Burning Boy (Penguin Award Winning Classics), The

by Gee, Maurice

  She sat on a mat of needles and looked down the paddock, over the orchard, to the house. John and Duncan were setting up one of the telescopes on the lawn. They must be going to do some sun-watching. She hoped John had warned the boy not to look directly, then put that worry out of her mind. Duncan would know. He had brought out John’s binoculars and was looking down the valley – perhaps over the plains, over Saxton, at the mountains of the Armitage, lovely clean-limbed Imrie with the gleaming mica face, and jagged Corkie where the aeroplane had crashed in the winter. She wondered if the glitter on a ridge was part of it. One of her girls had died in the crash. When you had nine hundred girls the deaths came all too frequently.

  Sheryleen Cato was the child’s name, a first year preppy. Norma had not known her well but had studied the class photograph later on, and saw a bright-eyed face with pointed nose, a beetle blackness, beetle sheen, in her hair, and a happy shyness on her mouth – all smashed to pieces on a mountain-side. Five died in that crash, pilot and family, and Norma tried to see a flashing away of souls, like shards of glass, to some bright home, but could not make the figure, and came back to the thing she knew – child grinning at the camera. Loss and pain, she thought, that’s what we’re equipped to know, not happy futures or eternal life. She sometimes tried to put the child’s few years into a sum, add them to the total of human experience, as though increase made a sort of meaning, no matter how short the life had been. But that left her out, that Sheryleen, and meaning went flashing off to nowhere, like those bright souls she could not see. The only thing to do, she thought, is grieve until you stop, and then go on with what comes next.

  She looked back at the house and found Duncan watching her. She was, at once, violently angry. How dare he watch? With those strong glasses he must have seen her thoughts upon her face. She made a chop with her arm, turning him away; and, yes, he had been watching, for he swung the glasses in a new direction.

  Rotten boy, with that way of gobbling down whatever he could find. She felt that he had taken Sheryleen. She moved into the pines, climbed a little hump that hid the house from view, and came down to the paddock edge again, into sunlight. She sat, then lay, on pine needles, feeling their elasticity. The tree-heads seemed to rotate and their movements increase. That, she thought, was caused by passing cloud wisps in the sky. There was no promise of rain in those clouds, no rain in sight anywhere. (No rain since those October storms five weeks ago.) The stars would shine for Duncan tonight and he could suck them one by one like sweets and add them to the sum of himself.

  She folded her hands under her breasts and closed her eyes and let herself drift to the place Josie Round called the plateau. Edges slipped, events, both imaginary and real, ran into one another, then grew thin and distant, went away, leaving her without any substance, and her consciousness without any weight. She sometimes came back frightened – by what, she could not say – but usually was refreshed and leaped up as though from a plunge in some cool stream. She wondered if, simply, the trivialities of her daily life, all the dust and muck of her feelings, were somehow put off like a skin. But being fresh, shouldn’t she remember where she had been? And what caused the fear she sometimes woke with – came back shrinking with, terrified to move in case she might be noticed, in case an eye might slowly turn on her? Did she visit some good part of herself, and then – thank God, less frequently – visit a bad?

  On this day, in the pines, Norma drifted a little way, then slept; and was woken by the shadow of John Toft falling on her. She sat up with a cry, not knowing him or the world.

  John apologized for frightening her. ‘I have never seen you wake, Norma. It is a very naked thing.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  He sat beside her. ‘How tiny and fragile you are. How thin the margin between sleep and death.’

  ‘It would be nice not to wake. But then …’

  John laughed. ‘Ah, you have your double vision still. One of your eyes sees dark, the other light.’ He lay on his back and sighted up a tree at the sky. ‘This boy, he is unusual. I don’t know if I can work him out.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Down at the house. He reads some books, then looks at the sun, then reads some more. I think he is like a dog and doesn’t know when to stop eating.’

  ‘Have you tried him out to see if he remembers?’

  ‘No, I’ll take your word. The problem is, as you say, to turn it into some useful course.’

  ‘He won’t go back to school. And he doesn’t want a job.’

  ‘Jobs are a long way off, I think. Perhaps he will never have a job.’

  ‘But he must. We can’t just let him opt out.’

  ‘You are talking like a teacher.’

  ‘That’s what I am. And I’m not going to let a good brain go to waste. Anyway, you said “useful” yourself.’

  ‘I meant useful to himself. So he can turn from, what shall we say, acquisition? Turn to interest. Turn to enjoyment. Otherwise, I think, he will reach an end one day and close his eyes and die.’

  ‘Ah, you’ve seen it too. All he’s doing is filling himself up. Does he like the sun?’

  ‘I think it has a special taste for him. But it’s no great thing. “The size will crush you,” I said. “And the distance will make you smaller than an atom. You must not try too hard to take possession because you cannot hold even a small piece of it all.” He said: “Aw, that’s easy. Ninety-three million miles, that’s easy.” ’ John laughed. ‘And as for size – he turns it in his hand like a tennis ball.’

  The image of the sun slides off the screen but the movement is the movement of the earth. Duncan smiles. Easy, easy. And zooming right down from huge to tiny, easy too – thousands of kilometres an hour down to this. A tortoise could go faster. He laughs. There’s no need any more to fill huge spaces. All he needs to do is set up lines back to himself. ‘Make leaps,’ Mrs Sangster has said, ‘you don’t have to walk heel to toe all the way’ – and it looks as if she’s right. He can make a kind of web in the world, a web in space, and sit in the middle – he doesn’t mind ‘like’ any more – like a spider.

  He puts the lens cap on the telescope and pauses to look at the instrument. The finder-scope is set in the main tube at an angle. That means mirrors inside, bending rays of light in a new direction. Interference, pressure, influence. His interest in levering and bending is coming back. And light – he blinks at the sun – must have the greatest influence of all. Does it have weight? There must be tons and tons of it pouring out of the sky. If you could concentrate it, bring it all together in one place … And does it have a sense of its own speed? Is speed a thing that happens to light or a part of it?

  Duncan is not ready for that. Hard vibration starts in his mind. He picks up the binoculars and looks at the pines and the stillness and the darkness relieve him. He goes into the apple trees and walks in the shade. A track of bent grass leads to the top of the orchard. He sees where Mr Toft followed Mrs Sangster. They’re somewhere in the forest, and maybe they want to be alone. That amuses him. Two old people like fourth-formers in love.

  He finds a place where he can straddle the wires. The grass is fat, with heavy heads of seed, though farmers are complaining they need a week of rain for a good hay crop. It’s great, he thinks, how seasons come and go all because the Earth is tilted on its side. If it was straight there’d be no cycle of things and no life. It all started because of an accident, the way the Earth was lined up with the sun. Millions to one against, that was the odds, which was why people thought there must be God. He cannot see the need for God himself – chance was an OK explanation. And when you thought of the number of galaxies out there, it must have happened thousands of times, so there could be thousands of races with brains as good as ours in the universe. If you believed in God you had to believe human beings were the only ones.

  Duncan is happy, he’s elated. He walks up the paddock to the pines and goes a little way into the shade and sits with his back against a trunk. Tre
es go off in every direction, side by side. His mother thinks, or says she does, that plants can be happy or afraid. He doesn’t believe it. His mother likes to play games, that is all. But he’s fascinated by the identity of each one, the chance of its being here, right here, and its atoms and molecules being here, not somewhere else. He looks at his hand and has a strong sense of his good fortune in having it – in being alive, in being himself – and is possessive, jealous of his identity.

  Mrs Sangster and Mr Toft walk by in the paddock. She’s holding on to him like his wife, though it makes his other arm go kind of stiff. Stella and Bel would love to hear she’s got herself a man, and so would Tom, but Duncan won’t tell. He hears her voice, which seems too neat and sing-song for the country: ‘I’ve been thinking about a girl who died in a plane crash. One minute she was alive and happy and the next … And Duncan’s friend, alive, then dead. And Duncan with his burns, all in a moment. For no reason …’

  Duncan curls his lip. Of course there was a reason, Wayne did something dumb. Mrs Sangster got easily worked up and that made her thick about some things. With all the stuff she knew you’d think she’d be a bit smarter and not worry about what couldn’t be changed.

  Duncan watches them walk down the paddock. They sink into the slope until their heads are floating like two balls on the sea, and those go down and nothing’s there. It seems like a message to Duncan. It seems to say people can be gone and it will make no difference to him. People can be emptied from his life and he won’t care. The warm, yellow paddock is left. The sun and sky are left. And he’s left here; and he’s enough. He can let people move from left to right, or right to left, across his mind and not be touched. He can, of course, touch them if he likes and use them for some fun if he likes – but there’s no need. ‘Whee!’ he says softly to himself. He’s a little alarmed. He wonders if there’s something he has missed – some bit of danger he can’t see. But he puts the binoculars up and looks at the sky and swings across: nothing there. He lowers them and looks at the valley. Most of the orchard is out of sight, but a farm stretches down to the plain. In a paddock by the creek a girl is jumping a pony over a white-painted log on a trestle. She could die too, any minute, fall off and break her neck, but right now she’s alive and having fun. He watches her through the binoculars, sees her teeth grin as she goes over, and her helmet jog crooked on her head. It’s a school friend of Bel’s, Kirsty something – Davidson. She puts up a hand, straightens her helmet, pats her pony on the neck, then spits, a long one, curving, and jerks round to see no one’s watching her. I’m watching, Duncan grins. He doesn’t mind telling Bel that her friend spits.

  He walks away from the orchard, past a fire-break separating the pines from native bush. A bell-bird calls from up the hill but Duncan goes down, throwing his arms round trees to keep his feet. The creek in the gully is almost dry. He crosses it with a leap and climbs to a clearing by the road. A car is parked alongside a picnic table and a woman lies on a rug with a straw hat shading her face. Duncan, standing in the bush, is interested in the way the weight of bone in her legs spreads her muscles out and how her breasts flatten with their weight. If we walked on four legs, he thinks, our muscles would have a different shape and our bones would bend in different ways. He looks at her husband playing with two children further off. It’s a game his father and Bel used to play, but this man isn’t half as good as Tom. He doesn’t show his teeth and hook his fingers and make a meal when he catches a child. ‘What’s the time, Mr Wolfie?’ cries the girl. ‘Half past three,’ the man drones, pacing along. ‘What’s the time, Mr Wolfie?’ says the boy. ‘A quarter to four.’ Pathetic. ‘It’s time I got my file and sharpened my teeth,’ Tom would have said. All the same the children are in a state of fright and when the man cries, ‘Dinnertime,’ and gallops after them they scream more with terror than enjoyment and the boy is almost in tears as he runs into his mother’s arms. The boy is the favourite, Duncan sees. His father has chased him twice in a row.

  ‘Yum yum,’ the man says, eager now. He pulls the child from its mother and bites it on the stomach.

  ‘Me, Daddy, me,’ the girl screams.

  ‘That’s enough,’ the mother says, and turns half away in disapproval. Sees Duncan. Her eyes dilate and her mouth drops open. She’s caught between breaths and can’t make her lungs work. Duncan thinks, turned her into stone.

  ‘Dan,’ she says, ‘Dan,’ reaching up and hooking her fingers in her husband’s belt.

  The man puts the boy down, steps at Duncan, lifts his arm as though chasing off a dog.

  Bugger you, Duncan thinks. He comes out of the bush and strolls by. ‘Bird-watching,’ showing his binoculars. ‘There’s bell-birds and grey warblers in there.’ The boy has a bite-mark and saliva on his stomach. I might have saved his life, Duncan thinks. He winks at the girl, making her squeak.

  ‘Come here, Gail,’ the mother cries.

  Duncan walks backwards two or three steps. ‘Don’t let them play with matches,’ he smiles. Then he goes on down the dirt road towards the orchard, shading his face from the sun.

  Turned her into stone. Bloody good.

  11

  Shelley walked through the right-of-way. She was on her way to visit Neil Chote but not even Hayley knew that. Hayley rode her bicycle close behind, with her swimming togs and towel on the carrier. She was heading up the river to Freaks’ Hole (so named in the sixties when a tribe of hippies camped under tent-flies on the bank and scandalized Saxton by swimming without togs). Hayley hoped to meet her boyfriend Gary Baxter there.

  As they entered the turning-bay an old lady ran from her door. ‘Girls,’ she cried, ‘come and help me please. Ken has fallen down the stairs.’

  ‘Who’s Ken?’ Shelley said.

  ‘My husband. He put his stick on the wrong step.’

  ‘Is he hurt? Do you want a doctor?’

  ‘I just need someone to help me get him up the stairs.’

  ‘OK,’ Shelley said.

  Hayley leaned her bike on the fence. They followed the woman into the house and saw an old man in a dressing-gown lying on the carpet. He was mooing like a cow and waving a big walking-stick around. A broken vase of flowers lay halfway down the stairs and a scent of freesias filled the hall.

  Shelley squatted beside the man. ‘Anything bust?’

  ‘Now Ken, don’t hit, she’s come to help,’ the woman said.

  Hayley tried to take the stick away but the man held on. ‘Too many women.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ Shelley said. ‘Let’s get you up the stairs, eh? Grab his arm, Hayley.’

  Although he looked big in his thick gown the man was light. They lifted him and made him take a step.

  ‘Ha, pretty girls. Let’s dance a rumba.’

  ‘Behave yourself, Ken,’ the woman said. She put her hands on his back and tried to push him up.

  ‘Don’t need you, old girl. Damn it,’ he dropped his stick, ‘the world’s going round and round.’

  He had the smell of something going off, cabbagy and meaty. One side of his face grew silver whiskers and the other was shaved, making him look broken in half.

  ‘He’s got my leg. Ow, shit!’ Shelley cried.

  The old man had her thigh in one long paw and was digging in. The woman said, ‘Be good, Ken,’ but Hayley saw he was holding on, not attacking Shell. She tried to help her sister break the grip and got the hand away after a moment. ‘I’ll have fucking bruises,’ Shelley said.

  ‘Oh my dear, you shouldn’t swear.’

  ‘It wasn’t your bloody leg.’ There were tears of pain in Shelley’s eyes.

  ‘Let’s just get him up, eh?’ Hayley said. ‘Got him, Shell?’

  They levered him into a sitting-room and guided him backwards into a chair. ‘Throned,’ he cried. ‘My stick, wife, bring my stick.’ The woman fetched it from the stairs.

  ‘I just about cut my foot on that bloody vase,’ Shelley complained.

  ‘You should wear shoes. No Ken, don’t hit. Stay o
ut of range, girls. He’s very pleased to see you but he gets excited. Oh, it’s nice you’ve called. We don’t have enough visitors. Sit down. No, the sofa, Ken did some wets on the chair.’ She started for the kitchen. ‘I’m going to make a cup of tea for us all.’

  ‘I don’t want tea. God, it stinks of piss round here. I’m going,’ Shelley said.

  ‘I want to wash my hands.’

  ‘Me too.’ They went into the kitchen. The woman was plugging in the kettle. Shelley and Hayley rinsed their hands at the sink.

  ‘One of you girls put some peanut brownies on a plate.’ She had thin legs and heavy humped-up shoulders and cushiony breasts. If she fell over, Hayley thought, they’d have to get a crane to hoist her up.

  ‘We’ve got to go. Can’t stay for tea,’ Shelley said.

  ‘Oh, what a pity. Ken will be disappointed. You must let me give you some money for an ice-cream. In that tin, dear. No, not that, that’s Ken’s treasure trove, the other one.’

  Shelley closed the first biscuit tin and opened the next. It was half filled with ten and twenty and fifty cent coins.

  ‘Take a handful, we’ve got far too much. And you must let me give you a bag of peanut brownies.’

  They went back through the sitting-room.

  ‘Who the hell let you in?’ cried the man.

  ‘Come and see us again,’ the woman said. ‘And next time you must have a cup of tea. Ken enjoyed your visit.’

  At the corner Shelley dropped the paper-bag of cookies over a fence. They counted their handfuls of silver and had more than three dollars each. Shelley laughed. ‘Money for an ice-cream, shit!’ She did not tell Hayley about the notes in the other tin – five hundred dollars at least, maybe a thousand. There were orange and red notes at the bottom, underneath a fat stack of green. And Hayley had no time, before she and Shelley went different ways, to mention the photograph of Mrs Sangster she’d glimpsed on the dining-room sideboard, and the wrinkled ghost of her in the old lady’s face.