Underdogs

by Markus Zusak

  "Right," he said. "Thank Christ for that," and he walked slowly to the fridge.

  "In the freezer bit," I told him.

  He stopped, mid-walk, turned slowly and carefully back round, and said, "Do you seriously think I'm pathetic enough to put beer which I just took from the fridge and poured into ice blocks back in just the fridge?"

  "Y' never know."

  He turned away again and kept walking. "Octavia, open the freezer, will y'." She did it. "Thanks, love." "No worries."

  Then it was just a matter of waiting for them to set.

  We sat around in the kitchen for a while, until Octavia spoke, to Rube.

  "You feel like doin' something?" she asked him. With most girls, that was my cue to leave. Octavia, though, I wasn't sure. I just cleared out anyway.

  "Where y' goin'?" Rube asked me.

  "Not sure."

  I went out of the kitchen, took my jacket for later, and walked onto the front porch. Half out the door, I mentioned, "Maybe down the dog track. Maybe just out wanderin'."

  "Fair enough."

  "See y' later, Cam."

  With a last look at Rube and a glance at Octavia, I could see desire in each of the eyes I met. Octavia had desire for Rube. Rube just had desire for a girl. Pretty simple, really.

  "See y's later," I said, and walked out.

  The flyscreen door slammed behind me.

  My feet dragged.

  I reached each arm into the jacket.

  Warm sleeves.

  Crumpled collar.

  Hands in pockets.

  Okay.

  I walked.

  Soon evening worked its way into the sky, and the city hunched itself down. I knew where I was going. Without knowing, without thinking, I knew. I was going to a girl's place. It was a girl I had met last year at the dog track.

  She liked.

  She liked.

  Not me.

  She liked Rube.

  She'd even called me a loser once when she was talking to him, and I'd listened in as my brother smacked her down with words and shoved her away.

  What I'd been doing lately was standing outside her house, across the road. I stood and stared and hoped. And I left, after the curtains were drawn for a while. Her name was Stephanie.

  That night, which I think of now as the beer ice block night, I stood and stared a bit longer than usual. I stood and imagined walking home with her and opening the door for her. I imagined it hard, till a reaching pain pulled me inside out. I stood.

  Soul on the outside. Flesh within. "Ah well."

  It was a fair walk because she lived in Glebe and I lived closer to Central, on a small street with ragged gutters and the train line just beyond. I was used to it, though -- both the distance and the street. In a way, I'm actually proud of where I come from. The small house. The craggy road. The Wolfe family.

  Many minutes shuffled forward as I walked home, and when I saw my dad's panel van on our street, I even smiled.

  Things had actually been okay for everyone lately. Steve, my other brother. Sarah, my sister.

  Mrs. Wolfe -- the resilient Mrs. Wolfe, my mother, who cleans houses and at the hospital for a living. Rube. Dad. And me.

  For some reason that night when I walked home, I felt peaceful. I felt happy for all of my family, because things really did seem to be going okay for them. All of them.

  A train rushed past, and I felt like I could hear the whole city in it.

  It came at me and then glided away.

  Things always seem to glide away.

  They come to you, stay a moment, then leave again.

  That train seemed like a friend that day, and when it was gone, I felt like something in me tripped. I was alone on the street, and although I was still peaceful, the brief happiness left and a sadness tore me open very slowly and deliberately. City lights shone across the air, reaching their arms out to me, but I knew they'd never quite make it.

  I composed myself and made my way onto the front porch. Inside they were talking about the ice blocks and the missing beer. I was actually looking forward to eating my share of it, even though I can never finish a full can or bottle of beer. (I just stop being thirsty, to which Rube once said, "So do I, mate, but I still keep drinkin' it.") In this case, the ice block idea was at least halfway interesting, so I was ready to go in and give it a shot.

  "I was planning on drinking that beer when we got home."

  I could hear my father talking just before I went inside. There was an element of bastardry in his voice as he continued. "And whose brilliant idea was it to make ice blocks out of my beer, sorry, my last beer, anyway? Who was it?"

  There was a pause. A long one. Silent.

  Then, finally, "Mine," came the answer, just as I walked into the house.

  The only question is, who said

  Was it Rube?

  Octavia?

  No.

  It was me.

  Don't ask me why, but I just didn't want Octavia to cop a bit of a battering (verbally, of course) from Clifford Wolfe, my father. The odds were that he'd be all nice to her about it, but still, it wasn't worth the risk. Much better for him to think it was me. He was used to me doing ridiculous things.

  "Why aren't I surprised?" he asked, turning to face me. He was holding the ice blocks in question in his hands.

  He smiled.

  A good thing, trust me.

  Then he laughed and said, "Well, Cameron, you won't mind if I eat yours then, will y'?"

  "Of course not." You always say "of course not" in that situation because you figure out pretty quick that your old man's really asking, "Will I take the ice block or will I make you suffer in a hundred different other ways?" Naturally, you play it safe.

  The ice blocks were handed out, and a small smile was exchanged between Octavia and me, then Rube and me.

  Rube held his ice block out to me. "Bite?" he asked, but I declined.

  I left the room, hearing my father say, "Pretty good, actually."

  The bastard.

  "Where'd y' go before?" Rube asked me later in our room, after Octavia had left. Each of us lay on our bed, talking across the room.

  "Just around a bit."

  "Down Glebe way?"

  I looked over. "What's that mean?"

  "It means," Rube sighed, "that Octavia and I followed you once, just out of interest. We saw y' outside a house, starin' into the window. You're a bit of a lonely bastard aren't y'?"

  Moments twisted and curled then, and off in the distance I could hear traffic, roaring almost silently. Far from all this. Far from Cameron and Ruben Wolfe discussing what in the hell I was doing outside the house of a girl who cared nothing for me.

  I swallowed, breathed in, and answered my brother.

  "Yeah," I said. "I guess I am."

  There was nothing else I could say. Nothing to cover it up. There was only a slight moment of waiting, truth and feeling, then a crack, and I said more. "It's that Stephanie girl."

  "The bitch Rube spat.

  "I know, but --"

  "I know," Rube interrupted. "It makes no difference if she said she hated you or called you a loser. Y' feel what y' feel."

  Y' feel what y' feel.

  It was one of the truest things Rube had ever said, just before a quietness smothered the room.

  From next-door's backyard we could hear a dog barking. It was Miffy, the pitiful Pomeranian we loved to hate, but still walked a few times a week anyway.

  "Sounds like Miffy's a bit upset," Rube said after a while.

  "Yeah," and I laughed a bit.

  A bit of a lonely bastard. A bit of a lonely bastard.

  Rube's statement reverberated inside me till his voice was like a hammer.

  Later, when I got up and sat on the front porch and watched shadows of traffic filter past, I told myself it was okay to be like this, as long as I stayed hungry. It felt like something was arriving in me. It was something I couldn't see or know or understand. It was just there, mingling i
nto my blood.

  Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.

  Even in the night, in bed, they woke me. They painted themselves onto the ceiling.

  They burned themselves onto the sheets of memory laid out in my mind.

  When I woke up the next day, I wrote the words down, on a torn-up piece of paper. And to me, the world changed color that morning.

  WORDS OF CAMERON

  The city streets are lined with truth, and I walk through them. Sometimes, they walk through me. Thoughts are like blood sometimes, when I think of women and sex and everything in between. I collect my thoughts as if they will stain me, murder me, and then resurrect me.

  I've stopped sometimes and felt the world turning, and I think there are hands that turn it.

  I guess I think we turn the world ourselves, often making our hands and fingers dirty, and our wrists sore, from the work.

  I feel like the world is a factory.

  It's the factory of God's light and we just work here.

  I clock onto the truth -- that I'm small in terms of this world, but I'm awake.

  Days and nights fight each other. The hours and minutes are the bruises, and as each day passes by, I know that 'm alone.

  They say that no one really likes being alone, and I know that I am one of them. Having said that, I think there's something tough in it. Something stoic and strong and uncensored.

  Another truth is that I am an animal. A human animal.

  With feral thoughts, and ragged furry hair that reaches for the sky.

  God, how I want the skin of women! I want it on my lips and hands and fingers. How I want to taste her...

  But then -- then--

  Beneath that.

  That's not enough!

  Yes, when that's done, I also want the everything that's her to fill up so much in front of me that it spills and shivers and gives, just like I'm prepared to do myself.

  But for now, happiness throws stones.

  It guards itself.

  I wait.

  CHAPTER 2

  My oldest brother Steven Wolfe is what you'd call a hard bastard. He's successful. He's smart. He's determined.

  The thing with Steve is that nothing will ever stop him. It's not only in him. It's on him, around him. You can smell it, sense it. His voice is hard and measured, and everything about him says, "You're not going to get in my way." When he talks to people, he's friendly enough, but the minute they try one on him, forget it. If someone tries to trample him, you'd put your house on it that he'll do twice the job on them. Steve never forgets.

  Me on the other hand.

  I'm not really like Steve in that way.

  I kind of wander around a lot.

  That's

  what I do.

  Personally, I think it comes from not having many friends, or in fact, any friends at all, really.

  There was a time when I really ached to be a part of a pack of friends. I wanted a bunch of guys I'd be prepared to bleed for. It never happened. When I was younger I had a mate called Greg and he was an okay guy. Actually, we did a lot together. Then we drifted apart. It happens to people all the time, I guess. No big deal. In a way, I'm part of the Wolfe pack, and that's enough. I know without doubt that I'd bleed for anyone in my family.

  Anyplace.

  Anytime.

  My best mate is Rube.

  Sten the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn't bleed for any of them, because he wouldn't trust them to bleed for him. In that way he's just as alone as me.

  He's alone.

  I'm alone.

  There just happen to be people around him, that's all. (People meaning friends, of course.) Anyway, the point of telling you about all this is that sometimes when I go out wandering at night I'll go up to Steve's apartment, which is about a kilometer from home. It's usually when I can't handle standing outside that girl's house, when the ache of it aches too much.

  He's got a nice place, Steve, on the second floor, and he has a girl who lives there as well. Often she's not there because she works in a company that sends her on business trips and all that kind of thing. I always thought she was pretty nice, I s'pose, since she tolerated me when I went up to visit. Her name's Sal and she's got nice legs. That's a fact I can never escape.

  "Hey Cam."

  "Hey Steve."

  That's what we say every time I go up and he's home.

  It was no different the night after the beer ice block incident. I buzzed from downstairs. He called me up. We said what we always say.

  The funny thing is that over time, we've become at least slightly better at talking to each other. The first time, we sat there and had black coffee and said nothing. We each just let our eyes swirl into the pools of coffee and let our voices be numb and silent. There was always a thought in me that maybe Steve held a sort of grudge against everyone in the Wolfe family because he seemed to be the only winner, in the world's eyes, anyway. It was like he might have good cause to be ashamed of us. I was never sure.

  In recent times, since Steve decided to play one more year of football, we'd even gone to the local ground and kicked the ball around. (Or in truth, Steve had practice shots at goal and I returned them.) We'd go there and he'd turn the lights on, and even if it was extra cold and the earth was coated with frost and our lungs were trodden with winter air, we always stayed for quite a while. If it got too late, he even dropped me home.

  He never asked how anyone was. Never. Steve was more specific.

  "Is Mum still workin' herself into the ground?"

  "Yeah."

  "Dad got plenty of work?"

  "Yeah."

  "Sarah still goin' out, getting smashed, and comin' home reeking of club and smoke and cocktails?"

  "Nah, she's off that now. Always workin' overtime shifts. She's okay."

  "Rube still Mr. Excitement? One girl after another? One fight after another?"

  "Nah, there's no one game enough to fight him anymore." Rube is without doubt one of the best fighters in this part of the city. He's proved it. Countless times. "You're right about the girls, though," I continued.

  "Of course," he nodded, and that's when things always get a little edgy -- when it comes to the question of me.

  What could he possibly ask?

  "Still got no mates, Cameron?"

  "Still completely alone, Cameron?"

  "Still wanderin' the streets?"

  "Still got your hands at work under the sheets?"

  No.

  Every time, he avoids it, just like the night I'm talking about.

  He asked, "And you?" A breath. "Survivin'?" "Yeah," I nodded. "Always."

  After that there was more silence, till I asked him who he was playing against this weekend.

  As I told you earlier, Steve decided to have one last year of football. At the start of the season, he was begged to go back by his old team. They begged hard, and finally, he gave in, and they haven't lost a game yet. That was Steve.

  That Monday night, I still had my words in my pocket, because I'd decided to carry them everywhere with me. They were still on that creased piece of paper, and often I would check that they were still there. For a moment, at Steve's table, I imagined myself telling him about it. I heard myself explaining how it made me feel like I was worth it, like I was just okay. But I said nothing. Absolutely nothing, even as I thought, I guess that's what we all crave once in a while. Okayness. Alrightness. It was a vision of looking inside a mirror and not wanting, not needing, because everything was there.

  With the words in my hands, that was how I felt.

  I nodded.

  At the prospect of it. "What?" Steve asked me. "Nothing." "Fair enough." The phone rang. Steve: "Hello."

  The other end: "Yeah, it's me." "Who the hell's me?" It was Rube. Steve knew it. I knew it.

  Even though I
was a good distance from the phone, I could tell it was Rube, because he talks loud, especially on the phone.

  "Is Cameron there?" "Yeah."

  "Are y's goin' up the oval

  "Maybe," at which point Steve looked over and I nodded. "Yes, we are," he answered. "I'll be up there in ten minutes." "Right. Bye." "Bye."

  Secretly, I think I preferred it when it was only Steve and me who went. Rube was always brilliant, always starting something and mucking around, but with Steve and me, I enjoyed the quiet intensity of it. We might never have said a word -- and I might have only kicked the ball back hard and straight, and let the dirt and smell of it thump onto my chest -- but I loved the feeling of it, and the idea that I was part of something unspoken and true.

  Not that I never had moments like that with Rube. I had plenty of great moments with Rube. I guess it's just that with Steve, you really have to earn things like that. You'd wait forever if you wanted one for free. Like I've said before, for other reasons, that's Steve.

  On the way down to the ground floor a few minutes later, he said, "I'm sore as hell from yesterday's game. I got belted in the ribs about five times."

  At Steve's games it was always the same. The other team always made sure he hit the ground especially hard. He always got up.

  We stood on the street, waiting for Rube.

  "Hey boys."

  When he arrived, Rube was puffing gently from the run. His thick, curly, furry hair was too attractive for its own good, even though it was a lot shorter than it used to be. He was wearing only a jersey, sawn-off track pants, and gymmies. Smoke came from his mouth, from the cold.

  We started walking, and Steve was his usual self. He wore the same pair of old jeans he always did at the oval and a flanno shirt. Athletic shoes. His eyes took aim, scanning the path, and his hair was short and wiry and tough-looking. He was tall and abrupt and exactly the kind of guy you wanted to be walking the streets with.

  Especially in the city.

  Especially in the dark.

  Then there was me.

  Maybe the best way to describe me that night was by looking again at my brothers. Both of them were in control. Rube, in a reckless, no matter what happens, I'll be ready when it comes kind of way. Steve, in a there's nothing you can do that's going to hurt me way.

  My own face focused on many things, but never for too long, remaining eventually on my feet, as they traveled across the slightly slanted road. My hair was sticking up. It was curly and ruffled. I wore the same jersey as Rube (only mine was slightly more faded), old jeans, my spray jacket, and boots. I told myself that although I could never look the same as my brothers, I still had something.