Underdogs: Three Novels

by Markus Zusak

  On the Friday of that week, what seems like a typical morning turns out to be a very important one.

  Rube and I are out for a run and it’s nearly seven when we return. , we have our old jerseys, track pants, and gymmies on. The day wears a sky with boulder clouds and a bright blue horizon. At our gate, we arrive and Sarah’s there. She asks, “Did y’ see Dad while you were out? He’s disappeared, ay.”

  “No,” I reply, wondering what the big deal is. “Dad’s been taking walks lately.”

  “Not this early.”

  Mum comes out.

  “His suit’s not there,” she announces, and instantly, we all know. He’s down there. He’s waiting. He’s gone down to get the dole.

  “No.”

  Someone says it. Again.

  Against the hope that it isn’t true.

  “No way,” and I realize that it’s me who has spoken, because the morning-cold smoke has tumbled from my mouth with the words. “We can’t let him.” Not because we’re ashamed of him. We’re not. We just know that he’s fought this for so long, and we know he sees it as the end of his dignity. “Come on.”

  Now it’s Rube who has spoken, and he tugs on my sleeve. He calls to Mum and Sarah that we’ll be back soon, and we take off.

  “Where we goin’?” I pant, but I know the answer, right up until we get to Steve’s place. Out of breath from the sprint, we stand there, gather ourselves, then call out.

  “Hey Steve! Steven Wolfe!”

  People yell out for us to shut up, but soon enough, Steve appears on his apartment balcony in his underwear. His face says, You bastards. His voice says, “I thought it was you blokes.” Then a shrill, unhappy shout: “What are y’s doin’ here? It’s seven o’clock in the bloody morning!”

  A neighbor shrieks, “What the hell’s goin’ on out there?”

  “Well?” Steve demands.

  “It’s,” Rube stutters. “It’s Dad.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s …” Damn, my voice is still panting. “He’s down there.” I’m shaking. “Getting the dole.”

  Steve’s face shows relief. “Well, it’s about time.”

  Yet, when Rube and I stare into him, he can tell. We’re pleading with him. We’re crying out. We’re howling for help. We’re screaming out that we need all of us. We need — “Ah, bloody hell!” Steve spits out the words. A minute later, he’s with us, running in his old football training gear and his good athletic shoes.

  “Can’t y’s run any faster?” he complains on the way, just to repay us for pulling him out of bed and humiliating him in front of his neighbors. He also says through clenched teeth, “I’ll get you blokes for this, I promise y’s.”

  Rube and I just keep running, and when we get back to our place, Mum and Sarah are dressed. They’re ready. We all are. We walk.

  After fifteen minutes, the employment service is in sight. At the doors, there sits a man, and the man is our father. He doesn’t see us, but each one of us walks toward him. Together. Alone.

  Mrs. Wolfe has pride on her face.

  Sarah has tears in her eyes.

  Steve has our father in his eyes, and finally, the realization that he would be equally as stubborn.

  Rube has intensity clawed across him.

  As for me, I look at my father, sitting there, alone, and I imagine his sense of failure. His black suit is a bit short at the ankles, exposing his worn-out socks beneath the pants.

  When we get there, he looks up. He’s a good-looking man, my father, although this morning, he’s defeated. He’s broken.

  “Thought I’d get down here early,” he says. “This is about the time I normally start work.” All of us stand around him.

  In the end, it’s Steve who speaks. He says, “Hi Dad.”

  Dad smiles. “Hi Steven.”

  That’s all there is. No more words. Not like you might expect. That’s all of it, except that we all know we won’t let him do it. Dad knows it too.

  He stands up and we resume the fight.

  When we walk back, Rube stops at one point. I wait with him. We watch the others walk.

  Rube speaks.

  “See,” he says. “That’s Fighting Clifford Wolfe.” He points. “That’s Fighting Mrs. Wolfe and Fighting Sarah Wolfe. Hell, these days, that’s even Fighting Steven Wolfe. And you’re Fighting Cameron Wolfe.”

  “What about you?” I ask my brother.

  “Me?” he wonders. “I’ve been given the name, but I don’t know.” He looks right at me and says truth. “I’ve got some fear of my own, Cam.”

  “Of what?”

  What can he be afraid of?

  “What will I do when a fight comes along that I might lose?” So that’s it. Rube’s a winner. He doesn’t want to be. He wants to be a fighter first. Like us.

  To fight a fight he might lose. I answer his question, to assure him. “You’ll fight anyway, just like us.” “Y’ reckon?”

  But neither of us knows, because a fight’s worth nothing if you know from the start that you’re going to win it. It’s the ones in between that test you. They’re the ones that bring questions with them.

  Rube hasn’t been in a fight yet. Not a real one.

  “When it comes along, will I stand up?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  He’d rather be a fighter a thousand times over among the Wolfe pack than be a winner once in the world.

  “Tell me how to do it,” he begs. “Tell me.” But we both understand that some things can’t be told or taught. A fighter can be a winner, but that doesn’t make a winner a fighter.

  “Hey Rube.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why can’t y’ be happy bein’ a winner?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I don’t know.” He goes over it. “Actually, I do know.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, first, if you’re a Wolfe, you should be able to fight. Second, there’s only so long you can win for, because someone can always beat you.” He draws a breath. “On the other hand, if you learn how to fight, you can fight forever, even when you get belted.”

  “Unless you give up.”

  “Yeah, but anyone can stop you being a winner. Only you yourself can make you stop fighting.”

  “I s’pose.”

  “Anyway …” Rube decides to finish it. “Fighting’s harder.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Like I’ve said earlier, there are four weeks now until I fight my brother. Fighting Ruben Wolfe. I wonder how it will be, and how it will feel. What will it be like to fight — not in our backyard, but in the ring, under all the lights, and with the crowd watching and cheering and waiting for the blood? Time will tell, I suppose, or at least, these pages will.

  Dad’s at the kitchen table, alone, but now, my father doesn’t look so beaten down. He looks like he’s back in it. He’s been to the brink ame back. I guess when you lose your pride, even for just a moment, you realize how much it means to you. His eyes have some strength back in them. His curly hair is spiraling at his eyebrows.

  Rube’s quiet lately.

  He spends a fair bit of time down in the basement, which, as you know, has been vacated by Steve. In the end, Mum offered it to everyone for their bedroom, but none of us wanted it. We said it’s because it gets so cold down there, but really, I reckon the remaining wolves in our house feel like now’s a time to stick together. I’ve felt it ever since Steve left. Not that I would say it out loud. I would never admit to Rube that I didn’t take the basement because I’d get too lonely without him. Or that I’d miss our conversations and the way he always annoys me. Or, as disgraceful as it sounds, that I’d even miss the smell of his socks and the sound of his snoring.

  Just last night, I tried waking him, because that snoring of his was dead-set detrimental to my health. Sleep deprivation, I’m telling you. That is, until it gets like a pendulum again, coaxing me into sleep. Huh. Hypnosis under the infl
uence of Ruben Wolfe’s snoring. It’s hopeless, I know, but you get used to things. You feel weird without them, like you’re not yourself anymore.

  In any case, it’s Mrs. Wolfe herself who has taken hold of the basement. She has a bit of an office down there and does the tax.

  On Saturday night, though, I find Rube there instead, sitting on the desk, his feet resting on the chair. It’s the night before his fight with Hitman Harry Jones. I pull the chair from his feet and sit on it.

  “Y’ right there?” He glares at me.

  “I am, yeah. It’s a pretty nice chair.”

  “Don’t worry about my feet,” he goes on. “They’re danglin’ now ‘cause of you.”

  “Ah y’ poor bloke.”

  “Got that right.”

  I swear it.

  Brothers.

  We’re strange.

  In here, he won’t give me an inch, but out in the world, he’ll defend me to the death. The frightening thing is that I’m the same. We all seem to be.

  A pause yawns through the air, before Rube and I start speaking without looking at each other. Personally, I look at a blotch on the wall, wondering, What is that? What the hell is it? As for Rube, I can sense that he has lifted his feet to the desk and rests his chin on his knees. His eyes, I imagine, are fixed straight ahead, on the old cement stairs.

  “Hitman Harry,” I begin.

  “Yeah.”

  “You reckon he’s any good?” “May

  Then, right in the middle of it all, Rube says, “I’m gonna tell ‘em.” His statement brings with it no extra attention, no movement. No prospect of believing that he’s thought out what he has said just now. It’s been decided long ago.

  The only problem is, I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  “Tell who what?” I inquire.

  “Can you really be that thick?” He turns to me now, a savage look on his face. “Mum and Dad, y’ yobbo.” “I’m not a yobbo.”

  I hate it when he calls me that. Yobbo. I think I hate it worse than faggot. It makes me feel like I’m eating a pie and drinking Carlton Cold and like I’ve got a beer gut the size of Everest.

  “Anyway,” he goes on impatiently, “I’m tellin’ Mum and Dad about the boxing. I’m sick of the sneakin’ round.”

  I stop.

  Think it over in my mind. “When y’ gonna tell ‘em?” “Just before you and me fight.” “Are you crazy?” “What’s wrong with that?”

  “They’ll keep us from fighting and Perry’ll kill us.”

  “No, they won’t.” He has a plan. “We’ll just promise that it’s the last time we’ll ever fight each other.” Is this part of Rube wanting a real fight? Telling Mum and Dad? Telling them the truth? “They can’t stop us, anyway. They might as well see us for what we are.”

  What we are.

  I repeat it, in my head.

  What we are…

  Then I ask it.

  “What are we?”

  And there’s silence.

  What are we?

  What are we?

  The weird thing about the question is that not long ago we knew exactly what we were. It was who we were that was the problem. We were vandals, backyard fighters, just boys. We knew what words like that meant, but the words Ruben and Cameron Wolfe were a mystery. We had no idea where we were going.

  Or maybe that’s wrong.

  Maybe who you are is what you are.

  I don’t know.

  I just know that right now, we want to be proud. For once. We want to take the struggle and rise above it. We want to frame it, live it, survive it. We want to put it in our mouths and taste it and never forget it, because it makes us strong.

  Then Rube cuts me open.

  He slits my doubt from throat to hip.

  He repeats it and answers it. “What are we?” A brief laugh. “Who knows what they will see, but if they come and watch us fight, they’ll know that we’re brothers.”

  That’s it!

  That’s what we are — maybe the only thing I can be sure of.

  Brothers.

  All the good things that involves. All the bad things. I nod.

  “So we’ll tell ‘em?” He’s looking at me now. I see him. “Yeah.”

  It’s agreed, and I must confess that I myself get obsessed with the idea. I want to run up immediately and tell everyone. Just to let it out of me. Instead, I concentrate on what lies ahead before it. I have three fights of my own to survive, and I must watch Rube fight and the way his opponents fight him. I can’t make the same mistakes they make. I’ve gotta go the distance, and for his sake, I have to give him a fight, not just another win.

  To my own surprise, I win my next fight — a points decision.

  Right after me, Rube puts the Hitman to bed midway through the fourth round.

  The week after, I lose in the fifth, and the last fight before my meeting with Rube is a good one. It’s at Maroubra, and compared with my first ever bout there, this time, I walk in and throw punches without hesitating. I’m not scared of being hit anymore. Maybe I’ve grown used to it. Or perhaps I know that the end is near for me. The guy I’m fighting doesn’t come out for the last round. He’s too wobbly, and I feel for him. I know how it feels to not want the last round. I know how it feels to concentrate hard on just standing, let alone even thinking about throwing punches. I know how it is for the fear to outweigh the physical pain.

  Watching Rube fight later, I see something.

  I find out why no one beats him, or why they don’t even come close. It’s because they don’t think they can win. They don’t believe they can do it, and they don’t want it badly enough.

  To survive him, I have to believe I can beat him.

  It’s easier said than done.

  “Hey Cam?”

  “It’s about time.”

  “About time for what?”

  “About time you started the talkin’.”

  “I’ve got somethin’ important to say.“Yeah?”

  “We’ll tell ‘em tomorrow.”

  “Y’ sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “When?”

  “After dinner.”

  “Where?”

  “Kitchen.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Now shut up. I wanna get some sleep.”

  Later, when he starts snoring, I tell him.

  “I’m gonna beat you.” But personally, I’m not really too convinced.

  CHAPTER 16

  The money sits on the kitchen table and we all stare at it. Mum, Dad, Sarah, Rube, and me. It’s all there. Notes, coins, the lot. Mum lifts Rube’s pile up just slightly, to get an idea of how much there is.

  “About eight hundred dollars all up,” Rube tells her. “That’s between Cameron and me.”

  Mum holds her head in her hands now. Thursday nights shouldn’t be like this for her, and she stands and walks over to the sink.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” she tells us, bent over.

  Dad stands, goes over and holds her.

  After about ten silent minutes, they return to the table. I swear, this kitchen table’s s

  een about everything, I reckon. Everything big that’s ever happened in this house.

  “So how long’s this been going on exactly?” Dad throws out the question.

  “A while. Since about June.”

  “Is that right, Cameron?” Mum this time.

  “Yeah, that’s right.” I can’t even look at her.

  However, Mrs. Wolfe looks at me. “So that’s where all those bruises came from?”

  I nod. “Yeah.” I go on talking. “We did still fight in the backyard, but only for practice. When we started out, we told ourselves that we all needed the money….” “But?”

  “But, I don’t think it’s ever been about the money.”

  Rube agrees and takes over. He says, “Y’ know Mum, it’s just that Cam and I saw what was happening here. We saw what was happening to us. To Dad, to you, to
all of us. We were barely surviving, just keeping our heads above water, and …” He’s getting feverish now. Desperate to tell it right. “We wanted to do something that would lift us up and make us okay again —”

  “Even if it makes the rest of us ashamed?” Mum interrupts.

  “Ashamed?” Rube boxes her through the eyes. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw Cameron fighting, standing up, over and over again.” He’s nearly shouting. “You’d fall to your knees with pride. You’d tell people that he’s your boy and he keeps fighting because that’s the way you brought him up.”

  Mum stops.

  She stares through the table. She imagines it, but all she sees is the pain. “How can you go through that?” she begs me. “How can you go through it, week after week?” “How can you?” I ask her. It works.

  “And how can you?” I ask Dad. The answer is this:

  We keep getting up because that’s what we do. Don’t ask me if it’s instinct, but we all do it. People everywhere do it. Especially people like us.

  When it’s nearly all over, I allow Rube to deliver the knockout blow. He does it. He says, “This week is Cameron’s last fight.” A deep breath. “The only thing is” — a pause — “he’s fighting me. We’re fighting each other.”

  Silence.

  Total silence.

  Then, in all honesty, it’s taken quite well. Only Sarah flinches.

  Rube goes on. “After that I’ve got semifinals. Three more weeks at the most.”

  Both Mum and Dad seem to be handling it now, slightly. What are they thinking? I ask myself. Mainly, I think they feel like they’ve failed as parents, which is completely untrue. They deserve no blame, because this is something Rube and I did on our own. If we succeeded, it was us. If we failed — us. No blame on them. No blame on the world. We didn’t want that, and we wouldn’t tolerate it.

  Now I crouch down next to my mother. I hug her and tell her, “I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry.”

  Sorry.