I look at him, the freakin’ dude about a metre wide in a check shirt, his arms stretching it tight. Once he was almost Tempy Secondary’s school captain, although I wasn’t there then. The teachers asked him to put his name up for the vote, but he wouldn’t. His mates got to him, I reckon. He just let it pass him on by.
Mum walked away when he said he wouldn’t try to get chosen. Even Bobby asked him to think it over, saying it might help him in the future. Slate basically told everyone to get stuffed and didn’t talk for a week. I get it to a point – your mates are your mates, but if your mates couldn’t even handle you being school captain then fuckin’ forget ’em. One of Slate’s old bros, Big Tex Vlahoff, basically went straight from school to prison for assault with a deadly weapon and is probably still there. So I’m not thinking his opinion should’ve counted for too much.
‘I need the cash,’ Slate says, angry, about two seconds away from getting up and walking out. ‘I need the work.’
You can’t argue with that, but I also get the feeling that Slate knows Jude and Bobby are right, that he’s taken a big step out into the wilderness.
‘You’ll be right, Slate,’ I say. ‘You could get a job down at the Tempy Hotel. You’ll know everyone, then. Just about.’
He looks at me, surprised that I’ve had the guts to comment.
‘I might.’ He begins to eat, using just a fork, one elbow on the table. Supermarket barbecued chicken. Everyone likes it. ‘As a start.’
Bobby-boy has a pained look on his face, holding his knife and fork as if he would like to eat but can’t allow himself to start. He knows there’s no stopping Slate. There hasn’t been for years. And it looks like there never will be again – unless Slate decides to hit the brakes and steady himself down, which I doubt. He’s way too angry.
‘Prefer not to die of boredom,’ he adds. ‘It’ll kill ya just as dead as a pump-action shotgun.’
I’d like to say that’s doubtful, but I don’t. It’s as if Slate’s run out of good ideas for the future, so now he’s settling for bad ones, which sounds like a very risky business, if you ask me.
On Friday afternoon I take Deed out behind Sky Point to let her run. In the distance I see a girl from school, white hair streaming in the wind. Her name’s Eden Larkin, and she’s a big English kid, fourteen or fifteen, with pale blue eyes hidden deep in the folds of a pale face. Her brother, Elmore, is in my year. He’s big, too. A psycho. He towers over his dad who drops them off every morning in a Camry with cheap mag wheels.
There’s a rumour that Elmore’s old man was a prison guard in England who got caught in a riot. Supposedly he was held for three days, and now he’s just mental. Well, he sure drives like a nutter, windows wound up, stickers on the boot telling everyone to back off and a row of driving lights that’d fry a kangaroo. Evidently he runs the house like a jail, and the only place I ever see the kids out of school is at Sky Point. This isn’t a bad thing, though, because Elmore might be scared of his old man, but he’s sure not scared of grabbing anyone else by the throat.
Their mother simply looks untidy, unhealthy, vague and shell-shocked. She walks around staring at the ground, gripping an old brown handbag as if it holds the secrets of the universe. Personally, I think something’s festering away in that family that none of them can escape, because they act pretty much the same weird way every day.
I watch Eden walking, head down and arms crossed, as if she couldn’t care less what’s coming her way or what might happen. I don’t mind her, although I don’t know her. Elmore, on the other hand, I do know, and if he can’t find trouble he invents it. I put Deed on the lead and head for home. There is one thing I know for sure about the Larkins – and that is there is no way in the world I would swap my life, my house, or my problems for theirs. No way.
On Saturday Evan and me go to the footy at Etihad Stadium to see the mighty Western Bulldogs, who aren’t always mighty but we love them anyway. They’re our boys. They’re from the west, they train not far down the road, and when they stream out onto the ground and rip through the banner, I see them with my whole heart. Those beautiful colours – red, white and blue – they give me strength.
‘Go Dogs,’ I murmur, hoping that today they will unleash football that amazes – that they will kick straight, hit every target and never let the other guys get a touch. I want to see them play footy that moves as fast as light and defies gravity – footy that makes Evan and me look at each other and shake our heads at the skill of it. ‘Go boys,’ I add, watching them spread, heading for their positions. ‘Go hard.’
We’ve got good seats close to the boundary line. Sixty metres above us the Etihad roof is like a massive white wing. Rows of dazzling white lights shower the place with feeling of showbiz and action about to unleash. Everything is bright, sharp and special, the grass so green you just want to get out there and get into the game.
The crowd is on edge, waiting for the show to start. But this isn’t a show, not to us, not to the real Bulldogs supporters. This is footy, and only AFL people know what footy means, even if they couldn’t explain it. It’s in your blood and it is in there forever.
Bulldogs! Bulldogs! Bulldogs!
That chant is like a heartbeat that comes straight out of the west. Don’t underestimate it.
Boydy, our midfield general, hits the contest like a battering ram. He forces the ball to Little Libba who gets it to Griff, who runs so fast he seems to drift over the ground. Players move as if the Bullies have the keys to the universe. They are a meteor shower of red, white and blue that sees the ball launched like a rocket – and we have slotted the first goal in sixteen seconds flat.
They go again, Dale turning defence into attack, the ball skipping up the wing like a red stone, the boys arriving like jets, in close and out wide, Murph powering past, the ball smacked off his boot fast, straight, and home! And even if this only lasts a game, a half, a quarter, I can see that the Dogs have got what it takes, and one day they will make history.
‘That’s what they’ve gotta bring,’ I say, two white flags waving as the goal umpire stands like the lone survivor of an avalanche of noise that rolls down from the stands. ‘Every week.’
Evan nods, and we look back to the centre, where it all begins.
In the end we lose, yeah, we lose, Evan and me staying to the bitter end to watch the Doggies leave the ground like a defeated army. The colours are not the same now. Even the air has lost the ability to support the dream, the grass chopped and scarred, the scoreboard giving it to us hard in black and white. The jumpers of the boys are torn and dirty, their socks are down, their beautiful boots aren’t slick and glossy anymore, but still I see the team with all my heart.
I am not ready to think of next week. I am still in this week, this game, this loss, watching Boydy, Dale and Tommy trudge off, heads down, hands on hips – and I want to tell them that you can’t always win, you cannot always get that bloody ball, no matter how hard you train, try, and put in.
‘At least they fought it out,’ I say. ‘They did that.’
With footy, with me, the fight, the battle, the effort, comes first. You cannot win a game without it, and you most certainly cannot win a flag. You must fight. And these Dogs do – which is why I’m here, and will be as long as I live.
‘Man, what a day,’ I say, as we watch the last player go down – the race, the defeat complete.
‘Yep.’ Evan slings on his backpack and we turn away, our Sunday winding down like an old watch. ‘That’s it.’
We head through a sea of empty green seats, rubbish rattling as it’s rolled by a cold wind, the real world not even waiting for us to get outside before it comes looking for the boys from the west. Then we walk along a concrete path as wide as a runway, trains rattling through the rail yards, the truth of the loss a pain all of its own that settles deep.
‘No doughnuts today,’ says Evan, as we pass a van lit with bulbs like a movie star’s mirror, the girls serving like actors on a stage.
> ‘Too fuckin’ true,’ I say.
Our rule is doughnuts only when we win.
We walk towards Southern Cross station, carried along by the crowd, me thinking of the Bulldogs somewhere deep under the stands. They’ll be sitting around, backs against the wall, boots off, socks down, staring into space. They’ll still be taped-up, holding icepacks, or blood-stained towels, thinking about what was and what might’ve been – the next game something that can’t even be imagined until the pain of this loss has become the property of the past.
As we walk, I look at the city buildings, a thousand lights showing a thousand empty offices. This place really isn’t on my map; it’s not even on my family’s map and I can’t see that changing. The city is a big complicated-looking thing. I don’t know how you go about getting involved in it, or what goes on in here. And mostly, I don’t care.
Down we go into the station, on our way back to Templeton. Behind us Etihad Stadium sits like an extinct grey volcano. But it’s not extinct. Just dormant.
The Dogs will rise.
As the train passes through dark suburbs, I tell Evan some of what has happened to Ariel and her family.
‘It’s like a disaster movie,’ he says as fences splattered with graffiti slide by and factories steam gloomily away into a black sky. ‘Plenty to deal with.’
No wonder she hasn’t got the time to think of anything other than money, her family and a house that’s struggling to stay upright.
‘No cash,’ I say. ‘That’ll always stuff things.’
Evan nods, his hat reflected in the train window, cars on the road beside us like boats travelling along a river.
‘Not wrong.’
That’s right, I’m not wrong, because money buys you time to deal with stuff and recover. But if you haven’t got money, then you’re faced with the cold hard fact that you’ve got to get some from somewhere and fast.
‘She’s doin’ all right,’ I say. ‘Hangin’ in there.’
Evan sits, arms crossed, feet out, blue Pumas together. Losing the footy makes everything seem harder. Losing tells you point-blank that things do not always go the way you want, no matter how hard you work and how much you hope. And it can go on like that for years.
‘We could take her and the kid to the beach,’ Evan says. ‘Since they’ve never seen it.’
‘We could.’ The train stops at a station. In an empty waiting room, moths circle a sick grey light. ‘We should.’ And as the train moves off, a little bit of today’s loss is chipped away. ‘We will.’
I get home and Bobby-boy is on the couch watching the news and not the footy replay, thank God.
‘Hard day at the office, Ryan.’ He swings his legs down, wanting to talk. ‘We were in it for three quarters.’
I nod, feeling the loss like an injury. We’re all Bulldogs supporters here, although Slate is quiet. He’ll watch them without a word, but with an eagle eye. He has them in his heart like we all do. Nearly sixty years without a flag. History like that weighs a thousand tonnes. Some people have it easy.
Later, in my room, I look at the Doggies poster stuck to the back of the door. It’s smooth and shiny – red, white and blue – the players lined up and pumped up, the photo taken at the start of the year when everyone was right to go and everything seemed possible. Now, we’ve got great players out and only good triers to replace them. There are cracks in the ice. We’re in trouble.
I think of Boydy leaving the stadium, driving out of the underground car park, footy bag on the back seat, feeling like he’s gone ten rounds with Danny Green. He’ll head for home, this week’s game plan shot to bits, and in the rear-view mirror Etihad will look like the biggest monster in the world.
What would he be thinking?
I reckon he’d be thinking that footy is a hard game; a game that comes with no money-back guarantees. I reckon he’d be thinking that today could’ve gone better, that we should’ve kicked straighter and tackled harder, but pretty soon he’d be coming up with ways to go forward, and that’s why he was our captain – because he will never give up.
I walk to school with Evan and Ariel and Kaydie on Monday morning, and still the kid doesn’t talk. She just tags along, her hair braided in fancy loops, crossing the road when she’s told, a funny little space-case living in her own silent world. Who knows what she does when she gets to class.
No one mentions that she doesn’t speak. We just talk about the weekend and what went down – well, I do, anyway. Evan says nothing, but listens as if he’s checking the facts, so I have to keep the ball rolling.
‘Evan and me’ll take you and Kaydie to the beach,’ I tell Ariel. ‘On the train. Won’t cost much. Less than ten bucks. Port Melbourne. It’s not far.’
‘And it’s not great,’ says Evan. ‘But it’s still the beach.’
Ariel, holding Kaydie’s hand, says nothing. Today she’s wearing a long skirt that is more black than white, with a big uneven pattern of spots you might see on a cow. She also has on those wool gloves that have the feel of something from another place, another time, another life.
‘Say yes whenever you like,’ I add. ‘It’s just down the road.’
Ariel looks at me, her hair so messy, glossy and soft-looking I want to dip my fingers in it. She appears to be considering the angles.
‘Well, okay, probably.’ She speaks slowly. ‘I’ll need to check it with Jill, Kaydie’s mum.’
I nod. Of course, there’s more to this situation than meets the eye. There always is.
‘Good. We’ll talk.’
‘We will.’ Ariel leaves it at that and Evan and me leave them at the front gate of Tempy Primary.
We walk on without a word.
Evan is definitely a left-field sort of guy. And when I look at our English teacher, Johnny James Dunnolly, I’m going to put him in that same field, because he certainly isn’t your usual type of teacher/prisoner of the Victorian secondary-school system.
I watch Johnny James walking up and down in a light-blue shirt and skinny leg jeans. No Rivers shoes or army disposal combat pants for this dude, although he has never backed away from a battle since he’s been here. He’s a bit like Boydy, in that he’ll take on everything and everyone if he thinks he has to – but on the flip side, he’s smart enough to know when he should stay cool.
‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Johnny James looks at the ceiling as if the thing was there, whatever a mockingbird is. ‘An important book or what? Discuss. With me. Now.’
‘Or what,’ says Elmore Larkin, big, pale, mad and angry. ‘The bloody black guy done it, eh?’ Elmore chops each word to bits, then spits out the remains. ‘End of stupid story.’
Johnny James examines Elmore’s answer as if it was a Rubik’s cube made of rare glass. He twists it and turns it, never saying Elmore’s wrong, or is a head case (which he obviously is), but works the answer until he arrives at a place where the book is a masterpiece, and guys, please don’t sell your copy second hand at the end of the year, keep it and value it.
Good luck with that!
‘Thank you, Elmore.’ Johnny puts a full stop exactly where he wants it. ‘For provoking further discussion that now sees us moving on to the written part of this exercise.’
Elmore cops it, but there’s a lingering anger in his eyes, as if he knows he’s been had, and doesn’t like it.
‘Only a short essay will be required,’ Johnny James says. ‘The planning of which will take place over the next fifteen minutes. And the writing is to be completed at home over the next two weeks.’
I look at Evan who has written the word NUTCASE in that old black writing that Germans, bikies and skateboarders love. He flicks a look at Elmore, who is slowly waving a shiny steel ruler in Tina Barbero’s face. Even from where I sit, I can see fear rising in her large, dark eyes.
‘One hundred per cent,’ I murmur.
‘Enough, Elmore.’ Johnny James Dunnolly moves in like a police negotiator, sharp but not too sharp. ‘Stop it, thanks. It’s not co
ol.’
And Elmore does stop it, this time.
Sometimes I think of school as an old grey ship ploughing through a stormy sea. The outside area is the deck, the classrooms have the portholes and we’re the live cargo. I also wonder if it’s actually taking us anywhere, although everyone who is older than me assures me that it is. I hope they’re right. Otherwise it’s kind of ridiculous being here.
‘Shooting the bow tonight,’ Evan says, as we cruise the oval at lunchtime, surrounded by a plague of green jumpers engaged in various acts of violence that hopefully won’t require an ambulance. ‘Come over. Something to show you.’
I nod as we walk around the fence like convicts in the exercise yard. From this corner, I can see Slate’s factory. It’s nothing but a wide white blot on the landscape; not a place you’d really want to spend twenty years of your life in.
From here, the world looks pretty big. You can look as far as your eyes will take you to the north, east, south and west. Trouble is, once people get out into the big wide world, it seems to shrink on them. Instead of doing what you want to do, or dream of doing, most people I know end up doing what they have to do – Slate working for Arcon, and Ariel in Kealoah being two examples that come to mind.
‘Elmore in action,’ Evan says. ‘Check it.’
Fifty metres away, I see Larkin’s got some big kid in a headlock. It’s not a serious fight, by Templeton standards. But Elmore’s hurting the guy, you can see that. Still, it’s not something we want to get involved in, because all you have to do is look at Elmore the wrong way and you’ll be handling him all on your own. And like a mad dog, he will never let go. This I know through personal experience.
‘I blame the English and Australian governments.’ Evan laughs. ‘For ever letting that bunch of crazies over here in the first place.’
It’s like Elmore has inherited his old man’s history of violence and anger, then put his own spin on it. He’s decided he’s never going to let anyone get the better of him, in any way, and that’s a worry. He has more than a chip on his shoulder – it’s like he’s been hit with a poison barb.
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