THE FAT KID

THE FAT KID Colin King moved as though afflicted with the gravity of a
heavier planet. He had some kind of autism, but without the genius
part. His moon face floated above the class during story time. While
the rest of us turned invisible, battled with dragons, followed hungry
caterpillars or ran aground in a wooden boat filled with animals, Kingy
counted roof tiles, picked his nose, drew shapes in the carpet pile and
bit his nails like he was eating his fingers. He also used to take
shits behind one of the mobile classrooms and stand twigs up in the
middle of them. Yesterday I saw him for the first time in ten years. He
was losing a game of dominoes to some of the old men who tremor away
the afternoons in the Oak Ridge Nursing Home. I was picking up a girl
who worked there. She had a job washing down the bed-ridden dreamers
who would whisper in her ear that they loved her and wanted to sex with
her. The first time she helped the staff nurse move a corpse she
screamed. When they sat the dead man upright, trapped air bellowed from
his lungs and he said gwhoooooahh like a bad impression of a ghost. I
loved her because she did a job that I could not. If no one moved the
bodies of the dead we would have to step over them in the street. Kingy
sat at a table with three wrinkled old men. The TV chattered in the
corner. When the old men missed a turn they rapped the dominoes hard on
the table to show that they were still alive. I said gKingy.h Nothing.
I said his name again and he swivelled his big head around. He locked
me in that gaze as vacant as the eyes of blind fish living at crushing
depths. Kingy always wore spotless white shorts for PE. He was the last
pick every week and I never once saw him run. Footballs bounced off him
as though they were ricocheting off a tree trunk. For the first two
lessons every Friday morning, the rest of the class kicked a ball
around a muddy field while Kingy took a stroll in a meadow. Not quite
picking buttercups or making daisy chains, maybe like a man looking for
something he thought he had dropped when it was still in his pocket.
The failed dreams of dictators live on in PE teachers. Cunno barked and
frothed his commands, jumped kids clean out of their skin. His baldhead
reddened and reddened as he pushed, shoved, swore, kicked, tripped and
slapped everyone but the fat boy in his own field. Kingy spread the
dominoes across the table. The old men hypnotically watched. He asked
me if I still liked football and counted me into the next game. I spoke
slowly and quietly. I told him about the men who threw me from a moving
car. gYou were good,h he said, gI remember.h I remember Kingy sprawled
in the November mud. I remember Cunno knowing his wrong. You could see
the fear on his face like he had just been told the day he would die
and what grizzly end was coming. We all saw it. All the mismatched kids
in mismatched sports kit, watching Kingy struggle onto his hands and
knees, mud across his face and in his hair, the scarlet hand mark on
his cheek glowing. Cunno was saying things like gGet up Colin,h and
gItfs only a bit of mud.h Kingy laboured up his body through that
unearthly gravity, his flabby white skin spilling over the elastic
waistband of his shorts, and walked off the pitch without looking back.
Cunno told us to gplay on, play on,h and gItfs not like his team is
going to miss him, is it?h We kicked the ball around some more. Then
Cunno blew the whistle. For the rest of the game he had been looking
back towards the school where Kingy was now standing. We walked towards
him as though the pitch had been tilted on its side and we were rolling
off it. He already had some in his hands. The first piece missed and
thudded against the wall. Cunno was about to say something when Kingy
threw again. This time it hit his open mouth. Kingy bent over and
picked up another lump. Cunno froze when he realised what missiles
Kingy was launching, what missiles he still had collected at his feet.
It was as though Kingyfs very own shit was saved up for such an
occasion as this. He smiled as he threw. We laughed as he threw. Cunno,
the little dictator, the failed man, the crestfallen shit-covered
turd-battler. Arms flailing in a storm of faeces. Then Kingy ran out of
ammunition. Then Cunno stepped towards him like Frankensteinfs monster
in a tracksuit. No one knows who was first to pick up a fistful of
sodden earth and hurl it at Cunno, as a legend like this has many
versions, many claims to be the hero. Even kids not in that year say
they were there, saving Kingy and pelting Cunno, covering him in a
shower of mud from which he would never emerge. Should I feel guilty
about this? I am not sure. A new PE teacher arrived a week later. He
had a beard and played the kind of games where geveryone wins.h Kingy
left school too. Sometimes I would see him waiting for the bus that
took disabled kids to a special school in the next town. Now he is
here, in the Oak Ridge Nursing Home playing a game of dominoes. One of
the old men is shaking so much he cannot move his piece. Kingy takes
his hand and helps him slide the brick across the table. This is what
people who work here do. I knock because I cannot go. Kingy looks me
straight in the eye and gives me the faintest smile. It is the shining
glint of recognition that he says he knows it was me who threw first.
He wins the game and neatly stacks the dominoes in their box. He stands
up, in his spotless white tunic, and leads a man so gently across the
room you think that he would break if he fell.