Footballs

He had a routine at the end of the day; when the long strident call of the bell waned to be drowned by the hubbub of other kids finding the connections they wanted for the walk home.
He would be just coming out of the toilet block, so that he was always just that little bit behind the long snake of bobbing heads swirling away.

Home was a short walk and he had his shoes on his hands as always, passing the pantomime of the crossing with the single lollipop lady holding back a tide of fidgety kids, the older boys surging in and out towards the road as her exasperated cries of ‘wait, wait!’ flew over their heads. His fingers explored the worn innards of the old hand-me-down shoes and pushed the socks right up into the toes.

The gravel path was wide enough for the friends who hung from each other’s shoulders as the kids fanned out along the gentle slope down towards the park beyond. He would cross it to reach the gate in the back fence at home. 
The path traced along the school boundary, passing the sports fields, soccer, rugby, cricket in turn. He and his friends had watched from the soccer field a day before as the unhurried council workers spread a new layer of the big grey gravel over the path, he spent so much time barefoot that his feet were made of old leather now. But he still stepped lightly over the sharp edges and his toes felt the chill down deep where the midwinter rain still hid amongst the stone.

Trees were spaced along the boundary and the weakening sun was already low behind them so that the light was cut into pieces to lay between the long branches reaching out for each other. He quickened across each shadow as the chill rose again in the ground.

The rhythmic coming and going of the tractor mower on the soccer field made him look up. The grass lay in long swathes in its wake and the smell came to him. He longed for Saturday when they would be here and the shouting would be for goals and sliding tackles on the soccer field.

Beyond the cricket pitch the trees turned and marched away towards the sun and a line of weatherboard council houses backed up towards them, each with a little backyard. A pillar of smoke rose serenely from the last of the yards and he could see a man bent to slowly adding this and that to a small fire, just as Sam did now on a Sunday, his job to light the small incinerator. His eyes followed the smoke up into the cloudless sky and a small plane seemed to balance atop the teetering column, unmoving, and he had to strain to think he could catch its rise and fall of engine hum.

Most of the kids in front had disappeared by now, the procession thinned to little ones with short legs and tired bodies, and a couple of girls in intense conversation, their heads almost touching.
He recognised one of the little boys, clutching his prized possession to his chest, a leather soccer ball, just as he did every lunch time when he came to the fields and tried to join in with the craziness of the older boys.

The boy reached the corner where the trees ran away and moved off the path as a group of older boys came towards him, moving fast with their long thin legs poking out of grey high school shorts striped green from their own lunch time football battles.
Sam hadn’t really paid them any attention and suddenly realised they had stopped, circling the little boy, and the tallest of them ripped the ball from his tiny hands, held the ball just above clutching fingers as the others laughed and goaded him on. He saw tears spring to the corners of the huge eyes of the little boy, Sam’s eyes grew huge too and he heard blood pound in his ears so that the world narrowed down to a tunnel running out towards the ball. 
He shook his shoes off his hands and swinging his bag forward off a shoulder threw them in, never breaking step, neither quickening nor slowing.

The tall boy lowered the ball a little and then reefed it back up beyond the reach of the little one, and again. And then held it aloft and looked across the road towards the overgrown gully that fell away beyond, seeming to measure the throw that would take the ball away where the little boy would never be able to find it. He looked back to his friends and their laughter grew in encouragement and a whine came from the little boy.

He brought his arm back theatrically, balancing the ball on his fingertips and in that moment Sam simply snatched it from him. Their hands came together and he felt the sweat, his, the boy's, he looked up the length of the long arm to the stunned eyes beyond and moved past him without stopping, putting the ball into the arms of the small boy and then pushing him gently on, towards wherever home may be. He felt big hands in his back roughly shoving him towards the road, knew that the loud taunts and threats were for him. He teetered in a crazy arc out towards the road and then back to the path and stones whistled past, one hit him on the shoulder and he winced but simply kept walking, the quick staccato of the little boys flying feet ahead, an invisible dog huffing and puffing at a gate as he passed. 

Ben had smiled and said something like “Good for you, hate a bully.” Then he had sat quiet for a while and after a time offered his own reply. He’d told them, Sam and Andy, about his father, sometimes, in pieces. They knew that his father had left for good when Ben was finishing high school.

“I was never really bullied”, Ben had begun. “But my sister was. After my father went. She never told me anything. But I had a feeling. We didn’t have much money, things were different back then about child support. She tried so hard to help mum, only had a couple of uniforms and sometimes they looked old and a bit worn. I was coming out of a class late because I hadn’t done my homework and I realised she was standing in a big group under a tree. I thought it was her friends, she was popular. But then I realised they were sort of circling her and laughing. I stood where she couldn’t see me, and listened. They told her all sorts of things about our mum, why dad had gone, how she would be the same. There were boys there too, pushing her around a little, telling her how they would treat her if they got the chance. That was about as far as it got. I walked over and got hold of the biggest one and smacked him hard, told him what I would do to him and every one of his dickhead mates if they ever went near her again. Smacked the second biggest one too, just to make sure. Lots of silly little girls yelling things at me so I told them what I thought of them.”