Spud - Learning to Fly

by John van de Ruit

  ‘To tell you the truth, Pike,’ replied Boggo, ‘we never thought you’d pass matric.’

  Pike let out a raucous fake laugh and then spat a greeny at Boggo.

  Despite Boggo’s snapped knee ligaments, he nimbly managed to duck down behind his locker and the missile landed safely on the curtain instead.

  Pike snorted dismissively, and with a terrible grin said, ‘I’m gonna pick you sorry bastards off, one by one, until there’s no one left! And even better, it’s legal because I’m a prefect.’

  ‘You’re a prefect?’ cried Garlic in astonishment.

  ‘Who the fuck are you, pink face?’ demanded Pike.

  ‘I’m Garlic,’ replied Garlic.

  ‘Yeah, well I’m sweet basil so lick my arse,’ snarled Pike.

  ‘You’re nothing!’ shouted Simon, unable to keep himself under control any longer.

  Pike sneered and said, ‘Well, if I’m nothing then I’m not here and if I’m not here, then that means you miserable fanny farts are talking after lights out. I’ll see you all in Viking’s office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  Eggwhite tried to persuade Pike that he was being a little unreasonable but Pike shouted, ‘Shut up, dick-weed!’ and marched out of the dormitory. Eggwhite dithered for a moment before following Pike and gently closing the door behind him.

  There was a long silence before Rambo spoke again in his low psychopathic voice. ‘I told you to say nothing, but it looks like we’re going to have to learn the hard way.’

  He didn’t say any more and the dormitory fell into a cold silence.

  Bring on tomorrow.

  Saturday 25th January

  BAD DAY BLUES

  1) Pike told Viking that he caught us running amok after lights out.

  We denied everything and said that Pike had set us up and the whole thing was a conspiracy. Pike then swore on his mother’s life that we were ‘running amok’ last night. Viking believed Pike and thrashed us viciously and with much relish.

  2) The third team coach (Norm Wade) doesn’t believe in spinners. He told me this as I was measuring my run-up for my bowling trial. After the batsman missed the first five deliveries of my over he then managed to snick the final ball between the keeper and first slip for a lucky four. Norm Wade gave me back my cap and told me that I was far too expensive and that he had seen enough of my bowling. He then drew a sharp line through my name on his clipboard before calling Stinky to take my place.

  3) I was fielding on the boundary when my attention was caught by a green station wagon roaring up Pilgrim’s Walk in the direction of the first team field. After about twenty minutes I heard loud hooting and then the station wagon roared back down Pilgrim’s Walk and disappeared through the main gates. Ten minutes later, the same vehicle sped back through the gates and raced up Pilgrim’s Walk again towards the main field. Despite my cap being pulled down low over my eyes, I couldn’t help but notice the station wagon steaming back down Pilgrim’s Walk a mere five minutes later. I caught a glimpse of Dad staring grimly ahead and Mom with her head in her hands.

  A terrible feeling of doom swept over me and I dropped an easy catch. Norm Wade made another note on his clipboard.

  When I returned to the house Runt came running up to me and said, ‘Hey, Spud, I heard your dad decked Sparerib.’ I stumbled into the common room and was met with loud applause and wolf whistles from a small but lively crowd. Everyone seemed thrilled that my father had attacked our former housemaster.

  ‘Sparerib has been rushed to hospital,’ said Boggo and added, ‘The dude is FUBAR!’ He then took a huge swig of tea and continued doodling on the front page of the house newspaper.

  ‘What’s FUBAR?’ demanded Garlic, appearing suddenly at the door. Boggo ignored Garlic and added the final touches to his ink sketch of a dog with a penis for a nose.

  ‘What’s FUBAR, Spud?’ repeated Garlic, his eyes spread wide with curiosity.

  ‘It means Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition …’ said Pike, swaggering into the common room and giving Garlic a healthy shove into the wall. Pike snorted at me and said, ‘Nice one, scrotum face. You can’t make seconds so you send in dad to beat up the coach! Classy.’

  I bit my lip and said nothing.

  Pike grinned at me with malicious eyes before announcing, ‘See what happens when you let in the white trash …’

  I figured this wasn’t the best time to attack a prefect so I walked out instead and slammed the door impressively behind me.

  Thankfully, bush telegraph has completely cocked up the story. According to Simon (who was at least there), my father had a heated argument with Sparerib during the morning tea break, and the two men had both pushed each other. Simon said it was Fatty and Boggo who had started the rumours of the punch-up. The good news is that Sparerib wasn’t injured and certainly isn’t lying FUBAR in hospital. The bad news is that after the argument Dad drove off in a furious rage, hooting his horn, and flashed Sparerib the middle finger through the driver’s side window.

  He then had to return five minutes later because he had driven off without Mom, who had gone into hiding when Dad blew his top.

  17:15 I called home to find out what was going on. My mother said she had been forced to lock Dad in the garage because he was completely out of hand. According to Mom, my father’s convinced that Sparerib has it in for me.

  17:30 Dad called and apologised for attacking my former housemaster. It was all a bit weird because he sounded like he was reading me a pre-written apology. My suspicions were confirmed when he abruptly stopped and took a long pause, before rebuking Mom for her poor handwriting. Once the badly read apology was finished it immediately sounded like Dad wasn’t at all sorry about attacking goblin man. In fact the only thing he said he regretted was that he didn’t finish Sparerib off when he had the chance. Dad reckons there’s a conspiracy against ‘us’. He says it’s because the teachers and parents are all snobs and are victimising me because Dad doesn’t drive a Mercedes-Benz and look like a ponce. He called Sparerib a squint-eyed little bureaucrat and declared that the entire school was corrupt to the core.

  He then said he had to call Sparerib to apologise, told me to hang tough, and rang off.

  Thanks, Dad.

  Rambo cancelled his dormitory meeting because he said there’s a rumour circulating that Pike has bugged the dormitory. We agreed instead to meet him at the old gates at 1pm tomorrow for further updates.

  Sometime in the night Roger jumped onto my bed and repeatedly tried to sleep on my face. He eventually gave up and crashed in my armpit instead.

  Sunday 26th January

  Thank God it’s Sunday.

  At least I can keep a low profile and not have to talk about the fight. Hopefully, Dad apologised and it’s now all blown over.

  12:30 The Crazy Eight gathered at the house bench waiting for one o’clock and for Rambo to make his appearance.

  12:40 Darryl (the last remaining) approached us, looking more than a little shifty. He eventually produced an envelope from his shirt pocket and handed it over to Boggo. He then galloped back to the safety of the common room. Boggo ripped open the unmarked envelope and we all leaned in to read the contents of the mysterious letter:

  Clearly you bird brains have no idea how to look natural! Why not just announce to the entire house that you’re up to something? Immediately do as follows:

  Simon, Boggo and Fatty stay on the bench and talk about chicks.

  Spud report to the dormitory with his diary.

  Vern and Roger to the bogs for a thorough inspection.

  Garlic to the common room to talk about Lake Malawi.

  PS Make sure Vern doesn’t do anything retarded!

  We tried to disperse in a normal fashion, but it was impossible to stop Vern from behaving abnormally. The fact that Rambo was watching us from somewhere meant that Vern became instantly preoccupied with discovering his whereabouts. He slunk around the cloisters and even peeked inside the big dustbin outside the library
. Eventually, Boggo lost patience with Vern’s skulking around like a detective, marched through the house door and trumpeted, ‘Fire in the bogs! Fire in the bogs!’ Vern galloped into the house like his life depended on it and didn’t emerge until 12:59.

  THE FINAL MEETING

  After about half an hour of hanging around at the old gates, it looked like the big meeting wasn’t going to happen after all. It was only then that I spotted a piece of paper stuck right in the middle of the rusty old school gate. It read:

  Cross the railway line, pass the dam on the left, and then search for the biggest tree you can find.

  PS Tell Fatty to move his fat ass!

  The piece of paper was stuck over a faded old gate inscription that read:

  Quit ye like men

  We started running immediately, with Boggo blaming everybody but himself for the series of blunders that we’d made in the past hour. Then Rain Man fell into the dam after trying to overtake Fatty on a tight bend on the footpath. Vern’s shorts were soaked and his left thigh was badly grazed but he didn’t seem to care and kept running along with us in a deranged fashion.

  Rambo was livid when we turned up so late, but made no mention of Vern being drenched and bleeding. We sat down in the shade of a towering pine tree and caught our breath. Rambo lit a cigarette but didn’t offer anyone else one.

  ‘I think we can all agree we have a problem here,’ began Rambo once everyone had settled down. We all nodded in agreement. ‘The problem,’ he continued, ‘is that the problem is more of a problem than you know.’

  ‘You mean it’s a conspiracy?’ panted Fatty.

  ‘A conspiracy?’ gasped Garlic.

  ‘Yeah, Garlic, just like your mother shagging the gardener and you being the last to know,’ spat Boggo, fed up with Garlic’s constant questions and interruptions.

  Rambo said it was obvious that Sparerib had chosen the house prefects for this year and not Viking. This means Pike wasn’t chosen by Viking to keep the peace – he was chosen by Sparerib to start a war!

  ‘His final parting shot,’ said Rambo.

  ‘Well, you did repeatedly bonk his wife,’ reasoned Boggo.

  ‘You bonked Sparerib’s wife?’ boomed Garlic and immediately blushed red.

  ‘Both ways,’ added Boggo proudly.

  Rambo ignored the interruptions and continued with his theory. ‘Pike’s living in the post matric residence – why would anybody even want him around the house, except to stir up shit?’ Rambo lit up another cigarette and said that Pike is planning on using his brother and the Normal Seven as live bait to lure us into making a mistake. ‘The moment one of us loses our cool, we’ll get hammered.’

  Rambo glared at us with dark eyes as black as the night and said, ‘Viking could be our only hope. From what I know he’s neutral … at least for the moment. That’s why we can’t afford to get bust or tempted or tricked. The more shit we get into, the lower our shares with Viking and the less chance we have of surviving this.’

  ‘It’s just like a movie,’ said the delighted Garlic, who clearly still hasn’t grasped the seriousness of the situation.

  ‘I’m going to create a plan to get rid of Pike,’ said Rambo in a solemn voice and then dragged deeply on his cigarette. ‘Information will be on a need to know basis,’ he continued, with large clouds of smoke pouring out his mouth. ‘There will be no more meetings and nobody is to even talk about Pike unless it’s to me.’ There was a pause. Rambo exhaled again and said, ‘This is it, the end of the road for the Crazy Eight.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘So we won’t know the plan then?’ said Boggo eventually, with a grim look and a raised eyebrow.

  ‘You’ll know nothing until it happens,’ replied Rambo. ‘You may even know nothing after it happens.’

  ‘So you don’t trust us?’ whined Fatty, looking dreadfully disappointed with the way things were turning out. ‘I thought you said it was one for all.’

  ‘I don’t trust anyone any more,’ replied Rambo and lit yet another cigarette. ‘I’m going it alone.’

  ‘Jeez, talk about a kick in the nuts,’ muttered Boggo, who looked enraged yet heartbroken.

  There was another long pause before Fatty spoke in a pathetic voice. ‘Can we at least call ourselves the Crazy Eight?’

  Rambo shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Suit yourself.’ He then stood up and said that he had to spend time alone working on his plan. He strode off before anybody could say anything and disappeared into the pine forest.

  While the rest of the former Crazy Eight spent the afternoon complaining about Rambo and his strange behaviour, I lay on the grass, gazed up at the sky and felt immensely relieved that I wouldn’t be roped into a suicidal plot to de-prefect Pike or something worse. Life around here is stressful enough without starting a civil war with a psychopath.

  Back in the dormitory, Rambo blared U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday from his ghetto blaster.

  I won’t heed the battle call

  It puts my back up

  It puts my back up against the wall …

  Monday 27th January

  A carefully handwritten note mysteriously appeared on the house notice board just before dinner, inviting third years to join up for Anglican confirmation classes. I’m not so sure if Reverend Bishop’s title ‘Become God’s Sheep!’ was the best way to attract people to the church.

  Boggo announced at dinner that he and Fatty have already signed up for Reverend Bishop’s confirmation classes. He chewed away at a leg of roast chicken and said, ‘If you don’t get confirmed you may as well kiss your chances of being a prefect goodbye.’ Fatty grunted in agreement because his mouth was too full to speak. Eventually he swallowed and said, ‘Over ninety per cent of prefects have been confirmed Anglicans. It’s a proven fact.’ He then speared one of Garlic’s roast potatoes with his knife and stuffed it in his mouth.

  ‘You do the maths,’ said Boggo and looked around in a smug fashion.

  There was a long pause before Simon said, ‘Hey, Boggo, aren’t you meant to be Jewish or something?’

  Boggo swallowed hard before saying, ‘Me, Jewish? Nah.’

  There was another long pause before Simon spoke again, this time with his mouth curled in a slight sneer, ‘Ja, but your name’s Greenstein.’

  ‘Your name’s Greenstein?’ bellowed Garlic in surprise.

  ‘Come on, Boggo,’ said Rambo. ‘What’s the story? There’s nothing wrong with being Jewish. Hey, it’s not like any of us are German!’

  ‘My mom’s half German!’ confessed Garlic to absolutely no response whatsoever.

  ‘I’m not Jewish,’ repeated Boggo in a low voice without looking up from his food. ‘My great-great-great-grandfather was, but I’m not.’

  ‘He’s not even circumcised,’ agreed Fatty as he spread tomato sauce over his roast potatoes.

  ‘So what?’ demanded Rambo.

  ‘So,’ said Fatty, ‘all Jewish okes are circumcised – it’s common knowledge.’

  ‘So that means Spud is Jewish then,’ said Simon, pointing at me accusingly with a fork.

  ‘Spud’s Jewish?’ repeated Garlic in an excessively loud voice.

  I didn’t like the direction in which the conversation was moving so I floored my glass of milk and left the table as casually as possible.

  Tuesday 28th January

  Raining. All cricket practices have been cancelled for today so still no idea what team I’ll be playing for on Saturday.

  The father and son golf day is becoming more horrifying by the day. They’ve already announced what time we’re teeing off and who our partners will be. Norman Whiteside said my four-ball included Dad, me, Vern and The Guv.

  Vern seemed very thrilled that his ‘father’ was going to be The Guv. Unfortunately, the cretin doesn’t seem to know the first thing about golf and spent the entire afternoon seeing how many golf balls he could cram into his mouth at one time.

  I called Dad in a panic about the fact that we may look like
complete morons on the Victoria golf course in six weeks’ time. My father sounded completely confident about his golfing abilities and said he had more or less mastered the game out on the back lawn yesterday afternoon. He promised to borrow/steal a set of clubs for me, and promised to coach me over the long weekend. My father said he had apologised to Sparerib and all was forgiven and forgotten.

  Wednesday 29th January

  Still drizzling and gloomy. It’s meant to be summer in Africa but everyone is wearing polo neck jerseys, longs and trench coats. Fatty said this was a definite sign that the approaching winter would be the coldest in living memory. He then went on to state that if the temperature ever fell below -10 degrees, your piss would freeze before it even hit the ground. Only Garlic believed him.

  Rambo informed us at dinner that he had called a dormitory meeting with Viking just before lights out. He instructed us to say nothing and let him do all the talking. Boggo and Simon were livid that Rambo was going ahead with his plans without consulting the rest of us. Fatty flew into a panic and tore up to the dormitory after prep where he counted every item in his huge tuck box and then carried it off to the second year dormitory where he hid his stash under Thinny’s bed. Fatty’s terrified that Viking may conduct a dormitory search after the meeting and steal his goodies. He threatened to fart on the head of any second year who so much as peeks inside his tuck box.

  21:15 There was a booming shout of ‘Right!’ from outside the dormitory. The door flew open and Viking strode in looking like he was about to bite somebody to death. He slammed the door shut behind him and pulled himself up onto Garlic’s locker where he sat like a badly overgrown schoolboy.

  ‘Right,’ he shouted again. ‘What is it, Black? Time is money, money is time and neither grows on trees!’ Rambo hurriedly stepped forward and told Viking that he was speaking on behalf of the dormitory. Viking’s eye’s widened and he shouted, ‘Is this true, Black?’ He then glared at all of us. We all stared back and Viking took our silence to mean that we were in agreement.