It didn’t take long for me to settle into the daily routines of the Farm. Although every part of my body was aching, I was starting to enjoy the hard, physical work. I’d also made some friends.
Pete and Charlie are my new best mates. Forget about the Three Bears – that’s kid’s stuff. The rules have changed and I was playing with the big boys now. There are bullies like Lance and outsiders like Charlie and Pete – the boys that no-one ever wants to play with in the playground. It’s different at the Farm, you can’t be too picky about who your friends are.
Charlie’s my second-best mate. He’s big for his age, a bit slow but not stupid. He hadn’t said more than two words to me until the incident at the creek. Once he started talking, though, it was hard to stop him: ‘Lived with me grandparents since I was five. Mum an’ Dad just up an’ left one day to go fruit pickin’ an’ never came home. “Better off without ’em,” is what Gran an’ Grandad said.
‘After a few years, I started gettin’ into trouble, breakin’ into people’s homes; stole money an’ liquor mostly. I got caught one too many times. Me grandparents, bein’ the good Catholics they are, turned to the parish priest rather than the police. That priest had it in for me from the very first time I broke into his presbytery. I only stole a few coins – he had a whole jarful anyway. I never cleaned anyone out, always left somethin’ behind. Times are hard – it’s the Depression, ya know.
‘If I got thirsty on the job, I’d take a few swigs o’ whatever was lyin’ aroun’ – rum, brandy, sherry, beer – I tried ’em all. It wasn’t long before I got a taste for liquor, so I started stealin’ that too. Not sure if it was the money or the liquor that bastard priest was more worried about. I was too drunk to understand what he was tryin’ to tell me.’
Apart from beer, the only liquor I’d had in my life was a few sips of altar wine that Harry gave me when Father Dennis wasn’t watching. It looked like blood and tasted like vinegar – I nearly choked on it. Not my thing at all.
Pete’s been my best mate since my first day at the Farm. He looks just like my little brother, Kit, except he has straight brown hair. They have the same blue eyes and crooked smile, and climb trees like monkeys – they could be a trapeze act in a circus. If Pete wasn’t two years older, they could pass for twins.
Unlike Charlie, Pete isn’t the one with the drinking problem in his family – it’s his stepdad. Pete hates his stepdad and, by the sound of things, the feeling is mutual. Pete has two half-sisters who are much younger than him.
‘If I go anywhere near Elsie an’ Dot, I get a beltin’ even if I’m just playin’ games with ’em. I cop the blame for everythin’,’ he said. There are still yellow and green bruises on Pete’s small, skinny body from the last belting his stepdad gave him.
‘What does your mum do when your dad belts you?’ I asked. I can relate to beltings, having had a few myself.
‘He’s not me dad – me real dad’s dead. Mum’s got a photo of Dad in his army uniform. Half Chinese he was. His father came out here from China lookin’ for gold, an’ then he met me gran an’ married her. I wish me Dad was still alive – he’d stick up for me. When me stepdad belts me, Mum just keeps doin’ whatever she’s doin’ an’ minds her own business, otherwise he lays into her. Sometimes she even takes his side. Makes me sick. She never sticks up for me, says I’m just like me father. I’m glad I’m not like me stepdad – I hate him.’ Pete gets really angry every time he talks about his stepdad.
‘Why were you sent here?’ I asked. It didn’t make any sense.
‘Tried to top meself. The doctor said I was a danger to meself an’ me family. He’s the one sent me here – pays me board as well.’
It had never occurred to me that you’d have to pay money to stay at the Farm. Times were much tougher than I’d thought.
Listening to Pete’s story, I felt like a wimp. I had nothing to complain about – well maybe not nothing, just nowhere near as much as Pete. I was paying for my crime, which is more than I could say for Brother Felix. If I hadn’t punched him in the face, he would’ve got off scot-free. But Pete didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not fair! Mum says, ‘There’s always somebody worse off than yourself.’ Pete’s worse off than most.
Lance isn’t a mate, but since he’s the foreman of our work team, I’ve got to know him pretty well, and I don’t like him. Sometimes, he gets this evil look in his eyes – it sends shivers down my spine. He was bragging about how he got into a fight in the city once, and a boy pulled a knife on him. When he tried to defend himself, Lance reckoned he stabbed the boy in the chest with his own knife. I have my doubts. Lance tells more lies than I do. I try my best to give him a wide berth but he brings out the worst in me.
The work’s hard and the days are long but I’ve never been so fit and strong. I’m learning heaps of things: how to chop and split wood, dig holes with a stick, milk cows and separate the cream, make charcoal pits, collect honey from beehives, plough fields and grow veggies; and how to work so hard that I forget about St Bart’s, my best friend Harry, the neighbours back home, Father Dennis and sometimes even my family.