Wesley Brown, our little mate in Year Two, got suspended. Suspended in Year Two! Not even Johnny got off to that bad a start. What’s more, he was suspended till further notice, which is pretty serious. We couldn’t believe it. And when we heard what he’d done, we couldn’t believe it even more.
What happened was, he pissed on his teacher. Yep. Pissed on his teacher. You see, he was having a fight, a fun fight with another kid, a little guy called Max. They’d been chucking gravel at each other, and having a water fight and stuff like that all day. Then, in the afternoon break that they get in Year Two, Max had spat at Wes, got him a good one in the face, and raced outside to escape.
Wes was about to chase him, but another kid told him Max was coming round the corner of the building. So Wes, thinking he’d be smart, climbed up on top of the big cupboard inside the door, and got ready to piss on Max. He had a kid as look-out, keeping watch. Well, this kid saw Max coming, yelled out to Wes ‘Shoot! Shoot!’. Wes whipped it out, and, as the door opened, he let fly. Only trouble was, it was the teacher coming through the door, not Max. So that was the end of Wes. Bye bye Wesley. What a way to go.
It took Johnny and I quite a while to figure out the full story ’cos those little kids get confused when they try to explain anything complicated, and they take so long to tell it. But by talking to Max and a couple of other kids, we finally got it out of them. Only trouble then was, we didn’t know what to do. We thought we ought to do something ’cos he didn’t have anyone who did much for him.
‘I think we should go see Miss Holland,’ I said, though I didn’t really believe it.
‘You go,’ said Johnny, ‘she doesn’t like me.’
‘We’ll both go,’ I said.
I don’t know why we went really. Mainly because we thought they should know that Wes hadn’t been deliberately aiming to do that to his teacher. And if we didn’t stick up for him, no-one would. So we went.
We had to wait in Mrs Wilson’s office for about twenty minutes, which just made us more nervous. Miss Holland looked pretty cranky when we got in there. Guess she thought we’d been sent along by a teacher, which is why we were usually there. When we told her we wanted to see her about Wesley, she leaned back in her chair and looked surprised. We told her the story and ended up saying:
‘You see, we thought you mightn’t know he wasn’t aiming at Mr Stuart. He was aiming at Max. I mean, it’s still bad, what he did, but not as bad as if he’d been out to get a teacher.’
‘Yes,’ Miss Holland said. ‘I take your point. Thank you for coming to see me. You have put rather a different complexion on the whole business. Wesley is lucky to have you looking after his interests.’
We went out, feeling pretty good. After school, we caught the bus down to Wesley’s street. Johnny knew which house it was—he’d never been there, but Wes had told him about it, about how it had a wading pool in the front and a big poster of Elvis Presley in a window, ’cos his father was a big fan of Elvis. It was one of those old streets, every house the same, but we found Wesley’s easily enough. That Elvis poster sure stood out. The yard looked a big mess. The grass hadn’t been cut in quite a while, and there were rusty toys lying around. In the drive there was an old Ford with its wheels off and bits of the engine on the ground.
It didn’t look like anyone was home—you know how houses look that way sometimes?—but we went ahead and knocked anyway. There was a long silence, we knocked again, and we were just turning away when we thought we heard a little sound from inside. We turned back and the door opened a fraction, then a bit more, then completely, and there was Wes.
I guess he was pleased to see us. He gave us a big smile, but he didn’t say anything. But then he always was a man of few words. He stood back as though he was inviting us in, so in we went.
Geez, that house was a mess. I mean, I’m untidy, but this was different. This was disgusting. It even smelt bad. The kitchen was the worst. There were dirty plates everywhere, and all those little flying insects that you see when fruit gets over-ripe. Most of the food that was around just seemed like junk—there were empty hamburger cartons and take-away food containers. There were clothes dropped on the floor in the living room and more dirty plates. And Wes’ bedroom was just one big mess.
Come to that, Wes didn’t look too good. He seemed a bit skinny and pale, and he had dark bulges under his eyes. He looked like a kid who’d been watching a lot of TV. There was a pile of videos on the floor, everything from Masters of Horror to Pinocchio.
Well, Johnny and I, we’d been little angels all day, as usual, so it was no effort for us to keep going. We took out a lot of rubbish, vacuumed the floor, washed the dishes, made Wes’ bed. He helped, too. Johnny knew how to operate a washing machine, so he put a load through. I went down to the shop and spent our last $3 on some bread and lettuce and tomato and celery, and made Wes a salad sandwich, which he ate quite happily. Then we had to go, but we left a note for Mr Brown, Wesley’s dad, to say we’d been.