Peripheral Vision Read Online Free PDF Page A

is called Dogster.
    â€˜Here for the parade?’ she asks as she takes our orders.
    The city mutters in an expectant, festive conversation. There is an occasional rumble of distant thunder and the light is a yellowy purple. Whiffs of stale oil and rotten garbage and the leftover rank smell of Saturday night in the city swirl through the air.
    â€˜If we had a normal daughter, this would be a netball final or a school concert. You’d better be right about her growing out of it soon.’ Adrian blows on his coffee and takes a hesitant sip.
    He’s not ready for this. He spends too much time away, a life behind glass in cars and planes and offices. He’s only just realised his daughter stinks. She’s not simply our daughter anymore. She’s a Dogteen. An independent wild thing who will do whatever she wants.
    I can hear the procession coming down the next street. The drums and tambourines bang out unevenly and tin whistles are playing tunes, but most of all it’s the barking and growling and yapping that echoes off the walls of the tall city buildings. Some comes from the dogs, some is recognisably human.
    Sunday shoppers are heaving their bags through the streets and a few people line the footpath, waiting for the parade to pass. In the electronics shop next to the cafe, I can see a telecast of the float coming down Collins Street. The packmaster, a bizarre red-dreadlocked cross between a Hungarian Puli and a Kelpie, sits on a massive purple satin cushion on the float, flanked on each side by identical Pekingese trotting along the road like an undulating carpet. This week they’re escorting a float in the shape of a giant bone. That’s what we never expected – the sense of humour, the practical jokes, the sheer joy of life the dogs bring to every event. That’s how they seduce our children.
    The second they round the corner, tears spring to my eyes. I don’t know whether I’m proud or ashamed. Sienna is the lead child in the harness. The chosen one. Leather straps criss-cross her chest, wrinkling the worn fabric of her shirt and carving a crevasse between her bud breasts. The harness and the float are strung with bells and medallions, ribbons and tattered pieces of coloured cloth.
    As she strains to pull the float, her jaw clenches and the ropes of muscle vibrate in her throat. I want to run over and strip her out of that harness, take her home, wash her in a hip bath. I’d dress her in a clean pair of flannelette pyjamas and feed her mashed vegetables and read to her from a girls’ adventure book as she drifted off to sleep in the soft light of her bedroom.
    Sienna lifts her arms, and the children in the harness rear back and finally stop. The packmaster stands. There’s an exchange between him and Sienna, yelping and barking, a growl. The packmaster circles three times and curls up on the cushion while Sienna talks to the children in harness behind her. As we’re waiting to find out what this means, a Pug leaves the procession, trots across the road to me and sits at my feet, grinning up at me with its wrinkled face.
    â€˜Pugsley?’ I don’t know what to do. They don’t like to be petted anymore.
    Pugsley rises to his feet, backs off and yaps three times at us before turning and haring into the group of dogs, his squat hindquarters pumping like pneumatic cushions.
    â€˜Did you see that?’ I place my hand on Adrian’s arm, but he’s staring at Sienna.
    The procession has quietened down. Sienna gazes straight at me and nods. After I have smiled and waved she tilts her head back, exposing her bony white throat, and begins a howl, a low moan that rises fast into an aria of leaping and bones and shitting and wild scents and twitching dreams all braiding into a brutal joyous crescendo of freedom. When she finishes, the whole city is silent. She turns her head to us again. The bells on her harness tinkle. Below her furs and checked