Chapter 12
When I got home that Sunday night, Rube and I did the usual deed of walking Miffy. The hound was in even worse shape than usual. The coughing sounded deeper, like it was coming from his lungs.
When we got back I asked Keith if he was going to take him to the vet.
“I don’t think this is fur balls,” I said.
Keith’s reply was pretty short and simple. “Yeah, I think I’d better. He looks shockin’.”
“Worse“Ah, he’s been like this before,” he explained, more out of hope than anything else. “It’s never been anything too serious.”
“Well let us know what happens, okay?”
“Yeah, bye mate.”
I thought for a moment about the dog. Miffy. I guess no matter how much Rube and I complained about him, we knew we’d sort of miss him if something happened to him. It’s funny how there are things in this world that do
nothing but annoy you, but you know you’d miss them when they’re gone. Miffy, the Pomeranian wonder-dog, was one such thing.
Later, when I was sitting in the lounge room with Rube, I missed many opportunities to tell him about Octavia and me.
Now, I told myself. Now!
No words ever came out though, and we just sat there.
The next night I went up and paid Steve a visit. It had been a while since I’d been to see him, and in a way, I missed him. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it was, but I’d grown to like Steve’s company a lot, even though very little was ever said. Sure, we spoke more than we used to, but it still wasn’t much.
When I got there only Sal was home.
“He should be here any minute,” she said, in a not-too-thrilled voice. “You want something to eat? Drink?”
“Nah, I’ll be right.”
She didn’t make me feel too welcome that night, like she just wasn’t up to tolerating me this time around. Her expression seemed to throw words down to me. Words like:
Loser.
Dirty little bastard.
I’m sure that at some point, a while ago, before Steve and I gathered an understanding of each other, he probably told Sal what a couple of loserous bastards he was the brother of. He’d always looked down on Rube and me when we all lived together. We did stupid things, I admit it: stealing road signs, fighting, gambling at the dog track … It wasn’t quite Steve’s scene.
When he came in, about ten minutes later, he actually smiled and said, “Hey, I haven’t seen you for a while!” For a moment, I smiled back and thought he was talking to me, before realizing it was Sal he was talking to. She’d been doing a lot of interstate work lately. He walked over and kissed her. Then he noticed his brother sitting on the couch.
“Hey Cam.”
“Hi Steve.”
I could see they wanted to be alone, so I waited a few seconds and stood up. The kitchen light surrounded them in the dimly lit lounge room.
“Hey, I’ll come back some other time,” I said too fast. I made sure to get the hell out of there. was giving me the best piss off look I’d ever seen.
“No.”
I was just about out the door when the word booted itself into my back. I turned around and Steve was standing behind me. His face was serious as he spoke the rest of the words.
“You don’t have to go, Cam.”
All I did was look at my brother and say, “Don’t worry,” and I turned and left without thinking too much about it. I had other places to go now anyway.
It was still fairly early, so I decided to run to the station and get a train down to Hurstville. In the train’s window I saw my reflection — my hair was getting longer again and standing up wild and rough. It was black. Pitch-black in the window, and for the first time, I kind of liked it. Swaying with the train, I looked inside me.
Octavia’s street was wrapped in darkness. The lights from the houses were like torchlights. If I closed my eyes tight and opened them again, it looked like the houses were stumbling around in the dark, finding their way. At any moment I expected them to fade. Sometimes human shadows crossed through them, as I waited, just outside her front gate.
For a while, I imagined myself walking to the front door and knocking, but I stayed patient. For some reason, it didn’t seem right to go in. Not yet. I was dying for her to come out, make no mistake about that. Yet I knew that if I had to leave again without even a glimpse of her, I would. If I could do it for a girl who cared nothing for me, I could do it for Octavia.
In that one stolen second, I considered the Glebe girl. She entered my mind like a burglar, then vanished again, taking nothing. It was like the humiliation of the past had been taken instantly from my back and left somewhere on the ground. I wondered for a moment how I could stand outside her house so many times. I even laughed. At myself. She was erased completely a few minutes later when Octavia moved the kitchen curtain aside, and came out to meet me.
The first thing I noticed, before any words hit the air, was the shell. It was tied to a piece of string and was hanging around her neck.
“It looks good,” I nodded, and I reached out and held it in my right hand. “It does,” she agreed.
We went to the same park as the first night I came, but this time we didn’t sit on the splintered bench. This time we walked over the dewy grass and ended up stopping by an old tree.
“Here,” I said, and I gave Octavia the words I wrote the previous night in bed. “They’re yours.”
She read them and kissed the paper and held on to me for quite a while. I told her I loved the howling sound of her harmonica. That seemed to be the limit of my courage that night. I had to get back home, so I couldn’t stay too long. It was just nice to see her and touch her and give her the words.
When we made it back to the gate, I kissed her hand and left.
“e you this weekend?” she asked. “Definitely.”
“I’ll call you,” she said, and I was on my way.
At my place, when I returned, I was shocked to find Steve on our front porch, waiting for me.
“I was wondering how long I’d have to sit here,” he fired when I showed up. “I’ve been here an hour.”
I walked closer. “And? Why’d you come?”
“Come on,” he said, standing up. “Let’s go back up to my place.”
“I’ll just go in and —”
“I already told ‘em.”
Steve’s car was parked farther along the street, and after getting in, there were very few words spoken in the car. I turned the radio up but don’t remember the song.
“So what’s this all about?” I asked. I looked at him but Steve’s eyes were firmly on the road. For a while I was wondering if he’d even heard my question. He let his eyes examine me for a second or two, but he said nothing. He was still waiting.
When we got out of the car, he said, “I want you to meet someone.” He slammed the door. “Or actually, I want her to meet you.”
We walked up the stairs and into his apartment. It was empty.
“Looks like she’s in the shower,” he mentioned. He stood and made coffee and put a cup down in front of me. It still swirled, taking my reflection with it. Taking me down.
For a moment, I thought we were about to go through our usual routine of questions and answers about everyone back at home, but I could see him deciding not to do it. He’d been at our place earlier and found out for himself. It wasn’t in Steve’s nature to manufacture conversation.
I hadn’t been to watch him at football for a while, so I asked how it was going. He was in the middle of explaining it when Sal came out of the bathroom, still drying her hair.
“Hey,” she said to me.
I nodded, giving her half a smile.
That was when Steve stood up and looked at me, then at her. I knew right then that at some point, like I’d suspected, he did tell her about Rube and me. I’d imagined it on the park bench in Hurstville for some reason, and I could hear the quiet tone of Steve’s intense voice practically disowning his brothers. Now he was rewriting it, or at least trying to make it right.
“Stand up,” he told me.
I did.
He said, “Sal.” She looked at me. I looked at her, as Steve kept talking. “This is my brother Cameron.” We s hands. My boyish, rough hand.
Her smooth and clean hand, which smelled of perfumed soap. Soap I imagined you’d get in hotel rooms I’d never get to visit.
She recognized me through the eyes and I was Cameron now, not just that loser brother of Steve.
On the way back home sometime after that, Steve and I talked a while, but only about small things. In the middle of it, I cut him short. I said, with knifelike words, “When you first told Sal about Rube and me you said we were losers. You told her you were ashamed of us, didn’t you?” My voice was still calm and not even the slightest bit accusing, though I was trying as hard as I could.
“No.” He denied it when the car came to a stop outside our house.
“No?” I could see the shame in his eyes, and for the first time ever, I could see it was shame he held for himself.
“No,” he confirmed, and he looked at me with something that resembled anger now, almost like he couldn’t stomach it. “Not you and Rube,” he explained, and his face looked injured. “Just you.”
God.
God, I thought, and my mouth was open. It was as if Steve had reached into me and pulled out my pulse. My heart was in his hands, and he was staring down at it, as if he too, could see it.
Beating.
Thrusting itself down, then standing up again. Almost bleeding down his forearms.
I said nothing about the truth Steve had just let loose.
All I did was undo my seat belt, take my heart, and get out of that car as fast as I could.
Steve followed but it was too late. I heard his footsteps coming after me when I was walking onto our porch. Words fell down between his feet.
“Cam!” he called out. “Cameron!” I was nearly inside when I heard his voice cry out. “I’m sorry. I was …” He made his voice go louder. “Cam, I was wrong!”
I got behind the door and shut it, then turned to look back out.
Steve’s figure was shadowed onto the front window. It was silent and still, plastered to the light.
“I was wrong.”
He said it again, though this time his voice was weaker.
A minute shuddered past. I broke.
Walking slowly to the front door, I opened it and saw my brother on the other side of the flyscreen.
I waited, then, “Forget about it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”
I was still hurt, but like I said, it d matter. I’d been hurt before and I’d be hurt again. Steve must have wished he’d never tried showing Sal that I wasn’t the loser she thought I was. All he’d succeeded in doing was proving that not only had he once thought I was a lost cause, but that I was the only one.
Soon, though, I was stabbed.
A feeling shook through me and cut me loose. All my thoughts were off the chain, until one solitary sentence arrived and wouldn’t leave me.
The words and Octavia.
That was the sentence.
It wavered in me.
It saved me, and almost whispering, I said to Steve, “Don’t worry, brother. I don’t need you to tell Sal that I’m not a loser.” We were still separated by the flyscreen. “I don’t need you to say it to me either. I know what I am. I know what I see. Maybe one day I’ll tell you a little more about me, but for now, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’m nowhere near what I’m going to be, and …” I could feel something in me. Something I’ve always felt. I paused and caught his eyes. I leaped into them through the door and held him down. “You ever hear a dog cry, Steve? You know, howling so loud, it’s almost unbearable?” He nodded. “I reckon they howl like that because they’re so hungry it hurts, and that’s what I feel in me every day of my life. I’m so hungry to be somethin’ — to be somebody. You hear me?” He did. “I’m not lyin’ down ever. Not for you. Not for anyone.” I ended it. “I’m hungry, Steve.”
Sometimes I think they’re the best words I’ve ever said.
“I’m hungry.”
And after that, I shut the door. I didn’t slam it.
You don’t shoot a dog when it’s already dead.
WHEN DOGS CRY
I saw a dog cry once.
It was one of those nights when the wind tries to tear the ground along with it, and a storm stirs itself amongst the sky. Lightning roared and thunder cracked above me.
The street was empty but for the dog, first walking the dangerous, desolate city floor, silently clicking over it with his paws and claws. He looked hungry, and desperate, until he simply stood there, and began.
He reached deep, and his fur stood on end, climbing ferociously up. From his heart, from everything in his instinct, he began to howl.
He howled above the howling thunder. He howled above the howling lightning, and beyond the howling wind.
With his head claiming the endless sky, he howled hunger and I felt it rise through me.
Iunger.
My pride.
And I smiled.
Even now, I smile, and I feel it in my eyes, because hunger’s a powerful thing.