Wrath (7 page)

A silence falls between us. Dad used to say much the same thing. It's an old saying, I think: ‘It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.' I knew what it meant now. Archie, for all his muscles, was somehow gentle. I sit there as the lights go off and the movie starts. I want to get tough and strong quickly, not for myself so much, but I'd hate to see Archie hurt. He was being kind to me. Sure, he doesn't know what I'd done—he might not want to be so kind then—but he made me feel human again, a little bit anyway, even though I didn't deserve it.

*

Sunday mornings are pretty relaxed even though we have to get up at the same time as we do the rest of the week. The time is pretty much our own, and as long as we're doing something productive, the guards keep a pretty low presence. Some kids play cricket if there're enough guards on duty to supervise; others stay in the rec room and read or play board games or table tennis. I go through the program again in the gym, but my muscles are screaming from yesterday. There are church services for the kids who want to go, but I keep well away. Not for me.

It's also visiting day. After lunch, all the kids line up to see their families or friends. They're hyped up, looking neater than usual, hopping around, keen to get through those doors and see who's waiting for them. I go back to my cell and lay on my bed. That panicky feeling I'd had in the courtroom is back, that nightmare feeling like I'm falling into a pit.
No one to visit you,
I think. Father long gone, mother gone forever, sister— silent. I turn over and face the wall. Why'd you have to get in the way, Mum? If only you'd kept out of it! I clasp my arms over my head, close my eyes and sleep.

After breakfast Monday morning, Owen taps me on the shoulder as we file out of the dining hall. “School starts for you today, mate. I'll take you to your class in 10 minutes. Get cleaned up and wait in your cell.”

Fifteen minutes later, I'm walking down that corridor again, the one with the windows into classrooms on each side. I can see Mr Khan's door, but we turn left there and keep going. Owen stops in front of an open door and taps on it. Inside, a middle-aged woman stops what she's doing and smiles at us.

“New student for you, Mrs S,” Owen says.

“Thanks, Owen.”

Owen saunters off up the corridor and sits down on a bench where I can see two more guards deep in conversation.

“Come in, come in,” the woman says, pushing back the steel-grey frizz that is her hair. “I've been expecting you, Luca. Mr Khan told me about you. I'm Mrs Shiels.”

My eyes flicker up at her. So she knows too. All about me, what I've done, what a monster I am. Ah well, what's it really matter? Did I think it would be a big secret?

She points to a desk halfway up the first row. “There you go. I'll talk to you a bit later. Boys, this is Luca.” A dozen pairs of eyes swivel to check me out. I know most of the faces, and I nod to them quickly and sit down.

“We've just started reading a story. Neil, could you fill Luca in on what's happened so far?”

I know without looking which person it is, but I turn in my seat and there he is, grinning at me, those pointed teeth zigzagging across his bottom lip.

“I'll fill him in, Miss,” he says, “fill his face in with my fist.” He laughs hoarsely at his joke, and several boys bray along.

Mrs Shiels waits till they finish. Silence. Her eyes never leave Neil Brown's face. He looks away uncomfortably. The silence stretches on, and finally she says, “Sam, perhaps you could answer seeing as Neil is being a smart-arse today.”

The class laughs and even I do too. It's just so unexpected.

“Um, it's about this dude in Alaska who thinks he knows everything about the place even though he's from the city. He decides to tramp off with his dogsled into the snow even though everyone tells him not to, that it's much too cold…” While Sam is speaking, Mrs Shiels moves towards Brown and speaks quietly to him, rubbing him on his big, spiky head. I look at that face, ugly sod that he is; he's smiling, those fangs making him look like a demented Rottweiler. I look more closely at this woman who has reduced him to a compliant lapdog.

“That about sums it up,” Mrs Shiels smiles. “Well done, Sam.” She's perched on the table at the front like a chook fluffing itself up for the night, her broad hips spreading out over its surface. Her legs are short and stumpy in their dark-blue slacks and don't even touch the ground. Her flowing white shirt adds to that chook-like appearance. She opens the book and begins to read. I keep studying her, but pretty soon I'm listening to the story. Though it's not cold in the room, the description in the story seems to make the temperature drop.

This poor idiot goes off on his own in the Yukon and makes one mistake after another till he freezes to death. But by the way this guy—Jack London, it says on the cover—writes, it's the weather that's the real story. When Mrs Shiels finishes, the boys talk about it for a bit, and then she sets them all to work and motions me up the front.

“I have some books here for you, Luca. I'd like you to have a go at the maths and science ones later in your room and just flick through till you come to things you haven't learned before. Let me know tomorrow how far you got, and we'll see how much work you need to do to catch up. Don't worry if you don't get too far. From what your file says, you're a bright boy.”

Yeah, right, real bright,
I think. You have to be a genius to end up in juvenile detention, to kill.

I look down at the books that she's handed to me, and she adds, “Oh, I've got some files and paper and pens for you—the stuff you need for class.” She pauses and says very low, so only I can hear, “Life
will
get better for you.”

I take the books and box of stuff and turn and walk a bit unsteadily back to my desk. Christ, it's not being treated badly that I'm afraid of—I deserve it; it's kindness that I can't handle.

I keep my head down for the rest of the day, which passes quickly. I've been out of school for quite a while now, and I didn't realise how much I missed it. The class isn't too quick on the uptake generally, but Mrs Shiels teaches well. She explains things clearly and has interesting stuff for those of us who get it to go on with while she goes over things with those who don't. I notice the boys seem quite comfortable asking her for help. Strangely, they don't sling off at one another for being dumb, and some of the smarter kids wander over and help the others. The one called Sam comes over to my desk.

“Just give us a shout if you need a hand. I'm Sam.”

“I'm Luca.”

“I know. I'm not deaf. I heard her say your name,” Sam grins.

“I'm not either. She said yours when she asked you to retell the story.”

He pulls a wry face. “Yeah, well. See you around,” and he wanders back to his seat.

I've only been here a while, but I've seen enough to know that there's a lot of viciousness around; not just the obvious sort like the chewed off ear, but something deeper, hiding, ready to leap out when the guards aren't looking or around a dark corner or in a lonely spot. But not in this room. It feels good—like a little island maybe—but around the edges I know the sharks are circling.

*

I drop my books on my bed and go to the gym for an hour, mindlessly going through the motions, and then I shower slowly. Some shift is happening inside me. Some tectonic plates of feeling are creaking out of their position, freeing themselves up slowly, and things are starting to flow again as they move. I dress and duck back to my cell. Usually, I'd hang around with Archie till he'd finished and we'd have our meal, but today enough was going on. I need calm.

I look at my cell with fresh eyes. It looks tidy but soulless, a room for a phantom or a dead man. Tipping the files, paper and pens out of the bag and onto my bed, I sit down next to it all and fish out the books Mrs Shiels had lent me. I'd never really read all that much before. There was a book by a Russian dude,
My
Childhood
, plus a couple of oldies by Wilbur Smith and Leon Uris.

There's a study table fixed to the end wall, so I stack the books on it neatly. Next to that, I line up the files and then duck up to the kitchen and ask one of the kids on duty if he could give me a box of some sort. He disappears into the pantry room and comes back after a few minutes with a couple of small white cardboard containers.

I put one of the boxes next to the files and fill it neatly with pencils and pens. The other one, I stack underneath. It would do for the text books Mrs Shiels had given me. Pulling up the chair, I flick through one of the books—maths. The first couple of pages are pretty basic stuff I'd done last year, but then there is some graphing and algebra I've never done before.

I start reading the chapter and doing the exercises. I keep going like she'd told me, but it's no drag. It's really interesting. I'm understanding it! My brain is getting a real workout, and it feels good. I work my way through the whole book, and as I'm finishing the last page, the siren sounds for lights out. How quickly the time has gone! I push the chair out, stand up and stretch. I'm pretty stiff from sitting for so long, but I feel kind of powerful. My brain's cranking again. My body is waking up too.

Dropping to the patch of floor between my bed and the desk, I do a few slow push-ups. This is the way to survive: not to sit passively as I had been doing, waiting for my life to seep away—but to fill my time up. I'll build my body so it is as fit as it can be. And as for my mind, which never lets up, I'll give it plenty of work to do. All the time I sat there at my little desk tonight, not one thought of anything but understanding and solving those maths problems had filled my mind— nothing! I could control my thoughts through hard work—physical
and
mental. I could survive!

I feel so buoyed up that I could even, for now at least, forget that black hole that is inside me.

I climb into bed, and for a few minutes, I look at the desk, holding neatly lined up books, files and containers. It looks like home—not my old one as that was all gone forever—but this little home of mine where no one can touch me! I flick off the light, and for the first time in a long while, I fall straight into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Ray Reid as the occasional visitor didn't last too long. He seemed to be at our house every Friday night for tea. I just made myself scarce and stayed in my room or went over to someone else's place after tea. Katy always sat longer than I did. The three of them would talk away, so they really didn't seem to notice that I hardly ever said a word. If Ray spoke to me, I'd make sure I didn't make eye contact and I'd mumble the shortest reply I could. Thank God he gave up after a few weeks.

One night was really hot. I'd gone outside after the dishes were cleaned up. I lay on the sad bit of grass that Mum had watered earlier. It was a bit prickly, but the water on it cooled me down, and every little puff of wind sent a delicious little shiver through me. I looked up at the night sky. It looked like a huge upturned soup bowl, and I remembered how hard it had been for me to understand that the earth was actually round and not flat with a semi-circular lid. Dad and I had lain out there together one summer night like this, and he'd pointed out the different stars to me.

“Just think, Luca, your grandfather, his father, his father and so on—all the way back to the beginning of time—have looked up at those stars. Makes you think, doesn't it?”

I had lain there for a while, thinking about all those people who'd come before me. “Where do we go when we die, Dad?”

He hadn't answered for a while, and then he'd said, “Well, no one really knows for certain, but a lot of people think they do.”

“What do you think?” I'd asked, slightly panicky. Dad knew everything, I'd thought, and this was an important question even if no one talked about it much. The thought of death as permanent darkness going on for ever and ever had terrified me.

He hadn't answered for a minute, and then he'd rolled onto one side and put his hand lightly on my chest. “I think that there's part of us that never dies. When we die, I think that part, which people call the soul, steps out. It's a bit like your old kindy clothes. Remember that Batman T-shirt you always wore? Mum would try and get it off you to wash it, and you'd sneak it out of the basket!”

I'd laughed. “I know. I wanted to wear it everywhere, even to bed!”

“What happened to it?”

“It had a few little holes in it, and one day when I pulled it on, they joined up and it ripped right across the back.”

“Then what?”

I had been stumped for a minute. “I felt sad, and then I threw it away”

“Exactly,” he'd said. “Think of your body like that T-shirt. One day, it'll get old and damaged till it completely gives up and you'll step out of that old body and move on. You aren't your body, are you?”

This was a hard one. “Aren't I?”

“Point to the part of you that is
you
.”

I had done a quick scan of my body. Not my legs or arms; they could be cut off and I'd still be me. “Maybe…” I'd said slowly, “maybe my head.”

“Why are you your head?”

“That's where I think, so that's probably where I am.”

“Not a bad thought, Luca. In fact, that's the place where all your thoughts are—but you're not your thoughts, are you?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Then what are you?” This was too hard. It seemed like a simple question, but I just couldn't answer it.

Dad had laughed. “Don't worry if you can't answer it now. It's the question we're all born to think about. Time for bed. We'll talk more another time.” And we'd wandered back inside, brushing bits of grass off each other's backs, and I'd felt comforted but couldn't really work out why.