A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS - CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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Whispering Jack on what was once the centre of his universe ...

A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS by Whispering Jack

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - CATCH THE WIND 

Our world was defined by boundaries. The beach to the west, the railway line to the east and Dandenong Road, the northern-most point except when we went to school. Princes Park, where we played kick to kick footy in the winter, cricket in the summer and took girls there until the small grandstand burnt down, was the centre of our universe. We played the Beatles, argued whether the Stones were better, discovered Dylan and the beauty of Joan Baez and her voice. And we were always trying to catch the wind.

Then one day (it must have been fifty years ago) he died, his parents' only son and just sixteen years old. I still remember his face in faded monochrome; his sad eyes and mine confronting our mortality. The first-time vision of a small black chair sitting low to the floor. 

Life moved on. I saw little of his parents after that and, in time, the memory of Alex dimmed although I heard they had given birth to another son.

That might have been the end of it if not for the emergence years later of two skillful indigenous footballers from Mount Barker WA who became champions with North Melbourne. The fact that they coincidentally bore almost the same surname restored the old memories. Then some five or six years ago, I read of a young junior footballer at AJAX and wondered if this might be a relative of my long-forgotten friend.

Today, along with my firstborn son and his oldest boy - a school friend of that young junior's sister- we are going on a journey beyond the boundaries of my old world to Etihad Stadium to watch him play for the Dragons in the TAC Cup Grand Final. The connections are endless. My son was in the inaugural Dragons squad in 1992 until his shoulder dislocated. The club's headquarters and that of the AJAX juniors where my sons trained and played and my grandson now (and I hope more of my grandkids in the future) plays is located at Princes Park, the local ground that once was the centre of our universe. And there is so much more to this story that bubbles under the surface.

Sometimes on a warm summer day I go back to Princes Park and when I close my eyes I can still hear the crack of a ball hitting the willow of his bat, hooked high into the air. I run wildly in the direction of its whirring sound but when my eyes open, the only thing for me to catch is the wind.