They Told Me I Had to Write This

by Kim Miller

  One time Mr German asked Jacko to give him two personal pronouns and Jacko just said, ‘Who, me?’ Mr German thought for two seconds and said ‘That’ll do’ and he went on to the next question for the next kid. Everybody looked at Jacko and said, ‘What?’ I think Mr German let him off the hook with that one. Probably just wanted to have an easy day.

  Somebody should make a movie! He is the most fully serious mate I’ve got.

  Clem.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 4

  MORE JACKO & OTHER STUFF

  Dear Gram

  Before you start thinking about Jacko like he’s a hooligan or something, I should tell you that in this school kids like him are pretty normal. We’ve all had a tough time in normal school and some kids can’t ever go back. I don’t think Jacko is one of those kids, but some of the kids here are really off the planet.

  There’s kids with ADHD and on Rit or Dexies like Jacko and Pete. I don’t have medication but Dad reckons I should be tested for ADHD, but I don’t think I’m really doing it like those kids who seem to run full-boost turbo most of the day.

  It’s a bit like when I was in year six with this group of boys and we’d eat a stack of Redskins at recess and then be really off for the next hour or two. We’d be doing all this crazy stuff and saying crazy things. It was pretty nangtastic at the time and we had this competition to see who could be the first to make the teacher yell at him between recess and lunchtime.

  Well ADHD kids are like that all the time, except they get it for free and we had to buy the Redskins.

  Sometimes in group we talk about this stuff and we learned about this super-heated ADHD thing called Conduct Disorder which is CD and those kids mess up their lives coz they can’t help it and sooner or later the coppers get them for something illegal. And if those kids can be kept safe from themselves then they can level out a bit and stay out of jail after all.

  One time somebody’s group camp finished up early because some kids set fire to Mr Sykes’ tent. Seems Bundy & Co. wanted to get Mr Sykes back for confiscating a placcy bag of dope so they saved up the fuel for the Trangia burner. That night they poured it over his tent and lit it up. Mr Sykes must have come fizzing out of there fit to burn them in hell.

  We were fired up in group about what to do to those guys, and Mr O’Neill asked us a question. ‘What does real justice look like? Do we chuck a teenager in jail for something like this, or can we do something different?’ It took us a bit of time but we mostly agreed that it’s better for somebody not to have been in jail coz that can really count against you.

  Drug stuff gets talked about around here, and the last time somebody got busted for dope he had to give a ‘Don’t Do Drugs’ talk at lunchtime one race day when we had a visiting team. But that’s another story and I’ve said enough.

  These guys could have burnt Mr Sykes up bad and they still did it. I was so mad. Some of the boys here can be dangerous, but most are just kids trying to keep the lid on a volcano. Emotional problems are easy to find around here and I think that is where I am.

  Another thing I have learned about is ODB which is Oppositional Defiant Behaviour which is when a boy just fights against everything. It doesn’t matter if it’s his dad or teacher or anybody, as soon as somebody asks him to do something he tells them to stick it. And ODB is what I feel like lots of the time and it is something that causes me grief.

  But emotional problems come in all shapes and sizes and most kids are running on things that have happened to them when they were little. And ADHD and CD and ODB and EP are piled up pretty high at RV.

  There’s a couple of kids whose mum or dad or both have died or they’ve been adopted or something and they don’t fit in anywhere. We’ve got one Koori kid who was adopted by a white family and they didn’t know how to look after him properly and he kept running away. There’s a Koori family who pick him up sometimes and I hope they are his relatives.

  I think I’m a bit like him and I can see how not having a mum comes up in the way I think. And sometimes I almost say stuff about that teacher in primary school but that stuff is private and I just can’t do it.

  That thing with the teacher in year five is another thing that kids here have got, like I told you about Jacko and the Little Nipper coach.

  That stuff really hurts and I don’t tell anyone coz not even Dad believed me back then. Talking about that would be too much corrosion on me. I don’t even talk about it around the campfire, but that’s when I say a lot of other stuff.

  Last time we were on camp I could even talk about Dad not having a passenger seat like I told the Rev. You know what, Gram? The other boys knew what I meant and everything. They can be really different around the campfire. It’s like this place where people understand each other.

  Mrs H says we choose between bridges or barricades. The campfire is where we build bridges.

  Your hopeful grandson,

  Clem.

  SATURDAY, JUNE 6

  ANOTHER METAPHOR BITES THE DUST

  Dear Gram

  It’s race weekend. This time with visitors.

  Sometimes we get to race a team from somewhere else, but it’s hardly ever a team from another school. I don’t know why they do it like that. Anyway, today we raced a team from the PCYC. Anything with the word police in it used to get me started, but the coppers have improved a lot since my time of trouble with them.

  We’ve raced these PCYC kids before and I was bit nervous the first time, but the coppers don’t come in uniform or anything. Some of their kids bring BMX bikes and even take them down the gully. That’s pretty crazy I reckon but those kids can be deadly reckless I tell you. But I don’t care how reckless they do it. I am going to wham into first place every time. Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser, that’s what I reckon.

  Anyway, I’m always training for the team and I mostly get picked but not always coz they’ve got to get everybody in the mix if you know what I mean. I don’t like it when I’m not in the team when I’ve done the work. And this week I got dropped, just like that. I was fully steamed when I found out, but they did this really weird thing.

  Mr O’Neill got the guys who missed the team and took them for a special group session on another part of the track. We did some follow-the-leader where we had to stay in formation and as close to the bike in front as possible and things can get pretty hairy when you do it like that for too long. And after some follow-the-leader, Mr O’Neill ran a group.

  Well, that group got pretty hot coz of the flak about not being picked in the races and Hamish said it was like waiting for his father to come and pick him up when it was his weekend but he never came. And I got really mad at his father doing that to him and you know what? Hamish got stuck into me for bagging out his dad. How weird is that? We’re in group together and he never bags anybody out.

  His dad’s just like mine and he complains when I start saying it out in the open. Not only that, but he got so angry that he started crying and then everybody else just sat and stared at us. I was fighting off something inside myself but then it got a bit weird and it was like I knew what was going on inside him. We sat there and looked at each other and said nothing. There’s too many kids in this place with all the same problems.

  So Mike, that’s Mr O’Neill, asked if there was something that somebody else wanted to say, but I was still running pretty hot. Some other kid said how his mum’s boyfriend is like a father figure and I went off about that and was yelling back at him that what this world needs is not more father figures but more fathers.

  ‘This world needs more proper dads,’ I yelled. And that shut him up, but it got others talking and some of them were as hot as I was.

  How does that happen? Do they have a factory for making dads where the mechanics in one section keep taking sickies and every dad comes out with the same bit missing? I reckon there’s a bit that the factory puts in most dads that’s like a magnet that sticks to another magnet in his son. But in this particular factory they forget to pu
t the magnet in the dad and the son has nothing to stick to no matter how hard he tries.

  I didn’t think that up in the group. I really thought that up in maths class. Well, Mr Williams was going on yada yada yadaracious about stuff I’d never heard of. I can find my way anywhere out in the bush, but in maths I can hardly find the lowest common denominator. I reckon I come from a factory where they miss out the bit that makes numbers stay in order in the kid’s brain, that’s what I reckon. It’s a simile. Or is it an allegory? I don’t know what it is but it’s the truth, I tell you.

  We got back on the bikes and took turns in this thing like in the Olympics where the leader peels off each lap and goes to the back and the second boy becomes leader and the next lap it is the same until everyone has had a turn. We had to keep as close as we dared to the bike in front and the leader had to set a pace as fast as he reckoned the pack could keep to without getting dangerous. And that is the hardest time on the track that I have ever had.

  Afterwards Mike asked us to say what position was the easiest and the hardest. I could see where he was going with this one (bit of visual speak there. Did you see it sneak past?), which was that it was probably the hardest to be in front and that’s what a dad should be doing, being in front. But that was only in my head and I didn’t say it out loud coz of Clem the Clam.

  Trouble is, that idea was not coming from anybody else and I might have got it wrong. I spoke up about the front man being like the dad but nobody thought that was what we were really doing here. So I had to really think about what Mike had asked us and he started us off again with the question.

  Most of the kids thought it was hardest to be the middle. The frontrunner gets to choose the path and there is nobody in the way. The backmarker doesn’t have to think about anybody following him so he can be a bit slack. But in the middle you have to keep your eyes on the bike ahead and you have to remember that the bike behind might ram your wheel but you also have to be his leader.

  And after all that Mike said, ‘So, what do you reckon is the dad position?’ Ha! I knew it. It’s a metaphor, Gram. There’s these dads and they are trying to follow how their dad and granddad did it. But they have to be leader to the son behind and the son might ram his dad’s back wheel if he gets too impatient.

  I reckon that is one heavy trip and Mike knew all along what was going to happen. Anyway, Mike is OK for keeping us on the track when we missed getting in the race team.

  Couldn’t believe it when he said it was time to get back coz the others would finish the BBQ. So we pumped those wheels like mad and we never cared who was leader or who was following and guess who was first back? You guessed it, not me, Hamish.

  Hamish the romantic with the moon painting light and everything, but out on the tracks you should see him ride the flat stuff. I can beat him through the trees but he gets pumping like crazy on the fire trails and so he beat everyone back to where the races were just finishing up for the morning and they hadn’t even started up the BBQ yet.

  We stood around a bit and I said to Hamish, ‘Sorry to stir you up out there.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘You were right about my dad anyway. Could have done without getting so upset, but.’

  Suddenly we were talking about girls. He’s got a one-track mind, that kid.

  Your custom-made grandson, factory finished, limited warranty, ha ha.

  Clem.

  TUESDAY, JUNE 9

  Dear Gram

  Mostly I ride alone. My tyre tracks must be all over this place.

  Was Mum that kind of person? Off by herself all the time? Even in the rain? Dad never says anything about her except to get mad at me. I reckon there’s this pile of questions that should come standard and get answered when you are born, and this is one of them. I wonder sometimes if I am like her or not. How can I tell?

  Maybe the questions will go around and around in my head and never slow up until I die. I hope not.

  When I was out riding last weekend I decided to take some of the fire trails through the national park. Sometimes there are other people there and last weekend I got stopped by the park ranger. He was riding a mountain bike and it was a beauty. Carbon fibre handlebars, full shockers, schmick looking disc brakes, and more gears than I could see without getting down and counting them.

  Anyway he waved me down and I was a bit scared coz that’s never happened before. But he just asked, ‘How are you going, mate?’

  I said, ‘OK.’

  Then he asked, ‘You from round here?’

  How could I answer that? I didn’t know if I should tell him I was from the school or not and I got stuck on that and he said, ‘Are you OK?’

  I said, ‘Yeah I’m OK. I’m Clem and I’m from Rocky Valley.’

  ‘You’re pretty lucky to have that race track,’ he said. ‘I ride it sometimes and it’s a great track.’

  ‘You are lucky for having a job to ride a mountain bike around the national park.’

  ‘I love this job. I get to check the fire trails and make sure people don’t come in with cars or motorbikes.’ And we talked about his bike which has twenty-seven gears and those disc brakes were hydraulics.

  I was nervous but that bloke was OK in the end. He only wanted to talk mountain bikes. I get edgy when other people ask who I am.

  So I need to know what Mum was like. If I am like her then I probably don’t have to be like Dad. And you know what I don’t want more than anything? I mostly don’t want to be like Dad.

  Thoughtful and lonely,

  Clem.

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10

  Dear Gram

  You know when I was little you were the only person I could talk with properly. I didn’t know it back then, but I know it now. I suppose that’s why, when the Rev reckoned I should write stuff, I started to write these letters to you.

  What makes it so hard to talk to people anyway? I loved the way you listened back then. It was so good just to be a little kid with his gram. I would give anything to go back to being that all over again.

  At this school people listen, most of them. I think I’ve even learned to listen a bit. What I mean is that sometimes I really get the feel of what another kid is saying, especially in group when we are all into the flow of it. Sometimes there is this buzz inside me and I’m glad to be there and I can talk easily and listen easily. And when that is happening I know that what I say is making sense and I understand what the others mean.

  Sometimes though, Clem the Clam takes me over and I don’t want to talk. You know what I’ve figured out about that? I’ve figured out that I talk the best when I know that the other person cares about me, that’s what I’ve figured out, and nobody ever cared about me like you did. I remember one teacher way back somewhere who used to say that getting me to talk was like opening an oyster with a bus ticket. Well what I reckon is, you can open a clam with a bit of listening. My bit of talk for the day.

  Clem.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 12

  THE FUNERAL, THE CLAM & THE BUS TICKET

  Dear Gram

  I’ve been thinking about the oyster and the bus ticket and that put me in mind of when they did the funeral for you and I didn’t go.

  I just knew that I would have to talk to people and they would talk to me, or Dad would say something, or he wouldn’t say something, and I just didn’t know what to do or how to handle it. So we were getting dressed for the church and I picked a fight with Dad and when he was angry enough I went yelling out of the house and grabbed my bike and rode away from there until I was lost in the traffic. Didn’t even look back.

  Dad must have been pretty worked up but I am only just starting to see it. I knew he would have to go to the funeral and not come after me. I sure left him carrying the can that day.

  But what he didn’t know is that I rode around and around until I got to your place. And then I went into the backyard and hid my bike between the bushes and the shed and I climbed up into my tree house and hid there. And the funeral was happening and I
wasn’t there.

  I stayed in the tree house looking at the back door and I knew the time would come when you would call out for me to come in for tea like you always did. But you didn’t call. No matter how long I waited.

  Dad came looking for me and was calling around the yard but I was not going to answer, no way, and then he kind of drooped onto the back step. He sat there looking up at the tree house for ages. I thought he must have seen me but I was in a war zone and I was not going to lose this one. When it finally got dark he left.

  I knew that you wouldn’t come calling out for me but still I waited for you to do it. Nobody could see me crying and somehow I went to sleep until the cold woke me up in the dark. I sat and shivered until the morning when you always opened up the back door. I knew it wasn’t going to happen but I waited anyway.

  When the time for opening the door was gone, I got down from the tree house and rode home and didn’t say anything to Dad. I knew that I was as closed up as an oyster and all Dad had was a bus ticket. That is why you didn’t see me at the funeral.

  Three years later and I still hate myself.

  Clem.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 19

  Dear Gram

  It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here at home.

  It’s not really home. It’s just a house and sometimes I’m here and sometimes Dad is here and sometimes we are both here. Even if we’re both here we don’t share the same space. How do I even get close?

  So I’m sitting here waiting for some mercy to come my way. And it’s Friday night. How bad is that?

  Anyway, I got this buzz of something inside me and I can’t make it sit still long enough to understand it. All I know is that here I am in Dad’s house and it’s not really my place and not really my time. Well, my time better not be too far off. And that’s it for Friday.