They Told Me I Had to Write This (8 page)

And those two guys keep putting that teacher and his two years into my head.

Clem.

TUESDAY, JULY 7
SURVIVING BUNDY

Dear Gram

I’m a bit on the mend, but my head still hurts. I reckon I’ve got a broken head but the doctor calls it concussion. Whatever it is, I don’t like it. And my eyes don’t like it especially. And it’s all coz of that burning of the 1000R.

The coppers reckon somebody burnt it deliberately. After the fireys came the cops turned up, and guess what they found? A Trangia burner. Inside the bike somewhere. Tucked away. Somebody set that burner going. An hour later, bomb dot com.

The story about that burner has gone viral. There was a bunch of us out at the paddock talking about it. Bundy stuck his finger into his other fist and said, ‘When you know where to put your thing, mate, that baby’s banjaxed. Nobody’s going to want to ride her any more.’ Everybody laughed but I looked at him for a bit and suddenly I got it. So I went for him.

I must have got in a couple of good punches, but when I woke up it was all over. My head got the worst of it. Don’t know how long it took. Mr Sykes was looking at me there on the ground.

‘He fell off the fence, Mr Sykes,’ somebody said.

‘There was a bunch of us sitting there and he started laughing at something and went over backwards, Mr Sykes.’

‘Clem the Clumsy, that’s what happened, Mr Sykes.’

I tried to sit up and I was going to have it out with whoever said that stupid thing but sitting up didn’t work and Mr Sykes took their story. They got me inside and somebody thought it would be a good idea to take me to the hospital to check me out.

From Clem.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8
ONE BANANA SMOOTHIE AND FOUR STRAWS

Dear Gram

I just spoke with Violet on Dad’s phone. I didn’t say anything about the thing with Bundy. Some things are different these days. Even over the phone I can feel her beside me, her long hair on the breeze, eyes dark and deep. She is so incredible.

Dad’s real pleased about Violet and you bet that makes me glad. He hasn’t mentioned Lyndal for ages but I’m OK about that. She works in the same place as him and perhaps they weren’t all that serious and I got it wrong.

I am in the zone with Violet. Her mum and dad want us all to go to lunch sometime. Maybe I’ll take them to the smoothie bar and we can all share the smoothie this time.

‘One banana smoothie and four straws please.’ Ha, ha.

I’m signing off.

Clem.

THURSDAY, JULY 9
THE SESSION OF SECRETS

Dear Gram

Session with the Rev.

‘Clem, I’ve got something important to discuss. Do you mind if I come straight out with it?’

‘OK,’ I said. He was very straight up this time.

‘Of all the people you could have picked a fight with, why Bundy?’

Out of nowhere I said, ‘Sometimes you have to dance on the battlefield.’

He looked at me with that raised eyebrow thing and I said, ‘I don’t get it either, but it’s the truth. And anyway, that bike owed me something and if anyone was going to burn it down it should have been me.’

The Rev just looked at me and said, ‘Uh huh.’

Then I looked at him and said, ‘How did you know about Bundy and the fight?’

And he looked at me and said, ‘How did you know about Bundy and the fire?’

And I said, ‘I reckon the coppers have got a bit of fingerprinting to do among the Trangias and I’ve seen Bundy’s hands close up and I reckon I’ve probably got those same fingerprints on my skull.’

The Rev had this secret smile that he sometimes gets like when something is going down in class but he already knows about it.

Then I said, ‘What do I do if Violet finds out?’

And he said, ‘I’d also be a bit worried about Mrs H if I were you.’

Short. Sharp. Session over.

Anyway, my eyes are looking in the same direction as each other so the concussion must have eased up.

Holidays next week so I’d better be looking straight. Extra time with Violet and I don’t want to miss a single blink.

Love from visionary Clem.

SATURDAY, JULY 25
THE CLAM OPENS UP

Dear Gram

Violet and me have spent a lot of time together on these holidays. This week we went out with her mum and dad. They are really nice. But I was still a bit nervous about the Bundy fight and what if I say something stupid. Needn’t have worried.

We met at the smoothie bar and I ordered ‘one banana smoothie and four straws’. Even the guy behind the smoothie bar broke up and I didn’t even get to Mars on that one but I was on fire on the inside like the old redskin days.

So we had our smoothies and I ordered Wild Berry coz I remembered the yoghurt and my question about how to hold on to a girlfriend. Violet had my favourite, banana, which was really excepto of her, so I sneaked in another straw and we laughed about that. And her dad even paid for them all.

They don’t know my dad but they know the place where he works coz the head office is right there in the main street and I said that he goes away for work a lot, but not much since Gram died. Then what I just said caught up to my ears and I had to stop talking and so they stopped talking too.

And now I can start writing again coz I had to stop writing for a bit there. I was up front about school because it is such a madaz place and I said that normal school found me hard to handle but this one is OK. And I told them about the bike track and the races and Violet’s dad said that it all sounded very positive.

Violet’s mum really likes that I bought her the bracelet. And Violet was wearing it, which made me smile inside as well as outside.

Then something mad happened. We finished the smoothies and Violet’s dad said, ‘How about we go out for a nice lunch?’ And I was OK about that and thought we’d get a sub, but we went to this place where they put menus on the table for you. Mr Carter said, ‘Let’s just order a bunch of stuff and share it around.’ and that’s what we did. So we had prawns and fish pieces and spring rolls and little bowls of sauce to dip it all in and they had the coldest Coke I have ever had. And even though it was only lunch we didn’t leave there for ages and we were talking through it all.

And they asked me more about school and so I went in headfirst. And I told them that we learned about lots of things apart from bike racing like metaphors and onomatopoeia and rap-running and things that normal school never taught me.

When I was talking Violet’s mum and dad were smiling and sometimes they would give each other a quick look with a grin. I didn’t like the quick looks so much but I liked it when they smiled. My dad could take a lesson from them.

It was like ‘Clem the Clam Opens at The Opera House’ which is a visual joke, Gram, can you see it? I’ve never spoken so much even in group, but Violet was there and when she smiles I just open up. Still, I hope her mum and dad didn’t think I was off or anything.

That bracelet must be the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

Love from Redskin Ready Clem.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 29
SOME THINGS YOU HAVE TO FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF

Dear Gram

Time to get high. We did the high ropes course again. It’s the best fun but when we started out I was nervous as. We have to climb up rope ladders to get to the walk rope, and have you ever tried to climb a rope ladder? It’s madaz coz they keep twisting and running away from your feet.

We’ve been asking for ages how high the ropes are but Mr Sykes won’t tell us.

‘One day we’ll have to get to that,’ is what he keeps saying. So this time we were asking him again and somebody said, ‘Why don’t we measure it?’

Mr Sykes said, ‘That’s a good idea, how are you going to do it?’

Nobody could think of anything straight up until Pete said, ‘Why not get a bit of string and let it down from the ropes to the ground and then we can run the string along the ground and step it out?’

Mr Sykes smiled at Pete and said, ‘You know? You could give that a go.’

But Jacko, being Jacko, looked straight at Mr Sykes and said, ‘That won’t work.’

Mr Sykes said, ‘Why not?’

Whacko Jacko said, ‘Because we want to know how high it is, not how long it is.’

We all started straight up laughing coz Jacko had done it to Mr Sykes again. Mr Sykes had been holding off telling us how high the ropes were until we came up with how to measure it for ourselves. They do that a lot around here, but I reckon Jacko and Pete cooked up this little plan to set him up.

Mr Sykes started laughing with us and then he said to Jacko, ‘For that you can be the one to climb up the ladder with the string.’ And he took this roll of string out of his pocket which had been there all along. And now I don’t know who was setting up who.

This place is pretty nangtastic. And you know what? That roll of string was just long enough to reach the ground and Mr Sykes must have had it in his pocket every time we were on the high ropes, just in case somebody came up with Pete’s suggestion.

Mr Sykes sure got the laugh on that one, but Jacko is still the funniest kid in the place and Mr Sykes said that nobody had ever come up with that joke since they built the ropes course, which is a neat thirteen metres from the ground.

Then I said, ‘They chose that for the height coz that’s the only piece of string Mr Sykes had in his pocket at the time,’ and that was fully stand-up for everyone and Mr Sykes laughed like he was one of us.

Then Jacko put on Mr Sykes’ voice, which he does so easy and said, ‘You boys know that asking questions is not the only way to find the truth.’

Jacko grinned at me and I knew we were on and I said to him, ‘Mr Sykes, if a boat is made of steel how does it float?’

And Jacko did Mr Sykes again, ‘I dunno.’

So I said, ‘Mr Sykes, how do fish breathe underwater?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Mr Sykes, if air is invisible why is the sky blue?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Mr Sykes, do you mind me asking all these questions?’

‘Course not. You don’t ask questions, you don’t learn nothin’.’

Well that was it for everyone but Mr Sykes tried to bust into everyone’s laughing and said, ‘OK you guys, let’s get some work done here, we’ve had enough jokes for today,’ and that is when Jacko put on this little English kid’s voice and said, ‘Please sir, don’t you want some more?’ which is from a DVD of Oliver Twist we did at the Shack and there is a Mr Bill Sykes Twist in there.

And that fully finished high ropes coz we all got fully moxied laughing and even Brian the Brain and I had to lean on each other to stay up and there was too much stupidivity for anything off the ground that day.

Mr Sykes could see that we would be flat out dangerous on the high ropes with all those jokes coming from us, and so he took us back to the paddock and we did blind running, only this time it was backwards and that is how Mr Sykes got his own class back from Jacko and Pete and me.

I will tell you about blind running in a second but first I have to say something about measuring those ropes. No other group has ever said anything about knowing how high they are. Now I’m starting to wonder if we got to it first or last coz none of us are going to tell the other groups. They have to do that for themselves. That’s how it is.

But what if Mr Sykes won’t have to carry that string any more coz we were the last? That would be fully obnoxified, being the last to get it I mean. And you know something? We will have to live with never knowing if we got to it first or last.

There are probably heaps of things that we will only find if we go looking. I might leave here with lots of things that I haven’t learnt just because I didn’t think to go looking. My head hurts when I think like this.

We started out walking the ropes pretty carefully and everyone was nervous but after a few times we were all getting fully fierce with how we ran the course at high speed and even backwards sometimes. Backwards is full-on mad coz you have to watch your feet and down there is the ground, and thirteen metres might be one thing when you lay a piece of string along the ground but when you are looking down from those ropes it is a very different piece of string I can tell you.

Back to blind running, which is a trust-yourself thing like the ropes but it is in the paddock. We take the sheep out first coz they are so dumb and would get in the way. Everybody stands evenly around the paddock fence. Each boy in turn has to clamp his eyes shut and run as fast as he can, which can be very toxic on some people, and he runs until he reckons he has to open his eyes or die.

Most boys can get about halfway across the paddock before they have to stop. If they start to run too close to the fence then the other boys around the edge yell, ‘Stop.’ But there is no shame in not running straight and I reckon some guys have one leg longer than the other coz they keep turning off in the same direction every time.

Mr O’Neill says the ropes and the blind running teach us lots of things like depth perception and spatial imagination and several different kinds of trust and propriocentricity and other casual stuff like that. Ha ha. And you know what? I’m not even going to tell you what that fancy P word means. Some things you just have to find out for yourself.