Ishmael and the Return of the Dungongs

  When Razza asked why, Mr Barker said it was for ‘Conduct unbecoming a halfway normal human being.’

  At the break the game was locked at one-all. Radley scored their goal when Razza was still off the field. Our goal had come just before half-time, and it was a Razzman special.

  It started when one of our more skilful players, Yousef Akmed, made a break down the right wing and hooked in a looping cross to Razza in space. At first it looked as if he was going to head it, but at the last second he leant slightly back, braced himself and caught the full force of the ball on his chest. As his body absorbed the impact, the ball rebounded slightly, appeared to hover a moment in mid-air and then began to drop. In one blinding movement Razza stepped forward, planted his left foot on the turf, then drove through with his right boot, striking the ball firmly and squarely just centimetres from the ground. There was a sound like a sonic boom and the ball exploded off Razza’s foot, rocketed dead straight for twenty metres, flashed over the top of the goalkeeper’s outstretched hands before dipping wickedly like a tracking missile into the top corner of the net.

  The Charlton supporters shot into the air and morphed into a bubbling mass of whooping, bouncing joy. Miss Tarango sprang up and let out a high pitched ‘Woooohoooooooooooo!’ that had Brother Jerome wincing and covering his ears. Meanwhile Razza had pulled his jersey up over his head and was charging around the field with his arms spread out like a fighter plane – that was until he ran blindly into the mob of Radley supporters and was lucky to escape with his life.

  The second half was a nerve-racking and intense battle with both teams having several chances to score. Razza tried every trick he knew, but following his spectacular first-half goal, Mr Hardcastle had set two defenders on him and now he was left with little room to move.

  With about five minutes to go, it looked like a one-all draw was going to be the result, and I think most of us would have been happy with that. ‘Most of us’, of course, didn’t include Mr Hardcastle. As well as ‘fail’, it’s a pretty sure bet that you could add ‘friendly’ and ‘fun’ to the list of words Mr Hardcastle didn’t know the meaning of. As the time ticked down he was becoming increasingly more desperate and irritable with his team. Finally he just did it all himself. From a corner he used his massive height and weight advantage to outleap and smother our Year Eight defender and head home a goal for a two-one lead. I saw Mr Guthrie give a slight shake of his head as Mr Hardcastle brushed past him, pumping his fists and shouting at his team, ‘All right you lot-stay focused. We haven’t won it yet!’

  That’s when the first of three weird things happened that had everyone in Charlton House turning to the people around them with their mouths dropped open. I’m surprised someone didn’t start shoving ping-pong balls down our throats to win prizes.

  What happened first was this. While the Year Eight boy was being treated for what we all assumed was post-traumatic shock syndrome, Mr Guthrie jogged over to Razza and they began having a discussion about something. Even from a distance we could tell that Razza wasn’t impressed. A few seconds later we knew why. When Mr Barker blew time back on, we did our famous sideshow alley impression.

  What we saw was Orazio Zorzotto trudging unhappily off to fullback, leaving Mr Guthrie standing over the ball in the forward striker position waiting to tap off.

  15.

  SHOOOOOOT!

  Theories raged around the Charlton House supporters as we attempted to make sense of this bizarre and disturbing switch of positions. The general consensus was that Mr Guthrie had taken a knock to the head in one of his unorthodox tackles and was now clearly suffering from temporary brain damage.

  Yet despite our confusion regarding the swap, we all agreed on one thing – we were doomed. Up front, our main strike weapon looked about as intimidating as a tranquillised kitten and seemed to be just hanging around waiting for the game to end. Even the Radley boys quickly realised Mr Guthrie was no danger and drifted off to cover the real threats.

  According to Ignatius Prindabel, who had volunteered to be the official timekeeper, there was exactly one minute left to play when the second even weirder thing happened. Razza won the ball off Mr Hardcastle near our goal and looked up to see Yousef, with his hand raised, powering into open space down the right wing. Everyone knew it was our last chance to snatch a draw. Razza had already shifted his body weight back to chip the ball forward when a voice called clearly and firmly, ‘Orazio – now.’

  It was Mr Guthrie. He was standing alone just on the halfway line with his back towards the Radley goal. He was pointing to his feet. Two Radley defenders were zeroing in on Yousef. Razza hesitated, flashing his eyes from Mr Guthrie to Yousef and back. Then he grimaced before moving forward over the ball and drilling it along the ground. We all held our breath as a small synthetic sphere carrying all our hopes raced towards a man wearing baggy pants and a Three Stooges T-shirt.

  Radley’s left defender was the first to react. He sprinted towards Mr Guthrie’s back as the ball closed in on its target. Mr Guthrie stuck out his right boot to trap it. The Radley fullback charged past him, obviously expecting to claim the rebound from Mr Guthrie’s inevitable lack of control. But there was no rebound. And there was no control. The ball sailed right between Mr Guthrie’s legs. By the time the Radley fullback realised what had happened he had well and truly overshot the mark, and Mr Guthrie was galloping in the opposite direction in hot pursuit of the ball with nothing between him and the Radley goalkeeper except twenty-five metres of grass.

  Charlton House erupted in a communal roar of Yeeeeaaaaahhhhhh! In front of me Miss Tarango suddenly dropped her pom-poms, latched on to Brother Jerome’s arm with both hands and started to bounce up and down rapidly, shouting, ‘Go-go-go-go-go-go-go!’

  Meanwhile, on the field, Mr Guthrie had caught up with the ball and was now stumbling and stuttering around as he nudged it jerkily in the general direction of the Radley goal.

  Closing in fast behind him was Mr Hardcastle, screaming purple-faced at the keeper, ‘Come out! Come out! Close him down! Get out of there! Come out!’ The Radley goalie stood frozen for a moment, and then in sheer panic charged at Mr Guthrie. We braced ourselves for a collision. Miss Tarango buried her face in Brother Jerome’s chest.

  But then, just as they were about to clash on the edge of the penalty area, Mr Guthrie seemed to trip over his own feet, and as he staggered to regain his balance, his boot clipped the ball. Amazingly, as both he and the ball veered wildly to the right, the keeper slid harmlessly by on his left. Miss Tarango, roused by a huge Charlton cheer, looked up. Now there was only Mr Guthrie, the ball and an open goal. Miss Tarango embedded her long fingernails in Brother Jerome’s arm and began to shake it furiously, screaming, ‘Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! Shoooooot!’

  Mr Guthrie was inside the penalty area. Any half-reasonable strike and he would have to score, but he continued to totter and lurch and stumble all around the ball in an agonising tangle of boots. It looked as if he was trying to dribble the ball right into the net.

  This was all the opening Mr Hardcastle needed. He burned up the last few metres, elbowed his way in beside Mr Guthrie and swung his right leg through to claim the ball – which he definitely would have done if one of Mr Guthrie’s boots hadn’t accidentally bumped against the ball again and sent it bobbling to the side. Now when Mr Hardcastle’s boot sliced across the grass, all it collected were legs.

  Later some people claimed that Mr Guthrie flew five metres through the air and somersaulted three times. Personally I think it was more like two metres and one somersault, but either way, the end result was that Mr Guthrie landed flat on his back in a cloud of dust … and he didn’t move. Well, not until Mr Barker blew the whistle and pointed to the penalty spot. Then he sat up, rubbed his head, blinked a few times and climbed shakily to his feet.

  As you can probably imagine, there was uproar from both sides. Miss Tarango, who had been staring silently with her hands over her mouth, suddenly burst into a raucous chant of,
‘Send him off! Send him off! Send-him-orrrmrrrrrff!’ and she was about to march on to the field to deliver the message in person when Brother Jerome placed his big hand on her shoulder and gently eased her back.

  Out on the pitch, Mr Hardcastle was waving his arms about and informing Mr Barker that he ‘must be joking’. Mr Barker just stood pointing at the penalty spot. I’m sure I was wrong, but I thought for a moment I saw him smile. While all that was happening, Mr Guthrie was patting the Radley keeper on the back and saying something about a ‘top effort’ and being ‘too good’. Then he picked up the ball and tossed it to Razza. ‘No pressure, Orazio.’

  Mr Hardcastle reeled around. ‘Hey, waaaiiiiit up there, boyo. He’s not taking it-no way. Only the player supposedly fouled can take the penalty. It’s in the competition rules, and I should know, because I wrote ‘em.’

  ‘Come on, John,’ Mr Guthrie said with smile, ‘it’s just a game. If you don’t want Orazio, let one of the other boys take it, then.’

  ‘Sorry, champ. It’s you or no one. Them’s the rules. What sort of example would we be setting for the boys if we just went about changing the rules when they didn’t suit us, eh?’

  Mr Guthrie closed his eyes briefly then took the ball from Razza. Mr Hardcastle turned immediately to his keeper.

  ‘Anthony, have a break from goal, matey. I’ll take this one.’

  ‘But sir, I …’

  ‘Yeah, I know, Tiger, but we just want to be sure, OK? Don’t want to blow it now, do we? There’s a good lad.’

  The Radley keeper moped slowly from the goal mouth and plonked himself down with the rest of his team on the half-way line. Miss Tarango glared across at Mr Hardcastle. I couldn’t tell exactly what she was thinking, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if the headline on the next day’s paper had been, St Daniel’s Sports Master Instantaneously Combusts.

  We all waited for the final act to play out before us. While Mr Hardcastle bounced around on the goal line like an escapee from the primate enclosure of the zoo, Mr Guthrie moved to the penalty spot and stood behind the ball. Then he called Razza over. I was wondering what they were saying to each other when Mr Hardcastle’s gruff voice cut across the field.

  ‘Come on, Pele!’ he shouted. We haven’t got all day. Or maybe you’d like Larry, Mo or Curly to take it for you?’

  Mr Guthrie sent Razza back to join his team mates. Then he paced six large steps back from the ball, took two smaller steps to his left and stopped. After a deep breath and a slow exhale, he bent down and pulled up his socks. They were different colours. One had a smiley face on it. An outbreak of laughter came from the Radley camp. Mr Guthrie fixed his eyes on Mr Hardcastle, gave his dreadlocks a shake, then rocked forward and began his run in.

  When Mr Guthrie reached the ball he drove his right boot through with a mighty force. Immediately everyone’s eyes shot to the top left-hand corner of the net. This is where Mr Hardcastle’s body was sailing. It was also where I’m sure the ball would have flown if Mr Guthrie had managed to middle it – which he most definitely hadn’t. What he had managed to do was to catch the left edge of the ball with the outside of his boot, throw himself completely off balance and land on his backside.

  And that’s when the third and weirdest thing of all happened-the thing that would earn Mr Guthrie a place in St Daniel’s folklore and brand him with the nickname Pele.

  As the outside edge of Mr Guthrie’s boot met the outside edge of the ball, instead of steaming through the air towards the top left-hand corner of the goal, the ball spun madly across the grass in an arc towards the bottom right-hand side.

  As soon as Mr Hardcastle hit the pitch he realised that he’d dived the wrong way. Frantically flipping himself around, he scrambled on his hands and knees like some giant wind-up toy before hurling himself forward in one last despairing lunge.

  Prindabel estimated later that he fell short by thirteen-point-five centimetres. All Mr Hardcastle could do was watch in horror as the ball whirled past his scrabbling fingers and nestled safely in the side netting.

  Radley House moaned.

  Charlton House bellowed.

  And Miss Tarango, to everyone’s delight and with our Principal’s blessing, performed a wild impromptu war dance on the sideline.

  After the match, both team captains held aloft the inaugural St Daniel’s World Cup Trophy and Brother Jerome, still nursing a bruised, battered and slightly punctured arm, made everyone line up for a group photo.

  Mr Hardcastle and Mr Guthrie found themselves side by side.

  ‘Of all the fluky shots,’ I heard Mr Hardcastle grumble.

  ‘Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk,’ Mr Guthrie replied.

  16.

  STRAIT JACKETS–R–US

  ‘Hey, dude, did you know that Pele has actually written some stuff?’

  ‘What?’

  It was a week since our conversation with Miss Tarango, and Razza and I were on our way to check out the Year Ten noticeboard, which he insisted contained some important debating information.

  ‘Guthrie-he’s written some short stories and poetry and stuff. Been in magazines and everything.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Miss Tarango told me.’

  ‘Miss Tarango? Why have you been talking to Miss Tarango about Mr Guthrie? Razz, I wasn’t kidding when I said …’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know. There’s no way you’d ask Mr Guthrie to help you write a poem to Kelly. Man, I’m not deaf, you know-you’ve told me about a zillion times already. I just wondered why Miss even suggested him, that’s all, so I asked her about it. No big deal. Thought I’d just mention it to you. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?’

  ‘No … I guess not.’ Just like I wouldn’t have a problem with Dracula ‘just mentioning’ that I had a nice neck.

  ‘Anyway … Maybe she was right. Maybe Guthrie might be a bit of a whiz with love poems and stuff.’

  ‘Razz, I couldn’t care if he’s Shakespeare’s ghost writer. He doesn’t even know me. I’m not asking him about writing a poem for Kelly Faulkner. No way. Besides, with my luck, his poetry writing would be right up there with his soccer skills.’

  Razza frowned and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘You see, that’s another thing I’ve been thinking about. There was something suss going on there last year – how he kept us in the game and got the penalty for the draw.’

  ‘Yes, I think it’s called “dumb luck”.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought so too … once … but now I don’t know so much. It’s like … when you have that much luck, it doesn’t seem that dumb any more … and then when you think about it for a while, it doesn’t seem much like luck either.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, I know that he looked pretty unco out there, but the thing is, he made all those tackles, didn’t he? And he stopped all those shots. And then, when we’re behind and it looks like we’re done for, he moves himself to striker. Now why would he do that if he was as hopeless as he was making out? And, dude, remember how he called for that ball and pointed to his feet?’

  ‘Yeah, and missed it completely.’

  ‘Or dummied that defender dude cold and then dribbled around the keeper?’

  ‘What? Dribbled around? You’re telling me you think he meant to do that?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well then, if he’s so brilliant, why didn’t he just shoot straightaway when he had an open goal? Even I could have scored from there.’

  ‘I was thinking … Maybe he didn’t want to show up the kid in goal … you know, make him feel bad. Maybe he was just waiting for Hardcastle to catch up the whole time, because he knew he could get the foul and win the penalty … only he thought someone else could be the hero and take it.’

  ‘So that penalty shot … you’re not seriously suggesting that he did that … on purpose?’

  Razza stopped walking and turned towards me.

  ‘Remember how he called me over?’

  ‘Ye
ah.’

  ‘You know what he asked me?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘He asked me which way I thought Hardcastle would dive.’

  ‘So what did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him left, top corner … and he said he thought so too. And that’s the way Hardcastle went-left, top corner.’ Razza paused dramatically as if he was giving evidence in a murder trial. ‘But the ball, Ishmael, the ball ended up in the bottom right corner. Man, do you know how awesome you have to be to look that bad and still play great?’

  ‘I don’t get it. Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why do it? If he’s so good, if he’s such a great player, why didn’t he just play normally? He could have scored heaps of goals and actually won the match for us instead of just drawing it.’

  ‘Yeah, I wondered about that too … and the only thing I can come up with is … maybe he didn’t think it was all about him.’ Razza considered this for a moment, then shrugged and added, ‘Some people are weird like that.’

  I guess we were both wondering about Mr Guthrie and replaying parts of the game in our heads as we made our way through the senior block and up the stairs to the Year Ten level. When we arrived at the noticeboard I scanned it quickly.

  ‘There’s nothing here.’

  ‘Nothing where?’ Razza said, looking around distractedly.

  ‘Nothing on the board about debating.’

  ‘Debating? Oh right … you sure? Check again,’ Razza said, fiddling with his watch.

  I worked my way around the timetables, messages, handouts, photos and lists of names. ‘Nope, nothing. I told you Scobie would have let us know if there was some news.’

  ‘Sorry, man … I must have heard wrong.’

  ‘Well, that was a waste of time-let’s go.’

  ‘Yeah … right … um … hey, wait up. Have you seen this?’

  I moved closer to where Razza was peering intently at the noticeboard.

  ‘What is it?’