It was one of the truest things Rube had ever said, just before a quietness smothered the room.
From next-door's backyard we could hear a dog barking. It was Miffy, the pitiful Pomeranian we loved to hate, but still walked a few times a week anyway.
'Sounds like Miffy's a bit upset,' Rube said after a while.
'Yeah,' and I laughed a bit.
A bit of a lonely bastard. A bit of a lonely bastard. . .
Rube's statement reverberated inside me till his voice was like a hammer.
Later, when I got up and sat on the front porch and watched shadows of traffic filter past, I told myself it was okay to be like this, as long as I stayed hungry. It felt like something was arriving in me. It was something I couldn't see or know or understand. It was just there, mingling into my blood.
Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.
Even in the night, in bed, they woke me.
They painted themselves onto the ceiling.
They burned themselves onto the sheets of memory laid out in my mind.
When I woke up the next day, I wrote the words down, on a torn-up piece of paper. And to me, the world changed colour that morning.
words of cameron
Nothing comes easy to a human like me.
It's not a complaint.
Just a truth.
The only problem now is that I have visions spilt on the floor of my mind. I have words in there that I'm trying to get out. To write.
Words I'll write for me.
A story I'll fight for.
And so it begins . . .
It's night and I walk through the city of my mind. Through streets and alleys. Between buildings that shiver. Between houses hunched, with their hands in their pockets.
As I walk these streets, sometimes I feel like they walk through me. Thoughts in me feel like blood.
I walk.
I realise.
Where am I going? I ask myself.
What am I looking for?
Yet, I walk on, moving deeper to some unknown place in this city. I'm drawn there.
Past wounded cars.
Down grimly lit stairways.
Till I'm there.
I feel it.
Know it.
I know I've found the heart of me in a shadow-beaten alley, in a back street in the somewhere of this place.
At the bottom, something waits.
Two eyes glow.
I swallow.
My heart beats me.
And now I walk on, to find what it is . . .
Footstep.
Heartbeat.
Footstep.
2
MY OLDEST BROTHER STEVEN WOLFE IS WHAT YOU'D CALL A hard bastard. He's successful. He's smart. He's determined.
The thing with Steve is that nothing will ever stop him. It's not only in him. It's on him, around him. You can smell it, sense it. His voice is hard and measured, and everything about him says, 'You're not going to get in my way.' When he talks to people, he's friendly enough, but the minute they try one on him, forget it. If someone tramples him, you'd put your house on it that he'll do twice the job on them. Steve never forgets.
Me on the other hand.
I'm not really like Steve in that way.
I kind of wander around a lot.
That's what I do.
Personally, I think it comes from not having many friends, or in fact, any friends at all, really.
There was a time when I really ached to be a part of a pack of friends. I wanted a bunch of guys I'd be prepared to bleed for. It never happened. When I was younger I had a mate called Greg and he was an okay guy. Actually, we did a lot together. Then we drifted apart. It happens to people all the time, I guess. No big deal. In a way, I'm part of the Wolfe pack, and that's enough. I know without doubt that I'd bleed for anyone in my family.
Any place.
Any time.
My best mate is Rube.
Steve, on the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn't bleed for any of them, because he wouldn't trust them to bleed for him. In that way he's just as alone as me.
He's alone.
I'm alone.
There just happen to be people around him, that's all. (People meaning friends, of course.) Anyway, the point of telling you about all this is that sometimes when I go out wandering at night I'll go up to Steve's apartment, which is about a kilometre from home. It's usually when I can't handle standing outside that girl's house, when the ache of it aches too much.
He's got a nice place, Steve, on the second floor, and he has a girl who lives there as well. Often though, she's not there because she works in a company that sends her on business trips and all that kind of thing. I always thought she was pretty nice, I s'pose, since she tolerated me when I went up to visit and she was there. Her name's Sal and she's got nice legs. That's a fact I can never escape.
'Hey Cam.'
'Hey Steve.'
That's what we say every time I go up and he's home.
It was no different the night after the beer ice block incident. I buzzed from downstairs. He called me up. We said what we always say.
The funny thing is that over time, we've become better at talking to each other. The first time, we just sat there and had black coffee and said nothing. We each just let our eyes swirl into the pools of coffee and let our voices be numb and silent. There was always a thought in me that maybe Steve held a sort of grudge against everyone in the Wolfe family because he seemed to be the only winner, in the world's eyes, anyway. It was like he might have good cause to be ashamed of us. I was never sure.
In recent times, since Steve decided to play one more year of football, we've even gone to the local ground and kicked the ball around. (Or in truth, Steve had practice shots at goal and I returned them.) We'd go there and he'd turn the lights on and, even if it was extra cold and the earth was coated with frost and our lungs were trodden with winter air, we always stayed for quite a while. If it got too late, he even dropped me home.
He never asked how anyone was. Never. Steve was more specific.
'Is Mum still workin' herself into the ground?'
'Yeah.'
'Dad got plenty of work?'
'Yeah.'
'Sarah still goin' out, getting smashed, and comin' home reeking of club and smoke and cocktails?'
'Nah, she's off that now. Always workin' overtime shifts. She's okay.'
'Rube still Mr Excitement? One girl after another? One fight after another?'
'Nah, there's no-one game enough to fight him any more.' Rube is without doubt one of the best fighters in this part of the city. He's proved it. Countless times. 'You're right about the girls, though,' I continued.
'Of course,' he nodded, and that's when things always get a little edgy--when it comes to the question of me.
What could he possibly ask?
'Still got no mates Cameron?'
'Still completely alone Cameron?'
'Still wanderin' the streets Cameron?'
'Still got your hands at work under the sheets Cameron?'
No.
Every time, he avoids it, just like the night I'm talking about.
He asked, 'And you?' A breath. 'Survivin'?'
'Yeah,' I nodded. 'Always.'
After that there was more silence, till I asked him who he was playing against this weekend.
As I told you earlier, Steve decided to have one last year of football. At the start of the season, he was begged to go back by his old team. They begged hard and, finally, he gave in, and they haven't lost a game yet. That was Steve.
That Monday night, I still had my words in my pocket, because I'd decided to carry them everywhere with me. They were still on that crumpled piece of paper, and often I would check that they were still there. For a moment, at Steve's table, I imagined myself telling him about it. I saw myse
lf, heard myself, felt myself explaining how it made me feel like I was worth it, like I was just okay. I said nothing though. Absolutely nothing, even as I thought, I guess that's what we all crave once in a while. Okayness. Alrightness. It was a vision of looking inside a mirror and not wanting, not needing, because everything was there . . .
With the words in my hands, that was how I felt.
I nodded.
At the prospect of it.
'What?' Steve asked me.
'Nothing.'
'Fair enough.'
The phone rang.
Steve: 'Hello.'
The other end: 'Yeah, it's me.'
'Who the hell's me?'
It was Rube.
Steve knew it.
I knew it.
Even though I was a good distance from the phone, I could tell it was Rube, because he talks loud, especially on the phone.
'Is Cameron there?'
'Yeah.'
'Are y's goin' up the oval?'
'Maybe,' at which point Steve looked over and I nodded. 'Yes, we are,' he answered.
'I'll be up there in ten minutes.'
'Right. Bye.'
'Bye.'
Secretly, I think I preferred it when it was only Steve and me who went. Rube was always brilliant, always starting something and mucking around, but with Steve and me, I enjoyed the quiet intensity of it. We might never have said a word--and I might have only kicked the ball back hard and straight, and let the dirt and smell of it thump onto my chest--but I loved the feeling of it, and the idea that I was part of something unspoken and true.
Not that I never had moments like that with Rube. I had plenty of great moments with Rube. I guess it's just that with Steve, you really have to earn things like that. You'd wait forever if you wanted one for free. Like I've said before, for other reasons, that's Steve.
On the way down to the ground floor a few minutes later, he said, 'I'm still sore from yesterday's game. I got belted in the ribs about five times.'
At Steve's games it was always the same. The other team always made sure he hit the ground especially hard. He always got up.
We stood on the street, waiting for Rube.
'Hey boys.'
When he arrived, Rube was puffing gently from the run. His thick, curly, furry hair was too attractive for its own good, even though it was a lot shorter than it used to be. He was wearing only a jersey, sawn-off track pants and gymmies. Smoke came from his mouth, from the cold.
We started walking, and Steve was his usual self. He wore the same pair of old jeans he always did at the oval and a flanno shirt. Athletics shoes. His eyes took aim, scanning the path, and his hair was short and wiry and tough-looking. He was tall and abrupt and exactly the kind of guy you wanted to be walking the streets with.
Especially in the city.
Especially in the dark.
Then there was me.
Maybe the best way to describe me that night was by looking again at my brothers. Both of them were in control. Rube, in a reckless, no matter what happens, I'll be ready when it comes kind of way. Steve, in a there's nothing you can do that's going to hurt me way.
My own face was the usual, for me. It focused on many things, but never for too long, remaining eventually on my feet, as they travelled across the slightly slanted road. My hair was sticking up. It was curly and ruffled. I wore the same jersey as Rube (only mine was slightly more faded), old jeans, my spray jacket, and boots. I told myself that although I could never look the same as my brothers, I still had something.
I had the words in my pocket.
Maybe that was what I had.
That, and knowing that I've walked the city a thousand times on my own and that I could walk the streets with more feeling than anyone, as if I was walking through myself. I'm pretty sure that was what it was--more a feeling than a look.
At the oval Steve had shots at goal.
Rube had shots at goal.
I sent the ball back to them.
When Steve had a shot, the ball rose up high and kept climbing between the posts. It was clean, ranging, and when it came down, it rushed onto my chest with a complete, numbing force. Rube's ball, on the other hand, spun and spiralled, low and charging, but also went through the posts. Every time.
They kicked them from everywhere. In front. Far out. Even past the edges of the field.
'Hey Cam!' Rube yelled at one point. 'Come out and have a shot!'
'Nah mate, I'll be right.'
They made me though. Twenty yards out, twenty yards to the left. I moved in with my heart shuddering. My feet stepped in, I kicked it, and the ball reached for the posts.
It curved.
Spun.
Then it collided with the right-hand post and slumped to the grass.
Silence.
Steve mentioned, 'It was a good shot Cameron,' and the three of us stood there, in the wet, weeping grass.
It was quarter past eight then.
At eight-thirty, Rube left, and I'd had another seven shots.
At just past nine-thirty, Steve was still standing behind the posts, and I still hadn't got it through. Clumps of darkness grew heavier in the sky, and it was just Steve and me.
Each time my brother sent the ball back, I searched for a note of complaint in him, but it never came. When we were younger he might have called me useless. Hopeless. All he did that night, however, was kick the ball back and wait again.
When the ball finally fought its way up and fell through the posts, Steve caught it and stood there.
No smile.
No nod of the head, or any recognition.
Not yet.
Soon he walked with the ball under his arm, and when he was perhaps ten yards short of me, he gave me a certain look.
His eyes looked differently at me.
His expression was swollen.
Then.
I've never seen a person's face shatter like his did.
With pride.
enter, the dog
I edge closer, towards the glowing eyes I'd previously seen inside me.
The city is cold and dark.
This alley is filled with numbness.
The sky's sinking. Dark, dark sky.
I'm there now, maybe five yards from an animal that stares back. My eyes adjust and I see all of him, crouched to the ground.
I see the eyes.
The rough, ragged, rusted fur.
Breathing.
Panting smoke.
Slowly, I move closer.
Too close.
I get too close and the dog buckles to his feet and arcs around me, watchful. His head's down, but trying to reach up.
He goes past me but stops to look back.
'What?' I ask.
But I know.
I have to follow him.
Gradually, he takes me back through the streets and to the oval. He moves with what I can only call a jagged grace.
Then.
There's a place on that ground.
On the dew-covered ground.
He stops and sits there and the city seems dead around us.
I like his eyes.
They look like desire.
3
FAGGOT. POOFTER. WANKER.
These are common words in my neighbourhood when someone wants to give you some, tell you off, or just plain humiliate you. They'll also call you one of those things if you show some sign that you're in some way different to the regular, run-of-the-mill sort of guy who lives in this part of the city. You might also get it if you've annoyed someone in some inadvertent way and the person has nothing better to say. For all I know it's the same everywhere, but I can't really speak for anywhere else. The only place I know is this.
This city.
These streets.
Soon you'll know why I've mentioned it . . .
On Thursday that week I decided I should go and get a haircut, which is always a pretty dangerous decision, especially when your hair sticks up as stubborn and chro
nic as mine. You just have to pray that it won't end in tragedy. You hope beyond all hope that the barber won't ignore all instructions and butcher your head to pieces. But it's a risk you have to take.
'Har-low mate,' the barber said when I entered the shop, deeper into the city. 'Have a seat, I won't be long.'
In the scungy waiting area there was quite a good range of magazines, though you could tell each one had been sitting there for the last few years, judging by the dates of issue. There was Time, Rolling Stone, some fishing thing, Who Weekly, some computer thing, Black and White, Surfing Life, and always a favourite, Inside Sport. Of course, the best thing about the Inside Sport magazine is not the sport, but the scantily clad woman who is planted on the cover. She is always firm and has desire in her eyes. Her swimsuit is nice and open, her legs long and tanned and elegant. She has breasts you can only imagine your hands touching and massaging. (Sorry, but it's true.) She has hips of extreme grace, a golden, flat stomach and a neck you can only imagine yourself sucking on. Her lips are always full and hungry. The eyes say, 'Take me.'
She's always brilliant.
Absolutely.
You remind yourself that there are some pretty good articles in Inside Sport, but you know you're lying. Of course there are some good articles in the magazine, but that sure as hell isn't what makes you pick it up. It's always the woman. Always. Trust me on this one.
So, typically, I surveyed the area and made sure no-one was looking when I picked up the Inside Sport magazine, opened it quickly and pretended to scan the contents page for any good articles. I was (predictably) seeing which page the woman was on.
Seventy-six.
'Okay mate,' the barber said.
'Me?'
'There's no-one else waiting is there?'
Yeah, but, I thought helplessly, I haven't got to page seventy-six yet!
It was futile.
The barber was ready and if there's one man you don't want to keep waiting it's the guy about to cut your hair. He's all-powerful. In fact, he might as well be God. That's the kind of power he has. A few months at barber school and a man becomes the most important person in your life for ten or fifteen minutes. The golden rule: don't give him the shits or there'll be hell to pay.
Immediately, I threw the magazine back to the table, face down so the barber wouldn't know right away what a pervert I am. He'd have to wait until later when he tidied the magazines.
Sitting in the chair (it sounds about as dangerous as the electric chair), I considered the whole woman on the cover situation.
'Short?' the barber asked me.
'Nah, not too short please, mate. I'm just tryin' to have it so it doesn't always stick up.'
'Easier said than done, ay?'