Chapter 8
When I went to the Conlons’ place the next morning with Dad, it’s true, my heart beat so hard, or big, as I originally put it, that it kin
d of hurt. It pumped something into my throat, causing me to salivatquestions.
What would I say?
How would I act when I saw her?
Nice?
Calm?
Indifferent?
That shy and sensitive style that had never worked for me in the past? I had no idea.
In the van on the way over, I thought I was going to choke or suffocate or something. Such was the feeling this girl had planted inside me. It grew as we drove closer to her house. It even got to the point where I was hoping the next light would be red so I had more time to think things through. It’s funny. I had all week to go over this, to be prepared, and now Saturday had come and I was at a loss. Maybe I’d had too much time to think about it. Maybe I should have spent less time worrying about Sarah and Bruce, and Steve, and stealing and returning road signs with Rube. Maybe then my own game wouldn’t have suffered. Maybe then I would have been all right.
If.
Only.
It was no use. All was lost.
When we arrive there, I thought, I’d be better off just sticking my head into the ditch and digging a hole for myself. Girls didn’t go for someone like me. What self-respecting girl could even stomach me? Permanently messy hair. Grubby hands and feet. Uneven smile. Uneasy, limping walk. No, this was definitely no good. Not at all.
Let’s face it, I even lectured myself inside, you don’t even deserve a girl. I was right. I didn’t. I showed clear signs of dubious morality, at best. I was easily led by my brother. I committed pathetic acts that were petty and done just for some kind of wild pride that was so ridiculous it was hard to comprehend. All I was was a panting desperate mess of a person, scrambling around for something to make me okay….
Then. Suddenly.
In an instant, I thought how strange it was that I never prayed for myself. Was I unable to be saved? Was I so dirty that I didn’t deserve a prayer? Perhaps. Maybe.
Yet, I did get Rube to return the sign, I managed to rationalize. So maybe I’m not so bad after all. That was better — a bit of positive thought, as Dad’s panel van rumbled on in the direction of my fate.
When we pulled up at the house, I even started to have some tiny moments of belief that maybe I wasn’t the ugly, sick degenerate I’d judged myself to be. I started telling myself that I was probably quite normal. I remembered what I thought that day back in the dental surgery — that all young boys are pretty disgusting, like beasts. Maybe the challenge was to somehow rise above it. Maybe that’s what I was looking for with Rebecca Conlon. Just one chance to prove that I could be nice and respectable instead of purely lustful and terrible. I just wanted one shot to treat her right and I knew I wouldn’t blow it.
I couldn’t
I wouldn’t allow myself.
“I’m not gonna blow it,” I whispered to myself as I got out of the van. I took a big breath, like I was walking toward the most important thing in my life. Then I realized. This was the most important thing in my life.
“Take this,” my father told me, handing me a shovel, and through the morning, I worked hard and waited for Rebecca Conlon to make her appearance. Then I found out in a conversation between Dad and her mother that she wasn’t there. She’d slept the night at a friend’s place.
“Brilliant,” I said, in the gap between my tongue and my throat.
And do you know what the worst part of it was? It was knowing that if Rebecca Conlon was coming to work at my place, I would have made sure without doubt that I was there to see her. I would have been there. I would have nailed myself to the floor two days earlier if I knew she was coming, just to make sure I wouldn’t miss her.
“I would have,” I said, agreeing with myself, as I kept working.
I worked myself into a state of numbness. It was awful. Even Dad asked if I was okay. I told him yes, but we both knew I was miserable.
At the end of the day, when the girl still hadn’t arrived, Dad gave me an extra ten dollars. He gave it to me and said, “You did well today, boy.” Then he walked away and stopped, turned, and said, “I mean, Cameron.”
“Thanks,” I said, and even though I tried so hard to make it real, the smile I gave my father was one of misery.
“I’d have treated her well,” I said to the city outside my window back home, but it was no use. The city didn’t care, and in the next room, Sarah and Bruce were arguing.
Rube came in and slumped forward onto his bed. He put his pillow over his head and said, “I think I liked ‘em better when they were all over each other.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I too slumped onto my bed, only I decided to turn on my back and cover my eyes with my hands. Squashing my thumbs in, I made myself see patterns in my darkness.
“What’s for dinner?” I asked Rube, dreading the answer.
“Sausages, I think, and leftover mushrooms.”
“Ah, beautiful.” I turned on my side, in pain. “Just bloody beautiful.”
Rube took his pillow off his head then and gravely said, “We’re out of tomato sauce as well.”
“Even more beautiful.”
I stopped speaking then, but I continued moaning inside. After a while I got tired of it and thought, Don’t worry, Cameron. Every dog willday.
Just, not on this day.
(We did eat the mushrooms, by the way. We looked down at them, then up. Then down again. Disgusting. No point backing away. We ate them because we were us and in the end, we ate everything. We always did. We always ate everything. Even if we spewed up our dinner and had it given to us again the next night, Rube and I probably would have eaten that too.)
There’s a big crowd, around a fight, and they are all yelling and howling and screaming, as though punches are landing and fists are molding faces. It’s a huge crowd, about eight deep, so it is very difficult to push my way through.
I get down on my knees.
I crawl.
I look for gaps and then slip through them, until eventually, I’m there. I’m at the front of the crowd, which is a giant circle, thick.
“Go!” the guy next to me yells. “Go hard!” Still, I look at the crowd. I don’t watch the fight. Not yet.
There are all kinds of people amongst this crowd. Skinny. Fat. Black. White. Yellow. They all look on and scream into the middle of the ring.
The guy next to me is always shrieking in my ear, drilling right through my skull to my brain. I feel his voice in my lungs. That’s how loud he is. Nothing stops him, even the ones behind who throw words at him to make him shut up. It is no use.
I try stopping him myself, by asking him something — a shout over the rest of the crowd. “Who y’ going for?” I ask.
He stops his noise. Immediately. He stares.
At the fight. Then at me.
A few more seconds pass and he says, “I’m goin’ for the underdog … I have to.” He laughs a little, sympathetically. “Gotta go for the underdog.”
It is then that I look at the fight, for the first time.
“Hey.”
Something is strange.
“Hey,” I ask the guy again, because there is only one fighter inside the huge, loud, throbbing circle. A boy. He is throwing punches wildly and moving around and blocking and swinging his arms at nothing. “Hey, how come there’s only the one fella fighting?” It is the guy next to me again that I have asked.
He doesn’t look at me this time, no. He keeps focused on the boy in the circle, who fights on so intensely that no one can take their eyes off him.
The guy speaks to me.
An answer.“He’s fighting the world.” And now, I watch as the underdog in the middle of the circle fights on and stands and falls and returns to his haunches and feet and fights on again. He fights on, no matter how hard he hits the ground. He gets up. Some people cheer him. Others laugh now and rubbish him.
Feeling comes out of me.
I watch.
My eyes swell, and burn. “Can he win?”
I ask it, and now, I too cannot take my eyes off the boy in the circle.