahl.’

  Tommy chewed and swallowed.

  ‘They’re really good.’

  Kamban nodded thanks, smiling and wiping grease from his lips.

  They ate in silence for a minute.

  ‘This is my favourite time of the day,’ Kamban said, turning to him. ‘Whatever bad happened today, you can fix tomorrow. Turn your face to the sun, let the shadows fall behind.’

  Tommy allowed the words to tumble inside him. Let the shadows fall behind. He felt something lift, like a bird beating its soft feathers inside his ribcage. Look forwards, he told himself. Tomorrow would be better.

  ‘Is that like a Tamil proverb or something?’ he asked.

  ‘Nah brother. It’s a Rihanna song.’

  They watched a grey tabby navigate the top of the fence. Kamban whistled and it jumped down, rubbing its face against his legs.

  ‘I’m glad we met, Kamban.’

  ‘Me too, Tommy. Me too.’

  About the author

  Eloise Young works in communications for a mental health charity, and ‘552 to Reservoir’ is her first piece of published fiction. She is interested in social justice issues and her favourite writers are Zadie Smith, George Orwell and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Originally from New Zealand, Eloise currently lives in Melbourne with her partner Ellie and their two unruly cats.

  Queen Street

  Katherine Hayes

  Third Prize

  Stay awake. It’s cold; you’re cold; cold’s cold. Your feet are wet. They always are, this time of year. He’s asleep, so you’ll watch for a while, keeping a special eye on the hat lying in front of him and one foot on his leg so he knows you’re still there.

  Sometimes cold bites his fingers so he can’t feel you regardless of being awake or asleep, and sometimes hunger bites his stomach so he snaps at you out of impatient, unyielding nausea. Other times you’re both silent for days, and that’s when you know it’s time to move on. Watching is easy, but when everything goes blurry round the edges and you blink and it’s Saturday again, you stand to trudge to sit to stay.

  Where are you now? Ah, that’s right – back in that quiet place underneath the stairs of a huge carpark in the Melbourne CBD. You’re here from time to time, when you can, when you slip in lately and silently under cover of Tuesday nights, when there’s little traffic and less concentration on behalf of the security guard. The light doesn’t come in anywhere, much, but the light sure doesn’t come in here. Good sleeps are had here, with the illusion of four walls and the taste of safety at the back of your throats.

  Wake up. You’re cold. It’s time to eat.

  Stretch. Stand. You both need to pee. It’s probably time to let a little light in now. On you go. There you are. It isn’t as bad when you’re moving, even if it is May.

  You wind up at that corner, both sets of your feet taking you there without much thought; but the smell of coffee draws him to turn right then left up Elizabeth, and because that’s what he does that’s what you do. It’s him that you follow.

  You’re not in it for the smell of caffeine but for his familiar smell, and his lopsided but steady tread, and his kind hands. Left. Cut through. Left again.

  You’ve learnt to read the slightest turn of his head or movement of his right hand as words that are meant for you and you alone, because really it is just you two alone, and nobody else bothers to read that language anyway. Right onto Queen. Stop. Sit.

  Today he manages a coffee within half an hour, courtesy of a woman in a scarf with kind eyes, courtesy of one of those who feel the cold but know there are worse colds out there. You can tell she isn’t sure what to give you, and you can tell she isn’t sure whether to ask or just give, and that makes her feel embarrassed and embarrassment causes her hand to shake, shame spilling from her cheeks as milk spills out the little hole in the lid of the takeaway cup. You don’t like coffee; you don’t lick it up. He sips the hot drink, and it’ll fill that red, raw hole of hunger a little, but you’re still hungry, and to you sometimes the entire world is a hole and you’re running out of gravity.

  You find yourself often feeling glad the street cleaners can be a little slack around the Queen Victoria market. Bins overflow there, from wallets overflowing from south-siders who’ve ventured over early and decided their breakfast burrito isn’t really agreeing with them. If you sneak up and back away quickly, sometimes you can grab one that still has a little warmth to it.

  You have a little warmth to you too, in your skin, and in the strong current in the large pocket of your small heart where he sits. You know he needs that warmth on days like these. You lean in close, on his lap, your eyes on his and your paws on his stomach.

  Your breathing never matches up because your littler dog lungs are half the size of his, but your hearing is ten times better. You can hear his breathing is a little rickety today.

  There’s a little catch there, on the inward breath, like the air has a han
gnail that catches on his lung every time. When he’s in a deep sleep, there are times when you’re not sure it will uncatch, and you tend to lay your head on his chest and will the air to whistle past your ear again.

  Today, the bread vendors are feeling generous, or at least maybe you’re both just conveniently placed next to their bins. A rainfall of a loaf that expired yesterday and a stale focaccia. The bread is life, and life rains onto his lap unceremoniously; dumped there in the midst of a storm that rages loud in stomachs and louder in heads.

  The loaf has to last as long as possible, but the focaccia is dotted with olives – you can’t stomach them. You’ll leave it to him; you’re better at finding scraps, and scrap-givers are better at giving them to dogs, not men. You nuzzle his arm one last time, and bark once gently, and he nods, through the olives and the filmy glare of an early Wednesday morning. One last stretch and you’re off, trotting down Queen and heading across the Flagstaff Gardens, because there’s a bunch of things to sniff in there and sometimes, if you’re early enough, possums to chase.

  You’ve not got much energy today and that back left leg is hurting you like it does when it’s cold, so you cut a chase-free path straight across. You think you might head for an alleyway just off King Street, to the back of a café which ends up with a big whack of its daily produce uneaten, and its sandwiches from yesterday often tossed out in the mornings.

  The café is opposite one of those trendy alleyway coffee places and their humble egg and lettuce can’t compete with the demand for fancy bagels. But your stomach has its eye on that egg and lettuce, so it’s there you head.

  Sometimes if you sit on one of the colourful milkcrates lining the alley for a little while, the café staff will come out and grin indulgently, like you’re a trained dolphin in the aquarium that’s conditioned to please. They think it’s clever, you doing tricks for food. You think it’s bullshit. You’re a staffy, not a sea lion. But generally there’s a bit of bread, or a muffin, or even a bit of ham in it for you. You’re good at sitting for long stretches, and you haven’t had ham since last month.

  Sit: once you find a comfortable position for your back left leg. It’s a cold day – not many people are out on the crates. The businessmen sit inside in the warmth, drinking strong lattes and talking expenses and clocking a life they don’t really enjoy, or won’t when the coffee wears off – until they start on the next one, easily affordable for them even if they want a size upgrade or soy.

  They’ll dash through the rain to get it and, while drinking, sit in a cloud of complaints about their new leather shoes being ruined and the weather being so cold. They’re frozen behind a wall of yellow and green bank notes, protected by the rainbow in their pockets, while your dreams are punctured by the sharp, thin edges of silver coins thrown in at you. Your leg hurts.

  You sit there, and wonder about real warmth and walls. Sit. Stay. Movement at the back door: you sit up straighter. A man new to you comes out; you don’t know him. He hasn’t fed you before. He’s got small eyes but big hands, and when the eyes see you the back of one of the hands is raised towards you.

  ‘Stray! Mutt! Get outta here!’ He’s brandishing a cigarette in the other hand, a little round brand, fire, burning flesh and rough hands and the fear, the fear of cigarettes choked with the feel of smoke in the lungs and the rotting of the skin. You know cigarettes well. Your skin crawls with unforgotten burns and the urge to flee. You try – leaping from the crate – but that pesky back left leg is slow and now stuck in one of the crate holes, and you’re floundering, and scrabbling for a footing as that brand waves above you and the bad words stick to you like rain, but it’s a rain that won’t wear off come the dry. It’ll stick to your insides like ash sticks to clothes.

  Finally you’re free, and you make your leg work, and you run. Where to? On. Away. Left, right, straight, you think there’s an alley through here, oh no that’s a main road, run faster, get further. Your heartbeat up, your tail down. You’re scattering bins and boxes. You’ve run, you’ve left, you’ve turned left too many times. Are you safe? Do you remember what safe is? You smell smoke, still. Onwards, further, away now.

  Stop. Pant. Shake: the terror from your head and the words from your skin and the image of the round, burning brand from your eyes. You don’t know how long you were running for. Where are you?

  You’ve gone past the city-skirts now, and everything’s looking too modern. There’s water, lots of water, but you don’t recognise the shape of it. It doesn’t look like a river anymore. You vaguely remember crossing train tracks. You’re in some sort of outdoor mall, nothing like the dirty old streets of Melbourne’s city centre. It’s too new here. The air doesn’t smell like it should, and nothing smells like him anymore. You’ve strayed too far.

  So pause, and breathe. Your leg hurts. Sitting will make it worse, but you feel the world has hit the ‘worse’ button already, so you need to back up a little. You curl up into a little ball, behind a balustrade near the water, and shut out the world. You send your thoughts down, down into the water, straight sinking down weighed by bad men and burns and thunk, they hit the bottom, and everything’s black for a while.

  Later, you wake, and know it’s time to find your way. You don’t know how long it’s been, but you think it’s been too long. You start to trudge. You miss him.

  You walk for long enough away from the water to know you must be going the right way. Any way that’s not water is the way back to him. Any way that doesn’t have angry men and cigarettes must lead you back to him, because he is all you know and want to know, and your back leg hurts, and you want to lie in his lap. You want the drips of coffee and crumbs of focaccia, and you’d even take the olives.

  You walk.

  The wind makes your mostly three-legged wobble difficult, but it’s easier because you know what you’re headed for. You’re still hungry, somewhere deep, but mostly just starving for him and intent on making your way home. Home isn’t a place but a feeling; not four walls, but four paws on his leg and two hands on your back.

  You walk on. Things are starting to look more familiar. You can see train tracks. It’s past the lunch hour now: commuters are slower, full of food and dribbling through the city with the lazy air of people who have everywhere to go but nowhere to be, yet. They slow down, to browse in fancy cosmetics shops. You think of cigarettes burning your skin and limp faster.

  Right onto Spencer. There’s the Coles that you frequented when you were just a pup, when he’d plucked small, runty you from under that overpass out west and fed you scraps which he couldn’t really spare. The Coles times were when your life hadn’t yet bled into his as much. Those days were the days you still liked a run, a chase, to snap at heels and bound and approach, and the touch of other hands.

  Back then you hadn’t realised, yet, how much you would need each other, as it got colder and the Julys stretched further and his breathing caught and your leg ached, and it got harder to find light to let in. Coles always had a bright fluorescent sign and heating at the entrance, so it wasn’t so hard there – they were open all night, after all, even in the darkest July.

  Left, now Lonsdale. Past the kebab shop you liked to sit out the back of two or so years ago. The owner was liberal with his tidbit giving, especially to you. He liked how you used to lick his hand to say thank you. You liked chicken.

  You were at the kebab shop when, sniffing around on your own one Friday night, a group of men with cigarettes thought they’d trap you in an alcove and, drunken and guffawing, burn you with their little brands over and over, your fur smouldering away and your skin sizzling, and the smell of death emitted from their tobacco. They pinned you down and burnt away any of the memories you had of other men being good.

  Those sizzled away, but your memories of and need for him stuck. It took him hours to coax you back into his arms, after that, and days before the blind terror subsided. You remember his anger. Nobody took it seriously, and nobody answered the questions he spat at passers-by.
‘Just another ranting hobo,’ they said. ‘Ignore him.’

  Only you knew his rage and his sadness, but only you bothered to find it under a face worn by time and words and death. You know your death would be his last. Home now; there soon.

  Left onto Queen. You’ve both walked a worn path up Queen so many times, you could do it asleep. The smell of your trail never fades, on Queen, and you can trace yourself back to him on it, wherever you find yourself. Most roads seem to lead to or through Queen, and Queen leads home.

  Ahead of you is the big roundabout. You’re almost there. You quicken; your tail finds motion again. Left right left right left right. Your body doesn’t feel so stagnant any more. He’s close. Move on.

  You round the curb, and head back to your spot near the back door of the market. There are his feet; there’s his hat. You made it back home, and you spring up to nuzzle his arm. You’re sorry you were away so long; you won’t run again.

  But something’s off. His eyes seem closed; his feet are slumped inward at an odd angle. When you butt his chin, his head barely moves. You try again. Still nothing. You don’t feel good. He doesn’t seem like him. You plant your paws on his chest and lick his face, and his body loses balance and falls sideways, sprawled, his hat going rolling off towards the road.

  His head moves into the light of a streetlight, and you see his grey face, and you know his half-open eyes aren’t on you, and you feel his cold hands, and you taste his death and the end of what you know.

  You howl. You won’t stop. Blind sound comes crashing out of you, and people will hear, but they still won’t listen.

  Howl outwards. Scream at the back of the light, as it leaves you. Let that bit of your heart that was him evaporate into noise, and don’t dare stop or you’ll have to surface.