“Um, I wasn’t really hoping for anything. This is already more than I could have dreamed,” he said, not joking.
“Really?” I was surprised.
He kicked some loose stones and a plume of dust clung to his grey pants. When he planted himself on a wooden barrier, near the pens I had picked out as animal housing from the air, his expression was somber. It didn’t fit.
The farm animals were separated, with gold plaques screwed into the fence posts of their enclosures naming them as goats, sheep, chickens, pigs, boars. Hands in his pockets, Rash looked like he wanted to say something but it was difficult for him. I sat down close, our hipbones touching. He leaned into my shoulder. He was almost as sharp and bony as I was.
Already, I felt like we were linked. Like our similarities drew a connecting line from one to the other. I didn’t look at him but said, “You can tell me. But you don’t have to. We can go make comparisons between the farm animals and the Guardians. I think Gomez looks like that boar with the missing tusk.” I pointed to the pen, the hairy creature snorting as if he was offended. Rash laughed half-heartedly. He took my hand and told me his story. It was cool and steady, easy to hold. And if I had been in his situation, I would find it hard to laugh about anything.
His father died when he was one and with no one willing to marry his mother at her age and with no money, she turned to servicing the local law enforcement. “If you know what I mean?” he said. I nodded. Rash was her second child and his mother was old. Sometimes she would get money, sometimes a beating. She cursed Rash for her bad fortune and he copped a fair few beatings himself. One night, after a particularly bad run in with a customer, his mother crept into his room and held a knife to his throat.
“She was crazy. I reckon she was like that because of what she had to do to survive. She used to scream for my brother.” Rash looked down at our joined hand and traced our knuckles with his other fingers. “I think she wished he had survived and not me. She blamed me for everything,” he said in a voice so small it was like Rash had been swallowed.
Then his mood switched, “She did it all the time. The same speech, different methods.” He said like it was something altogether ordinary. Like saying, ‘I like milk on my cereal.’
“You ruined my life! she would say,” Rash yelled in a hag-like voice, throwing his fist in the air. He then went on to comically demonstrate the various methods his mother had used to try and kill him. Hands around his neck trying to choke him, his tongue hanging out, making strangled noises and coughing, and fighting to breathe with a pillow over his face. He looked so funny flailing around on the ground, like a beetle on its back, that I laughed despite myself.
He got up and I dusted the dirt from his back. His face changed. No longer a smile, but a sad expression that made him look older. He shook his head, trying to dislodge the horrible memory.
“She’d never used a knife before. I wasn’t ready for that. I had to fight back. I didn’t want to die.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything. I just squeezed his rough hand and stared out into the trees, watched them pick up the slight wind and dance on it. Nodding their heads in agreement that no one should have to go through something so horrible. Wishing I could lift some of the burden, that I could reach into his head and pluck out those painful memories.
“I tried to save her but there was just so much blood. Too much.” He wasn’t crying. He talked about it almost like it was someone else’s story, like he had watched it from a distance. Commented on the angle of the knife, the ineffectual method of stabbing that left the victim bleeding for hours before the release of death.
“Anyway, I buried her, under the house. Then I told the neighbors she had run away. Of course they reported me straight away and, before I knew what was happening, I was on a chopper to here.”
I nodded. He was right. Anything was better than that. His expression quickly changed, his face relaxed, and he was easy-going Rash again. He let go of my hand and punched my shoulder lightly, “Farm animals?”
“Sure.” I guess everyone had their own way of coping. This was his.
After time spent joking with Rash at the animal pens, we separated and I went back to my dorm. It was dark and the moonlight made the buildings look less harsh, less like they were going to rise up and devour me. But I still felt small; the eyes of the concrete creatures clinging to the drainpipes followed me, mocked me.
I lay awake thinking about what Rash had said. Realizing that things could be a lot worse for me. Construction was a surprise, yes, but there must have been a reason why they picked it, something in my tests that pointed them in that direction. I would try. I would go into Class and absorb everything I could. I fell asleep easily. Anticipating the ‘hard, hard work’ but kind of looking forward to it.
It didn’t take me long to realize that there had been a reason. I was good at this, really good. Every week we would learn a new skill, repeat it as many times as was necessary to perfect it, and then move on to something new. Our teacher was passionate and intense, but he wasn’t unkind. He had never-ending patience for the ones that struggled. For once, somehow, that wasn’t me. I enjoyed making things. Taking a piece of wood and crafting it into something useful was calming and centering for me.
My classmates were all genuinely decent young men, despite the swearing. They looked out for me in the beginning, protective because I was a girl, but once they could see I was managing really well on my own, they would often come to me for help.
Daydreaming about Joseph, I was plummeting a drill bit into a piece of plasterboard, white dust flying everywhere like toxic snow. I was thinking about talking to him, imagining a confrontation that didn’t end in him running away from me. A strong hand wrapped around my own and pulled the drill back.
“Uh, Soar?” My new nickname. “What the hell are you doing?”
I snapped my head around to face Nik, a tree stump of a boy whose ropey exterior resembled an even rougher and ropier interior.
“Oh, damn, sorry Nik, I wasn’t concentrating.”
He looked at me dumbfounded, “What yer apologizing to me for? I jest needed yer help with sumthin’.” He ran his hand through his black-as-batwing hair awkwardly, “Er, that is, if ya have the time.”
I let in a puff of pride at the fact that this boy needed my help. Trying not to be too girly and blush, I punched his arm, which felt exactly as I thought it would, like punching a bag of nails, and said, “Of course. What do you need?”
“Well, I can’t reach that goddamn tin of oil up there.” He pointed to a high shelf. I felt myself deflating. “Can I lift you up there to get it?”
“Oh, sure,” I said quietly. He grabbed me by my waist and lifted me with ease. I snatched the tin and slammed it on the bench.
“Thanks,” Nik muttered. “Um, Soar?”
What now, did he want me to fix the ceiling fan while I was up there?
“Yes.”
“Ah crap, how freakin’ long does this take fore I can put a second coat on it, and um, do ya sand in between?”
I grabbed his impossibly hard arm, steered him to his workbench, and began instructing him, Gomez looking silently over my shoulder.
As I selected a piece of fine-grit sandpaper, I asked, “Nik?”
“Yeah.”
“Why Soar?”
His pale blue eyes fixed on me and he gave a crooked grin. “Aw ya know, coz yer the high flyer in the class. And, der, it’s Rosa backwards.”
My mouth twitched into a half-smile. I didn’t correct him.
As the weeks went by, the violence faded, as did the heartache. I was surrounded by friends who respected me and it salved my heart inadvertently. The students were all working hard towards the mid-year assessment. I saw Joseph from time to time, hanging around outside the medical building, swinging from the concrete pillars, wearing his white coat. He seemed happy. I tried to be happy for him, despite the stone that twisted in my heart. He never looked at me.