Page 90 of I Am the Messenger

Within five minutes, I'm thrown a blue jersey with red and yellow stripes on it. Number 12. I change from my jeans into a pair of black shorts. There are no socks and no boots--they're the rules of the Sledge Game. No boots and no protective gear. Just a jersey, shorts, and a foul mouth. That's all you need.

Our team is known as the Colts. The opposition is the Falcons. They wear a green and white jersey with the same color shorts, though no one cares about that. We're lucky to have the jerseys at all, considering each side just flogged them one year from one of the real local clubs or took the discarded ones.

There are forty-year-old men in the Sledge Game. Big, ugly firemen or coal miners. Then there are some midrange players; some young ones, like Marv, Ritchie, and me; and some that can actually play well.

Ritchie's our last guy to show up.

"Well, look what the bloody dog brought along," says one of our fat guys. One of his mates tells him it's supposed to be what the cat dragged in, but, frankly, big fatso's too thick to understand. He's got what we'd call a Merv Hughes mustache. If you don't understand that, all you really need to know is that it's big, it's bushy, and it's downright reprehensible. The saddest comment on all of this is that he also happens to be our captain. I think his real name's Henry Dickens. No relation to Charles.

Ritchie throws down his bag and answers, "Hey, lads, how are we?" but he looks at the ground, and no one really gives a shit about how anyone is. It's five minutes to four and most of the team is drinking beer. One gets thrown to me, but I keep it for later.

I stand around a bit as the crowd continues piling toward the soccer field and Ritchie comes over.

He studies me, up and down, and speaks.

"Christ, Ed--you look bloody desperate. All bloodied and messed up and shit."

"Thanks."

He looks closer. "What happened?"

"Ah, just some young fellas having a bit of harmless fun."

He pats me on the back, hard enough to hurt. "That'll teach you, won't it?"

"For what?"

Ritchie winks at me and finishes his beer. "No idea."

You have to love Ritchie when he's like this. He doesn't care much for how things happen or bother asking why. He can tell I don't particularly feel like discussing the incident, so he makes a crack and we leave it behind us.

Ritchie's a good mate.

I find it curious that no one's even suggested that I should have called the police about what happened. You don't do that sort of thing around here. People get mugged or beaten up all the time, and in most cases you either get back straightaway or take it.

In my case, I'm taking it.

Doing a few lazy stretches, I look over at the opposition. They're bigger than us, and I set my eyes on the massive one Marv had been talking about a while back. He's gigantic, and to be honest, I can't tell if it's a man or a woman. In fact, from a distance, he looks like Mimi from The Drew Carey Show.

Then.

Worst of all.

I look at his number.

It's number 12, like me.

"That's who you're marking," says a voice behind me. I know it's Marv, and Ritchie comes over as well.

"Good luck, Ed," he says, suppressing his amusement. It makes a burst of laughter shoot from my mouth.

"Bloody hell, I'll get flattened by him. Literally."

"You sure that's a man?" Marv inquires.

I bend down and hold up my toes, stretching the backs of my legs. "I'll ask when he's on top of me."

Strangely, though, I'm not overly concerned.