We Fight Dragons (Volume 1, Chapter 3) 'The Woods'
Jam and his friends went directly to Shirate lessons after school, which was just as well because they had a lot of energy to burn off after sitting down for so long.
Jam kept arguing the case for going to the city. ‘I keep telling you, a new movie like this is only in the cinemas for a few weeks. We need to go to the city now because after that we’ll never be able to see it again.’ Like the other boys, sometimes he really disliked not having a mobile or a laptop.
‘There’s a new movie every week! If we watched them all, then we would never leave the city!’ As far as Jam was concerned, Rollo always had a reason to not do something.
‘Why is that so bad?’
‘Well, my parents said it can be dangerous.’
‘I don’t reckon it is!’ exclaimed Jam. ‘We all do Shirate. If someone came up to me looking for a fight…’ he saw the a letterbox they were about to walk past, ‘…I’d line them up and… Shi-hai!’ Jam spun on his heel and pretended to kick the letterbox, only to mis-judge it and knock the letterbox off its post. ‘Craps!’ he exclaimed, losing his cool.
‘Jam! What have you done!’ exclaimed Rollo.
Jam tried to put the letterbox back on its post, but it was now badly misshapen, wouldn’t sit flat, and the coach bolts that used to hold it down had been torn out of the post.
‘You’re going to have to apologise,’ said Oli. ‘Glad I’m not you! That’s the cat-lady’s house.’
‘Craps!’ said Jam again, when the realisation sank it. ‘Should we just leg it?’ Jam looked to Tobes for a useful suggestion.
‘I think you just need to apologise. With a bit of luck she might not even be home.’
Swallowing his trepidation, Jam walked up to the front door and knocked. For a moment, to Jam’s relief, it seemed like no one was home but then he heard slow footsteps coming to the door which opened enough to see an old woman squinting at them. She was clutching a mottled grey cat with scaly skin, that looked like it was losing its fur to the mange.
The woman looked at Jam, then at the others, and then she narrowed her eyes on her letterbox. ‘Have you come to report a crime?’ she asked grimly.
‘No, no,’ Jam back-peddled, desperate to correct the misperception of the situation. ‘It was an accident. But I can help fix it. My dad, he’s a builder, he can fix things.’
‘I know who your father is, Jamie Wood. I know who all your fathers are,’ she waved a hand to indicate the others.
Jam felt an instant relief. ‘That’s great! I’ll tell my dad. I’m sure he can fix it.’
The cat-lady looked like Jam had just cheated her out of something, and her face twisted into a grimace. ‘Mogs doesn’t like you,’ she said.
‘Uh, hi Mogs,’ said Jam, tentatively waving to the cat. ‘You look a bit… sick.’
For a moment the cat-lady considered responding. The tension in the air was thick. Abruptly, she turned and shuffled back inside. ‘Best you get out of here. Don’t you all have practice to get to?’
After the door had shut the boys backed away down the street, unwilling to turn their backs to the cat-lady’s house for reasons they could not put words to. It wasn’t until they had reached the corner of the block that they relaxed and joked about what had just happened.
When they got to the community hall, Tobes told his dad that Jam had accidentally broken the letterbox. Mr Dawson thought about it for a moment. ‘Well, I guess we know what Jam will be doing Saturday morning. Fixing a letterbox.’ As an experienced Policeman, Mr Dawson was unflappable in any situation. Jam expected that there would be more words spoken about the letterbox when he sat down for dinner later.
Shirate class started with the shortest of warm-ups, and went into the usual Laka which were practice sequences of strikes and blocks. Then they progressed to single-counter sparing drills. This usually lead to open-sparing practice which the boys loved, but this afternoon was different.
Mr Dawson handed out thin wooden ‘breaking boards’, and demonstrated how one student was supposed to brace a board using both hands, and another student would use a reverse-punch to break the board. Jam held the board for Rollo, who broke it with his first punch.
‘Great technique,’ said Mr Dawson. ‘You have to commit to the strike and power through it, because if you waver, or go half-arsed, you will hurt yourself. Now switch places.’
Rollo braced a new board for Jam. On his first strike, Jam was tentative and barely put any power into the punch. It didn’t really hurt, but he wasn’t going to break any boards with it.
‘Come on Jam, just go through it! It’s easy.’
Jam knew that Rollo was right. Rollo was the same age and size as him, and had broken the board on the first try. Jam focused and struck the board with all his might… but out of no-where the memory of Emma’s mocking laughter distracted him, scattering his focus.
He wavered, and his hand struck the board with no strength behind it. His wrist folded in on itself and pain shot up his arm. ‘Argh!’ he winced.
Mr Dawson was over quickly, inspecting the injury. Jam’s knuckles had swollen up, and the skin on the back of his hand looked white. ‘That doesn’t look good, Jamie. You’d better sit out for now and put some ice on it. I’ll call your parents and you can ask them to come get you. It’s going to be ice and rest for a while.’
Jam was miserable as he watched the rest of the lesson with an ice pack on his hand. Over the community-hall phone his Mum asked if he needed a lift home. He said that it was an easy walk, and he could get home on his own. She said he was very brave. He just felt stupid.
It was dark by the time Jam made it home. From the front gate he could already smell the roast dinner cooking, and hear Mum and Dad sharing a joke about something. Mum gave him a warm hug, and Dad wrapped an arm around his shoulder in consolation. ‘How does the hand feel?’ Mum asked.
‘It’s not too bad,’ Jam boasted and unwrapped the hand to show off the black and purple bruising and swollen skin. The ice had numbed the worst of the pain.
‘That looks nasty, sweetheart,’ Mum said as she gently brushed the bruised skin in sympathy. ‘I’m glad it isn’t giving you too much grief. Now, with your spare hand, do you think you could help set the table?’
Setting the table consistent of laying out three plates and sets of cutlery, as well as bringing a basket of Goji berries from the pantry, as well as apple-juice from the fridge. As part of the common-land surrounding the town, Mum lease an orchard where she cultivated of strawberries and goji berry trees. Some of the produce was shared with the town or kept for the family, but most was sold to restaurants in the city.
‘Eeeee!!!’ Mum make a sudden shrill noise. Jam became immediately focused. ‘A cockroach! Jam! Kill it!’
Jam’s senses went from high-alert to amusement as he moved to deal with the cockroach. ‘Mum, it’s just an insect.’
‘I don’t like it! They give the the creeps. Use your Shirate on it!’ she joked.
‘Ha-ha.’ Jam grabbed one of his outdoor-shoes, and some paper towel. The roach was fast, and he missed it a couple of times, until he didn’t, and then he cleaned up the mess with the paper towel and put it in the compost.
‘Come on everyone,’ announced his father. ‘It’s the end of the day.’
They sat around the dinner table, now piled with hot food. Dad washed his hands in a bowl of lemon water, which he passed to Mum who did likewise, who passed it on to Jam who copied them both.
‘Is there anyone here who has not eaten with us before?’ asked Dad. The question was unnecessary, because it was only the three of them, but Jam understood that always asking it made it automatic.
After a brief pause and no response, Dad continued, ‘Is everyone here true?’
Jam remembered what happened after school. ‘I… was careless. I broke that old lady’s letterbox on the way to Shirate. I was practicing my kicks, and it was an accident.’ Mum shook her head in disapproval. Dad shook his head ruefully, but struggled to stop himself from smiling which earned him his own look of disapproval from Mum.
‘I’ll give her a visit to let her know we be fixing it on the weekend,’ Dad added. ‘You’ll just have to do the best you can with your injured hand.’
That sounded fair. ‘Yes, Dad.’
Mum went next. ‘As for myself, I’m sorry to say that I was glad when Jam said he would walk home from Shirate. It was late, and I’d had a long day at the orchard, and I just wanted to rest. Thank you for that, Jam.’
‘Thank you, Mum.’ Jam beamed at her.
Dad suddenly became sombre when it was his turn. ‘Well… I was repairing a wall today, and I was in a rush to finish the job, so I didn’t dress the inside of the wall. Hardly anyone will see it. But I’ll know it’s there, and I don’t like cutting corners.’
‘Oh well, I guess none of us are perfect,’ Mum said smiling. ‘Now, who’s hungry?’
Jam was ravenous. He washed down a glass of apple-juice, and immediately tore into a lamb shank. The bandage that had been around his wrist was getting food on it, so he cast it aside absent-mindedly and dug into the roast potatoes and carrots.
‘I can’t reach the roast, Jam. Can you push the pot my way?’ his father asked.
Jam thought it was odd that his father didn’t just reach over, but he figured that it must be some ‘manners’ thing he’d never been told about. He pushed the heavy earthenware bowl across, and was so busy eating that he didn’t even notice his parents exchange confused glances.
‘Say, Dad?’ he asked, with a mouthful of food.
‘Say what, Jam?’
‘Maybe this Saturday we could go for a drive… to the city?’
‘Anything particular you want to do in the city?’
‘Well, there is this new movie that’s out. We reckon it will only be in the cinemas for a month at the most.’
‘The city is not a nice place,’ said his Mum. ‘I know. I used to live there.’
Jam sighed. ‘So you keep saying, Mum. But nothing happened to you.’
‘That’s true. And well argued. But, I can also point out that I didn’t stay. I left'.’
‘When you are older, Jam,’ said his Dad.
‘Not you too! Aren’t you always encouraging me to get outside? To do things?’
‘Yes, but this is different. Around town you can stay out after dark and no one worries.’
‘Worry! It’s always worry! Emma went to the city on the weekend. She practically lives next door to it, and her parent’s aren’t worried.’
‘Who’s Emma?’ Dad asked.
Mum explained. ‘A girl at school that he likes,’ she said knowingly. How did she know that, Jam wondered? Was one of his friends a traitor?
‘What! Mum, I don’t like her. She’s…,’ he searched for the best word. ‘Horrible, in fact.’
Mum looked surprised by this new opinion of Emma.
‘Cross that one off the list,’ his Dad said jokingly.
Jam had no idea what that meant, but that wasn’t what had stirred him up. ‘You both get to go to the city whenever you want! We always do what you want! When do we ever do what I want!’ He thumped his fists on the dinner table, not in anger, but in frustration.
Rather than get annoyed with him for thumping the table, his parents paused and gave him time to calm down, making it clear that they were waiting for an explanation.
Jam drew in a deep breath, just like he’d practiced in Shirate. ‘Sorry. It’s been a funny day. I can’t eat any more. I want to put my dishes away now, okay?’
Mum and Dad both nodded, and Jam got up and rinsed his plate and stacked it in the dishwasher. After he had left the kitchen his parents sat thinking in silence.
Eventually, his father spoke. ‘You saw that, right?’
‘Yes. It was hard to miss.’
‘Our little boy is growing up. How are you feeling, Freya?’ David moved his chair close so he could put a comforting arm around her.
Freya smiled in return, grateful that he understood. ‘Had to happen, I guess. I just hope we did a good job.’
‘Steady on, Freya, he’s not an adult yet. There’s a long way to go. And we are doing a great job.’
Meanwhile, to get out his frustrations, Jam went to the garage and used his father’s punching-bag until he was tired. Then he lay on his bed and read BMX magazines until he fell asleep.
.