The Dog that Dumped on my Doona (13 page)

Then Rose screamed and there was no mistaking the expression in
that
.

According to what she told Mum later, she couldn't help herself. One moment she was gazing adoringly into the gelled freak's eyes, the next she saw a lizard appear over the guy's left shoulder. It puffed up its beard and hissed at her. The scream came out before she knew it. Without thinking, she slapped at the lizard. Fortunately, or unfortunately according to your point of view, she missed because the reptile slithered out of sight and down the guy's back. What she didn't miss, however, was her fellow actor's face. There was a loud slap that jerked his head back.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have hoped for a result like this. And then it got better.

The guy – what was his name? Josh – slapped her back. It wasn't in the script, but then neither was getting a backhander from Rose. What should have followed was a kiss. Thank God we all missed it. I suppose Josh was taken by surprise and acted on instinct. At least it showed he
could
act.

Rose stood there for a moment, totally bewildered. Then she kneed him in the nuts. I can't tell you how brilliant it all was. Josh gave a thin scream and doubled over. The audience gasped. I suppose they thought it was all in the script. Probably thinking, ‘Wow, this is realistic.' What clearly wasn't in the script, however, was a dirty-white dog bounding onto the stage, biting Josh on the leg and then running down the aisle towards the exit doors. He went past me in a flash, but I noticed a small lizard clinging to the fur on his neck. I must have been the only one who did. I craned my neck and looked behind me. The rest of the audience were doing the same. Dylan had the door open and Blacky flashed through it. There was a muffled scream – probably from the toilet-flushing girl on ticket duty – and then silence. We all turned back to the stage.

Josh didn't know whether to cradle his aching groin or attend to the bite in his leg. He just thrashed around and moaned. Rose gazed down at him with horrified eyes. Then the teachers arrived on stage. They bustled around the fallen actor. Finally one raised his head and appealed to the audience.

‘Is there a doctor in the house?' he said.

A stunned silence greeted him. Then Mrs Bird broke it.

‘Around a quarter to eight,' she said.

Rose said very little on the journey back. She just sat looking out of the window and sobbing occasionally. Mum and Dad didn't know what to say either, so we drove in uncomfortable silence.

I must have been the most uncomfortable of the lot of us, which was strange given that it had all gone better than I could have hoped. Not only was God out of there and, presumably, on his way home, but I had achieved the ultimate revenge on Rose for all that head-down-the-bog stuff. What I hadn't banked on was disrupting the play to such an extent that it had to be abandoned. I hadn't banked on humiliating her. Well, not to that degree. That hadn't been part of my plan.

And the further we drove, the more uncomfortable I felt.

‘I'm sorry, Rose,' I whispered and I meant it.

What I wanted was for her to whisper back, to give me heaps, tell me to get stuffed, that I was a loser and a squirt. She didn't. She choked off another sob.

‘Not even I can blame you for what happened back there, Marcus,' she said in a low voice dipped in pain. I looked out of the window at the darkness streaming by and bit on my knuckle. She had called me Marcus. She had called me Marcus when Mum and Dad couldn't hear.

Revenge is supposed to be sweet. So why couldn't I get rid of that nasty taste in my mouth?

Saturday morning and it was raining.

Of course it was. I stood in the middle of the goalposts, soaked right through, and watched as yet another attack swept towards me. At least there were only a couple more minutes before full-time.

I remember reading somewhere that if you had enough monkeys and enough typewriters and enough time, eventually they would write the complete works of Shakespeare. This doesn't strike me as being very useful, since the complete works of Shakespeare are … well,
complete
already, I suppose. Lot of effort for zilch. But I guess the real point is if you wait around long enough,
everything
is bound to happen sooner or later. The reason I mention this is that my team was leading one-nil in the eighty-eighth minute.

This was a miracle.

As far as I could tell, we had only had one attack. Even then our striker mis-kicked the ball. But it took a wicked deflection and went in off the crossbar. Our entire team couldn't quite believe it. We'd never scored a goal before and didn't know what to do.

That happened in the first five minutes. After that, we didn't get out of our own half. It was so busy in our penalty area we could have done with a traffic cop to sort out the flow. Shots rained in from everywhere.

But none of them went in.

I'd like to be able to say this was because of my brilliant goalkeeping. It wasn't. It was more like monkeys, typewriters and the complete works of Shakespeare. They hit the bar, they hit the post. Constantly. I was worried the structure would collapse on my head it was taking so much pounding. True, I also made some saves but they were entirely by accident. I'd throw myself to one side – the wrong side, normally – and the ball would be deflected onto me and then to safety. A couple of times I turned away to avoid injury from a wet ball travelling at the speed of a supersonic jet and the thing would hit me on the back of the head and rebound out of the danger area.

I felt like I had gone fifteen rounds with the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

Now there were two minutes to go. Two minutes and we would win. I could see Dad on the touchline and he kept jumping up and down. It wouldn't have surprised me to learn he'd wet his pants in excitement. Our coach was next to him and the two of them looked like they might be sharing a heart attack.

Ninety seconds.

A minute.

Then it happened. One of their strikers (let me correct that – at this time
all
of their players were strikers. Even their goalie was camped out on the penalty spot) dribbled the ball into the six-yard box. He lifted his leg to shoot. I could tell it was going to be a hard shot. Possibly one that was going to put me in hospital. But the shot never came. Because one of our defenders took the guy's legs out from underneath him. He hit the pitch in a soggy mass and the ref blew his whistle.

Penalty.

With seconds to go.

All the stuffing seemed to go out of our team. I knew why. There I was, a dwarf with no obvious goalkeeping talent and I was the only person who could get us our first win. True, we'd had incredible luck. Maybe they'd hit the bar yet again. But as I looked into the eyes of my team, I knew what they were thinking and I shared the view. After lightning has struck in the same place a hundred times, it's difficult to believe it'll strike for the hundred and first.

Their captain – a huge kid whose muscles had muscles – placed the ball on the spot and took a long run up. His muscles twitched. All of them. The other players stood outside the penalty area. It was me and him. I crouched in the centre of my goal and touched my boots. I have no idea why, but it looked professional. I even glanced from side to side as if gauging the width of the goal, and flexed my knees. The silence was deafening.

‘He'll shoot to your right, maybe a metre or so off the ground. Dive just before he strikes the ball.'

I hadn't thought I would ever hear that voice again. I whipped my head around and there was Blacky, sitting at the side of the goal. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the penalty taker.

‘Don't look at me, tosh. Look at him. Straight in his eyes. Frighten him. Shouldn't be a problem with your face.'

‘Blacky,' I said. I kept the words in my head.

‘Concentrate, mush. To your right, remember.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I've already told you. I am a student of the game.'

There was no time for anything else. The ref blew his whistle and the penalty taker ran forward, gathering speed. The ground trembled. There were earthquakes that made less rumblings than this guy. His head dipped at the last moment and his right foot swept back.

Just before his foot made contact I dived. To my right.

The ball travelled like a bullet. I was at full stretch, about a metre off the ground. My fingertips clawed at the air.

It was the faintest touch. But it was enough. The ball, destined for the bottom corner of the net, was nudged maybe half a metre. It flew past the post.

There wasn't even time for the corner. The ref blew his whistle for full-time and the next thing I knew I was buried beneath ten very soggy but very excited footballers. They all jumped on top of me. Later, I was told they were joined by my dad
and
the coach. I'm surprised I lived through it.

Finally, Dad had found his former glory.

‘Tell me what happened.'

Blacky and I hadn't had time to talk. After my penalty save, Dad had taken me to a burger bar and bought me whatever I wanted. A celebration, he had said. Under normal circumstances, I would have been all for it. But I wanted – needed – to talk to Blacky. I told him as much when I finally got up from beneath the quivering mass of excited soccer players. He told me he would be waiting for me back at my place, outside my bedroom window. When we'd fi nally got home, I made my excuses to Dad and went to my room. I opened the window and Blacky jumped in and curled up on my doona.

He looked in a bad way. It was clear he was exhausted. And thin. I could see his ribs jutting out through his skin. His pads were raw and bleeding. I smuggled in a bowl of water from the kitchen and raided the fridge. Three-quarters of a kilo of prime steak. There would be trouble about that later, but I didn't care.

Blacky couldn't eat all of it. But he tried and he certainly got the water down. Then he slept for half an hour. When he woke I couldn't keep the questions to myself any longer.

‘Did God make it?'

‘He did. We did.'

And Blacky told me the full story. How the two of them had travelled through the night and all the next day. Mostly running, and walking when Blacky got too tired. Once, they managed to jump onto the back of a truck for a few hours. Finally, they came to the edge of the desert where God lived. It was another two hours in the fierce sun, with no water and not even any shadows to shelter under. They got there at dusk.

But they got there.

And God's family was where he had left them.

Some had died, others were sick. But the rest were fit and healthy enough to follow God as he led them through the wilderness to safety. Blacky told me how they had all travelled into the night, many of the dragons clinging to his fur. Finally, they reached a point on a rocky outcrop. God dropped from Blacky's neck and looked around. If a bearded dragon could be said to smile, said Blacky, God smiled.

‘Home,' he said.

All around the desert stretched. There was no sign of humans or their buildings. God looked into the night as his family made their home. Blacky stood by him. Neither moved. Finally, the dog sniffed at the reptile next to him, but he already knew.

God was dead.

I realised that tears were streaming down my cheeks.

‘You shouldn't be sad,' said Blacky. ‘Us animals don't look at death like you humans do. For us, it is natural. We live. We die. What is unnatural is when species die. Not individuals. Species. And the funny thing is you humans are responsible for that, yet you don't see it as important.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said.

‘
You
have nothing to be sorry about,' said Blacky. ‘You have made a start, Marcus. You and that dropkick mate of yours. But it's only a start. Remember what I said to you before. Do the small stuff. One animal at a time. And tell other people. Tell them we must be kind to each other. While we can.'

I wanted Blacky to stay the night. He was so tired. But he wouldn't. He had places to go. Or as he put it, bums to sniff. So I opened the window and he jumped onto the sill.