Underdogs Read Online Free PDF

much room to get out of the way. Hard concrete as well …
    “C’mon.” Rube stepped in and went for my head, faked, and cracked my ribs. He then took a shot at my head for real and just skimmed my ear. That was when I saw him open up so I slammed one right in at his nose. It hit. Brilliant.
    “Yow!”
Simon cheered, but Rube remained focused. He walked in again without fear and didn’t worry about my cocky bouncing around. He leaned in and whackedme over the eye. I blocked it and aimed up myself. He swerved me and turned me around and rammed me back against the wall, then pulled me out. He pushed me back. He hauled me onto the grass and crashed his fist into my shoulder. Yes. He hit. Oh, it was okay. It was like an ax had burst open my joint and next thing my head was rocked by his left hand. It flung forward and jammed onto my chin.
    Hard.
    It happened.
    The sky came down.
    I breathed in the clouds.
    The ground wobbled.
    The ground.
    The ground.
    I swung.
    Missed.
    Rube laughed, from under that increasing beard of his.
    He laughed as soon as I fell down to my knees and got up a little just to crouch there. The count came, with delight. Rube: “ — two — three —”
    Once I was up again and the cheers of Simon, Jeff, and Cheese were no longer mere blurs, there were only a few more punches and Round One was over.
    I sat in the corner of the yard, in the shade.
    Round Two.
    It was much the same, only this time Rube went down once as well.
    Round Three was a dog fight.
    Both of us came out throwing hard and I recall reefing at Rube’s ribs close to seven or eight times and copping at least three good shots on my cheekbone. It was brutal. The neighbor on our left kept caged parrots and had a midget dog. The birds screeched from over the fence and the midget dog barked and jumped at the fence while my brother and I fought each other senseless. His fist was this big brown blur that kept driving forward from his long arm, pumping out at me and singing as it pushed my skin into my bones. All was mirrored and shaky and shivery and getting orange-dark and I could feel that metallic taste of blood crawling from my nose to my lip, over my teeth and onto my tongue. Or was I bleeding inside my mouth? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything until I was crouched down again and dizzy and feeling like I might throw up.
    “One — two —”
    The count meant nothing this time. I ignored it.
    All I did this time was sit down against the back fence till I recovered.
    “Y’ okay?” Rube asked a bit later, his rough hair swinging down into his eyes.
    I nodded.
    I was.
    Back inside, I surveyed the damage and it didn’t look too good.
    There was no blood in my nose. It did turn out to bein my mouth, and I had a black eye. A good one. No hiding it. Not today. No point. Mum was going to kill us. She did.
    She took one look at me and said, “And what happened to you?” “Ah, nothin’.”
    Then she saw Rube, who had a slightly swollen lip.
    “Ah, you boys.” She shook her head. “You disgust me, I swear it. Can you not go one week without hurting each other?”
    No, we couldn’t.
    We were always hurting each other, whether it was boxing, or playing football in the lounge room with a rolled-up pair of socks.
    “Well, stay apart for a while,” she ordered us, and we obeyed the order. We tried hard to listen to our mother because she was tough and she cleaned rich people’s houses for a living and she worked hard to let us have an okay house. We didn’t like it much when she was disappointed in us.
    The disappointment was
    It really got bad throughout the next day because some of my teachers became a bit concerned about the state of my face and the way that every second week it seemed to have a bruise or a scab or a graze on it. They asked me all these weird questions about how things were at home and how I got on with my parents and all that kind of thing. I just told them I got on pretty wellwith everyone and that things were