tell ‘em tomorrow.”
“Y’ sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“When?”
“After dinner.”
“Where?”
“Kitchen.”
“Okay.”
“Good. Now shut up. I wanna get some sleep.”
Later, when he starts snoring, I tell him.
“I’m gonna beat you.” But personally, I’m not really too convinced.
CHAPTER 16
The money sits on the kitchen table and we all stare at it. Mum, Dad, Sarah, Rube, and me. It’s all there. Notes, coins, the lot. Mum lifts Rube’s pile up just slightly, to get an idea of how much there is.
“About eight hundred dollars all up,” Rube tells her. “That’s between Cameron and me.”
Mum holds her head in her hands now. Thursday nights shouldn’t be like this for her, and she stands and walks over to the sink.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” she tells us, bent over.
Dad stands, goes over and holds her.
After about ten silent minutes, they return to the table. I swear, this kitchen table’s s
een about everything, I reckon. Everything big that’s ever happened in this house.
“So how long’s this been going on exactly?” Dad throws out the question.
“A while. Since about June.”
“Is that right, Cameron?” Mum this time.
“Yeah, that’s right.” I can’t even look at her.
However, Mrs. Wolfe looks at me. “So that’s where all those bruises came from?”
I nod. “Yeah.” I go on talking. “We did still fight in the backyard, but only for practice. When we started out, we told ourselves that we all needed the money….” “But?”
“But, I don’t think it’s ever been about the money.”
Rube agrees and takes over. He says, “Y’ know Mum, it’s just that Cam and I saw what was happening here. We saw what was happening to us. To Dad, to you, to all of us. We were barely surviving, just keeping our heads above water, and …” He’s getting feverish now. Desperate to tell it right. “We wanted to do something that would lift us up and make us okay again —”
“Even if it makes the rest of us ashamed?” Mum interrupts.
“Ashamed?” Rube boxes her through the eyes. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw Cameron fighting, standing up, over and over again.” He’s nearly shouting. “You’d fall to your knees with pride. You’d tell people that he’s your boy and he keeps fighting because that’s the way you brought him up.”
Mum stops.
She stares through the table. She imagines it, but all she sees is the pain. “How can you go through that?” she begs me. “How can you go through it, week after week?” “How can you?” I ask her. It works.
“And how can you?” I ask Dad. The answer is this:
We keep getting up because that’s what we do. Don’t ask me if it’s instinct, but we all do it. People everywhere do it. Especially people like us.
When it’s nearly all over, I allow Rube to deliver the knockout blow. He does it. He says, “This week is Cameron’s last fight.” A deep breath. “The only thing is” — a pause — “he’s fighting me. We’re fighting each other.”
Silence.
Total silence.
Then, in all honesty, it’s taken quite well. Only Sarah flinches.
Rube goes on. “After that I’ve got semifinals. Three more weeks at the most.”
Both Mum and Dad seem to be handling it now, slightly. What are they thinking? I ask myself. Mainly, I think they feel like they’ve failed as parents, which is completely untrue. They deserve no blame, because this is something Rube and I did on our own. If we succeeded, it was us. If we failed — us. No blame on them. No blame on the world. We didn’t want that, and we wouldn’t tolerate it.
Now I crouch down next to my mother. I hug her and tell her, “I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry.”
Sorry.
Will that ever do?
Will it ever make her understand enough to forgive us?
“We promise,” Rube still tries. “This is the last time Cameron and I will ever fight each other.”
“Jeez, that’s comforting.” Sarah finally speaks. “You can’t fight someone when he’s dead.”
Everyone looks at her and listens, but no one speaks.
It finishes.
A nervous quiet curls through the kitchen air, till only Rube and I sit there. Everyone else leaves. Sarah first, then Dad, then Mrs. Wolfe. Now we wait for the fight.
Living among the next few days, I continue in my determination to believe that I can beat him. I can’t pull it off. The closest I come is believing that I want to beat him, in order to survive.
When we leave for the warehouse on Sunday night, Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe come with us. Dad makes us all pile into his panel van