Spud - Learning to Fly

by John van de Ruit

  I now understand why Vincent van Gogh cut his ear off.

  Monday 20th January

  The atmosphere in the green Renault station wagon was at best gloomy and at worst murderous. Just before leaving home, Mom caught Dad on his stepladder peeping over the fence as our new neighbour was taking her afternoon swim. Mom accused Dad of being perverse and blamed Frank for putting funny ideas into his head. Our new neighbour goes by the name of Amber and because of her being blonde, thin and divorced, Mom has taken an instant dislike to her. Dad pleaded that he was only checking the alignment of the hedge and not being a peeping tom. Mom hasn’t spoken to him since, besides barking orders and complaining about finding a tick in the bed.

  Further bad news was that the windscreen wipers stopped working soon after driving into a huge electrical storm near Cato Ridge. Dad was livid, and kept lunging out of the window with his jersey to furiously wipe at the windscreen to improve his visibility. He then set off on a long tirade about Renault being infiltrated by commies and said that the French were spending too much time bonking and not enough time at work. Mom snorted loudly to herself but didn’t say anything else. I slipped on my Walkman and allowed David Bowie to take me back to school instead.

  Ground control to Major Tom

  Ground control to Major Tom

  Take your protein pills and put your helmet on …

  19:15 I dragged my trunk up the final stretch of Pilgrim’s Walk towards the grand old red brick buildings accompanied by the loud chorus of frogs and crickets celebrating the rain. I felt twitchy and nauseous and my trunk was heavier than I can ever remember. A thick mist had descended over the school, muffling all the sounds and the hesitant trickle of Pissing Pete standing alone and miserable in the school fountain. Once in the quad I gazed up at the second storey of the house where all the dormitory lights were blazing neon and in each window frame there was a buzz of movement. I looked along towards the third year dormitory at the far end of the building. In the first window I could see a hand repetitively bouncing a ball on a cricket bat, the second window was closed and the third revealed the outline of a very large boy eating something greedily out of an ice cream tub.

  Fatty must have seen me approaching because there was a loud bleat, and then the strident voice of Boggo shouting, ‘Hey, okes, here comes the resident house lesbian!’ There was a chorus of laughter followed by more bleating and a few wolf whistles. I pretended not to hear the mockery and heaved my trunk through the house door. Vern came galloping down like he was running away from a fire and screeched to a halt in front of my trunk at the foot of the stairs. ‘Hi, Vern,’ I said. Rain Man saluted with a flourish and shouted, ‘Spud!’ before picking up the handle on the other side of my army trunk. We carried my trunk up the stairs in complete silence and then opened the door to my new home … and a new member of the Crazy Eight.

  And there he sat, perched like a goblin on the end of his trunk, wolfing down a bar of chocolate. It soon dawned on me that everybody was munching a bar of chocolate and staring at me like I was the stranger in the dorm. The new boy jumped up and marched towards me holding out his hand. It was pleasing to see that he was a good few inches shorter than me.

  I didn’t immediately say anything because I was distracted by how pink his face was and realised that the short curly hair on his scalp was glowing like an orb in the neon light. It was so white that it looked like he had been dragged on his head across a halfway line.

  ‘Hello,’ he said with a goofy grin. ‘You must be Spud Milton.’

  ‘Hi,’ I stammered.

  ‘I thought so!’ he shouted in a high-pitched voice.

  The new boy looked thrilled that he knew who I was before I even had a chance to introduce myself.

  ‘My name is Garth Garlic,’ he said, pumping my palm with a vigorous handshake. I immediately sensed that this must be a devious Crazy Eight set-up and that I was about to embarrass myself, so I played things cool and said nothing.

  ‘I come from Malawi,’ Garlic continued. His eyes then widened into blue circular pools and he asked, ‘You ever been to Malawi?’

  I shook my head.

  Garlic looked heartbroken and his big eyes narrowed again. ‘You would love it,’ he continued. ‘Lake Malawi is the most beautiful place in the world and they don’t mind if you drink beer there under age.’

  Then he said, ‘Gee, it’s awesome to meet you, Spud Milton. I’m feeling really proud to be a member of the Secret Seven!’

  There was a shocked silence around the dorm before Fatty stepped in. With one arm around Garlic’s shoulders and eyes that were gleaming with delight, he opened a mouth full of chewed chocolate and said, ‘That’s the Crazy Eight, buddy – you probably don’t want to make that kind of mistake again …’ He then gave me a wink and announced, ‘His old man’s the MD of Nestlé Malawi.’ Fatty then swallowed greedily before saying, ‘The oke’s class.’ With that he patted the beaming Garlic on the back and returned to his cubicle where a stack of Nestlé products waited for him slap bang in the centre of his bed.

  Boggo was quite obviously sulking. Apparently Rambo had arrived early and immediately welcomed Garlic to the dormitory without discussing the matter with anyone else. Boggo and Fatty were appalled that a stranger could be installed as a fully fledged member of the Crazy Eight without passing a series of worthiness tests that ranged from burping on demand to a graphic description of the females in his family tree. When Boggo complained, Rambo accused Fatty and Boggo of behaving like twelve-year-olds and said the whole Crazy Eight thing was childish and embarrassing.

  Unfortunately for Boggo, that was the moment when Fatty discovered that Garlic’s dad was the boss of Nestlé Malawi and immediately switched sides before turning viciously on his former comrade and best friend. Boggo clearly wasn’t impressed with the way everything had gone, because he spent the rest of the evening scowling into the mirror and exploding his numerous zits into a white tissue.

  Rambo is also behaving bizarrely. He hardly said anything the entire evening and is acting like we’re all complete strangers.

  I watched Rain Man pull out his notebook and sketch a very lifelike picture of Garlic’s face. He furiously wrote GARLIC underneath the picture, and then snapped his notebook shut and slid it back under his mattress. He then crouched low on his bed and watched Garlic for the entire evening through the bars of his towel rail.

  CRAZY EIGHT HOLIDAY SCORECARD

  RAMBO Thrice bungee jumped off the 216m Bloukrans bridge.

  SIMON Spent a month living in a villa in Monaco. He says scoring girls in the south of France is like shooting fish in a barrel. Simon may have overdone the tanning a bit because he now looks weirdly orange.

  FATTY Videos, Dungeons and Dragons, computer games, eating. Etc.

  BOGGO Has come up with a deadly secret formula for scoring girls. He says it has a proven hundred per cent success rate. He later admitted that he had only tried it on one girl, who hasn’t returned his calls since the night he got stuck into her.

  SPUD The worst holiday ever. Sheer boredom, and constant arguments among his family. I told the others about violently kissing Mermaid against the fridge and may have exaggerated things slightly but didn’t mention that we’d actually broken up. I also kept Dad’s week of madness to myself.

  VERN Went to Swaziland for Christmas and brought a photograph of himself sitting on the loo and two Christmas cards to prove it.

  ROGER Unknown.

  GARLIC Lake Malawi.

  Garlic has verbal diarrhoea – after crapping on about Lake Malawi for over an hour, Boggo snapped at him and told him if he wanted to be a part of the Crazy Eight then he had to talk far less and preferably not at all. Garlic’s face flushed and tears sprang to his eyes. He then said, ‘Sorry, guys, I know I talk too much, it’s like I have a loose wire between my head and my brain sometimes and I just like say things that I’m thinking, but that I don’t really like fully mean. You know what I mean?’

  There was a paus
e and then everybody burst into laughter. Garlic was thrilled and laughed along raucously despite being the butt of the joke. Fatty thumped Garlic on the back and said, ‘What a guy!’ He then helped himself to another chocolate from Garlic’s locker and added it to his pile.

  Garlic finished laughing and said, ‘Gee, I’m glad I brought those choccies. Dad said they could come in useful if I wanted to buy a few friends …’

  We all laughed again and Garlic once again roared along with us.

  It feels weird to be back at school, in a new dormitory, and to have a stranger among us. The good news is that I have my own cubicle this year; the bad news is that I’m sandwiched between Vern and Fatty.

  Lay awake listening to Fatty snoring and Vern muttering to himself in his sleep. I waited for the night train to charge by but it never did.

  I dreamt that Mad Dog derailed the night train from Johannesburg with his catapult. I then woke up and couldn’t sleep for hours. I lay in bed thinking about how different the dormitory feels.

  I miss the Mad Dog.

  Tuesday 21st January

  6:30 Roll Call

  Norman Whiteside read out the names at the first roll call of the year. For this reason, and because he looked overly self-important, I’m backing he’s our new head of house. Boggo agreed and said, ‘The class of 1992 aren’t exactly top of the gene pool.’ He then downed his tea and strode off across the quad shaking his head and looking disgusted with life.

  Garlic and Barryl were nearly declared missing after spending roll call in the bogs. Apparently, Garlic bailed Barryl up with more talk of Lake Malawi. The shaken Barryl said it was impossible to get away from the prattling maniac, and that Garlic also looked a bit like the tokoloshe. Whiteside made a great show of giving the two a severe rebuking and a final warning. He droned on for ages about people taking liberties and disregarding school traditions. His speech attracted quite a crowd because many boys thought he was making an official announcement.

  Garlic was greatly upset that he had implicated Barryl and pleaded, ‘It wasn’t this gentleman’s fault. I was talking about Lake Malawi!’ A collective groan sounded around the bogs and the crowd began to disperse. Looks like word has already spread about the great peril of Lake Malawi.

  To add salt to the wounds, Vern gave both Barryl and Garlic a written warning for Bad Form in the Bogs and Surrounds. Garlic obviously didn’t know what was cracking because he said, ‘Hey, shot!’ and happily stashed the blue chit in the pocket of his crimson dressing gown.

  Spike has grown. In fact he looks more and more like his vermin older brother by the day. Unfortunately, he now seems to be at least a head taller than me and to make matters worse he shoulder-charged me as I passed him in the passage near the piss trough. He claimed it was an accident but didn’t apologise.

  The matrics are all walking around barking orders at people and looking prefectish. Tonight Viking will announce this year’s head of house and the 1992 prefects.

  16:45 Garlic covered his entire body in Vaseline after his afternoon shower. He then ambled around the dormitory chatting to people about Lake Malawi while stark naked and glistening. Vern thought this was hilarious, squawked with laughter and pointed at Garlic’s groin. Garlic then asked Vern if he was retarded. Vern thought this was equally hilarious and cackled away to himself before pointing at Garlic’s nuts again and shouting, ‘Spud!’ Garlic looked a little shocked and backed away to his cubicle where he hurriedly got into his clothes and scurried out the dormitory.

  20:00 House Meeting

  Viking called the first house gathering a ‘Meet and Greet’ although it would be more accurately described as a ‘Clout and Shout’. Spike farted and tried to pretend it was his chair squeaking on the floor. Tough break for him was that it stank and the entire house meeting had to be adjourned for ten minutes while the Normal Seven were ordered to fan the room with cushions and spray their deodorant. Viking conducted his first thrashing as housemaster and caned Spike with two very meaty strokes. Eventually order was restored and Runt was allowed to continue with his Bible reading.

  Viking’s introduction was conducted at the general volume of a shout. The poor first years huddled together on the floor at his feet looking genuinely terrified. I remember those days when I kept my eyes glued to the floor, cringing from everything.

  ‘This house,’ Viking declared, ‘is a complete and utter disgrace!’ He then continued with, ‘And most of you lot wouldn’t cut it in any half-baked platoon!’ I felt an elbow in my ribs before Vern’s extremely loud whisper of, ‘Half-baked Spudoon …’ His crazy sniggering was brought to a halt by Viking who boomed, ‘You clearly have something to share with the house, Blackadder?’ Vern blushed and shook his head about seven times. He then realised that everyone was watching him so he said, ‘Spud!’ There was a long pause. Clearly Vern had stumped yet another figure of authority with his rambling nonsense. Viking eventually said, ‘Yes well … um yes indeed … thank you for sharing that with us, Blackadder,’ before cranking up the volume with, ‘Now I am going to instil peace and respect in this house even if there must be bloodshed!’

  After this heart-warming welcome, Viking announced his 1992 prefects:

  HEAD OF HOUSE

  Norman Whiteside (no nickname). Whose only claim to fame is that his canoe played the title role in last year’s appalling house play. He was so excited when his name was announced, he embarrassingly punched the air with his fist and shouted, ‘Yes, please!’

  PREFECTS

  Greg Whitton (nickname Eggwhite). His dad is on the board of governors. No discernible sign of personality.

  Meany Dlamini. The school chess champion. (Hopefully he’s only called Meany because it rhymes with Dlamini.)

  Leonard Pike!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  There was uproar in the common room after the prefects were announced. The fact that Pike was coming back for post matric was thoroughly gutting. That he’s now a prefect is a catastrophe! Viking must be insane if he thinks that Pike could in any way be a good prefect? Thankfully the swine isn’t back at school yet so we didn’t have to endure the look on his smug face and his taunting threats.

  Viking congratulated the new prefects with shouted congratulations and wild slaps on the back. He then said to them, ‘My office – now!’ Rambo turned to the rest of the Crazy Eight and said, ‘My cubicle – now!’

  House Meeting adjourned.

  Upstairs Rambo ordered the windows and door shut. Fatty tried to light up incense and candles but Rambo told him to grow up and look sharp. Then Boggo, who had sauntered into the dormitory with his hands casually fondling his pockets said, ‘Oh, so now suddenly we’re calling Crazy Eight meetings again.’

  ‘All right, we’ve got a serious problem,’ said Rambo, completely ignoring Boggo’s taunt.

  ‘This place is insane,’ added Simon as he furiously bit his nails.

  ‘Talk about scaling an oke’s nuts from out of his jocks,’ agreed Fatty solemnly.

  Vern shouted, ‘Oi!’ to let us know that he wasn’t happy either.

  Rambo waited for complete silence before continuing, ‘Right, now listen up. We’ve got to box clever. We can’t have a repeat of last year.’ We all nodded back in agreement. ‘We can never get bust, never! In fact we can’t put a single foot wrong. With Viking and Pike sniffing around like detectives we’re gonna have to keep our noses clean – and I mean Omo clean …’ We all nodded solemnly again, apart from Garlic, who chuckled loudly and thought everything was great fun – a clear indication that he’s never encountered a human being as dire as Pike before.

  ‘We can’t just carry on like we’re a law unto ourselves,’ continued Rambo, now looking more in control. ‘It’s a dead end street and it’s obvious that something suspicious is going on here.’

  I wasn’t too sure what Rambo was talking about but if it meant an end to suicidal crazy missions then I’m all for it.

  ‘Oh, and another thing,’ said Rambo. ‘I’m doing away wi
th democracy. There are members of this group who don’t deserve the vote, have no judgement, and are clinically insane. That’s the reason the shit hit the fan last year.’ Vern stroked Roger forcefully and looked around deviously like he was expecting something to happen. Nothing happened.

  Rambo cleared his throat and glared at each of us in turn before saying, ‘So that is why I am taking over full control of the dormitory.’

  There was another long and awkward silence. Boggo looked like he was sucking on a lemon. Fatty eventually summoned up the courage to speak, albeit in his whiny voice. ‘So what happens if we don’t want to do what you want us to do?’ Rambo stared at Fatty for a few seconds before grinning and saying, ‘Let’s double-cross that bridge if we get to it.’ Fatty grinned back like an idiot and said nothing further.

  ‘Right,’ said Rambo clapping his hands together. ‘Let’s go meet the new boys!’ His march to the door was stopped by Simon who had clearly had enough of Rambo Stalin’s orders. ‘Okay, you’ve told us we are going to stick to the rules and stay out of trouble this year. Then in the same breath you order us to break the rules of the house.’ Boggo snorted loudly and shouted, ‘Hello – contradiction?’ Nobody moved. Rambo stared, but still nobody moved.

  It was a classic Crazy Eight stand-off.

  ‘There’s no contradiction, Boggo,’ said Rambo in an unnervingly calm voice. ‘Yes, it’s breaking the rules to touch a first year before their two weeks’ grace is up. But there’s nothing in the rules about a little meet and greet …’

  Simon shook his head and said, ‘If the prefects bust us in that dormitory they won’t ask questions.’