Underdogs (23 page)

Julia was, of course, an absolute scrubber. There’s not a whole lot more I can say about her. A scrubber (in case you don’t know) is a girl who might be described as kind of slutty or festy, yet still without being a complete prostitute or anything like that. She chews gum a lot. She might drink excessively and smoke for show. She’ll call you a faggot, poofter, or wanker with a lovely smirk on her face. She’ll wear tight-arse jeans and good cleavage and she won’t care too much if her headlights are on. Jewelry: moderate to heavy, maybe with a nose ring or eyebrow ring for rebellious originality. Then there’s the makeup. At times it’s
bucketed
on, especially if there’s a bit of acne involved on her face, although more often than not, a scrubber isn’t too bad-looking at all. She just has a tendency to make herself ugly, by what she says and what she does.

And Julia?

What can I say?

She was beautiful. She w
as blond.

And she was a scrubber and a half.

“So this is Cameron,” she said when she first saw me. She was chewing that low-sugar gum that dentists highly recommend.

“Hey,” I said, and Rube winked at me. I knew what the wink meant. Something like,
Not bad, huh
? or,
You
wouldn’t knock her back, would y
’? or even simply,
Pretty good handfuls, ay
? The bastard.

As you can imagine, I got out of there pretty quick smart, because that girl annoyed the crap out of me very bloody fast. My only hope was that Rube wouldn’t take her to see me staring at that Stephanie girl’s house. Octavia, I could handle, because she at least had a bit of class about her. A bit of niceness. But not this one. She’d most likely call me a bit of a lonely bastard as well. Or maybe she’d say something like, “Get a life,” or repeat something Rube had previously said, hoping his charisma would rub off on her. No way. I wouldn’t give her a chance. Not this one (even though
Christ
, I thought at one stage,
take a look at her
. She had an
Inside Sport
body if ever I’d seen one).

But no.

I’d made up my mind.

Rather than hang around them like a bad smell, I decided to go to the movies and hang around like a bad smell there instead.

On a cold, windy Saturday, when Dad didn’t need me, I saw three movies on the one day, before going over to Glebe a while, and then home. In the night, I went down to our basement and wrote for a while, feeling everything that was me shift and turn inside.

I was in bed for quite a while when Rube came in and slumped down on his own bed across from me. When I got up to turn off the light, he said, “Well Cam?”

“Well what?”

“What are your thoughts?” “On what?” “On Julia.”

“Well,” I began, but I didn’t want to congratulate him on her, and I didn’t want to interfere either. The injured darkness of the room swayed and stumbled and I said, “She’s okay, I guess.”

“Okay!?” He raised his voice excitedly. “She’s pretty bloody brilliant if you ask me.”

“But I didn’t ask you, did I?” I stated. “You asked
me
and I told you the answer.”

“Smart-arse.”

I laughed.

“Are you tryin’ to start somethin’?” “Of course not.”

“Well you better bloody not …”

Rube’s voice trailed off and he fell asleep, letting the night throb around me, alone.

I lay there, not sleeping for hours — thinking about the cover model on the magazine at the barber, then an exotic supermodel I saw on an ad at the movies. In my mind, I was with them. In them. Alone. For a while I even thought of Julia, but that was too much. I mean, there’s perversion and there’s perversion. Even for me.

In the morning, the previous night’s conversation between Rube and me was forgotten. He ate slabs of bacon in the kitchen before going out again, while I stayed in because I had work due in at school next day.

Of course, I knew Rube was with Julia, and the pattern continued.

About two weeks went by, and everything was normal. Normal routine.

Dad was working hard, plumbing.

Mrs. Wolfe was the same, cleaning people’s houses and doing a few cleaning shifts at the hospital.

Sarah did some overtime.

Steve kept winning at football, working in his office job, and living in his apartment with Sal. Rube went out with Julia

And I still wrote my words, sometimes in our bedroom, sometimes in the basement. I also went over to Glebe quite a few times, more out of habit now than anything else.

Soon, though, a day came that changed everything.

It … I don’t know how to explain it.

It all seemed so normal, but slightly off-center at the same time.

I walked the city streets, as usual.

I made my way over to the suburb of Glebe, without even thinking about where I was walking.

I went there, sat there, stood there, waited there, even begged there for something, anything to happen.

It was a Thursday, and in the dying moments of day, when the last rays of light stood up to be killed in the sky, I could feel someone behind me, just to the side. I could feel a presence, a shadow, standing just obscured behind a tree.

I turned around. I looked.

“Rube?” I asked. “That you, Rube?” But it wasn’t Rube.

I was sitting down against the small brick fence when I saw the person step into the last remnants of light, and walk slowly toward me. It was Octavia.

It was Octavia and she walked over and sat next to me.

“Hi Cameron,” she said.

“Hi Octavia.” I was shocked.

Silence bent down then, just for a moment, and whispered to each of us.

My heart threw itself to my throat.

Then, down.

Down.

She looked into the window I’d been staring at. Stephanie’s window.

“Nothing?” she asked, and I knew what she meant.

“No, not tonight,” I answered.

“Any night?”

I couldn’t help it.

I promise you, I couldn’t….

A huge stupid tear rose up and fell out of my eye. It stammered down my face to my mouth and I could taste it. I could taste the saltiness of it, on my lips.

“Cameron?”

I looked at her.

“You okay?” she asked.

And all I did from there was tell her said, “She’s not comin’ out tonight, or any other night, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” I was even moved to quote Rube. “Y’ feel what y’ feel, and that girl doesn’t feel a thing for me. That’s all there is to it….” I looked away, at the dying sky, attempting to pull myself together.

I began wondering exactly why I’d chosen this Glebe girl as the one I wanted to please, to drown in. “Cam?” asked Octavia. “Cam?”

She kept wanting me to look at her, but I still wasn’t ready. Instead, I stood up and stared into the house. The lights went on. The curtains were drawn, and the girl, as always, was nowhere to be seen.

Yet, there was a girl next to me, who’d stood up now as well, and we were both beside the brick fence. She looked at me and made me look back. She asked one more time.

“Cam?”

Finally, I answered, quietly, timidly. “Yeah?”

And Octavia’s face cried out to me in the silent city night as she asked, “Would you come and stand outside my house instead?”

THE CHARCOAL SKY

Sometimes you go to the wrong place, but the right way comes and finds you. It might make you trip over it or
speak to it. Or it might come to you when a day is stripped apart by night and ask you to take its hand and forget this wrong place, this illusion where you stand
.

I think of the mess in my mind and the girl who walked through it to stand before me and let her voice come close
.

I remember brick walls
.

There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it — when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were
.

It calls your name, but you’re gone
.

You hear nothing. See nothing
.

You’ve gone somewhere else. You’ve gone somewhere to find a different definition of yourself, and it’s a place where nothing else can touch you. Nothing else can swing on your thoughts. It’s only yourself, flat against the charcoal sky, for one moment
.

Then flat on the earth again, where the world doesn’t recognize you anymore. Your name is what it always was. You look and sound like you always did, yet you’re not the same, and when a city wind begins to call out, its voice doesn’t only hit the edges
.

It connects
.

It blows into you, rather than in spite of you.

Sometimes you feel like it’s calling out for you
.

She broke into me.

It was that simple.

Her words reached into me, grabbed my spirit by the heart, and reefed it from my body.

It was the words and the voice, and Octavia and me. And my spirit, on the silent, shadow-stricken street. I could only watch her, as slowly, she collected my hand and placed it gently in hers.

I took all of her in.

It was cold and her smoky breath flowed from her mouth. She smiled and her hair kept falling over her face, so beautiful and true. She suddenly had the most human eyes I’d ever seen, and the slight movements of her mouth whispered without the words. I could feel her pulse in my hand, beating gently onto my skin. Her shoulders were slight, and she stood with me on the city street that was slowly flooding with darkness. Her hand was holding on to me. She was waiting.

Silent howls howled through me.

The streetlights flickered on.

I remained still. Completely still, looking at her. Looking at the truth of her, standing before me.

I wanted to pour myself out and let my words spill onto the footpath, but I said nothing. This girl had just
asked me the most brilliant question in the world and I was completely speechless.

“Yes,” I wanted to say. I wanted to shout it and pick her up and hold her and say, “Yes. Yes. I’ll come and stand outside your house anytime,” but I didn’t say anything. My voice found its way into my mouth but it never made it out. It always stumbled somewhere, then became lost, or was swallowed again.

The moment was cut open. It fell in pieces all around me, and I had no idea what would happen next, whether it would come from Octavia or me. I wanted to crouch down and pick up every piece of it and put it in my pockets. In a way, somewhere close to me, I could hear the voice of my spirit, telling me what to say, or what to do, but I couldn’t understand it. The silence around me was too strong. It overwhelmed me, until I noticed her fingers wrapping tighter in mine for just a moment.

Then gone.

Slowly, she let her hand come loose, and it was over.

My hand fell back and gently slapped my side from the impact of her letting go.

She looked into me and then away.

Was she hurt? Did she expect me to speak? Did she want me to hold her hand again? Did she want me to pull her into me?

Questions lunged at me, but still I didn’t get close enough to doing anything. I simply stood there like a hapless, hopeless fool, waiting for something to change.

In the end it was Octavia’s voice that stamped out the burning silence of the night. A quiet, courageous voice.

She said, “Just …” She hesitated. “Just think about it, Cam,” and after a moment of thought and a last glance into me, she turned and walked away.

I watched.

Her legs.

Her feet, walking.

Her hair, echoing down her back in the dark.

I also remembered her voice, and the question, and the feeling I felt rising up through me. It shouted in me and warmed me and chilled me and threw itself down inside me. Why didn’t I say anything?

Why didn’t you say anything
? I abused myself.

I could hear her footsteps now.

They lifted and scratched just slightly as she walked away in the direction of the train station.

“Cameron.”

A voice called to me.

“Cameron!”

I remember clearly that my hands were in my pockets, and when I looked over to my right, I swear I could make out the figure of my spirit, also standing against the brick fence, also with its hands in its pockets. It looked at me. It stared. It said more words.

“What the hell are you doing?” it asked me.

“What?”

“What do you mean
what
? Aren’t you going after her?”

“I can’t.” I looked down, at my old shoes and the jaded bottom sleeves of my jeans. I just looked and spoke. “It’s too late now anyway.”

My spirit came closer. “Bloody hell, boy!” The words were brutal. They made me look up and stare, to find the face connected to the voice. “You stand and wait outside some girl’s place who couldn’t care less, and when something real arrives, you fall apart! What kind of person
are
you?”

It shut up then.

The voice ended abruptly.

What it wanted to say was said, and we resumed standing against the fence, with our hands in our pockets, and silence feeding on our mouths.

A minute passed, and another. Time scratched itself through my thoughts, like the sound of Octavia’s feet.

Finally, I moved.

It was after about fifteen minutes.

I took a final stare at the house, knowing it was probably the last time I would ever see it, and I began walking toward Redfern Station, under the electric wires, and through the cold of the street. The leaded windows of houses glimmered when the streetlights rushed at them, and I could hear my feet lifting and then clawto the road as I started running. Behind me somewhere, I could hear the footsteps and
breathing of my spirit. I wanted to beat it to the station. I had to. I ran.

I let the cold air splash into my lungs as I thought the name
Octavia
, over and over. I ran till my arms ached as hard as my legs and my head throbbed with the blood rushing into it.

“Octavia,” I said.

To myself.

I kept running.

Past the university.

Past the abandoned shops.

Past a few guys who looked like they might try to rob me.

“Come on,” I told myself when I thought I was slowing down, and I looked hard into the distance to see the legs and footsteps of Octavia.

When I made it to the station there were hordes of people pouring through the gates and I managed to slip through between a guy with a suitcase and a woman holding flowers. I went to the Illawarra line and sprinted down the escalator, past all the suits, the briefcases, and the different day-old perfumes and hair spray.

I made it to the bottom, nearly tripping.

Look at this bloody crowd
! I thought, but slowly I edged my way along the platform. When the train arrived all the people crammed and crushed and shook their heads when I got in their way. There was even a pretty bad smell like someone’s underarm sweat. It
licked me in the face, but still I looked and rushed through the crowd.

“Get out of the way,” someone snarled, and I was left with no other choice.

I got on the train.

I got on and stood in the packed middle compartment, right next to a guy with a mustache who was obviously the owner of the putrid underarm sweat. We both held on to the greasy metal pole until both the train and I got moving.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Sorry,” and I made my way through the carriage downstairs. I figured I’d do all the lower levels of the train first and come back on the upper levels. This was the only train going to Hurstville. She had to be on it.

She wasn’t in the carriage I got in on, or the next.

I opened the doors between each carriage and went through, with the cold tunnel air coughing around me before I entered the next carriage. Once I nearly slammed the door in my spirit’s face as it closed in on me.

“There!”

I heard its voice point her out to me in the crowd of humans locked up in the suburban train.

I saw her just after the train rattled and burst out of the tunnel and into the paler darkness of the night. She was standing, just like I’d been standing a few carriages back, but facing the other way. From the lower level of the train I could see her legs.

Footstep. Footstep.

I edged my way closer and made it to the stairs and started climbing them.

Soon I could see all of her.

She stood and looked out the smeared window of the train. I wondered what thoughts she was thinking.

I was close, and I could see her neck and the movement of her breathing. I saw her fingers holding the pole as the train stuttered and the lights flooded and blinked.

Octavia
, I said inside.

My spirit shoved me forward.

“Go on,” it said, but it didn’t dare me, order me, or demand anything anymore. It was just telling me what was right, and what I needed to do.

“All right,” I whispered.

I walked closer and stood behind her.

Her flannel shirt.

The skin of her neck.

The ruffled streams of hair landing on her back.

Her shoulder …

I reached out and touched her.

She turned around and I looked into her and a feeling lurched in me. God, she looked beautiful. I heard my voice. It said, “I’ll stand outside your house, Octavia.” I even smiled. “I’ll come and stand there tomorrow.”

That was when she closed her eyes for a moment and smiled back.

She smiled and said, “That’d be good, Cam.” The voice was quiet.

I moved closer and grabbed hold of her shirt at her stomach and held on to her, relieved.

At the next stop, I told her I’d better get out.

“See you tomorrow?” she asked.

I nodded.

The train doors opened and I got out. When they closed I had no idea what station I was at, but as the train pulled and dragged itself along, I walked with it, still looking into her through the window.

When the train was gone I stood there, eventually realizing how cold it was on the platform.

Something struck me.

My spirit.

It was gone.

I searched everywhere for it, until I realized. It didn’t get off the train with me. It was still in the carriage, with Octavia.

TRACK

A crowded train drags itself through me
.

I own it now. I live inside the carriages, letting them carry me home
.

If I stay inside long enough, the train slowly empties, until it’s just her and me standing inside it, under the flickering fluorescent lights and above the metallic shifting of the wheels, rolling over the tracks
.

The train breathes.

It speaks
.

Its voice is made up of memory and the words of now.

Sparks flick and fall from above.

We stand
.

I hold her by the shirt
.

My spirit’s at my shoulder, whispering
.

Even when I get out of the train, I find myself running alongside it, bargaining with fatigue, and making sure I’ll always remember it
.

Finally, it goes too fast. It shivers in front of my eyes and fades, and I bend down, amongst the words. I allow my hands to fall to my knees. I suck the air hard. I can’t breathe it quick enough, it tastes that good
.