The facesaver

THE FACESAVER So McCorriston stabs the third former’s shoulder blades into the sick-bay, bundles over a chair, secures the door, and, viscera seething, rakes the corridor with anxious eye. Then wrenches at the dusky folds of thick, green curtain, casting a Romany duskiness over the miscreant whose eyes he cannot hood.

‘You crazy little runt!’ snaps McCorriston. And waits – which is weakness. Amid odours of stale salad rolls, withering canvas, linseed, liniment, and his own dank armpits, silence is bristling, hemming him in against the clutter now materializing: spineless books, punctured footballs, stumpy-tailed cricket bats and varicose desk lids ‘You could have killed someone!’

Trenery still brands that sneer of timeless defiance that McCorriston himself would never have flaunted in his day – unless one recollected the snoot he wore for his father’s unrealistic expectations of him.

So it’s McCorriston’s move again, apparently; there is no copping out. The kid is dictating strategy through the insinuation of his bacon-rind lips.

‘You knew there was a fire ban today, didn’t you? I said, didn’t you?’ McCorriston’s neck cords to yank up the smug kid by the lapels and throttle.

Trenery, at last, makes his gambit under a veneer of nonchalance, eases palms onto hips, points a toecap at ninety degrees and sighs as if savouring a roach.

A string snaps in McCorriston’s elbow – his right arm reels out in spite/because of his trepidation to deliver a backhander, then flips to cuff the other cheek now unguarded and heave and Trenery staggers against the stretcher, clattering the first-aid box onto a beaker of ash.

Winded by surprise, his bulbous sheep eyes swim for McCorriston who bulls in to smother the snivelling whelp, shadowing the whole cell, rocking on eager tiptoe, checking almost, then shrinking back to relish the pistoning of his own lungs. He’s not going to take any more lip from this snotty-nosed cocky kid.

Sprawled on the canvas, Trenery whimpers for the shadows to recoil.

‘Sorry, feller,’ mumbles McCorriston, magnanimity leeching out. Or a strain of apprehension.

‘What did youse go an’ hit me for then?’ sniffles the child in the young man.

‘You left me no choice,‘ retorts McCorriston, as if less tangible rules had been broken.

Tears threaten to glaze his own eyes, as he mock-punches Trenery’s shoulder.

The boy skitters like a shot-up rabbit. Even the truce must be fought for. ‘Yeah, but youse didn’t have to hit me.’

‘Let’s knock it off and start again,’ offers McCorriston, bewildered - five years’ teaching experience, two as co-ordinator, gone down the gurgler, evaporated in a whiplash frenzy. But he really did have to hit this wop, didn’t he? That cricket game fiasco, the fire lit in the grass, the drawn-out interrogation with blank stares, with wholesale threats if no one owned up, Trenery insolently calling him by his surname after he’d been sprung, then the audacity of that transfixed sneer that had so infuriated. ‘You’d better wash your face.’

‘Then can I go to the library?’ in a voice of abject misery, almost inaudible.

‘I don’t see why not.’ McCorriston warms to this notion of getting the kid out of his hair, whilst appearing to grant a conciliatory favour. Besides, old Mrs Sansom, the entrenched librarian who knew all the local folks, would enjoy clucking round the piker.

Trenery burrows into his stained rag of a handkerchief, snuffles and stumbles out onto the blind edge of afternoon.

McCorriston’s first stint in a small country school, following his transfer from Melbourne’s inner suburbs, has been a slap in the face. IIID has thrown down the challenge to their fourth English teacher of the year. The previous incumbent was relieved by pregnancy, though not from the local scandal of being unmarried.

Now it’s the newie, the respectably married McCorriston who trembles. Immediately, he must collect himself, not heed the turmoil within, not betray the nervous uncoordination of his crustaceous body. Bearing and gestures serve as scar tissue. So McCorriston reassures his wayward tie, tags his cuffs and roosters off to class.

Where quizzical faces pop up from neglected assignment sheets like spindles of tin ducks on a firing range.

‘I’m pleased to see you’re all hard at work for once!’ declares McCorriston, who indulges a partiality for scaling pebbles across a millpond. He anticipates but fails to gauge the deep-swirling currents of indignation and righteousness.

‘Where’s Charlie?’ Leanne pipes up with a beaming smile of wide-eyed innocence and gleaming white teeth. Her attention span will require comment on the special report.

‘Now, what I’d like . . .’ Shards of chalk rime are biting under McCorriston’s fingernails and peppering his larynx.

‘What have youse done with ‘im?’ Daryl Somers, still wearing earrings.

‘There’s too much . . . ‘ ‘Bullshit,’ someone muttered in the back row, whose identity was hidden by a screen of sniggers ‘Odds on, he’s bailed up in Gumnut’s office.’

God, there’d be hell to pay if the boss gets wind of all this racket. ‘Now let’s get down . . .’

‘Charlie’s old man’s built like an ox. He could lay youse out with his little pinkie, soon as look at youse.’

‘Nah, he blew that one off holding a bloody banger in his mitt. Man’s a mongrel.’

‘I’ve just about . . .’

‘We want Charlie! Where is Charlie!’

McCorriston is glancing mechanically at his watch-face, unseeing, as if performing a series of skilful flips with a yo-yo. The yipping that snipes at his ears begins to congeal into a cannonade orchestrated by rulers and thumping books. McCorriston raises his arms in an appeal for quiet, some might have said mercy, but the waves of derision do not abate.

‘WE WANT CHAR LIE!’ ‘WHERE IS CHAR LIE?’ McCorriston rides the tension on his sphincter muscle, pleading providential intervention from the corridor. Instead, his stomach slurries at the frieze of gargoyles impressing the widescreen window. Refugees from the library, toilets, forgotten errands have sniffed out something relevant at last. Hoppity desks are grating towards his lead-weighted feet.

‘WE WANT CHAR LIE!’ ‘WHERE IS CHAR LIE?’ To hell with them all! I’m not a bloody babysitter! McCorriston finally bolts through the ricochets of laughter and homes for the staff room.

At the end of the fibro tunnel Kevin O’ Brady is tamping his pipe. Luigi, a longlegged, wiry boy stalking up behind the curly-headed history teacher, suddenly pummels the sporty man’s bulging bicep, in spite of the quills of beard. ‘How goes it, sir?’

‘Non c’e male, grazie,’ replies Kevin in a sing-song, exaggerating each syllable through teeth tipped by nicotine. ‘Come sta, mio piccolo amico?’ Then sideswipes the India rubber boy into the gunmetal-grey lockers to regulate the encroachment.

‘Can’t grumble, you know,’ Luigi chortles, from a stooping wariness, bouncing back with a left to the body, Ali-shuffles, feints to the right . . .

‘Mama mia!’ exclaims Kevin, with a flourish of big bucketing basketballer’s hands, Que bambino loco! Jeez, Macka, what a fruitcake! It’s crazy the sort of stuff you have to take on the chin to stay onside with some of these wops. It helps to be a Sylvester Stallone-cum shrink-cum Mother Teresa in this job. And how goes it with you, old son?

Oah, can’t complain,’ sighs McCorriston, beetling into the staff-room, just as a football plunks into the wall and three elongated shapes are soaring and scrabbling over his head.

‘Get out of the road, Macka! You’re interfering with play!’

Shrugging: ‘Lay off, can’t you!’

‘You tell ‘em, McCorrikins. And since you’ve got a free, how about you buying into this round?’

The mute English teacher turns a bunched back on the seven card stud, harnesses himself to his desk, fumbles open his mark book and begins totting up a column of figures that fudges over. The childish jinks behind him confirm that he is in the wrong profession.

‘Donnikins to deal. Have you put in, Donnikins? Jeffkins? Well, bloody well get off your arse! McCorrikins is gonna buy into the next round.

Trenery plashed at the misery scowled on his face, trumpeted mucus onto his dustgrained palms and skeined it over the porcelain sink that in stained like tannin.

Can’t hack it much longer all I wanna do is jump on my trail-bike hit humps of sand and fly into the wind get to hell out of this prison why do they flamin’ treat youse like kids?

He scuffed across the basketball court. When he clapped eyes on McCorriston’s pansy yellow Gemini, he was tempted to snap off the antenna, but figured he’d be number one suspect, so he spat an oyster of catarrh at the plump tyres and slunk down towards the oval, snatching randomly at straggly furze and branches, tracing the boundary culvert that curved to a shady grove of gums. Wheeling in from the third green of the golf course, a magpie raked his hair, squawking away from his vicious swipe.

Trenery snucked against the bole of a manna gum beneath scrolls of lingering bark, roughing his back on a knurl, jack-knifing his limbs into the flaps of grey shirt, sniffed at his thrumming headache, remembered the sick koala that had sat right there, just sat and occasionally blinked, even when kids poked at it to check out if it really might spill with sticks of straw; then stickybeak Don Winters came and lugged it off, the touchy feely Careers guy, said he’d give it a decent burial in his back garden and how he’d always wanted to own a koala skeleton, the crazy coot.

A bull ant had mounted Trenery’s kneecap. He flicked it onto the nuggety humus that cracked like his old man’s raw, fubsy hands, to crush it Macka Macka Mac Cor ris ton with a twig, for the buses still hadn’t come and there was the bloody milking before tea and he could hear classrooms droning like a Fokker Friendship over the Prom.

So maybe Macka’s not so weak as pddy piss big deal bet he wouldn’t uv given that beanpole Clarkey a poke if he’d uv stirred O’ Brady would uv landed one to rubbish youse but he’s a grouse teacher youse can have a joke with him but he won’t let youse mess around all we was doing was setting light to some hay back of the concrete strip cricket, what a drag!

I could uv been sticking logos on my bike or giving the engine a right-old tune-up and I’m the dummy gets sprung if that dag blabs to Gumnut, pig’s arse, it’ll be on me report, no worries and then mum’ll start chewing me ear and the old man might belt me one, want me to give school away an’ making a hundred bucks a week if he coughs up but then stuck here, with the old man, him always telling youse what to do, never seeing me mates, hardly. Jeez! I’d lose me marbles hell, I’ll just have to get me head down, show Macka I’m not so dumb as he thinks he’s green, but Jeez, can he hurt! I dunno, why do they always get cranky and want to roll youse?

McCorriston’s addled head was whisked round and round on the Grand Ridge monorail. At every blind curve he expected Trenery to jackinabox the windscreen, then leap off on kangaroo legs. McCorriston swerved, juddered, lost control in shoals of dust, rolled over and . . .

‘Ready for a dip, darl?’ Josie invited.

‘W h a?’ A swatch of stale breadcrumbs or sand particles was crystallising on his back.

‘You going in? Such a beaut day!’

‘Jeez, I’ve never known such a lousy year for sandflies,’ he moaned, scoring the hardening, white blotches with his nails until their moisture soothed.

‘Knock it off, Brad. I can’t stand any more of your Sundayitis. You’ve got an obsession with that third form.’

‘How many sickies have I taken this year?’

‘Don’t keep harping on it. You bet, everyone else has taken their fortnight.’

‘Josie, listen. Just listen. This is really bad news.’ He paused to tease some parsley from a cavity. ‘I should’ve told you at the end of school instead of keeping it to myself. I cracked a kid’s face last period, Friday. What’s more, I felt good, really good, kind of released, when I’d done it. For a while.’

‘Oh, jeez, Brad, what gets into you?’ Even suntan lotion could not gloss the puckers of contempt. ‘You’re an animal sometimes. Suppose Gumnut sticks his beak in?’

‘The boss is always buried up to his hairpiece in administrivia, so he’s no worry. No, it’s those kids I can’t be sure of. You give them an inch and they ride roughshod all over you, even when they’re just hitting up on the oval. To get anywhere with them, you have to act all macho. Like Kevin O’ Brady.’

‘Don’t make me laugh. Kevin? He’s as gentle as a bear. And he’s got a sense of humour. Who was the kid anyway?’

‘Young Trenery. The sort who goes out shooting roos at night with a spotlight and calls it a wicked circus.’

‘Listen, you better believe the future’s no longer with Sid Vicious.’

‘Christ! Even my wife’s turning against me now! You’ve got no idea of what it’s like, standing like a lemon in front of thirty hyperactive kids who are bored out of their socks.’

‘Kids have been swinging from the rafters ever since I raced huntsman spiders across the ceiling by torchlight. Get used to it, darl.’

‘But this herringbone mentality is giving me the irrits. School is just a holiday camp and work a dirty four-letter word for most of these kids. They just want to go back to the farm as soon as possible. Unenlightened. This is the Dark Ages. In Dip Ed the tutor always had solutions. You diagnosed the symptoms and followed the proper corrective programme. Communicate with the kids rationally, sympathetically and fairly. Then they’ll give you a fair go. Sometimes I feel like a stuntman running for fifty minutes across an enemy minefield, but I’ve forgotten the script.’

‘When are you going to grow up, Brad. These are only cocky kids you’re talking about. Show them who’s the boss, for Christ sake.’

‘I’m not cut out for teaching, Josie. Classroom problems don’t rate a mention with O’Brady and co. Even that Pommy science teacher has to take the all-girl year eights round the oval because he daren’t trust them in the lab.’

‘Of course not! They’ve learnt to switch off at three o’clock. And on Friday arvo they take off for Melbourne as if they’re starting Le Mans.’

‘I need to try something different. Before it’s too late. Start a nursery, something harmonious.’

‘You’ve only got to hang in there for a couple of years, then you’re entitled to promotion. We could do with the extra money.’

‘Those third form kids are going to crucify me, I know it. I can’t walk out on them twice.’

‘Mrs Trenery’s always going on about the teachers up there letting the kids get away with murder.’ She gave his knee a playful tap. ‘At least she can’t throw that at you.’

Brad stared at her cascade of sheeny, blonde hair. ‘Damned flies! I told you we should’ve gone to Waratah.’

McCorriston tossed and turned Saturday night or Monday morning. So red raw burnt, so inflamed his skin that it tickled, then itched with pain.

I’ll never understand why teaching brings out the best and worst in me. Especially the worst, though I suspect Josie bears the brunt more than those wops. Okay, so I yell my head off half a dozen times a year, but sometimes it’s the only thing they understand – as long as no wise guy burps or farts. Yet one blast of temper scares me up for a couple of days, with sheer exhaustion or despair, usually guilt, remorse. But I’ve never struck a kid before. Though I’ve come close. And I still can’t believe those sensations. It was as if I was impelled to lash out because Trenery dared me to gain his respect, and even though there was something inside my head ordering me not to, all my meanness erupted. Like a boil pierced. Why? I try not to get so involved, but when lessons do take off, the intensity’s delicious, propels me into a kind of intimacy which seems meaningful, even strangely moving, at the time. But next morning’s always a new beginning, a different stage, as if you have to win over these kids every day afresh. And the anxiety of not being able to turn it on, the fear of boring the backsides off them with so much deadwood, is taking over my life. Now they won’t trust me an inch and I’ll have to read the Riot Act. Which they’ll ignore anyway.

Hell, why won’t they just let me teach?

He anticipated the drive to school at 8.25, turning in by the domestic.science block, a slew of kids would greet him like manic batmen, only to shoot him down with popping plosions of bubble gum, tossing him questions about his Macmobile, his team, his weekend, his sandwich fillings, all of which required circumspect negotiation. Kerry Martin would bowl him a googly about his wife and . . .

Trenery was mincing back through brief candy-striped dresses, grey shirts, sloughing off deference to his weekend fame. Yet he was alert to every McCorriston sound. and movement, like when he’d suddenly encountered a coil of snake slothing on a bush trail, tensing and trembling to club it to ribbons, but stood off to admire the frigid glaze of black and orange slack.

McCorriston locked and checked his car, as if consoling a hostage. ‘No, you couldn’t haves seen me snorkelling for abalone, Shane, I was nowhere near Walkerville. So how many runs did you tonk up, Robbie? How’s your mother’s hepatitis, Trish?

But he had barely listened to the answers before skulking into the staff room.

Head down, Trenery dawdled and scuffed towards the yard for assembly, didn’t feel like mussing up Leanne’s Afro frizz or swiping a nipper’s marbles, the first Monday he’d handed up his Mastering Words homework. Most of the stupid words he’d checked out in the dictionary he’d never even heard of, could make neither head nor tail of their meanings anyways, but he had ruled up a margin and underlined the date, so it was worth at least a B. Sometimes you had to play it their way, even if your old man would always be expecting youse in the paddocks.

‘Youse kids gonna stir Macka then?’ It was Ken Jansen, first wicket down for the seconds, whose old man was struck down dead by a goods train under the trestle bridge one Saturday night, sozzled, and made all the papers.

Trenery shrugged. Didn’t like the fuss of giving a lead, but there was something else bothering him. Perhaps the sweat tucking the crooks of his knees. Or a scything backhander from his old man.

‘What d’yer reckon?’ Trenery muttered, scouring round lest McCorriston jumped him from behind a gum tree to twist his ear.

‘Whatever youse say, Charlie.’

‘Oh er, it’s up to youse guys,’ he mumbled. I’m taking a spell to . . . catch up.’

Trenery felt his cheeks burn. Wasn’t school for having a yarn with your mates and not chickening out? He scratched his head as he watched the long-striding Jansen jog over to the gang, his chest heaving.

McCorriston was gulping down a mug of water, held his breath and touched his shins six times. Jeez, my stomach’s playing up! Nonetheless, he traipsed off for room 12 to secure the advantage, reminded of the sulphurous mists of Rotorua on a squally morning.

But no sooner had he deposited his books and papers, and magisterially paced up and down the aisles for want of a bracing tonic, than he speculated whether it still wasn’t too late to do a runner to Tarra Valley. The clanking seizure of a distant door, encroaching salvoes of scatty laughter and the tinny slamming of lockers nailed him down. Would he never outgrow this wretched stagefright?

‘How’s it hanging, sir?’ sang Kerry, with an artificially sweetened smile. “We’ve brought you a Christmas prezzie.’ She tendered him a large, red-ribboned parcel. ‘For our favourite teach.’

God, surely not a peace-offering, he squirmed, surreptitiously kneading the awkward lump. ‘That’s very nice of you, I’m sure,’ he bumbled.

Although he had set his jaw at gaining firm control, Kerry’s unexpected gesture disarmed him. So much did he wish to show his likeable side.

‘D’jer ‘ave a good weekend?’ Daryl’s swagger was all the more weighty since he could outdrink his old man and make his belly fat ripple and roll when things dragged.

‘Ah, good,’ McCorriston hedged, not intending to be roped in too soon, nor too grammatically precious.

‘Who’s he gonna take into the sick-bay today, I wonder?’ whined Melanie, angling for a spot prize. ‘I rather fancy my chances, you know.’ She made as if to primp her mousy, auburn hair and splayed one hand on her hip, mooching provocatively.

‘Bloke may be a desperado, but he’s not that bloody crazy.’

McCorriston ignored Daryl’s comment by niggling at the knots binding his gift.

‘Wanna bet?’ chimed Kerry, then slid into that wide, molar-gleaming grin.

McCorriston would offer them the benefit of the doubt. After all, he had within seconds somehow cast himself adrift, and couldn’t dredge the courage to retrieve the tiller. Besides, Trenery was conspicuously inoffensive.

IIID dismantled their chairs with shuddering gusto, but after they had parked themselves McCorriston could hear only the low twang of twine and the crinkle of paper that peeled off in wad after wad of brown wrapping, alfoil, print-patterned birthday, yellow serviette, tissue, red, green mistletoe on snow-white Xmas . . .

‘Isn’t this a fun lesson, everyone?’ Kerry’s voice lilted in sugary parabolas. ‘Aren’t you getting a teensy bit excited, sir?’

McCorriston found himself holding a paper ball bunched by elastic bands, in which lurked – what? A plastic Huntsman, a tractor spark plug, a pig’s trotter, Kevin O’ Brady’s liver? His sunburn ached with overheating.

‘Aren’t youse gonna open it?’ taunted Daryl, lounging back with his bleached grey shirt draped open, threatening to dance his navel. Trenery began fidgeting in the desk behind.

‘Get a shifty on, mate. I’ve got net practice,’ said Ken Jansen, twirling the blade of his bat.

Suddenly, through their smirky eyes, he saw the wishy-washy posturing of his petty, minified self. Oh Christ! Sucked in again. Who said every child wants to learn!

McCorriston’s tongue felt lumpy, his throat dry. Speechless, he was. Could scarcely bring himself to untie all the knots. He yearned for some bolt-hole to the eucalypt scents of the scallop-breasted hills where words soared like rosellas through the windbreaks and Josie’s lips tasted of pineapple upside-down cake.

‘Sir?’ ‘Yes, Trenery?’ Oh hell, brace yourself for the flak!

‘I forgot to tell yer, but Gumnut …’

A snort and splutter from Kerry, a jeer from Daryl. ‘err, I mean Mr Weston, said you was to see him at the beginning of the lesson.’

‘What about, do you know?’

Sniggers spattered around McCorriston’s suspicion.

Trenery shrugged. ‘Just said it’s urgent.’

McCorriston probed the inscrutability of the youth’s face. For once, Trenery looked away, bland, was in fact earnestly thumbing through All the Green Year. ‘Well, in that case . . .’ McCorriston’s voice firmed, his breathing escaped more evenly. ‘Carry on with some private reading.’ Elastic groans testified to his popularity.

Still clenching a tacky ball of paper, McCorriston strode off for the Principal’s office – Jeez! Out of the frying pan into the fire. Trenery’s folks must’ve complained to Gumnut. Can’t blame them, I s’pose. Should’ve invited them up for an interview before all this shit hit the fan. The boss’ll lay it on the line. Oh bugger! I might as well hand in my notice.

The secretary was decorating the Principal’s tea tray with Granitas and china. No personally named, scum-scarred mugs here.

‘Is the boss expecting me, Meryl?’

‘No one is allowed to see Mr Weston now, Brad. You know he’s tied up with the time-tabling committee.’

McCorriston tempered his anger in a steely walk back down the corridor, bent on verbal abuse at least. So this was how Trenery would stalk him. With more devious, less showy behaviour. Would that lad never learn? As he closed in on his jabbering classroom, he became aware of a sticky dribble oozing from the package in his hand.

Inside, three apple cores squelched against a tomato sandwich. More disappointed than annoyed, McCorriston abruptly halted. Scratched his nose. And began to reconsider. How the hell can I save face now?

Michael Small 1973; revised January, 2016 published in The Hat Trick, Australian Short Stories, BHP/VFAW, 1981