by Jock Serong
We jump out and he’s straight round the back, hauling the pill press out. As we heave the thing onto the front step, I can’t help myself.
‘Craigo you dumb fuck, you’ve gotta go back. They’re gonna have your plates.’
He looks at me, looks back at the car.
‘No, mate. They’re gonna have that guy’s plates.’
I look back at the Skyline, at the rego it didn’t have yesterday.
Stolen.
It’s a restless night, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.
I leave Craigo banging and crashing in his room and try to catch a couple of hours before dawn. I’m normally okay doing this. In fact, I’ve scored big runs doing this. But this time I’m just chasing sleep and I wake up foggy and depressed. Craigo tells me it’s the hydroponic dope. Skunk, he says, nasty herbover. I’ll get us some good bush stuff.
In the middle of this exchange the phone rings: Wally, saying a letter turned up at Mum’s yesterday, and it’s a VCA envelope.
Over at Mum’s place, I see the familiar Nissan parked in the drive. Louise, Wally’s girlfriend of six months, perhaps even more morally constipated than he is. Louise is studying community development at the Footscray Institute. Wants to be an aid worker in Tibet. I trust they’re having sex—Christ I hope for his sake they’re having sex—but she won’t move in with him because she thinks it wouldn’t be special then. I’ve never heard her say this, of course—what I’ve heard is Wally reporting it in this smarmy tone like he’s explaining it to an eight-year-old. I don’t even know where to begin with my exasperation: getting lectured on sexual ethics by a man with almost zero miles on the clock, or just her general appropriation of my brother. Her taking liberties with my family.
Parking in our driveway, for instance. First a bunch of ‘guys’ take up occupation inside my best friend’s soul like some alien life form, and now Wally has become Occupied Territory.
He greets me at the door, big grin on his face. We sit around the kitchen bench; me, Mum, Wally, and Louise, who is wearing some sort of ethical hemp. Wally’s got his arm around her as I rip into the VCA envelope. He seems proud.
I read through the letter. It’s only short, and when I’m done I read it again to let the good bits sink in.
I’m in the state squad.
I’m twenty, I’m the leading run-scorer in Victorian district cricket and I’m in the state squad. I can go to their office in Jolimont, collect my uniform and sign a contract this week. Blue cap. Tours, sponsored gear. They’re going to pay me to play cricket.
I study Mum intently, searching for any sign of what this means for her. Her eyes are happy, above the sad crease that always runs from her cheeks to the sides of her mouth. At forty-one, she’s spent more of her years looking after us than she has living a life of her own. She likes Louise, trusts her; she knows Wally’s found a kindred spirit.
At the moment Louise is fiddling with her purse on the kitchen bench with her long, clean fingers; Mum jumps up and starts fussing with the kettle. I watch her flip the switch and boil it twice before she gets round to the teabags. As she makes tea I’m looking at the little routines of her kitchen, the neat pile of papers, the other pile with the clippings she’s cut about Wally and me.
Lists.
She’s always writing lists: she even writes down things that are routine and recurring. Put bins out. Spray whites before wash. Her lovely handwriting, nearly as familiar to me as her voice.
Tucked in a little magazine rack on the end of the bench against the wall, I can see the spiral binding of the scorebook we gave her for this year’s birthday. I’m flicking through it, I’ll admit, to find the days I outscored him. And I’m slowing down as I’m flicking because something’s wrong. In the end I’m staring at a solitary page. In fear of being caught, I shove the book back into the rack.
Wally’s locked his eyes on me and he tilts his head towards the back door.
There’s a bat and a bucket of balls in the laundry. He bats first as he’s always done. The grass is perfectly mowed, the edges cut straight, and the bald patches where bowler and batsman stand have had a chance to recover since we played last.
‘Lawn looks good,’ I say. ‘Mum hired someone?’
I let go a short one, aiming for his ribs. He rocks onto the back foot and smashes it into the Apostouloses’ fence. The bang on the palings won’t raise any reaction these days: old man Aposta died last winter, keeled over near his front gate, and Mrs Aposta doesn’t cook anymore. Mum reckons she’s just withering away, picking at meals on wheels.
‘Mum can’t afford it, you fuckwit. I did it.’
I go long, aiming a full ball at his toes, but missing the length by enough inches that it reaches him as a half-volley and he straight drives past me. His backlift is high today, his follow-through extravagant. He’s stinging inside, batting out his aggression.
‘You can’t be far off, mate. Half the squad’s up for national selection.’
He doesn’t appear to hear me. Misses an easy one outside off with an angry swoosh of the bat.
I try again. ‘I thought you’d be happy for me.’
‘I am,’ he says bitterly.
He swings the bat though phantom arcs as I hold the ball. Yes, I was fortunate, but I deserved it. The fact that he also deserved it is none of my doing. I’m a lucky guy. Just am.
‘Bowl the fucking ball,’ he says. Every muscle in his body is tensed. But I hang onto the ball.
‘Something’s wrong with Mum.’
He straightens up, exasperated. ‘What? She’s fine.’
‘Have you looked at her? She’s lost weight.’
‘So what? Prob’ly menopause.’
‘Is that even a symptom of menopause?’
‘Oh excuse me, doctor.’
‘You know that scorebook we gave her?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Ever looked inside it?’
He shrugs a little. ‘Nah. Why?’
‘It’s all fucked up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Full of nonsense numbers. Stuff that doesn’t add up. Big gaps between things, like she’s…’
‘So fucking what? She probably doesn’t know how to score.’
‘Wally, she knows more about cricket than you and I do. She knows how to score.’
He’s silent for a moment, but the look on his face makes his contempt very clear.
‘There’s one page in there, this is only eight weeks ago, that’s just hundreds and hundreds of threes. They’re all just threes. And she forgets stuff all the time.’
He scoffs at this. ‘Like you don’t,’ he mutters. ‘Bowl the fucking ball.’
So I drop one short. Dig it right in and watch it rear up towards his head. For a split second it takes him by surprise, but then he’s onto it, swinging through a hook shot that carries it far over the back fence. There’s a loud crash as it knocks over something in the neighbours’ yard. We don’t even know those neighbours, he’s hit it so far.
‘Go and get it,’ I say.
‘Fuck you,’ he responds, and then, almost as an afterthought, he throws the bat on the ground and charges at me, catching me off-guard around the middle.
We both collapse in a grunting heap, but with his momentum he’s managed to get astride my back. He grabs hold of my head and drives my face deep into the lawn, a manoeuvre I recall from our early childhood. I can smell soil down there. The answer is to push even further forward until you can get your knees up under your chest, then buck him off forwards like a rodeo horse. I try this, but he’s moved his grip so he’s got both my ears. The pain is excruciating, especially once my move takes effect and he does topple forward. Now his entire weight is being supported by my ears. I’m roaring, God knows what I’m saying, but he’s totally silent, intent on inflicting as much pain as possible.
He’s down on one shoulder with his arse high in the air from where he spilled forward, so I take the obvious opportunity and fish around the front of h
is Young Liberal chinos until I find his balls. Then I grind them good and proper, and sure enough, he releases his grip. For a moment or two we both roll around on the grass moaning, and then I’m conscious that the women are standing above us. Hands on hips, heads shaking in dismay.
‘What the hell was that about?’ Mum demands. She doesn’t look remotely frail now.
Wally’s up first, dragging a sleeve across his nose. ‘Nothin.’ He takes out his puffer, administers a few squirts. I watch with a stab of long-forgotten terror.
‘You two are pathetic,’ says Mum. ‘Twenty and twenty-two! Do I have to send you both to your rooms? And you—’ she points at me, dammit. ‘If you’re going to play for the state, could you try to avoid these scenes in front of large crowds? Dear me.’
I celebrate the state selection with a bender.
Wally comes out early and puts in a decent effort at the pub. He and Craig are like long-lost friends, arm in arm, singing songs and slopping beer on each other. Craig, as always, wants the benefit of Wally’s wisdom, has to be prised off him when Wally starts making gotta go home faces.
The rest of the night’s a blur to me now, unexceptional. Except there’s this girl.
Carly.
Craig introduces me to her, though she seems to know who I am. There’s some leather. Leather top maybe? Heavy black eyeshadow contrasted against white, white skin, like a sexually charged panda. Her arms round my neck, her tongue in my mouth on the dance floor, and I’m instantly aware of the clacking of metal against my teeth. She withdraws, flashes me a wild grin and pokes out the tongue, coloured lights reflecting off the ball-bearing stud in the centre of it.
Carly is a naughty girl. Naughty in the cab on the way home, and uncontainable once the bedroom door slams behind her.
But when she wakes, late and harshly lit by unforgiving morning sun, she wants to talk. I’ve got no aversion to learning a little about the person who’s wandered into my life overnight, but she’s maudlin and more interested in talking than checking in on whether I’m listening.
She tells me she’s twenty-two, a teenage runaway, lived on the streets for a little bit and then got into stripping. The place where she worked in King Street was run by bikies. Small timers aspiring to Comanchero affiliation. The manager kept a close eye on her. Huge man, scars, tatts, filthy beard. Stank, she says. Pretty quickly, what began as professional protectiveness turned into ownership. Her body was his. Her social life was his. Her very thoughts were his. The sex was punishing. He bought her things, gave her a place to sleep and endless cash, but at the cost of her freedom. He watched her day and night, on occasions raining violence on other males unlucky enough to show an interest. He bought her an abortion and—she clutches them proudly—‘these tits’.
At this stage, I’m lying propped on one elbow, smiling pleasantly but beginning to think how the hell did your world and mine collide?
He hit her sometimes, threatened her.
Jesus, I think, I need this girl to get out of here, and I do not want to get tangled up with whoever this guy is.
She leans closer, takes my chin so she can peer into my head. ‘Do you know what it feels like to be somebody’s possession, Darren?’
So anyway, she goes on, she’s free now. He got tangled up in some shit or other, took a baseball bat to a rival. Pulverised him. Fractures that needed plates and screws. Brain injuries leading to months of rehab. Left him a wreck, she’d heard. Incontinent, dependent. But the upside is the cops picked up her beloved boyfriend when he was getting his own injuries seen to, and now he’s doing seven with a five.
There’s a bell ringing somewhere in the back of my mind. A nagging indicator of something wrong, something bad. I can’t place it.
Then I can. ‘What’s this guy’s name?’
She smiles, knowing she’s got her finger on the button that says TERROR. ‘Brett Freer.’
I’m thinking frantically now.
‘They call him something else. The Dog…?’
She sees my panic, takes her time.
‘The Pitbull.’
‘Fuck. Brett “The Pitbull” Freer?’
She nods.
‘Oh Jesus, could you not have told me this before you stuck your tongue in my mouth?’
She pats my chest. ‘You seemed pretty willing.’
She steps from the bed, pulls her legs through her jeans. ‘And he’s locked up,’ she says defensively. ‘So stop carrying on.’
She watches me as she works her hair free of the leather jacket.
‘You got a toothbrush I can use?’
I get a call from Amy Harris within days of the state selection.
She’s a sports reporter now for a metro daily in Sydney. Flying down to do other stuff, she says, and wants to talk about my news. Two voices in my head; always two voices. Tell her to get fucked, apropos of Bradman is Dead. Or blow my trumpet like always. Hey, look at me: state squad, just like I said.
I meet her over a rear table at the Richmond Club on Swan Street, the nearest thing we have to a local in our blasted postindustrial neighbourhood. She’s there before me, eyes down, fiddling with a tape recorder. She’s dyed her hair blonde; more than blonde, a hard corporate platinum that startles me at first. It sweeps precisely across one corner of her forehead, curving away from her ear and resting exactly at her collar. I can only see the top half of her above the table, formally composed like a newsreader, and she’s a study in poise and intent, a glass of water by her wrist. Where the white shirt parts over her breastbone there’s a delicate silver chain lying on her skin, a bright crucifix at the end of its curve. I swoop in, aiming to plant a kiss on her cheek but she deftly withdraws and offers me a hand.
I’m trying to process these things when she starts the tape recorder, takes me through the selection news.
We talk team balance, the coming season, my ambitions and thoughts on the coaching staff. Then she asks me if I was surprised to get the jump on Wally.
‘I’m not surprised,’ I tell her. ‘The whole thing’s inevitable, you know? If it’d been Wally first, then me, I don’t think it would’ve upset me. We’re two halves of a whole. He’ll get there soon enough.’
‘Was he angry?’
I can’t help laughing. Not by his standards he wasn’t. He could’ve sunk a knee into my windpipe like he did the time I smashed his bat on the apricot stump.
‘No, he was fine. He’s very patient. I’m telling you, it’s just a matter of time.’
She’s watching me like a bug in a jar. ‘Your mate Craig. He takes a keen interest in your career?’
Now this I didn’t see coming. ‘Craig?’
‘Craig Wearne. Your housemate. Works in, um…’ she rubs a finger on a bead of moisture left by the glass. ‘Vehicle leasing.’ Her eyes follow the finger on the table, lashes lowered.
‘This is sports reporting?’
‘I also do police stories,’ she looks up sharply from the finger. ‘Courts.’
‘Craig’s a good friend,’ I stagger.
‘Wally doesn’t hang out with him.’
A statement, not a question. Contrasting.
‘Not much. No.’
‘Mm.’ She clicks off the tape recorder.
I know I’m supposed to be attuned here. Supposed to know that the media aren’t there in my interests. But this intrusive stranger defies judgment.
‘I’m not someone who turns off the recorder, Darren. But you seem a nice guy. So I’m going to say this to you once: I’ve got a keen interest in Craig Wearne, and so have a number of other people. You, Darren, you are someone who should not have a keen interest in Craig Wearne.’
I’m floored. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You heard of Pitbull Freer?’
A hot jolt of alarm spreads through me. I don’t know if she can detect it, but she’s watching me closely.
‘Everyone has. He was on the front page of the paper.’
‘Yep, and he’s about to be again. The Court o
f Appeal just granted him leave to appeal his conviction. He could be out in two weeks. How does that make you feel?’
I laugh, but she knows how the news makes me feel. How the hell does she know?
‘I’m fine thanks.’
She shrugs. ‘And I don’t have to tell you anything more. Like I said, this is further than I’d normally go.’ She runs a finger over the tape recorder, presses ‘record’ again. Flicks her hair back.
‘So, how’s your fitness going into the season?’
Gestation
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve dropped the little shard of plastic.
I chose to work on the cable ties rather than the gag, only because I couldn’t think of any way to rip the tape off without my hands free.
The trick to working the shard is like that thing you see Vegas card sharks doing with a gambling chip, rolling it from knuckle to knuckle until it lodges between Squibbly and forefinger like a plectrum. I’m sure it would be a lot easier if I wasn’t slumped on top of my hands, and if Squibbly had any feedback to offer, but of course he doesn’t. Again and again, the shard rolls across the tangled knuckles, only to tumble out halfway across. And each time that happens, I spend an eternity feeling around on the prickly synthetic carpet of the boot’s floor, trying to locate it again.
It’s keeping my mind off things, this little game. But I have to assume the people in the front aren’t going to let me play all night.
It all comes to pass exactly as we expected: Wally gets picked by late February, and for the duration of that summer it’s me in at four and him at number five for the state side.
The previous summer was a lean time for the side. There was a coaching blow-up, a players’ walkout, a home-ground redevelopment necessitating temporary training facilities, and a dozen other minor shitfights that collectively sapped morale and plunged the side to the bottom of the table.
But we arrive after the deluge, Wally and I. New coach, new blood, an air of determination. The side becomes a formidable unit. And it happens within weeks—there’s no process of forging, of grafting towards something. It’s just wham, success. And just as suddenly we’re recognisable, in a way members of a losing team can’t be.
