The Invisible Hero (11 page)

The whole Burke and Hare thing's got to me. I've been reading everything I can. The more I find out, the more I see everyone in the story is as bad as each other. As I've said before, that's life. There are no heroes. Just scratch the surface of even the most squeaky clean and you find dirt underneath. I've always felt that.

Okay then, the high and mighty go and condemn Burke to death by hanging for being a murderer. Now that's a story in itself. Wednesday, 28th January, 1829. Despite the rain through the night (and it would be freezing in Scotland at that time of the year), people started gathering where the gallows had been set up. By daylight, there was one of the biggest crowds of onlookers that Edinburgh had ever had – maybe up to forty thousand people.

At the very moment Burke is hanged, someone screams out, ‘You'll see Daft Jamie soon!' The crowd roars. And then guess what happens to Burke? Talk about twisted.

Burke's body gets given over for dissection by medical students at Edinburgh University. Heaps of famous scientists call in to take a squiz at Burke. The story gets more complicated 'cos even that creates riots – not from people objecting, mind you. No, from other medical students who want to be part of the dissection. They get let in because they're so angry. So now tell me, are human beings weirdos or what?

Then, of course, the public want in on it. The dissection room is opened to the public for a day. Sixty people a minute walk through that room, getting their couple of seconds worth of staring at Burke's nude body.

If you're not yet convinced that humans are nasty types, then what about this? Some of the students in that dissection room sneak bits of Burke's skin away and make it into wallets and pocket books to sell as trophies. Don't believe me? Then go visit Surgeon's Hall Museum, Edinburgh University and you'll see a pocket book covered in skin with words in gold on the front, ‘Burke's skin 1829'.

Now tell me, where's the right and wrong in all this? And that's how I see people. It's how I see Mum and Dad, too. Them with their non-stop round of joints and their doped out friends hanging round our place. My house reminds me of Hare's woman friend's boarding house. A dirty little hole full of losers. There's been more than a few of my folks' ‘friends' who you'd never miss if something happened to them. They would be surprised to know I feel this way. Ever since I was a kid, I made myself useful. Seven years old and I was rolling my folks' joints for them. Got praise for that. But all the talk that goes on about peace, love and tolerance when everyone's off their heads? It lasts as long as the joint lasts.

And some of the people who buy stuff off Dad? I've watched them come and go. The bloke who runs the pie shop. The wife of one of the local councillors. I could name others. It makes me look differently at what they call ‘respectable' people.

Just one person to go. I want to find out more about Dr Knox.

If I didn't have my mum and dad to pour my heart out to, I don't know what I'd do. They are the best. They are interesting, intelligent people who I love listening to and sharing my ideas with. I've learnt so much from them both that I sometimes say to them, ‘Why send me to school? Apart from Mrs Canmore's English classes, I learn more from discussing things with you two and reading the books you show me than I would in a hundred years of classroom torture.' And they agree about that, but say that school ‘socialises' and that kids who miss out on ‘the school experience' can turn out a bit weird and socially backward.

Thank goodness, Mum and Dad know everything that's happening at school. The agony of it all. But they reckon you can't judge a school on only a few weeks' experience. Before we moved house, I loved my old school, but Mum and Dad say not to compare, ‘just give it a chance'.

They also agree that from what I've told them about Jake MacKinnon, he sounds like ‘a clever thug' (Dad's words), but then they go into all this sort of psychological talk about him probably having an unhappy home life. I describe the red sports car his mum drives, the beach house his inner circle rave about (have you ever heard of anything so over the top as a beach house with a swimming pool and spa?), his good looking barrister dad who's on the school council – and my parents say, ‘just wait and see'. But they totally agree with me about what really gets to me about Jake, his never-ending popularity-winning tactics and the
way even some of the teachers are sucked in by it.

‘It's sickening,' I say. ‘The tree planting thing even had the Principal giving Jake a big wrap at a special school assembly today. And for those who are too lazy to plant trees, there's his other idea about a
Learning Free Day of Fun.
And I'm telling you, he really is popular.'

Dad threw his head back and laughed, ‘He covers all bases!'

But Mum was more serious, ‘Don't let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.'

When I asked what she meant, Mum said, ‘True acts of kindness don't need an audience.'

And I really like what Mum said. It describes my sort of hero.

While a positive, up-mood is sweeping one part of the class, Macca, de Grekh, Cheung and Co are getting nastier. There's a kind of electrical storm feeling in the air. I've been feeling the tension in myself. But a few days back, Dede helped me heaps.

I'd got home, tired and hungry and tense, to see Dede sitting on the front verandah sitting bolt upright. I knew he was waiting for me.

‘My boy, I have your laughing hero for you!' he called as I pushed through the low front gate.

I plonked down on the bench next to my grandfather. He had a cold drink ready for me and a newspaper article.

‘Drink and read!' he commanded.

The first thing I looked at was a photo of this guy in a top hat, with a monocle on one eye, looking like a cross between a circus clown and some sort of aristocrat. ‘Activist used humour as his best defence,' was the headline.

‘Lord Bloody Wog Rolo!' said Dede. ‘He shocked us, but he made us laugh. And we felt less alone. We admired him.'

‘Whoa,' I said. ‘What are you on about?'

‘This man,' said Dede jabbing the photo, ‘he was a genius. Like us, he was an immigrant. From Argentina. Like us, he had a hard time feeling accepted in this new country. But not like us, he said and did things that made people think and laugh at the same time. Well most people – he did get fined and locked up a few times.'

I read the opening paragraph aloud:

I looked up. ‘A stirrer, eh?'

‘He was such a one,' said Dede. ‘We were living in the Western suburbs, Sydney, back then. I remember seeing a big crowd one day waving to a man and a lady, very dressed up, going past in an open top car. I joined this crowd and asked someone, an Australian man, was this someone from the royal family. But no, it was Lord Bloody Wog Rolo and his wife, Lady Bloody Wog
Rolo! The Aussies in the crowd thought it was a great joke. Not the police or those high up, though.'

‘What were their real names?' I asked.

‘That was their real name,' laughed Dede. ‘He changed his name by deed poll.'

It turns out the reason for this name change was that Rolo was always being called a ‘bloody wog', so by making it his name, people couldn't use it as a put-down. Calling himself ‘Lord' was a way of laughing at the serious way so many Australians took British Royalty. Rolo reckoned that Australians could practise bowing and curtseying to him before a visit from the British royals.

I sat there and finished reading the article. It was an obituary, actually. Rolo had died in 2007 at the age of 62. Dede had kept this page tucked away in a drawer.

Can't finish this. Alara wants me to play dress-ups. I have to be Prince Charming. So glad no one from school can see what I have to do to keep my little sister happy.

What a day.

First off, Mrs Canmore has heard from Quayle about my idea about a Learning Free Day of Fun. She hands out these grammar sheets and then smiles that witch smile of hers and says, ‘I am most inspired by Mr MacKinnon's suggestion about a Learning Free Day.' We all stop breathing. How could she be saying this? This woman is usually the Queen of all that is evil – hours of homework, and instant detentions for a range of crimes like not having time to finish homework or what she sees as a lack of
common courtesy
(her words). And she has it in for me, Sam, Charlie and Genelle. She has her favourites and we're not them.

So there we are wondering if the High Witch Canmore has had a personality transplant. She is actually going along with one of my ideas. The class is cheering. Then Mrs Canmore calls for quiet and we are waiting for the deal, ‘I propose to give you your learning free day right now.' More cheering. Charlie has jumped onto his chair and is creating ear-splitting whistling with two fingers stuck in his mouth. ‘Take out your Grammar sheets and pick up your pens,' continues Mrs Canmore.

‘What?' A whole lot of ‘whats' from all over the room, actually. Faces looking confused.

‘I offer you this essential learning of grammar for free. And you will have fun.'

The class groans. Charlie Cheung boos and won't stop, so he gets sent outside. I admit that once the grammar sheet was finished, Mrs Canmore organised some word and drama games
which the rest of the class got into big time. Mrs Canmore kept picking Dugan, Raph and Waterworks to lead a lot of it. De Grekh, Cheung, Genelle and I wouldn't join in. We couldn't give Witch Canmore the pleasure.

Then the finishing touch to a bad day was at going home time when we were all hanging round our lockers. Raph suddenly screams and we all turn to see what's happened. It sounds likes she's seen a spider. But that's not the case. She's all excited and holding a package wrapped in gift paper. I don't want to look at all the carry-on, but half the class is there hanging over her shoulder, wanting to see what's inside the paper.

‘Is it your birthday?' asks Waterworks.

‘No way,' says Raph, carefully unwrapping the mystery gift.

‘Probably a practical joke,' says Genelle who couldn't help but be curious.

And by then there's the present. A darn book. And second-hand, as well. Dusty. Cracked leather cover. Old as the hills.

‘Some surprise,' says Genelle turning back to packing up her bag.

There's a note with the book. Typed. Raph reads it out. ‘Raphaela – with you, being different means being better.
Use the good thoughts of wise people – Tolstoy.
'

‘Who's Tolstoy?' asks Waterworks.

‘A famous writer. That's all I know,' says Raph. And that's about all I knew, except I think he's Russian. But then Raph says something weird, ‘Don't let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.' And she says this with a strange kind of smile.

‘What does that mean?' asks Dill.

Well none of us knew what Raph was on about, but I wasn't going to let on that I didn't. By then, Raph realised she was going to miss the bus if she didn't hurry, so she shoves the note and the book in her bag and runs off calling over her shoulder, ‘Tell you another time.'

Once again, the mystery saint has struck and it's really getting to me. Such a try hard.

When I got to school this morning there was a commotion because someone had planted a beautiful young sapling in the middle of the playground. It's the perfect place to put it because there's no shade at all in that area. No one knows who planted it – not even the teachers. It was just there when we got off the buses. Mr Dalhousie, the Woodtech teacher, says it's a Murray River Red Gum.

The Principal asked Jake MacKinnon if he had planted the sapling considering Macca has this tree planting idea happening. But Macca wasn't even at school when the first bus arrived. I was there when the Principal asked Macca this, so he couldn't very well pretend, but typically he did say in a casual sort of way that he supposed some kid had got inspired by his tree planting idea. The Principal said maybe that's what had happened and then he said Mr Quayle should be congratulated because maybe the Villains and Heroes Study Unit had been an inspiration to some kid. Macca had to agree, of course. I wanted to spew. Mr Quayle is a bully. That's the only thing he can teach us about.

Later on in the library I saw Raphaela showing the librarian the surprise book she got yesterday. Mrs Wilgard took a careful look at the book and then said it was very old and valuable, over a hundred years old. Phil Dugan turned up soon after and asked Raphaela what the book is about. She said ‘It's an anthology of different poets.' Then Phil asked which was her favourite poem. She said, ‘I'll tell you when I've decided.' Raphaela was stroking the old leather cover as if she loved everything about that book and she said, ‘Whoever said you can't judge a book by its cover is wrong,' and Phil and I laughed at her joke.

So now the class is all excited about the mystery hero. Some of the kids think the tree might have come from Oliver Johnston because his Dad owns a plant nursery, but when they asked Oliver he laughed his head off and said, ‘As if.' And Oliver wouldn't know a poetry book from a can of beans – he's into car magazines. I've known him since kinder. He wouldn't have given me that chocolate medal, either. We might have been engaged for a few days back in Grade 1, but I know he's sweet on a girl from another school. They meet at the bus stop some afternoons.

The good news for me at the moment is that I've found a hero. Just the kind I was looking for. A brave woman who stands up for what is right against incredibly scary enemies. She's into planting trees and protecting the environment and human rights and freedoms. She's the real deal. She's had death threats, been thrown into prison and been beaten and even more.

Mum deserves the credit really. She suggested I google ‘Nobel Peace Prize winners'. I didn't even know about Nobel Peace Prizes
'til she told me. I was looking at each year's winners – and I've got to say, there are some amazing people I'd never heard of before – but then I get back to 2004 and this name, Wangari Maathai, just jumps out at me.

Wangari has it all. She was born in 1940 and lived in a mud hut in an African country called Kenya. Her mum wanted her to go to school even though this was unusual. She must have been intelligent because she got a scholarship to study in America (and so did Barack Obama's father). It was some sort of programme to do with President John F Kennedy and the Civil Rights Movement.

Naturally, next I had to google Civil Rights Movement. It turns out that before the 1970s, Afro-American people in some parts of the USA had it as bad as black people in South Africa – not allowed to sit next to whites on buses and stuff like that. Instead of getting violent, they just ‘Did a Dugan' – they stood up to the unfair treatment in a non-violent way. Like one day this black lady got on the bus and sat next to a white person on purpose and lots of other Afro-Americans did the same and they got chucked in gaol and treated really badly, but they just kept on. I was glad to read that there were some white people, too, who also challenged this ban on sitting next to someone of a different colour.

I'm getting off the track. America must still have been a good place to study in, 'cos Wangari was impressed with everyday rights of Americans and she got ideas from the civil rights thing which she took back to Kenya.

Mum's calling me to dinner. Golden rule in this little family.
You don't dawdle when Mum calls ‘Dinner'. Dinner is for talking about the day. TV off. Computer off.

Macca's been furious. I try my best to advise him. It's been so good 'til now, but this mystery hero, spreading love and goodwill, is stuffing things up. Like I've said before, I don't trust that sort of crap. It'll be someone trying to suck up. And I bet you it won't last. This project thingy has helped to keep my mind off other stuff...

(And they reckon us kids are exposed to nasty things on films and the internet!)

There was a heck of a lot of anger with the Burke and Hare thing. People were furious that Hare and the two women accomplices were able to get away scott-free. But they were also furious with Dr Robert Knox. I've read everything I can. Who knows which bits are true and which aren't, but it all just makes me laugh even more at the world.

Robert Knox was very, very ugly. He'd had smallpox as a kid and had been badly scarred as well as losing sight in one eye. He sounds disgusting to look at. He seemed to make up for being ugly by studying hard. At university, he was it and a bit when it came to topping the class at everything.

By the time Knox was giving his anatomy dissection lessons, he'd become this flash dresser with fancy waistcoats and jewels. He kind of performed for the crowd, made his demonstrations fun to attend. And I find this bit hard to believe, according to my sources he was a charmer with the women.

Now it's interesting that Knox liked his bodies fresh and there were no questions asked about where they came from. That makes him sound pretty guilty. However, apparently it was never Dr Knox who received the bodies and he never met Burke or Hare, either. But just when Knox might start to sound innocent, what about this?

The body of the prostitute, Mary Paterson, that Burke and Hare sold to Knox – turns out she was only a teenager and quite beautiful. Knox preserved her corpse in a giant bottle of whisky for about three months. How creepy is that? What a pervert! He even brought in artists to draw her. Is that for scientific research?

My verdict? Knox was as weird as the rest of them. Enough. I've done more work on this research thing than ever in my life. The end.

My other verdict. Trust no one. There's no such thing as a hero. Was saying this to the others and Cheung said, ‘There's a villain in everyone.' I now need to re-direct my energy to helping Macca expose the sly, attention-seeking do-gooder who's
wrecking everything for us. I like Macca's way of describing this kid's stupid game – ‘upsetting the
status quo'.

It's not just the book – and that's awesome enough, virtually antique. It's that line, ‘With you, being different means being better.' At first I wasn't sure what it meant. And maybe I'm wrong, but I reckon whoever wrote this is saying that being different from everyone else is not a bad thing, that it can be a good thing. And it was a message to me. Whoever the mystery writer is knows I'm on the outside of everything – excluded, but she/he is saying I'm appreciated. That makes me feel much less alone and less misunderstood.

All I wish now is that this person would tell me who she/he is. I'm eliminating the people who it would definitely not be. First off, Macca and his in-group – and that includes Genelle. And secondly, it's not Philip – he's a nice kid and he has been kind to me, but he didn't even know what sort of book I'd been given and the note is too well written for a dyslexic. I'm wondering if it's Ruth Stern. She's a gutsy girl with a good heart underneath her cry-baby image. But then again, Ruth got that chocolate medal from the mystery person.

Whoever it is doesn't want to be traced. The note I got is typed. There are a few other kids in the class who seem alright. There's a guy called Grant Evans who's brilliant, works very hard, and doesn't speak much. And there's Imogen Webb, brown plait
way down her back, a natural at sport, and the only kid I know who is still in Girl Guides. When I think of Girl Guides, I see a bunch of girls marching single file through the bush singing ‘Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree', or sitting in front of a campfire toasting marshmallows. And they're definitely into ‘good turns'.

Not much of this is relevant to what I should be writing about. It's taken me ages to decide who I'm going to do my Heroes and Villains project on. But now I've been inspired by Ruth, the only one in the class to dare defend Philip against Mr Quayle the day he read Philip's journal to the class.

When my family and I were watching that doco on the Holocaust, there was some film footage of a Nazi trial. The accused were a group of army officers and other conspirators who tried to blow up Hitler with a bomb. A suitcase with the bomb in it was put under the desk in a meeting room. If the plan had succeeded, the war would have ended much sooner.

Sometimes evil leaders like Hitler seem to have nine lives. It's such a sad story.

It was a complicated business getting a bomb into a meeting room with Hitler. There were heaps of people involved in planning the assassination. I mean hundreds. I don't think everyone had hugely important parts to play. I suppose in any big, secret plot you have people who deliver messages, or even bits of messages, and things like that. A jigsaw puzzle of people doing their little bit.

As I said, an officer planted a bomb underneath a desk where Hitler was having a meeting with his evil inner circle. The bomb
went off, but Hitler escaped injury. Anyway, they rounded up the plotters and put them on trial and they all got executed.

‘Kangaroo courts!' yelled Dad at the TV.

‘David, calm down!' said Mum to him.

‘What do you mean by
kangaroo?
' I asked Dad.

‘Show trials, sweetie,' explained Dad. ‘They skip across the laws of the constitution and find everyone guilty.'

I listened more closely to the documentary, the animal roars from the officials when any of the accused dared to express an opinion. I read the subtitles with more care.