Boy Overboard

by Peter Wells

  I see this.

  We are surrounded, suspended, briefly, in space, as we climb downwards staring out.

  I squish my eyes shut.

  Into this I breathe.

  This is my home.

  Clatter of our footsteps as we fall.

  Beside us, locked doors, barred windows, boards tacked over: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Two such big heavy words falling like the judge’s gavel, clang of prison door, sharp yank of hand round the back of your shirt pulling it tight against your neck.

  Trespassers will be Prosecuted.

  ‘Do you reckon Horton might be in there?’

  I like to frill the rill of nervousness.

  Ponk jumps. For someone so big, she can be surprisingly light on her feet.

  ‘No. Ah. Why?’

  ‘He could be inside there,’ I say, authoritatively. ‘Holding a knife. Waiting to slit your windpipe. Scarlet flower.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Ponk, breathing out heavily, no longer so intrepid. ‘When he escapes.’

  For we know a mass murderer cannot be held in the bin up the road. It is as natural as the tides going in and out that he will escape.

  And come for us.

  It is only a question of time.

  A murderer cannot escape from the end of Hungry Creek. There is nowhere to go. But the same grandeur of illogic which has made him into a killer will send him down the long straight road which leads straight to our houses.

  We know this.

  Some part of us is always preternaturally waiting.

  We know he is inside the coal shed, behind the door, under the bed. He doesn’t need a key; he will simply flow out through the keyhole and come, like a lover, like a father, looking for us.

  This much we know.

  So we carefully keep an open distance between us and the locked-up hotel doors. Instead, we hear drops falling in heavy moist percussion onto a soaked floor. We listen for any difference in the soundfall.

  Nothing.

  We select some long grass and, testing it for glass or jagged tin, stretch out.

  ‘What you thinking of?’ breathes Ponky after a while.

  She is lying there, hands behind her head. Looking up at sky. She smokes a grass straw. There are times she wants to know. Like now.

  ‘Plane crashes,’ I say, looking far out to sea. Sunlight toffees us all over.

  ‘What plane crash?’ she sounds doubtful. For one moment she struggles up and looks.

  ‘O, nothing,’ I say, carefully. Then, ‘If a plane crashes … people have insurance.’

  She looks at me in silence. Waiting. I like this about Ponky. She listens and can hear things that other people don’t hear. Besides, her ears always prick up at the sound of money. Money is serious. Money is important. But money is also a trick. A conjuring trick which a magician like Uncle Ambrose can summon up. This is Uncle Ambrose, dispenser of halfcrowns, ten shilling notes, double-decker ice-creams, crates of Coca-Cola.

  ‘My parents have insurance,’ I say casually.

  ‘How much?’ she almost doesn’t say. But her voice is interested.

  ‘O,’ I say airily, looking far out to where the sea is, rolled right back to a thin line of gold. Sun is a plane crash hurtling into the distant line of the Waitaks. I watch this blinded, numbly. Looking into it sates me. Eases me. Fiery it falls, plummets, with the ease of a dream. I smile.

  ‘O, twelve thousand pounds. Six thousand each. Enough,’ I say slowly, ‘to live on for the rest of my life.’

  I will be free then.

  A small dagger runs down her face. She picks up a stone, fast.

  A braille of birds lifts up from a tree, hurls a net, flings backwards, joyously, squawking. They attach themselves to another tree which comes bird alive. Have they heard me?

  Ponk is looking right into me.

  ‘You doan know what you’re talking about,’ she says then. Seriously.

  She throws the stone far far away from us. After a long while, we hear it fall: plop! onto mud.

  A series of metallic sounds, clicking and minute whirrings, indicate crabs are quickly scuttling away.

  ‘Yes I do,’ I say quickly. I have thought about it a lot, lying in bed. It comforts me.

  Ponky picks up another stone, takes aim.

  ‘I doan know,’ I say then. My voice has a different tone, a catch. ‘They left me behind. They coulda taken me. I woulduv gone. They haven’t even written. Like they said they would.’ I don’t say, I’m abandoned. I never knew time could be this slow. I miss them. I miss her. I wish they would come back, mumndad.

  ‘It’s twelve thousand pounds,’ I say. ‘Enough to get away.’

  ‘Where would you go?’

  I think about it for a while.

  ‘Paris,’ I say. ‘Yes,’ more convinced. ‘Paris.’

  ‘Why Paris?’ she asks, interested. I might know something she might want to know. Find useful.

  ‘So I can go and see the collections. Dior. I’m going to be a famous dress designer,’ I say then. Naked. But airily. ‘One day.’

  On the ballroom floor I can almost see it. Shadows. Dior gowns. A chandelier burns.

  ‘Or an opera singer. I haven’t decided yet.’

  Ponk doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. But then this is Ponky, too. She doesn’t laugh at me, call me names, accuse me. She just listens. And if she thinks differently she keeps a John Wayne silence.

  We lie there and let the silence dissolve us. Far out to sea is a little pickpocking sound as a single tern dipducks and tries to find a pipi. We can hear its footsteps, echoing right across the bowl of the empty beach, which we know, inch by inch, every part of it, like the insides of our hand, or as if our bodies were cut open, there it would be, inside us, shaping every organ in our body.

  ‘I can’t wait for it to be summer,’ I say lying back.

  Inside the ballroom I hear a fallen drip.

  ‘We can go swimming at night again. Eh, Ponky? Full moon. King tide,’ I say, waiting for Ponky to join in, and help erect the fluttering flag of all pleasure of our agreed-upon summit. ‘We can go bottlefishing. We can do … anything. Eh, Ponk?’

  I listen.

  But she doesn’t answer.

  THE BELL HAS slung its rung and we all tauten, turn and form into patterns. I watch: across the playground, the girls thread away in a snake, to sewing class. We boys have to join up with Form IB and file off to woodwire metalhorror. Both the teachers here are unlike any other teacher I have met. Mr Adams is commandant of woodwork, and he is like Mr Brunt at church, the verger, tight-lipped, back rigid with anger, eyes little bullets spraying round the class.

  ‘A poor workman blames his tools.’

  Glue is made from horses’ hooves. I think: Auschwitz. Already I have sneaked into the library, covenant of books, and taken a look: photos of stacked skeletons, lampshade of skins, tattoo numbers. I know all this to be true. Why doesn’t anyone say it? Instead it hides inside the walls, under the floorboards, in the silences. Behind people’s eyeballs from the transit camp. I know this. It is under the tip, over the back fence, being buried. Bodies under the grader.

  Mr Blanney, the metalwork teacher, is no different. His room is down by the darkhorror creek, where the wet seeps into the wood. Shade cruels down the windows; everything in the room of metal is ice-cool to touch, you think your skin might leach onto metal and when you pull your hand away the skin is left behind.

  Mr Blanney, surrounded by the smell of solder, little blue fires burning, paces the room, angry, angry. Nobody ever knows how he will take things. He has never been known to have a pet. Going into the room is like going into death. To be his pet would be a terror. He is balding. On the top of his head are thin sheaths of hair which look like they have been fried by sitting up there, sizzling. Sometimes he is barely shaved, and then it is as if the prickles are fighting to get out of the loose folds down by his chin.

  He has no eyes.

  This is why he is so angry. He barg
es about the room, screaming with pain.

  Nothing is done well enough.

  One day he lined us up. We had to sit very still. He opened his mouth wide and, pacing back and forth in front of us, he took up each of our metalwork projects (a teacaddy spoon we are making for MUM, a toast rack, an ashtray) and, laughing deeply, bitterly, loose strands of hair flying off his balding head, he turns sharp on his heels and throws the metal pieces crashing round the room.

  Silence.

  Silence of fear, ice dripping down all our backs. Faces white, hardly a breath among us, we all change into an octopus of fright. Will he come towards one of us?

  Another piece of metal whistles through the air. Much, much later we hear it crash, dash and dribble its tears across the floor. But this is later, for in that moment we have looked into his eyes and seen there an animal from the zoo, chained. Lion-angry, pad’s sore. What makes an adult human so furious? He is not furious with us. Or rather, he is furious with us, but we are not what is before his eyes. He can see none of us.

  But wait!

  Carrot has turned half his body, awkward with pain, towards Keely. He is trying to nuzzle his body into Keely’s, out of fear. He is frightened of this spray of acid, which douses all of us, melting the flesh off our bones till we are a tiny stack of skeletons sitting there, neat, dead. Play dead, that is the only way. Pray he will go away. It will end. Everything ends in the end. I know this. Just stay there. Close your mind off. I know. I know.

  ‘Woodley!’ Mr Blanney screams into Carrot’s face. Carrot wilts down inside himself, into a pool of fear running across the floor. We all, as a body, brace.

  ‘Come here,’ whispers Mr Blanney. He is smile-smiling.

  The room is dark now. We are in Russia. Far away: everyone, every adult is far away. Nobody can help us.

  ‘I have to do this, I hate to do this, why do you make me always have to do this?’ Mr Blanney is keening. Broken veins on his forehead, a shimmer of sweat inside his eye pocket. Pupils turned inwards.

  ‘Woodley, bend over.’

  None of us breathes now, as we allow Carrot to be executed.

  Mr Blanney sings: Whywhywhy? He smiles at us all the terrifying smile of a disappointed man, one driven insane.

  I feel a start behind me: surely nobody is going to answer him? But it is knees pressed into me, shaking. We listen to Mr Blanney’s footsteps going to his drawer, in which, we know, lies the strap.

  The drawer slowly unfolds its magic.

  I see the strap, which is a thin file of leather, balancing now in Mr Blanney’s hand. He dangles it before our eyes, to emphasise its liveliness. It is living. It is this which has dictated Mr Blanney’s actions all this half-hour. It is to this he has been driving. Hard. Remorseless. He turns abruptly to us, grinning. The strap holds him.

  ‘Why do you always make me do this? You boys?’ he whispers to us, lips stretched tight, white. His eyeballs now roll in his head and skim over each of our faces, lips: but I am ice, I know how to do this.

  I can see Carrot’s face, down below. Already it is crunched into fear: this waiting is worse, as worse as the possible pain which will come. His eyes are tight. Fingers clasped white round his knees. The leather of Mr Blanney’s footsteps as he paces towards Carrot. Now a soft flow comes from the boys. Yes, we feel silently, seditiously, yes: hurt Carrot. Punish him. If you punish him, we will all be safe. For a while. But hurt him. Hurt him good. This is a terrible power, and knowledge, we all pass around amongst ourselves, silently. All of us feel shit-dirty, suddenly. But eager as crystal, sharp, pierce-point of thrill.

  Ah, Mr Blanney is now behind Carrot, his footsteps gather up their pace, a sharp intake of breath among our body; now all we boys are onebody, onebreath, onehugeeye, shining, and bulging, basketball-size. His steps run towards Carrot who, crouched, tight, scrunched still, goes blank: then the shock, I realise he has relaxed. Just before the blow, he has relaxed. I remember Whopper, Carrot’s brother, told him that (the secret message), don’t tense up, it makes it worse, it hurts worse. Just relax. I receive this miraculous wisdom at that moment.

  But Mr Blanney, swishing the strap over Carrot’s body, just whisking him with the whiplash of its wake, so Carrot, uncertain whether he has felt already the blow, or whether it is still to come, turns a tragic mask towards us: is the blow still about to fall?

  Mr Blanney has sauntered away from him. He has suddenly lost interest. He lets out one spurt of a bitter laugh.

  ‘All you fuckykids get back to your work.’ Something has snapped. Something is over. In that second, we hear clocks tick, voices outside the room, a distant gull and, beyond that, the living breath of other humans. We are back in the world. Poor Carrot, still crouched there, doesn’t know what to do. He has never been stripped so remorselessly before, for the delectation of our pupils. We all feel mysteriously happy, as if we have witnessed a miraculous event. Carrot is — momentarily — history.

  ‘Youboy, get back to your soldering.’

  This is Mr Blanney to Carrot. It is strange, his voice is almost tender; or as if he has, at last, glimpsed a far sight. Mr Blanney has returned to being inside his body. Our voices take up, thatching over the terrible silence we have just witnessed: the hole, the black hole which lies in the centre of the globe, I have seen it. I think this of the world: inside it is a black source, and the night is simply its echo. I know this.

  I say nothing. And soon, we have all forgotten it.

  ‘I KNOW,’ I say, a secret smile on the corner of my lips. Mona Lisa. I know.

  ‘Know what?’ says Winkie, coming into our conversation late.

  I press my lips together, lower my lids. If I close them just so, like curtains, they cannot get into them. But I see, sparking between Keely and Carrot, the trapeze of their glance. They hang off it, dangling. Goon-dangle.

  We are dawdling, kick-kicking our way back to our classroom. School lies in the far distance like a sleeping animal snoozing. Inside it, though, we hear the distant hum of voices. Everyone else in there is trapped, learning. We are free. We are Form One Accelerate, so clever we can walk at random, plucking learning from the air.

  Like now.

  ‘You never have,’ Carrot kicks the dust with his pickers. He has this pair of old dented winklepickers, I know, everyone knows, they are handmedowns from his brother. Whopper, also known as FuckingBigCunt. Just as Carrot is a runt his brother is a bigcunt. That is what they call him. Carrot hides under Whopper’s shadow, walks, trembling, inside his shoes. Which, natch, are several sizes too big. Sometimes, when he struts, pushing the frame of his hips forward, out, lying back on his pelvis as if he’s carrying down there some good juicy secret so great we’re all lucky to be seeing it — just then — his winkle, the twinkle of his shoe, gets caught inside a pock of dust; he sprawls forward, hands out, braced to fall, snarling as he goes. In that instant we read his face: a babyboy’s face, like our own, no longer creased into a scowl.

  ‘Heeeeeeeeeh!’ we all screel, copying him, his tribe. Not being naturally tough, we must all act so.

  Sneer.

  ‘You almost got dirty,’ says Winkie, laughing most.

  Carrot, erect now, turns back, tightens his white fist. Listen now to the air whistle all around us. Over zoowards comes a low groan from … what? The elephant mourning, calling Africa?

  ‘Moooooooaaaan,’ its hollow trumpet sings.

  Carrot’s fist is tight: pummel-tight. Air suctions round us … me. My laugh dries all fakey on my mouth.

  ‘C’mon, son,’ says Keely, Capt’n Keely taking charge of the situation. Inside Carrot’s grey-green phlegm eyes I read the comic cartoon of Whopper’s threat. We scuff along some further.

  ‘What’d you know?’ It’s Winkie again, whine-slow.

  ‘How come you know?’ His eyes graze me. Soft-slime, snail trail. ‘Who you done it with?’ This is Keelyboy.

  Inside my eyes, like an x-ray, is his head. Ever since I first saw him I ache to have his head. Shaped at the
back like a football, the perfect head. The way he carries it on his shoulders, just as if he is trotting back having scored a try. as if inside the soft moist globe of his ear he always hears a cheer. Is deafened by it. But gracious. His brown-brown eyes modestly looking down. He grins. But now is silent.

  ‘O!’ I say, then, ‘o,’ a smaller o, a tiny hole of o, hardly open. I lower my lashes again, bringing on night. I don’t want to know myself. ‘I can’t say,’ I say. I look down at my plastic shoes, rimmed with fuckmud. Plishplashy all round the soles. A new invention, plastic shoes. I don’t know whether I like them, hate them. I want pointy shoes, like Keely. Keely has new pointy-toe shoes, which I stare at longingly and silently.

  ‘Why can’t you say?’ wheedles Winkie.

  ‘He can’t say because it never ’appened. E’s makin’ it up’.

  Carrot sends a punch, lightly, scaling off Winkie’s back. Down his spine. He grabs Winkie’s creambuns and gives them a squeeze. Winkie squirts away.

  ‘Doaaaannn!’ he moan-moans. He really hates it, I can tell.

  ‘I do know!’ I cry out hotly.

  My cry comes out so loud, far away on the grass a squadron of gulls lifts up, ripples.

  A thousand eyes watch us, tense.

  ‘Come on,’ says Captain Keely, suddenlike. ‘Squadron prepare for surprise daylight mission. Take offensive position. Attack!’

  He goes, one pointy-toe after another, leading us along.

  We form behind him.

  Pearl Harbor lift-off.

  Into gullstorm.

  Now, above us, white sky gets cut into a million black pieces. Wings break the air all around us. Whirlwing.

  We run dodge-dodging the bombs-splatter.

  Screaming, us.

  Laughing with freedom, Form One Accelerate.

  CLOSER TO THE sleeping beast of school, we walk-dawdle.

  Seriously.

  Lengthening the time till we hit the wood.

  ‘What it feel like?’ barely says Carrot. Looking down at his shoescuff.