“Ball!” Tyson yelled. “I’ve got Ball!”
He
lumbered to the front of the line, shoving aside a couple of kids that got in
his way. David watched the intent with which the bully moved, instantly feeling
his stomach turn to water. If Tyson wanted Ball, he always got Ball. And he
always got the person with the ball, regardless of the rules. That was the law
of the schoolyard.
David
knew that it wasn’t coincidence that Tyson made his call when he realised that
Nathan held the football. Another law of the schoolyard was for the bully to
make certain that newcomers were treated to a bit of a roughing on their first
outing. The fact that Tyson had waited this long meant that the roughing was
going to be extra special.
Nathan
didn’t seem too concerned. But he had no reason to. Thus far, all Tyson had
done was just push a few kids around, before ambling off with a couple of mates
for a quick smoke when the teacher disappeared around the front of the school
on her perambulations. But never in that first five minutes did Tyson call for
the “Ball.” Never had he moved in anything faster than a loping walk. Only now,
like a wolf sniffing the scent of a lamb, did he jog to the front of the line,
sneer in place, arms flexed, tense, ready to grab.
As
if by magic, the opposition line suddenly kicked forward. As one they all moved,
a thick wall of farm boys in work boots. Each kid announced their “tags” once
more, their voices now cleared of any fatigue. The game was reaching
matchpoint. And everyone knew what that meant. Everyone that is, except for
Nathan Johnson.
With
this knowledge, the rest of David’s team slowed down. Of the half who’d kept up
with Nathan, only two remained in the line… and Paddy O’Sullivan was only there
because he was in the middle of Nathan and David—he couldn’t see that none of
his team-mates were tagging along. Why David kept jogging was a mystery to him.
It probably would have been less painful had he simply stopped running like the
rest of the boys.
Seeing
the lambs making their way blindly to the slaughterhouse brought about a change
to the personnel in the opposition line. There were two more “tags,” followed
by some shuffling of the line. Next to Tyson appeared Vinnie, and next to
Vinnie, was Damien, and before either Paddy or David could react, there was a
loud whoop from somewhere on the farm boy line.
It
happened in the blink of an eye. Three bodies crashed into three; there was a
series of grunts, and then, a high pitched wail of pain. The ball bounced away,
only to be kicked further away by a steel-capped boot. David felt knees dig
into his back, and a pair of rough hands shoving his face deep into the soft,
oozing mud. His hearing was blotted out momentarily, replaced with the roar of
blood in his ears. In vain, he tried to roll, to lift his head out of the mud,
but the pressure was too much…
“Ah, my arm! It’s broken!”
The
howl split the air; everything momentarily stopped. At least long enough for
David to wrench his face out of the mud. Damien, the oath that had tackled him
was still kneeling over him, but his attention was not on the task he’d been
performing. His face was a slack jawed expression of equal parts shock and
stupidity.
“You
broke his arm, fuckhead!” It was Nathan Johnson, who somehow had gotten back to
his feet, and was shoving Vinnie hard enough to knock him back a few paces.
“Whatcha
gonna do about it!” Vinnie sneered, shoving Nathan back. But before anything
could escalate, a big meaty forearm suddenly crushed Nathan’s neck.
“I
ain’t finished with you!” Tyson growled. He leaned back so that Nathan was
hoisted off his feet, his legs kicking only air.
Stunned
silence greeted the outburst. Paddy O’Sullivan seemed to have even forgotten
the fact that his arm was numb from the shoulder down. The only noise breaking
the silence was Nathan’s heavy wheezing as he tried to draw breath into his
lungs.
“Hunnh, hunnh, hunnh!” he went, while his legs pathetically pedalled the air.
Tyson
carried him a few awkward steps away, leaning himself back as if Nathan were a
bag of barley that needed lifting into the tray of a truck. Nathan floundered
in Tyson’s grip; his left foot snapped forward with enough force to dislodge
his shoe. It spiralled into the air, before tumbling end over end into a large
pool of water. And before he even realised it, Nathan followed his shoe… arse
first into the largest puddle on the whole of the playground. And if that
wasn’t humiliating enough, Tyson scooped up two handfuls of filthy black mud,
and cupped them over Nathan’s face, rubbing it into his mouth, his nose and
eyes, while he spluttered and coughed.
“Not
even your rich dad can fucking save you now, city boy,” Tyson growled, rubbing
the mud now into Nathan’s hair. “Why don’t you go back to the city, rich boy!”
“Yeah,
city boy!” someone else said.
“Where’s
yer fuckin dad, anyway?” Tyson added. He was now squatting over Nathan, who was
clawing mud out of his face, which had gone from scarlet to the same pale white
that graces the underbelly of a fish. “He too good to follow you and your bitch
of a mother out here? Too good to live in the bush? Is that it? Or have your
folks divorced? Is that it, rich boy? Your mummy and daddy not fuckin no more? Well?
What is it?”
“What
is it!” the echo screeched. And suddenly, the chorus was taken up by all of the
farm boys; all of them leant over Nathan, who still sat in the cold depths of
the puddle shaking black mud from his hair, shouting into his face.
Tyson,
seeing his work as being done, backed off a few steps. He was still the boss. All
the while the crowd began to increase in numbers as kids from other reaches of
the playground came running over to add their two cents worth, for whatever
reasons.
But
Nathan ignored the farm boys yelling in his face. He even ignored the fact that
some of the town boys had joined in the fracas; anything, perhaps to be seen in
a similar (but not the same) light as the farm boys… look, we’re not really
that bad… we have a common enemy now! When finally he picked himself up, and
bellowed out, it was clear to whom he was addressing.
“The
reason my dad isn’t home is because he is dead! He has an excuse not to be
home, unlike your jailbird father!”
The
colour drained from Tyson’s face the instant the last words faded into the now
silent playground. Everyone who had been jeering and taunting Nathan stopped,
their jaws slack, their eyes gawky. No
one says that Tyson’s dad is a jailbird, all of their minds were saying,
David’s included, for although he wasn’t among the group jeering Nathan, he had
watched the verbal exchange all the same.
Nathan
was not oblivious to the hush around him. He knew he had cut Tyson deeply with
the words he had just said and knew what the price of saying those words
constituted. But he also had a soft spot where his father was concerned, and as
another unwritten law of the school yard goes: defend your father’s honour. And that’s just what he had done,
despite the fact that as far as the silent group around him and Tyson were
concerned, Nathan Johnson was a dead man.
Threat
or no, Nathan smiled at Tyson, that cold smile that was patently his, the smile
that matched his eyes, giving Nathan a frightening look. It was hard to believe
that the eyes now locked onto Tyson’s firing green orbs were the same eyes that
had held the year six audience captive while Nathan delivered a speech beyond
reproach. The look in those cold eyes practically dared Tyson to do something and get it over with. Though
an imbecile in class, Tyson knew better than to start something in the
playground and risk bearing the wrath of the teacher on duty. Indeed, what he’d
done already was going to cost him dearly. He knew deep down inside that every
teacher in school wanted him out of there, and that even if he failed year six
again, his promotion to high school was inevitable. Compared to Nathan Johnson,
Tyson Maloney was Mount Everest. Broad, deep voiced with the onset of puberty;
Tyson was more of a bull than a boy. There were rumours (which no one ever had
a cause to substantiate) that Tyson had pubic hair. This naturally meant that
because he was more mature than the other boys, he demanded their respect.
He
fixed Nathan Johnson with his trademark grimace of disapproval that many kids
had seen before having their lights knocked out. “You’re dead meat, arsehole,”
Tyson growled. As the pièce de résistance,
he hawked and spat a large wad of green phlegm onto the ground at Nathan’s feet
before he turned and lumbered away.
His
cronies, the weak slavering hyenas that they were, laughed in Nathan Johnson’s
face; Vinnie Dollabella and Damien Treloar, went as far as to point the index
and pinkie fingers of their left hand at him, invoking the sign of the Evil
Eye, proclaiming him cursed. Whether Nathan was scared or not, David couldn’t
tell, for he hid it behind those cold eyes so well. When the crowd had
dispersed, David went with it, knowing that there was little hope for Nathan to
escape from the hole that he had just dug himself.