They Told Me I Had to Write This (11 page)

I turned around to face him more straight on. ‘Mr Paterson, do you have any other kids apart from Emily?’

‘I have three children and you met Emily who is eight. There are twin boys called Simon and Peter and they are ten, and you saw my wife in the car that day too, and her name is Marilyn. How about that for a full answer?’

‘That is madaz of you to tell me all that.’

‘Clem, if I told you the names of my family way back when you asked about them, do you think it would have answered your real question?’

‘I would still be toxic about my dad wouldn’t I?’

‘Yes, you probably would.’

We stayed like that for a bit. A couple of farmers looking out over the paddock. Waiting for better weather.

‘Mr Paterson, why doesn’t my dad stick to me?’

‘I don’t know for sure but let’s have a go. Imagine a man and his wife are very much in love. They have a new baby. Suddenly the wife is gone. The man wants to chase after her but the baby is crying and needs him. He looks one way into what used to be and he looks the other way into the eyes of his newborn son. How can he choose between those two?’

‘That fully sucks that somebody has to choose like that!’ I got all red-mist on this one and that is when the calf suddenly skits off, coz he’s skitty sometimes and he’s been standing there while we scritched his head all the way up to now. I suppose he just couldn’t take me getting toxic but seeing him get nervous slowed me down a bit.

Change of subject time suddenly arrived so I said, ‘Do you think the calf should have a name?’

‘I think of him as Mr Bojangles,’ the Rev said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘There’s a famous old song about a dancer who was light on his feet. The calf reminds me of it. That’s all, nothing too serious.’

‘Hamish was light on his feet,’ I said.

‘He sure was.’ The Rev smiled.

We leaned against the fence a bit longer, but the conversation was over. ‘You can go back to being the Rev if you want to,’ I said. We both smiled at that. Sometimes I get it.

I’m not so toxic on Dad now that I understand a bit, especially about my guess last night that he was saying to himself, ‘What if it was Clem and not Hamish?’ Coz if I am right on that guess then it means he is a bit stuck on me after all.

I hope so.

Love from Clem.

MONDAY, AUGUST 24
NICK & ME

Dear Gram

You know about Nick and how he gets toxic. Well, he doesn’t like being passed on the track, but that happens if you are not fast enough. Our worst ever day was when I said, ‘Nick is not a slow racer, and Nick is not a fast racer. Nick is a half-fast racer.’ Everybody laughed. Except Nick. I should have known there would be bruises for me in that joke. No pain, no gain.

Today we were riding the track and there were about ten of us there with Mr Sykes who is a bit big to fit properly on a mountain bike but he does OK.

If it is not a race sometimes we fool around and we try to knock each other off by tracking the next person’s back wheel with our front wheel. That can be fun but you have to be careful coz you only want the other guy to fall off and not run over him and fall off yourself.

Sometimes we end up with a buckle in a wheel and Mr Sykes stands on the wheel and pulls it back to shape enough for us to ride some more. Then we have to fix it properly back at the school with a little spanner on the spokes but most of us can’t get that right. And it’s Mr Hartley who teaches us about that spanner on the spokes and that is full-on funny coz it was him who taught us about tracking in the first place. I reckon Mr Hartley is sixteen in his head, but he looks like sixty from the outside. There’s some full-on fierce buckled wheels back at the school sometimes and that is really nangtastic coz it means there has been some hot tracking.

Getting close to the gully today, where I’m always serious, I passed Nick and he tried to track me for payback and I had to duck and weave. So I slowed up a bit and let him have it in both ears.

‘Nick Off!’ I yelled, coz saying that presses his button and he goes ape. I knew there were going to be bruises in this one coz he gets up beside me and yells out, ‘Who are you bagging out, stick insect?’ That’s what I get sometimes for being skinny. And as soon as he yells that he steers straight into my front wheel and we both hit the dirt, luckily before we got too steep down into the gully.

He was on top of me like a shot with his fists and was madaz agroholic but I wasn’t going to back down on that one, no way, coz that would be the end of me, so I was back into him with my fists. Suddenly Mr Sykes comes out of nowhere and he lifts us up with a hand on each and holds us apart and that man is like a giant when he does that. And having Mr Sykes on the spot so quick is exactly what we didn’t want because we try to keep our fights secret from the teachers otherwise we get really scarfed up.

And we keep our bruises secret too, especially from the boy who hit us, which is a really full-on rule for us otherwise we would not be able to take the shame.

Anyway, Mr Sykes was holding us apart and all the other boys were there by now and they all love a fight when it is somebody else. Mr Sykes gets really hot when there is fisties on the track. Are you two in the same group?’ and we say, ‘No.’ And he says, ‘It might be time we got you both together. I’ll see Mr O’Neill about that.’

Well then Nick and I looked at each other and we both hated that idea and by then I was feeling the bruises on my ribs and I was hoping he had some bruises too. But Nick can’t hit like Bundy used to and I know that for sure.

In my old school I would get into fights and get warnings and no matter how quickly us kids made up those warnings would stay and when there is enough warnings I would get suspended. Here they do things differently but I’ve never heard of them putting two boys into the same group for something like this.

And the more I write about this thing the more I get worked up coz what Nick did is so black and white wrong, but I know that if I try to talk about how wrong it was I will get something like, ‘It might not be so black and white, you know.’ We get that around here. ‘Things are not always so black and white.’

Why don’t I see it? I just have to add in a few shades of grey and Nick is not so much of a zit-head. As if.

It’s a bit funny considering that on live-ins they keep showing black and white DVDs of boys in trouble, like that one about ‘Lord of the Flies’ where they were so tribal they started killing each other. I dunno where they get those DVDs. Maybe there’s a black and white warehouse somewhere up behind the Shack.

What would they know about black and white anyway? That’s what I want to know. I am so revved up and it’s all Nick’s fault for what he did in tracking my front wheel which is black and white against the rules. Nick needs to see a little black and blue, that’s what he needs. Now I am waiting for Mr O’Neill to tell us what is going to happen.

I remain your obedient servant.

We learned in English that people used to end letters like that but did they mean it in person? Not.

Clem.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26
DNA

Dear Gram

Jacko set up Mr Williams something brilliant and he was stand-up funny. Mr Williams was doing yada-yada-yada stuff, he is such a yadaholic, and he said, ‘A tower subtends an angle of fifteen degrees at a distance of two hundred metres,’ and it’s trigonometry. But the numbers don’t sit straight with me. Trigonometry is about measuring triangles. I get the word but I can’t get the numbers.

And anyway Mr Williams was trying to get me to get it right and there were other boys who weren’t getting either it but Mr Williams is mostly chilled about that. Not like teachers I had in normal school.

And then Jacko said, ‘Mr Williams, you shouldn’t be too tough on these boys because they are all members of the DNA, which is the National Dyslexics Association.’

Mr Williams looked up puzzled and I could tell he didn’t quite get it but Jacko and I sat there laughing fit to bust ourselves.

Then Jacko said, ‘The DNA, sir. Putting the sex back in dyslexia.’

That really got me going and by then Mr Williams had got it and he laughed like crazy but some of the other kids sat there saying, ‘What?’

Nothing yet from Mr O’Neill about Nick and me, but I am patient and the bruises are coloured up.

Love from Colourful Clem. Ha ha, I am still laughing about the DNA joke.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 28
LIKE TRIGONOMETRY

Dear Gram

Mr O’Neill got Nick and me together in his office and we were looking at each other sideways and that was it for us. And he said, ‘OK guys, we’re off to do some stuff.’ And you know what we did? He took us to the high ropes course.

When we got to the ropes Mr O’Neill said we had to choose who was going to belay the other first. And that was tough for me coz I wanted to belay Nick and then just let him drop. Mr O’Neill said we could take whatever time it took to make our decision and he just stood there with us near the rope ladder but neither of us spoke.

And I remembered that the silence is not my friend and so I decided to make the decision for us.

‘I will belay Nick first,’ I said, and I was final with that.

Mr O’Neill said to Nick, ‘What do you think of that suggestion?’

‘What if he drops me on purpose?’

‘If you have a different suggestion we can hear them both and you two can decide between them.’

Nick said to me, Are you thinking about dropping me?’

‘I was thinking that at first,’ I said, ‘but I will belay you properly.’ Nick thought about that. ‘OK,’ he said.

Mr O’Neill sent Nick up into the ropes and said, ‘Today you will jump off deliberately and Clem will hold you.’

We both looked at him and at each other. And then Nick jumped. I held him easy, but it was full-on weird when I had to trust Nick to hold me.

Mr O’Neill said, ‘OK guys, this time you will be up there together on different tracks. I want to see some speed and we are going to do a rope race.’ I had never heard of a rope race.

Mr O’Neill had this trick of handling two belay ropes at once and we started running. Nick can get along those ropes faster than I can, but I wasn’t about to let him bruise me in a fight and then outrun me in a race. He won every time and I wasn’t OK with that but I figured I would get him later with something.

You can’t run the ropes for too long because the rope starts to ache your feet and we finished up and headed back. Mr O’Neill said he would see us on Monday and each of us will tell the story about our fight from our own angle. It’s a bit like trigonometry, which I am not the best at.

Love from Clem.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29
TAGGIN’ THE SCREAMIN’ DEMON

Dear Gram

Saturday morning I was up early to get to Ted’s bike shop. Dad was dragging the chain full-on and we got to the shop and it wasn’t even opened yet, but I was hot to trot. Mr Carter dropped Violet at the shop and she looked amazing and she was wearing the bracelet.

I said, ‘Haven’t you taken that off yet?’ and she whispered to me she even wears it in the shower and I went off to Mars on that and got redder and redder. Dad said to me, ‘Are you OK?’ And Violet just grinned coz she knew what I was thinking. It’s not easy being a kinesthetic, but there was definitely a big dose of visual in me when she said that I tell you. Sometimes when she hugs me it’s as if I’m about to explode off the planet, but it’s better not to think too much of that when I’m standing in front of a bike shop with Dad.

Ted came and opened up and Dad said my birthday was coming up and we just wanted to see what he had in there. Those bikes are fully serious and there was nothing like mine there which is a bit old and is not tricked out or anything. Dad said for Violet and me to look around while he talked with Ted.

I was in the zone with all those bikes. There were rear shockers everywhere and hydraulic disc brakes and XTR shifters and carbon fibre handlebars, and I was like, ‘Where do I look next?’ And I tried to think of how long until my birthday.

Dad and Ted had talked about money and Ted told me, ‘The bikes in this section would fit into that range,’ and I hadn’t even looked at the price tags but when I did it was more than I could think about even on ‘Deal or No Deal’. We were standing near a Bianchi like the Rev has, and that was a shocker to me I can tell you. Dad is being red hot with money for this bike.