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Sport 34: Winter 2006

Home fires

Home fires

He presses his nose to a brick of clay. Fertile, like the smell of a waterfall in the bush. Tom has shown him how to cut the soft flesh with taut wire, like cold butter.

He was falling, and woke with a start. Someone told him that if you hit the bottom before you wake, you die. He pulled on shorts and stumbled through the paddock. Federico ran to the middle of page 120the road, then his legs stopped. He looked down that long dark reel. The largeness of the world stared back. Each step is tiny and the body grows tired.

He turns back to the house.

The moon is big, lights up Tom's studio. Thin metal shelves with pots stacked to dry. A wooden box with the small tools that scrape the surface of a wet clay bowl. On a high wooden dais under a large sheet of plastic sits a damp, half-finished face and shoulders. Federico pulls the plastic off, studies the face. It's like a haughty marble emperor in ancient histories. This one is ugly. An unforgiving mouth. Federico shakes the matches in his pocket. The kiln clicks. Tom's firing again. He spends the day throwing clay at the emperor, pushing and pinching his fingers into the face and body.

The kiln clicks and he moves to it. Warmth radiates onto his bare arms. He peers down the air vent. Bright orange turning white, the colour of a leaking volcano. Heat that ignites paper instantly. Everything in the kiln will be soft and glowing now, then the temperature will cool and the pots will harden to a true form.

Federico leans over so his nose touches the emperor's. He presses his finger down into the clay cheek, making an indent. Under the face he lights a match. The emperor glares at him, there's a pock-mark under the cheekbone where his finger pressed. It felt good to leave a mark. Federico bends down slowly, places the burning match on the ground under the dais. He crouches over the flame, protecting it, listening to its tiny crackle. A small flame, but something on the ground is helping it live. It could catch quickly. He would like to watch the emperor burn. He would like to melt his nose, his wicked brow.

At night-time, nothing is like itself. Cats crying are a chorus of eels rising from the creek-bed, a possum rustling in a tree is a boy quietly setting light to a barn. Night-time belongs to shifting forms, the undoing of the world. Federico leans over to the growing flame, and blows. The flame burns harder, daring him. Bea said people were broken records, creatures of habit. She said he could be anything and she looked straight at him. Her eyes were clear and he could see himself, a tiny dark form reflected. The emperor nods. Federico blows again. This time the flame goes out. He crouches there, watches the red glow of the match die. Smoke dissipates in the air. He lies down page 121beneath the emperor on the wooden floor, still warm from the evening sun. Federico shuts his eyes.

At dawn the birds wake him scratching and calling on the roof. Outside the sky is dragging mucky summer clouds over the hill. The air is cool and new. The sky is red, which means rain.