On his return, Terry joined the local football club. They played rough in those days- the parents watched the battered heads of their children crash together in chilly autumn dusks, and they writhed in ecstasy. Their kids were proving themselves, and even when they came off the field wearing wigs of dried blood, nobody could have been more pleased. In Australia, as anywhere, rites of passage are no small thing.
It was immediately apparent that Terry was a naturally outstanding player, a star on the field. To watch him tackle, pass, dummy, duck and weave through the skinny legions of little athletes would give your eyes spots. He ran like one possessed, his concentration absolute. In fact, on the field Terry underwent a transformation of character and disposition. Though he played the clown in just about every situation conceivable, he had no sense of humor about the game whatsoever; once the whistle blew, he was as serious about that tough oval ball as a cardiovascular surgeon is about squishy oval hearts. Like me and probably most Australians, Terry had an innate opposition to authority. Discipline was abhorrent to his nature. If someone told him to sit down just as he was reaching for a chair, he’d probably have tossed it out the nearest window. But in the realm of self-discipline he was a Zen master. You couldn’t stop him. Terry would do laps of the garden even while the magnified moon rose up like a soap bubble. In storms he’d power on with sit-ups and push-ups, and as the sun sank behind the prison, his boots chomped through clumps of thick wet grass and lakes of mud.
In summer Terry joined the local cricket team. Again he shone from the first day. As a bowler he was fast and accurate; as a batter he was deadly and powerful; as a fielder his eye was exacting and his reflexes sharp. It was unnatural how natural he was. Everyone talked about him. And when they opened the new swimming pool, guess who was the first in the water? The guy who built it! And guess who was second? Terry! I ask you: Can a person’s body be genius? Can muscles? Can sinew? Can bones? You should’ve seen him in the pool. And calm! At the start of a race, while the other boys trembled on the swimmer’s block, Terry stood there as if he were waiting for a bus. But suddenly the gun fired! He was so quick you wouldn’t remember seeing him dive; he glossed through the water as though towed by a jet ski. So that Terry could have his hero cheer him on, I went, always half concealing myself in the back of the stands, roaring louder than anyone. God, those swimming carnivals! It’s like I’m there now: the echo of the splashing bodies and the wet feet trotting along the cold sopping tiles of the indoor swimming pool, the pungent stench of chlorine that would make an embalmer nostalgic, the sound of a swimming cap sucked from a head, the dribbling of water emptied from a pair of goggles. And those boys loved it. It was as if someone had said to them, “Human beings need water to live, so get in!” And they got in. And they were happy.
Terry was the happiest of them all. Why wouldn’t he be? Football star, cricket star, swimming star. The town had its first local celebrity, made all the more remarkable because he was a seven-year-old boy. Seven! Only seven! He was the Mozart of sport, a prodigy unlike anybody ever seen. The town adored him, all its lovesick eyes caressing him, encouraging him. There’s no point denying it was out-and-out worship. The local paper made a big hullabaloo of the amazing Terry Dean too. When one of the city papers did a story on young athletes most likely to make sporting history and Terry was listed among them, my father almost died from delight.
In case you’re wondering, there was no sibling rivalry between us, not a speck of jealousy on my part, and even though I felt forgotten like those burned-out cars in derelict suburbs, I was proud of my brother, the sporting hero. But I was concerned too; I was the only one to notice there was more to Terry and sport than mere skill and athleticism.
It wasn’t the way he played that keyed me into it, but the way he watched when he was a spectator. First of all, you couldn’t get two words out of him before a game. It was the only time in my life I can say I saw him display anything that resembled anxiety. And I’ve seen him stand in court about to be given a life sentence, so I know what I’m talking about.
We’d arrive to watch a football game and a deep excitement would come over him- for Terry an empty oval was a shadowy, mystical place. The match would begin, and he would sit upright and expectant, his mouth half open and his eyes glued to every action. He was genuinely moved. It was as if he were hearing a language only he understood. He sat with a quiet intensity, like he was seeing something holy- as if scoring a goal in the last thirty seconds was an immortal act. After a game, win or lose, his whole soul seemed filled with satisfaction. He was in a religious fervor! When his team scored a goal, he would actually shudder. I saw him do it with my own eyes, and I don’t care what anyone says, a young boy shuddering with religious fervor is just plain creepy. He couldn’t stand a draw. You couldn’t talk to him after a draw. Bad calls from the umpire set him off into a violent temper too. I’d say, “Can we go home now?” and he’d turn slowly to face me, his eyes full of pain, his breath shallow; he seemed to be suffering. At home, after unsatisfactory games, we all had to walk on tiptoes (which isn’t easy when you’re on crutches).
As I’ve said, Terry and I were different in our bodies. His gestures were loose, effortless, honest, and agile while mine were laborious, painful, hesitant, and inept. But our differences were most keenly felt in our obsessions, and contrary obsessions can be a real divider. For example, if you have one friend in a monomania about not having found love and another is an actor who can only talk about whether God gave him the right nose, a little wall comes between them and conversations disintegrate into competing monologues. In a way, this is what was beginning to happen to Terry and me. Terry talked only of sporting heroes. I took some interest, but a significant part of having a hero is imagining his heroic deeds as your own. The fact was, I got only nominal pleasure from imagining myself scoring a goal or running the four-minute mile. Daydreams in which effusive crowds cried, “Isn’t he fast?” just weren’t that satisfying for me. It was clear I was in need of another kind of hero altogether.
Terry’s obsession eventually took over his life; everything from meals to going to the toilet was an unwanted interval between the times he could play, practice, or think about sport. Card games bored him, books bored him, sleep bored him, God bored him, food bored him, affection bored him, our parents bored him, and eventually I bored him too. We started arguing about silly things, mostly about my behavior: now that he was out enjoying life in the company of children who weren’t lying in bed moaning, my pervasive negativity and my incapacity for joy became wearisome to him. He started criticizing me for every little thing: he didn’t like the way I gently tapped people on the shoulder with my crutch when I wanted to get by them, he didn’t like how I quickly discovered the thing a person was most proud of and immediately ridiculed it as a way of undermining them, he was tired of my deep suspicion of everyone and everything, from church doors to smiles.
Sadly, in the space of a few months, Terry finally saw me for what I was: an eleven-year-old grump, a sour, depressive, aggressive, proud, ugly, mean, myopic, misanthropic kid- you know the type. The days of following me around, imitating my cough, and pretending to share in my stabbing abdominal pains were but a sweet, distant memory. Of course, looking back, it’s easy to see that Terry’s anger and reproaches were born of frustration and love; he didn’t understand why I couldn’t be as easy and happy in the world as he was. But at the time all I could see was the betrayal. It seemed that all the world’s injustices were rushing at me like a strong wind.