Skid

by Keith Fenwick

  Bruce’s team had apparently lost the toss, and after a brief discussion that he couldn’t follow the ball was thrown in his direction, apparently so he could kick off and start the game.

  Bruce placed the ball on a plastic tee and kicked out to where his forwards were grouped. The ball rose into the air and dropped neatly into the hands of one of the charging opposition players who promptly stopped in surprise, as if someone had dropped a bomb in his lap.

  Bruce raced across the field to the base of the ruck that formed, arriving as the ball popped out and rolled across the ground towards him. His first pass was a real ripper, missing out the stunned first five, landing in the hands of an equally stunned center, who then spoilt a wonderful attacking chance by running straight into the arms of his opposite number.

  The two sets of forwards lumbered across the field to the breakdown while the backs struggled with each other on the ground.

  “Bloody hell, get in there, use your feet!” Bruce shouted frantically and was about to ruck the ball out with his foot when the referee blew his whistle.

  “Scrum it. You! Watch your language!” He pointed a finger at Bruce. “Black ball.”

  “Eh?”

  This wasn’t a game of rugby. It was a joke. Bruce fed the scrum which had formed midway between the opposition twenty-two and halfway, calling ‘weight’, as he rolled the ball beneath the hooker’s feet.

  The scrum didn’t move an inch. Bruce skipped around the base of it as his number eight picked up the cleanly hooked ball and ran forward. As the opposition loosies went to tackle him he went to ground and placed the ball on the ground in copybook fashion for his own forwards to group on him and drive over the top of him. The slow motion dance disgusted Bruce. He leapt into the collapsing maul, wrenched out the ball, feinted to the left, simply ran right over two or three opposition players and then sprinted for the try line and touched down between the posts.

  “Peep!” went the ref’s whistle as Bruce trotted back with the ball to kick the conversion, just as the ref ordered a penalty where the scrum had been.

  “What the hell?” Bruce couldn’t believe it and kicked the ball away in disgust. Penalized for over-vigorous play! What a load of shit! These Skidians were just a bunch of big girls. Bruce stopped in his tracks, realizing the players from both teams were staring at him in complete astonishment as if they couldn’t believe their eyes at what had happened. Bruce was even more disconcerted to see that a complete hush had fallen over the crowd, and he felt as if every eye in the place were upon him, thousands of them.

  He shrugged in the uneasy silence, half afraid the spectators might pour onto the field and rip him apart in response to his misdemeanor. When they didn’t, he relaxed, failing to register the excited buzz that spread around the stadium like a Mexican wave.

  Bruce continued his aggressive approach to the game with each of his runs or tackles greeted by a huge roar from the crowd. Just before half time the referee gave Bruce another warning for over-vigorous play after he punched an opponent who had the misfortune to try to tackle him when he didn’t have the ball.

  “One more warning and you’re off,” the referee informed him in no uncertain terms.

  None of his fellow team members looked at Bruce, let alone spoke to him, at half time, and he was left wondering what he had done wrong. After all, he’d scored two tries, set up several others and tackled like a man possessed, stopping several dangerous attacks in their tracks.

  To his disgust, just minutes into the second half the referee sent him off. The sending off was especially perplexing as all he done was make a fantastic try, saving tackle just shy of the try line.

  The opposition had won the ball from a scrum, and the ball had been passed out to the backs. The opposition fullback had lumbered up inside the wing to make an extra man, had received the ball and plodded on in the general direction of the goal line. Bruce couldn’t believe it when his team just watched the man run. He sprinted across the field, felling the fullback just short of the try line and bundled him into touch. The ball spilled forward from the fullback’s arms and Bruce pounced on it, got to his feet and booted it up field.

  He congratulated himself as the crowd roared. Then the referee ran up and ordered him from the field with an unmistakable gesture towards the stand that Bruce didn’t even bother to argue with.

  “You’re just a fucken’ wanker!” Bruce told him in no uncertain terms.

  As he made his way across the field the crowd began to boo loudly and various missiles began to rain down from the stands. They sounded like a circus crowd that had been deprived of a new and bloody spectacle. Bruce started to run, hoping to make the comparative safety of the changing rooms before he got lynched. At the entrance of the tunnel that led under the stand, Bruce turned to give the ref the fingers. However, the referee had been struck by a missile and was already being carried from the field on a stretcher.

  Bruce counted his lucky stars he’d got away, unaware that his dismissal from the game had incited the sort of diversionary riot that long-forgotten Skidian social engineers had originally designed Stim to create.

  Unwittingly Bruce had achieved this by playing Stim in the fashion intended by its creators, a fashion that had been absent from the game here for more years than could be remembered. Thanks to Bruce and the baying of the crowd it was now back in style. He had set a level of expectation that all teams would need to replicate.

  Bruce didn’t stick around to watch the remainder of the game; he wasn’t interested in just watching.

  Cyprus eased his disappointment by saying his dismissal had been unjustified and that he was most embarrassed it had happened. The problem was, he explained, that Tutsi, Inel’s youngest son, was playing for the opposition side hoping to regain his place in the senior team after recovering from an injury.

  “And I tackled him.”

  “That is correct.”

  Bruce wondered, as Cyprus apologized profusely at the indignity of his being sent off, whether he had been tested in some fashion and if that was so, whether he had passed.

  Cyprus, on the other hand, was more than a little disconcerted by Bruce’s performance. He had expected Bruce to be easily contained by the admittedly second-rate players and chopped down to size. It was an awed Skidian that witnessed Bruce take over the Stim event virtually single-handed. Cyprus hoped Bruce would accept his feeble attempt to save face and resolved to keep him from the Stim field in future so that the flower of Skidian manhood could not be so embarrassed again. The event adjudicator would have to be rewarded for his unwitting cooperation in removing Bruce from the event if he ever recovered from the injuries inflicted by the crowd.

  Sue didn’t hide the fact that she was impressed with Bruce’s athletic prowess, commenting more than once on the short journey home that he’d do much better if he didn’t smoke and drink so much. Bruce ignored the barbs and smiled modestly as Sue’s admiration caught him off guard.

  “I’m not very good really. Those other jokers were just bloody useless, that’s all.”

  “You were impressive. I am sure the Murd coach will want to talk to you soon about playing for them,” Cyprus lied before turning to Sue for a second opinion.

  “Is that how you play Stim on your planet?”

  “I’ve never seen this game before. It looks to me like a perverted version of …” Sue knew she had said the wrong thing as soon as the words left her mouth.

  “I have already explained it to you once!” Bruce reminded her, not wanting to make a scene in front of Cyprus.

  “It’s difficult to explain, Cyprus,” Bruce replied struggling to regain his composure. “Where I come from, like Skid, it’s the most important game we play. However, it’s not a major sport on our planet. We also generally play it with a lot more enthusiasm than you seem to.”

  Cyprus assimilated this unlikely explanation and then asked, “Then what is the most important event on your planet?” For Skidians, Stim was not a game, it was more a
religious celebration.

  “Soccer. It’s a game that rugby, er, Stim, sort of developed from.”

  “Explain this soccer to me,” Cyprus demanded, becoming confused.

  “It’s a game played with a round ball,” Bruce traced the shape in the air with a finger. “Instead of holding the ball or carrying it, you play it with the feet and kick it. The game is played on a field roughly the size of a Stim field, and the aim is to get the ball through the area below the crossbar on a set of Stim goal posts. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Cyprus nodded. “It sounds like a very complex game to play,” he added, trying to picture what the event would look like. “How did Stim develop from this event?” Cyprus wondered if some unwitting Skidian had introduced the game to the offworlder’s planet; that was the only explanation he could think of for the event developing anywhere else.

  “Oh easy. One day at a school called Rugby a boy called William Webb Ellis picked up a soccer ball and ran with it, so the game was called rugby. How did Stim develop on Skid?” Bruce asked, but he should have known better.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Cyprus frowned and shook his head, changing the subject. “We must be going.”

  What a moody shit, thought Bruce as they popped up in front of the house again.

  Bruce couldn’t really have cared less about Stim, Sue, Cyprus or anything else on Skid for that matter, especially when they got back home and found a set of wheels parked by the house. He wasn’t surprised that it looked like a very close copy of the ute probably still parked in the shed back home.

  Bruce walked around the vehicle, nudging the tires experimentally with his big toe, peering into the cab and then finally sliding in behind the wheel. He turned the ignition key, but the only indication that anything was happening was the ignition light going out.

  He depressed the clutch, engaged first gear and then released the clutch. To his surprise the ute moved forward. Bruce had wondered for a moment if the Skidians had thought to put an engine under the hood or whether they expected him to paddle it along like a Fred Flintstone type car.

  “Hmm.” Bruce pulled the gear lever into neutral and pulled the bonnet catch so he could check out the engine.

  “Hello!” He found, to his surprise, that there wasn’t one.

  Instead, suspended by several struts in the large engine bay, designed millions of miles away, and usually occupied by a six- or eight-cylinder donk, was a small cylinder the shape and size of a half-gallon beer flagon. A shaft ran from the neck of the cylinder back to what Bruce supposed was some form of transmission system. He crawled underneath the ute and had a look there. No exhaust, no gearbox, no fuel line. Nothing. Just a shaft running back to the diff.

  Oh well, Bruce decided, I don’t need to know how it works as long as it does. He could hear his father’s voice roaring at him as if in a dream. “If you don’t understand it, leave the bloody thing alone, boy!” Bruce had always had the knack of pulling things apart but was never as clever at putting them back together again.

  “Want to come for a test run?” Bruce asked Sue, whose inquisitiveness had got the better of her, though she would rather not have had anything to do with Bruce for a while.

  “As long as you promise to drive carefully. Where shall we go?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, let’s just go,” Bruce replied, wondering why he put up with the stupid woman. How did he know where he was going?

  “What if you get lost?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Look, are you coming or not? Because I’m off now!”

  “Hang on!” Sue rushed into the house while Bruce drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. “Come on, come on,” he muttered under his breath and was just about to take off without her when he decided he might as well let the dogs off for a run.

  Travel was one of the dogs’ favorite pastimes. Cop paused to cock his leg on the driver’s side to show the world who really owned the ute before joining Can and Punch on the back. Can and Punch impatiently barked, ‘Come on, we’re ready to go!’

  Sue skipped down the steps at last and went round to open up the driver’s side door.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Oh.” Sue peered into the cab. “The steering wheel’s on the wrong side.”

  “Rubbish, you’re just used to driving on the wrong side of the road.” Bruce pushed her out of the way, banging on the roof in an attempt to quiet the dogs. Then he slid behind the wheel again, started the motor, engaged reverse gear and roared backwards onto the street. Well it would have been a roar except that this ute didn’t have an internal combustion engine or a leaky muffler.

  Once on the road, Bruce shifted into first gear and dropped the clutch while pressing firmly on the throttle with his right foot. The ute’s rear fishtailed as the tires spun and then caught on the road’s surface, throwing Sue around and forcing her to grab the door handle for support.

  On the back the dogs barked their approval.

  “Be careful,” Sue gasped, as Bruce accelerated off down the left-hand side of the road. “You’re on the wrong side!” she screamed, throwing her hands up in an effort to protect herself from the accident that was surely about to happen at any moment.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Dunno. Ask your tablet. I presume you brought it?” snapped Bruce. Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut?

  “Very good, Bruce. Start driving and then find out about the road rules. Really bright.”

  “Do you want to come with me or not?” he demanded, slowing and pulling to the side of the road, prepared to let her out if that’s what she wanted.

  “Pedestrians have the right of way at all times,” came a voice from the dashboard leaving Bruce none the wiser about what side of the road to drive on.

  In an instant the road suddenly became alive with Skidians as if they’d all poured out from their homes on cue to catch the greatest show in town, to stare at the strange looking vehicle driving past.

  Skidians everywhere, more than Bruce or Sue had seen at any one time except at the Stim stadium. Walking along the footpath, all over the road, sitting under trees, on chairs in little groups, young Skidians chasing each other around, all wearing the uniform long white robes.

  All of them stopped whatever they had suddenly found to do to watch the ute roll past. Following it with their eyes faces devoid of any expression. Nobody smiled or waved, and a sinister hostility pervaded the atmosphere, as if the two offworlders had stumbled into some forbidden zone. They would be unknown here. The Skidians they had met, Cyprus and the others, hadn’t said anything about not showing themselves, but Bruce reckoned they wouldn’t have let on about their presence either.

  “Bugger this,” Bruce decided aloud. “How do we get out of this place?” Bruce swung the ute around and headed back the way they had come and out into the empty countryside.

  “What about a trip to that resource center?” The dash-mounted tablet spat out directions, travel times and an ETA like a navman, and part of the dash reformatted itself into a map.

  “Better leave it for tomorrow,” suggested Bruce, realizing the trip would take several hours and it was getting late in the day. Without further consultation he swung the ute around again and headed back home, much to the disgust of Sue, who wanted to continue to look around. At what, she would not say, so not surprisingly Bruce didn’t feel particularly helpful.

  They found the house surrounded by hundreds of Skidians, sitting, lying, or standing about the lawn, chattering in small groups on the road. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for this activity. They could have been just inquisitive, or perhaps rent-a -ob. None of them batted an eyelid as the ute drew up outside the house and the two offworlders got out.

  The Skidians hung around for ages, the more adventurous of them coming close to the house and peering through the windows or knocking on the door before running off quickly as if to irritate the offworlders. If Bruce f
ound this sort of behavior disconcerting, Sue was absolutely terrified by it.

  “I can’t handle this, Bruce. They’re driving me crazy!” She was worried that the crowd might turn into something uglier and had conjured up visions of a lynch mob.

  “I hate it as well, all these people moping around. The first thing I’m going to do is organize a place to stay, out in the country somewhere.” He did not make it plain to Sue whether she was welcome to join him.

  “Bugger off before I set the dogs on ya, ya bastards!” he finally yelled out the door, feeling uncomfortably like a goldfish. “Can’t a man have any bloody privacy round here?”

  The Skidians seemed to get the message for they slowly dispersed.

  “I’ve always harbored this dream of being a pioneer braving the wilds, hacking a farm out of the bush,” Bruce mused, as he watched them leave in ones and twos, “and here, millions of miles from home, it looks as if I might get my chance.”

  “Oh that sounds so romantic. A man and a woman against the land!” Sue gushed, in the mistaken belief that Bruce might have included her in his fantasy. Another thought struck Bruce. A thunderbolt, so obvious that he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. “You know, that could be just what the Skidians want.”

  “Eh? How do you mean?”

  “The Skidians want us to help them, but for some reason best known to themselves they aren’t comfortable with coming out and pointing us in the right direction. Right?”

  “Yeah, Bruce, we’ve gone over all that before and couldn’t work out what we should be doing,” Sue yawned. “So you reckon you’ve worked out what they want?”

  “Not really,” he confessed, “but we’ve got to come up with a solution to help them out with their famine, or …” He drew his hand dramatically across his throat.

  “What really gets me, though, is why they just don’t come out and tell us what they want,” said Sue. “Maybe it’s too difficult for them to admit they are in trouble, perhaps impossible for them to admit it.”