Underdogs (17 page)

Like I’ve said earlier, there are four weeks now until I fight my brother. Fighting Ruben Wolfe. I wonder how it will be, and how it will feel. What will it be like to fight — not in our backyard, but in the ring, under all the lights, and with the crowd watching and cheering and waiting for the blood? Time will tell, I suppose, or at least, these pages will.

Dad’s at the kitchen table, alone, but now, my father doesn’t look so beaten down. He looks like he’s back in it. He’s been to the brink ame back. I guess when you lose your pride, even for just a moment, you realize how much it means to you. His eyes have some strength back in them. His curly hair is spiraling at his eyebrows.

Rube’s quiet lately.

He spends a fair bit of time down in the basement, which, as you know, has been vacated by Steve. In the end, Mum offered it to everyone for their bedroom, but none of us wanted it. We said it’s because it gets so cold down there, but really, I reckon the remaining wolves in our house feel like now’s a time to stick together. I’ve felt it ever since Steve left. Not that I would say it out loud. I would never admit to Rube that I didn’t take the basement because I’d get too lonely without him. Or that I’d
miss our conversations and the way he always annoys me. Or, as disgraceful as it sounds, that I’d even miss the smell of his socks and the sound of his snoring.

Just last night, I tried waking him, because that snoring of his was dead-set detrimental to my health. Sleep deprivation, I’m telling you. That is, until it gets like a pendulum again, coaxing me into sleep. Huh. Hypnosis under the influence of Ruben Wolfe’s snoring. It’s hopeless, I know, but you get used to things. You feel weird without them, like you’re not yourself anymore.

In any case, it’s Mrs. Wolfe herself who has taken hold of the basement. She has a bit of an office down there and does the tax.

On Saturday night, though, I find Rube there instead, sitting on the desk, his feet resting on the chair. It’s the night before his fight with Hitman Harry Jones. I pull the chair from his feet and sit on it.

“Y’ right there?” He glares at me.

“I am, yeah. It’s a pretty nice chair.”

“Don’t worry about my feet,” he goes on. “They’re danglin’ now ‘cause of you.”

“Ah y’ poor bloke.”

“Got that right.”

I swear it.

Brothers.

We’re strange.

In here, he won’t give me an inch, but out in the world, he’ll defend me to the death. The frightening thing is that I’m the same. We all seem to be.

A pause yawns through the air, before Rube and I start speaking without looking at each other. Personally, I look at a blotch on the wall, wondering,
What is that? What the hell is it
? As for Rube, I can sense that he has lifted his feet to the desk and rests his chin on his knees. His eyes, I imagine, are fixed straight ahead, on the old cement stairs.

“Hitman Harry,” I begin.

“Yeah.”

“You reckon he’s any good?” “May

Then, right in the middle of it all, Rube says, “I’m gonna tell ‘em.” His statement brings with it no extra attention, no movement. No prospect of believing that he’s thought out what he has said just now. It’s been decided long ago.

The only problem is, I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Tell who what?” I inquire.

“Can you really be that thick?” He turns to me now, a savage look on his face. “Mum and Dad, y’ yobbo.” “I’m not a yobbo.”

I hate it when he calls me that.
Yobbo
. I think I hate it worse than
faggot
. It makes me feel like I’m eating a pie and drinking Carlton Cold and like I’ve got a beer gut the size of Everest.

“Anyway,” he goes on impatiently, “I’m tellin’ Mum and Dad about the boxing. I’m sick of the sneakin’ round.”

I stop.

Think it over in my mind. “When y’ gonna tell ‘em?” “Just before you and me fight.” “Are you crazy?” “What’s wrong with that?”

“They’ll keep us from fighting and Perry’ll kill us.”

“No, they won’t.” He has a plan. “We’ll just promise that it’s the last time we’ll ever fight each other.” Is this part of Rube wanting a real fight? Telling Mum and Dad? Telling them the truth? “They can’t stop us, anyway. They might as well see us for what we are.”

What we are.

I repeat it, in my head.

What we are
…

Then I ask it.

“What are we?”

And there’s silence.

What are we?

What are we?

The weird thing about the question is that not long ago we knew exactly what we were. It was
who
we were that was the problem. We were vandals, backyard fighters, just boys. We knew what words like that meant, but the words Ruben and Cameron Wolfe were a mystery. We had no idea where we were going.

Or maybe that’s wrong.

Maybe who you are
is
what you are.

I don’t know.

I just know that right now, we want to be proud. For once. We want to take the struggle and rise above it. We want to frame it, live it, survive it. We want to put it in our mouths and taste it and never forget it, because it makes us strong.

Then Rube cuts me open.

He slits my doubt from throat to hip.

He repeats it and answers it. “What are we?” A brief laugh. “Who knows what they will see, but if they come and watch us fight, they’ll know that we’re brothers.”

That’s it!

That’s what we are — maybe the only thing I
can
be sure of.

Brothers.

All the good things that involves. All the bad things. I nod.

“So we’ll tell ‘em?” He’s looking at me now. I see him. “Yeah.”

It’s agreed, and I must confess that I myself get obsessed with the idea. I want to run up immediately and tell everyone. Just to let it out of me. Instead, I concentrate on what lies ahead before it. I have three fights of my own to survive, and I must watch Rube fight and the way his opponents fight him. I can’t make the same mistakes they make. I’ve gotta go the distance, and for his sake, I have to give him a fight, not just another win.

To my own surprise, I win my next fight — a points decision.

Right after me, Rube puts the Hitman to bed midway through the fourth round.

The week after, I lose in the fifth, and the last fight before my meeting with Rube is a good one. It’s at Maroubra, and compared with my first ever bout there, this time, I walk in and throw punches without hesitating. I’m not scared of being hit anymore. Maybe I’ve grown used to it. Or perhaps I know that the end is near for me. The guy I’m fighting doesn’t come out for the last round. He’s too wobbly, and I feel for him. I know how it feels to not want the last round. I know how it feels to concentrate hard on just standing, let alone even thinking about throwing punches. I know how it is for the fear to outweigh the physical pain.

Watching Rube fight later, I see something.

I find out why no one beats him, or why they don’t even come close. It’s because they don’t
think
they can win. They don’t believe they can do it, and they don’t want it badly enough.

To survive him, I have to believe I can beat him.

It’s easier said than done.

“
Hey Cam
?”

“
It’s about time.
”

“
About time for what
?”

“
About time
you
started the talkin’.
”

“
I’ve got somethin’ important to say.
“
Yeah
?”

“
We’ll tell ‘em tomorrow.
”

“
Y’ sure
?”

“
Yes. I’m sure.
”

“
When
?”

“
After dinner.
”

“
Where
?”

“
Kitchen.”

“Okay.
”

“
Good. Now shut up. I wanna get some sleep.”

Later, when he starts snoring, I tell him.

“I’m gonna beat you.” But personally, I’m not really too convinced
.

The money sits on the kitchen table and we all stare at it. Mum, Dad, Sarah, Rube, and me. It’s all there. Notes, coins, the lot. Mum lifts Rube’s pile up just slightly, to get an idea of how much there is.

“About eight hundred dollars all up,” Rube tells her. “That’s between Cameron and me.”

Mum holds her head in her hands now. Thursday nights shouldn’t be like this for her, and she stands and walks over to the sink.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she tells us, bent over.

Dad stands, goes over and holds her.

After about ten silent minutes, they return to the table. I swear, this kitchen table’s s
een about everything, I reckon. Everything big that’s ever happened in this house.

“So how long’s this been going on exactly?” Dad throws out the question.

“A while. Since about June.”

“Is that right, Cameron?” Mum this time.

“Yeah, that’s right.” I can’t even look at her.

However, Mrs. Wolfe looks at me. “So that’s where all those bruises came from?”

I nod. “Yeah.” I go on talking. “We did still fight in the backyard, but only for practice. When we
started out, we told ourselves that we all needed the money….” “But?”

“But, I don’t think it’s ever been about the money.”

Rube agrees and takes over. He says, “Y’ know Mum, it’s just that Cam and I saw what was happening here. We saw what was happening to us. To Dad, to you, to all of us. We were barely surviving, just keeping our heads above water, and …” He’s getting feverish now. Desperate to tell it right. “We wanted to do something that would lift us up and make us okay again —”

“Even if it makes the rest of us ashamed?” Mum interrupts.

“Ashamed?” Rube boxes her through the eyes. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw Cameron fighting, standing up, over and over again.” He’s nearly shouting. “You’d fall to your knees with pride. You’d tell people that he’s your boy and he keeps fighting because that’s the way you brought him up.”

Mum stops.

She stares through the table. She imagines it, but all she sees is the pain. “How can you go through that?” she begs me. “How can you go through it, week after week?” “How can
you
?” I ask her. It works.

“And how can you?” I ask Dad. The answer is this:

We keep getting up because that’s what we do. Don’t ask me if it’s instinct, but we all do it. People everywhere do it. Especially people like us.

When it’s nearly all over, I allow Rube to deliver the knockout blow. He does it. He says, “This week is Cameron’s last fight.” A deep breath. “The only thing is” — a pause — “he’s fighting me. We’re fighting each other.”

Silence.

Total silence.

Then, in all honesty, it’s taken quite well. Only Sarah flinches.

Rube goes on. “After that I’ve got semifinals. Three more weeks at the most.”

Both Mum and Dad seem to be handling it now, slightly.
What are they thinking
? I ask myself. Mainly, I think they feel like they’ve failed as parents, which is completely untrue. They deserve no blame, because this is something Rube and I did on our own. If we succeeded, it was us. If we failed — us. No blame on them. No blame on the world. We didn’t want that, and we wouldn’t tolerate it.

Now I crouch down next to my mother. I hug her and tell her, “I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry.”

Sorry.

Will that ever do?

Will it ever make her understand enough to forgive us?

“We promise,” Rube still tries. “This is the last time Cameron and I will ever fight each other.”

“Jeez, that’s comforting.” Sarah finally speaks. “You can’t fight someone when he’s dead.”

Everyone looks at her and listens, but no one speaks.

It finishes.

A nervous quiet curls through the kitchen air, till only Rube and I sit there. Everyone else leaves. Sarah first, then Dad, then Mrs. Wolfe. Now we wait for the fight.

Living among the next few days, I continue in my determination to believe that I can beat him. I can’t pull it off. The closest I come is believing that I
want
to beat him, in order to survive.

When we leave for the warehouse on Sunday night, Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe come with us. Dad makes us all pile into his panel van (with me cramped into the back).

The car takes off slowly.

I sweat.

I fear.

The fight.

My brother.

For
my brother — for his own fight.

The whole way there, nothing is said, until we get out at the warehouse, when Dad says, “Don’t kill each other.”

“We won’t.”

It’s organized in the dressing room that Perry will sit in Rube’s corner. Bumper will be in mine. There’s a good crowd.

I can hear it, and I see it, when I go into the
Visiting Fighters
dressing room. I don’t look for Mum and Dad because I know they’re out there, and I’m concentrating on what I have to do.

In the dirty dressing room, I sit for a while, and other fighters come and go. I walk around. I’m jumpy. This is the biggest fight of my life.

I’m fighting against my brother.

I’m also fighting
for
him….

With a few minutes to go, I lose contact with everyone else. I lie down on the floor. With my eyes shut, my arms at my side. My gloves touch the tops of my legs. I don’t see anyone. I don’t hear anyone. I’m alone in my mind. There’s tension all around me, pressed to the outline of my body. It gets beneath me and lifts me….

I want it
, I tell myself.
I want it more than him
. Future scenes from the fight angle through my mind.

I see Rube trying to get at me.
I want it
.

I see myself ducking and counterpunching.
More
.

I see myself, standing, at the end. Standing at the end of a real fight. Not a win, or a loss, but a fight. I see Rube.

I want it more than him
, I repeat, and I know that I do. I do want it more, because I have to. I’ve — “It’s time.”

Bumper’s near me , and I jump to my feet and stare forward. I’m ready.

Perry’s shouting voice registers, but only for a second. When Bumper pushes through the door, the crowd makes its usual noise. I see it, I feel it, but I can’t hear it. I walk on, inside me. Inside the fight.

I climb the ropes.

I get rid of the jacket.

I don’t see him, but I know he’s there.

But I want it more.

Now.

The ref.

His words.

Silent.

Looking at my feet. Anywhere but at Rube.

In the suffocating seconds between now and the fight, I wait. No practice punches, I’ll need them all. It’s fear and truth and future, all devouring me. It hunts through my blood and I’m a Wolfe. Cameron Wolfe.

I hear the bell.

With it, the crowd comes storming into my ears.

I walk forward and throw the first punch. I miss. Then Rube swings and gets me on the shoulder. There’s no slow beginning, no warm-up period or watching
time. I move in hard and get underneath. I hit him. Hard on the chin. It hurts him. I see it. I see it because I want it more and he is there to be hurt. He’s there to be beaten and I’m the only one in the ring to do it.

It’s three minutes per round.

That’s all.

Fists and pain and staying upright.

Again, I feel my fist cut through my brother, only this time it rips into his stomach. In reply, a right hand lands on my left eye. We trade punches for nearly the whole round. There’s no running, no circling. Just punches. Toward the end, Rube gashes me open. He gets me in the mouth, making my head swarm backward and the pulse in my throat go numb. My legs go, but the round’s over. I walk straight to my corner.

I wait.

I want.

The fight is there, and I want Rube to know that he’s in it as well. The second round has to convince him.

It begins hard again, with Rube miss-hitting two jabs. I follow, but miss with an uppercut. Rube gets annoyed. He tries to hook me, but it frees him up and I land the best punch of my life on his jaw, and …

He staggers.

He staggers, and I chase him to the neutral corner, throwing my fists into his face, and slitting him once over his eye. He finds composure and fights his way out. Nothing hard lands though, and somehow, I stay out of his way the entire round. Once more, I find him on the
chin. A good shot. A real good shot, and the round is mine.

“You’re in a fight,” I tell him. It’s all I say, and Rube looks into me.

He comes out even harder in the third, and he gets me on the ropes twice, but only a handful of punches reach their mark. His breathing is heavy and my own lungs are exhausted. When the bell goes, I fake a burst of energy and head straight for my stool. I glance over at Rube as Perry talks to him. It’s the face of our mother when she gets up in the morning, ready for another double overtime shift. It’s the face of Dad that day down at the employment service. It’s the face of Steve, fighting in his own life and then for his father, simply saying, “Hi Dad.” It’s the face of Sarah, dragging washing off the line with me. It’s my own face, right now.

“He’s scared of losin’,” Bumper tells me.

“Good.”

In the fourth, Rube reacts.

He misses me just once, then opens me up several times. His left hand is especially cruel, pinning me into his corner. Only once do I get through him and clip his jaw again. It’s the last time.

By the end of the round, I’m against the ropes, just about gone.

When the bell goes this time, I find my corner, oh, miles and miles away, and stagger toward it. I fall. Down. Into the arms of Bumper.

“Hey buddy,” he tells me, but he’s so far away. Why’s he so far away? “I don’t think you can go out for the last. I think you’ve had enough.”

I realize.

“No way,” I beg him.

The bell goes again and the referee calls us into the middle. One final handshake before the last round. It’s always the same … until today.

My head is jolted back by what I see.

Is it real
? I ask myself.
Is
… because there, in front of me, Rube is wearing only one boxing glove and his eyes circle inside mine. He’s wearing one boxing glove, on his left hand, just like all those times in the backyard. He’s standing there, before me, and something very slight glimmers across his face. He’s a Wolfe and I’m a Wolfe and I will never ever tell my brother that I love him. And he will never tell it to me.

No.

All we have is this…. This is the only way.

This is us. This is us saying it, in the only way we can possibly do it.

It means something. It’s about something.

I return.

To my corner.

With my teeth, I take off the left glove. I give it to Bumper, who accepts it

Mum and Dad are somewhere in the crowd, watching.

My pulse does a lap of the silence. The ref calls something out. Sight.

Is that what he yells? No, it’s “Fight,” although … Rube and I look at each other. He comes forward. So do I. The crowd erupts.

One fist covered. One fist naked.

That’s all.

Rube throws first and takes me on the chin.

It’s over. I’m hurt, I’m … but I throw a punch back, just missing. I cannot go down. Not tonight. Not now, when everything hinges on me staying on my feet.

I’m hit again, and this time the world has stopped. Opposite me, Rube’s standing there, wearing a solitary boxing glove. Both his hands are at his side. Another silence gathers strength. It is broken, by Perry. His words are familiar.

“Finish him off!” he calls out.

Rube looks at him. He looks at me. He tells him.

“No.”

I find them. Mum and Dad. I collapse.

My brother catches me and holds me up. Without knowing it, I’m crying. I’m weeping on my brother’s throat as he holds me up.

Fighting Ruben Wolfe. He holds me up. Fighting Ruben Wolfe. It hurts.

Fighting Ruben Wolfe. His fight inside.

Fighting Ruben Wolfe. Like the rest of us.

Fighting Ruben Wolfe. Not fighting him, no. It’s something else….

“Y’ okay?” he asks me. It’s a whisper.

I say nothing. I just cry on my brother’s throat and let him hold me up. My hands feel nothing and my veins are on fire. My heart is heavy and hurting, and out there somewhere, I can imagine the pain of a beaten dog.

I find that nothing more has happened. The bell rings and it’s over. We stand there.

“It’s over,” I say.

“I know,” Rube smiles. I feel it.

Even in the following minutes, when scattered money falls into the ring, and when we walk back through the murmuring crowd, the moment carries on.

It carries me back to the dressing room with Rube at my side, as people stare at us and nod and reach out not for Rube or for me, but for this moment that is both of us. “That was some fight,” some of them say, but they’re wrong. It was more than that. It was Ruben Wolfe and me, and the blood of brothers in our veins.

In the dressing room, the feeling of it helps me get changed, and it waits with me for Rube. When he finds me, Perry arrives as well and sorts out the money, though we both know we’ll split it tonight, down the middle. The money means nothing.

On our way out the back door, the crowd roars from another fight, and Perry stops us. I expect him to say
something to Rube about not finishing me off, but he doesn’t. Instead, with a smile and shake of his head, he says, “Not bad, lads. Not bad at all.”

“Thanks,” Rube answers, and we walk out.

Tonight, we’re pretty quick to leave, mainly for our mother’s sake. We meet back at the panel van.

Outside, the cold air slaps me.

We drive home, in silence again.

On our front porch, Mrs. Wolfe stops and gives us each a hug. She hugs our father as well. They both go in.

Standing outside, we still hear Sarah ask from the kitchen, “So, who won?”

We also hear the answer.

“Nobody.”

It’s Dad.

Mum calls out from inside. “Do you fellas want dinner? I’m heating it up right now!”

“What is it?” Rube answers, hopeful. “The usual!”