Bring Back Cerberus

by Phillip Gwynne

  ‘He says he has something very important to tell us,’ said Dad.

  ‘But we’re eating,’ said Mom.

  Without any further consultation Dad said into the mouthpiece, ‘Send Mr Ryan up, Samsoni.’

  It was obvious that Mom was pretty annoyed but she didn’t say anything.

  A couple of minutes later and Mr Ryan, dressed in his usual chinos and blue cotton shirt, a satchel in his hand, walked through our front door.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to intrude,’ he said, ‘but I have some news I thought was better delivered in person. I’ve been doing a little light reading.’ He opened his satchel.

  ‘Regulations of the Schools Athletics Board,’ he said, extracting a thick white book. ‘Look, some of the stuff in here is pretty legalistic, but I’ll put it in simple terms: basically, they can’t stop Dom from running tomorrow.’

  ‘They can’t?’ I said, my heart pulling at its mooring ropes, getting ready to soar.

  ‘No, they can’t,’ said Mr Ryan. ‘Not according to their own regulations.’

  My heart broke free, soaring – they couldn’t stop me from running!

  ‘But we can,’ said Mom. ‘According to our regulations.’

  All eyes were now on her.

  ‘I thank you very much for your concern, Mr Ryan.

  And I appreciate you coming over. But Dom made a bad decision, actually quite a few bad decisions, and he has to live with the consequences of those decisions.’

  Mom walked over to the door, opened it.

  Poor Mr Ryan, he must’ve been so excited, and now he was being kicked out, humiliated.

  And my soaring heart had crash-landed, Zolt-style. I looked over at Gus, then Dad.

  Something was going on between them, some sort of wordless conversation.

  Just as Mr Ryan was about to walk through the door Dad said, ‘Mr Ryan, could you please hold on?’

  Mr Ryan stopped, looked back.

  ‘Are you saying that if my son turns up tomorrow, they have to let him run?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Mr Ryan, throwing a nervous look at Mom. ‘And it’s not as if anybody took his place, they were just going to run the race with one less competitor.’

  Dad looked at me and said, ‘And Dom, you want to run?’

  I nodded. Yes, I want to run. More than anything in the world I want to run.

  ‘Then Dom should run,’ said Dad.

  Mom and Dad didn’t do scenes.

  Not public ones anyway.

  So they disappeared outside while the rest of us stayed where we were.

  But even from the dining room we could hear their raised voices.

  The smashing of furniture.

  A gunshot.

  Not quite, but their debate did sound pretty vigorous.

  Eventually they came back inside, and Dad was looking like he’d just done some serious time in the Octagon. ‘Looks like we’re going to Sydney,’ he said, trying to keep the triumph out of his voice.

  Mom rolled her eyes before she turned on the plasma.

  ‘Where can I find the last episode of Ready! Set! Cook!’ she asked Miranda, resident media guru.

  The four of us – Dad, Gus, Mr Ryan and me – moved to the lounge room with Dad’s laptop to try to find a way to get me to Sydney.

  At first we were going to take a commercial flight in the morning, but we couldn’t find any that would get us there in time to register. Not when you took into account the taxi trip from the airport to the stadium.

  Then Dad said, ‘No problem, we’ll charter a flight.’

  But there was an issue with that too.

  There just weren’t any charters available out of the Gold Coast.

  Dad was in the middle of contacting a friend of his, to see if he could borrow his jet, when Gus said, ‘Dave, why don’t we just take the bloody car?’

  ‘But it’s a twelve-hour drive!’ said Dad.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Gus. ‘So let’s hit the road now, otherwise Dom won’t make it to the registration in time.’

  Dad put his phone down and said, ‘You’re right, a big old road trip.’

  He looked at Mr Ryan, then Gus, and then at me before he sighed and said, ‘I’ll go and sort it with your mother.’

  It took him half an hour to sort it and even then I don’t know how sorted it actually was, because when he came back he said, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

  There was no packing, none of that; I just grabbed my running gear and threw it into the back of Dad’s Porsche 911.

  ‘Well, thanks for your trouble,’ said a smiling Dad to Mr Ryan, going to shake his hand as they both stood in our drive.

  ‘Are you joking?’ said Mr Ryan and the smile dropped from Dad’s face.

  ‘Do you think I’m going to miss a big old road trip?’ said Mr Ryan. ‘Besides, you need somebody at the other end to deal with any legal issues.’

  So Dad drove, Mr Ryan sat in the passenger seat, and Gus and I squeezed into the back.

  When we saw the sign that said Sydney 824 km, Dad let out a wild yell of joy.

  It was so extraordinarily un-Dad-like that I was a bit embarrassed for him – and me – especially in front of Mr Ryan.

  And when my grandfather responded with a yell of his own, even louder than Dad’s, my embarrassment increased exponentially.

  ‘Calm down, guys,’ I wanted to say. ‘This is my Civics teacher here.’

  But my Civics teacher already had his mouth open and a noise was already coming out.

  A noise so deranged, so unhinged, so loud it would have put any banshee to shame.

  When the last reverberations had died away, Mr Ryan’s effort received a deserved round of applause.

  ‘Dom, do you want to have a go?’ said Dad.

  ‘I might just preserve my energy for the race,’ I said.

  And my dignity.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Gus.

  Dad’s phone rang.

  Nothing unusual there – Dad’s phone was always ringing, it was perhaps the ringiest phone in the whole of Australia.

  But instead of answering it like he always did, he did another extraordinary un-Dad-like-thing: he turned his phone off and then tossed it into the glove box.

  ‘Okay, fellas,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Let’s have them.’

  Mr Ryan was the first to relinquish his phone. And then Gus gave his over. My hand went into my pocket but I just couldn’t do it.

  ‘Dom?’ said Dad, holding out his hand.

  ‘Do I really have to?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t at least one of us be online in case there’s an emergency or something?’

  But Dad’s hand remained where it was, so I reluctantly took out my old iPhone 4, turned it off and gave it to him.

  Dad put his foot down and I could feel myself being sucked back into my seat.

  ‘Holy Moses!’ said Mr Ryan. ‘This thing’s got some poke!’

  ‘You want a drive later?’ Dad asked him.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Well, you don’t think I’m going to do all the driving, do you?’

  Dad fiddled around with his iPod until he found some Rolling Stones, apparently one of their earlier albums.

  Personally I thought all their albums were earlier albums.

  Mr Ryan, it seemed, despite the identikit chinos and blue cotton shirt, was also a big fan of the Stones.

  And while they discussed whether Keith Richards really did use an acoustic guitar on the opening riff of ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, I felt my eyelids getting heavier.

  ‘Stretch yourself out,’ Gus told me. ‘You need some shut-eye before the race.’

  It was a Porsche 911, I wanted to tell him, there wasn’t really anywhere to stretch out.

  Gus unclipped his prosthetic leg, shoved it under Dad’s seat.

  ‘That gives you a bit more leg room,’ he said, pressing his bony frame against the door.

  I was still reluctant to take up more than my share of space.

 
; ‘Come on, stick your head here,’ said Gus, patting his thigh.

  I did as he said: curled up in the seat, rested my head on his thigh.

  As far as pillows went, it wasn’t even close. And the car was full of noise, the throaty roar of the Porsche’s exhaust and the jagged chords of Keith’s acoustic – or was it electric? – guitar.

  The last thing I heard before I fell asleep was Gus humming the bad head, sick feet song.

  SUNDAY

  FARTS UNFARTED

  When I woke, the interior of the car was flooded with soft morning light. And it smelt like farts: old farts, new farts and farts yet to be farted.

  Dad and Gus were slumbering and Mr Ryan was driving. He must’ve been enjoying using up all that fossil fuel he’d saved by putting around in a Prius because the Porsche was flying, the needle twitching around the one-eighty mark.

  ‘Morning,’ I said, sitting up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

  ‘Morning,’ said Mr Ryan.

  ‘It must’ve been some night,’ I said, noticing the Macca’s wrappers on the floor, the empty cans of Red Bull.

  ‘It was,’ said Mr Ryan, breaking into a huge smile. ‘Your dad –’

  I waited for the next part of the statement, wondering what he was going to say: your dad is an amazing driver, your dad is an astute businessman, your dad knows a lot about the Rolling Stones?

  ‘– He sure knows how to let one rip,’ he said.

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ said Dad, who obviously wasn’t as asleep as I’d thought he was. ‘Old Trumpet Bum here. Old Organ Arse.’

  Gus opened his eyes and said, ‘You young fellows don’t know the first thing about flatulence. In my day, we would’ve shredded the upholstery in this thing.’

  ‘You want to give us an example, Dad?’ said Dad, winking at Mr Ryan. ‘Show us what it was all about back in the day?’

  ‘Them days are gone,’ said Gus, shaking his head. ‘And at my age you never trust a fart.’

  We stopped for fuel and Dad and Mr Ryan changed places.

  ‘Take the next exit,’ said Gus.

  ‘GPS reckons it’s the one after,’ said Dad.

  ‘Bugger the GPS,’ said Gus. ‘You want to get the kid registered on time or not?

  Dad took the next exit.

  Gus gave directions, Dad drove like a maniac, but it seemed like all the traffic lights were conspiring against getting me registered.

  We sat at one, engine ticking, traffic static.

  ‘Stuff this,’ said Dad, looking both ways before he planted his foot, the Porsche taking off with a squeal of rubber.

  ‘Wow!’ I said.

  Gus shook his head.

  This was a Dad I hardly knew.

  Another thought occurred to me: this is the Dad who repaid The Debt. Who spoke Calabrian.

  Between buildings, I could now see glimpses of the Olympic Stadium’s soaring walls.

  Dad turned into the drive and pulled up outside the entrance. Even before we’d come to a complete stop Mr Ryan was out of the door, Regulations of the Schools Athletics Board in his hand.

  He raced for the entrance.

  Despite the chinos, he showed plenty of speed, and you could see why he still held that school cross-country record.

  We parked the Porsche in the carpark. All three of us got out, hurried towards the entrance.

  ‘No matter what happens,’ said Dad, ‘I’d just like to thank you guys for a great time.’

  ‘Bloody waste of effort if Dom doesn’t run,’ said Gus.

  In through the entrance, and I was getting excited: this was where the Kenyan Noah Ngeny had beaten the world record holder Hicham el Gerrouj in the final of the 1500 metres.

  I was also getting worried: what if Mr Ryan and his chinos had got it wrong?

  As we neared the registration area I could see Mr Ryan talking to a fluoro-jacketed official, pointing to something in the book.

  She was a big official; there was a lot of fluoro.

  Mr Ryan saw me and beckoned with his hand:

  Come here.

  I jogged over.

  The official, whose name I could see from one of the many passes that hung around her neck was Marge Jenkins, gave me a once-over.

  Wasn’t she the one who got the Kenyans disqualified? I asked myself.

  ‘Here’s Dom,’ said Mr Ryan. ‘As you can see, he’s raring to go!’

  I gave Ms Jenkins my best raring-to-go look.

  She glanced back down at the book and shook her head.

  ‘Well, I suppose rules are rules,’ she said. ‘But, really, this is most irregular.’

  Mr Ryan punched the air with his fist.

  ‘I’m running!’ I yelled, legs propelling me upwards, arms pumping. ‘I’m running in the nationals!’

  SUNDAY

  THE NATIONALS

  Despite how long it had taken to get here, I still couldn’t quite believe that I was about to compete in the national championships.

  I sort of expected somebody to snap their fingers and I’d be back in Halcyon Grove, about to watch Toby compete in the Ready! Set! Cook! final.

  I think this was why I didn’t find the other competitors as threatening as I usually did.

  Coach Sheeds got the three of us – me, Rashid and Bevan Milne – together for a pep talk.

  It was a good one, too, and I could see that the others were suitably pepped, but I still felt pretty relaxed.

  So relaxed that when I saw Seb on the side of the track peeling off his tracksuit I didn’t really react that much, not like I should’ve.

  Oh, Seb’s here, I thought, and then my thoughts moved on to other things, like what a lovely day it was, how high the walls of the stadium were, and how amazing it must’ve been to be here when Cathy Freeman won gold in the 400 metres.

  Even when Seb caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up it still didn’t occur to me how weird it was that he was here.

  In fact, if Bevan Milne hadn’t said, ‘What in the blazes is Seb doing competing?’, I might not have reacted at all.

  ‘Seb?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bevan Milne. ‘Your mate Seb. He’s down on the starting list.’

  ‘But who’s he racing for?’ I asked. ‘He doesn’t even go to school.’

  ‘Well, he obviously found some loophole,’ said Bevan Milne.

  ‘Obviously,’ I said, thinking that loopholes weren’t such a bad thing, actually.

  We took our positions on the starting line, the starter did his thing, and we were off.

  It didn’t take me long, maybe half a lap, to realise that I had absolutely no chance of winning the National Junior 1500 Metre title.

  The Debt had totally trashed my preparation, the other runners were too strong.

  But as weird as it sounds, I didn’t even want to try to win this race.

  Because if I did, if I went for broke, I knew I’d blow up, I knew the other runners would mow me down like the grass at the Halcyon Grove Recreation Precinct and I’d struggle in a distant and dismal last.

  I didn’t want to try to medal either, to finish second or third.

  No, I wanted to finish fourth.

  Because fourth would be enough to get me on the team to compete in the World Youth Games in Rome.

  As we entered the third lap, Rashid and I were running abreast, stride for stride, and Seb was hard on our heels.

  The leaders, a tight bunch of four runners, were about twenty metres in front of us.

  I was starting to hurt, the usual lap-three blues – burning thighs, oxygen getting hard to find – but as Coach Sheeds was fond of saying, Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional, boys.

  By the start of the bell lap one runner had dropped off the leading bunch.

  This was exactly what I’d been counting on: the occasion had got to somebody, they’d gone out too hard and were now paying the price.

  The three of us moved past him, and there were now only three runners between us and the finishing line.


  I didn’t care about them, they could divvy up the hardware between them; it was fourth I had my eyes on.

  I took a quick glance behind; there was too much distance for the other runners to make up, they weren’t in contention.

  The last place was between Seb, Rashid and me.

  I knew that I had a much bigger kick than they did, even if my training hadn’t been optimal.

  Both of them knew that I had a much bigger kick than they did, even if my training hadn’t been optimal.

  Really, if either was to have any chance, they needed to kick now.

  I looked across at Rashid.

  He smiled at me, a resigned smile.

  He’s not going to go, I thought. He’s given up on going to Rome.

  Well, there wasn’t much I could do about that.

  Up ahead the front runners had kicked, two of them pulling quickly away from the third.

  There was over three hundred metres to go, and I thought of Coach Sheeds’s instructions, which were exactly the same as Gus’s instructions: ‘Kick with two hundred to go, not a millimetre more, not a millimetre less.’

  Up ahead the third runner had dropped back even more.

  He’s really struggling, I thought. He’s hit the wall.

  Suddenly it occurred to me: if we both pass him, then Rashid and I would both qualify.

  But it’s too far out to kick, I told myself. What if I blow up, don’t even make fourth?

  ‘Rashid,’ I puffed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, let’s get him!’

  I kicked.

  Two-fifty metres out and I kicked.

  I could almost hear both Coach Sheeds and Gus going, ‘Noooooo!’

  Rashid went with me and Seb jumped into our slipstream.

  The crowd, silent throughout the race, found its voice.

  Now I could see why they called this place the Colosseum, now it felt like the sort of place where two men would fight to the death.

  Fifty metres from the finish and we reeled the third runner in.

  Coach Sheeds and Gus had got their maths right, though – after kicking for two hundred metres, I hit the wall.

  It was the three of us, Rashid, Seb and me, side by side, straining for the finish.

  Seb powered ahead, and Rashid and I went stride for stride.

  I was gone, nothing left.