Underdogs (13 page)

Time has elapsed and it’s the Sunday morning. Fight day, and I’m dying to get into the bathroom. I have to do a nervous one. We’ve trained hard. Running, push-ups, sit-ups, the lot. Even skipping, with Miffy’s leash. We’ve done One Punch and also fought two-handed with our new gloves, every afternoon. Rube keeps telling me we’re ready, but still, I have to go. Desperately.

“Who’s
in
there?” I cry through the door. “I’m in agony out here, ay.”

A voice booms back. “It’s me.” Me as in Dad. Me as in the old man. Me as in the guy who may be unemployed but can still give us a good kick in the pants for being smart. “Give me two

Two minutes!

How am I going to survive two minutes?

When he finally comes out, I feel like I’m going to collapse onto the seat, but the doorway’s as far as I get.
Why’s that
? you may well ask, but I tell you, if you’re anywhere near our bathroom this morning, you’ll be tasting the worst smell you’ve ever swallowed in your whole life. The smell is twisted. It’s angry. No, it’s downright ropeable.

I breathe and choke and breathe again, turning around, almost running. Now, though, I’m almost howling with laughter as well.

“What?” Rube asks when I make it back to our room.

“Oh, mate.”

“What is it?”

“Come ‘ere.” I tell him, and we walk back toward the bathroom.

The smell hits me again.

It smacks into Rube.

“Whoa.” That’s all he says, at first.

“Shockin’, ay?” I ask.

“Well, it isn’t too cheerful, is it, that smell,” Rube admits. “What’s the old man been eating lately?”

“I’ve got no idea,” I go on, “but I’m tellin’ y’ right now — that smell’s physical.”

“Damn right.” Rube backs away from it. “It’s bloody relentless is what it is. Like a gremlin, a monster, a —” He’s lost for words.

I muster up some courage and say, “I’m goin’ in.”

“Why?”

“I’m dyin’ here!”

“Okay, good luck.”

“I’ll need it.”

I’ll need more later though, and I feel the nerves, waiting at Eddy Avenue. Fingers of fear and doubt scratch the lining of my stomach. I feel like I’m bleeding
inside, but it’s only nerves. I’m sure. Rube, on the other hand, sits with his legs stretched out. His hands rest firmly on his hips. His face is awash with his hair, blown in from the wind. A small smile is forming on his lips. His mouth opens.

“He’s here,” my brother says. “Let’s go.”

The van pulls in — a real heap of a thing. A Kombi. Four other guys are already in it. We enter it, through the sliding door.

“Glad y’s could make it.rins at us through the rear vision mirror. He’s wearing a suit today. Bloodred and tough to look at. It’s nice.

“I had to cancel my violin recital,” Rube tells him, “but we made it.” He sits down and some guy the size of an outhouse slides the door shut. His name is Bumper. The lean guy next to him is Leaf. The fatty sort of bloke is Erroll and the normal-looking one is Ben. They’re all older than us. Daunting. Scarred. Fist-weathered.

“Rube ‘n’ Cameron.” Perry introduces us, via the mirror again.

“Hey.”

Silence.

Violent eyes.

Broken noses.

Missing teeth.

In my uneasiness, I look to Rube. He doesn’t ignore me, but rather, he closes a fist as if to say, “Stay awake.”

Minutes follow.

They’re silent minutes. Awake. Moving. On edge, as I concentrate on survival, and hope for this trip to never end. Hope to never get there….

We pull into the meat factory out the back of Maroubra and it’s cold and windy and salty.

People hang.

Around us, I can sniff out a savagery in the noisy southern air. It knifes its way into my nose, but I do not bleed blood. It’s fear I bleed, and it gushes out over my lip. I wipe it away, in a hurry.

“C’mon.” Rube drags me with him. “This way boy, or do y’ wanna play with the locals?”

“No way.”

Inside, Perry takes us through a small room and into a freezing compartment, where some dead frozen pigs hang like martyrs from the ceiling. It’s terrible. I stare at them a moment, with the tightened air and the frightening sight of dead cut meat gouging at my throat.

“It’s just like Joe Frazier,” I whisper to Rube. “The hangin’ meat.”

“Yeah,” he replies. He knows what I mean.

It makes me wonder what we’re doing here. All the other fellas just wait around, even sit, and they smoke, or they drink alcoholic beverages to eat the nerves. To calm the fear. To slow the fists but quicken the courage. That huge bloke, Bumper, he winks at me, enjoying my fear.

He’s just sitting there and his quiet voice comes to me, casually.

“The first fight’s the toughest.” A smile. “Don’t worry about winning it. Survive first, then consider it. Okay?”

I nod, but it’s Rube who speak

He speaks, “Don’t worry, mate. My brother knows how to get up.”

“Good.” He means it. Then, “How ‘bout you?”

“Me?” Rube smiles. He’s tough and sure and doesn’t seem to have any fear. Or at least he won’t show it. He only says, “I won’t need to get up,” and the thing is, he knows he won’t. Bumper knows he won’t.
I
know he won’t. You can smell it on him, like that guy in
Apocalypse Now
that everyone knows won’t die. He loves the war too much, and the power. He doesn’t even consider death, let alone fear it. And that’s exactly how Rube is. He’s walking out of here with fifty dollars and a grin. That’s it. Nothing more to say about it.

We meet some people.

“So you’ve got some new blokes, ay?” an ugly old guy smiles at Perry — a smile like a stain. He sums us up and points. “The little one’s got no hope, but the older fella looks all right. A bit pretty maybe, but not too bad at all. Can he fight?”

“Yeah,” Perry assures him, “and the little one’s got heart.”

“Good.” A scar crawls up and down the old guy’s chin. “If he keeps gettin’ up, we might just have us a slaughter. We haven’t had a slaughter here for weeks.” He gets right in my eyes, for power. “We might just hang him up here with the pigs.”

“How about you leave, old man?” Rube steps closer. “Or maybe we’ll hang you up instead.”

The old man.

Rube.

Their eyes are fixed on each other, and the man is dying to have Rube against the wall, I swear it, but something stops him. He only makes a brief statement.

He states, “You all know the rules, lads. Five rounds or until one of y’s can’t get up. The crowd’s restless tonight. They want some blood, so be careful. I’ve got me some hard fellas myself, and they’re keen, just like you. See you out there.”

When he leaves, it’s Perry who has Rube up against the wall. He warns him. “If you ever do that again, that guy’ll kill you. Understand?”

“Okay.”

“Say yes.”

Rube smiles. “Okay.” A shrug. “Yes.”

He releases him and straightens his suit. “Good.”

Perry then takes us through another hall and into a new room. Through a crack in the door, we see the crowd. There are at least three hundred of them. Probably more, all crammed into the cleared factory floor.

They drink beer.

They smoke.

They talk.

Smile.

Laugh.

Cough.

It’s a crowd of stupid men, old and young. Surfers, footballers, rednecks, the lot.

They wear jackets and black jeans and rough coats and some of them have women or girls clinging to them. They’re brainless girls, otherwise they wouldn’t be seen dead here. They’re pretty, with ugly, appealing smiles and conversations we can’t hear. They breathe smoke and blow it out, and words drop from their mouths and get crushed to the floor. Or they get discarded, just to glow with warmth for a moment, for someone else to tread on later.

Words.

Just words.

Just sticky-blond words, and when I see the ring all lit up and silent, I can imagine those women cheering later on when I hit the canvas floor, my face all bruised up and bloody.

Yes.

They’ll cheer, I reckon.

Cigarette in one hand.

Warm, sweaty hand of a thug in the other.

Screaming, blond, beer-filled mouth.

All of that, and a spinning room.

That’s what scares me most.

“
Hey Rube, what’re we doin’ here
?”

“
Shut up.
”

“
I can’t believe we got ourselves into this!
”

“
Stop whisperin’.”

“Why
?”

“
If y’ don’t, I’ll be forced to trounce you myself.”

“Really
?”

“
You’re startin’ to aggravate me, y’ know that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“We’re ready.”

“Are we
?”

“
Yes. Don’t you feel it
?”

I ask myself
.

Are y’ ready Cameron?

Aga

Are y’ ready Cameron?

Time will tell
.

It’s funny, don’t you think, how time seems to do a lot of things? It flies, it tells, and worst of all, it runs out
.

It’s the sound of my breathing that gets me, pouring down into my lungs and then tripping back up my throat. Perry’s just come in and told me. It’s time.

“You’re up first,” he says.

It’s time and I’m still sitting there, in my old, too-big-for-me spray jacket. (Rube’s got an old hooded jacket of Steve’s.) All is numb. My hands, fingers, feet. It’s time.

I stand up
.

I wait.

Perry’s gone back out to the ring, and the next time the door opens, I’ll be heading there myself. With no more time to think, it happens. The door is opened and I start walking out. Out into.

The arena.

Aggression quivers inside me. Fear shrouds me. Footsteps take me forward.

Then the crowd.

They lift my spirit, as I’m the first fighter to come out.

They turn and look at me in my spray jacket, and I walk through them. The hood is out and over my head. They cheer. They clap and whistle, and this is just the beginning. They howl and chant, and for a moment,
they forget the beer. They don’t even feel it pouring down their throats. It’s just me, and the fact that violence is near. I’m the messenger. I’m the hands and feet. I bring it to them. I deliver it.

“THE UNDERDOG!”

It’s Perry, standing in the ring, holding a microphone.

“Yes, it’s Cameron Wolfe, the Underdog!” he shouts through the mike. “Give the boy a hand — our youngest fighter! Our youngest battler! Our youngest brawler! He’ll fight to the end, people, and he’ll keep getting up!”

The hood of the jacket is still over my head, even though it has no string, no anything to hold it in place. My boxing shorts are comfortable on my legs. My gym boots walk on, through the sharp, thick crowd.

They’re alert now.

Awake.

Eager.

They watch me and size me up and they’re tough and hard and suddenly respectful.

“Underdog,” they murmur, all the way to the ring, till I climb in. Rube’s behind meHe’ll be in my corner, just like I’ll sit in his.

“Breathe,” I say to me.

I look.

Around.

I walk.

From one side of the ring to the other.

I crouch.

Down in my corner.

When I’m there, Rube’s eyes fire into mine.
Make sure you get up
, they tell me, and I nod, then jump up. The jacket’s off. My skin’s warm. My wolfish hair sticks up as always, nice and thick. I’m ready now. I’m ready to keep standing up, no matter what, I’m ready to believe that I welcome the pain and that I want it so much that I will look for it. I will seek it out. I’ll run to it and throw myself into it. I’ll stand in front of it in blind terror and let it beat me down and down till my courage hangs off me in rags. Then it will dismantle me and stand me up naked and beat me some more and my slaughter-blood will fly from my mouth and the pain will drink it, feel it, steal it, and conceal it in the pockets of its gut and it will taste me. It will just keep standing me up, and I won’t let it know. I won’t tell it that I feel it. I won’t give it the satisfaction. No, the pain will have to kill me.

That’s what I want right now as I stand in the ring, waiting for the doors to open again. I want the pain to kill me before I give in….

“And now!”

I stare into the canvas floor beneath me. “You know who it is!”

I close my eyes and lean on the ropes with my gloves.

“Yes!” It’s the old ugly guy who yells now. “It’s Cagey Carl Ewings! Cagey Carl! Cagey Carl!”

The doors are kicked open and my opponent comes trotting through, and the crowd goes absolutely berserk. Five times louder than when I walked in, that’s for sure.

Cagey Carl.

“He looks about thirty years old!” I scream at Rube. He barely hears me.

“Yeah,” he replies, “but he’s a bit of a runt of a thing.”

Nonetheless, however, he’s still taller, stronger, and faster-looking than me. He looks like he’s been in a hundred fights and had fifty broken noses. Mostly though, he looks hard.

“Nineteen years old!” the old man continues into the mike. “Twenty-eight fights, twenty-four wins,” and the big one — “twenty-two by knockout.”

“Christ.”

It’s Rube who speaks this time, and Cagey Carl Ewings has jumped the ropes and circles the ring now like he wants to kill someone. And guess just happens to be the closest guy around. It’s me, of course, thinking,
Twenty-two knockouts. Twenty-two knockouts
. I’m dog’s meat. I’m dog’s meat, I swear it.

He comes over.

“Hey boy,” he says.

“Hey,” I answer, although I’m not sure he wants one. I’m just being friendly, really. You can’t blame one for trying.

Whatever it is, it seems to work, because he smiles. Then he states something very clearly.

He states, “I’m gonna kill you.”

“Okay.”

Did I just say that?

“You’re scared.” Another statement.

“If you like.”

“Oh, I like, mate, but I’ll like it even more when they cart you out of here on a stretcher.”

“Is that right?”

“Definitely.”

In the end, he smiles again and returns to his corner. Frankly, I’m quite sure he’ll beat the skin off me. Cagey Carl. What an idiot, and I’d tell him so if I wasn’t so afraid of him. Now there’s only me and the fear and the furled footsteps I take to center ring. Rube stands behind me.

Now I feel naked, in just my dark blue shorts, my gymmies, and with the gloves on my hands. I feel too skinny, too bare. Like you can read the fear on me. The warm room filters across my back. The cigarette smoke breathes onto my skin. It smells like cancer.

Light is on us.

Blinding.

The crowd is dark.

Hidden.

They’re just voices now. No names, no blondes, no beers or anything else. Just voices drawn toward the light, and there’s no way to liken them to anything else. They sound like people gathered around a fight. That’s all. That’s what they are and they like what they are.

Both Carl and I sweat. There’s Vaseline above his stare, which grinds its way into my eyes. It dawns on me very quickly that he really
does
want to kill me.

“Fair fight,” the referee says, and that’s all he says.

Then it’s back to the corner.

My legs rage with anticipation.

My heart turns.

My head nods, as Rube gives me two instructions. The first: “

The second: “If you do go down, be sure to get up.”

“Okay.”

Okay.

Okay.

What a word, ay? What a word, because you can’t always mean it when you say it. Everything’s gonna be okay. Yeah, whatever, because it’s not. Everything hinges on you yourself, which in this case, is me.

“Okay,” I say again, feeling the irony of it, and the bell rings and this is it.

Is it
? I ask myself.
Is this it? Really
?

The answer to my question comes not from me, but from Cagey Carl, who has made his intentions excessively clear. He sprints over to me and throws out his left hand. I duck it, swing around, and get out of the corner.

He laughs as he chases me.

All round.

He comes at me, I duck.

He swings and misses and tells me I’m scared.

Toward the end of the round, his left glove finds its way through, echoing onto my jaw. Then his right finds me, and another one. Then the bell.

The round is over and I haven’t thrown a single punch.

Rube tells me.

He says, “Just a hint you can’t win a fight without throwing any punches.”

“I know.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, start throwin’ a few.”

“All right.” But personally, I’m just glad I survived the first round without being knocked down. I’m ecstatic that I’m still upright.

Second round. Still no punches, but this time, late, I hit the canvas and the crowd roars. Cagey Carl stands over me and says, “Hey boy! Hey boy!” That’s all he says as I struggle to my knees and stand. Soon after, the bell rings. Everyone knows I’m scared.

This time Rube abuses me.

“If y’ gonna carry on like this there’s no point bein’ here! Remember what we said that morning? This is our chance. Our
only
chance, and you’re gonna blow it because you’re scared of a little pain!” His face snarls at me. He barks. “If I was fightin’ this guy I’d have dropped ‘im in the first round and we both know it. It takes me twenty minutes to beat
you
, so get interested an’ pull y’ finger out, or go home!”

Yet stillI throw no punches. Boos emerge from the crowd. No one likes a coward.

Rounds three and four, no punches. Finally, the last round, the fifth. What happens?

I walk out, my hammering heart smashing through my ribs. I duck and swerve and Cagey Carl lands a few more good punches. He keeps telling me to stop running, but I don’t. I keep running, and I survive my first fight. I lose it, on account of throwing no punches, and the crowd wants to lynch me. On my way out of the ring, they yell in my face, spit at me, and one guy even gives me a nice crack in the ribs. I deserve it.

Back in the room, the other fellas only shake their heads.

Perry ignores me.

Rube can’t bring himself to look at me.

Instead, he punches the raw meat that hangs down around us as I take my gloves off, ashamed. There’s another fight before Rube goes on. He punches hard and waits and we know. Rube will win. He has that about him now. I don’t know where it came from — maybe that fight in the school yard. I’m not sure, but I can smell it, right up to the time when the other fight’s over.

When Perry tells him, “It’s time,” Rube punches one last pig and we go to the doors. Again, we wait, and when Perry’s voice comes to us, Rube bursts through the door.

Perry yells again: “And now, I think you’ll see something tonight that you’ll talk about for the rest of your life! You’ll say that you saw him.” All quiet. All quiet and Perry’s voice lowers. Serious. “You’ll say, ‘I was there. I was there that first night when Ruben Wolfe fought. I saw Fighting Ruben Wolfe’s first fight.’ That’s what you’ll say….”

Fighting Ruben Wolfe.

So that’s his name.

Fighting Ruben Wolfe, and what the crowd does see is Rube walking toward the ring, in Steve’s jacket. Like everyone else so far, they can smell it. The confidence. They see it in the eyes that peer out from his hood.

His walk is not bouncy or cocky.

He throws no punches to the air.

No step, however, is out of turn.

He is straight ahead, straight out, straight and hard, and ready to fight.

“Hope you’re better than your brother,” someone calls.

It hurts me. Wounds me.

“I am.”

But not as much as that. Not as much as those two words from my own brother’s lips, as he walks on, without flinching.

“I’m ready tonight,” he talks on, and I am aware that now, he speaks only to himself. The crowd, Perry, me — we’re all just out therefocused. Now it’s
just Rube, the fight, and the win. There is no world around it.

Typically, his opponent jumps into the ring, but that’s about it. In the first round, Rube knocks him down twice. The bell saves him. In the break, all I do is give my brother some water as he sits and stares and waits. He waits for the fight with a slight smile, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. He makes his legs rise and fall very slightly and very fast. He does it over, over, over again, before jumping up and going out, fists raised. Fighting.

The second round’s the last round.

Rube catches him with a great right hand.

He punches his lungs out.

Then he goes under his ribs.

Even in the neck.

Shoulder.

Arm.

Anywhere legal and uncovered.

Finally, he goes straight through his face. Three times, until the blood rants and raves on its way out of the other guy’s mouth.

“Stop it,” Rube says to the ref.

The crowd roars.

“Stop the fight.” But the ref has no intention to do so, and Rube is forced to bury one last punch onto the chin of Wizard Walter Brighton, and he falls cold to the canvas.

All is loud and violent.

Beer glasses smash.

People shout.

A drop of extra blood hits the canvas. Rubes stares.

Then another roar does a lap around the factory floor.

“That’s it then,” Rube says when he returns to the corner. “I told ‘em to stop it but I guess they like the blood. That’s what people’re payin’ for, I s’pose.”

He climbs out of the ring and is given instant worship by the crowd. They pour beer on him, shake hands with his glove, and yell out how great he is. Rube reacts to none of them.

At the end of the night, we all file back into Perry’s van. Bumper won in five but the other blokes all lost, including me, of course. The ride home is all silent. Only two fighters hold a fifty-dollar note in their hand. The others have a little bit of tip money in their pockets, thrown into their corner at the end of the fight. All of them except me, that is. Like I’ve said, it’s clear that no one likes a coward.

Perry drops everyone else off first and lets Rube and me out at Central.

“Hey Rube,” he calls.

“You can fight, boy. See y’ next week.” “Same time?”

“Yeah.”

Perry, to me: “Cameron, if you do what you did tonight next week, I’ll kill you.”

Me: “All right.”

My heart falls to my ankles, the van takes off, and Rube and I walk home. I kick my heart along the ground. I feel like crying, but I don’t. I wish I was Rube. I wish I was Fighting Ruben Wolfe and not the Underdog. I wish I was my brother.

A train passes above us as we walk through the tunnel and onto Elizabeth Street. The sound is deafening, then gone.

Our feet take over.

Out on the other side, on the street, I can smell the fear again. I can pick up the scent. It’s easy to find, and Rube smells it too, I can sense it. But he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t feel it.

The worst part is the knowing that things have changed. See, Rube and I had always been together. We were both down low. We were both scrap. Both no good.

Now Rube’s a winner, and I’m a Wolfe on my own. I’m the Underdog, alone.