Five

Day 2

St Nicholas College

12.03 a.m. Monday, 26th October 1965

The boy sat on the limestone steps descending to the hockey field. Darkness surrounded him. He began to feel invisible again; his body shivered, his shoulders and knees began bouncing uncontrollably and his jaw trembled, then he cried. He cried, staring at the lone streetlight at the bottom of the field. He held his eyes wide open, staring at the light as it blurred and ran. He held the scattering, staring vision as if to lose it would mean falling into a darkness from which he couldn’t return. Eventually his eyes began to dry and his shoulders only occasionally shuddered. He was taking great gulps of air as if he’d forgotten how to breathe. This is how it had been every time he left Captain Edmund. Then his penis would stiffen, something that had never happened with Captain Edmund even though Captain Edmund had tried ‘all his tricks’. But then that’s not why the boy went; he knew that, he knew what was going to happen to him. Captain Edmund called him ‘my little girl’, ‘my sweetie little girl’. A weight dropped through his body, leaving him wretched.

With the sharp object from Captain Edmund’s room still in his palm, he walked to the corner of the administration building that contained the captain’s room, to where a strip of light from the quadrangle came between the dormitory block and the administration block. Slowly, standing in shadow with only his forearm in the light, he opened his hand, palm up. He stared at the object. It reminded him of raindrops on a car window.

He’d sat in the car while waiting for his father when big fat raindrops started to fall. ‘It’s a good sign, son,’ his father had said. When the rain struck the window it instantly spread, thin tendrils with droplets on the end. They held that shape for some time, or he imagined they held that shape. He couldn’t decide if they were frightened or happy as they spread and hesitated before joining the other water streaming down the windscreen. And they kept coming, falling, hundreds of them, drumming like an army. His father had run to the car and burst in slamming the door behind him with a big grin on his face. ‘That’s a good sign, son.’ They’d both been happy.

The object reminded him of that day, of his father. The boy’s body convulsed and gusts of grief burst from his throat. He tried to hold them back but they sprung his mouth open and dropped him to his knees. He retched out the grief then slumped to his side on the path, still holding his palm and the object in the light. He opened his eyes on it and suddenly knew what it was. It was a bullet. He’d collected them from the rifle range, not spread like a droplet but flattened and misshapen.

He sat on his haunches and turned the bullet over, the base was intact, but the rest open, spread, searching. There was blood in his hand but his hand wasn’t cut. He examined his heel, he saw puckered white skin but it wasn’t broken. In his instep he saw dried blood, spider thin in the wrinkles of his feet and toes, he looked at his other foot, it also held the whispers of Captain Edmund’s room. He wet his finger and rubbed at the threads. Gradually, begrudgingly, they disappeared. Then he remembered the shot. That shot. The one that brought all the boys to the windows, the one the teachers, who had rooms on the other side of the building to the quad, said was just an echo from across the river. Captain Edmund had never lain on his back on the floor like that. He would lie on his back on the bed when he wanted things done to him, but not on the floor. And Captain Edmund hadn’t answered. Had he answered? The boy became confused. Did he tell me to go? He’d never sent him away without first doing something to him. He opened his palm in the light and stared at the bullet again. Now it was a mallee eucalyptus flower, bright red, flung open to the sun.

He again imagined the car that was needed to kill him. He saw its light approaching, speeding at him. He would stand and step into its path, he felt the motion go through him. He imagined the headlight strike slowly buckling him. That’s when it kills you, if it’s fast enough. The kangaroos his father had hit had bounced and rolled and tried to stand. That was no good. They had to say his death was instantaneous. He swore to himself, it would be a speeding car. Busted would be worse, questions would shower on him. Dead he could smile, because no questions would get to him.