Underdogs (28 page)

It’s about the girl, and it’s this
.

If her soul ever leaks, I want it to land on me
.

It rained nonstop for a week, and amongst all the water, an event occurred that had the potential to turn everything on its head.

A tragedy.

A debacle.

And you guessed it, it involves Miffy, the wonder-dog, the little bastard, the ball of fluff who’s always managed to elbow his way into our lives.

What happened was this:

The poor little guy just up and died on us.

It was Thursday afternoon and torrential rain poured itself down, battering the streets and rooftops. Someone was smashing their fist into our front door.

“Hang on!” I yelled. I was glumly eating toast in the lounge room.

I opened the door and there was a small balding man on his knees, completely drenched.

“Keith?” I asked.

He looked up at me. I dropped the toast. Rube was behind me now, asking, “What’s goin’ on?”

K
eith’s face was covered in sorrow. Dribbles of rain ambled down his face as he slowly picked himself up. He fixed his eyes on our kitchen window and said it, with pain rinsing through his voice.

“Miffy.” He almost went to pieces again. “He’s dead. In the backyard.”

Rube and I looked at each other.

We ran out the back and clambered over the fence as the back door slammed behind us. Hfway over the fence, I saw it. There was a soggy ball of fluff lying motionless amongst the grass.

No
, I thought, as I landed on the other side. Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my thoughts wild.

Rube also hit the ground. His feet slapped down into the sodden grass, and where my footsteps ended, his began.

I kneeled down in the pouring rain.

The dog was dead.

I touched him.

The dog was dead.

I turned to Rube, who was kneeling next to me. For the moment, our differences were cast aside. The dog was dead.

We sat there a while, completely silent as the rain fell like needles onto our soaked bodies. The fluffy brown fur of Miffy the pain-in-the-arse Pomeranian was being dented by the rain, but it was still soft, and clammy. Both Rube and I stroked him. A few stray tears even sprang into my eyes. I recalled all the times we walked him at night with smoke climbing from our lungs and with laughter in our voices. I heard us complaining about him, ridiculing him,
but deep down, caring for him.
Even loving him
, I thought.

Rube’s face was devastated.

“Poor little bastard,” he said. His voice clung strangely to his mouth.

I wanted to say something but was completely speechless. I’d always known this day would come, but I didn’t imagine it like this. Not pouring rain. Not a pathetic frozen lump of fur, or a feeling as despondent as the one I felt at this exact moment.

Rube picked him up and carried him under the shelter of Keith’s back veranda.

The dog was dead.

Even once the rain stopped, the feeling inside me didn’t subside. We kept patting him. Rube even apologized to him, probably for all the verbal abuse he’d leveled at him almost every time he saw him.

“Sorry,” he said, and I had to check who he was talking to.

Keith arrived after a while, but it was mainly Rube and me who stayed. For about an hour or so, we sat with him.

“He’s getting stiff,” I pointed out at one stage.

“I know,” Rube replied, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say a smirk didn’t cross our faces. It was the situation, I guess. We were cold, soaking wet, and hungry, and in a way, this was Miffy’s final revenge on us — guilt. Or was it a sacrifice, to bring us back together?

Here we were, just about frozen in our neighbor’s backyard, patting a dog that was getting stiffer and stiffer by the minute, all because we’d consistently insulted him and then had the audacity to love him.

“Well forget this,” Rube finally said. Hve Miffy a last pat and told the truth with a wavering voice. He said, “Miffy — you were undoubtedly a pathetic individual. I hated you, loved you, and wore a hood on my head so no one saw me with you. It’s been a pleasure.” He gave him a final pat, on the dog’s head. “Now, I’m leavin’,” he pointed out. “Just because you had the nerve to die under your clothesline in the middle of what was practically a hurricane, I’m not about to get pneumonia because of it. So good-bye — and let’s pray the next dog Keith and his wife decide to get is actually a
dog
and not a ferret, rat, or rodent in disguise. Good-bye.”

He walked away, into the darkness of the backyard, but as he climbed the fence, he turned and gave Miffy one last look. One last good-bye. Then he was gone. For a moment, I realized that this was more than he’d given me when I sat on the porch that night after Octavia ran from me. He sure as hell didn’t look back at
me
. But then, to be fair, I wasn’t dead.

I hung around a little while longer, and when Keith’s wife came home from work she was quite distressed about what I was beginning to call “The Miffy Incident.” She kept repeating one thing. “We’ll get him cremated. We’ve gotta get that dog cremated.” Apparently, Miffy
was a gift from her dead mother, who insisted that all corpses, including her own, had to be burned. “Gotta get that dog cremated,” she went on, but rarely did she even look at him. Strangely enough, I had the feeling it was Rube and me who loved that dog the most — a dog whose ashes would most likely end up on top of the TV or video, or in the liquor cabinet for safekeeping.

Soon, I said my last good-bye, running my hand over the stiff body and silky fur, still a little shocked by all of it.

I went home and told everyone the news of the cremation. Needless to say, everyone was amazed, especially Rube. Or maybe amazed isn’t quite the right word for my brother’s reaction. Appalled was more like it.

“Cremate him!?” he shouted. He couldn’t believe it. “Did you see that dog!? Did you see how bloody soggy he was!? They’ll have to dry him out first or else he’ll never even burn! He’ll just smolder! They’ll have to get the blow-dryer out!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Trust Rube to still make me laugh despite my hating his guts at that point in time.

It was the blow-dryer, I think.

I kept imagining Keith standing over the poor mongrel with the blow-dryer on full speed and his wife calling out from the back door:

“Is he dry yet, love? Can we chuck him in the fire?”

“No, not yet darlin’!” he’d reply. “I’ll need about another ten minutes, I reckon. I just can’t get this damn
tail dry!” Miffy had one of the bushiest tails in the history of the world. Trust me.

We found out the next day that there’d be a small ceremony on Saturday afternoon at four. The dog was being burned on Friday.

Natly, as the walkers of Miffy, we were invited next door for the funeral. But it didn’t stop there. Keith also decided he wanted to scatter Miffy’s ashes in the backyard that was his domain. He asked if we’d like to be the ones who emptied them. “You know,” he said. “Since you spent the most time with him.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Well, to be honest,” he shifted on the spot a little. “The wife wasn’t too keen on the idea, but I put my foot down. I said,
No, those boys deserve it and that’s it, Norma.
” He laughed and said, “My wife referred to you as the two dirty bastards from next door.”

Old bitch
, I thought.

“Old bitch,” Rube said, but luckily, Keith didn’t hear.

On Saturday, Dad, Rube, and I finished work at two so we could get home in time for the big funeral, and by four o’clock it was Rube, Sarah, and me who went next door. We all climbed the fence.

Keith brought Miffy out in a wooden box, and the sun was shining, the breeze was curling, and Keith’s wife was sneering at Rube and me.

Old bitch
, I thought again, and you guessed it, Rube actually said it, as a whisper only he, Sarah, and I could
hear. It made us all laugh, though I tried to resist. The wife didn’t look too happy. Keith held the box.

He gave a futile speech about how wonderful Miffy was. How loyal. How beautiful. “And how pitiful,” Rube whispered again, to which I had to bite the inside of my mouth to keep from laughing. A small burst actually made it out, and Keith’s wife wasn’t too impressed.

Bloody Rube
, I thought. Even when I hated him he could make me laugh. Even when I despised everything he stood for and had done to me, he could make me laugh by giving Miffy a good mouthful.

The thing was, though, it was fitting for it to be like this. There was no point in us standing there claiming how much we loved the dog and all that kind of thing. That would only show how much we
didn’t
love him. We expressed love for this dog by:

1. Putting him down.

2. Deliberately provoking him.

3. Hurling verbal abuse at him.

4. Discussing whether or not we should throw him over the fence.

5. Giving him meat that was a borderline decision on whether or not he could adequately chew it.

6. Heckling him to make him bark.

7. Pretending we didn’t know him in public.

8. Making jokes at his funeral.

9. Comparing him to a rat, ferret, and any other creature resembling a rodent.

10. Knowing without showing that we cared for him.

The problem with this funeral was that Keith was go, and his wife kept insisting on attempting to cry. Eventually, when everyone was bored senseless and almost expecting a hymn to be sung, Keith asked a vital question. In hindsight, I’m sure he wished like hell he didn’t ask it at all.

He said, “Anyone else got something to say?”

Silence.

Pure silence.

Then Rube.

Keith was just about to hand me the wooden box that contained the last dregs of Miffy the dog when Rube said, “Actually, yes. I have something to say.”

No, Rube
, I thought desperately.
Please. Don’t do it
.

But he did.

As Keith handed me the box, Rube made his announcement. In a loud, clear voice, he said, “Miffy — we will always remember you.” His head was held high. Proud. “You were strictly the most ridiculous animal on the face of the earth. But we loved you.”

He looked over at Sarah and smiled — but not for long.

Definitely not for long, because before we even had time to think, Keith’s wife exploded. She came tearing
across at us. She was onto me in a second and she started wrestling me for the bloody box!

“Give us that, y’ little bastard,” she hissed.

“What did
I
do?” I asked despairingly, and within an instant, there was a war going on with Miffy in the center of it. Rube’s hands were on the box now as well, and with Miffy and me in the middle, he and Norma were going at it. Sarah took some great action shots of the two of them fighting.

“Give us that,” Norma was spitting, but Rube didn’t give in. There was no way. They struggled on, Norma with all her might, and Rube in a relaxed, amused way.

In the end, it was Keith who ended it.

He stepped into the middle of the fray and shouted, “Norma! Norma! Stop being stupid!”

She let go and so did Rube. The only person now with their hands on the box was me, and I couldn’t help but laugh at this ludicrous situation. To be honest, I think Norma was still upset about an incident I haven’t previously mentioned. It was something that happened two years ago. It was the incident that got us walking Miffy to begin with, when Rube and I and a few other fellas were playing football in our yard. Old Miffy got all excited because of all the noise and the ball constantly hitting the fence. He barked until he had a mild heart attack, and to make up for it, Mrs. Wolfe made us pay the vet’s bill and take him for walks at least twice a week.

That was the beginning of Miffy and us. The
true
beginning, and although we whinged and carried on about him, we did grow to love him.

In the backyard funeral scene, however, Norma wasn’t having any of it. She was still seething. She only calmed down a few minutes later, when we were ready to empty Miffy out into the breeze and the backyard.

“Okay Cameron,” Keith nodded. “It’s time.”

He made me stand up on an old lawn chair and I opened the box.

“Good-bye Miffy,” he said, and I turned the box upside down, expecting Miffy to come pouring out.

The only problem was, he didn’t. He was stuck in there.

“Bloody hell!” Rube exclaimed. “Trust Miffy to be all bloody sticky!”

Keith’s wife looked slightly aggravated, to say the least. Actually, I think ropeable would be a more appropriate word.

All I could do was start shaking the box, but still the ashes didn’t come out.

“Put your finger in it and stir it round a bit,” Sarah suggested.

Norma looked at her. “You’re not gettin’ smart now too, are y’ girly?”

“No way,” Sarah replied honestly. Good idea. You wouldn’t want to upset this lady at this point in time. She looked about ready to strangle someone.

I turned the box back over and cringed before rummaging my hand through the ashes.

The next time I tried emptying it, there was success. Miffy was set free. As Sarah took the photo, the wind picked up the ashes and scattered them over the yard and into Keith’s other neighbor’s yard.

“Oh no,” Keith said, scratching his head. “I knew I should have told next door to take their washing off the line….”

His neighbors would be wearing Miffy on their clothes for at least the next couple of days.

PAUSE OF DEATH

I pause a moment and thoughts of death climb onto me. They hang from my shoulders and breathe in my face, and I get to thinking about religion and heaven and hell
.

Or to be honest, I think of hell
.

There’s nothing worse than thinking that that’s
exactly
where you’re going when eternity comes for you
.

That’s where I usually think I’m going
.

Sometimes I take comfort in the fact that most people I know are probably going to hell too. I even tell myself that if all my family are going to hell I’d rather go with them than enter heaven. I mean, I’d feel sort of guilty. There they’d be, burning through eternity, while I’m eating peaches and most likely patting pitiful Pomeranians like Miffy up in heaven
.