Killer Boots

by Jenkins, Wendy

  Toggo did a few more of the little kids’ letters, then went and made himself some coffee. The one to Greg Lukin was going to be a bit harder.

  When he came back to his desk he read Greg’s letter through again. It was clear that this kid knew that they were special boots. Though what ‘special’ meant to him, Toggo couldn’t be certain. Still, it made him feel good to think that, while he was injured, his boots would be running around doing their stuff. And there was something about that kid that had stayed with him. When he’d had that magic patch of play just before he did his leg, it had been playing kick to kick with Greg Lukin that he’d been thinking about.

  Dear Greg

  Thank you for your letter. I’m glad you’re so pleased with the boots I left with you.

  That ‘left with’ would make the kid sit up, if he wasn’t already on the edge of his chair.

  I’m really happy that the boots have gone to a good home. Yeah, I think they’re a special pair too, and I think you were meant to have them. It makes me glad to think they’re kicking goals while I’m out of action. (I guess you saw me do my hammy — a real bummer, eh?) It’s responding well to treatment and I hope to be back in a few weeks. Write to me again, mate, at the end of the season, and let me know how many you bagged.

  PS: My brother used to be an Eagles fan too but I convinced him that Dockers Rule. You reckon you can sort yours out as well?

  Matt Tognolini put his pen down and pushed back in his chair. That letter was a lot more positive than he felt … but what can you do when you’re ‘Toggo’, and half the kids in the State think you’re a superhero.

  Greg had got past approaching the letterbox like it had a redback in it, but he was still worried. And part of the worry was feeling bad about Toggo. Feeling like he’d taken the good luck, the magic, that should have been Toggo’s. That would have been protecting him if he’d been wearing the boots.

  When he checked the box Thursday there was just one letter. It was addressed to him. Oh well, if it was from Toggo wanting the boots back he could just about live with it. It didn’t feel the same wearing them any more. At training yesterday he’d played okay, but the spark, the special feeling had gone.

  Still, he half hoped it was the Demon Dentist writing to prepare him for his appointment for this afternoon:

  Your dentist is your friend. Open wide.

  Dr Denning had sent one of those last time but still managed to find a cavity that needed filling.

  Greg’s heart skipped when he saw Toggo’s signature at the bottom of the letter. No getting away from it. This was it.

  Dear Greg

  … I’m glad you’re so pleased with the boots I left with you …

  There were those words again, those sneaky words. But Toggo seemed to be using them like he understood.

  … I’m really happy that the boots have gone to a good home …

  Oh, wow! Was this for real?

  … Yeah, I think they’re a special pair too, and I think you were meant to have them …

  Meant to have them? Toggo thought that?

  … It makes me glad to think that they’re kicking goals while I’m out of action …

  Greg read the rest of the letter through in a daze. He read it six times in the next ten minutes, still not believing it. He put it down, then picked it up and read it again. There was no doubt about it. Toggo was giving him the boots. And Toggo thought he was meant to have them.

  Greg could sense the good feelings, the good connections, coming back. The boots were his and he was meant to have them. He could say that out loud now instead of just wishing it to himself. The boots were his and he was meant to have them.

  Suddenly, he couldn’t wait for the game on Saturday and for the season to be really underway. If the boots could pick up on his feelings, they’d be burning a hole in the bottom of the wardrobe right now. Toggo had said that he liked to think of the boots kicking goals while he couldn’t play. Well, Greg would kick a ton. He was playing for two people now.

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ Greg said, when Chris arrived to drive him to the dentist. ‘I got a letter back from Toggo, see?’

  Chris took the letter and read it carefully. There was something going down here she didn’t understand. ‘That’s a great letter,’ she said. ‘It’s very nice of him to write at all — he must get hundreds of letters.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Greg was smiling quietly to himself. He was off the hook in a big way. But the satisfaction went much deeper than that. Toggo might get hundreds of letters, but there was only one pair of killer boots. And they were his now, no worries.

  Not even Dr Denning, Demon Dentist, could get to Greg’s smile that afternoon, it was so deep inside.

  GIVE SMOKIN’ THE BOOT

  Toggo was standing in front of a mirror, practising his lines. ‘I couldn’t take those high marks without a good set of lungs … give smoking the boot.’

  He tried it another way: ‘I couldn’t take those high marks without a good set of lungs… give smoking the boot.’

  Nah…! However he said it he sounded like a dork. It had been bad enough doing the ads for the boots. This had the potential to be mega-embarrassing.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like the idea of being on TV, or even that he didn’t like doing the filming. He did. It was just that he was so lousy at acting. When the words came out of his mouth, it was like he’d eaten a bowl of dry muesli backwards and the raisins were pinging around in his throat. ‘I couldn’t take those high …’ Oh, bugger it!

  Still, he wasn’t the only sportsman who was no competition for Brad Pitt. It was a toss up who were worse, the cricketers or the footballers. At the start of each season there’d be a crop of ads like an eruption of zits. Apart from the occasional ‘natural’, none of the guys fronting them would have got a bit part in a cartoon run at half speed. After you’d seen the ads a few times, you wanted to roll these guys up in their carpets, stuff their mouths with sandwich bread, and fit them with their own mufflers.

  Well, Toggo thought, after this, someone would be wanting to light him up or give him the boot. And he wouldn’t blame them. But at least he wouldn’t be alone. Darryl Nannup, and Grantley Bell from the Eagles, would be in it too. It was going to be a big campaign, with posters, print ads and the works.

  The phone rang. It was Daz.

  ‘Hi, Togs. How ya doin’?’

  ‘Oh, not too bad, mate. Getting sick of swimming, though. Looking forward to getting back on the track.’

  ‘Won’t be long, eh?’

  ‘The physios are pretty happy. And it’s feeling okay.’ Toggo was hopeful. He had to be.

  ‘That’s good. We need ya … Listen, you got your script for this smokin’ thing yet?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, what do you reckon?’ Dazza didn’t sound too sure about it either.

  I dunno, it’s a bit embarrassing. My girlfriend can’t stop laughing.’

  ‘My wife’s the same. I mean, how’m I s’posed to say this.’ Dazza read from his script: ‘I’m proud of my heritage and proud of my achievements. You can be too. Give smoking the boot.’ I mean, I am proud of it, but I wouldn’t say it like that.’

  ‘No. Well, what would you say?’

  ‘I dunno. What I thought was: It’s good bein’ black but not in yer lungs. Give smokin’ the boot.’

  Toggo was impressed. ‘Daz — it’s brilliant.’

  ‘You reckon? My ol’ Nan says it’s good.’

  ‘Can she be wrong?’

  ‘She hasn’t been so far.’

  Toggo had a tight feeling in his stomach. ‘I wish I could come up with something like that, Daz. I’m gunna sound like a real dork. Listen to this …’ Toggo spoke his lines.

  Dazza sucked in his breath in sympathy. ‘Tough, mate. Real tough.’

  Half an hour later, Grantley Bell was on the phone. This was very unusual — the Dockers and the Eagles were not close mates.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me ringing you at home,’ Grantley sai
d. ‘It’s about this anti-smoking campaign.’

  ‘Yeah …?’

  ‘I’ve got my script. What do reckon about this thing …?

  Toggo listened while Grantley Bell read his lines, then told him he sounded fine. ‘You’re a natural, mate. No worries.’ He didn’t tell Grantley that he sounded like a muffler stuffed with sandwich bread rolled up in a carpet. The Dockers Rule, Okay?

  SNAP, BUBBLE AND THUNK

  Thun-k — thun-k — thun-k. Greg was pounding the footpath through the rain, running to get his fitness up. The wet surface of the pavement sucked his runners just enough to turn the usual thunk into a two-beat sound. Thun-k. He was wearing runners to save his boots for the real action, for when they really mattered.

  He’d played half-a-dozen games in them now, and each one had been better than the last. South Freo had won three of the matches and were in the top half of the competition ladder. If they kept it up, they had a good chance of playing in the finals.

  Last week the coach had switched Greg between full-forward and centre half-back. This had thrown him off a bit at first. But when he’d settled down and sussed it out he really enjoyed the change. It had worked out well for the team too. He’d booted five goals in the time he was in the forward line. If this was going to be the game plan from now on, he needed a high level of fitness to keep up with pace. Thun-k — Thun-splog (dog shit) — Thun-k.

  The kind of rhythm you could get up after about ten minutes of this was great — your body just clicked together and went with it. Although it was a really cold day, he made his own special heat. A kind of warm, soft armour protected him. He loved it. There was a hum under his skin that was sort of background to the thun-k — thun-k. The muscles in his legs were resonating like the strings of an electric guitar. It was a bit like that Walt Whitman poem they were doing at school … I sing the body electric … (Shit, cut that out. He’d be wandering lonely as a cloud soon).

  Greg waved to an old guy out the front of his house, working in his garden. The old guy usually gave him a snarky look when he ran past. This time he waved back, and he had a smile on his face. Hello man, hello footpath, hello world.

  Greg Lukin pounded the pavements, glad to be alive.

  FFFFF…hhhhhnnnnh … FFFFF…hhhhhnnnnh … FFFF…hhhhhnnnnh. Toggo was into his twentieth lap of freestyle. He was getting really sick of swimming but had to do laps for fitness until his leg got stronger.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like the water. He loved the beach in summer, and had been a bit of a surf when he was a kid. But these endless laps were as boring as repeats of The Brady Bunch. His whole body was screaming at him to stop, to get out of the water, to do something else. Anything else.

  But then he thought of Luke Vidovich breathing down his neck for his spot in the team. He’d been right. The coach had wheeled Big Luke straight into the vacant spot at full-forward.

  The big guy had played a couple of average games first up. Probably spun out at suddenly finding himself in the big league. But then he’d started to click, and last week he’d booted eight goals. He was bigger and heavier than Toggo. Not as quick and springy, but stronger on the ground and with the body-to-body stuff. The forwards’ game was already changing around him. This would make it a little bit harder when Toggo got his spot back. If he got it back.

  What Toggo really wanted to do was run. That was his favourite kind of aerobic training. His body really missed it when his legs were out of action and he couldn’t get that kind of pumping rhythm feeding into his muscles, heart and lungs. He had a flash of how terrible it would be to be permanently injured. It would take your body a long time to forget what it felt like to run.

  Swimming was a different kind of noise to running. What you heard back, really loud, was your own breathing, your own body noise. It seemed to bounce back at you from the bottom and sides of the pool. When you wanted to forget about yourself and get into a rhythm that took over and kept you going, all the noise and bubbles were a real turn-off.

  Toggo imagined that Luke Vidovich was swimming in the next lane. That gave him something to focus on, something to compete with. He and Luke went stroke for stroke for a while, then Toggo began to pull away … Luke was threshing along like a rugby player on steroids but was no match against Matt Tognolini’s lean strength and electric heels. Eat My Bubbles, Turkey.

  Matt did a tumble turn like he was racing, and pushed back hard against the sounding board with both feet. He felt something snap behind his left knee. Shit … he stopped swimming … SHIT! His hamstring had gone again.

  It was his own fault this time. He wasn’t supposed to really stress it yet.

  Toggo, all alone in the middle of the pool, felt sadder and lonelier than he ever had in his life. He imagined Luke Vidovich surging on ahead to the finishing line, leaving him behind. This new injury felt bad. It would mean more time out of the team, maybe a lot more. And maybe he had that thing that all players dreaded — a dodgy hamstring. If he had, his career in the AFL would be on pretty shaky ground.

  A couple of days later, Greg came in from his run hardly puffing. He grabbed a bowl of cereal and the paper, and settled down to read the sports pages.

  His eye was grabbed by an article on the Dockers. They were winning about the same number of games as they were losing and were just outside of the top eight, looking dangerous. Well, Greg thought, they’d be doing better when Toggo was back in the team. It shouldn’t be long now.

  Greg slid his bowl down the page and uncovered a headline.

  BIG SETBACK FOR TOGNOLINI

  High-flying Dockers forward Matt Tognolini will miss at least another three weeks with a serious aggravation to an existing injury.

  It is understood that Tognolini, who strained his left hamstring in the fifth round clash against North Melbourne, had been responding well to treatment before breaking down at training earlier in the week.

  ‘Toggo will be out for at least another three weeks,’ Dockers manager Neil Gerard said last night.

  ‘Hopefully he will be able to strengthen the leg with normal rehabilitation which will involve swimming and weights.

  Tognolini, who has struggled with form this year, said yesterday that he was hopeful of playing again within a month. ‘I’m really keen to get back out there with the guys. But I guess I have to convince the medical staff and the match committee that I’m a hundred per cent. I’ll be working at it.’

  New recruit Luke Vidovich has been gaining in stature and confidence in recent weeks, which could pose a selection dilemma when Tognolini is declared fit to play.

  Greg had stopped eating his bowl of Rice Bubbles. What selection dilemma? They couldn’t dump Toggo. No way. Toggo was a champion. When he was fit, he’d be back in the team. They couldn’t forget about a star like Matt Tognolini. Could they?

  LIKE A NORMAL FAMILY

  Greg was dreaming that he was adrift on a raft way out to sea. A terrible storm was starting up. The raft was rising up and down on a huge swell. A horrible slimy creature emerged from the depths, dragged itself across the raft and squatted, wet and smelly, on his chest. ‘Gup Gweg,’ it said.

  Gup Gweg?

  Greg opened an eye. He was still half asleep. There was a definitely something heavy and wet on his chest, and he was bobbing up and down like he was on the ocean. No, he was bobbing up and down like he was on his bed.

  ‘G’up Gweg, g’up!’

  Greg opened both eyes.

  Ashley was sitting on his chest, bouncing up and down. She wanted him to ‘get up’. She leaned over and grinned a baby grin right into his face. Any minute now that string of dribble would connect with his nose …

  ‘Listen rug rat.’ Greg sat up and plonked Ashley down at the end of the bed. ‘There’s going to have to be a few rules around here. One: this is my room when I stay here and …’

  Brett appeared at the door. ‘Oh, sorry Greg,’ he said, with a smile on his face. He picked Ashley up. ‘She disappeared while I was getting her breakfast rea
dy … oh, she’s a bit wet … sorry.’

  ‘UUUUUH — urrrrrrrrrhhhh.’ Greg wrapped his head in the pillow, pulled the blanket over his head and turned to face the wall. Rowan, in the other bed, gave a grunt and mumbled loudly in his sleep.

  ‘I don’t think we’re welcome here just at the minute, Ashley,’ Brett said.

  Greg heard Ashley grizzle as Brett picked her up. Then there were a couple of footsteps and the door closed shut. Peace.

  He lay in the quiet for a while, enjoying the warmth of the covers. He started to think about the day ahead. It was going to be a big game for the under fifteens. They were up against Lakes, who were one of the best sides in the competition. South Fremantle had lost last week. They needed to win this match to have a place in the finals. If they lost, it would be their last game for the season.

  Greg had become one of the key players in the team. They worked as a unit, and everyone did their bit, but a lot rested on him. When it was going well, the coach usually left him at full-forward as a spearhead and goal kicker. If the ball was staying down the other end, he tended to put Greg at half-back to get more drive out of the back line. Sometimes he gave him a run on the ball as well.

  Greg was the fittest he’d ever been. He was happy wherever he played but his favourite position was full-forward. His dream, which he was now starting to let himself think might actually come true one day, was to play full-forward for the Dockers like Matt Tognolini …

  ‘What do you mean you haven’t got any tinned spaghetti?’

  There was a mutiny in the kitchen. Greg was glowering at his mother over the kitchen bench.

  ‘I didn’t know it was such a big deal. You should have told me if it was so important,’ Chris said.

  ‘You’ve always had it before.’

  ‘Well, we’ve run out now. I buy it, people eat it, it disappears.’