Boy on a Wire Page 2

  Thank you, Dorothy.

  Dorothy turns, smiles, then walks back to her desk with her borrowed actress walk. I want to wish Mr Harris dead, now, here, in front of the class, but the weight of my sin sinks me and my head gets red and I stare at him so hard he looks at me and says, You all right, Muir?

  Yes, sir.

  For the rest of the year I want to wish him dead, because Sleaze Face drives me mad with his ritualistic sleazing and no amount of salt-licking can ease the irritation, or stem the flow of heat that rises into my head and I lose count of the times he has to ask me if I’m all right and I always answer, I’m fine, but one day he writes a note to my mum and then she takes me to the doctor.

  He’s often irritable, Doctor, and his teacher worries about him. Mr Harris said his face is often very red. Do you think it’s the pinks disease?

  What is it, Doctor, I ask, the pinks disease?

  Don’t be rude, Jack, the doctor is trying to help.

  It’s all right, Mrs Muir. It’s time he knew. Pinks disease, or acrodynia, is mercury poisoning, son. When you were a baby you had all the symptoms: peeling skin, rashes, pink scalp, irritability and respiratory distress.

  How did I get it?

  We’re not sure, but a lot of baby products had mercury in them and some babies were very sensitive to it, but not all. Clearly your brother Thomas wasn’t.

  And that is that. The doctor gives me some medication, confirms that some doctors believe salt will help. Mum leads me out of the surgery and drives home, in silence.

  What, Mum?

  You were rude.

  I was not. It’s my disease.

  The doctor knows best and you should respect him.

  I did.

  Don’t forget, Jack, curiosity killed the cat.

  What cat?

  She won’t answer. The cat? Yes, I want to say, I killed the cat, smashed its head in with a rock, stood on its brains, but I don’t. And the robin redbreast, I killed that too, blew its guts, but I say nothing.

  Two weeks before the end of the year, Dorothy Wilson sets her ruler on the side of her desk, sticks a big blob of wet paper on one end, pulls it back and flicks a spit-ball that slaps into and sticks to the classroom ceiling. Mr Harris looks up, down, then across, directly at Tony Urban. Always Tony Urban. Tony Urban is Genoralup underclass. Tony doesn’t wear shoes. Tony wears rags. Tony doesn’t eat lunch. Tony is a spit-ball genius. He can take a sheet of paper, mash it up in his mouth and make a ball stick to a ceiling for a month, a year, a decade, you name the time and Tony can make a blob of spit-soaked paper that sticks for as long as you like.

  Urban, come here.

  I didn’t do it, sir.

  He didn’t do it, sir.

  Did I ask you, Muir?

  No, sir.

  The class laughs. My face glows.

  Muir’s gone red again, sir.

  Not everyone laughs, but enough for Mr Harris to know that he is on the right track. But Urban sticks to his whining denial.

  I didn’t do it, sir, I didn’t.

  Was it you last week, Urban?

  Yes, sir, but it wasn’t me now.

  Was it you who flicked that ball on the ceiling in the undercroft, the one that fell on Mrs Andrews during assembly?

  Yes, sir, I got the spit mix wrong that time, but it wasn’t me put that one there.

  I don’t believe you, Urban, says Mr Harris.

  But Mr Harris wants to be seen as a fair man so he decides to conduct a court case, to show us how the justice system works. He appoints himself judge, chooses a jury, defence lawyers and a prosecutor. Guess who Sleaze Face chooses for prosecutor? Right, with a sleazy smile on his face, as though delivering an honour, he picks out Dorothy Wilson. Big-breasted Dorothy Wilson, the guilty party, chosen to condemn Tony Urban, the innocent party, a boy with no breasts, no shoes, no hope. Wilson wins, Urban loses, even before the trial has started. And, natch, right throughout the entire trial, the judge, the Sleaze, has to keep his eyes on Big Breasts, the prosecutor, because it is all about her, because the case for the defence is weak and pathetic and run by Edna Turner, a girl with no breasts and no personality.

  When it is all over, Tony Urban is crushed and the man I can’t wish dead turns to the class and says, And that, girls and boys, is how justice is done. Then he sentences Urban to pick up rocks from around the edge of the new football oval.

  Tony didn’t do it, sir.

  Not you again, Muir. Urban has been found guilty by a duly constituted court of law and the sentence stands.

  I saw who did it, sir, and it wasn’t Tony.

  Then who did it?

  I’m not saying, sir.

  And you can’t accept the verdict of this court?

  No, sir.

  Then, Muir, you shall serve Urban’s sentence with him.

  And I do. Here we are, me and Tony Urban, picking up rocks together, a skinny, weeping boy muttering to himself: But I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it. And me, a pink-headed, hot-headed, salt-licking do-gooder, death-wisher and robin redbreast killer, muttering: Why, God? Is it because he doesn’t go to church?

  And then I go away to school. And Tony Urban? Well, he just goes away. I go to Grammar School, where the justice system not only prevails but produces upright young men who make up the real-world justice system. One of them will be my brother, he who breaks noses and who God almost kills just so he can show me how powerful he is. My brother, who I will allow to break both my legs if he wants to and who is cared for by the staff of Grammar School as though he is the young Dalai Lama.

  Grammar School, my dad says, is the best school in the city and it costs a lot of money. We don’t want you to waste it.

  Do you think he’s ready, dear? asks Mum.

  Dad looks at her.

  You know, the pinks disease.

  For heaven’s sake, he was a baby. He just needs to keep up his salt intake. He has to go. His brother’s there. I was there. My father was there. It’s a family tradition.

  He doesn’t mention God, or Mum’s family tradition, and then he hands me a list of things I have to do before I leave home: chop wood, fill up woodboxes, clean out my wardrobe, wash the car, try on Thomas’ old uniforms.

  The cupboard on the wall

  Before I go to Grammar I have to sit in an examination room full of boy geniuses. Something about a scholarship. To help with the money. I get the feeling the exam has been designed by God to remind me how stupid I am. We’re in a classroom unlike any classroom I’ve ever been in before. There’s a raised area at the front, where the teacher has his desk, chair and blackboard, and even before he stands up to write on the blackboard he is looking down on us, the boys. I sit in the middle. The questions are questions I have never seen before and I know as soon as I look at them that I am a stupid boy from the bush and I decide there and then that if I am going to fail I will fail big time. There are five I know the answers to and then I sit back and look around me.

  The boy sitting next to me draws pictures of tanks and guns and Germans and dead Americans. I look hard for Hungarians. When he sees me looking he turns and says, What are you looking at?

  I think it an odd question because it is obvious what I am looking at, so I say, You, looking at me.

  He sneers, but the boy sitting on the other side of him laughs so hard he has to put his face inside his jumper and then the teacher stands beside him and says, What’s going on here?

  I made them laugh, I say. Well, not him, but him.

  The teacher grabs and pulls my jumper, leads me outside and puts his face right up against mine so I can smell his eggs and bacon: Listen, boy, you might get into Grammar School, and if you do, I’ll be waiting for you. Have you got that?

  What, sir, got what?

  That I’ll be waiting for you.

  Yes, sir. Where?

  And then, without warning, his hand rises quick and clips the back of my head. I wonder what kind of teacher it is that can hit you even before you are going
to his school, but I don’t tell Mum and Dad because Mum will only cry and Dad will sit there and eventually one of them will say: Well, you must have deserved it. You must have been rude. So I say, when they ask how the exam went: I met a couple of boys and a teacher said he would see me when I got to school.

  That’s nice, says Mum.

  And then we meet the headmaster.

  The headmaster’s office is at the front of the school, right off the big entrance hall and it stinks, of something I can’t work out, but almost like that dried-up dead rabbit I found in the bush up the back of the house last summer.

  Outside, the world is quite beautiful. Trees line the street and send shadows and dancing light over cars and boys. We sit there, Mum, Dad and me, in a cold silence, which seems easy for them. I try hard to sit still, but my leg jumps. Mum puts a hand on it. My other leg jumps. Keep still, she says. I don’t know how they do it. Not once does Dad shift his right leg from over his left leg. Mum busies herself preening small sections of her dress and body, with little tiny movements that cannot be noticed by casual observers.

  I say, Keep still, Mum.

  Dad smiles, but Mum looks embarrassed.

  When the door opens, it seems to do so all by itself. We look at it, then at the secretary, who nods and says, You can go in now. So we do, Dad first, then me, then Mum.

  So this is the young man then, says the balding, robed man with skin whiter than the sheets Mum sometimes boils in the old copper out by the shed. Okay, not that white, but whiter than I had ever seen on the face of a human being. He is one of those people who, when you first see them, confuse you, and you will never be sure whether he is some kind of angelic genius or an evil devil who reports directly to Satan. He doesn’t put out his hand to Dad, me or Mum, he simply turns and walks behind his desk, seems to disappear, then reappear as a much smaller person.

  Yes, says Mum.

  Not another word is spoken. Silence. A painful silence. My leg jumps. Mum glares. The great man pores over my primary school records, nods, looks like he might speak, almost speaks, Dad seems to reply, doesn’t reply, Mum certainly doesn’t, but she has stopped glaring and preening and sits upright, as though any movement will result in my immediate expulsion and the family will carry the shame forever. There is a small, interesting cupboard built into the wall above the floor. Mum wipes her forehead, once, with one quick, nervous sweep, then smiles, faintly, at the headmaster’s head, still poring over paper.

  This boy is not quite the same as Thomas. We will have a bit of work to do, I imagine.

  We all look up, shocked, almost terrified at the sound of the great man’s voice.

  Yes, of course, says Dad.

  His results from the scholarship exam were, well, not good.

  He did his best, says Mum.

  Of course, says the great man. And then he adds, as though desperate for something positive to say, He is clearly a good runner. We could use him in the sprint team.

  He can play football too, says Dad.

  Inside my head I’m wondering how hard it must have been for Dad to say that and I am determined to show him something, anything, to make him realise that even though I am not like Thomas there are things I can do. I don’t know what they are.

  Yes, of course, says the headmaster.

  Then, without knowing it, we are gone, in the car, and Dad is driving south for Genoralup.

  I’ll bet that desk cost a fortune, he says.

  I pray to God he’ll be all right, says Mum.

  His brother will look after him, says Dad.

  I wonder what’s in the cupboard on the wall, I say.

  Grammar School

  At the beginning of the next year, Dad drives back to Perth. Mum sits in the front, Thomas and I sit in the back. He sleeps. I fidget.

  We drop Thomas off at the senior boarding house, then walk over to the junior boarding house, and its housemaster, Mr Duff. He seems nice enough and laughs when I ask why the showers don’t have walls.

  Why, because we’re all boys in here, my boy.

  He tells Mum and Dad I will be in good hands.

  I am sure he will fit in and behave well, says Duff. His brother Thomas is one of the best boys in the entire school.

  While Duff rambles on about Thomas and his behaviour and his school work and his wonderful temperament, I disappear up a flight of stairs, into the common room, over the playground, round the yard, and when I get back they have gone.

  We never see each other again. Well, of course we do, but, in a way, it’s never the same. Mum is back a few weeks later to take me to the dentist and make sure I’m getting plenty of salt.

  In her first letter she writes that she is disappointed she didn’t see me again, to say goodbye, properly: When we turned around to say goodbye, you had gone. I was upset. Mr Duff said you would be fine, perhaps a little excitable. Please be good, Jack. Remember Thomas is there too and if you do anything wrong it might be bad for him.

  I feel guilty about disappearing, but even guiltier because of the happiness I felt not having to go through the goodbye, the weeping, the lecturing, being forced to promise, yes, I will be good, yes, I will eat plenty of salt, do the right thing and look to Thomas if I’m not sure what the right thing is. It felt good to be free of them, free of the lists, the pleading, the harping on salt and all the other things that are said and the things that are not said.

  When I disappear I meet Brett Jones. He sees me on the stairs and says, You want to come upstairs and see the other dorms?

  What’s a dorm?

  Dormitory. Where we sleep.

  He looks at me as though I am dumb.

  I am dumb. If Brett Jones leaves I will be dumber.

  That night I have my first shower without walls.

  I take my clothes off, fold them neatly, place them in my bedside cupboard, put on my dressing-gown, take out my little toilet bag, my towel and head for the bathroom. After I brush my teeth, carefully, more than once, I walk into the shower room. There is only one boy under water, a big boy and he almost needs two nozzles. The kid knows he is big. As he washes himself he makes big movements, like he isn’t sure where his body ends.

  Gidday.

  He nods. But his eyes don’t meet mine. They look out from under his angled head, but they don’t look at me. They avoid me. His body is too big to worry about me. His arms bend with purpose and even though he is almost fat I can see the muscles. I take my dressing-gown off, hang it on a hook and brace myself so he can see I have muscles too. He mustn’t think I am as puny as I look.

  Brett Jones has mentioned a boy called Tubby Lardarse. I am sure it is him. He is one of those kids you can tell as soon as you see him that you won’t like him, just like Luke Wilson, the fat prick who always slaps me when I walk past. And right off you know that if you let your guard down he will kill you. I am determined not to be killed by him, or anyone. If anyone is going to kill me, it will be me. Or God.

  I show Tubby my wood-chopping muscles. Back home in Genoralup, the coldest early-morning place in the entire world, my daily job is to supply the house with wood. So every afternoon after school, summer and winter, I head for the woodheap, grab the axe and chop enough wood to feed the house fires for that night and the next day. I love swinging an axe. A lot of people don’t understand the axe. It’s all about rhythm. Every Genoralup show is worth the entrance fee for the annual log chop competition and the sight of Big Tom Brittain swinging from his hips in slow, perfect movements and dismantling huge logs of the hardest wood on Planet Earth. Apart from my biceps and shoulders, the rest of me is as puny as it looks.

  I don’t take the nozzle next to Lardarse. I take the one at the end of the row of eight. Even then he seems threatened by my presence.

  I wash quickly. He remains intrigued by his own form. He sweeps back and forth and around, covering bits I am sure he has covered before, but maybe he is so big that by the time he washes the last bit of his body the first bit needs washing again.

&n
bsp; Watching Lardarse is a mistake.

  What are you looking at?

  What?

  You heard me.

  I just got here. It’s my first day. My name’s Jack Muir.

  So what?

  This puzzles me. I must look puzzled. Lardarse stops washing. He moves away from his shower. I move away from mine. Water runs from two nozzles. He looks at me. I look at him.

  What are you looking at?

  You, you puny little prick.

  Not anymore.

  I leave my nozzle running, grab my towel, dressing-gown and toilet bag and leave him there, forever finding new bits to wash.

  Lucky for me, Lardarse isn’t in my dorm. Brett Jones is.

  I think I met Tubby Lardarse, in the showers.

  It’s not his real name, says Jonesy, but I don’t know what that is. He’s been here a year already and he thinks he owns the place.

  Does he always shower alone?

  He needs all the nozzles he can get.

  We laugh. I like Jonesy. He is one of those kids you like right away, as soon as you see him. Jonesy loves a prank. He is always coming up with something. Simple stuff even God can laugh at, but at God’s school, Grammar School, laughing is not encouraged. Rules are encouraged, demanded and enforced. I think it is only two weeks before Jonesy gets his first whack on the bum. For what? For eating in the common room after lights out, for the third time, and going for a walk outside in his pyjamas.

  I always get hungry about two o’clock, he says to Duff. Then I have to walk it off.

  Lights out means you stay in bed, says Duff. See me in my office first thing after breakfast.

  After breakfast and his visit to Duff’s office, Jonesy says, He’s got a collection.

  What?

  Jonesy shows me the cane marks across his bum, the first bum marked that year. Jonesy is proud.

  He’s got this cabinet with about a dozen canes. I reckon he chooses one for the size of your bum. Or how thick he thinks your skin is.