It's How You Play The Game
by Russell Merrin
Tommy cast a quick glance back over his shoulder. He felt a surge of panic. Dad still wasn’t here!
And he had promised. Again and again he had promised!
Tommy shook his head.
Beside him, Sparksy was running on the spot, flicking his fingers, trying for the cool look but his nervous eye-twitches betrayed him. The rest of his class were already crouched down. Ready. Waiting.
‘Still reckon you’ve got a chance?’ challenged Sparksy.
Tommy just gave a little head shake. They’d already done the trash talk, sledged each other like Olympic champions, even exchanged ‘dead-arms’, but not too hard, because they were best mates after all. Tommy turned back, aware that Mister Tattersall, the starter, was calling something out.
As Mum shuffled his small sister Grace, from one thigh to the other, Tommy tried to catch her eye. He raised his shoulders in a shrug and arranged his face into a question.
Where’s Dad?
Mum shook her head, matched his shrug, then tightened her grip on Gracie who was trying to reach for Mum’s earrings.
Tommy fumed. Dad had to be here. They had practised for this race for so long, both of them. Dad racing alongside him every time, wearing his old sand shoes, even in bare feet. They had run on the grass at the footy oval. They had run along the hard sand at the beach, even, once, running through the shallow surf.
But they had run. They had trained. Both of them. Dad simply had to be here.
‘Clear the track!’
Tommy glanced up. His lane stretched out way ahead of him. It seemed to be much longer than fifty metres. Tommy felt his face flush. The butterflies were there too in his tummy, of course, but Dad had said that they would go away once the race began. He hoped that Dad was right.
‘Judges!’ boomed Mister Tattersall. ‘Are we ready?’
Tommy glanced ahead, down the track.
Thumbs up from the judges.
Tommy cast a desperate glance back to Mum, but a lady beside her was leaning in and asking her something. With Mum distracted, little Gracie squirmed on her lap.
And Dad still wasn’t there!
Tommy closed his eyes, took a deep breath and tried to quell his rage, tried to focus on the race.
When he felt a small, unexpected movement down beside his left leg, he glanced down. ‘Gracie!’ he snapped. ‘You can’t be here. Go back to Mum!’
His tiny sister squatted down awkwardly on the dew-wet early morning grass, with a grin of excited anticipation spread across her ruddy face, trying hopelessly to ape his easy sprinter’s stance. Tommy turned around and waved urgently to his mother who gave him a distracted smile and a half-wave.
Beside him, Sparksy flashed a grin.
‘Hi Gracie-face,’ he called across to the small girl. She ignored him. Her eyes were fixed solely on Tommy’s. From somewhere far away, Tommy heard Mister Tattersall’s bellow.
‘Take your marks!’
‘Grace!’
Tears of frustration pricked at the back of Tommy’s eyes now. The surging lump in his throat threatened to spill out into real tears. He cast a glance down at his sister.
Mister Tattersall’s voice boomed through Tommy’s churning scrambling thoughts.
‘Get set!’
‘Grace,’ begged Tommy, softly, almost whispering. ‘Please.’
Grace leaned sideways, reached up her little face towards him, but couldn’t manage it, so she tried for the next best thing, the thing that she had just learned. She raised her little palm to her mouth and blew him a kiss.
Then, with an excited grin, she squatted down on her haunches. She stared along the track, scrunching her tiny features into a mask of determination.
Tommy did not even hear the starter’s pistol going off. He was suddenly aware of an explosion of movement all around him as every runner surged down the grassy racetrack.
Sparksy didn’t even spare him a glance.
They were all running, even Grace, who half-turned back to him, raising her tiny left arm up to catch his right, as though to help him. Tommy pulled his hand away and heaved forward, still sure he could make up the half-second slack he had missed with his distracted start.
Then, instinctively, he looked down.
Saw the fleeting confusion at his dismissal of her proffered hand, saw the excitement and sheer joy freeze for a millisecond into a perplexed frown.
Tommy stopped.
Felt the little girl’s deep hurt.
Suddenly, in a single, half-second of shame, Tommy didn’t even bother turning back to the now-lost-race, far down the field ahead of him.
He squatted and gazed into his sister’s trusting eyes.
‘Just you and me, Gracie,’ he whispered. ‘Come on! We’ve got to win this!’
And, hand in hand, they staggered, stopped, started again, ambled, walked and finally ran all the way to the finish line and the tape that now lay useless on the grass at the end of the track.
Tommy glanced back to let his Mum know where Grace was, that she was okay, more than okay. Mum was no longer talking to her friend.
She was staring back along the track to him and Gracie, with her fingers to her lips and, for some reason, she was crying.
And Dad was there too.
Dad, unlike Mum, was grinning.
Grinning his head off, in fact.
Tommy couldn’t work it out.
Parents!
Both of them had wanted him to win, but he had come the very last, because as he and Grace had crossed over the finish line, he had pulled back and let her have the victory.
Sparksy couldn’t resist a dig, of course.
‘Gees Tom, beaten by a little kid.’ And he walked away grinning, but there was no malice in it.
Tommy squatted down beside Grace still flushed by her amazing little victory.
‘Come on, champ,’ he whispered. ‘Dad’s got to buy you ice cream after that win. You are a legend!’