The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong

up on the following page. Wally’s stopped breathing.
    He finds a clean page and Sweeney hands him a pencil. Wally carefully draws around his foot and hands the pad and pencil back when he’s done. His foot is only worth about three-quarters of a page, a short story among the great novels he’s just passed. Sweeney looks at the outline over his heavy half-glasses.
    ‘Is the other one the same?’
    Wally, the literalist, can’t see the joke. ‘Y-yes sir.’
    ‘Now, stand on the outline and press your weight down for me.’
    Wally does as he’s told. Sweeney makes some cryptic marks with a stubby pencil of his own, the gristly fingers clenched.
    ‘Lift up on the ball of your foot’.
    More hieroglyphs on the notebook.
    ‘Good. Now you.’
    He hands the pad and pencil to me. Mum’s watching, pleased as punch, from a small cane chair near the door. A blade of dusty sunlight falls on her shoulders, and I can see stray hairs lifting away from her ponytail. She’s beautiful.
    I place my foot on the pad and watch while Sweeney makes his scratchings.
    ‘Hey, Hope,’ I say. ‘You can just give me what Border takes. He’s my man.’
    Sweeney gradually straightens and peers into my eyes for a long time, seeing something in there he doesn’t like at all. I find myself looking from him to Mum and back again.
    ‘Fine, okay.’ I mumble. He’s grimacing.
    ‘None of this is instantaneous, son. Doesn’t just happen , you know. People put lifetimes into these things. Making boots. Batting…’ He points at Mum. ‘Raising children. Stuff that’s worthwhile doesn’t just…turn up.’
    ‘I know.’ I’m not sure why he’s decided to pick on me.
    He’s scowling at me now, the canyons of his face all snaking south. ‘I don’t think you do.’
    Wally’s got his back to me, looking up at the photos. I know he didn’t miss a word.
    Half an hour later, old Sweeney’s guiding us out the door. Mum gets a hug, Wally gets a firm handshake, eye to eye. The handshake offered to me is short and cursory. Our boots will be ready in a month. As we drive away I know this tough little man has read me clearly.
    Rather than taking this as an indication that perceptive people can see my faults, I take it as a warning to avoid perceptive people at all costs.

    In the winter of 1986, I know that school and I are about to part ways.
    I’m halfway through year eleven. Wally’s finished year twelve, is studying some shopkeeper’s accounting course at TAFE while he works for Brewer’s Sports and Leisure, two blocks from home.
    Though I ridicule him about the job, which requires him to dress like a VFL trainer every day, we both know it’s a splendid lurk—he gets to handle bats all day long, swishing them for customers, sometimes just shadow-batting under the fluoros. The times I go to visit him, he picks up a brand-new four-piece ball while we talk, flicks it from hand to hand. He’s developing a sideline in leg spin: each flick of the ball involves a complex rolling of the wrist which I’ve tried (in secret) but never mastered. He shows me things around the shop—new gloves, helmets, training shoes. He gets to handle cash, even order stock.
    But the highlight of any visit to the shop is when Bobby Brewer’s out and we can slip into the indoor net.
    The net is there so people can try out the gear—kick footballs or swing racquets, maybe face a cricket ball or two. But mostly it lies empty. I’ll be at home, sometimes faking an illness or not even bothering, and the phone will ring. I race down there and Wally puts Hunters and Collectors’ Human Frailty on the tape deck behind the counter. We slip into the net, resuming our endless hurl and crack as though it’s the backyard.
    The Brewer’s job is a holding pattern for Wally, nothing more. So is the accounting diploma. In everything he does, he’s waiting for fate to come and knock. Not in a passive way, but in the absolute assurance that his time will come; he merely needs