Day 1 - 1.11.09 - words= 1,389
Chapter 1: Oak Hill Blues
It was a rainy autumn and the drops hit heavily against the car bonnets that stood motionless in the parking bays. Across in a classroom a few children stared lazily out of the window as the drops fell down the glass forming deltas that became far more fascinating than the drawl of Dr Callahan’s endless analysis of Steinbeck. The seconds clicked by faithfully on the white clock at the back of the room and occasionally a pair of eyes would sneak a look at its progress. Mobile phones rumbled unnoticed in pockets and the children’s hand twitched as they resisted the temptation to discover what message had been delivered to them. The word Redemption was scrawled in red felt letters across the white board with the name Tom Joad written below it, it was the theme of the day. Dr Callahan found the best place to begin any lesson was with an over riding theme as he spent the next hour trying to convey the particular parts of the novel that contained the corresponding theme, themes of vital importance to humanity, humanity itself contained within a few thousand letters placed together across a few hundred pages, great fiction, yet great truth. The time and place of the writers, the industrial Dickensian distopia, Steinbecks swirling dustbowl or worst still the classic tales of crushed souls, a character destined to the worst of fates by their own actions; Lear or Faust.
These were the deepest of cuts fed to disinterested minds at such an early age, what could Jack Cropper know of tragedy, what could Simon Collins, who sat swirling chewing cum around his tongue with untied shoes and unpopped pimples, glean from Blake or Shelley or Wordsworth, why should he care? Borne to an electronic world, masters of quick communication already at the tender age of fifteen, they write thousands of words a day yet never read a letter. They truly know desire and lust but not for Juliet or Mr Darcy but for things, looks, possessions. Dr Callahan was a sales man, engaged in a bartering deal with his students. A deal where knowledge was imparted with the greatest of good intentions, offered as a means for a slip of paper that decreed a child’s worth in this world.
The rain still fell and the deltas fell into each other on the window. Edward looked out over the playing fields beyond the concrete fence at the back which had the letters f.w.c.k written on it. Stephen Stockmen had written that, well he had clearly written something else but Mr Taurbold had not got his hands upon the culprit so he had modified the mantra by add an extra line to the U. When eventually he did call Stephen to his office he would send him out there with a bucket and brush until it was clean. For the moment if you asked him what it meant he would reply “find who corrupted the kingdom.” For of course Oak Hill was Mr Taurbold’s Kingdom.
Edward smirked into his hand that was covered in blue ink as his pen was leaking. Things often happened to Edward that to the casual observer would look like carelessness but Edward would claim it was just bad luck. Often it was a mixture of the two, when bad luck befell Edward he would often pay little attention to remedying the situation instead choosing the idle route of acceptance, he felt it showed an ability to adapt to a situation, to accept fate in all its instances and to not question its judgment. If this meant his white shirt returned home stained with grass, chocolate and small dots of blood then so be it, he would wear it the next day because after all it was still a shirt, capable of performing the same function as it was the previous day. It still hung loosely of his shoulders covering his scrawny torso from the world. The only difference was now it had a chronology all of it’s own, it was his Nordic tapestry. Of course when his mother discovered the pile of his shirts stained and crumpled against the edge of his bed on a Saturday morning when she shook him awake to accompany her in shopping or a family excursion she would launch into an exasperated scolding for his lack of self respect for his personal appearance and remove the pile of garments in a wretched fit of disgust. On Monday the shirts would reappear gleamed and fresh hanging on the banister outside of Edwards room, blank canvas’s, suspended nylon tabula rasa’s.
Edward reveled in scruffiness and alienated others in the process. His hair was thick and rough, it looked as though it would curl if only it had the energy instead though it sparked out of his scalp in a fuzzy limbo, there was nothing remotely stylish about it. It looked as though he were wearing a wig of horsehair and stalks. He frequently washed it with soap and created stiff clumps around the fringe and above his ears, like a spiny dry octopus made of hay had descended onto his scalp and taken residence there. It didn’t occur to him that perhaps this constituted anything but normality, he saw the other boys at the school with their subtle highlights delicately placed upon the tips of the gelled spines from the expensive hairdressers in town and wondered why they chose to call him a puff. They always seemed more premed and effeminate, Martin McCulsky even carried a tube of hand moisturizer with him at all times. Not that it mattered all that much to Edward if he was a puff or not, according to the majority of the student body it was the worst imaginable thing to be but Oscar Wilde was a puff and Dr Callahan was forever quoting him and talking about him. Maybe Dr Callahan was a puff to. Edward wasn’t sure how much different life would be if he were a puff except maybe he could give a definitive answer every time Elliott Samson asked him the question ‘Are you a fuckin’ puff Hale?’ before punching his stomach and laughing at Edwards contorted winded frame gasping for air against the wall of the corridor.
Edwards face looked as though it desperately wanted to be older, the first few shoots of an adolescent beard peeked out in whispers beneath his chin and beside his ears. Some boys had already achieved reasonable looking stubble around the majority of their faces. For Edward though the only evidence of his facial follicle achievements were through touch when he rubbed his hand along the soft strands he smiled and wished he could one day have a wild unkempt beard like Darwin or Whitman or perhaps a distinguishable mustache like Gracho Marx or Charlie Chaplin it would be so much a part of him he would not be himself without it. For now though he was confined to a light fluff like the fine wisps of cotton wool that clung to the edge of the pads his mother used to clean off her make-up before she went to sleep.
He would often notice these clumps of black balls in the wicker bin in his mother’s bedroom. She had the only full-length mirror in the house so he used to parade in front of it sometimes just to examine himself, to see that he was satisfied with what the world saw of him. Occasionally he would dress in front of it just to see his naked form that he did not choose be concealed by things he did choose. The stained, ripped and battered Parker jacket that his Father had brought him for a skiing trip two years ago. It hung now far too short and was held together by a few key stitches. The hood resembled an ally cat with the fur matted together and smelled as if it had been floating facedown in a sewer. The coat was almost a part of him though, when it rained and he put the hood up some boys he barely knew the names of who sat 7 rows back on the top deck of the 54A bus shouted ‘urrrgh Chewy!!’ at him from the window.
