Hero

by Lean, Sarah

“Jack was down the sinkhole …” I began, but Grizzly had something else on his mind.

  “You know I told you about that time I knocked out Nicky Sullivan?”

  “I remember. All arms you were: he didn’t see you coming.”

  “That’s it,” Grizzly laughed. “I knocked him out all right.” He raised his elbows, curled his fists, punched out with his right arm, then jabbed with his left. His shoulders dropped.

  “But it didn’t count. Not there in the sparring ring on a Friday night at the club. Not without tickets and the bell and an audience.”

  That floored me for a minute, but I wasn’t sure what he was telling me. Hadn’t he been a boxer after all?

  “I thought you said Nicky Sullivan said you’d make a good boxer. I thought somebody saw what you did.”

  “Oh, there was someone there. Sullivan’s manager. And another person. They saw. Nicky’s manager said I had a career in front of me. That I had a future in the ring. He could see my name in lights, you know what I mean? But that was before I knocked Nicky out. Nobody else ever knew, except one person.”

  That stunned me. Grizzly’s finest moment. Hushed up for all these years. Except … Lucy knew.

  “I didn’t like the way Nicky spoke to the young lady who came in to clean the place. Sylvia.” He smiled. “She became Mrs Allen and Lucy’s mum.”

  He recalled her, his face warm, his frown gone.

  “No, no, I wasn’t a boxer at Sullivan’s club, not after that night. He threw me out and I joined another club; they were too embarrassed about what I’d done. The truth is I never won again. I had a few decent rounds and some success, but winning Sylvia’s heart was the only real fight I won. Surprise you, eh?”

  Well, yes, because he didn’t seem like a loser at all. And no, because what I thought of him, even though it wasn’t real, was much easier to believe.

  “I think you’re a champion,” I said because those big things about people don’t change.

  He growled a soft sound of satisfaction, deep in his throat.

  “I won a prize more valuable than any shiny buckle around my waist. I liked that people thought I was a boxer and a good one at that, and I suppose I’ve let people think that all along. But the only fight I ever had was to win the woman of my dreams. And I’d rather you didn’t tell anyone about that.”

  I opened my mouth. I guessed then that he did know what I’d done. Was he telling me that he wasn’t going to say anything either? But I needed to tell the truth.

  “Grizzly—”

  “So what I’m saying, Leo, is this,” he interrupted, his eyes casting over what I had in my hands. “The rest of the world doesn’t always see or know what we’ve done. But we,” he pointed to his chest, “we live with it.”

  “And that’s what made you great,” I said.

  He laughed, snorted, roared a big chesty laugh like a bear with a honeycomb, all the fear and dread and disappointment gone.

  “It’s what makes anyone great,” he beamed like the sun rising and melting the frost on the window. “It’s what makes that little dog great, what’s inside him, what he’s got in that little heart of his. And you only know it when you become like him.”

  All the time he’d been talking I’d had that Roman helmet turning in my hands, tarnished and dusty and buried for hundreds and hundreds of years below our town.

  I thought of everything: of Miller and Grizzly’s mobility scooter, of fame and praise, of Jack Pepper and the way he wouldn’t let any of us down.

  Then I told Grizzly everything that had happened, right from the beginning, and he listened and he didn’t say anything but poured me tea and told me to keep going until it was all out, all finished and told, and became a story from the past to keep to ourselves and move on from.

  “That Miller boy you talked about,” he said, in the end. “Big lad, dark hair, shiny black bike?” “That’s him. Do you know him?”

  “I met him a couple of weeks back coming home from town. I’d just got my mobility scooter.” He sighed, disappointed in his own legs. “I was riding through the Rec when I saw him. He’d fallen out with his dad.” Grizzly frowned. “I think that kid has it tough at home, you know.”

  Suddenly there was a different Warren Miller that I didn’t know. None of us knew.

  “Do you think … he’s pretending that he’s tough then?”

  “Maybe. Isn’t that what we do when we’re trying to defend ourselves? It’s not the only act he has though. That boy is a lot like you in some ways.” Grizzly smiled. “He dreams.”

  “He dreams?”

  “He imagines he’s someone else, just like you. Someone brave, someone who fights and wins, someone that others will be proud of. But he was embarrassed when I saw and asked him what he was dreaming of; ashamed that he pretends, that it isn’t real. I told him it didn’t matter, that it was good he knew who he wanted to be. But the boy was too upset. Perhaps I shouldn’t have pried.”

  I understood then why Warren had done what he’d done to Grizzly and to me. You can feel really stupid when you think someone else knows what’s in your imagination. He was trying to make sure he always had one over on me, just in case Grizzly had told me.

  “What does he pretend to be?” I asked.

  Grizzly’s smile pressed into his cheeks. He didn’t answer straight away.

  “You know what I was doing when I was going through the Rec when I’d just bought the scooter?”

  I shook my head.

  “Pretending it was a motorbike! Chrome buffed and gleaming, the exhaust roaring like a lion!” He leaned back, recalled his scooter. “I don’t think it would be right for me to tell you what that boy dreamed of though. That’s up to him.”

  I nodded. I understood.

  There was still a question left over though.

  “Do you think it was Mrs Pardoe’s cat or Warren that kept knocking over your bin, Grizzly?”

  “Is that what you’re really asking?” Grizzly said, a twinkle in his eye. “Was Warren your downfall? Or did he show you who you didn’t want to be? Do you think you can win without ever having to fight?”

  They were good questions and I needed to clear my head before I decided what to do about Warren.

  “Grizzly? I found something.”

  “So you did!” He roared, laughing like an erupting volcano. “So you did! I can see that; anybody could see that if they knew how to look.”

  I knew he was talking about something invisible inside me. But it wasn’t what I meant.

  “This,” I said, holding out the helmet.

  Grizzly was suddenly quiet. He took the helmet, rubbed at it with his sleeve, saw the warmth of the metal under the dust.

  “Put it on,” I said and he did. I could just see his eyes and the gladiator he was. “It fits you!”

  Jack’s nose came out and glistened by the crackling fire. Grizzly took off the helmet and beamed.

  “If we’re not going to tell anyone about getting Jack back …” I said, and there was a question in Grizzly’s face too. But I knew right then what I was going to do. “I still think everyone should see this.”

  Grizzly tried to hand the helmet back, but I’d finished with pretending to be a gladiator. I also wanted Grizzly to have a prize, for the fight he won, the fight nobody ever knew about. “I want you to have it. I don’t want to be a gladiator any more.”

  “No, of course not. Why would you want to be what you already are?”

  “I don’t want people to know what I did,” I said, suddenly realising that I wasn’t going to get away with everything and that I could live with what I’d done all by myself, with just Grizzly and Jack knowing.

  “Things like this can’t stay hidden though.” Grizzly’s smile was like the sun rising as he cleaned the helmet with his sleeve. He nodded to himself. “If you’re sure …”

  “Totally,” I said.

  “Then leave your dad to me,” Grizzly said. “Come on, let’s get this all sorted out.”

 
A couple of days of good food and warmth and water and just about the whole town knocking on Grizzly’s door to see the little dog from the sinkhole, gushing and fussing over him with bones and treats and biscuits, and Jack Pepper quickly recovered.

  Reporters came; photographers came. Grizzly Allen, a great bear of a man, held that little white dog with the ginger mask in his arms and told them a story while they took pictures of them both standing in front of the museum with the find of the century – a gold Roman helmet.

  It made the headlines of all the local papers. Grizzly told everyone the story. It wasn’t true, but it had all the things a good story should. A cat, a sinkhole, a meteor and our hero, Jack Pepper. Grizzly told everyone that Jack Pepper must have fallen in the sinkhole, but was safe down the hole, and it took him some time to find his way out. When Grizzly found him barking outside his door in the early hours, Jack was carrying treasure in his teeth. He’d brought the helmet back with him. Grizzly could only assume that Mrs Pardoe’s cat had helped Jack to find his way out, maybe because he was so desperate to chase him, because the cat had been there in the middle of Clarendon Road too when Jack came home. Both of them covered in dust.

  People loved the story. There were pictures of Grizzly and Jack, Mrs Pardoe and her cat, the animals blurred in the photographs, wriggling and paddling, dying to chase each other still. Everyone loved Jack Pepper, not only because he survived the disaster he also brought back something beautiful and valuable.

  There was loads of interest in our town from charities, lotteries, people who wanted to give money to build things, to start archaeological digs to find out if there was anything else underneath us, to expand the museum, to invite tourists. Plans and hope. To rename shops (Dad wanted to change his shop to Ben’s Gladiator Café but Mum told him not to). The buzz was immense. It affected everyone. The helmet was made of gold, which meant it had belonged to somebody very important, so there was history beneath our feet and the possibility of more treasure to find.

  I might have been wrong about the amphitheatre though. I still don’t know if I imagined it or not. Of course Grizzly couldn’t say what I’d told him I saw down that sinkhole, and Jack couldn’t have told Grizzly what was down there either, so Grizzly just had to leave things and hope people’s imaginations would fill in the rest.

  Most people were saying there was a Victorian sewage and cellar system under the crossroads and maybe the helmet had been stolen or lost from somewhere else and hidden. People imagined all sorts of explanations as to how it had got down there. One day soon they’re going to dig to find out the truth.

  Grizzly told the same story to my family. He told them the only reason that I was with him that morning was that I’d gone to his house to apologise for everything I’d done wrong.

  Kirsty and Milly didn’t say a word. As far as they knew, that’s what I’d done as well.

  I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation with Grizzly but Dad and Mum came up to my room. They stood there for a long time looking at me and each other. But I had some things I wanted to say.

  “I’m sorry I let you down.” Mum covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head. Dad put his arm around her. “It was all stupid and I’ll never do anything like that again. It’s just … well, I just kind of felt left out, and that I didn’t ever do anything to make you proud.”

  “But we love you just the way you are,” Mum said.

  “Couldn’t be prouder of my little daydreamer,” Dad said, his chin trembling.

  “We’re sorry,” Mum said, “we’ve always been proud. Perhaps we should have said.”

  “And you put things right, son,” Dad said. “Can’t ask for any more than that.”

  Then he opened his arms and it was all over.

  “And you know what, son?”

  “What, Dad?”

  “What the special ingredient is?”

  I stood back to see his grin.

  “Pepper!” I said. “It’s pepper, isn’t it? Like Jack Pepper.”

  “No,” he chuckled. “But that would have been funny.” He smiled. “It’s a good heart, the secret ingredient. Not the fancy type, just simple, plain old goodness. What I see in you, son.”

  The last evening we had with Jack Pepper, Grizzly and I were sitting on his sofa when Lucy came back from her holiday.

  Jack Pepper was Grizzly’s daughter’s dog and now she was ready to take Jack back home.

  Imagine that.

  Imagining is the only way you’re going to know what it’s like to have that dog turn up in your road, like some fallen star from the universe come to show you things great and miraculous, and then have him taken away again. And what you imagine will be nothing like how hard it really was to see Jack Pepper go.

  Grizzly and I didn’t move, each of us with a hand on Jack when Lucy came. Jack was pleased to see Lucy. His hips wriggled as his tail swayed but he didn’t know what to do. He jumped off the sofa, ran up to her, came back and jumped up, then down again.

  Lucy looked at our battle-worn faces but saw our hearts were full. She smiled and shook her head.

  “So what’s Jack done this time?” She laughed and Grizzly told her his story too. “Always when my back’s turned he goes and gets into all sorts of mischief. What will I do with that dog, hey, Dad?”

  I don’t want to say any more about what happened next except that, when they left, Lucy was baffled and amazed at the people from our town who lined the streets and cheered and waved as she drove off with Jack in her car, him looking through the window and leaving us with something more valuable than you can ever imagine. He was like something precious from a museum, something to keep for good inside us, something we could go back and look at time and time again.

  So, Warren Miller. The thing was he wasn’t so bad and I kind of understood him after Grizzly told me how he knew him.

  I knocked on George’s door.

  “Well?” he said all impatient.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I meant to say it before but I couldn’t—”

  “Never mind that,” George said. He grinned like nobody’s business. “The map, Leo. The map!”

  “Oh, that …” I couldn’t tell George now either! “Yeah, it was … useful, but obviously I didn’t need it because Jack found his way out.”

  “Yeah, right,” George said. He punched his fist and elbow down. “Look, you don’t have to tell me, Leo, because I understand and all that, but just give me a sign. You got Jack back, didn’t you? And I helped, didn’t I? With the map?”

  I grinned.

  “George, all I’m saying is this: will you help me with something else? I still want to be your best friend.”

  George grinned. “Always have been,” he said.

  “I can’t tell you what I’m going to do though, George. Just trust me.” I thumped my arm across my chest. “I promise it’s a good thing, on my honour.”

  “Your honour as a gladiator or as Leo Biggs?”

  “Leo Biggs,” I said. “It’s just me now.”

  We went back to school and George and I sat on the far right of the middle row at our desk, but the view looked different from there now.

  Beatrix Jones came and sat next to George, so now there were three of us, and George said we had increased our friends by 100 per cent. Result. And I needed both of them to help.

  At break time, Beatrix went to Warren’s corner in the playing field and told him that Mr Patterson wanted to see him in the classroom. George stayed in the corridor, hung around as lookout to make sure Josh and Warren’s mates didn’t follow him in.

  I was waiting for Warren in the classroom.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Warren said when the door closed behind him. “The hero.” He smirked but his lip quivered and his smile fell. He seemed different, kind of unprotected, without his mates surrounding him.

  “I know about you,” I said.

  Warren’s cheeks flushed. He swallowed. But I didn’t want to lie or play games.

  “I kno
w what it’s like when you think your dad’s not proud of you,” I said.

  He turned away, shook his head, picked up a book on the shelf and put it back.

  He half laughed, but it didn’t sound real. “You don’t know anything, Leo. You’re a dreamer—”

  “And I’m good at it,” I said.

  Warren glanced over. He took a deep breath and seemed to decide something.

  “Look, the game’s over—” he began, but my head was clear and I knew what I wanted to say.

  “It isn’t, because you haven’t won yet.” I took a step towards him. “Do your mates know? Do you tell them what you dream about? Do they help you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re on about,” Warren said.

  “Grizzly didn’t tell me or anyone else what you dream of being,” I said.

  Warren looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes and sighed. I saw it sink in, that everything he had done to protect himself had all been pointless.

  “I don’t know who you pretend to be, but I know it helped me to imagine who I wanted to be,” I said, because most of all I wanted to tell him that there was something worthwhile about dreaming.

  But Warren headed for the door, shaking his head, his back turned.

  “I wish I’d told my dad the truth all along,” I said. “He just forgot to tell me he was proud, that’s all. It didn’t mean he wasn’t.”

  Warren turned the door handle; the door opened.

  “You can go if you want,” I called. “I’m just saying, if you want someone to help you win your fight, I’ll do it.”

  The door closed. But Warren was still inside the classroom. He didn’t turn around, but something was keeping him there.

  “George and me are in Clarendon Road most evenings. You could come too if you want. Any time. We don’t have to do gladiators. We could do what you want.” Warren half looked over his shoulder. “And Jack Pepper’s coming back to stay at Easter. Come then if you want. He’s brilliant that dog, honest he is. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t know what it was like to be brave for real.”

  Warren turned around to face me. He looked towards the window, his eyes far away, as if he saw something in his imagination that nobody else could see.