When Dogs Cry (2 page)

That was when Octavia had her great idea.

‘How ‘bout we make it into ice blocks?'

‘Is that some kind of sick joke?' Rube asked her.

‘Of course not.'

‘Beer ice blocks?' Rube shrugged and considered it. ‘Well, I s'pose. It's warm enough, ay. Have we got any of those plastic ice block things? You know, with the stick?'

Octavia was already in the cupboards though, and she found what she was after. ‘Pay dirt,' she grinned (and she had a lovely mouth, with straight, white, sexy teeth).

‘Okay.'

This was serious now.

Rube opened the beer and was about to pour it out, in equal amounts, of course.

Interruption.

Me.

‘Shouldn't we wash 'em out or somethin'?'

‘Why?'

‘Well they've prob'ly been in that cupboard for ten years.'

‘So what?'

‘So they're probably all mouldy and mangy, and—'

‘Can I just pour the goddamn beer!?'

We all laughed again, through the tension, and finally, painstakingly, Rube poured three equal portions of beer into the ice block containers. He fixed the stick on each of them so they were straight down.

‘Right,' he said. ‘Thank Christ for that,' and he walked slowly to the fridge.

‘In the freezer bit,' I told him.

He stopped, mid-walk, turned slowly and carefully back round and said, ‘Do you seriously think I'm
pathetic enough to put beer which I just took
from
the fridge and poured into
ice
blocks back in just the fridge?'

‘Y' never know.'

He turned away again and kept walking. ‘Octavia, open the freezer, will y'.'

She did it.

‘Thanks love.'

‘No worries.'

Then it was just a matter of waiting for them to set.

We sat around in the kitchen for a while, until Octavia spoke, to Rube.

‘You feel like doin' something?' she asked him. With most girls, that was my cue to leave. Octavia though, I wasn't sure. I just cleared out anyway.

‘Where y' goin'?' Rube asked me.

‘Not sure.'

I went out of the kitchen, took my jacket for later and walked onto the front porch. Half out the door, I mentioned, ‘Maybe down the dog track. Maybe just out wanderin'.'

‘Fair enough.'

‘See y' later Cam.'

With a last look at Rube and a glance at Octavia, I could see desire in each of the eyes I met. Octavia had desire for Rube. Rube just had desire for a girl. Pretty simple really.

‘See y's later,' I said, and walked out.

The flyscreen door slammed behind me.

My feet dragged.

I reached each arm into the jacket.

Warm sleeves.

Creased collar.

Hands in pockets.

Okay.

I walked.

Soon evening worked its way into the sky and the city hunched itself down. I knew where I was going. Without knowing, without thinking, I knew. I was going to a girl's place. It was a girl I had met last year at the dog track.

She liked.

She liked.

Not me.

She liked Rube.

She'd even called me a loser once when she was talking to him, and I'd listened in as my brother smacked her down with words and shoved her away.

What I'd been doing lately was standing outside her house, across the road. I stood and stared and watched and hoped. And I left, after the curtains were drawn for a while. Her name was Stephanie.

That night, which I think of now as the beer ice block night, I stood and stared a bit longer than usual. I stood and imagined walking home with her and opening the door for her. I imagined it hard, till a reaching pain pulled me inside out.

I stood.

Soul on the outside.

Flesh within.

‘Ah well.'

It was a fair walk because she lived in Glebe and I
lived closer to Central, on a small street with ragged gutters and train line just beyond. I was used to it though—both the distance and the street. In a way, I'm actually proud of where I come from. The small house. The Wolfe family.

Many minutes shuffled forward as I walked home, and when I saw my dad's panel van on our street, I even smiled.

Things have actually been okay for everyone lately.

Steve, my other brother.

Sarah, my sister.

Mrs Wolfe—the resilient Mrs Wolfe, my mother, who cleans houses and at the hospital for a living.

Rube.

Dad.

And me.

For some reason that night when I walked home, I felt peaceful. I felt happy for all of my family, because things really did seem to be going okay for them. All of them.

A train rushed past, and I felt like I could hear the whole city in it.

It came at me and then glided away.

Things always seem to glide away.

They come to you, stay a moment, then leave again.

That train seemed like a friend that day, and when it was gone, I felt like something in me tripped. I was alone on the street, and although I was still peaceful, the brief happiness left and a sadness tore me open very slowly and deliberately. City lights shone across the air, reaching their arms out to me, but I knew they'd never quite reach.

I composed myself and made my way onto the front porch. Inside they were talking about the ice blocks and the case of the missing beer. I was actually looking forward to eating my share of it, even though I can never finish a full can or bottle of beer. (I just stop being thirsty, to which Rube once said, ‘So do I mate, but I still keep drinkin' it.') The ice block idea was at least halfway interesting though, and I was ready to go in and give it a shot.

‘I was planning on drinking that beer when we got home.'

I could hear my father talking just before I went inside. There was an element of bastardry in his voice as he continued. ‘And whose brilliant idea was it to make ice blocks out of
my
beer, sorry, my
last
beer, anyway? Who was it?'

There was a pause.

A long one.

Silent.

Then, finally, ‘Mine' came the answer, just as I walked into the house.

The only question is, who said it?

Was it Rube?

Octavia?

No.

It was me.

Don't ask me why, but I just didn't want Octavia to cop a bit of a battering (verbally, of course) from Clifford Wolfe, my father. The odds were that he'd be all nice to her about it, but still, it wasn't worth the risk.
Much better for him to think it was me. He was used to me doing ridiculous things.

‘Why aren't I surprised?' he asked, turning to face me. He was holding the ice blocks in question in his hands.

He smiled.

A good thing, trust me.

Then he laughed and said, ‘Well Cameron, you won't mind if I eat yours then, will y'?'

‘Of course not.' You always say of course not in that situation because you figure out pretty quick that your old man's really asking, ‘Will I take the ice block or will I make you suffer in a hundred different other ways?' Naturally, you play it safe.

The ice blocks were handed out and a small smile was exchanged between Octavia and me, then Rube and me.

Rube held his ice block out to me. ‘Bite?' he asked, but I declined.

I left the room, hearing my father say, ‘Pretty good actually.'

The bastard.

‘Where'd y' go before?' Rube asked me later in our room, after Octavia had left. Each of us lay on our bed, talking across the room.

‘Just around a bit.'

‘Down Glebe way?'

I looked over. ‘What's that mean?'

‘It means,' Rube sighed, ‘that Octavia and I followed you once, just out of interest, and saw y' outside a house, starin' into the window. You're a bit of a lonely bastard aren't y'?'

Moments twisted and curled then, and off in the distance I could hear traffic, roaring almost silently. Far from all this. Far from Cameron Wolfe and Ruben Wolfe discussing what in the hell I was doing outside the house of a girl who cared nothing for me.

Then I swallowed, breathed in and answered my brother.

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘I guess I am.'

There was nothing else I could say. Nothing to cover it up. There was just a slight moment of waiting, truth and feeling, then a crack, and I said more. ‘It's that Stephanie girl.'

‘The bitch,' Rube spat.

‘I know, but—'

‘I know,' Rube interrupted. ‘It makes no difference if she said she hated you or called you a loser. Y' feel what y' feel.'

Y' feel what y' feel.

It was one of the truest things Rube had ever said, just before a quietness smothered the room.

From next-door's backyard we could hear a dog barking. It was Miffy, the pitiful Pomeranian we loved to hate, but still walked a few times a week anyway.

‘Sounds like Miffy's a bit upset,' Rube said after a while.

‘Yeah,' and I laughed a bit.

A bit of a lonely bastard. A bit of a lonely bastard
. . .

Rube's statement reverberated inside me till his voice was like a hammer.

Later, when I got up and sat on the front porch and
watched shadows of traffic filter past, I told myself it was okay to be like this, as long as I stayed hungry. It felt like something was arriving in me. It was something I couldn't see or know or understand. It was just there, mingling into my blood.

Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.

Even in the night, in bed, they woke me.

They painted themselves onto the ceiling.

They burned themselves onto the sheets of memory laid out in my mind.

When I woke up the next day, I wrote the words down, on a torn-up piece of paper. And to me, the world changed colour that morning.

 

words of cameron

Nothing comes easy to a human like me.

It's not a complaint.

Just a truth.

The only problem now is that I have visions spilt on the floor of my mind. I have words in there that I'm trying to get out. To write.

Words I'll write for me.

A story I'll fight for.

And so it begins . . .

It's night and I walk through the city of my mind. Through streets and alleys. Between buildings that shiver. Between houses hunched, with their hands in their pockets.

As I walk these streets, sometimes I feel like
they
walk through
me.
Thoughts in me feel like blood.

I walk.

I realise.

Where am I going?
I ask myself.

What am I looking for?

Yet, I walk on, moving deeper to some unknown place in this city. I'm drawn there.

Past wounded cars.

Down grimly lit stairways.

Till I'm there.

I feel it.

Know it.

I know I've found the heart of me in a shadow-beaten
alley, in a back street in the somewhere of this place.

At the bottom, something waits.

Two eyes glow.

I swallow.

My heart beats me.

And now I walk on, to find what it is . . .

Footstep.

Heartbeat.

Footstep.

M
Y OLDEST BROTHER
S
TEVEN
W
OLFE IS WHAT YOU'D CALL A
hard bastard. He's successful. He's smart. He's determined.

The thing with Steve is that nothing will ever stop him. It's not only
in
him. It's on him, around him. You can smell it, sense it. His voice is hard and measured, and everything about him says, ‘You're not going to get in my way.' When he talks to people, he's friendly enough, but the minute they try one on him, forget it. If someone tramples him, you'd put your house on it that he'll do twice the job on them. Steve never forgets.

Me on the other hand.

I'm not really like Steve in that way.

I kind of wander around a lot.

That's what I do.

Personally, I think it comes from not having many friends, or in fact, any friends at all, really.

There was a time when I really ached to be a part of
a pack of friends. I wanted a bunch of guys I'd be prepared to bleed for. It never happened. When I was younger I had a mate called Greg and he was an okay guy. Actually, we did a lot together. Then we drifted apart. It happens to people all the time, I guess. No big deal. In a way, I'm part of the Wolfe pack, and that's enough. I know without doubt that I'd bleed for anyone in my family.

Any place.

Any time.

My best mate is Rube.

Steve, on the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn't bleed for any of them, because he wouldn't trust them to bleed for him. In that way he's just as alone as me.

He's alone.

I'm alone.

There just happen to be people around him, that's all. (People meaning friends, of course.)

Anyway, the point of telling you about all this is that sometimes when I go out wandering at night I'll go up to Steve's apartment, which is about a kilometre from home. It's usually when I can't handle standing outside that girl's house, when the ache of it aches too much.

He's got a nice place, Steve, on the second floor, and he has a girl who lives there as well. Often though, she's not there because she works in a company that sends her on business trips and all that kind of thing. I always thought she was pretty nice, I s'pose, since she tolerated me when I went up to visit and she was there. Her
name's Sal and she's got nice legs. That's a fact I can never escape.