The Flea Thing

by Brian Falkner

  ‘Tell me about the Warriors, son.’

  I didn’t go to school that day.

  TWELVE

  DISASTER!

  Dad put the art gallery up for sale the next day. I think the shock of seeing me on the front page must have had a deeper impact on him than I could have guessed. One of the Auckland Art Galleries – a really big one in the central city – was looking for a new director. Dad had already turned them down twice. I don’t know why, because it was a really important job. Anyway he rang them and accepted. He didn’t say a lot about it, just that he had finally come to realise what was really important in life. Much later he started calling this time the ‘lost years’.

  Dad came to my next game. I was so excited to see him there that I couldn’t sit still on the reserves’ bench. I couldn’t wait to show him my skills. But I didn’t play. I just sat on the bench the entire game.

  Dad came to my next game too, but I didn’t play in that either. The game after that was an away game, which meant flying to Australia, to Sydney in fact. Dad couldn’t make it to that game. We won, but the team did it without me. I just sat on the bench.

  We played in sunshine, and I sat on the bench. We played in rain, and I sat on the bench. We played in Canberra and Melbourne and even flew all the way to Townsville to play the Cowboys, and I sat on the bench. We won games we were expected to lose, we lost games we were expected to win, we drew one game against the Broncos with a last minute field goal. And all the time I sat on the bench.

  Maybe I was a Warrior. Maybe I wasn’t. I had stopped being sure. The season went through its usual highs and lows and all the time I sat there, taking up a space on the reserves’ bench, and never getting on the field.

  I tried talking to Frank about it, and Henry tried too. But all Frank would say was, ‘I make decisions during the game about which reserves to bring on. You’ll get your call when the time and the game is right.’

  You couldn’t argue with that.

  One thing I was so proud of, though, was my dad. He kept on coming, to all my home games. Mum came too, to quite a few, although I know she felt quite out of place amongst all the yahooing rugby league fans. Time and time again I could count on Dad watching from the stands, even though I never took the field in front of him.

  Jason came to a few games at the start of the season, but I don’t think he made it after that. I really didn’t have much of a chance to talk to him during the season. I hadn’t seen Jenny for weeks either. Just hadn’t had the time.

  We won more games than we lost. We gave a couple of the better-rated sides a real hiding and other games were absolute nail-biters. And so the season finally wound to a close and we were sitting right up there in fifth place on the points table.

  The top eight teams go through to the semifinals, so we were assured of a place, but the top four teams get a second life in the semis, so we were desperate to win our last match. It just happened to be against the thugs of the tournament, the Blacktown Machetes.

  The Machetes had bullied and bumped their way into second place on the table, right behind the Brisbane Broncos, who had had an incredible season, losing only one game. It didn’t really matter to the Machetes whether they won or lost this last game, but it was vitally important to us. Somehow, though, all of us knew that they were going to be playing for keeps, no matter what the stakes were.

  I took my usual seat on the reserves’ bench, next to George, who was usually a run-on player but was still getting over a hamstring injury.

  The first half was scoreless, just a lot of crash and bash as we had come to expect against the Machetes. Frank’s face was grim at half-time. Falofa, Nicholson and Kris had all come off and were not going back on the field that day. We didn’t know it then, but Nicholson would not get back on the field that year, thanks to a nasty bone fracture in his knee.

  The changing room is a surprisingly cold place. No matter how high you turn up the heating it always feels cold. Something to do with the concrete walls and its location in the bowels of the grandstand. It’s a bit of a dungeon really. At half-time, when the coach isn’t happy, it can seem even colder.

  ‘They’re hammering us,’ Frank said in a voice full of fury. ‘It’s not pretty and it’s not legal but they’re getting away with it. We can’t avoid it and there’s only one thing to do.’ He looked around at us all. ‘You’ve got to hammer back. Don’t let them get away with it. Stand up for yourselves. But don’t do anything illegal.’

  We all knew what he meant. He meant ‘give them as good as they gave.’ And ‘don’t do anything illegal’ simply meant ‘don’t get caught’.

  ‘You’ve got to show them you’re not scared of them or they are going to eat you alive.’

  I saw Henry shake his head, just slightly. He wasn’t going to argue with the coach, especially not in the middle of a crucial match, but he wasn’t the sort to play dirty, no matter what was going on with the other team. You had to respect him for that.

  The second half started the same way the first had, bash, crash and smash, only this time it wasn’t just our guys who got up rubbing their heads or their arms after a hard tackle. There was another difference too, and that difference was Henry.

  Henry, it seemed, had decided to win the match, regardless of how the other team was playing. He went at the line like a demolition ball, knocking players out of the way, charging over the top of others. Every time he touched the ball he made a ten to twenty metre gain. It was fantastic rugby league.

  It was only a matter of time before one of his buffeting runs opened up a gap in their defences and let Ainsley scoot through for a try. The deadlock was broken. Then the miracle happened.

  Henry had played over a hundred first class games for the Warriors and never scored a try. To be honest, front rowers don’t score tries all that often, that’s left to the backs and the wingers after the front rowers have done their argy-bargy stuff.

  This time, though, Henry crashed through a couple of defenders and flipped the ball out to Bazza, who carved a line up through the middle of the Machetes until Rumble Bean brought him crashing down hard, close to the line.

  He was up quick though, and Henry, who was closest, played hooker. That’s not usually the job of a front row forward either! Bazza toed the ball back and Henry picked it up like a piece of fruit. He dummied a pass to Ricky, who had closed in and was running a tight angle towards the line. Then Henry just hurled himself at the Machetes’ defence. He exploded through three of them and dropped over the line for a try.

  I was jumping up and down on the bench seat, shouting at the top of my lungs. Henry stood up and looked over to me and saluted like a sergeant major. I stood ramrod straight and saluted back and we both laughed. The Machetes huddled behind their line while Ainsley kicked the conversion and I noticed Rumble Bean casting a couple of evil glances at Henry.

  I shivered, even though it was quite a warm day.

  Three sets of six later, Rumble struck like a venomous snake. They were clever how they planned it, and clever how they did it, but that didn’t make it any less mean.

  Henry had the ball; he had bounced off Alistair, one of their forwards, and was tussling with a couple more Machetes, still making progress towards the try line. That was when I noticed that the two Machetes didn’t really seem to be trying to tackle him. They were just sort of holding him, pulling one of his arms away from his body. A sharp movement caught my eye. Rumble Bean was arrowing in like a guided missile, knees pumping, shoulder dropped. The other two weren’t tackling Henry, they were turning him into a target.

  ‘Henry!’ I shouted from the other side of the field, but he could never have heard me and it was far too late anyway. ‘Henry!’

  Rumble smashed into Henry’s outstretched arm with a crack that I could hear and feel right across the park. Henry spun around and toppled over, Bean’s knee crashing into the side of his head as he fell. The ball came out as he hit the ground.

  Rumble was on the loose ball in a se
cond and I didn’t even see him dive over our line for the try. I was still watching Henry, who hadn’t moved since he had crashed to the ground.

  A moment later the stretcher buggy was called and it took six guys to lift Henry on to the back of the machine. Six players. They wouldn’t let the trainers do it, just pushed them out of the way and lifted the stretcher themselves. They all stood in a line as a gesture of respect as the buggy drove off towards the sideline. My heart felt like it had stopped. It took me a long time to realise that old Andy the trainer was talking to me.

  ‘What?’ I said vacantly. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Andy waved his hand at the reserves’ bench and suddenly I did understand. I was the last reserve. So many of our guys had been taken off the park with injuries that I was the only one left to fill out the squad.

  ‘Henry, I’ve gotta go see Henry,’ I stammered. ‘He’s been hurt.’

  Andy said nothing and just passed me the radio.

  ‘Frank, it’s Flea. I can’t …’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ Frank cut me off. ‘We’ll look after Henry. You get on the field and show me that it’s not all just talk and fancy moves in training.’

  I had no choice then, and, with Henry weighing heavily on my mind, I stripped off my tracksuit and jogged slowly on to the pitch.

  I played the last fifteen minutes of that match, and for thirteen of them the ball came nowhere near me. The rest of the team played as if I wasn’t on the park. They didn’t pass me the ball and they slid across in front of me whenever an attack was looming. They were playing like a twelve man squad against thirteen and so it was no surprise that the Machetes ran in two quick tries. They missed both conversions though, which left the score at fourteen to twelve with two minutes to go.

  If you’re on a rugby field that long though, sooner or later the ball has to come your way, and eventually it did, in the hands of the man himself, Rumble Bean, who had picked it up from broken play and found himself in the open with just me between him and the match-winning try.

  It was all too easy really. I held my ground in front of him the way I had with Henry in training. He stuck out an arm in a vicious fend but I sidestepped and ankle-tapped him, just like before. I toed the ball out, picked it up and weaved a fiery path right through the centre of the Machetes’ pack before sliding over for my first-ever professional rugby league try.

  Henry and I had both scored our first tries in the same match! I hoped like anything that he was OK. I looked up and noticed Rumble Bean staring at me. Not staring really, more like giving me the evil eye. I did my best Crazy Jason glare right back at him.

  Ainsley converted and a moment or so later the final whistle sounded. We had won, but it didn’t feel like a victory to me. There had been no word from the hospital and the whole team was holding its breath waiting to hear about Henry.

  Frank eventually brought the news into the changing room while we were cleaning up after the game.

  ‘We’ve heard from the hospital,’ he said quietly and the room went instantly silent. ‘He has concussion and a dislocated shoulder. They’re X-raying to see if anything is broken. We’ll know in a few days if we’ll have him back for the semifinals.’

  I was surrounded by players I had come to know well, and many of them I called my friends. But never in my life have I felt so dreadfully alone.

  We flew back from Australia on Sunday morning and I biked straight over to Jason’s place to see if he had watched the match. Seen me play. Seen me score. His mum said he was down at the park with the boys, so I headed down there.

  Their bikes were at the boat ramp but Manuka Park was empty, so I knew they’d be in the Lost Park.

  I burst down the secret track and out into the Lost Park yahooing like a scatterbrain. But then I stopped. I stopped and I shut up. Because things weren’t right. Things were very wrong.

  Jenny was there, for a start. She might have been my girlfriend but she was still a girl, and we’d vowed never to tell any girls about the Lost Park.

  Jason and Tupai were running around the fort, playing pirates or something like that, and Fizzer was up in the Spitfire.

  But there was someone else. Someone sitting with Jenny on the tractor, with his arm around her shoulders. It seemed that Jenny had got herself a new boyfriend.

  That hurt. I knew it was my own fault for being away all the time, for missing her birthday, but it still hurt. They all looked around when I came bursting through the track. Then Jenny moved her head, and I saw who she was sitting with.

  It was the boy without a brain. Phil Domane.

  THIRTEEN

  THE SMART FART

  Looking back, I know I felt hurt about Jenny and Phil, but that was nothing compared to how wounded I felt that Phil had been invited to the Lost Park. The Lost Park was private. It was ours. Me and Jason and Fizzer and Tupai. Except that now it seemed to be Phil and Jason and Fizzer and Tupai.

  Jenny kind of covered her face and looked at the ground. Jason climbed down from the fort and walked over. He stood awkwardly in front of me and didn’t say anything at first.

  ‘Hi, Daniel,’ he said eventually. ‘Or is it Flea now?’

  ‘Still Daniel,’ I said calmly. ‘I …’

  I stopped at that, spun around on my heels and ran back into the track. I missed my footing on the rotten, old bridge and crashed into the creek, coming up covered in mud and sludgy water. Then Jason was beside me and we walked back to Manuka Park together.

  ‘I can’t believe you told Phil about the Lost Park,’ I said, struggling not to cry like a little kid. ‘I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘You haven’t been around much,’ Jason said. ‘You haven’t been around at all really and Phil’s not such a bad guy. He just thinks you’re a bit of a smart fart, and …’

  He stopped.

  ‘And what?’ I asked tightly.

  ‘Well. Well, you are a bit of a smart fart sometimes. I mean, I don’t care, but you haven’t been here and …’

  I blinked a couple of times and left him standing there with his mouth gaping open. I didn’t even bother about my bike, I just sprinted up the road from the park and jogged all the way back home. I was hot and I was cold. Hot from the running, cold from the wet clothes. I hardly noticed though. How could they? How could Jason? Just because I’d been busy with my team. It just wasn’t fair.

  And, on top of all that, he’d called me a smart fart. In just one morning Jason had gone from my good friend to my sworn enemy.

  By the evening I was so worked up about it that I’d made a papier mâché voodoo doll of Jason and was busy sticking pins in it. That was when the telephone rang. Dad answered it.

  ‘It’s for you, Danny … Daniel,’ he called from the hall.

  ‘I’m not here,’ I called back.

  ‘He says he’s not here.’ Dad was trying to be funny; it just made me more angry. Jason and the rest of those guys could go get …

  ‘It’s that Henry chap from your team.’

  I dropped the voodoo doll and was by the phone before Dad had finished his sentence. I snatched away the receiver.

  ‘Hi, Henry.’

  ‘Hi, mate, how’s it going?’

  ‘It’s … OK. How are you feeling? Are you going to be all right?’

  ‘I’m a bit sore. They had to relocate my shoulder. No broken bones though, so I’ll be back for the semis. Bad luck, eh?’

  I exhaled slowly. That was a huge relief. I had been afraid Henry had been seriously injured. I thought carefully about what I said next. ‘It wasn’t bad luck, Henry, it was deliberate.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I know. I saw Rumble lining up to get you. They wanted you out of the game.’

  There was a long silence from the hospital in Australia.

  ‘That’s not nice.’

  Then I wished I hadn’t said it. Henry was just a simple guy. He had his own view of the world. And it wasn’t a view in which people like Rumble Bean would deliberately set out to
break a player’s arm.

  Because that was what Rumble had intended to do, I had no doubt. I could see the whole thing over and over in my mind, like an action replay. The way he had crashed into Henry’s arm would have snapped anyone else’s like a twig. He’d still managed to do some serious damage, even to a meat-mountain like Henry. I changed the subject.

  ‘Congratulations on your first-ever try.’

  ‘Congratulations yourself!’

  ‘When are you back?’

  ‘Wednesday. They’re flying me back business class, for the comfort.’

  ‘Lucky beggar.’

  We chatted a bit more, then Henry rang off. Now, there was a guy who’d be loyal to his friends, I thought, even if they were out of touch for a bit.

  FOURTEEN

  GROWING DOWN

  If I thought my first press conference was a major event, the second made it look like a Sunday school picnic.

  The first time the story was about my selection for the Warriors. This time it was about my playing a game and scoring the winning try. All the reporters were there from the previous press conference plus CNN, ESPN, BBC, in fact the whole alphabet from ABC to XYZ.

  Henry wasn’t there this time. That was a shame, and I know he wanted to be there to lend some moral support, but he was still in hospital.

  My dad came though, and sat by my side the whole time. It was good having him there. This time the questions were sharper and directed at me. All you have to do to be taken seriously by the world’s media, it seems, is to score the winning try in a professional rugby league game. If you are a thirteen-year-old boy that is.

  The story made the front page again, made the top three stories on the evening news on both the main TV channels, was a human interest story on CNN and a lead on ESPN right around the world. Sky had it, the radio stations carried it, you would have thought I’d just invented a cure for cancer the way they all went on.

  It didn’t stop with that one game either. From that moment on, if I took the field, it made the news. Of course, it helped that I scored tries in all of our semifinal games, and that we won all the games.