Underdogs (19 page)

“Just around a bit.”

“Down Glebe way?”

I looked over. “What’s that mean?”

“It means,” Rube sighed, “that Octavia and I followed you once, just out of interest. We saw y’ outside a house, starin’ into the window. You’re a bit of a lonely bastard aren’t y’?”

Moments twisted and curled then, and off in the distance I could hear traffic, roaring almost silently. Far from all this. Far from Cameron and Ruben Wolfe discussing what in the hell I was doing outside the house of a girl who cared nothing for me.

I swallowed, breathed in, and answered my brother.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am.”

There was nothing else I could say. Nothing to cover it up. There was only a slight moment of waiting, truth and feeling, then a crack, and I said more. “It’s that Stephanie girl.”

“The bitch Rube spat.

“I know, but —”

“I know,” Rube interrupted. “It makes no difference if she said she hated you or called you a loser. Y’ feel what y’ feel.”

Y’ feel what y’ feel.

It was one of the truest things Rube had ever said, just before a quietness smothered the room.

From next-door’s backyard we could hear a dog barking. It was Miffy, the pitiful Pomeranian we loved to hate, but still walked a few times a week anyway.

“Sounds like Miffy’s a bit upset,” Rube said after a while.

“Yeah,” and I laughed a bit.

A bit of a lonely bastard. A bit of a lonely bastard
.

Rube’s statement reverberated inside me till his voice was like a hammer.

Later, when I got up and sat on the front porch and watched shadows of traffic filter past, I told myself it was okay to be like this, as long as I stayed hungry. It felt like something was arriving in me. It was something I couldn’t see or know or understand. It was just there, mingling into my blood.

Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.

Even in the night, in bed, they woke me. They painted themselves onto the ceiling.

They burned themselves onto the sheets of memory laid out in my mind.

When I woke up the next day, I wrote the words down, on a torn-up piece of paper. And to me, the world changed color that morning.

WORDS OF CAMERON

The city streets are lined with truth, and I walk through them. Sometimes
, they
walk through
me.
Thoughts are like blood sometimes, when I think of women and sex and everything in between. I collect my thoughts as if they will stain me, murder me, and then resurrect me
.

I’ve stopped sometimes and felt the world turning, and I think there are hands that turn it
.

I guess I think we turn the world ourselves, often making our hands and fingers dirty, and our wrists sore, from the work
.

I feel like the world is a factory
.

It’s the factory of God’s light and we just work here
.

I clock onto the truth — that I’m small in terms of this world, but I’m awake
.

Days and nights fight each other. The hours and minutes are the bruises, and as each day passes by, I know that ’m alone
.

They say that no one really likes being alone, and I know that I am one of them. Having said that, I think there’s something tough in it. Something stoic and strong and uncensored
.

Another truth is that I am an animal. A human animal
.

With feral thoughts, and ragged furry hair that reaches for the sky
.

God, how I want the skin of women! I want it on my lips and hands and fingers. How I want to taste her
…

But then — then
—

Beneath that
.

That’s not enough
!

Yes, when that’s done, I also want the everything that’s her to fill up so much in front of me that it spills and shivers and gives, just like I’m prepared to do myself
.

But for now, happiness throws stones
.

It guards itself
.

I wait
.

My oldest brother Steven Wolfe is what you’d call a hard bastard. He’s successful. He’s smart. He’s determined.

The thing with Steve is that nothing will ever stop him. It’s not only
in
him. It’s on him, around him. You can smell it, sense it. His voice is hard and measured, and everything about him says, “You’re not going to get in my way.” When he talks to people, he’s friendly enough, but the minute they try one on him, forget it. If someone tries to trample him, you’d put your house on it that he’ll do twice the job on them. Steve never forgets.

Me on the other hand.

I’m not really like Steve in that way.

I kind of wander around a lot.

That’s
what I do.

Personally, I think it comes from not having many friends, or in fact, any friends at all, really.

There was a time when I really ached to be a part of a pack of friends. I wanted a bunch of guys I’d be prepared to bleed for. It never happened. When I was younger I had a mate called Greg and he was an okay guy. Actually, we did a lot together. Then we drifted apart. It happens to people all the time, I guess. No big
deal. In a way, I’m part of the Wolfe pack, and that’s enough. I know without doubt that I’d bleed for anyone in my family.

Anyplace.

Anytime.

My best mate is Rube.

Sten the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn’t bleed for any of them, because he wouldn’t trust them to bleed for him. In that way he’s just as alone as me.

He’s alone.

I’m alone.

There just happen to be people around him, that’s all. (People meaning friends, of course.)

Anyway, the point of telling you about all this is that sometimes when I go out wandering at night I’ll go up to Steve’s apartment, which is about a kilometer from home. It’s usually when I can’t handle standing outside that girl’s house, when the ache of it aches too much.

He’s got a nice place, Steve, on the second floor, and he has a girl who lives there as well. Often she’s not there because she works in a company that sends her on business trips and all that kind of thing. I always thought she was pretty nice, I s’pose, since she tolerated me when I went up to visit. Her name’s Sal and she’s got nice legs. That’s a fact I can never escape.

“Hey Cam.”

“Hey Steve.”

That’s what we say every time I go up and he’s home.

It was no different the night after the beer ice block incident. I buzzed from downstairs. He called me up. We said what we always say.

The funny thing is that over time, we’ve become at least slightly better at talking to each other. The first time, we sat there and had black coffee and said nothing. We each just let our eyes swirl into the pools of coffee and let our voices be numb and silent. There was always a thought in me that maybe Steve held a sort of grudge against everyone in the Wolfe family because he seemed to be the only winner, in the world’s eyes, anyway. It was like he might have good cause to be ashamed of us. I was never sure.

In recent times, since Steve decided to play one more year of football, we’d even gone to the local ground and kicked the ball around. (Or in truth, Steve had practice shots at goal and I returned them.) We’d go there and he’d turn the lights on, and even if it was extra cold and the earth was coated with frost and our lungs were trodden with winter air, we always stayed for quite a while. If it got too late, he even dropped me home.

He never asked how anyone was. Never. Steve was more specific.

“Is Mum still workin’ herself into the ground?”

“Yeah.”

“Dad got plenty of work?”

“Yeah.”

“Sarah still goin’ out, getting smashed, and comin’ home reeking of club and smoke and cocktails?”

“Nah, she’s off that now. Always workin’ overtime shifts. She’s okay.”

“Rube still Mr. Excitement? One girl after another? One fight after another?”

“Nah, there’s no one game enough to fight him anymore.” Rube is without doubt one of the best fighters in this part of the city. He’s proved it. Countless times. “You’re right about the girls, though,” I continued.

“Of course,” he nodded, and that’s when things always get a little edgy — when it comes to the question of me.

What could he possibly ask?

“Still got no mates, Cameron?”

“Still completely alone, Cameron?”

“Still wanderin’ the streets?”

“Still got your hands at work under the sheets?”

No.

Every time, he avoids it, just like the night I’m talking about.

He asked, “And you?” A breath. “Survivin’?” “Yeah,” I nodded. “Always.”

After that there was more silence, till I asked him who he was playing against this weekend.

As I told you earlier, Steve decided to have one last year of football. At the start of the season, he was begged to go back by his old team. They begged hard, and
finally, he gave in, and they haven’t lost a game yet. That was Steve.

That Monday night, I still had my words in my pocket, because I’d decided to carry them everywhere with me. They were still on that creased piece of paper, and often I would check that they were still there. For a moment, at Steve’s table, I imagined myself telling him about it. I heard myself explaining how it made me feel like I was worth it, like I was just
okay
. But I said nothing. Absolutely nothing, even as I thought,
I guess that’s what we all crave once in a while. Okayness. Alrightness
. It was a vision of looking inside a mirror and not wanting, not needing, because everything was there.

With the words in my hands, that was how I felt.

I nodded.

At the prospect of it. “What?” Steve asked me. “Nothing.” “Fair enough.” The phone rang. Steve: “Hello.”

The other end: “Yeah, it’s me.” “Who the hell’s me?” It was Rube. Steve knew it. I knew it.

Even though I was a good distance from the phone, I could tell it was Rube, because he talks loud, especially on the phone.

“Is Cameron there?” “Yeah.”

“Are y’s goin’ up the oval

“Maybe,” at which point Steve looked over and I nodded. “Yes, we are,” he answered. “I’ll be up there in ten minutes.” “Right. Bye.” “Bye.”

Secretly, I think I preferred it when it was only Steve and me who went. Rube was always brilliant, always starting something and mucking around, but with Steve and me, I enjoyed the quiet intensity of it. We might never have said a word — and I might have only kicked the ball back hard and straight, and let the dirt and smell of it thump onto my chest — but I loved the feeling of it, and the idea that I was part of something unspoken and true.

Not that I never had moments like that with Rube. I had plenty of great moments with Rube. I guess it’s just that with Steve, you really have to earn things like that. You’d wait forever if you wanted one for free. Like I’ve said before, for other reasons, that’s Steve.

On the way down to the ground floor a few minutes later, he said, “I’m sore as hell from yesterday’s game. I got belted in the ribs about five times.”

At Steve’s games it was always the same. The other team always made sure he hit the ground especially hard. He always got up.

We stood on the street, waiting for Rube.

“Hey boys.”

When he arrived, Rube was puffing gently from the run. His thick, curly, furry hair was too attractive for its own good, even though it was a lot shorter than it used to be. He was wearing only a jersey, sawn-off track pants, and gymmies. Smoke came from his mouth, from the cold.

We started walking, and Steve was his usual self. He wore the same pair of old jeans he always did at the oval and a flanno shirt. Athletic shoes. His eyes took aim, scanning the path, and his hair was short and wiry and tough-looking. He was tall and abrupt and exactly the kind of guy you wanted to be walking the streets with.

Especially in the city.

Especially in the dark.

Then there was me.

Maybe the best way to describe me that night was by looking again at my brothers. Both of them were in control. Rube, in a reckless,
no matter what happens, I’ll be ready when it comes
kind of way. Steve, in a
there’s nothing you can do that’s going to hurt me
way.

My own face focused on many things, but never for too long, remaining eventually on my feet, as they traveled across the slightly slanted road. My hair was sticking up. It was curly and ruffled. I wore the same jersey as Rube (only mine was slightly more faded), old jeans, my spray jacket, and boots. I told myself that although I could never look the same as my brothers, I still had
something
.

I had the words in my pocket. Maybe that was what I had.

That, and knowing that I’ve walked the city a thousand times on my own and that I could walk these streetre feeling than anyone, as if I was walking through myself. I’m pretty sure that was what it was — more a feeling than a look.

At the oval Steve had shots at goal.

Rube had shots at goal.

I sent the ball back to them.

When Steve had a shot, the ball rose up high and kept climbing between the posts. It was clean, ranging, and when it came down, it rushed onto my chest with a complete, numbing force. Rube’s ball, on the other hand, spun and spiraled, low and charging, but also went through the posts each time.

They kicked them from everywhere. In front. Far out. Even past the edges of the field.

“Hey Cam!” Rube yelled at one point. “Come out and have a shot!”

“Nah mate, I’ll be right.”

They made me, though. Twenty yards out, twenty yards to the left. I moved in with my heart shuddering. My feet stepped in, I kicked it, and the ball reached for the posts.

It curved.

Spun.

Then it collided with the right-hand post and slumped to the grass.

Silence.

Steve mentioned, “It was a good shot, Cameron,” and the three of us stood there, in the wet, weeping grass.

It was quarter past eight then. At eight-thirty, Rube left, and I’d had another seven shots.

At just past nine-thirty, Steve was still standing behind the posts, and I still hadn’t got it through. Clumps of darkness grew heavier in the sky, and it was just Steve and me.

Each time my brother sent the ball back, I searched for a note of complaint in him, but it never came. When we were younger he might have called me useless. Hopeless. All he did that night, however, was kick the ball back and wait again.

When the ball finally fought its way up and fell through the posts, Steve caught it and stood there.

No smile.

No nod of the head, or any recognition. Not yet.

Soon he walked with the ball under his arm, and when he was perhaps ten yards short of me, he gave me a certain look.

His eyes looked differently at me.

His expression was swollen.

Then.

I’ve never seen a person’s face shatter like his did. With pride.

HUNGER AND DESIRE ON A FRONT PORCH NIGHT

Tonight, I sit on the front porwrite these words. The wind crawls up my sleeves and the pen wavers in my hand
.

The city is cold and dark
.

The streets are filled with numbness and the sky is sinking. Dark, dark sky
.

Beside me, I look at the memory of twenty out and twenty left of the posts. I see a shattering face and the verge of something to become
.

I tell me:

Let these words be footsteps, because I have a long way to travel. Let the words walk the dirty streets. Let them make their way across the crying grass. Let them stand and breathe and pant smoke in winter evenings. And when they’re tired and have fallen down, let them buckle to their feet and arc around me, watchful
.

I want these words to be actions
.

Give them flesh and bones, I say to me, and eyes of hunger and desire, so they can write and fight me through the night
.