Spud - Learning to Fly (37 page)

After the lecture, Boggo and Garlic returned to the phone room and began banging on the door and shouting nasty taunts at Fatty who was seated on the floor with the phone cord wrapped around his body. When the banging and taunts failed to prise Fatty out of the phone room, Boggo and Garlic resorted to making loud orgasm noises and shouting things in a mock Penny voice like, ‘Oh yes, touch me there, Fatty!’ or ‘My, my, Fatty, what a big shlong you have!’

Fatty came storming out of the phone room in a seething rage and pushed Boggo against the wall. Garlic took one look at Fatty’s face and sped off like his life depended on it. Fatty had Boggo pinned up against the wall and looked ready to punch his lights out. Boggo covered his face with his hands and started whimpering. But just when it looked like Boggo was going to receive the knockout punch that he so richly deserves, Fatty’s anger abruptly left him and he ended up whining, ‘Just grow up, Boggo!’ and storming off in a sulk.

‘You see!’ said the now livid Boggo as he staggered to his feet. ‘Chicks! They screw everything up!’

Free Bounds

13:00 ‘It’s outrageous, Spud,’ whined Boggo. ‘The oke has completely lost his personality. It’s like he’s not even my friend any more.’

I nodded sympathetically and looked up at the swaying pine trees above us. It’s been a while since my last free bounds and I was ideally hoping to spend it alone reading and writing and perhaps thinking, but Garlic spotted me leaving the house and soon he and Boggo were charging after me with a blanket and a lunch pack shouting, ‘Wait up! Wait up!’

‘Fatty’s changed completely since Mad Dog’s farm,’ said Garlic with large eyes.

‘It’s Penny,’ said Boggo with a look of disgust.

‘He used to be so friendly like,’ agreed Garlic.

Boggo shook his head for the umpteenth time and said, ‘When last did you hear him fart, or see him eat too much, or talk about ghosts?’

‘Mad Dog’s farm,’ replied Garlic immediately.

‘He’s becoming anorexic,’ said Boggo seriously.

I asked Boggo if he was worried about Simon becoming a prefect.

‘No chance,’ said Boggo. ‘You can’t have a manic depressive in a leadership position.’ Boggo reckons Simon’s excuse about playing cricket in England is a lame attempt at saving face.

‘He’s certainly not prefect material,’ he concluded.

When the time finally came to return to school, Boggo shouted, ‘Come on, buddy, let’s go cause shit with Stutterheim!’ He wasn’t talking to me. He and Garlic charged off giggling and gossiping without so much as saying goodbye. I stayed out under the pine trees until five minutes before roll call. Any time not spent talking about prefects should be treasured.

17:20 A terrific storm blew up out of nowhere and unleashed a torrent of hailstones onto the school. I watched it blow in from my perch on the windowsill. Lightning flashed constantly against the blue-black sky and not a voice could be heard against the pelting stones that smashed onto the tin roof of the dormitory.

Roger tore into the dorm with his eyes wild and his fur standing upright. Vern immediately leapt off his bed, where he was tapping away at his calculator, and ripped back his mattress. Roger leapt into the bowels of Vern’s bed and Rain Man carefully folded back the mattress, stashed his calculator in his locker, and then lay flat on his bed to protect his cat from the violence of the storm.

The furious wind drove me off my perch eventually and onto my bed and sounded like it was repeatedly whipping the school buildings.

And then the electricity failed and we were plunged into darkness with the rain pounding down and nothing to be done but sit and wait.

We were each given a candle to do our homework, but it was useless and the idea was abandoned after Thinny and Runt set fire to a carpet in the second year classroom after duelling with lit candles.

Amidst the chaos, Spike and JR Ewing were also thrashed by Viking because he caught them mocking Stutterheim in the first year dormitory.

Lay in bed listening to the roar of the generator and the pelting rain. Pissing Pete’s fountain has overflowed into the quad.

Power still out, although it’s no longer raining. Rogers Hallibut, who has recently been promoted to School Maintenance Supervisor, reversed a bakkie into the main quad and began offloading paraffin lamps, which he lined up in neat rows outside the houses. The school is a mess. Flooded and defeated.

I passed Pike in the quad after breakfast. By the time I saw him it was too late to change course so I decided to flash him a smile and be as friendly as possible.

‘Hi, Pike,’ I said. Those green slitty eyes glared at me with menace and he didn’t answer.

08:00 The Glock called an emergency assembly and said the power failure might take some time to fix and asked the matrics to remain patient and focus on their exam preparation. He then gave us a stern warning about ‘opportunistic behaviour’ after dark and threatened to expel anyone who acted like a hoodlum.

14:30 Took a stroll around the school with Rambo and Simon to inspect the flood damage. Most of the fields are still covered in huge puddles where the hailstones have melted and pooled on the sodden earth. Branches, leaves and debris are everywhere and the ground staff were busy slicing up a tree that had fallen over at the far end of Pilgrim’s Walk.

We came across The Guv who was inspecting the overflowing bog stream and seemed to be prodding at something on the riverbank with his walking stick.

‘Freeze!’ The Guv shouted. ‘Move an inch and I’ll have your testicles for high tea!’

We froze where we were and The Guv mumbled on about us destroying his evidence. He prodded at the dark shape in the water and exclaimed, ‘Bah, humbug!’ He stepped back from the water’s edge and motioned for us to join him.

‘I thought I might have discovered a corpse,’ he declared and tapped the mud off his gumboots. He glanced at Rambo and said, ‘Never seen a dead body, you know?’ We then began to walk back through the mud towards Pilgrim’s Walk.

‘So, Milton,’ said The Guv eventually, ‘you’ve decided to perambulate with Black and Brown, I see?’ The Guv roared with laughter and fixed his gaze on Simon before saying, ‘Good to see you, Brown. How was the off season?’

Simon grinned back at The Guv and replied, ‘Better than expected.’

The Guv stared back at the gushing bog stream and the debris strewn all over the fields and said, ‘God’s wrath, boys!’ And with the slightest tip of his hat, he set off towards his house.

‘What a freak,’ said Rambo, although it was unclear if he was indicating the storm or The Guv.

It was a relief to reach the house. I hardly uttered a word for the entire walk and was never brought into the conversation. I was like a shadow to them – like I didn’t really exist.

‘Ass creeper!’ hissed Boggo on my arrival back at the house.

‘You just want to be seen as one of the heavies now,’ agreed Garlic.

Boggo informed me that hanging around with Rambo and Simon wasn’t going to improve my prefect chances.

I ignored his taunts and headed for an early shower because I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

The water was freezing cold.

Still no power! There’s a rumour circulating that this situation may last for over a week. I’m not so sure the school won’t break out into a riot before then.

All sports/games have been cancelled because of the waterlogged fields. We are expected to spend all day working in dim light despite the entire house, including the prefects, running amok.

Mr Bosch reckons we had over 8 inches of rain on Monday, and that the wind gusted over 80km/h! He called it a freak weather system, the like of which we may never see again in our lifetimes.

I passed Simon coming up the stairs – I’m not sure if it was just the dim light but it looked like he had been crying.

Getting used to living in the Stone Age. Boggo reckons the real reason we haven’t seen a newspaper or eaten anything other than cold meat and salads since the storm, is because the roads have been washed away.

Fatty said he wouldn’t be surprised if we were the last living beings left in South Africa and that the rest of the country has been washed away. He reckons the only reason they haven’t told us is because they fear a major riot.

‘Jeez!’ said Garlic in relief. ‘Thank God I live in Malawi!’

‘And the phone lines are still down,’ whined Fatty like this was far worse than the entire country being destroyed.

‘It would be the perfect time for a psychopath to strike,’ said Rambo, chewing thoughtfully on the end of his pen. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘No lights, no phones, no contact with the outside world …’ Rambo looked menacingly at Garlic and whispered, ‘You could just pop them off one by one …’

The dormitory fell silent. A feeling of unease spread about the place and mingled with the aroma of paraffin and candle wax.

‘We’re gonna starve to death!’ Fatty gasped in horror as he examined what had been dished up on his lunch plate. (A slice of tomato, a spoon of potato salad, and a rock-hard bun.)

‘Well, you’re meant to be the house catering rep,’ came the tetchy reply from Rambo as he moved the potato salad around his plate with his fork.

‘What am I supposed to do – turn five loaves into five thousand?’ protested Fatty as he studied his dry bun.

‘Well, at least you could find out what day we’re going to run out of food and have to start eating each other,’ said Rambo, his voice rising in anger.

‘Okay,’ said Fatty dousing his tomato slice with white pepper. ‘Let’s say we did have to eat somebody … who would be first?’

‘Garlic!’ came the loud chorus of replies.

Garlic didn’t see the funny side of being unanimously elected the first roast after the food runs out.

‘Dibs on his liver!’ shouted Rambo and prodded Garlic’s midriff with a fork.

‘Why me?’ wailed Garlic, desperately protecting his organs with his arms.

‘Because you have skin like a pig,’ Rambo told him.

‘I bet you Garlic tastes like bacon,’ said Boggo.

Then we all roared with laughter because of how stupid that sounded. We left the dining hall in high spirits, apart from Bacon Garlic who hung back nervously like he didn’t quite trust us any more.

The electricity came on for a brief ten seconds, then it took the rest of the day off.

Fatty drew the line at porridge for dinner, and stormed into the kitchens to give the caterer a piece of his mind. He returned five minutes later looking ashen and horrified. He collapsed back down onto his bench and said, ‘We’re going down. It’s like Ethiopia in there!’

Fatty said the entire situation was diabolical. All the roads to the school have been washed away, as have half the roads in the Midlands. The kitchens have completely run out of food and they only have porridge left for another day.

‘The caterer is on the brink of quitting,’ said Fatty. ‘He’s flipping out big time.’

‘Well, we may have to eat Garlic after all,’ said Rambo.

Then Boggo set off on a long rant about how the school should refund us our money for this. He accused The Glock of being asleep at the wheel and having no plan Β in place in case of emergency.

16:00 Good news at last … The phone lines have been restored. Unfortunately there was an instant queue of twenty boys outside the phone room including Fatty so I didn’t bother.

Porridge and darkness.

JR Ewing was thrashed 6 by Viking after he was caught hanging Stutterheim out of the window by his feet.

17:00 Phoned home. It didn’t sound like my mother believed me about the storm and the electricity cuts. She said they had also had some rain before changing the subject.

It has begun. Despite the darkness and lack of food, the teachers have kicked off their dire warnings of examination failure and its consequences. We are now at least two weeks behind the other schools. How the teachers all know this when the phones have been cut off is a complete mystery.

Oh no. I’m afraid I’m far too streetwise to fall for these cheap scare tactics. They may have driven Garlic into near hysteria, but taunts of failure don’t wash with Spud Milton. I still don’t buy the fact that anyone out there in the big wide world will ever ask me for my third year results. It’s just the kind of propaganda the National Party has been getting away with for years.

14:00 Three trucks laden with food and supplies pulled up at the kitchen entrance. Fatty was there to welcome the trucks and examine exactly what food had arrived.

18:00 Lamb stew and rice for dinner! It was one of the most delicious meals I’ve ever tasted. I pity vegetarians everywhere.

Still no electricity!

Confirmation Class

Reverend Bishop said the storm was definitely an act of God and we should be humbled by his awe and power.

‘Why would God want to screw up the school, Father?’ asked Rambo.

The chaplain blustered and rambled on like all priests do when you ask them why terrible things happen.

‘Do you think God suspected there might be sodomy being carried out here like Sodom and Gomorrah?’ asked Rambo innocently.

The chaplain blushed and told Rambo that that was unlikely because the storm had affected numerous other areas in the province.

Boggo nodded his head at the front desk and said that God was probably trying to destroy the inbred community of Fort Nottingham but missed. The chaplain conceded that this was possible.

‘God works in mysterious ways, boys,’ he said, looking uncertainly out the window.

‘You telling me,’ said Rambo.

And then the lights came on.

The vestry was suddenly awash with bright neon light. Nobody said anything. We just stared up at the light, waiting for it to disappear again. But it didn’t.

‘Let there be light!’ shouted Boggo leaping to his feet.

Reverend Bishop genuinely thought it was a miracle and leapt up and down with excitement shouting ‘Hallelujah!’ He then said a long prayer in a trembling voice about how God had given us the sign of the light.