Underdogs: Three Novels

by Markus Zusak

  It’s Rube who speaks this time, and Cagey Carl Ewings has jumped the ropes and circles the ring now like he wants to kill someone. And guess just happens to be the closest guy around. It’s me, of course, thinking, Twenty-two knockouts. Twenty-two knockouts. I’m dog’s meat. I’m dog’s meat, I swear it.

  He comes over.

  “Hey boy,” he says.

  “Hey,” I answer, although I’m not sure he wants one. I’m just being friendly, really. You can’t blame one for trying.

  Whatever it is, it seems to work, because he smiles. Then he states something very clearly.

  He states, “I’m gonna kill you.”

  “Okay.”

  Did I just say that?

  “You’re scared.” Another statement.

  “If you like.”

  “Oh, I like, mate, but I’ll like it even more when they cart you out of here on a stretcher.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Definitely.”

  In the end, he smiles again and returns to his corner. Frankly, I’m quite sure he’ll beat the skin off me. Cagey Carl. What an idiot, and I’d tell him so if I wasn’t so afraid of him. Now there’s only me and the fear and the furled footsteps I take to center ring. Rube stands behind me.

  Now I feel naked, in just my dark blue shorts, my gymmies, and with the gloves on my hands. I feel too skinny, too bare. Like you can read the fear on me. The warm room filters across my back. The cigarette smoke breathes onto my skin. It smells like cancer.

  Light is on us.

  Blinding.

  The crowd is dark.

  Hidden.

  They’re just voices now. No names, no blondes, no beers or anything else. Just voices drawn toward the light, and there’s no way to liken them to anything else. They sound like people gathered around a fight. That’s all. That’s what they are and they like what they are.

  Both Carl and I sweat. There’s Vaseline above his stare, which grinds its way into my eyes. It dawns on me very quickly that he really does want to kill me.

  “Fair fight,” the referee says, and that’s all he says.

  Then it’s back to the corner.

  My legs rage with anticipation.

  My heart turns.

  My head nods, as Rube gives me two instructions. The first: “

  The second: “If you do go down, be sure to get up.”

  “Okay.”

  Okay.

  Okay.

  What a word, ay? What a word, because you can’t always mean it when you say it. Everything’s gonna be okay. Yeah, whatever, because it’s not. Everything hinges on you yourself, which in this case, is me.

  “Okay,” I say again, feeling the irony of it, and the bell rings and this is it.

  Is it? I ask myself. Is this it? Really?

  The answer to my question comes not from me, but from Cagey Carl, who has made his intentions excessively clear. He sprints over to me and throws out his left hand. I duck it, swing around, and get out of the corner.

  He laughs as he chases me.

  All round.

  He comes at me, I duck.

  He swings and misses and tells me I’m scared.

  Toward the end of the round, his left glove finds its way through, echoing onto my jaw. Then his right finds me, and another one. Then the bell.

  The round is over and I haven’t thrown a single punch.

  Rube tells me.

  He says, “Just a hint you can’t win a fight without throwing any punches.”

  “I know.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Well, start throwin’ a few.”

  “All right.” But personally, I’m just glad I survived the first round without being knocked down. I’m ecstatic that I’m still upright.

  Second round. Still no punches, but this time, late, I hit the canvas and the crowd roars. Cagey Carl stands over me and says, “Hey boy! Hey boy!” That’s all he says as I struggle to my knees and stand. Soon after, the bell rings. Everyone knows I’m scared.

  This time Rube abuses me.

  “If y’ gonna carry on like this there’s no point bein’ here! Remember what we said that morning? This is our chance. Our only chance, and you’re gonna blow it because you’re scared of a little pain!” His face snarls at me. He barks. “If I was fightin’ this guy I’d have dropped ‘im in the first round and we both know it. It takes me twenty minutes to beat you, so get interested an’ pull y’ finger out, or go home!”

  Yet stillI throw no punches. Boos emerge from the crowd. No one likes a coward.

  Rounds three and four, no punches. Finally, the last round, the fifth. What happens?

  I walk out, my hammering heart smashing through my ribs. I duck and swerve and Cagey Carl lands a few more good punches. He keeps telling me to stop running, but I don’t. I keep running, and I survive my first fight. I lose it, on account of throwing no punches, and the crowd wants to lynch me. On my way out of the ring, they yell in my face, spit at me, and one guy even gives me a nice crack in the ribs. I deserve it.

  Back in the room, the other fellas only shake their heads.

  Perry ignores me.

  Rube can’t bring himself to look at me.

  Instead, he punches the raw meat that hangs down around us as I take my gloves off, ashamed. There’s another fight before Rube goes on. He punches hard and waits and we know. Rube will win. He has that about him now. I don’t know where it came from — maybe that fight in the school yard. I’m not sure, but I can smell it, right up to the time when the other fight’s over.

  When Perry tells him, “It’s time,” Rube punches one last pig and we go to the doors. Again, we wait, and when Perry’s voice comes to us, Rube bursts through the door.

  Perry yells again: “And now, I think you’ll see something tonight that you’ll talk about for the rest of your life! You’ll say that you saw him.” All quiet. All quiet and Perry’s voice lowers. Serious. “You’ll say, ‘I was there. I was there that first night when Ruben Wolfe fought. I saw Fighting Ruben Wolfe’s first fight.’ That’s what you’ll say….”

  Fighting Ruben Wolfe.

  So that’s his name.

  Fighting Ruben Wolfe, and what the crowd does see is Rube walking toward the ring, in Steve’s jacket. Like everyone else so far, they can smell it. The confidence. They see it in the eyes that peer out from his hood.

  His walk is not bouncy or cocky.

  He throws no punches to the air.

  No step, however, is out of turn.

  He is straight ahead, straight out, straight and hard, and ready to fight.

  “Hope you’re better than your brother,” someone calls.

  It hurts me. Wounds me.

  “I am.”

  But not as much as that. Not as much as those two words from my own brother’s lips, as he walks on, without flinching.

  “I’m ready tonight,” he talks on, and I am aware that now, he speaks only to himself. The crowd, Perry, me — we’re all just out therefocused. Now it’s just Rube, the fight, and the win. There is no world around it.

  Typically, his opponent jumps into the ring, but that’s about it. In the first round, Rube knocks him down twice. The bell saves him. In the break, all I do is give my brother some water as he sits and stares and waits. He waits for the fight with a slight smile, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. He makes his legs rise and fall very slightly and very fast. He does it over, over, over again, before jumping up and going out, fists raised. Fighting.

  The second round’s the last round.

  Rube catches him with a great right hand.

  He punches his lungs out.

  Then he goes under his ribs.

  Even in the neck.

  Shoulder.

  Arm.

  Anywhere legal and uncovered.

  Finally, he goes straight through his face. Three times, until the blood rants and raves on its way out of the other guy’s mouth.

  “Stop it,”
Rube says to the ref.

  The crowd roars.

  “Stop the fight.” But the ref has no intention to do so, and Rube is forced to bury one last punch onto the chin of Wizard Walter Brighton, and he falls cold to the canvas.

  All is loud and violent.

  Beer glasses smash.

  People shout.

  A drop of extra blood hits the canvas. Rubes stares.

  Then another roar does a lap around the factory floor.

  “That’s it then,” Rube says when he returns to the corner. “I told ‘em to stop it but I guess they like the blood. That’s what people’re payin’ for, I s’pose.”

  He climbs out of the ring and is given instant worship by the crowd. They pour beer on him, shake hands with his glove, and yell out how great he is. Rube reacts to none of them.

  At the end of the night, we all file back into Perry’s van. Bumper won in five but the other blokes all lost, including me, of course. The ride home is all silent. Only two fighters hold a fifty-dollar note in their hand. The others have a little bit of tip money in their pockets, thrown into their corner at the end of the fight. All of them except me, that is. Like I’ve said, it’s clear that no one likes a coward.

  Perry drops everyone else off first and lets Rube and me out at Central.

  “Hey Rube,” he calls.

  “You can fight, boy. See y’ next week.” “Same time?”

  “Yeah.”

  Perry, to me: “Cameron, if you do what you did tonight next week, I’ll kill you.”

  Me: “All right.”

  My heart falls to my ankles, the van takes off, and Rube and I walk home. I kick my heart along the ground. I feel like crying, but I don’t. I wish I was Rube. I wish I was Fighting Ruben Wolfe and not the Underdog. I wish I was my brother.

  A train passes above us as we walk through the tunnel and onto Elizabeth Street. The sound is deafening, then gone.

  Our feet take over.

  Out on the other side, on the street, I can smell the fear again. I can pick up the scent. It’s easy to find, and Rube smells it too, I can sense it. But he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t feel it.

  The worst part is the knowing that things have changed. See, Rube and I had always been together. We were both down low. We were both scrap. Both no good.

  Now Rube’s a winner, and I’m a Wolfe on my own. I’m the Underdog, alone.

  On our way through the front gate back home, Rube pats me on the shoulder, twice. His previous anger has calmed, probably on account of his own great victory. We brace ourselves for the questions of why we’re so late for dinner. It doesn’t happen, as Mum’s doing an evening shift at the hospital, and Dad’s out walking. The first thing Rube does is hose the blood off his gloves in the backyard.

  When he comes into our room, he says, “We’ll have dinner and then walk Miffy, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  My own gloves go straight back under my bed. They’re spotless. Squeaky clean.

  “Rube?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve gotta tell me how it felt. Y’ gotta tell me how it felt to win.”

  Quiet.

  All quiet.

  Voices of Mum and Dad wander down at us from the kitchen. They’re talking to Steve, because I hear my brother’s voice as well. Sarah sleeps in her own room, I guess.

  “How’d it feel?” Rube asks himself. “I don’t know exactly, but it made me wanna howl.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Grab that bag there,” Steve tells me. Just like said he would, he’s moving out. All his stuff is cleared from the basement as he prepares to leave home, get a flat with his girl. He will rent for a while, I’d say, and then he’ll probably buy something. He’s been working a long while now. Good job, just started part-time university. Nice suits. Not bad for a few years out of school. He just says it’s time to leave, with Mum and Dad struggling to pay bills, and Dad refusing the dole.

  He isn’t dramatic.

  He doesn’t look

  down into his room with a last nostalgic gaze.

  He just smiles, gives Mum a hug, shakes Dad’s hand, and walks out.

  On the porch, Mum cries. Dad holds up his hand in good-bye. Sarah holds the last remnants of a hug in her arms. A son and brother is gone. Rube and I travel with him, to help him unpack what’s left of his stuff. The flat he will live in is only about a kilometer away, but he says he wants to move south.

  “Down near the National Park.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Fresh air and beaches.”

  “Sounds good.”

  We drive off and it’s only me who turns around to see the rest of the Wolfe pack on the front porch. They will watch the car till it disappears. Then, one by one, they will go back inside. Behind the flyscreen. Behind the wooden door. Behind the walls. Into the world within the world.

  “Bye Steve,” we say, when all is unpacked.

  “I’m only up the street for now,” he says, and I reach for a semblance of recognition in his voice. Anything that sounds like It’s okay, lads. We’ll be right. We all will be. Steve’s voice sounds nothing like it though. We all know that Steve will be okay. There’s no irony in the word for him. Steven will always be okay. That’s just how things are.

  None of us embrace.

  Steve and Rube shake hands.

  Steve and I shake hands.

  His last words are, “Make sure Mum’s okay, right?”

  “Right.”

  We run home, together, in the nearly-dark of Tuesday evening. Rube is waiting for me as we run. He pushes me. The next fight loiters around, like a thief, waiting to thieve. It’s five days away.

  Each night, I dream about it.

  I nightmare.

  I sweat.

  In my dreams, I fight Perry. I fight Steve and Rube. Even my mother steps up and beats the hell out of me. The weirdest thing is that every time, my father is in the crowd, just watching. He says nothing. Does nothing. He simply watches everything go by, or reads the classifi looking for that elusive job.

  On Saturday night, I hardly sleep at all.

  All through Sunday, I mope around. I barely eat.

  Like last week, Perry picks us up, but he takes us to Glebe this time, way down the end.

  All is the same.

  Same type of crowd.

  Same guys, same blondes, same smell.

  Same fear.

  The warehouse is old and creaky, and the room we sit in is nearly falling apart.

  Before the doors kick open, Rube reminds me.

  “Remember. Either the other guy kills you, or Perry does. If I was you, I know who I’d prefer it to be.”

  I nod.

  The doors.

  They’re open.

  Perry shouts again and after a last deep breath, I enter the crowd. My opponent awaits me, but tonight, I don’t even look at him. Not at the start. Not at the prematch talk by the referee. Not ever.

  The first time I see him is when he’s in my face.

  He’s taller.

  He has a small goatee. He throws punches that are slow but hard. I duck and swerve and get out of the way. No suspense now.

  No wondering.

  I take one on my shoulder and counterpunch him. I get inside and throw a jab into his face. It misses. I throw another. It misses.

  His giant hand seems to shake me first, then land on my chin. I hit him back, in the ribs.

  “That’s the way, Cam!” I hear Rube call out, and when the round is over, he smiles at me. “Even round,” he tells me. “You can drop this clown easy.” He even begins to laugh. “Just imagine you’re fighting me.”

  “Good idea.”

  “You afraid of me?”

  “A bit.”

  “Well, beat him anyway.”

  He gives me a last drink and I go out for the second.

  This time it’s the crowd that swerves. Their voices climb through the ropes and wrap around me. When I’m on the canvas, they fall over me like a stream,
making me get up.

  The third is a nonevent. We both get tangled up and throw punches into the ribs. I hurt him once but he laughs at me.

  In the fouth, he tells me something at the start. He says, “Hey, I had y’ mother last night. She’s pretty lousy, ay. Pretty dirty.” That’s when I decide that I have to win. There’s a picture in my mind of Mum, Mrs. Wolfe, working. Tired to the bone, but still working. For us. I don’t lose my mind or go crazy, but I get more intense.

  I’m more patient, and when I get my chance, I land three good punches in his face. When the bell rings for the end of the round, I don’t stop punching him.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Rube laughs in our corner.

  I answer, “Got hungry.”

  “Good.”

  In the fifth, I go down twice and the guy they call Thunder Joe Ross goes down once. Each time I hit the canvas, the crowd urges me to my feet, and when the bell rings and the decision is announced, they clap, and coins are thrown into my corner. Perry collects them.

  I’ve lost the fight, but I have fought well.

  I’ve risen to my feet.

  That’s all I had to do.

  “There.” Perry gives me every cent when we reach the dressing room. “Twenty-two bucks eighty. That’s a good tip. Most losers are happy with fifteen or twenty.”

  “He ain’t a loser.”

  The voice belongs to Rube, who is standing behind me.

  “Whatever you say,” Perry agrees (not caring if it’s true or not), and he’s gone.

  When it comes to Rube’s fight, the crowd is extra sharp. Their eyes are glued to him, watching his every move, every mannerism, every everything that might indicate what they’ve heard about him. Word has traveled fast that Perry Cole’s got a hot new fighter, and everyone wants to see him. They don’t see much.

  His fight begins with a massive left hook.

  The guy hits the ropes and Rube keeps going. He rinses the guy out. Whales him. His hands launch into his ribs. Uppercuts, one after the other. Midway through the round, it’s all over.

  “Get up!” people shout, but this guy just can’t. He can barely move.

  Rube stands there.

  Above him.

  He doesn’t smile.

  The crowd sees the blood, and they smell it. They look into Rube’s fire-stomped eyes. Fighting Ruben Wolfe. It’s a name they will come to see here now for a long time.