Underdogs

  Busted head.

  Broken jaw.

  Lots of stitches.

  Plenty of wires.

  Sure, he's like all fathers, my dad. My old man. He's okay. He's hard.

  He's sadistic-like. That is, if he's in the mood. Generally though, he's just a human guy with a dog's last name and I feel for him at the moment. He's half a man, because it seems that when a man can't work and when his wife and kids earn all the money, a man becomes half a man. It's just the way it is. Hands grow pale. Heartbeat gets stale.

  One thing I must say again, though, is that Dad wouldn't allow Steve or even Sarah to pay a single bill. Just their usual board. Even as he says his regular "No, no, it's okay," you can see where he's been ripped apart. You can see where the shadow opens the flesh and grabs his spirit by the throat. Often, I remember working with him on Saturdays. He'd tell me off and swear when I screwed something up, but he would tell me I did something decently as well. It would be short, to the point.

  We are working people.

  Work.

  Struggle

  Even laugh about it sometimes. None of us are winners. We're survivors.

  We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it's beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it's shared and taken and fought for.

  That's the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? Our own place is small perhaps, but when your old man is eaten by his own shadow, you realize that maybe in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it.

  Maybe that's what these pages of words are about.

  Bringing the world to the window.

  "It's okay," Mum says one night. I hear her from my bed as she and Dad discuss paying the bills. I can picture them at the kitchen table, because many things are fought, won, and lost in the kitchen at our place.

  Dad replies, "I don't understand it -- I used to have three months' work ahead of me, but since ..." His voice trails off. I imagine his feet, his jeaned legs, and the scar that angles down the side of his face and onto his throat. His fingers hold each other gently, entwining, making a single fist against the table.

  He's wounded.

  He's desperate -- which makes his next move pretty understandable, even if it can't be condoned. It's door to door. Door to dead-set door.

  "Well, I've tried advertising in the papers." He raises his voice in the kitchen again. It's the next Saturday. "I've tried everything, so I decided to knock on doors and work cheap. Fix what needs fixin'." While my mother places a chipped mug of coffee in front of him. All she does is stand there, and it's Rube, Sarah, and me that watch.

  The next weekend it gets worse, because Rube and I actually see him. We see him as he returns from someone's front gate and we can tell he's copped another rejection. It's strange. Strange to look at him, when just a matter of months ago our father was tough and hard and wouldn't give us an inch. (Not that he does now. It's just a different feeling, that's all.) He was brutal in his fairness. Cruel in his judgments. Harder than necessary for our own good. He had dirty hands and cash in his pocket and sweat in his armpits.

  Rube reminds me of something as we stand there by the street, making sure we don't let him see us.

  He says, "Remember when we was kids?"

  "Were kids."

  "Shut up, will y'?"

  "Okay."

  We walk to a trashed, scabby shop on Elizabeth Street that closed down years ago. Rube continues to talk. It's gray sky again, with blue holes shot through the cloud-blankets. We sit, against a wall, under a bolted-up window.

  Rube says, "I remember when we were younger and Dad built a new fence, because the old one was collapsing. I was about ten and you were nine, and the old man was out in the yard, from first light to sunset." Rube brings his knees up to his throat. His jeans cushion his chin, and the bullet holes in the sky widen. I look through them, at what Rube speaks of.

  I remember that time quite clearly -- how at the end of a day, when sun was melting back into horizon, Dad turned to us with some nails in his hand and said, "Fellas, these nails here are magic. They're magic nails." And the next day, we woke to the sound of a pounding hammer and we believed it. We believed those nails were magic, and maybe they still are now, because they take us back, to that sound. That pounding sound. They take us back to our father as he was: a vision of tall, bent-over strength, with a tough, hard smile and wire-curly hair. There was the slight stoop of his shoulders and his dirty shirt. Eyes of height ... There was a contentment to him -- an air of control, of all-rightness that sat down and hammered in the wake of a tangerine sky, or in that gradual twilight of slight rain, when water fell like tiny splinters from the clouds. He was our father then, not a human.

  "Now he's," I answer Rube, "just too real, y' know?" Not much else to say when you've just seen the man knock on doors.

  Real.

  Reel from it. Half a man, but. Still human.

  "The bastard," Rube laughs, and I laugh with him, as it seems like the only logical thing to do. "We're gonna cop a hidin' for this at school, ay."

  "You're right."

  You must understand that we know he's doing his door-knocking in our own district, which means people in school are getting closer and closer to whipping us with remarks. They'll find out all right, and Rube and I will go down heavily. It's just the way it is.

  Dad, doors, shame, and in the meantime, Sarah has been out late again.

  Three nights.

  Three drunken hazes.

  Two throw-ups.

  Then it happens.

  At school.

  "Hey Wolfe. Wolfe!" "What?"

  "Your old man came knockin' at our door on the weekend, lookin' for work. Me mum told him he's too useless to even let him near our pipes."

  Rube laughs.

  "Hey Wolfe, I can get your dad a paper run if you want. He could use the pocket money, ay." Rube smiles.

  "Hey Wolfe, when's your old man gonna get the dole?"

  Rube stares.

  "Hey Wolfe, you might have to leave school and get a job, boy. Y' family could use the extra money." Rube rubs his teeth together. Then.

  It happens.

  The one comment that does it:

  "Hey Wolfe, if your family needs the money so bad, your sister should take up whoring. She gets around a bit anyway, I hear...."

  Rube.

  Rube.

  "Rube!" I shout, running. Too late.

  Far too late, because Rube has the guy.

  His fingers get bloody from the guy's teeth. His fist hacks through him. Left hand only at first, but it's over and the guy doesn't have a chance. Hardly anyone sees it. Hardly anyone knows, but Rube is standing there. Punches fall fast from his shoulder and land on the guy's face. When they hit him, they pull him apart. They spread out. His legs buckle. He falls. He hits the concrete.

  Rube stands and his eyes tread all over the guy.

  I stand next to him.

  He speaks.

  "I don't like this guy very much." A sigh. "He won't get back up. Not in a hurry." He's standing in the guy's eyes, and the last thing he says is, "No one calls my sister a prostitute, slut, whore, or anything else you please to call it." His hair is lifted by the wind, and sun reflects from his face. His tough, scrawny frame is growing good hard flesh by the second, and he smiles. A handful of people have seen what has happened now, and the word is beginning to travel.

  More people show up.

  "Who?" they ask. "Ruben Wolfe? But he's just a --" A what? I wonder.

  "I didn't mean to hit him so hard," Rube mentions, and he sucks on his
knuckles. "Or that good." I don't know about him, but I get a flashback of the many fights Rube and I have had in our backyard, with just the one boxing glove each. (You do that when you have only one pair of gloves.) This time it's different.

  This time it's real.

  "This time I used both hands," Rube smiles, and I know that we've been thinking about the same thing. I wonder how it feels to really hit someone, that final commitment of putting your bare fist in his face, for real. Not just some brotherly thing you do in the backyard, for fun, with boxing gloves.

  At home that night, we ask Sarah what's been happening.

  She says she's done a few stupid things lately. We ask her to stop.

  She says nothing, but gives us a silent nod.

  I keep meaning to ask Rube what it was like to really beat the hell out of that guy, but I never do. I always pull out.

  Also, in case you're interested, something has started to stink in our room, but we don't know what it is.

  "What the hell is that?" Rube asks me. A threatening tone. "Is it y' feet?"

  "No."

  "Y' socks?" "No way."

  "Y' shoes? Undies?"

  "It's this conversation," I suggest.

  "Now don't get smart."

  "All right!"

  "Or I'll crush y'."

  "All right."

  "Y' little --"

  "All right!"

  "Somethin' always stinks in here," interrupts my dad, who has stuck his head into the room. He shakes his head in amazement, and I feel like everything's going to be okay. Or at least half okay anyway.

  "Hey Rube."

  "You just woke me, you bastard."

  "Sorry."

  "No, you're not."

  "Yeah, you're right. I'm glad I did. You deserve it."

  "What is it this time?"

  "Can't y' hear 'em?"

  "Who?"

  "Mum and Dad. They're talkin' again in the kitchen. About the bills and all that."

  "Yeah. They can't pay 'em too good."

  "It's --"

  Bloody hell! What is that smell? It's a dis-grace, ay. Are you sure it's not y' socks?"

  "Yes. I'm sure."

  I stop and breathe.

  I think a question and speak it. Finally.

  "Did it feel good to smash that guy?"

  Rube: "A little, but not really."

  "Why not?"

  "Because ..." He thinks for a moment. "I knew I'd beat him and I didn't care about him one bit. I cared about Sarah." I sense him staring at the ceiling. "See, Cameron. The only things I care about in this life are me, you, Mum, Dad, Steve, and Sarah. And maybe Miffy. The rest of the world means nothing to me. The rest of the world can rot."

  "Am I like that too?"

  "You? No way." There's a slight gap in his words. "And that's your problem. You care about everything."

  He's right.

  I do.

  CHAPTER 4

  Mum's cooking pea soup now. It'll last us about a week, which is okay. I can think of worse meals.

  "Top-notch soup," Rube tells her after it's swallowed on Wednesday night. Miffy night.

  "Well, there's more where that came from," Mum answers.

  "Yeah," Rube laughs,

  and everyone else is pretty quiet.

  Steve and Dad have just argued about Dad going on the dole. The silence is slippery. It's dangerous, as I go over what was said: "I won't do it."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's below my dignity."

  "Like hell it is. You're even knockin' on doors like a pathetic Boy Scout offering vacuuming and dusting for fifty cents apiece." Steve glares. "And it'd be nice to pay our bills on time," which is when Dad's fist comes down on the table.

  "No," and that's pretty much it.

  Know that my father will not be bent easily. He will die fighting if he has to.

  Steve tries a different tactic. "Mum?"

  "No," is her response, and now it's final for sure.

  No dole. No deal.

  I feel like saying something about it when we walk Miffy later on, but Rube and I are concentrating too hard on not being noticed by anyone to say anything. Even later, there is no conversation in our room. We both sleep hard and wake up without knowing that this is Rube's day -- the day that will change everything. Short and sweet.

  It's after school.

  It waits.

  Outside our front gate.

  "Can we talk inside?" a rough bloke asks us. He leans on the gate, not realizing it could fall apart any minute (although he doesn't seem like the type of guy who would care). He is unshaven and wears a jeans jacket. He has a tattoo on his hand. He puts the question to us again, with just a "Well?"

  Rube and I stare.

  At him.

  At each other.

  "Well, for starters," Rube says in the windy street, "who the hell are y'?"

  "Oh, I'm sorry," says the guy in his thick city accent. "I'm a guy who can either change your life or smack it into the ground for bein' smart."

  We decide to listen.

  Needless to say it.

  He continues with, "I've heard a rumor that you can fight." He is motioning to Rube. "I have sources at my disposal that never lie, and they say that you gave someone a good caning." "So?"

  Straight to the point now. "So I want you to fight for me. Fifty dollars for a win. A decent tip for a loss." "I think you'd better come inside." Rube knows.

  This could be interesting.

  No one else is home so we sit at the kitchen table and I make the guy coffee even though he says he wants a beer. Even if we did have beer, I wouldn't give it to this guy. He's arrogant. He's abrasive, and worst of all, he's likable, which always makes a guy difficult to deal with. See, when someone's strictly an awful person, they're easy to get rid of. It's when they make you like them as well that they're hard to contain. Throw likable in and anything can happen. It's a lethal combination.

  "Perry Cole."

  That's his name. It sounds familiar, but I shrug it off.

  "Ruben Wolfe," says Rube. He points at me. "Cameron Wolfe." Both Rube and I shake hands with Perry Cole. The tatt is of a hawk. Real original.

  One thing about the guy is that he doesn't muck around. He talks to you and he isn't afraidan close, even if his coffee breath reeks like hell. He explains everything straight out. He talks of steady violence, organized fights, raids from police, and everything else that his business involves.

  "See," he explains with that succinct, violent voice of his, "I'm part of an organized boxing racket. All through winter, we have fights every Sunday afternoon at four different places in the city. One's a warehouse out the back of Glebe, which is my home arena. One's a meat factory over at Maroubra. One's a warehouse in Ashfield, and there's a pretty decent ring way down south on some guy's farm at Helensburgh." When he speaks, spit fires from his tongue and sticks to the corner of his mouth. "Like I said -- you get fifty dollars if you win a fight. You might get a tip if y' lose. People pay in like you wouldn't believe. I mean, you'd think they'd have better things to do on a Sunday afternoon and evening, but they don't. They're sick of football and all that other garbage. They pay five bucks to get in and see up to six fights into the night. Five rounds each and we've had some good fights. We're a few weeks into this season, but I reckon I've got room for you.... If you feel like going to one of the other guys who run a team, you'll get the same deal. If you fight well, we'll give you enough money to scrape by, and I myself get rich off the way you fight. That's how it is. You wanna do it?"

  Rube hasn't shaved today so he rubs his spiky beard, in thought. "Well, how the hell do I get to all the fights? How'm I gonna get back from Helensburgh on a Sunday night?"

  "I've got a van." Easy. "I got a van and I cram all my fighters in. If you get hurt, I don't take you to a doctor. That's not in the service. If you get killed, your family buries you, not me."

  "Ah, stop bein' a tosser," Rube tells him, and all laugh, especially Perry. He li
kes Rube. I can tell. People like someone who says what they think. "If you die ..." My brother imitates him.

  "One guy came close once," Perry assures him, "but it was a warmer than usual night. It was heat exhaustion and it was only a mild stroke. A heavyweight."

  "Oh."

  "So," Perry smiles. "You want in?" "I d'know. I've gotta discuss it with my management."

  "Who's your management?" Perry smiles and motions to me with a nod. "It's not this little pansy here, is it?"

  "He ain't no pansy." Rube points a finger at him. "He's a cream puff." Then he gets serious. "Actually, he might be a bit skinny, but he can stand up all right, I tell you," which shocks me. Ruben L. Wolfe, my brother, is sticking up for me.

  "Is that right?"

  "It is.... You can check us out if you want. We'll just have us a game of One Punch in the backyard." He looks to me. "We'll just climb over and g Miffy so he doesn't start barking. He likes watching when he's in our yard, doesn't he?"

  "He loves it." I can only agree. It's being on the other side of the fence that offends old Miffy. He's gotta be closer to the action, where he can see what's going on. That's when everything's apples. He either watches contentedly or gets bored and goes to sleep.

  "Who the hell's Miffy?" Perry asks, confused.

  "You'll see."

  Rube, Perry, and I stand up and proceed to the backyard. We put the gloves on, Rube climbs the fence and hands Miffy to me over the top, and One Punch is about to happen. By the look on Perry's face, I can tell he'll appreciate it.

  We each wear our solitary boxing glove, but Miffy the Pomeranian is demanding attention and pats. We both crouch down and pat the midget dog. Perry watches. He looks like the kind of guy who would dropkick a dog like this from here to eternity. As it turns out, he isn't.

  "The dog's an embarrassment," Rube explains to him, "but we have to look out for 'im."

  "Come 'ere, fella." Perry holds out his fingers for the dog to sniff and Miffy likes him immediately. He sits next to him as Rube and I start our game of One Punch.

  Perry loves it.

  He laughs.

  He smiles.

  He watches with curiosity when I hit the ground the first time.