Oval – by Matthew Green
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
‘What about here?’
That’s what Bobby appreciated about Cas. The manly duties of finding somewhere – to smoke, fuck, get some air even – weren’t dependent on himself alone. Cas helped steer the stickier side of their relationship. At the heart of it, what Bobby liked most about Cas was that she went along. She wouldn’t forever, but for now she did.[Text Wrapping Break] Bobby slowed the Falcon to a grumbling crawl. The car’s headlights shone through the night like two foggy ghosts and ran across school insignia and the crooked lettering of a sign window: Happy Retirement Mr Denning. Thank you for your service…
‘This is where I went to primary school,’ said Bobby.
‘I don’t know, maybe,’ said Cas.
She sat bolt upright in the passenger-side seat. Brunette hair tied into pig tails, little dimples creviced into her cheeks. She wore a creased grey tee adorned with the artwork of Green Day’s second album: Kerplunk. Weed smoke and perfume mingled with the noisy rush of the car’s air conditioning. It was 1997.
‘Okay, this will do,’ said Bobby.
‘Good call, skip.’
Bobby gave a thigh a squeeze, reached toward the glovebox and popped it open. It hinged violently. He rummaged through the junk inside and pulled out a torch. He flicked it on and a faint, mirrored light shone upward into the car’s roof lining. A quick look around. Then, also from the glovebox, he procured scissors and foil which housed two nuggets of dirt weed. Chop chop chop. Papers. And there you have it: a joint.
‘Here.’ He handed it to Cas. ‘I’ve got a lighter. Let’s go.’
They slunk their way from out the low-ride car. Bobby shut the door on his side and Cas closed hers with a thud.
‘Jesus babe, quiet.’
‘What?’
She made a habit of doing that. Doing something, saying something mildly inappropriate. She had a nasty streak to her at times. Something he’d have to apologise for in a group setting. Or even something as innocent as this, slamming a car door too loudly at an inopportune moment. Whatever the case, always the same makeshift, impenetrable wall. The same: what? Like she didn’t know what she’d done or what was happening, but she knew. She was intelligent. She knew exactly what she’d done. As if people didn’t make mistakes occasionally. Things you could maybe just own up to for a change instead of feigning ignorance.
Bobby peered into her puppy dog incomprehension and said, ‘It’s okay. Come on.’
Cas wheeled around the Falcon’s bonnet and took up her place beside him a little smaller somehow. It was like a flame burned within her and Bobby’s job was to feed it twigs, keep the fire licking. It was a losing battle, and they both sensed that as they walked. Bumping shoulders.
A low fence separated the car park from the school grounds. The office and admin block just ahead. Darkness enshrouded them, gave everything a bluish tinge. Birds of the night screeched in flocks somewhere off in the distance. Bobby pointed the torch forward. A glistening, white sign reflected the message: Trespassing Prohibited! Groundsman on Site. Cas noticed it too, but it didn’t register to either of them. Reality never proved an obstacle. Bobby offered his arm to Cas as a boost, which she curtly acknowledged before jumping the fence herself. Bobby followed.
They wandered through the courtyard. Demountable buildings and blocks of classrooms were scattered about like dominoes. It felt strangely thrilling being here at night, devoid of the noise and rabble of kids tearing through the place. A sadness to it as well. The empty nooks and crannies, the empty benches. Time both frozen and slipping away. They came to a covered area: Where we’d sit our arses down on the hard concrete for assembly, Bobby explained. Played hopscotch before moving along. Their voices filled the stillness.
Cas wanted to know things. Which ones were his classrooms, did he remember? Where did you sit at lunch? Were you a good kid or bad? You were bad, weren’t you? Where did you have your first kiss? Cas and her Mum, Jules, moved around a lot when she was younger. The pair now settled into semi-permanence in a caravan at the edge of the suburbs. With a mountain of time to catch up on, Cas frequented the cafes and record stores, made friends, and acquainted herself with her new home with a curiosity seemingly endless. Relishing a sense of normality, Bobby imagined.
Bobby knew these kinds of things about her. Along with the bands she liked, the books she couldn’t put down, the existence of a pervy uncle from her past, her favourite food: orange Tic Tacs (There’s just something futuristic about them). And he’d known these things for so long now he sometimes struggled to reconcile these facts with the person beside him. Where did they end, and she began? Or were they all she was, all anyone was, besides the flesh they spilled from? When she first opened the promise of her body to him, they shared a perfect, delicate thing. Now, sex stood as a dividing wall between the facts (the things that made her her), and the things she did to pleasure him. It was with shame that Bobby knew which he’d grown weary of, and which he largely stuck around for. Cas’s mother knew too, he could tell. Bobby admired Jules’s tanned leather skin and faded tattoos, the way she blew cigarette smoke out the caravan window beside pot plants and the old-school radio airing tunes, a cuppa tea always in hand. But behind the knowledge of her smile, she exhibited to him a caginess reserved for people you don’t want around for long, sending telepathic signals Bobby felt obligated and somewhat relieved to pick up on, like a naughty child caught in the act, messages like: My daughter is much more emotionally invested in you than you are in her, and, What you’re doing is fine so long as you don’t do anything BAD. Bobby didn’t know what he was capable of anymore. Getting what he wanted proved a bit too easy lately.
They followed the footpath and it led them to the school oval. The open field invited them with its panoramic freedom, a disjunction from the monotony of classroom buildings. The moon peeked through clouds and illuminated the sea of grass. Looking out over the space with older eyes, Bobby noticed the forlorn-looking trees that sheltered the oval, and behind them a tall fence, and that must be the trainline back there. It all looked smaller to him now. Bobby imagined running across it, covering the ground and pounding the grass in a body that only recently had begun to suit him. Much good it would do him now. When he was a kid, the field felt enormous. The kind of endless space that made you exhaustedly happy, but big enough for a quiet kid to get lost in.
‘What’s that?’ said Cas beside him. She pointed to a tiny house at the opposite end of the oval. Bobby didn’t remember a house ever being there. It sat perched in darkness upon a knoll.
‘Do you think it’s the groundsman’s?’ said Cas.
‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ said Bobby.
‘Should we go back?’
‘We’ll be fine. His lights are off. Let’s go and sit.’
They made their way down a small hill, crossed running lanes until they met the middle. They flopped onto a concrete cricket pitch covered with dust and tiny pebbles. The dewy grass surrounding them smelled sweet and slick. They were exposed out here, under the moonlight, but that felt kind of nice, thought Bobby. Better than the darkness of the pathways and empty classrooms. Cas sat cross legged with her back to the groundsman’s house. She kept turning to look at it, her pig tails swishing beside her head.
‘What do you think he does in there?’ said Cas.
‘Who?’
‘The groundsman.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, what do you think he does? I bet he cooks a mean stew. It looks like that kind of house. He’s probably old. A widower maybe. Must get lonely.’
‘Go say hello then.’
Cas just laughed.
‘Come here,’ said Bobby. He leant his face forward and rested his hands on her thighs. He stretched further and ran his hands up her legs until they were around her waist. He rested his forehead on her collarbone. Then he leant back, looked into her eyes, and kissed her. Like he meant it. They were due.
‘You’re good at that,’ she said.
He kissed her again. Guided her hand to the hardness in his jeans. She unbuckled his belt and then she had him in her mouth. Bobby watched her dipping head. He knew only her breath and the wetness of her lips. He finished.
‘Fuck.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. That was good.’
‘Oh,’ said Cas. She peered at the groundsman’s house.
‘Do you have that joint?’
Cas barely heard him but pulled the joint out of her pocket. Bobby took it and flicked his silver lighter. The end of the joint glowed and then came the pungent smell. Cas rested her head on her knee. There were tears in her eyes.
‘Am I your girlfriend?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘I said am I your girlfriend? Do you even love me? Do you?’
Bobby didn’t say anything. He wanted to speak but the words didn’t come.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Cas.
She stood and walked away.
‘Wait, Cas!’ He shot up after her. ‘Hang on a second, where are you going?’
Hundreds of bats shrieked above the trees. Bobby was stoned. The moment crystallised. He strove to suppress a slight panic from leaping out his throat.
‘Cas, please, just wait up!’
‘Cas, can you talk to me, please? Let’s talk!’
The bats screamed and laughed. And then another sound, indistinguishable at first, rang out across the oval. Bobby froze. A pack of dogs snarled and yelped. He couldn’t see them, but he heard their old howls closing in. Yellow lights gleamed from the windows of the groundsman’s house like the eyes of some B-movie monster.
Her oversized tee flailed in the wind behind her. Bobby laughed as he ran. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was the ridiculousness of the situation – being caught like this, the dogs chasing after them. He felt better. A bit of that panic subsided. For a moment, he thought things would be okay. He could pass this off. Bobby ran and expected to hit that next gear any second now, get his long legs into stride, and in a flash make up the ground Cas had on him. Show off his athleticism a little. Why not? It would feel good. Catch up and put all that stuff behind them, literally. Say something funny maybe as he ran beside her, so they could be on the same level again. Not him here in the rear like this and she ahead. But his lungs burned, and his legs were atrophied sticks, and his running breath was all wrong and righting it again would only slow him further. So he struggled and wheezed and a stitch stabbed his sides. He stopped smiling then and gritted his teeth, swung his arms harder, tried to jolt his feet down quicker, tried to will it into being so. But he couldn’t gain ground. He realised he couldn’t keep up, could only hope to hang on. They ran down the footpath now, through the heart of the courtyard. The dogs barked and the beam of his torch cut through the night like a shard of glass. The scuff of shoes and his own heavy breathing filled the world. And Cas, her head still and poised, a runner’s gaze clear and focused ahead, leant well into her stride, her calves up to her hips a picture of form as her pale legs kicked up and down and her arms swung with such grace in the light of the moon. ▼
Image: Erik Mclean - Pexels
If you liked this piece, please share it. And please consider donating or subscribing so that we can keep supporting writers and artists.