Underdogs (6 page)

During the week, I must confess, Rube and I were up to old tricks. Again. We couldn’t help ourselves. Robberies were out. One Punch. Out.

So what the hell else was there for us to do? The d
ecision I came to was backyard soccer, or football, or whatever you please to call it. For starters, we had to.

We did.

I promise.

Maybe I asked Rube if he wanted to get into it because he was still so miserable about the whole street-sign debacle. Admittedly, it was demoralizing, to actually succeed and then find a way to make yourself fail again. It hurt more than Rube could relate. He just sat there every afternoon and rubbed his gruff jawline with an ominous, melancholic hand. His hair was dirty as ever, strewn over his ears and biting at his back.

“C’mon,” I tried to get him in.

“Nuh.”

It was often like this. Me, being the younger brother, I had always wanted Rube to do things, whether it was a game of Monopoly or a ball game in the backy Rube, the older brother, well he was the judge and jury.
If he didn’t feel like doing it, we didn’t do it. Maybe that’s why I was always so willing to go on his robbery missions — simply because he actually wanted me to come along. We’d given up on doing things with Steve years ago.

“C’mon,” I kept trying. “I’ve got the ball pumped up, and the goals are ready. Come have a look. They’re chalked onto the fence at both ends.”

“The same size?”

“Two meters wide, nearly one and a half high.”

“Good, good.”

He looked up and gave a slight smile, for the first time in days.

“We on?” I asked again, with far too much eagerness. “Okay.”

We went outside then and it was lovely. Absolutely lovely.

Rube fell to the cement and got up. Twice. He swore his head off at me when I scored, and it was getting serious. An out-of-control shot at goal went flying to the top of the fence, we held our breath, then let it out when it hit the edge and came back. We even smiled at each other.

It was brilliant mainly because Rube had been down and out with his own form of identity crisis while I was in my typical agony over the whole Rebecca Conlon affair. This was much better. Yes. It was, because all of a sudden we were back to doing the things we did
best — throwing ourselves and each other around the backyard and getting dirty and making sure to swear and carry on and, if possible, offend the neighbors. This was better all right. This was a welcome return to the good old days.

The ball thumped into the fence, making next-door’s dog bark and the caged parrots over there go wild. I copped a whack in the shins. Rube fell on the concrete again, taking some skin off his hand when he braced himself for the landing. All the while that dog next door kept barking and those parrots were in some kind of frenzy. It was old times all right, and typically, Rube won, 7–6. I didn’t care, though, because both of us ended up laughing and not taking things so seriously.

What greeted us on the back step was, however, something very different. It was Sarah, alone.

First to notice her was Rube. He backhanded me lightly on the arm and motioned over to her with his head.

I looked.

I said very quietly, “Oh, no.”

Sarah looked up then because she must have heard me, and I promise you, the way she looked was bad. She was sitting there, all crumpled up, with her knees up to her shoulders and her arms folded, holding them up as if to keep all air inside her. Tears cut down her face.

Awkward.

That’s exactly how it was when we walked over to our sister and stood on each side of her, looking at her and feeling things and not knowing

Eventually, I sat down next to her but I had no idea what to say.

In the end, it was Sarah who broke the silence. The dog next door had settled down, and the neighborhood seemed stunned by this event occurring in our backyard. It was like it could sense it. It could sense some form of tragedy and helplessness being played out, and to tell you the truth, it all surprised me. I was so used to things just going on, oblivious and ignorant to all feeling.

Sarah spoke.

She spoke. “He got someone else.”

“Bruce?” I asked, to which Rube looked down at me with an incredulous face on him.

“No,” he barked, “the king of bloody Sweden. Who do y’ think?”

“Okay, all right!”

Then Sarah leaned away and said, “I think you’d better leave me alone for a while.”

“Okay.”

As I stood up and left with Rube, the city around us seemed colder than ever again, and I realized that even if it really had sensed something going on, it certainly didn’t care. It moved forward again. I could feel it. I could almost hear it laugh and taste it. Close. Watching.

Mocking. And it was cold, so cold, as it watched my sister bleeding at the back of our house.

Inside, Rube was angry.

He said, “Now, you see? This spoils things.”

“It was always gonna happen.” As I said it, I saw Steve’s figure out on the front porch. Away from us.

“Yeah, but why today?”

“Why not?”

From the couch, I looked at an old photo of Steve, Sarah, Rube, and me as very young children, standing in staggered formation for some photographer man. Steve smiled. Sarah smiled. We all did. It was strange to see it, because it was there every day and only now was I really noticing it. Steve’s smile. It cared — for us. Sarah’s smile. It was beautiful. Rube and I looked clean. All four of us were young and undaunted and our smiles were so strong that it made me smile even then on the couch, with a kind of loss.

Where did that go?
I asked inside me. I couldn’t even remember the photo being taken. Was it actually real?

At that moment, Sarah was on our back step, crying, and Rube and I were slumped on the couch, powerless to help her. Steve didn’t seem to care, for any of us.

Where did it go?
I thought again. How could that picture turn into this one?

Had years defeated us?

Had they worn us down?

Had they passed like big white clouds, disintegrating very slowly so that we couldn’t notice?

In any case, this was pretty awful, and it was to worsen.

It worsened during the night when Sarah went out and didn’t come back for hours.

She left with the words “I’m goin’ out for a walk,” and a lot of time passed while she was gone. The rest of us acted indifferent to it at first, but by just after eleven, we were all worried. Even Steve seemed a bit affected.

“C’mon,” our father told us. “We’re goin’ out lookin’.”

No one argued.

Rube and I went out in the panel van with Dad while Mum and Steve stayed home in case Sarah showed up while we were gone. We checked the pubs and all her friends’ places. Even Bruce’s place. Empty. She was nowhere.

By midnight, when we got home, she still wasn’t back, and all we could do now was wait.

We each did it differently.

Mum sat, silent, not looking at anyone.

Dad made coffee after coffee and drank them down like there was no tomorrow.

Steve put a heat pack on and off his ankle and kept it elevated, determined.

Rube mumbled something very quietly, at least five hundred times: “I’m gonna kill that bastard. I’m gonna kill that bastard. I’m gonna get that Bruce Patterson. I’m gonna kill that … I’m gonna. I’m gonna …”

As for me, I ground my teeth together a bit and leaned forward with my chin resting on the table.

Only Rube went to bed. The rest of us stayed.

“No sign?” Mum asked when she woke up at one o’clock.

“No.” Dad shook his head, and quite soon, we were all falling asleep, under a white, aching kitchen light globe.

Later on, a dream was arriving.

Interruption.

“Cam?”

“Cam?”

I was shaken awake. I jumped. “Sarah?” “Nah, me.” It was Rube. “Ah, bloody you!”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “She’s still not here?” “No. Unless she walked straight past us to bed.” “Nah, she’s not in there.”

That was when we noticed something else — now Steve was gone as well. I checked the basement

“Nup.” I looked back up at Rube. So now just the two of us went out on the porch, then out on the street. Where the hell was he?

“Wait.” Rube turned around, looking down the road. “There he is.”

We saw our brother sitting, propped up against a telegraph pole. We ran down to him. We stopped. Rube asked, “What’s goin’ on?”

Steve looked up, and I had never seen him afraid like that, or as knotted up. He looked so lanky, and still like a man; he had always seemed to be a man. Always … but never like this. Not a vulnerable one.

His crutches were two dead arms, lying there, wooden, next to him.

Slowly, meltingly, our brother said, “I guess.” He stopped. Started again. “I just wanted to find her.”

We said nothing, but I think when we helped Steve up and helped him walk home, he must have seen what the lives of Rube, Sarah, and me were like. He’d seen what it was to fall down and not know if you could get back up, and it scared him. It scared him because we did get up. We always did. We always.

We took him home.

We —

From there, we all waited in the kitchen again, but only Rube and I were awake. At one point, he whispered something to me. The same thing as before.

He went, “Ay, Cam. We’re gonna get that Patterson bloke.” He sounded so sure of it. “We’ll get him.”

I was too tired to say anything but “We will.”

Pretty soon, Rube was asleep, like Mum, Dad, and Steve. It didn’t take long for my own eyes to feel like cement and I went as well.

All of us, asleep in the kitchen. I dreamed. It’s coming up. Not a bad one.

When I woke up again, there was an extra person now, sleeping like the rest of us, at the crowded kitchen table.

I’m standing in an empty goal. The stadium is packed. Perhaps 120,000 people have their eyes glued to me. They chant.

“Wolf Man! Wolf Man!”

I look around the entire stadium, at all the people willing me on, and I love them, even though they are complete strangers to me. I think they’re South Americans or something. Brazilians or something. Maybe Argentinians.

“I won’t let you down,” I whisper to them, knowing they couldn’t hear me even if I screamed to them.

In front of me, there is a line of people, all in the opposition’s colors.

They are the people from my story:

Dad, Rube, Mum, Steve, Sarah, Bruce, Bruce’s faceless new girlfriend, Greg, the dental nurse, the dentist, Dennison the principal, Welfare Woman, Rube’s mates, and Rebecca Conlon.

I’m wearing all the stuff the goalkeeper has to wear: boots, socks pulled up, a green jersey with a diamond pattern on the front, and gloves. It’s night and the black air is busted through by huge lights standing like watchtowers, over all of us.

I’m ready.

I slap my hands together and crouch, ready to dive either way for the ball. The goal behind me feels kilometers wide and kilometers deep. The net is a loose cage, swaying and whispering in the breeze.

Dad steps up, places the ball, calls out that this is some kind of cup final penalty shootout, and that everything depends on me. He walks back, props, and runs and drills the ball to my right. I dive but the ball is way out of reach. He looks at me after the ball flies into the corner of the net, and he smiles, as if to say, “Sorry, boy. I had to.”

Mum steps up. Then Rube. They both score, Rube with a callous smile. He says, “You’ve got no hope, sunshine.”

The crowd through all of this is always buzzing, like static in my ear. When I am beaten and the ball scores, they roar and then sigh, because they are on my side. They want me to save one because they know how hard I’m fighting. They see my small arms and the will on my lips, and they cannot hear, but feel the smacking of my hands when I ready myself for each penalty kick. They still chant.

My name.

My name.

Yet, no matter how hard I try, I can’t save a single goal.

A miserable Sarah even gets through me. Before her shot, she says, “Don’t try to help me. It’s pointless. All is out of your control.”

Steve goes, and Bruce. Rube’s mates. Everyone.

Then Rebecca Conlon steps up.

She walks toward me.

Slowly.

Smiling.

She says: “If you save it, I’ll love you.”

I nod, solemnly, ready.

She goes back, comes in, kicks the ball.

It’s up high and I lose it in the lights. I find it and dive, high to the right, and somehow, when the ball hits my wrist, it comes back and hits me hard in the face.

I come down with it.

It pops out when I land and it ro, so slowly, over the line and into the back of the net.

Oh, I dive for it, but it’s no use. I fall short — and quickly, I’m alone, not in the stadium but in our sun-drenched backyard, sitting against the fence with a bloodied nose.

Our plan was to get him quickly. No point letting a week or two pass. If we did, maybe the burning desire to really put it to the guy would fade. There was no way we could afford that.

We found out that this Bruce Pat
terson had been getting it off with some other girl for about a month, thus leading our sister on by still coming over. It was a slap in the head for all of us that we allowed him into our house when he was into it with some scrubber around the city.

“Should we go bash him?” I asked Rube, but he only looked at me, with ridicule.

“Are you serious? Look at the size of y’. You’re like a Chihuahua and Patterson’s built like a brick bloody shithouse. Do you have any idea what the guy would do to you?”

“Well, I thought maybe the two of us.”

“I’m a weed myself” was Rube’s curt response to that one. “Sure, I’ve got a hell of a beard goin’, but Bruce could kill the pair of us.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

What happened next was unexpected.

There was a knock at the door that was more like scraping, and when I opened it, my former best mate Greg was standing there.

“Can I come in?” he asked me. “Whatta y’ reckon?”

I opened the flyscreen door and he entered the house, just after taking a look over at Steve, who sat grim-faced as ever on the porch.

“Hey, werewolf,” Greg greeted Rube inside, to which Rube threatened to throw him out.

“Sorry,” he apologized, and I took him into Rube’s and my room.

He sat down under the window, against the wall. Silent.

“Well,” I asked, sitting on my bed, “if you don’t mind my asking, but what the hell brings you here?”

“I need help” was the swift, frank reply. He rummaged his hands through his hair and I could see the ‘druff go flying out. Greg always had a bit of a dandruff problem. He enjoyed it, shaking it out on the desk in school.

“Help with what?” I kept probing. “Money.” “How much?” “Three hundred.”

“Three hundred!
Bloody hell, what the hell’ve been doin’ lately?”

“Ah, don’t ask. Just …” His face flinched a bit. “You got it?”

“Geez, three hundred, I d’know.” I went to my piece of carpet and got out what was stashed under there. Eighty bucks.

“Well, I’ve got eighty here.” I got out my bankbook thing and saw that I had a hundred and thirty in it. “So I’ve got two-ten all up. That’s the best I can do.”

“Ah, damn, mate.”

I joined him on the floor, against my bed, asking, “Just tell me what it’s for, will y’?” He was reluctant.

“Tell me or I won’t give y’ the cash.” This was a lie and we both knew it. We both knew I was giving Greg my money and I wouldn’t even ask for it back. That was all there was to it. But he owed me at least this. He owed it to me to say where my money was going.

“Ah,” he gave out. “One of me mates, Dale. You know ‘im?”

Dale Perry.

Yeah, I knew him all right. He was exactly the kind of guy I hated because he walked around like he owned the joint no matter where he went, and I hated his guts. In Commerce the previous year (a subject I should never have chosen), he had taken his metal ruler, heated it up on the heater, and then held it up against my ear, burning the absolute hell out of me. That’s who Dale Perry was. He was also in that big group chatting with the pretty girls at the football that day.

“Yeah, I know the guy,” I stated calmly.

“Yeah, well, a few of his older mates, they needed someone to pick some gear up for ‘em. Three hundred bucks’ worth.”

“Gear?”

Of course, I knew exactly what the gear was, but I thought I’d make this whole thing just a little uncomfortable for Greg. After all, I was giving the guy every cent I had on me. So much for buying myself a stereo or whatever. So much for that hard-earned cash I’d got working the past few weeks with Dad. It was all getting flushed down the toilet because a former best mate of mine came to me because he knew I was the only guy who wouldn’t let him down. None of his new mates would help him out, but his original one would.

It’s weird.

Don’t you think?

It’s not so much that the old friend is a better friend. It’s just that you know the person better, and you know they don’t really care if you’re acting like a poor, grovelling idiot. They know you would do the same for them. I knew Greg would do it for me if it was the other way around.

So yes, “Gear?” I asked him. “What are y’ talkin’ about?You know,” he answered.

I let him get away with it. “Yeah, I know.”

“Just light stuff,” he went on, “but a whole lot of it. There were about ten guys and they all threw in and they were all too lazy to go get it ‘emselves.” He slipped down against the wall a little further. “I got the stuff no problems, but things got bad when I had to sit on it for a night.”

“Aah.” I threw my head back and started laughing. I was pretty sure I knew now exactly what had happened.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Greg nodded. “Me old bloody lady found it under my bed and the old man threw it in the fire. It was like signing my death warrant…. I can’t believe the old boy chucked it in the fire, ay.”

By now, I was in stitches, because I could just see Greg’s old man — a tiny, curly-haired, wiry brute of a man swearing his head off and throwing it into the fire. It actually got Greg laughing as well, even though he kept saying, “It’s not funny, Cam. It’s not funny.”

It was, though, and that was what saved him for the money.

It saved him because I told the story to Rube and he shelled out the extra ninety bucks Greg needed, even though he threatened to kill him if he didn’t get it back in a fair hurry. The solution ended up being that I would pay Rube back from the money I earned with Dad over the next month or so and everyone was happy. Then Greg would pay the lot back to me.

For Greg, you could see the pressure released from his face. He didn’t look so drawn once that cash had found its way into his hand.

In the next room, Sarah was lying on her bed in a hundred pieces.

We walked past her on our way out back, where Rube, Greg, and I took potshots at goal against the
fence. We took turns at being goalie. It was my idea (mainly because of the dream I’d had the night before), and I was actually just hoping I wouldn’t get a bleeding nose. Although, Rebecca Conlon wasn’t in the yard, was she? I thought I was pretty safe.

Of course, next-door’s dog started barking and the parrots went berserk.

It was all heightened when Rube phoned his mates. This was the conversation:

“Hello.”

“Hello, Simon. Ruben here.” “Ruben. How are you?” “I’m well. Y’ comin’ over?”

“Why not indeed. That sounds convenient enough.” “Get Cheese an’ Jeff.”

“Right.”

“Good-bye.” “Good-bye.”

When they made it to our place, we got a fully fledged game going.

Over and ov, we hammered the ball into the fence, making the most of the time we had before Mum and Dad got home. You should have heard it.
Smash. Smash.
The ball at both ends was killing it and the sound echoed around everywhere, followed by the shrieks and the swearing.

My team was Jeff, Greg, and myself and we were actually winning, even though we were smaller and weaker than Rube’s team. It was our hunger.

Four–two it was when next-door’s dog stopped barking.

“Stop, stop!” I shouted when I noticed. “You hear that?”

“What?”

“The dog.”

“Hey, yeah. It’s stopped barkin’.” I climbed up the fence and peeked over, and you won’t believe what I saw. The dog was dead.

“Geez, I think it’s dead,” I said, looking back at everyone else.

“What!?”

“I’m tellin’ y’s. Come have a look.”

Rube climbed up next to me and could only agree.

“Bloody ‘ell, I think he’s right,” he laughed back down to the others. “I think we’ve given the poor bloody thing a heart attack.”

“Y’ sure?”

“Or a stroke.”

“Oh no,” I said. “What have we done?” “What sort of dog is it?” Rube had had enough.

“I don’t bloody know!” he yelled down at Cheese. “I think it’s a, a —”

“Pomeranian,” I answered for him.

“What the hell’s a Pomeranian?”

“You know,” Cheese explained to the others, “one of those fluffy rodent-lookin’ things … I guess he just barked till he couldn’t take it anymore.”

Even the parrots over in the cage were looking morosely down at the dog.

“We’ve gotta do somethin’,” I said to Rube. “Like what? Give it mouth to mouth?” “Look, it’s shakin’.” “Oh, this is lovely, ay.”

I jumped over and took off my flanno shirt and wrapped up the dog. Rube came over and the rest of the fellas looked over the fence as we stroked the fluffy rodent-looking dog, wondering if it really was about to die.

After about fifteen minutes, our next-door neighbor came home — a fifty-year-old fella with a mouth fouler than all of us put together. He showed a lot of restraint, to tell you the truth as he raced out back, called us a few names, picked up the Pomeranian — whose name was Miffy by the way — and took it to the vet.

“Y’ think it’ll live?” we asked each other, back at our place.

“Mate, I d’know.”

Gradually, everyone left. Greg was last. “Man.” He shook his head on his way out. “I’d forgotten what it’s like round here.” “Old times, ay?” “Yeah,” he nodded. “Chaos.” “Absolutely.”

It really had been like old times, but I knew it was fruitless to think it would go on. We both knew that the
next time he came over would be to pay either some or all of my money back. It was just the way things were.

In the evening, something I knew was coming came. The neighbor.

He came over telling Mum and Dad that they couldn’t control Rube and me, and because Rube was the only one out of us with any money left, he was the one who paid the man’s vet bill.

Miffy the Pomeranian, by the way, was okay. It was just a very mild heart attack. Poor rodent midget dog.

It was all pretty much the last straw for our mother, though.

She had us sitting at the kitchen table and she circled us, shouting and telling us off like you wouldn’t believe. She even held the wooden spoon under our noses, even though she hadn’t hit us with it since I was ten. I tell you, she looked ready to wrap it around our heads.

“Why do you keep doing this!?” she screamed at us. “Giving each other black eyes, giving bloody neighbors’ dogs heart attacks. It’s a disgrace…. I’m ashamed of you both.
Again!”

Even Dad could only sit in the corner, completely silent. He didn’t dare to speak himself for fear of being the next to be set upon.

At the end, she really went crazy, getting the compost off the kitchen sink, and instead of taking it outside to put it in her compost bin, she threw it to the floor, picked it up, and threw it down again, this time at my feet.

“You’re like animals!” she shouted with even more volume than earlier. Then she said the thing that always seems to hurt the most:
“Grow up!”

Needless to say, Rube and I cleaned up the mess and took it outside and stayed out there. We didn’t dare to go back in.

From her bedroom window, Sarah looked out at us and smiled, shaking her head through her suffering. She was laughing, which made us laugh a bit ourselves. It made Rube find his resolve again and say, “We’re still gettin’ Patterson. Make no mistake about that.” “We’ve gotta,” I agreed.

After a longer while, I reflected on the day’s proceedings, because now I owed Rube half the vet’s bill as well. Things had really gone downhill, I promise you“Damn that Pomeranian,” I suggested. “Huh,” Rube snorted. “Pomeranian with a weak heart. It could only happen to us, ay.”

There’s a guy in front of me on a dirt road at sunrise. He looks at me. I look at him.

We stand, maybe ten meters apart, until finally I decide to break the silence. I say, “So?”

“So what?” comes his reply. He’s wearing a robe and scratches his beard and tries to get a stone out of one of his sandals.

“Well, I don’t know,” I think to say. “Who the hell are you, for starters?” He smiles. Laughs. Stands.

When he’s ready, he repeats the question and answers it: “Who the hell am I?” A brief laugh. “I’m Christ.” “Christ? You actually exist?” “Of course I bloody do.” I decide to test Him. “So who am I, then?”

“I’m not interested in who you are,” and He walks toward me along the road, still trying to get that pebble out of His sandal. “Bloody sandals.” He scuffs, then continues. “Actually, I’m interested in
what
you are.”

“Which is?”

“Miserable.”

“Yeah.” I shrug in agreement.

“I can help,” He goes on, and I’m expecting Him now to give me the usual line all those scripture teachers give us on their annual pilgrimage to our school. He doesn’t.

Instead, He hands me a bottle with red liquid in it and motions with hands saying, “Bottoms up” for me to drink it.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Wine.” “Yeah?”

“Actually, no, it’s red cordial — you’re too young to be drinking.”

“Aah, y’ wet blanket.”

“Hey, don’t blame me. It’s not my fault, I’m telling you. It was me old man who wouldn’t let me give you the real thing. So you can blame Him.”

“Okay, okay … What’s up with Him anyway?”

“Ah, He’s been under a lot of pressure lately.”

“The Middle East?”

“Yeah, they’re at it again.” He comes closer and whispers, “Just between you and me, He was close to calling the whole thing off last week.

“What? The world?” “Yep.”

“Christ almighty!”

Christ’s face looks disappointed at my words. “Oh, yeah. Sorry,” I say. “That sort of talk’s no good, ay.”

“No worries. Look.” Jesus has decided it’s time to get down to business. “I really came to give you this.”

He pulls something out of a robe pocket and I ask,

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s just some ointment.” He hands it to me. “For the bleeding nose.”