Underdogs (2 page)

For some reason, when I make it to the edge, the dental nurse hasn’t come with me.

When I stand next to the brooding, mustached dentist and look over the edge, she’s standing at the bottom, trying to tell him to come down.

“What are you doing down there?” I call down to her.

“I’m not going up there!” she shouts back up. “I’m scared of heights!”

I accept her statement, because, quite frankly, I’m happy enough because I can see her legs and body, and my stomach tightens under my skin.

“Come on, Tom!” She tries to negotiate with the dentist. “Come back down. Please!”

“Say, what
are
you doin’ up here anyway?” I ask him. He turns to face me. Candid.

Then he says, “It’s because of you.” “Me! What the hell did I do?” “I overcharged you.”

“Geez, mate, that wasn’t very nice,” and suddenly, sadistically, I urge him on. “Go on, jump, then — you deserve it, you bloody cheat.”

Even the beautiful dental nurse wants him to jump now. She calls out, “Come on, Tom — I’ll catch you!” It happens. Down. Down.

He jumps and falls down, and the beautiful dental nurse catches him, kisses his mouth, and places him gently on the ground. She even holds him, touching bodies with him. Oh, that white uniform, rubbing on him. It drives me wild, and instantly, when she to jump as well, I do it and fall….

In bed, waking up, I’m lying there with the taste of blood in my mouth, and with the memory of footpath and impact in my head.

Since the whole dentist incident drained my money situation, I pretty much went and begged for my old job back. The guy in the newsagent’s wasn’t impressed.

He said, “Sorry, Mr. Wolfe. You’re just too much of a risk. You’re dangerous.”

Have a listen to the bloke. You’d think I was walking around with a sawn-off shotgun or something. Bloody hell, I was just a paper boy.

“C’mon, Max,” I pleaded with him. “I’m older now. More responsible.”

“How old are y’ anyway?”

“Fifteen.”

“Well …” He thought hard. He stopped — drew the line. “No.” He shook his head. “No. No.” But I had him, surely. There was too much hesitation in him. He was thinking too hard. “Fifteen’s too old now, anyway.”

Too old!

Mate, it didn’t feel too good to be a washed-up, redundant paper boy, I can tell you.

“Please?” I drooled. It was sickening. All this for a lousy paper run, while other guys my age were raking it in at Maccas and Kentucky Fried bloody Chickens. It was a disgrace. “C’mon, Max.” I had an idea. “If y’ don’t employ me again I’ll come here wearin’ these clothes
I’m wearin’ right now” (I was wearing crummy tracksuit pants, old shoes, and a dirty old spray jacket) “and I’ll bring my brother and his mates along and we’ll treat the place like a library. We won’t cause trouble, mind you. We’ll just hang round. A few of ‘em might steal, but I doubt it. Maybe just one or two …”

Max stepped closer.

“Are you threatenin’ me, y’ little grot?”

“Yes, sir, I am.” I smiled. I thought things were going along fine.

I was wrong.

I was wrong because my old boss Max took me by the collar of my jacket and removed me from his property.

“And don’t come back in here again,” he ordered me. I stood.

I shook my head. At myself. A grot. A grot! It was true.

My game plan for getting the job back had backfired miserably. The pulse in my neck felt really heavy, and I felt like I could taste last night’s blood in the bottom of my throat.

“Y’ grot,” I called myself. I looked at myself in the bakery shop window next door and imagined I was wearing a brand-new light blue suit with a black tie, black shoes, nice hair. The reality, though, was that I was wearing peasants’ clothes and my hair was sticking
up worse than ever. I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me, and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That’s the smile I was smiling.

“Yeah,” I said to myself. “Yeah.”

I looked in the local paper — I had to get Rube to go in the newsagent’s and buy it for me — for another job, but nothing was going. Things were skinny. Jobs. People. Values. No one was on the lookout for anyone or anything new. It got to the point where I considered doing the unthinkable — asking my father if I could work with him on Saturdays.

“No way,” he said, when I approached him. “I’m a plumber, not a circus clown, or a zookeeper.” He was eating his dinner. He raised his knife. “Now, if I was —”

“Ah, c’mon, Dad. I can help.”

Mum put in her opinion.

“Come on, Cliff, give the boy a chance.”

He sighed, almost moaned.

A decision: “Okay,” although he waved his fork under my nose. “But all it’ll take is one screwup, one smart-mouth remark, one act of stupidity, and you’ll be out.”

“Okay.”

I smiled.

I smiled to Mum but she was eating her dinner.

I smiled to Mum and Rube and Sarah and even to Steve, but they were all eating their dinner because the matter was over and the whole thing didn’t really excite any of them. Only me.

Even at work on Saturday my father didn’t seem too enthusiastic about me being there. The first thing he made me do was stick my hand down some old lady’s toilet and pull all the blockage out. It’s true, I nearly vomited into the bowl right there and then.

“Oh, blood-y
hell!”
I screeched under my breath, and my father just smiled.

He said, “Welcome to the world, my boy,” and it was the last time he smiled at me all day. The rest of the time he made me do all the sap jobs like getting pipes off the roof of his panel van, digging a trench under a house, turning the mains off and on, and collecting and tidying his tools. At the end of the day he gave me twenty bucks and actually said thanks.

He said, “Thanks for your help, boy.”

It shocked me.

Happ

“Even though you
are
a bit slow.” He cut me down right after. “And make sure you have a shower when we get home….”

During lunch it was funny because we sat on these two buckets at Dad’s van and he made me read the paper. He took the Weekend Extra part out of the inside and threw the rest of it over to me.

“Read,” he told me. “Why?”

“Because you don’t learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind.”

No need to say that I stuck my head in that paper and read it. I could easily have been sacked for not reading the paper when I was told to.

The most important thing was that I survived the day and I had another twenty dollars to my name.

“Next Saturday?” I asked Dad when we got back out at home.

He nodded.

The thing is, I had no idea that this working Saturdays was going to lead me to the feet of a girl who was even better than the dental nurse. It was a few weeks away yet, but when it came I felt something shift inside me.

On that first Saturday night, though, I walked in our front door feeling quite proud of myself. I went down to the basement because it’s Steve’s room and Steve always goes out on Saturday nights, and I turned up his old stereo and moved around to it a bit. I sang along like all poor saps do in their own company, and I danced like a complete klutz. You don’t care when there’s no one around to look.

Then Rube came in, without me knowing.

He looked.

“Pitiful.” His voice shocked me.

I stopped.

“Pitiful,” he repeated, shutting the door and taking slow, deliberate paces down the old, worn steps.

He was followed in by Dad saying, “I’ve got four things to say to you blokes. One, dinner’s ready. Two, have showers. Three” — and he looked directly at Rube for this one — “you — shave.” I looked briefly at Rube and saw patches of beard growing on his face. It was just becoming kind of thick and consistent. “And four, we’re watchin’
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
tonight and if either one of you wants to watch something else, tough luck — the TV’s booked.”

“We don’t care,” Rube assured him.

“Just so there’s no complaints.”

“Just so there
are
no complaints,” I corrected the man. Big mistake.

“Are you tryin’ to start something?” He pointed as he came farther in.

“Not at all.”

He backed away. “Well, good. Anyway, come to dinner,” and as we walked toward him, he mentioned, “Don’t forget your old man can still give you a good kick in the pants for bein’ smart.” He was laughing, though. I was glad.

At the door, I said, “Maybe I’ll save to get a stereo, like Steve’s. A better one, maybe.”

Dad nodded. “Not a bad idea.” No matter how harsh the man could be, I guess he liked it that I never just asked for things. He saw that I wanted to earn them.

I did.

I wanted nothing for free.

Nothing came for free at our place anyway.

Rube spoke.

He asked, “Why would you want a stereo for, boy? So you can dance up in our room as pitifully as
that?”

Dad only stopped, looked back at him, and clipped him on the ear.

He said, “At least the boy wants to work, which is more than I can say for you.” He turned away again and said, “Now come for the dinner.”

We followed our father back up and I had to get Sarah out of her room for dinner. She was in there with the boyfriend getting it off with him against the wardrobe.

It’s a movie scene in which I have a noose around my neck, waiting to be hanged. I’m sitting on a horse. The rope is attached to a heavy tree branch. My father is on a horse in the distance, waiting with a gun.

I know that there has been a price on my head for quite some time, and my father and I have a plan going where he turns me in, collects the reward, then shoots the rope as I’m about to be hanged. Somehow I will then get away and we will continue the process in towns all over the countryside.

I’m sitting there with that rope around my neck in a whole lot of outrageous cowboy gear. The sheriff or lawman or whoever he is is reading me the death sentence
and all these tobacco-chewing country folk are cheering because they know I’m about to die.

“Any last words?” they ask me, but at first, I only laugh.

Then I say, still laughing, “Good luck,” and with sarcasm, “God bless.”

The shot should come any moment now. It doesn’t. I get nervous. I twitch.

I look around, and see him.

The horse is slapped, to make it take off, and next thing, I’m hanging there, choking to death.

My hands are tied in front of me and I reach them up to keep the rope off my neck. It isn’t working. I , horribly, saying, “Come on! Come on.”

Finally.

The shot comes. Nothing.

“I’m still choking!” I hiss, but now my father is riding toward the mob. He fires again, and this time the rope is broken and I fall.

I hit the ground.

I suck.

Air.

Lovely.

Bullets fly all around me.

I reach for my father’s hand and he lifts me onto his horse on the run.

Wide shot (camera shot). New scene.

All is now calm and Dad holds about a dozen hundred-dollar notes in his hand. He gives me one. “One!”

“That’s right.”

“You know,” I reason, “I really think I should get more than just this — after all, it’s my neck hangin’ up there.”

Dad smiles and throws away a cigar, chewed. He speaks.

“Yeah, but it’s me who shoots you down.”

With desert all around me, I realize how sore my back is from falling down.

Dad is gone, and alone, I kiss the note and say, “Damn you, my friend.” I begin walking somewhere, waiting for next time, hoping that I will live that long.

I’d forgotten they were there.

I’d forgotten they were there until the next day when I was lying in bed with an incredible pain in my back from the trenches I’d dug the day before. I don’t know why I remembered. I just did. The pictures. The pictures.

They were hiding under my bed.

“The pictures,” I said to myself, and without even thinking, I got out of bed in the dark but slowly lightening room and got out the pictures. They were pictures of all these women I’d found in a swimwear magazine catalog thing that came through the mail last Christmas. I’d kept it.

Back in bed I looked at the pictures of all the women with their arched backs and their smiles and their hair and lips and hips and legs and everything.

I saw the dental nurse in it — not really, of course. I just imagined her there. She would have fitted.

“God almighty,” I said when I sone of the women. I stared, and I felt really ashamed in my bed because … I don’t know. It just seemed like a low thing to be doing — gawking at women first thing in the morning while everyone else in the house was still asleep. In a Christmas catalog no less. Christmas was
just under six months ago. Still, though, I stared and thumbed through the issue. Rube was still snoring his head off on the other side of the room.

The funny thing is that looking at those women is supposed to make a kid like me feel pretty good, but all it did was make me angry. I was angry that I could be so weak and stare like some sick degenerate at women who could eat me for breakfast. I thought too, but only for a second, about how a girl my age would feel looking at this stuff. It would probably make her angrier than me, because while all I wanted was to touch these women, the girl was supposed to
be
the women. This was what she was meant to aspire to. That had to be a lot of pressure.

I fell back, hopeless, to bed.

Hopeless.

“Dirty boy,” I heard Rube saying from the other day at the dentist.

“Yeah, dirty,” I agreed out loud again, and I knew that when I got older I didn’t want to be one of those sicko animal guys who had naked women from
Playboy
magazines hanging on the garage wall. I didn’t want it. Right then, I didn’t, so I pulled the catalog from under my pillow and tore it in half, then quarters, and so on, knowing I would regret it. I would regret it the next time I wanted a look.

Hopeless.

When I got up I threw the pieces of women in amongst the recycling pile. I guessed they’d be back
again next Christmas in a new catalog. Glued back together. It was inevitable.

Another thing that was inevitable was that since today was Sunday I’d be going down to Lumsden Oval to watch Rube and Steve play football. Steve’s side was one of the best sides around, while Rube’s was one of the worst sides you would ever see in your life. Rube and his mates got flogged every week and it was always pretty brutal to watch. Rube himself wasn’t too bad — him and a few others. The rest were completely useless.

Eating breakfast later on in front of
Sportsworld,
he asked me, “So what’s the bet on today’s scoreline? Seventy-nil? Eighty-nil?”

“I d’know.”

“Maybe we’ll finally crack the triple figures.”

“Maybe.”

We munched.

We munched as Steve came up from the basement and laid out five bananas for himself to eat. He did it every Sunday, and he ate them while grunting at Rube and me.

At the ground, Rube ended up being not too far wrong. He lost, 76–2. The other side was massive. Bigger, stronger, hairier. Rube’s side only got their two points at the end of the game when the ref gave them a mercy penalty. They took the shot at goal just to get on the board. here was no sand boy or anything so the goalkicker took his boot off, put the ball in it, and kicked
the goal in just his socks. By comparison, Steve’s side won a pretty good game, 24–10, and Steve, as usual, had a blinder.

All up, there were really only two halfway-interesting things about the whole day.

The first was that I saw Greg Fienni, a guy who had been my best friend until not too long ago. The thing was that we just stopped being best friends. There was no incident, no fight, no anything. We just slowly stopped being best mates. It was probably because Greg became interested in skating and he joined another gang of friends. In all honesty, he even tried to get me into the group with him, but I wasn’t interested. I liked Greg a lot, but I wasn’t going to follow him. He was into the skateboard culture now and I was into, well, I’m not sure what I was into. I was into roaming around on my own, and I enjoyed it.

At the ground, when I arrived, Rube’s game had already started, and there was a pack of boys sitting up in the top corner, watching. When I walked past it, a voice called out to me. I knew it was Greg.

“Cam!” he called. “Cameron Wolfe!”

“Hey.” I turned. “How’s it goin’, Greg.” (I should have put a question mark there, but what I said wasn’t really a question. It was a greeting.)

Next thing, Greg came out from his mates and walked over to me.

It was brief.

He asked, “You wanna know the score?”

“Yeah, I’m a bit late, ay.” I looked strangely at his bleached, knotted hair. “What is it?” “Twenty-nil.”

The other side went in to score. We laughed.

“Twenny-four.”

“Ay, sit ‘own,” someone from in the group yelled out. “Or get out of the way!”

“Okay.” I shrugged, and I raised my head to Greg. I looked at his mates for a moment, then said, “I’ll see y’ later, ay.” Some girls had just showed up at the group now as well. I think there were about five of them, and pretty. A couple of them were school beauty queen pretty while a few were that more real-looking type. A realer kind of pretty.
Real girls,
I thought,
who might, if I’m lucky, talk to me someday.

“Okay.” Greg returned to his mates. “Catch y’ later.” About a month later, as it turned out.

Funny,
I thought as I walked on, around the rope that made the field an enclosure.
Best friends once, and now we have almost nothing to say to each other.
It was interesting, how he had joined those guys and I just stayed on my own. I didn’t like it or dislike it. It was just funny that things had turned out that way.

The second interesting thing was that back home, toward evenin I was sitting on our front porch watching traffic go by when Sarah and her boyfriend came walking up our street. His car was outside our house but they’d decided just to go out for a walk. The car was his pride and joy. It was a red Ford that had plenty of guts under the hood. Some people are heavily into cars, but to me they seemed pretty stupid. When you looked out my window you could see the whole city crouched under a blanket of car smog. Also, there are guys who tear up and down our street till all hours of the night and think they’re absolutely brilliant.

Frankly, I think they’re tossers.

Yet, who am I to say?

The first thing I do when I get up on a Sunday morning is look at pictures of half-naked women.

So.

From way down the street, I watched them: Sarah and the boyfriend. I could tell it was them because I could see Sarah’s pale jeans that she wore quite often. Maybe she had a couple of pairs.

What I remember best is the way she and the boyfriend, whose name, by the way, was Bruce, were holding hands as they walked. It was nice to look at.

Even a dirty boy like me could see that.

I could.

I admitted to myself on our tiny front porch that beauty was my sister and Bruce Patterson walking up the street like that, and I honestly don’t care what you call me for saying so.

In reality, that was what I wanted — what my sister and Bruce had.

Sure, I wanted those women I’d seen in that catalog, but they were just … not real. They were temporary.

They would be like that every time — just something to pull out and then pack away.

“How’s it goin’?”

“Okay.”

Sarah and Bruce came onto the front porch and went inside.

Right now I still remember them walking up the road like that. I still see it.

The worst thing about it was that it didn’t take a whole lot longer for Bruce to ditch Sarah for someone else. I do meet the replacement girl, later in these pages, but I only get a short look at her. Short words. Short words at a front door …

She seemed okay but I don’t know.

I don’t know anything, not really.

I —

Maybe all I know is that on that day on our front porch, when I watched Sarah and Bruce, I felt something and vowed that if I ever got a girl I would treat her right and never be bad or dirty to her or hurt her, ever. I vowed it and had all the confidence in the world that I would keep the vow.

“I’d treat her,” I said.

“I would.”

“I would.”

“— I would.”

I’m at the one-day cricket with a large group of guys behind me. It’s raining lightly and the players are off the
field, so everyone is miserable. The guys behind me have been screaming all day, abusing the opposition, each other, and anyone else they can find.

Earlier on, they yelled out to this guy named Harris.

“Oi, Harris! Show us y’ bald spot!”

“Harris, y’ dirty boy!”

I’m down at the fence, quiet.

When our mob was fielding, they gave our own players a good mouthful as well, yelling, “Hey, Lehmann — you’re lucky to be in the side — give us a wave!” He didn’t, but they didn’t stop. “Hey, Lehmann, y’ ignorant bloody — give us a wave or you’ll get my beer on your head!”

After a while the guy waved and everyone cheered, but now in the rain delay, it’s all getting a bit much.

The Mexican wave is going around the ground.

People go up, throwing anything they possibly can into the air and booing when it gets to the Members, and they don’t go up like everyone else.

When the wave stops, the fellas discover a young security guard maybe twenty meters to our right. He’s one of many security guards wearing black pants, black boots, and yellow shirts.

He’s kind of big and stupid-looking and he has black greasy hair and huge lamb chop sideburns that go right down to his jawline.

He gets started in on: “Hey, you! Security man! Give us a wave!”

He sees us but there’s no response.

“Hey, Elvis, give us a wave!”

“Hey, Bobby Burns, give us a wave!” He smiles and nods, very cool, and cops a barrage for it. Oohs and aahs and you’re an idiot this and that. Still they keep going. “Hey, Travolta!”

“Hey, Travolta, give us a wave! A proper one!” Toward the end of the dream, I suddenly feel weird and I realize that I’m actually naked. Yes, naked.

“Geez, y’ right, mate?” someone asks from behind. Then the streaking dares start coming. “C’mon mate, I’ll pay your fine if you make it to the other side.”

I refuse, and each time I do, another piece of clothing reappears over my sk

The sick dream ends with me sitting there in my normal clothes again, glad and smiling that I didn’t streak or do the pitch invasion I was urged to do.

As the dream suggests, I may be perverted and sick, but I’m not completely stupid.

“You won’t catch me without my trousers. Not for long anyway.”

No one hears.

The players come back out.

The security guard still cops a good mouthful.