RuKsaK

The symmetry of the two standing policemen with the dangling handcuffs was broken when Stink was taken away and I was left behind. He got three months in borstal for doing fifty percent more crimes than I had. The damage, enjoyment, fear and money made had been about the about the same for each misdemeanour. He’s just done more and was sent down for this statistic alone. The magistrate had said something about Stink being the instigator – when I looked up the word later I realised that they’d got that wrong – it was me. Stink should have seen the back of my head disappearing into the side door with the next story behind it, but the story went to him. It really belonged to him anyway – it just wasn’t until many years later I realised that.
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When he came out it was more than the bruises and chunky ear that made him different. His gait had taken on an epic level of apathy. I noticed this when he entered rooms – he didn’t glance around, never checked to see what the room was saying or giving. He didn’t look for the comfiest chair in a room, didn’t seem to choose food in the school canteen. He denied the walls, the ceiling, lost all communication with the concrete, the furniture. He just let the rooms happen around his body – all interaction was off. I can’t explain it better than that – I’ve never felt that way. He was in the middle of his field and carrying into everywhere with him.
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He told us about borstal, all matter-of-factly, using ‘I’ and ‘me’ like names for someone else. His black eyes had come from the chicken run the Hammer had promised him before leaving.
‘I had to run round the dorm, under one bed and over the next. The kids were punching and kicking me at the same time. The Hammer made me go round twice.’
‘Christ! Did it hurt really badly?’
‘The dorm beating hurt more because it was the first. The chicken run was worse though. I couldn’t ball myself up. I’ve got bruises all over my ribs from the soap bars in socks.’

He lifted up his t-shirt to show us. He didn’t wince or slow down lifting it – it was a mechanical movement. Down either side his skin was washed black and grey – it looked like the rain clouds we painted in art classes at school, all pocked and mushed together. We couldn’t imagine what so many bruises felt like. He put his t-shirt back down with as much magnitude as he put into blinking.
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He never bragged and only told us about it when we asked him – just like pressing a button. The whole motion he’d adopted was cool and measured – not a fifteen-year-old anymore, if even a human – it was like his body was constantly checking gravity. Stink had come back as a very peaceful alien.

But there was violence too.
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Go to Stink and the suicides - part 10 here.

Monday, May 09, 2005

Stink and the suicides - part 9