15

Like I’ve said earlier, there are four weeks now until I fight my brother. Fighting Ruben Wolfe. I wonder how it will be, and how it will feel. What will it be like to fight him — not in our backyard, but in the ring, under all the lights, and with the crowd watching and cheering and waiting for the blood? Time will tell, I suppose, or at least, these pages will.

Dad’s at the kitchen table, alone, but now, my father doesn’t look so beaten down. He looks like he’s back in it. He’s been to the brink and come back. I guess when you lose your pride, even for just a moment, you realise how much it means to you. His eyes have some strength back in them. His curly hair is spiralling at his eyebrows.

Rube’s quiet lately.

He spends a fair bit of time down in the basement, which, as you know, has been vacated by Steve. In the end, Mum offered it to everyone for their bedroom but none of us wanted it. We said it’s because it gets so cold down there, but really, I reckon the remaining wolves in our house feel like now’s a time to stick together. I’ve felt it ever since Steve left. Not that I would say it out loud. I would never admit to Rube that I didn’t take the basement because I’d get too lonely without him. Or that I’d miss our conversations and the way he always annoys me. Or, as disgraceful as it sounds, that I’d even miss the smell of his socks and the sound of his snoring.

Just last night, I tried waking him, because that snoring of his was dead-set detrimental to my health. Sleep deprivation, I’m telling you. That is, until it gets like a pendulum again, coaxing me into sleep. Huh. Hypnosis under the influence of Ruben Wolfe’s snoring. It’s hopeless, I know, but you get used to things. You feel weird without them, like you’re not yourself any more.

In any case, it’s Mrs Wolfe herself who has taken hold of the basement. She has a bit of an office down there and does the tax.

On Saturday night though, I find Rube there instead, sitting on the desk, his feet resting on the chair. It’s the night before his fight with Hitman Harry Jones. I pull the chair from his feet and sit on it.

‘Y’ right there?’ He glares at me.

‘I am, yeah. It’s a pretty nice chair.’

‘Don’t worry about my feet,’ he goes on. ‘They’re danglin’ now ‘cause of you.’

‘Ah y’ poor bloke.’

‘Got that right.’

I swear it.

Brothers.

We’re strange.