That was his last over and with him out of the way I hit quite a few. But I remembered Mark Watley, the Southern Districts coach, saying that a good player will always find a way to get involved in the game. I was batting with Sophia, just a couple of balls after Lucas had been stumped. I was on 72 and at the non-striker’s end. She hit a good hard crisp shot to mid-on and called me through for a single. I was backing up a fair way, so I didn’t think there’d be a problem. But I hadn’t processed the fact that Red was fielding at mid-on. Even so, he was pretty deep. I jogged down the pitch without any thought of him.
A metre short of the crease I was travelling pretty comfortably when all three stumps were suddenly smashed out of the ground, by a ball travelling at the speed of a bullet. It was a total horror show. I nearly dropped my bat, but recovered, swerved to my right and kept running. No point hanging around to see the celebrations.
Wally told me about it afterwards. ‘He came in like a greyhound, Josh, picked it up and threw it, all in a split second. Phenomenal fielding. Don’t know why he didn’t throw to Sophia’s end though. Must have thought that’d be too easy.’
Between our innings and theirs I was coming out of the toilet block when suddenly there was Red. Before I could say ‘Good bowling’ or ‘Good fielding’ or ‘Well played’ or any of the polite things you’re meant to say to each other he grabbed me round the throat. ‘You *!@%***#@*,’ he said, ‘You *&%$#*%*# %$&*&@#$% &**&#%$@**,’ along with a few other words that I don’t even have symbols for on the keyboard. Some of the mildest things he said were that the cerebral material between my ears had been replaced by the stuff you find on the footpath where people have been walking their dogs, and that from my neck up I actually had a penis instead of a head. I must have looked pretty strange to him.
I tried to say something, but I had no chance. Red was red all right: he was seeing red, and he was red in the face, and he was keen to see red stuff coming out of my eyeballs and ears and nose. Luckily, before he could do too much damage, his coach called his name, and at about the same time Wally called me, so we both had to go. All I could gasp was, ‘I’m sorry, Red,’ in a strangled voice, but I don’t think he even heard me.
We went out to start fielding. Red was opening their batting, and I was hoping like mad that I wouldn’t be given the ball. Luckily Jonah threw it to Lucas. But as time went on and Red was still in I knew my luck would run out sooner or later. Sure enough, the moment came when halfway through an over Jonah told me, ‘You’re next.’
‘Oh, Jonah,’ I whined. I decided to try the same excuse I’d used at Bromwich. ‘I think I’ve pulled a muscle or something.’
‘What are you talking about? You just sprinted fifty metres to get that ball back.’
‘Yeah, that’s when I pulled it.’
‘Bullcrap.’
It was hard to argue with Jonah, partly because he was from New Zealand and weighed about a hundred kilos and looked like his main ambition in life was to do a haka on your head. When you haven’t quite turned twelve yet, and you’re in an Under 14s team, you’re an easy target. At the end of the over I took the ball like a good little boy.
I could feel Red’s eyes burning into me as I began my run-up. I bowled an absolute shocker, a long hop, which he promptly smashed to the boundary. It was a bit different from the fiery ball Red had bowled me at the start of my innings. My second was a wide. My third was a no ball, which he hit for another four. My fourth, or the second if you didn’t count the ones that didn’t count, was a full toss which he hit for another four.
Jonah, who was fielding at mid-off, muttered, ‘What are you doing?’ But I didn’t mind that as much as I minded the look of contempt from Red as I stood at my mark, ready to start running in again. ‘Bugger this,’ I thought, ‘he’s not the only one who can bowl with a bit of venom.’
In I came, and let one go that reared up and would have broken his nose if he (a) wasn’t wearing a helmet, and (b) hadn’t moved his head out of the way just in time. There was applause from the slips and the wicketkeeper, and even Jonah grunted, ‘That’s better.’ Red looked a bit warier as I came in for my next ball.
From then on, it became a duel, with him batting better than I’d ever seen him, and me bowling with everything I had. I guess it was a draw: I got him in the end, when Sophia caught him on the boundary, but by then he’d scored 80, beating me by eight runs.
At the end of the morning, we went around shaking hands like we were meant to, but Red just turned his back and walked away when I tried to shake his.
‘He could at least have asked me why I did it,’ I thought, but the problem was that I wasn’t sure of the answer myself.
That afternoon I was home alone with Callan. Mum and Dad were both working and Pippa was at some dance class she’d joined. Callan and I were doing a bit more on the tree house. We’d been really slack about it for weeks and now I wanted to get it finished. From time to time I glanced at the place next door, to see whether the eye would reappear. I kind of wanted it to, and I didn’t. It was disturbing and exciting at the same time.
At one point I looked over there, looked back at the nail I was hammering, bashed it with the hammer, looked back at the place next door, and to my astonishment, as if by magic, a kid was standing in the yard looking at us. I don’t know how he had appeared in, like, three seconds. I’d say he was maybe ten years old, skinny, with black hair but a very pale face, like he’d been in the house all his life and never seen sunlight before.
Then a big burly-looking man in a suit came out of the back door. He looked up at us too, and said something to the kid. It was obvious they were talking about us. The kid nodded, quite enthusiastically, and the man went to the door again and said something to someone I couldn’t see. The next moment another man, who looked like the twin brother of the first one, came out. I heard a woman call from inside, and the kid just nodded again.
From being completely deserted for so long, suddenly this house had a cast of thousands. The second man came over to the fence, looked at me and in a quiet voice said: ‘Are your parents home, Josh?’
He knew my name! My stomach gave a lurch. This was way weird. ‘No,’ I said, but Callan interrupted and said, ‘Yes they are, Dad is,’ and pointed to the driveway. I looked across, and he was right: the Accord had just pulled in.
The man climbed the fence, dropping into our backyard. What the hell? I looked at Callan in amazement, but he was no help. The man ignored us and went down the side of the house to where Dad was getting out of the car. Dad didn’t seem too surprised to see this guy walking down our driveway, and that was surprising. They talked for a few minutes. I looked at the kid next door. He was still standing there with the first guy. Then Dad and the second man came over to our tree.
‘Hop down for a sec,’ Dad said to Callan and me. ‘I need to talk to you both.’
We scrambled down, and stood facing them. Dad looked kind of awkward. He nodded at the place next door and said, ‘OK, boys, here’s the situation: they’ve got a kid staying at the moment who’s got no-one to play with. He’s ten years old, and his name . . . well, he’s got a nickname, and it’s Woody. So you can just call him that.’
‘So you want us to play with him?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, but here’s the thing, don’t go asking him any questions, OK? Nothing about him or his family or what school he goes to, that kind of stuff. And he’s not allowed out the front. He’ll have to get over the fence . . . and go back the same way.’
‘Weird,’ said Callan, who always says what he thinks. He didn’t seem too bothered though. Me, I was stunned. I felt like I’d landed in a TV show. The biggest mystery in my life before was who took the twenty bucks out of the top of my wardrobe at our old house. The obvious answer was Callan, but he was at a school camp at the time. The next most obvious answer was Pippa, but she couldn’t reach that high, even standing on a chair.
Anyway, two minutes later the kid had been handed over the fence by the two big guys and we were standing under the tree looking at each other. Woody seemed nervous and so did Callan now, but I was ready to pass out. Because I’d seen something that Callan hadn’t – when the two men were helping Woody, I’d seen a gun in a holster under the jacket of the guy on our side of the fence.
I’d never seen a handgun before but I’d watched a lot of movies, so I knew what they were like.
‘Er, Dad,’ I called, just as he was heading into the house, ‘can I ask you something?’
‘Sure, what?’
‘I’ll come over there.’
I tried to walk at normal speed but it wasn’t easy. ‘Dad, that guy’s got a gun,’ I whispered, as soon as I was close enough.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I imagine they both do.’
I gaped at him.
‘Look, Josh,’ he said. ‘It’s OK. Later, I’ll tell you as much as I can. But not now. For now, just do what I’ve asked. It’ll be all right, believe me. Those guys are fine; you can trust them.’
I still stood there staring at him. He added in a whisper: ‘OK, I’ll tell you this much. They’re both cops. I’m not even meant to tell you that, but you’ve got a right to know. Now is it OK?’
‘I . . . I guess so,’ I stammered. Suddenly we seemed to be surrounded by cops.
‘Good. Just play with the kid. He needs a break.’
It’s kind of hard to play with anyone, let alone a kid you’ve never met before, when you’re under orders to do it. But I went back to him and Callan, and asked him, ‘Do you play cricket?’
He shook his head. That ruled out my first twenty choices. He helped matters a bit though by saying, ‘Are you building a tree house? Can I help?’
I gave a sigh of relief. ‘Sure,’ I said.
The three of us headed back up the tree. It wasn’t until we got up there that I realised the man who’d climbed over the fence, the man with the gun, was still in our backyard, leaning against the fence, watching us. That really put me off. I wondered what would happen if Callan or I said something mean to Woody. Would the guy shoot us?
Woody didn’t say a lot but he was pretty handy with a hammer, and willing enough with a saw, even if it took him a long time to cut anything. He worked on the decking while Callan and I got on with the cabin. It was a pretty ambitious tree house. The cop with the gun helped a few times by passing up bits of wood, and even made a suggestion about cutting joints into the ends of the planks, which meant the job was going to take a lot longer but it would be much better.
We spent more than an hour in the tree. Woody gradually warmed up, and even made a few jokes. I’d say he got on better with Callan than with me. Poor kid, he actually laughed at Callan’s jokes, but he was probably desperate for friends.
Then Dad brought out some sandwiches and a bottle of Solo. He’d never ever done that before. We hoed into it but as soon as we’d finished, the cop with the gun said it was time to go. Woody just got up and said, ‘See you,’ and over the fence he climbed, on his own this time.
As soon as they were back inside their house Callan and I went after Dad with the questions. But he wasn’t too keen on answering. Callan hadn’t seen the gun so he wasn’t as interested as me in interrogating Dad. He just thought it was weird that these people were living next door and Woody was being watched so closely and we weren’t allowed to ask him anything.
I thought it was all beyond weird and I remembered the police check on us that Harriet had told me about, and I wondered if it was all related. A few weeks earlier I’d never spoken to a cop in my life and now here I was living in Cop City.
On Monday morning at school I was a man with a mission, and my mission was to find Red before he got to Mr Surrey. I didn’t know what I wanted to say; I just knew I had to track him down.
I got a glimpse of his back on the way in from the bus stop so I ran and caught up with him as he reached his locker. ‘Red,’ I gasped, ‘we have to talk.’
On American TV shows that line always seems to work, but it didn’t work for me. Red turned away, shoved his stuff in his locker and headed down the corridor towards the assembly hall without looking at me. I tagged along beside him, still carrying my bag, trying to think of what to say next.
We got into the assembly hall but we were so early the teachers hadn’t even arrived, so we weren’t meant to be in there at all. But we both ignored that. Red went down the front, trying to get away from me, but at the same time still trying to pretend I wasn’t there. ‘Red,’ I said again, ‘please just let me explain.’
He jumped up on the stage and stood there looking down at me. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Explain. You’ve got one minute.’
I jumped up beside him and he immediately walked to the other side. ‘Forty-five seconds,’ he said. Suddenly we were like actors in a play. The trouble was, I didn’t have a script. It was about ten minutes since I’d first seen him and I still couldn’t think of a single word to convince him that I wasn’t a complete dickhead . . . which was very close to one of the things he’d accused me of being.
‘Geez,’ I said. ‘You’re making this difficult.’
It wasn’t much of a line but it seemed to trigger a bit of a reaction in him. ‘I’m making it difficult?’ he asked. ‘What have I done? Everyone knows this is the crappiest school in the whole crap universe and we get treated like crap by everyone and we get totally smashed by every other school in every sport you can think of and in my last year when we finally get a decent oval I try and do something to give us a chance to actually win a game of cricket and here you are, the best cricketer in the school, and you won’t even pick up a bat or a ball to help. So what have I done that’s so wrong?’
I stood there burning up with embarrassment because I knew he was right. I had been a complete dickhead. So I said that.
‘Yeah, I’ve been a complete dickhead,’ were my exact words.
‘You can say that again,’ he said.
Always wanting to be the comedian, I had to fight very hard not to immediately say ‘I’ve been a complete dickhead’ a second time. Instead I swallowed, then opened my mouth, not quite sure what was going to come out. I just hoped it would be words, and luckily it was.
‘I didn’t want to come here,’ I said. ‘My last school was pretty good and I had a lot of mates. We kicked butt at most sports, and yeah, I did OK. I was gunna be the cricket captain this year. Maybe even school captain. And I was booked in for St Andrew’s College next year. Then my mum and dad lost all their money in this company they worked for. Antelope Investments, it was called. You might have seen it on TV. It went belly up. We lost our house and everything. So we had to move here. Now we’re living in a rental place my grandpa owns, and I’ll tell you the truth, ever since we got here I’ve hated everything about Tarrawagga. So I wasn’t going to give a rat’s arse whether we beat other schools or not. But now . . . well, I kind of . . . admire . . . the way you’ve got everyone trying so hard at cricket and netball, to beat Maxwell and all that. I’d really like to start training with you guys. And to get in the team if I’m good enough.’
He laughed. ‘Yeah, you’d probably scrape in all right.’ Then he added: ‘Did you know I’m Aboriginal?’
‘Nuh.’
‘Well, I am.’
I didn’t know what that had to do with anything, so I didn’t answer. He said: ‘When we were at Bromwich the other day, this kid tried to tell me you were a cricket stud and I thought he was being funny.’
That would have been Angus. I’d kill him next time I saw him.
‘So can I come to training?’ I asked.
‘Far as I’m concerned. It’s really up to Mr Surrey though.’
‘That’s not good. He hates my guts.’
‘Yeah, maybe a bit. He’s not that bad but. Thing is, at least he cares about this school.
For a long time we had teachers same as you – they didn’t want to be here, they hated the place, they just wanted to be at rich posh schools in the city. But there’s a few of them now, they don’t take the first transfer they get, they stay here. I know for a fact Mr Surrey’s been offered jobs at much better schools than this one.’
‘THANK YOU, REDMOND.’
We both jumped a metre or so. It was like the voice of God, booming around the hall. Not that I’ve ever heard the voice of God. But this was a huge voice that filled the place. We looked around in shock, trying to find where it was coming from.
‘That you, Mr Surrey?’ Red asked.
‘YES,’ said the voice. Then, a bit more quietly: ‘Up here, in the sound box.’
We looked up, and there he was. He stepped out of the sound box, closing the door behind him. ‘I came in to fiddle around with the audio, before tonight’s play,’ he explained, in his normal voice. He sounded so quiet, after being on the microphone. ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear a live drama while I was doing it. But it was very helpful in getting the sound levels right.’
‘You mean we were on the microphones?’ Red asked.
‘Every word you both said was amplified nicely.’
My face must have matched Red’s name. I groaned. Did I have to make a complete mess of everything? And what exactly had I said about Mr Surrey? I couldn’t remember, but I knew it was bad.
‘So, Josh, am I to take it that you’re a bit of a cricketer after all?’