When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his back on the cold, hard concrete. He gazed up at the corrugated roof of the grandstand. It took a second to remember where he was. Blood was streaming from his nose, into his mouth. The taste was becoming far too familiar for his liking.
He ran his tongue around his mouth, fearful of what he might find, but thankfully his teeth were all intact. The cut on his lip had burst open again, though, and already it had swollen to twice its normal size.
Sutcliffe and the others were long gone. Now it was the groundsmen who were staring at him. They all had concerned looks on their faces.
“You all right, son?” the oldest of the three men asked, helping him to his feet. “Are you hurt?”
He looked around, confused. Why were all his belongings on the ground? Were those his revision notes strewn across the pitch?
All of a sudden, he felt a wave of nausea surge up from inside. He sank to his knees and puked on the concrete.
“I think we ought to get you to hospital, son.” The groundsman who had spoken before rested a hand on his shoulder, but he brushed it away.
He hauled himself to his feet again. “No, I’m fine,” he mumbled, stooping to pick up his belongings and almost falling forward onto his face. A sharp pain shot through in his side as he twisted his body to right himself.
The other two groundsmen gathered his things and stuffed them back into his bag. They offered to take him to Accident and Emergency, but he refused point blank to go with them. Ignoring their protests, he limped over to the gate.
When he arrived home, he slipped into the house as quietly as he could manage, but his mother still heard the door open. “Sam, is that you?” she called out from the kitchen.
He took a deep breath before replying, “Yeah, it’s me. I’m just going to have a shower before tea.”
“Well, don’t be long. It will be ready soon.”
He took off his bloodstained shirt and threw it into the corner of the bathroom in disgust. Then he limped over to the mirror to inspect his face. It looked as bad as it felt.
As well as a fat lip, he had the beginnings of a black eye. Sutcliffe’s blows had driven his lower lip into his teeth, puncturing the flesh, and the volley of punches to his abdomen had almost certainly broken a rib or two.
His mum almost dropped what she was holding when he walked into the kitchen. “What on earth happened to you?” she gasped. There was an almighty clang as she dropped the pan into the sink and rushed forward. She cupped his face in her hands. “Dear God, look at your nose.”
As she reached out to touch it, he shrank from her hand, in anticipation of the pain.
“We need to get you to the hospital.”
“I’m OK, Mum. It’s nothing.” He tried his best to sound as casual as possible, but he felt his voice breaking. Despite his best efforts, a tear broke free and ran down his cheek.
“Oh, Sam,” his mother said. She put her arms around him. “John, come here,” she called over his shoulder. The sound was like a knife stabbing through his skull, and he winced.
“What?” his father shouted back.
“Sam’s been hurt. You’re going to have to take him to the after-hours.”
He extricated himself from his mother’s arms and filled a glass with cold water from the tap.
“What’s happened to you, then?” his father asked, appearing in the doorway.
“Nothing,” he replied, avoiding his father’s eye. He took a sip of water and immediately tasted blood again. He swished the water around his mouth and spat it out into the sink.
They drove to the medical centre and back in silence.
“Two broken ribs,” his father announced as they walked through the front door. His mother pulled him up close and gripped him by the shoulders. She looked him straight in the eyes. “Who did this to you, Sam? I want you to tell me right now.”
His father was standing behind him, but he could sense that he was waiting, listening, for his answer.
“Just leave it, Mum,” he mumbled.
“This is no trivial matter,” she scolded, her grip tightening. “The people who did this to you need to be punished. John, tell him he needs to tell us who did this.” She reached up and touched the cut on his lip. Should he tell her that his father was partly to blame? He wasn’t sure she’d want to know.
He was picking at his dinner when his mother walked back into the kitchen. She had been speaking with his father in the living room. “Make sure you eat it all up,” she said, looking at the food he had barely touched.
“I’m not hungry, Mum.”
She folded her arms and stared at him. He was looking down at his plate, but he could feel the intensity of her gaze.
“Well?” she said, after a long, awkward silence.
He shrugged. “I told you, it’s nothing. I just got in a fight. That’s all.”
“Look at your face, Sam. I wouldn’t call that nothing.” She sighed and sat down opposite. “Are you being bullied?”
“No!” He shook his head and shovelled a forkful of mashed potato into his mouth before she could ask another question. He chewed slowly. “It was just a stupid fight,” he said, grimacing as he swallowed. “It’s nothing to stress about.”
His mother opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off by pushing his chair back from the table and getting to his feet.
“Sam—”
“I just need to lie down, Mum.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze as he left the room. “I’ll be fine—really.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to his mother clattering about in the kitchen—the chink of china as she stacked the dishwasher; the scraping of chair legs on the floor as she swept around the table—he felt a pang of guilt in the pit of his stomach. He shouldn’t have been so short with her. He knew she couldn’t help but worry, and she had problems enough to contend with at the moment without his adding to them.
He reached down, picked up the university prospectus, which had fallen onto the floor the night before, and gazed at the faces smiling up at him from the cover. He threw the booklet across the room. It hit the wall with a thud and fell open on the carpet. He fell back onto the bed with a sigh.
It was pitch-black when he woke several hours later. He was still lying on top of the covers, and his hands and feet felt like blocks of ice. He staggered, half asleep, across the hall towards the bathroom, his bladder full to bursting.
He was making his way back to his bedroom when he noticed that the kitchen light was still on. No doubt his mother had left it on by accident. He stopped and turned towards the kitchen to switch it off.
The kitchen door was ajar. He couldn’t see much except the pantry and a slither of the bench. The kitchen table was tucked away behind the door, hidden from view. As he reached through the gap, feeling along the wall for the light switch, a muffled sob pierced the silence.
He snatched back his hand and froze.
He had seen his mother upset plenty of times, but right now, he wasn’t sure he had the energy to deal with whatever had happened. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to leave her crying all by herself. He stepped forward and pushed open the door.
It was hard to say who was the more startled: him or his father.
His father jumped up from the table as if he had been caught with his hand in the till. He turned to face the wall.
“What are you playing at,” his father growled, “creeping around the house in the middle of the night?”
He was lost for words. Never in his life had he seen his father cry; in fact, he didn’t think his father was even capable of it. “Sorry, I—”
His father sniffed and wipe a hand under his nose. “This never happened—OK?”
The sun hadn’t been up for long when he climbed out of bed. He pulled on an old pair of track pants and a hoodie and crept across the room. Every movement hurt like hell. His head was still pounding, but he couldn’t stay cooped up inside any longer. He snatched his sunglasses of
f the desk—an old pair he had found at the back of a drawer—and made his way quietly along the hall, towards the front door.
As he passed the kitchen, he glanced in. The room was empty, and for a fleeting moment he wondered whether last night had been a dream—a bad dream—but the pouch of rolling tobacco on the table confirmed otherwise. At some point during the night, Patch had moved from his usual spot at the foot of his bed and was now sprawled across the kitchen floor. The instant the front door clicked open, he was on his feet, his tail wagging.
“Shush,” Sam said, snatching up Patch’s lead. Patch had fetched it from the pantry and was dragging it behind him across the floor. The noise was loud enough to wake the dead. Patch squeezed past him and out the door.
It had been raining on and off all night, and dark storm clouds were now rolling up from the south. It would be pouring within the hour. He pulled the hood over his head and half-walked, half-limped out onto the footpath. “Come on then,” he said, giving the lead a yank.
Every inhalation of breath sent a stabbing pain up under his ribcage and brought tears to his eyes. The doctor had told him there was nothing he could do to make his ribs heal faster; it was simply a matter of letting nature take its course. Still, the doctor had given him strict instructions to rest.
He took a deep breath, winced, and continued on, towards the ocean. Anything was better than waiting around the house for his parents to wake up. He would give his father a wide berth for a couple of days.
When they reached the foreshore, he turned right, past the surf club and the half a dozen surf lifesavers hauling kayaks out of the shed onto the sand. The seagulls squawked angrily overhead, swooping and soaring on the wind, as he and Patch passed by. The waves were crashing against the rocks at the eastern end of the beach, exploding one after the other in bursts of white foam.
He cupped his hands in front of his face and breathed into his palms until the warmth of his breath defrosted his nose and cheeks.
Despite the early hour and the darkening sky, the beach was far from deserted. A hundred or so metres away, two dogs were chasing each other back and forth through the ankle-deep water. Patch pulled on the lead, eager to join in, but he had no intention of stopping. “Come on, boy,” he said, pulling him reluctantly in the opposite direction.
By the time they reached the rugby club close to his house, the rain had set in well and truly. He lit a cigarette and took shelter beneath the eaves of the clubhouse while Patch, happy to be off the lead at last, sniffed around the goal posts at the far end of the pitch. When he found the perfect spot, he cocked his hind leg and urinated.
Patch was making his way back across the field, nose down, tail wagging, when the double doors on his right swung open and a mass of bodies spilled out into the fresh air.
“Crowd around, boys.” The players formed a tight circle around their coach. It was bitterly cold, and it looked as if they all had smoke billowing from the tops of their heads.
He pressed his back against the wall and watched as they began their training.
His father had wanted so much for him to be good at sport. As soon as he was old enough, he had signed him up for the junior rugby team and the junior soccer team. New kit, new boots—his father had bought the whole caboodle. He even had his mother stitch his surname onto the back of his jersey.
Where are you going, boy? Open your bloody eyes! That type of encouragement might have worked with other boys, but with him it had had the opposite effect. The constant criticism made him only more self-conscious. After just two seasons, his jersey had been retired for good.
He stubbed out his cigarette on the wall and was turning to leave when he caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the group. It was Patch’s victim from the beach.
The players were working their way from one end of the pitch to the other, catching and passing the ball between them. He watched, mesmerised, as the ball flew from one pair of hands straight into the next. They made it look effortless, and he felt a pang of jealousy.
When the players reached the end of the pitch closest to the clubhouse, the coach blew on his whistle and gestured for everybody to crowd around. The rain was coming down hard now, and the players huddled close to each other. The guy from the beach was standing at the edge of the pack, his hands on his hips. Water was pouring from his wavy hair, and his jersey, saturated already, clung to his body.
After a short pep talk, the players divided into groups for scrum practice.
Sam tried not to stare too overtly, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the blond-haired stranger, who stepped forward and locked arms with the two props on either side of him. A second and a third row fell in behind, and at the coach’s command, the two front rows crouched and touched shoulders.
“Engage!” the coach shouted over the ruckus and the two halves of the scrum came together with a thud. But within a matter of seconds the pack buckled under its own weight and collapsed in on itself. “Get up and try it again.”
The next attempt was more successful, and he watched, his eyes glued on the centre of the pack, as the two teams pushed against each other. Blond-haired’s jersey was pulled taut over his back, and the tendons in his forearms bulged as he gripped the players on either side of him. Sixteen pairs of studded boots chewed into the muddy pitch as each team tried to force the other backwards, towards an imaginary try line.
He wasn’t paying any attention to the ball and didn’t notice when it emerged from the back of the scrum. One of the other players darted forward and scooped it up. He turned and punted it fifty metres down the field.
Patch was sniffing the grass at the side of the pitch. His ears pricked up.
“Stay!” he hissed, stepping towards Patch and reaching for his collar, but he wasn’t quick enough, and Patch wriggled away. Before he could make another grab for him, Patch dropped back on his hind legs and then launched himself after the ball.
The oval ball spun as it sailed through the air. When it hit the ground, it bounced several times before finally wobbling to a stop. Patch was travelling too fast and overshot the mark. He tumbled to a stop, turned and scrambled back to the ball.
“Get that ball off that bloody dog,” the coach’s voice boomed across the field. But Patch had already sunk his teeth into the leather and was carrying it away into the bushes.
“Fucking dog,” Sam cursed and chased after him as fast as his ribs would allow.
He found Patch hiding behind the large pohutukawa tree next to the clubhouse, and as he stepped towards him, Patch’s ears went back. He let out a low, rumbling growl.
“Drop!” he ordered and made a grab for the drool-soaked leather. But instead of releasing his grip, Patch dropped forward onto his front legs and inched backwards. He was a large, powerful dog, and had no intention of losing this tug of war. He shook his head from side to side to try to loosen Sam’s grip.
The jerking movement sent a sharp pain shooting through his body, and he yelped, letting go his grip. “Have it your way, then,” he snapped, clutching his side and inhaling through his nose. As he turned to leave, Patch dropped the ball and looked up at him. He cocked his head, as if to ask why the game was over.
Sam’s mother was sitting at the breakfast table when they arrived home. Her eyes were closed and she had her hands folded neatly in her lap.
He let Patch off the lead, kicked off his trainers and wandered into the room. His feet were steaming and left sweaty footprints on the grey slate tiles.
He buttered himself a piece of toast and flicked through the morning paper while his mother finished her morning prayers.
“You ask for the same things every day,” his father scoffed as he walked into the kitchen and sat down. The sound of the chair legs as they scraped against the floor set his teeth on edge. “Couldn’t you ask to win Lotto once in a while?”
His mother didn’t react.
“Where have you been?” His father turned his attention to him.
“Walking the dog.”
>
“The lawns need mowing today, and you can weed-eat the drive. You might as well make yourself useful now that you’ve finished school.” His father slurped on his tea and reached across the table for the newspaper.
Although Sam had finished his toast, he was still hungry. He had hardly eaten anything the night before and now his stomach felt as if his throat had been cut. He rummaged through the pantry for something, anything, to eat and found a couple of Weet-Bix hiding at the bottom of a box. He put them in a bowl and poured over the last dribble of milk in the carton.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, Dad,” he answered. “Mum, have we got any more milk?”
His mother closed her Bible and reached across the table for the teapot. “No, I’m afraid that was the last of it.” She poured herself a cup of tea and added a spoonful of honey. She always drank hers black.
He added a dash of cold water to the Weet-Bix, and just enough sugar to disguise the soggy cardboard taste. He sat back down at the table and shovelled a spoonful of the grey mush into his mouth. It tasted as bad as it looked but he finished the bowl.
“Bloody pervert,” his father muttered under his breath.
“What was that, John?”
His father pointed to the story on the front page of the paper: Eastern ward elects first gay councillor.
“This city is going to the dogs. Mark my words: it won’t be long before they’re running the joint.”
In the space of a few seconds, Sam had gone from feeling hungry to wanting to be sick. He kept his eyes down and sipped his tea in silence.
“It’s the way the world is going, John,” his mother said. “Jesus said it would only get worse.”
“Well, you can tell Jesus that I blame the parents,” his father continued, looking up from his newspaper and draining his cup. He stood up and tossed the paper onto the table. “I’m going to work,” he grunted. “Sam, don’t forget those lawns.”
He had been trying to read for the past hour, but he just couldn’t concentrate. Interesting as the book was, he found he had to read every sentence twice—three times even—just to remember what was going on. He finally conceded defeat, folded down the corner of the page, and returned the book to the bedside table. Unopposed, his mind wandered back to the rugby field. He had seen the guy with the blond hair twice and spoken to him just once—hell, he didn’t even know his name—yet he couldn’t think of anything else.
Sam Page 4
