Boy on a Wire Read online

  Do you reckon he’d have one big enough for Lardarse?

  We laugh, but not for long, because Lardarse walks into the bathroom.

  What’s the matter with you pricks?

  Nothing.

  Lardarse leans forward as if he is going to bite my head off, but he doesn’t. As I watch his face, his arm comes up behind me, but my chopping arm gets there first and knocks it away. He takes a step back with his fists raised.

  Come on.

  Nar, you come on.

  He moves towards me. He holds up one hand with his middle finger poised for a knuckle attack on my bicep. I drop my arms, stand still and turn my left shoulder towards him.

  Go on then, hit me.

  He hits me.

  Yeah, says Jonesy, hit me too.

  He hits Jonesy with a regular-shaped fist.

  Is that the best you can do, Lardy?

  Lardarse’s face turns a bright red and just then a mob of boys from our dorm tumble into the bathroom.

  Hey, Chef.

  Jonesy turns to Chef, a kid whose real name is Cook.

  Lardarse is hitting blokes for nothing. No reason. You wanna get hit?

  Chef is not sure.

  It’s easy, I say. Doesn’t hurt a bit.

  Lardarse hits me again.

  See.

  Chef laughs and the others join in. I start hitting my own arm.

  If you can’t do a proper job of it, let me have a go.

  Lardarse is angry now and runs at me, but he isn’t quick enough. I run out of the bathroom, down the corridor and straight into Mr Duff.

  Muir.

  Yes, sir.

  That will be one half-hour detention, this Saturday morning, in the garden, weeding.

  Thank you, sir.

  Then Lardarse arrives, not running, but walking with speed.

  That’s better, Malcolm. You see, Muir, that’s what we’re looking for around here.

  Yes, sir, but that’s his top speed.

  But Duff hasn’t heard. He’s seen an infringement, issued a punishment and moved on. As he passes the boy he calls Malcolm and heads towards his office, he doesn’t see Lardarse raise his fist once more and punch me again and follow it with another nasty look and I know from then on I will have to watch my back, my front and all the other bits.

  I ask God about people like Tubby Lardarse. In the first week there are a few of us who kneel beside our beds and pray, then less, and less and, finally, just me. I am the only kneeling boy in the dorm tonight. The heathens have scared off the kneelers, sneered them into submission and their beds. I think it’s a bit odd because Grammar School is a Church school, my Church, the one and only true Church. God, as usual, keeps his comments to himself. But Jonesy doesn’t. He says I’ll have to stop, soon, because someone will make fun of me and others will follow. I can’t stop. What I do is wait until I think they are all asleep and the world is full of dark, then I crawl out of bed, talk to God, and crawl back.

  Well, not quite dark, because back home the dark is always dark, really dark, but in Perth the dark is never quite complete, and on the very first night I wonder when they are going to turn the big lights out and I keep waking up to check and they never do. It feels safe. Back home the pitch-black dark sometimes opens up and throws shapes and sounds and scares the hell out of me. One night I wake up screaming and the screams don’t stop when I stop. I run down the hall towards Mum and Dad’s bedroom and they get louder. Then they stop. It’s Mum. At breakfast, before Mum gets out of bed, Dad tells us she had a nightmare.

  So, God, I say, what is it with Tubby? Why is he such a prick? Should I stay away from him, pick on him, or give him fresh fruit from the farm? Tubby confuses me, he seems to want to be bad, but can’t quite make it. Something about us, the smaller boys, irritates him, but something else holds him back from crushing us to a pulp.

  God says nothing.

  I sleep.

  It doesn’t take me and Jonesy long to realise that we aren’t going to make it in Grammar School. I’m from Genoralup Primary School, Grade Seven, twenty-three pupils. And Jonesy is from Mukinbudin Junior Primary, Grade Seven, twelve pupils.

  We go straight into Fourth Form Standard C, one up from the bottom, D. There are about thirty kids in C. Must have been thousands in the whole year. Okay, not thousands, but about five times the size of Genoralup Grade Seven.

  First day in class my nickname is agreed on when the French master, a stuck-up English chap in a suit, catches me sharing a new scab on my knee with Jonesy. The Englishman looks at me and says, You there, Coco, or whatever your name is.

  Muir, sir.

  Right, Muir, pay attention in class.

  Excuse me, sir, who’s Coco, sir?

  Coco, Muir, is a famous Latvian clown, Coco the Clown. Coco le Clown in French, la noce di cocco il pagliaccio, in Italian. And el coco el payaso, in Spanish.

  Thank you, sir.

  In French, Muir, merci, Monsieur.

  Yes, sir.

  Oui, Monsieur.

  Oui, Monsieur.

  That is it, from then on I am Coco. I don’t mind at first, and I don’t mind later, because in a boarding school the kids who suffer most are those who have nothing going for them. I’m new and already I have two things going for me: a quick tongue and a new name. Jonesy has two things going for him too: he learns quick, and he has a nickname, Jonesy. Well, Jonesy isn’t really a nickname but it is better than being called Lardarse, or Ponsey, or Chuka.

  Standard C is a long way from Standard A, which is where I spot the boy from the exam room who drew tanks and Germans in the scholarship exam. I could see then he is one of those boys it will be hard to like and as soon as he sees me he looks right through me as though I don’t exist, or, even worse, I am one of those bush boys from the boarding house and so I stink, am coarse, stupid, and not worth knowing. None of them talk to any of us. And apart from a kid from Tambellup and another from Merredin, none of us is anywhere near Standard A. The only place Jonesy and I are going from Standard C is Standard D.

  Short sheet

  Dear Mum and Dad,The wether is nice. I like some of the boys. Can you send me some choclate. This is my first letter to you. Hope you like it. The dining room has plenty of salt. Love Jack.Justice not only prevails at Grammar School, it is rampant. I have been in the boarding house for six weeks and I’m taking a shower, in the middle of a row of naked boys all laughing, whistling, singing or waiting for a vacant nozzle. It is the early morning shower, the one we take as soon as we leave our beds at 6.30, summer or winter, the one without heat but with no shortage of streaming freezing water because that will make men of us. It’s all about self-discipline.

  Get under it, Muir, yells Stringer, the housemaster on duty.

  I hate cold showers. I discipline myself. Get under it, Muir, I yell inside my head. This will make you a better person, Muir. Then I make a mistake: I decide to squeeze hard around my bar of soap and it flies through the air and lands at Stringer’s feet.

  What did I just see you do, Muir?

  Squeeze a bar of soap, sir.

  Why, Muir?

  It was in my hand, sir, and it wanted to escape.

  You think you’re funny, don’t you, Muir?

  Only if you laugh, sir.

  Well, I’m not, Muir. Can you see me laughing, Muir?

  No, sir, but other people are.

  They are not people, Muir, they are boys. Can you hear me?

  Yes, sir. You said they are not people, sir, but boys are people too, sir.

  Are they, Muir? Are they indeed?

  Yes, sir.

  Everyone around me is laughing. I think I can hear God laughing. I am not laughing because I am trying hard to stop shivering and to think what the problem is but I can’t stop and I can’t see. The only other person not laughing is Stringer.

  Bend over, boy.

  I don’t need to, sir, I’ve got the soap. Jonesy got it for me.

  Muir, bend.

  What for, sir?
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  For squeezing soap in the showers.

  I didn’t know you weren’t allowed to, sir.

  It’s not allowed, Muir, never has been, never will be. Is that clear, Muir?

  And then he doesn’t even wait for me to bend over. He takes off his slipper and he lays into me, into my naked bottom, like he is tanning a piece of cowhide and like I am Satan incarnate and I know I’m not. I know sometimes Satan is in front of me when he should be behind but God gave Moses ten commandments and not one of them is about squeezing soap and I’m terribly confused and my bottom stings like it never has, not even as much as the time Dad whacked me with the feather duster for not doing what he told me to do when he told me to do it and Stringer doesn’t seem to know when to stop and I’m trying desperately to work out what kind of sin squeezing soap is and for some reason I remember a bird I saw once sitting on a fence wire in a strong wind, wobbling this way and that way and then flying off to a safer place in the middle of a big old red gum and I wonder why God has employed Stringer in his school, the Church school. There has to be a reason and the only reason I can’t see it is because I’m stupid, and I’m in Standard C.

  Stringer stops.

  Thank you, sir.

  But I don’t mean thank you, sir, what I really mean is: there’s something going on here I don’t understand and I’m not sure I ever will but I feel like a bird on a wire in a strong wind and I must try to find a tree or learn what is going on, or what the rules are and save my bum from this burning, throbbing that makes it very hard to sit in comfort on the toilet and read my Phantom comics.

  That night I lie in bed while my bum smoulders and I ask God lots of questions about soap and how to handle it but he doesn’t say anything. I don’t crawl out of bed in the dark and kneel. It’s the first time.

  Next morning, Rod Hooper lets me know all about it.

  What happened to you last night, Coco? he says.

  What do you mean?

  No time for God?

  What?

  Hooper draws an audience quickly because in the boarding house lots of boys love a good ragging and when word gets out they gather around to see how good the ragger is and how good a ragging the ragged boy gives back. Hooper smiles. You can see he feels good about his ragging. You can see in his face he thinks he’s onto something. He gets down on his knees and says, Dear God, please stop my bum from stinging.

  Hooper’s feelings about himself increase dramatically because most boys are laughing. Jonesy isn’t. He looks at me. I’m not laughing. I can feel the red in my face.

  Oo, look, Coke’s gone red.

  Nothing a person whose face has gone red needs less is someone who points it out. One thing is sure, your face will get redder. I decide there are only three responses: tough it out, run away, ignore it and use the anger. I get down on my knees.

  Dear God, please don’t worry about my bum, or my red face, but can you do something about Hooper’s face, he’s the ugliest boy I’ve ever seen in my life. And while you’re at it, can you find him a brain? Or are his brain and his bum the same thing?

  There’s an even bigger laugh now but Hooper doesn’t join in. He turns away and I can see the redness creep around his neck and I wonder if he’s got pinks disease. I’m not that happy about it because I don’t mind Hooper. He can be a prick, and he can be kind. He’s a mixture. He can go either way. I saw him with Phillip McGrath the other day. McGrath is a skinny, puffy boy from the wheatbelt whose father is a vet. Hooper had him in a headlock and I had to ask him to let him go, twice, and when I asked the second time I stood up close to his face and looked him hard in the eyes, so hard he could see the mercury rising. Maybe that’s why he’s mad at me. And he’s in Standard D. The brain bit wasn’t fair. I tell God I’m sorry for wasting his time and using the word bum.

  The boarding house is about a quarter of a mile from the school and the school is where we do our homework, our prep. Each night after prep we run like hell to the boarding house and the hot water, because after forty boys have been through the showers there’s only cold left but the housemaster on duty forces us all under the water no matter what its temperature.

  Jonesy and I get out quick one night and we run like hell with Chef. This night we are not hot for hot water, we are hunting sheets. We are hunting sheets because two nights ago someone from the next dorm shortsheeted three of our beds. One of them was Hooper’s.

  Jonesy, Chef and me run into the dorm next door and shortsheet as many beds as we can. It’s not a thing you can do quickly, shortsheet a bed. You have to pull back the blankets, roll up both sheets together so they are double and neat, but only fold one over the blanket. Then, when the weary boy puts his feet in hard and fast because he’s about to nod off before his head hits the pillow, he can only get halfway down the bed because the sheets block his legs. Once you’ve done the shortening, you then have to make the bed again as though nothing has changed.

  Hoops and two others join us and we almost shortsheet the entire fifteen beds before we run like hell back to our dorm because we can hear the other boys arrive at the front entrance.

  Later, as lights are going out around the boarding house, there is a huge roar, like someone has stuck an axe in a bull’s flank, but they haven’t, it’s just Tubby Lardarse sticking his fat feet straight through both sheets like they were dunny paper.

  We lie still, well, not quite still, our heads are rocking with laughter. We hear fast walking, heavy feet on solid floorboards, Stringer.

  He doesn’t waste any time. He storms into our dorm, turns on the light and says, Who shortsheeted the beds in the dorm next door?

  Nobody speaks. Some heads still rock. Then he looks at me, because my bed is the first one inside the dorm door. He says again, Who shortsheeted the beds in the dorm next door? Muir?

  Without hesitating or asking God if I should, I say, I did, sir.

  Were you alone, Muir?

  No, sir.

  Who was with you, Muir?

  I’m not telling, sir.

  Right, Muir, come with me.

  Stringer takes me into Duff’s office and leaves me there. I’m in my pyjamas. I’m cold. I’m glad I don’t have any soap on me. I’m a bit scared, but I think God will protect me because I said I did it and honesty is the most important thing. Mum always says: Honesty is the most important thing, Jack. Never tell a lie.

  Duff arrives in his dressing-gown. It’s an old man’s dressing-gown. It’s brown. He’s not happy. He says, Did you shortsheet all those beds on your own, my boy?

  No, sir?

  Who helped you?

  I’m not telling, sir.

  All right, Muir, I don’t want to have to do this but I’m going to have to ask you to bend over.

  I wait. Duff looks at me. His face reddens.

  Don’t get smart with me, Muir.

  I bend over. I hear Duff do something with his dressinggown. I look around. He’s tying the cord around his middle. He has trouble and has to start again. Then he walks away and I hear something open and close. A moment of silence. He walks towards me. Then, without warning, immediately following the beautiful sound of swish, something nasty strikes me, bites me, right into my bottom flesh and then again something beautiful is followed by something nasty and biting that winds around my thigh. I think of Big Tom Brittain and want to watch Duff as he swings into me. But I don’t. I wait for the final swish and nasty, and say, Thank you, sir.

  I’m confused again. Did anyone die? Did I kill someone? Will the fat-arse Lardy Boy walk again? Of course he will. Is he dead? No, so what’s with this, the swish and nasty? Show me where the Bible says anything about shortsheeting beds? I can feel my head warming up and I think I might need some salt.

  Go back to bed, Muir, and be sure you’ll be hearing more of this.

  Back in the dorm Jonesy has a torch and he says, Let’s see, Coco, let’s check your bum.

  I drop my pyjamas and Jonesy whistles, softly.

  Jesus.

  D
on’t say that, Jonesy.

  Look. You’re bleeding.

  I look down and I am. Duff has sent his cane running across my bum, round my thigh and, inside my leg, very close to the little bag of skin holding my balls, it has snatched a piece of flesh.

  Bastard.

  It’s okay, Jonesy. It doesn’t hurt.

  But it does hurt and after all the others who have gathered around to see my cut inner-leg have gone to bed and the almost-dark has taken over the world, I kneel and ask God what it is all about. Why would a grown-up man cut into a boy’s flesh because he’d shortsheeted a few beds and then owned up and taken all the blame? When I get back into bed I notice Hooper is looking at me, but next morning he doesn’t say a thing.

  Wankers

  Dear Mum and Dad,I hope you are well. I seem too be getting on all right with the other boys. So far its good. The food is not too bad but still not good. How is everything down there. Are you both well? Can you send me some chocolate. We are allowed to have some. Thank you for the Phantom comics. Love Jack.You’d think, given the total boarding population of around one hundred and fifty boys at Grammar School, that I’d see Thomas every day. Not so, rarely, because Thomas is in the big boys’ house, the upper house, the house we will all move to next year.

  In the morning, as I’m walking away from the dining room and another round of slimy eggs with bacon and foul-tasting, foul-smelling margarine on toast, he walks up behind me and says, Thanks. Not, Gidday, how are you going? Are you settling in? Can I help you in any way whatsoever? No. He says, Thanks.

  What for?

  My new nickname.

  What’s that?

  Big Coco.

  Right. Sorry. It’s not my fault, it was Mr Farnsworth, in French, he started it. And I say Farnsworth with a toffy English accent. Thomas almost laughs, but not quite, sort of smiles, as though a smile is something he has heard about and wants to do but can’t quite get the hang of.

  You going to the dentist when Mum comes up?

  No.

  Then he walks away. Nothing else to say. I feel sorry for him, of course, because he doesn’t talk to God and his hair is still not quite right and we’re all very lucky that he is still with us and not buried in the ground, dead and mangled. And then Hooper runs up to me.