22

Emmett starts them off on football with all his stories about North and his mates and about how bloody good they were. About the glory days of the league. About the high flying. The marks that defy death in the goal square, the big men flying. Strange thing is, he never goes anymore, just trails off and confines himself to horses and to the radio. Before that though, he and Louisa go down to the football ground. It was never planned, it just happened like the flu happens, right out of the blue.

It’s a Saturday afternoon and she’s walking down Willy Road towards the Western Oval, home of Footscray Football Club, the Bulldogs. Frank is with her but behind, caught, leg way up, taking a very long piss on a quiet corner. And suddenly there’s Emmett, looming before her like a brick wall. Doesn’t even seem that drunk and he’s friendly. ‘G’day Bugalugs,’ he says, rocking on his heels. ‘What’s new?’

As ever she’s speechless, so he speaks more sternly. ‘Where ya going Louisa Jane Brown?’ And he clamps his hand onto her shoulder and looks down at her.

‘To the footy. Collingwood are versing us,’ she blurts and reddens, immediately guilty and not knowing why. ‘You get in for free at three-quarter time.’ Her voice is squeaky and un familiar. Standing there in the road looking down, he seems as elemental as the sky. Frank has caught up by now and, allegiances switched instantly, he props at Emmett’s feet.

And like a change in the weather, Emmett is suddenly irritated. ‘Louisa. Don’t say “versing”, it’s not a bloody verb. For God’s sake.’ He sucks his teeth to calm himself and then, after a small pause, declares that he may as well come with her, keep her out of trouble.

Though this feels harsh to the girl, she smiles crookedly and Emmett adds, bright and sunny and even enthused now, ‘You reckon it’s free to get in? Well, I love a bargain, always have liked a bar-bloody-gain.’ And the girl’s stomach flutters as they set off together, the very image of a father and a daughter.

He wears work boots, the jacket with the leather sleeves, his work strides and a blue shirt that makes his eyes seem bluer. Walking towards the football ground, the noise swells at them in low circles and the crowd lifts her from the oppression of being alone with her father.

He walks quietly with his hands in his pockets. Seems to be thinking. Doesn’t speak. His hair is longer than usual and threaded with grey but he still looks a bit like Clark Gable and these days he even has the moustache. When Frank gets too close, a quiet ‘Piss off, Francis’ moves him.

Then he says, ‘What’s your favourite word?’ and doesn’t wait. ‘I’ll tell you about mine. Mine is “phenomenal”. Well today it’s “phenomenal”, that’s a word and a half. But you should always look at the roots of a word before you make up your mind on it. “Phenomenal” comes from the Greek and origin ally means something that can be seen. Now, these days it means remarkable. How about that? What d’ya reckon?’ He pauses without expectation and she stays quiet, musing on her mental old man.

‘But the greatest word of them all is “onomatopoeia”. And what, Miss Louisa Jane, does this word mean?’ It’s the second time he’s called her by her middle name, something he rarely does though she knows she’s named after Jane Austen, one of his favourite writers. Louisa comes from Henry Lawson’s mother, Louisa, also a writer. She feels a swamp of confusion get her. The quicksand is everywhere. What does all this mean?

She tries to concentrate on what he’s saying instead of stretching her head with thoughts about writers but he’s caught her right out. So she takes a stab. ‘Something to do with rhyming?’

They’ve passed the railway station and people mill around on the platforms and beneath them the pewter tracks ribbon away and the thought flashes by, what if someone stepped off right at the wrong moment?

Emmett laughs. He’s not mad at her for being a dill and she understands then in a flash that he’s better when the other kids aren’t there. The dog heads off home when they get to the station and she watches the thread of Frank moving out like a fish on a line.

But Emmett is still telling her something. ‘Onomatopoeia is a poet’s word and it means the formation of a name or a word by an imitation of the sound associated with the thing or action designated. Thwack is the sound you make whacking a ball and it has onomatopoeia!’

‘Gee,’ she says evenly and wonders if he’s so smart, why doesn’t he stop drinking beer and acting like an idiot? But she smiles and listens and the talk carries her forward. He says, ‘There are other words I’m particularly fond of. “Branch”, as you know, is an old favourite. But “ludicrous” for instance, what do you think of that one?’

He stops and cups his two hands around her face. His eyes are lighter this afternoon, pure blue circles of sky. ‘Because that’s what I am. Ludicrous.’ He smiles and lets go of her face but holds onto her plait for longer than she thinks he should until she feels like a rabbit in a trap.

Just under Mount Mistake down at the ground, the big wire gates stand wide open and inside the bitumen terraces look like bad teeth. Green beer cans and knots of people are everywhere. Footscray is playing Collingwood. A cold wind crouches over the oval and harries them and Footscray’s premiership flag from 1954 hoisted up on the grandstand flagpole snaps and sags. The best team in the league against the worst. Perversely, Louisa has a soft spot for Collingwood.

Footscray is routinely flogged and here it is again today, so Louisa has a go at making stilts out of discarded beer cans but she’s clumsy and falls and she senses that it begins to annoy him and he shouts roughly. ‘Come ’ere Lou, anyone’d think you were your idiot brother, behaving like that. Settle down.’ When he gets mad his nostrils flare and he reminds her of an eagle. He can’t be that mad though because he buys her a pie and for himself a beer and they stand on the iron grey terraces and cheer on the poor old Dogs.

When the players come close, their effort is shocking and the mud and sweat stuns and silences them. He explains the finer points of the rules, round-the-neck, holding-the-ball, in-the-back, man-on-the-mark, all stuff she believes she’s always known, in fact was born knowing, but even so, when he talks she’s listening.

‘This game is special to us, special to this city right here. It was invented by a couple of toffs who went to fancy schools over the other side. But despite this, as you know, there never was a better game in all the world. That’s a plain fact.’ He pauses, aware of some kind of betrayal and adds as though he will be held accountable, ‘But I am more than fond of cricket as you well know.’

Nearby, a Collingwood supporter, his bald head sitting above a swathe of black and white scarf, hawks loudly and spits and a great island of yellow phlegm lands an inch from Louisa’s school shoe. Oh no, thinks Louisa, the cold silence of anticipation creeping through her. Emmett pauses with his can to his lips and asks the man a question, loud but casual. ‘You’d be a complete dickhead, wouldn’t you mate?’ Heads swivel. Louisa manages to hiss a strangled, ‘Please Dad’ and he puts his spare hand on her head and the panic drops away. She’s amazed when he ceases hostilities.

They move down to the fence and he leans in to her and says, ‘Never mind mate, it’s only a bush oyster’, and they laugh. ‘You reckon?’ she says. ‘Pretty damn big oyster.’ She’s still full of lightheaded relief that he didn’t spit the dummy and she sneaks a look at Emmett sipping on his can of VB and the innards of the boiling pie run between her fingers and scald a vee, and she burns her tongue cleaning it up, but everything is all right now.

‘You see Lou, what this game has is the marking, the big men bloody flying. That bloke over there must be six-foot-four, can you credit how high he gets? And the man has no fear. Ah, makes your heart sing.’ They are standing on the wing and when players thunder by, dots of black mud spray them and Emmett smiles and wipes his face.

Louisa listens and eats on, not at all worried about a bit of mud. ‘You know, I took your mother to see North play when we first met and I got myself all overexcited when that Mopsy Fraser bastard from Richmond dropped one of our boys behind the play. Fair dinkum, felt like an assault on the family and there he was out there grinning like a shot fox. Smug as all get-out. Well, I just went berserk. I admit it.

‘And soon enough there they were the bloody rozzers. As you know, cops have no respect for a passionate supporter and without wanting to big note, I was a bit of a lair in those days and possibly not even the full quid. Well anyway, the coppers escorted me from the ground, chucked me out the gates and I come a bloody massive gutser too. Grazes up and down me arms and all over the shop from the bitumen.

‘Your poor old mum, who as you know hates footy anyway, did not have a clue what to do. She was stuck there till the game ended. I waited outside for her. She was not happy. In my defence, I will say that Mopsy Fraser went on to break Ted Whitten’s jaw, so the bloke was always unreliable.’

He’s smiling at the memory of his young self and shaking his head indulgently. He looks around at the wide sky so open above the ground, then gives his attention to a skirmish in the play. He’s finished his beer and chucked it into the rolling tide of cans. The Dogs are going down by at least twelve goals and it may even get to twenty.

‘You know, Louie,’ he says after a while, ‘sometimes there’s not that much difference between winning and losing. It’s all academic in the long run.’ At that, something slips in her and it feels okay to disagree, as if some unspoken law has been relaxed. ‘It’s not the same though Dad, winning and losing aren’t really the same thing.’

He grabs her plait again and shakes it. ‘Good for you, that’s the way, you take the bastards on Louie.’ She wonders again what it was that has made him so weird, so alone and explosive, but doesn’t even consider asking that one because she knows it’s all beyond her anyway. She flings the pie crust into the rubbish, wipes her hands on her skirt, pulls up her socks. Even covered in oily mud, the footballers are too much to think about, the pure force of their maleness is a mystery to be deferred, so she waits for Emmett to be ready. But he’s in no hurry and when almost everyone else has drained out of the ground he says, ‘Let’s go.’

A bit past the station, Frank is propped on the footpath waiting, people passing him as though he’s a dog statue. Frank always shows up, nearly always finding them in the web of streets; it’s not even noticed much any more. Today he watches them approach with the patience of a fisherman. ‘Frankie,’ Louisa says dropping her hand on his head, ‘you’re late again boy.’ Frank’s heard it before and he nudges her and turns to lead them home.

As they walk through the end of the afternoon, Emmett puts his arm round Louisa’s shoulder and despite herself and the good day, she flinches. ‘Louie,’ he says low and quiet like he’s telling her a secret, ‘I’m only a battler,’ and then he drops his arm and like a small soldier, she walks beside him all the way. She thinks about trying to hold his hand but she’s too busy at the moment, silently measuring her steps against his and being surprised that they aren’t much different from hers.

In the winter, Peter’s centre-half forward for West Footscray. He’s fast and courageous and his skills are okay too. There’s talk that he’ll go all the way, play for the Dogs one day.

When they win the Under 13 grand final, the boy in the worst footy boots gets Best on Ground and the team drape themselves over each other, all caked in mud and grinning. Photographs are taken and Pete’s head seems huge. His hair is wild and high but his eyes are calm. As the kids cool off, they suck their stomachs in away from the wet jumpers and by now Peter’s skin is rough with goose pimples and he’s shivering like a machine.

As the mud tightens on him he walks stiff-legged over to Anne and hugs her around the neck. ‘Hey there Mum,’ he says, still pretty hoarse from the game. She knows he’s thinking of Daniel but with all the people laughing and patting each other on the back, it’s not possible to say anything. She breathes in the mud of him and thinks about holding onto this moment forever.

He gives up footy not long after the big win. The next year a big kid lands hard on his neck after a thwarted tap down. A squad of his mates carry Peter to the car and then he’s forwarded on to the hospital. He remembers the press of arms carrying him and that he can’t move his neck and that the red pillow of his heart feels too big for his chest.

The doctors think the neck may well be broken. Anne comes to see him before and after work. She wants to keep him hoping, so for something to talk about she tells him about the ladies at work. Emmett stays away.

Louisa believes fervently and tragically that Peter will never walk again and weeps hard and long, settled into the dirt in the old shed. She leans against the broken washing machine and puts her face in her hands and says, she knew it. That she had a premonition and it was right. Rob doesn’t believe any of it and says Louisa’s cracked.

‘That wasn’t a premonition, you were just dizzy, you bloody idiot. It had nothing to do with anything. You are not part of every-bloody-thing Louisa. You can’t fix things and you don’t cause them.’ But he’s upset himself now and tears slide onto his jumper. He slams out of the shed. Jessie is too young for such stories to take hold but sitting beside Louisa, she mashes her doll’s face into the dirt.

The swelling must go down before they know for sure. Lying in the children’s ward, anchored to sandbags and stretched out in the slice of bed, Peter registers that time passes by the light from the window. And by the meals and by the number of times they change his wee bottle.

From the whispering, it seems he won’t be walking again. He thinks about fishing. The pier. Rob and Louisa sit so quietly without bickering or punching or giving Chinese burns, they make him nervous. The only one he really wants is Anne, but her time is rationed by work.

Then one night, straight from a counter tea at the pub, Emmett strides into the ward, pissed and booming. His clothes, his hair and even his skin hold the reek of countless cigarettes and the sweat of blokes and the slaughterhouse smell of pubs.

On his face tonight, Emmett’s got the look. It brooks no argument. He’s got it all sorted RIGHT out. Peter can’t see much, given he can’t move his head, but hearing is more than enough. He wonders what the other kids in the ward will make of this.

Emmett gets up close. ‘Listen mate, don’t worry,’ he whispers real loud leaning in to the boy, placing his big hard hand on Peter’s bandaged head. A coil of nicotine circles two fingers. ‘It will be all right. I’ve had a word to the big bloke about you. Upstairs. Told him I wanted my son to walk. We worked it right out. Said he’d fix it.’ It takes some time for Peter to realise that Emmett must be talking about God.

Emmett’s all stubble and bloodshot eyes. The newspaper, as ever, is folded to the form guide and stands straight up in his pocket. Hot beer fumes fan out from him and the boy actually breathes them in gratefully. Today he doesn’t mind them, they smell familiar, remind him of home.

Emmett sits beside him, awkward on the little chair. He crosses his legs, the steel-capped boots incongruous and baleful on the shining hospital floor. He’s uncomfortable and hot in his bulky work jacket with its squeaky leather sleeves. The newspaper slips to the floor. He retrieves it absently.

He remembers when he was in hospital as a child. How he liked that it was all so clean. Whiteness surrounded everything and the nurses smiled. It was real nice.

He drifts for a minute then something occurs to him and he brightens with the idea. Leans forward. He asks the boy if he’s eating. His voice lowers gravely. ‘Because you know boy, there’s only one rule in life and you know what that is. You don’t eat, you don’t shit! You don’t shit – you die! Simple rule boy. Remember that one.’

He’s pleased with having recalled the rule. Not a bad rule, he thinks, off the top of me head, not bad at all, and success relaxes him. Some of the other kids in the ward are tittering at Emmett but he doesn’t notice.

And then, in the pause between acts, some of the air seems to leave him and he sags with all these efforts he must make. It’s as if he’s not inflated anymore, not so hard, and Pete, though he can’t see his face, feels it again, the mouldy sadness that circles the old man.

No one else seems to be in on Emmett’s God-bothering. The doctors skirt around the bed reading charts and the nurses whisper to each other. They don’t seem to have been told that Emmett has fixed it. For days they wait for the swelling to subside with Peter not moving. Days coming and going with other children enduring pain in the ward. Louisa, Rob, Anne and Jess visit and shuffle by his bed like some kind of lost tribe.

But it turns out that Peter’s neck is all right and he is discharged. Brokenly, walking slow and careful as something newborn, he gets from the hospital to the Holden. In the car, safe from prying ears, Emmett changes the gears and claims credit. Peter shifts his fledgling legs and prepares to listen.

‘Makes a difference a little chat with the big bloke,’ he says with a nod. Peter can turn his head a bit now. The streets move past them as though they’re on a conveyor belt. He sees his father in profile eternal against the landscape. ‘Yeah Dad, it’s a good thing you sorted it out,’ he says, closing his eyes and leaning his head gently back on the car seat.