CANDLE IN THE DARK
Just Plain Eddie
Edward Thompson was his full name, his real name, but I didn't know it till later. I'd heard it, I mean, but I just didn't know it. In fact I don't think any of us kids did. Right from the beginning he was just plain Eddie. Eddie.
Just the sort of name a retard would have. You know what I mean?
Retards always have those funny names, like Franky or Mikey or Stevey. Normal kids don't have names like that.
Hey Eddie, ya retard! we would yell.
Gees it was funny.
Hey, Ed-die! Ha!
He'd look up with his gawky cow eyes and his massive forehead and stare straight through us. Straight through. We cacked ourselves.
Every day the same thing. He'd sit deep in the shadows nibbling at his lunch. That was his spot. Just like a little one man stage where we could watch him doing his retard stuff in the dark.
And he just sat there and took it.
Hey Eddie, ya retard! we would yell. Gees.
Just sat there, nibbling away like some dumb rabbit.
Didn't seem to care.
I dunno. Maybe he did.
Bit late to be worrying about that now though.
It's funny when you see someone for the first time - how you kind of suss 'em out and form an opinion about all sorts of things before they even speak a word. Only takes about five seconds.
With Eddie it took less.
I remember the day clearly. It was hot - a scratchy sort of day.
Hendo walked into the room with Eddie loping along behind him. One look and you could tell he was different.
It was his pants. They flared out high above his ankles. You could see heaps of sock and it made his feet look like they were stuck on afterwards or something. Like he was a plastic model and the pieces all got jumbled up in the box.
Then Hendo started up.
"Okay ladies and gentlemen, - Mr Harbridge - listen up. Edward is a new student to the year. Please look after him."
Hendo was the Principal. He'd been at the school supposedly since it opened about a hundred and fifty years ago. Word had it that he was pretty rough on the grog at the RSL most every night. Wouldn't surprise me. Old bastard.
"His next class will be Economics with Miss Bannister. I expect you'll all make the effort to show him the ropes. Some of you no doubt remember that feeling of starting afresh in a new school...."
Standard speech.
Blah. Blah.
Funny thing was, all the time Hendo's speaking, Eddie's up the front staring at us. Just standing there. Like he knows us. Not scared like you'd expect a nervous new kid to be.
And then I got that creepy feeling. You know? His hands were by his side. Straight down. Too straight. Not fidgeting. Just dangling there like they weren't even stuck in the sockets. Dead arms..
".... canteen and the toilets of course, gentlemen, I'll leave to you. Well good luck Edward. Mr Harbridge, could I just.... ah...."
Hendo flicked his finger back toward the door. Harbridge got off his sweaty backside and waddled over. They stood there nodding and mumbling to each other, every so often glancing back into the room. You could see the sweat stain spreading out from Harbie's underarms. It was like some poxy disease. Fat pig.
Eddie took a seat up the front and just sat there, staring straight ahead with his back to us. Bolt upright and still - real still - like a robot.
That's when it happened.
I was staring at the back of his head. It was a bad haircut. Too short at the back and kind of like a bowl on top. And then he did it. He turned around and looked at us, the whole class - looked through us - and spoke, in a voice too loud-
"I am f-feel-ing very anxious today. I am new here just in case you d-didn't know. Just in c-case. It's all ver-y strange."
That was it.
Then he turned back again to his robot position.
Total silence. Kids were looking around at each other with their mouths open. I looked over and saw Hendo raise one eyebrow slightly to Harbridge.
And then I knew.
It was like a neon sign lit up above Eddie's head for all to see. And that sign said in bright capital letters - RETARD.
Then the class went berko. We cacked ourselves and I knew straight away that Eddie would be in for it.
We'd go at him like we did all the other losers.
Like a pack of dingos.
Turned out Eddie and his Mum and Dad had arrived about a week before and moved into a two storey place near the town hall. His Dad was some lecturer or something - an agricultural scientist from a Uni down south, here to solve "our problem".
Funny that, how the Dad was a brainiac and his boy was a retard. You know, his name was Dr Thompson and he had some letters after it. He was working around the farms doing tests and stuff.
It'd all started small enough a while back. No-one took too much notice at the time.
Some of the McPherson crop had got some sort of rot or bug or something like that. Rotted right on the stem. It had to be burned. Huge mounds of it like yellow gold went up in a big red fireball.
Simon McPherson was my best mate. What a day we had, riding our bikes around, seeing who could get closest to the fire. We threw these huge sods of dirt at each other till his Dad started yelling at us. It was a cack. Got filthy dirty. Then we went for a swim in the dam.
But they were just the first. Other farms started going down too, and it wasn't so much fun anymore.
Lots of people got worried. There was a lot of talk and town meetings and stuff.
People from the CSIRO came out. They did tests and measurements - you know, all scientific stuff. I don't know about that.
The local paper had a field day. We even got on the TV news. These people arrived in a van, waved their TV cameras around and interviewed a couple of old buggers outside the pub. Me and Simon tried to get on TV - you know, do stupid stuff in the background on our bikes. They didn't seem to take much notice.
And there it was on TV two nights later. Our town, Mullagong. Capital of Nowhere, Australia. Famous. On TV. You could see the main street, the milk bar and huge piles of wheat getting burnt at the local tip. The Mayor raved on about our town falling into - I remember this - "a dark economic abyss". And of course there were the two old grunters knockin' down their beer. If you looked real careful I reckon you could see my bike wheel right up in the top of the screen, but Simon reckons it was him. I cacked myself.
Things turned real bad. Farms got hit pretty hard and a lot of wheat was going to waste. I even heard my Dad talking with some of his mates about selling up.
Next thing, Eddie's Dad arrived. The Mullagong Courier even had a bit about him. Said the Uni had sent him to "monitor the effect of the eradication measures on the present blight" - whatever that meant! Ha!
My Dad tried telling me about it. Something about long hot rains of last season and fungus and the wheat seeds getting eaten from the inside out. It even had some important sounding name - sporus bascillibus - I remember 'cos all us kids called it the silly bus disease.
"We're gonna be ruined by the silly bus!" we'd all yell.
Gees, it was a cack.
Well, I was right about Eddie. A couple of months went by and he turned out to be a head case, a real retard.
All you had to do was look at him. His arms were covered in long wispy hair, almost like cotton. Normal kids don't have hair like that. When he walked he didn't swing his arms either. Instead he marched around with this jerky step - always looking like he was in a hurry. Most of the time you could hear him mumbling to himself as he stomped around the corridors, six inches taller than almost everyone else.
"Hey Eddie, what was that? Didn't hear ya Eddie! Speak up Eddie!" Me and Simon were pretty funny that way.
He'd stop still, hug his books to his chest, all the time with his eyes down to the floor darting around like he was looking for something.
"The k-kind of things I am saying here, I promise you, are much too much f-for the l-likes of you. You should think about other p-people," he would say. Then he'd scamper off mumbling his retard nonsense again.
"Good on ya' Eddie!" and we'd run off. We cacked ourselves.
Half the stuff he said never made sense - at least not to anybody with a brain. He had this collection of little sayings that he'd use all the time, as if they were real important. You know, like he'd look across at me in class and say "A bird in the hand...." or something like that.
Often I'd see him staring off in to space with his bug eyes like he was thinking about real serious stuff or something. He liked to stroke things with his nobbly fingers - you know, rubbing his bottom lip or running his hand along the seam of his pants or pressing it up against the bricks. Only a retard would do stuff like that.
Once, in Jameson's Maths class, Simonne Davis came in late, about ten minutes, whining about running errands for the front office ladies. We all knew it was crap and she was having a smoke so we gave her heaps - me and Simon especially. Then Eddie stands bolt upright out of his chair and offers his seat to her.
"I always s-say, if you c-can't be nice...." he said. See what I mean?
She just kind of looked at him funny. And then she smiled and sat down. But you'd expect that from Davis. Scrag.
We went berko.
He did that kind of stuff a lot, especially around the girls. He never shoved 'em or barrelled 'em into the lockers when he walked passed. He always was letting them in front in the lines or going through doors or lining up at the canteen.
But the wierdest time of all was in Science. Everybody in the whole school must've heard about that one.
Parker was showing us how to dissect rats - you know - looking at the heart and guts and stuff. So we're all there around the table, all packed in. And Parker makes what he calls "a lateral incision" which means he slit it right up the guts. A couple of kids had to go outside cos' they couldn't hack it - one kid even had a spew in the corridor. Faggot.
Anyway, there's the rat on the table all peeled open, and Eddie starts to giggle to himself, in a retarded sort of way. Everyone just looks at him.
Parker asks him if he's gonna share the joke with us and Eddie's reply - which he must of thought was pretty funny - was, "I was j-just thinking."
Parker asks him what and so Eddie does that thing again where he looks around all over the place but doesn't look at anyone in the face. And then he says the dumbest thing ever. I can't even remember it cos it was long and it made no sense at all. But it was something about candles going out and life being a stage or something. He said it was his tribute to the rat. And then he started laughing again.
Gees, what a retard.
Funny thing was, some of the other kids - brainiac kids - had a little laugh too. I dunno. Maybe they felt sorry for him or something. Faggots.
And every lunch, there he was again. All alone in the shadows of the sports shed. Everybody knew it was his spot. I guess he liked it there. It was quiet and he could mumble to himself and run his hands all over the bricks and practise his little sayings.
Me and Simon would sit a ways off in the sun.
Hey Eddie, ya retard! we would yell.
Gees it was funny.
Hey, Ed-die! Ha!
He'd look up and we'd look away. We cacked ourselves.
And he just sat there in the dark.
Winter came and went and then it was the pre-summer season when all the soil had to be got ready for planting. That was one of the best times of the year. Things started happening around the town. People and trucks arrived over the horizon out of the dust, just like they did every other year.
The part time labourers drifted in. The caravan park filled up and there were people in the street and the pub and the milkbar and even the poxy old public pool.
Soon after that, the spiders arrived. Spiders - that's what us kids called 'em cos that's what they looked like. Huge big black and yellow tractors on spindly arms and legs that could span about eight wheat rows - sometimes even more. They crawled all over the fields, day and night - you could see 'em everywhere - digging up the soil and getting the rows ready for the start of the season.
Eddie's Dad was busy too. All these trucks arrived with this special spray stuff in huge containers. Looked just like water to me, but it was supposed to kill the stuff that had eaten the wheat seeds. Real powerful. All the farmers came into town and had this big meeting and lectures and stuff about killing the silly bus. It was pretty exciting.
Eddie's Dad said that the silly bus would die and the next harvest would be fine.
The Courier said our dark days were over.
We just had to wait and see.
Henderson called an assembly one Tuesday morning. He started by saying that his job as a Principal was a good one and he got to do plenty of good stuff, but sometimes his job wasn't so good.
Then he stopped and kind of choked on his words and pulled this face, like when you suck a lemon, and I knew then that something was wrong. All the teachers had their heads down, even Harbie, and Jameson looked like she'd been crying. Something was very wrong.
"At eight o'clock last night, Edward Thompson, a student of our school...."
Gees.
".... known to all of us I'm sure.... died as a result of long-term renal disease."
Gees. No.
"This has come as a great shock to us all and.... greatly saddened.... this tragedy...."
Gees. Gees. Gees. Gees.
Blah. Blah.
Hendo went on about how Eddie had been sick for a long time and his kidneys were busted or something. He was supposed to die years ago - and how it was a miracle and all that.
I just stared at my laces like they were the only thing around. Just me and the laces.
Then he said about how Eddie was a real character - a one in a million. I guess that's a nice way of saying retard or something. He said about how much the teachers liked him for his funny ways. And how all the kids - the girls especially - thought he was caring and nice, a real gentleman.
I looked at my laces and felt all funny inside. Hendo kept raving on and I could hear some kids around me crying.
All I could think about was Eddie's gawky eyes and his stupid walk and the dumb stuff he used to say. I felt all clumsy and hot and stupid. Eddie wouldn't be around anymore and even though he was a retard, and I didn't even like him, I felt bad.
Sometimes I still think about Eddie, about Edward Thompson.
I remember his goofy pants and his stupid words and his mumbling and that dumb walk of his. I remember how his Dad saved the town.
But most of all I remember what happened two days after Eddie died. Things were still pretty quiet around the school. You know.
At lunchtime I went out to my usual spot. But I stopped dead still when I saw it.
I had that hot sick feeling again. You know what I mean?
In the gym alcove where Eddie used to sit at lunch, there was a candle. It was on the floor and on the seat. Burning. Even from where I stood , I could see a little circle of yellow light.
Gees. Gees.
I walked over. A couple of kids were standing around looking too. There was a piece of paper stuck to the noticeboard with a flower and a photo of Eddie with his big bug eyes pinned on it. It just said "For Edward".
And then printed underneath, in a kid's writing,
Out out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. Shakespeare.
I knew then it what Eddie said that day with the rat.
Funny. When I look back, the thing I remember most of all is that right then - right at that moment, standing there with that candle and stuff and the poxy photo of Eddie and his bad haircut pinned up in front of me - that was the first time I cried since I was a little kid.
PETER DOWNEY
Just the sort of name a retard would have. You know what I mean?
Retards always have those funny names, like Franky or Mikey or Stevey. Normal kids don't have names like that.
Hey Eddie, ya retard! we would yell.
Gees it was funny.
Hey, Ed-die! Ha!
He'd look up with his gawky cow eyes and his massive forehead and stare straight through us. Straight through. We cacked ourselves.
Every day the same thing. He'd sit deep in the shadows nibbling at his lunch. That was his spot. Just like a little one man stage where we could watch him doing his retard stuff in the dark.
And he just sat there and took it.
Hey Eddie, ya retard! we would yell. Gees.
Just sat there, nibbling away like some dumb rabbit.
Didn't seem to care.
I dunno. Maybe he did.
Bit late to be worrying about that now though.
It's funny when you see someone for the first time - how you kind of suss 'em out and form an opinion about all sorts of things before they even speak a word. Only takes about five seconds.
With Eddie it took less.
I remember the day clearly. It was hot - a scratchy sort of day.
Hendo walked into the room with Eddie loping along behind him. One look and you could tell he was different.
It was his pants. They flared out high above his ankles. You could see heaps of sock and it made his feet look like they were stuck on afterwards or something. Like he was a plastic model and the pieces all got jumbled up in the box.
Then Hendo started up.
"Okay ladies and gentlemen, - Mr Harbridge - listen up. Edward is a new student to the year. Please look after him."
Hendo was the Principal. He'd been at the school supposedly since it opened about a hundred and fifty years ago. Word had it that he was pretty rough on the grog at the RSL most every night. Wouldn't surprise me. Old bastard.
"His next class will be Economics with Miss Bannister. I expect you'll all make the effort to show him the ropes. Some of you no doubt remember that feeling of starting afresh in a new school...."
Standard speech.
Blah. Blah.
Funny thing was, all the time Hendo's speaking, Eddie's up the front staring at us. Just standing there. Like he knows us. Not scared like you'd expect a nervous new kid to be.
And then I got that creepy feeling. You know? His hands were by his side. Straight down. Too straight. Not fidgeting. Just dangling there like they weren't even stuck in the sockets. Dead arms..
".... canteen and the toilets of course, gentlemen, I'll leave to you. Well good luck Edward. Mr Harbridge, could I just.... ah...."
Hendo flicked his finger back toward the door. Harbridge got off his sweaty backside and waddled over. They stood there nodding and mumbling to each other, every so often glancing back into the room. You could see the sweat stain spreading out from Harbie's underarms. It was like some poxy disease. Fat pig.
Eddie took a seat up the front and just sat there, staring straight ahead with his back to us. Bolt upright and still - real still - like a robot.
That's when it happened.
I was staring at the back of his head. It was a bad haircut. Too short at the back and kind of like a bowl on top. And then he did it. He turned around and looked at us, the whole class - looked through us - and spoke, in a voice too loud-
"I am f-feel-ing very anxious today. I am new here just in case you d-didn't know. Just in c-case. It's all ver-y strange."
That was it.
Then he turned back again to his robot position.
Total silence. Kids were looking around at each other with their mouths open. I looked over and saw Hendo raise one eyebrow slightly to Harbridge.
And then I knew.
It was like a neon sign lit up above Eddie's head for all to see. And that sign said in bright capital letters - RETARD.
Then the class went berko. We cacked ourselves and I knew straight away that Eddie would be in for it.
We'd go at him like we did all the other losers.
Like a pack of dingos.
Turned out Eddie and his Mum and Dad had arrived about a week before and moved into a two storey place near the town hall. His Dad was some lecturer or something - an agricultural scientist from a Uni down south, here to solve "our problem".
Funny that, how the Dad was a brainiac and his boy was a retard. You know, his name was Dr Thompson and he had some letters after it. He was working around the farms doing tests and stuff.
It'd all started small enough a while back. No-one took too much notice at the time.
Some of the McPherson crop had got some sort of rot or bug or something like that. Rotted right on the stem. It had to be burned. Huge mounds of it like yellow gold went up in a big red fireball.
Simon McPherson was my best mate. What a day we had, riding our bikes around, seeing who could get closest to the fire. We threw these huge sods of dirt at each other till his Dad started yelling at us. It was a cack. Got filthy dirty. Then we went for a swim in the dam.
But they were just the first. Other farms started going down too, and it wasn't so much fun anymore.
Lots of people got worried. There was a lot of talk and town meetings and stuff.
People from the CSIRO came out. They did tests and measurements - you know, all scientific stuff. I don't know about that.
The local paper had a field day. We even got on the TV news. These people arrived in a van, waved their TV cameras around and interviewed a couple of old buggers outside the pub. Me and Simon tried to get on TV - you know, do stupid stuff in the background on our bikes. They didn't seem to take much notice.
And there it was on TV two nights later. Our town, Mullagong. Capital of Nowhere, Australia. Famous. On TV. You could see the main street, the milk bar and huge piles of wheat getting burnt at the local tip. The Mayor raved on about our town falling into - I remember this - "a dark economic abyss". And of course there were the two old grunters knockin' down their beer. If you looked real careful I reckon you could see my bike wheel right up in the top of the screen, but Simon reckons it was him. I cacked myself.
Things turned real bad. Farms got hit pretty hard and a lot of wheat was going to waste. I even heard my Dad talking with some of his mates about selling up.
Next thing, Eddie's Dad arrived. The Mullagong Courier even had a bit about him. Said the Uni had sent him to "monitor the effect of the eradication measures on the present blight" - whatever that meant! Ha!
My Dad tried telling me about it. Something about long hot rains of last season and fungus and the wheat seeds getting eaten from the inside out. It even had some important sounding name - sporus bascillibus - I remember 'cos all us kids called it the silly bus disease.
"We're gonna be ruined by the silly bus!" we'd all yell.
Gees, it was a cack.
Well, I was right about Eddie. A couple of months went by and he turned out to be a head case, a real retard.
All you had to do was look at him. His arms were covered in long wispy hair, almost like cotton. Normal kids don't have hair like that. When he walked he didn't swing his arms either. Instead he marched around with this jerky step - always looking like he was in a hurry. Most of the time you could hear him mumbling to himself as he stomped around the corridors, six inches taller than almost everyone else.
"Hey Eddie, what was that? Didn't hear ya Eddie! Speak up Eddie!" Me and Simon were pretty funny that way.
He'd stop still, hug his books to his chest, all the time with his eyes down to the floor darting around like he was looking for something.
"The k-kind of things I am saying here, I promise you, are much too much f-for the l-likes of you. You should think about other p-people," he would say. Then he'd scamper off mumbling his retard nonsense again.
"Good on ya' Eddie!" and we'd run off. We cacked ourselves.
Half the stuff he said never made sense - at least not to anybody with a brain. He had this collection of little sayings that he'd use all the time, as if they were real important. You know, like he'd look across at me in class and say "A bird in the hand...." or something like that.
Often I'd see him staring off in to space with his bug eyes like he was thinking about real serious stuff or something. He liked to stroke things with his nobbly fingers - you know, rubbing his bottom lip or running his hand along the seam of his pants or pressing it up against the bricks. Only a retard would do stuff like that.
Once, in Jameson's Maths class, Simonne Davis came in late, about ten minutes, whining about running errands for the front office ladies. We all knew it was crap and she was having a smoke so we gave her heaps - me and Simon especially. Then Eddie stands bolt upright out of his chair and offers his seat to her.
"I always s-say, if you c-can't be nice...." he said. See what I mean?
She just kind of looked at him funny. And then she smiled and sat down. But you'd expect that from Davis. Scrag.
We went berko.
He did that kind of stuff a lot, especially around the girls. He never shoved 'em or barrelled 'em into the lockers when he walked passed. He always was letting them in front in the lines or going through doors or lining up at the canteen.
But the wierdest time of all was in Science. Everybody in the whole school must've heard about that one.
Parker was showing us how to dissect rats - you know - looking at the heart and guts and stuff. So we're all there around the table, all packed in. And Parker makes what he calls "a lateral incision" which means he slit it right up the guts. A couple of kids had to go outside cos' they couldn't hack it - one kid even had a spew in the corridor. Faggot.
Anyway, there's the rat on the table all peeled open, and Eddie starts to giggle to himself, in a retarded sort of way. Everyone just looks at him.
Parker asks him if he's gonna share the joke with us and Eddie's reply - which he must of thought was pretty funny - was, "I was j-just thinking."
Parker asks him what and so Eddie does that thing again where he looks around all over the place but doesn't look at anyone in the face. And then he says the dumbest thing ever. I can't even remember it cos it was long and it made no sense at all. But it was something about candles going out and life being a stage or something. He said it was his tribute to the rat. And then he started laughing again.
Gees, what a retard.
Funny thing was, some of the other kids - brainiac kids - had a little laugh too. I dunno. Maybe they felt sorry for him or something. Faggots.
And every lunch, there he was again. All alone in the shadows of the sports shed. Everybody knew it was his spot. I guess he liked it there. It was quiet and he could mumble to himself and run his hands all over the bricks and practise his little sayings.
Me and Simon would sit a ways off in the sun.
Hey Eddie, ya retard! we would yell.
Gees it was funny.
Hey, Ed-die! Ha!
He'd look up and we'd look away. We cacked ourselves.
And he just sat there in the dark.
Winter came and went and then it was the pre-summer season when all the soil had to be got ready for planting. That was one of the best times of the year. Things started happening around the town. People and trucks arrived over the horizon out of the dust, just like they did every other year.
The part time labourers drifted in. The caravan park filled up and there were people in the street and the pub and the milkbar and even the poxy old public pool.
Soon after that, the spiders arrived. Spiders - that's what us kids called 'em cos that's what they looked like. Huge big black and yellow tractors on spindly arms and legs that could span about eight wheat rows - sometimes even more. They crawled all over the fields, day and night - you could see 'em everywhere - digging up the soil and getting the rows ready for the start of the season.
Eddie's Dad was busy too. All these trucks arrived with this special spray stuff in huge containers. Looked just like water to me, but it was supposed to kill the stuff that had eaten the wheat seeds. Real powerful. All the farmers came into town and had this big meeting and lectures and stuff about killing the silly bus. It was pretty exciting.
Eddie's Dad said that the silly bus would die and the next harvest would be fine.
The Courier said our dark days were over.
We just had to wait and see.
Henderson called an assembly one Tuesday morning. He started by saying that his job as a Principal was a good one and he got to do plenty of good stuff, but sometimes his job wasn't so good.
Then he stopped and kind of choked on his words and pulled this face, like when you suck a lemon, and I knew then that something was wrong. All the teachers had their heads down, even Harbie, and Jameson looked like she'd been crying. Something was very wrong.
"At eight o'clock last night, Edward Thompson, a student of our school...."
Gees.
".... known to all of us I'm sure.... died as a result of long-term renal disease."
Gees. No.
"This has come as a great shock to us all and.... greatly saddened.... this tragedy...."
Gees. Gees. Gees. Gees.
Blah. Blah.
Hendo went on about how Eddie had been sick for a long time and his kidneys were busted or something. He was supposed to die years ago - and how it was a miracle and all that.
I just stared at my laces like they were the only thing around. Just me and the laces.
Then he said about how Eddie was a real character - a one in a million. I guess that's a nice way of saying retard or something. He said about how much the teachers liked him for his funny ways. And how all the kids - the girls especially - thought he was caring and nice, a real gentleman.
I looked at my laces and felt all funny inside. Hendo kept raving on and I could hear some kids around me crying.
All I could think about was Eddie's gawky eyes and his stupid walk and the dumb stuff he used to say. I felt all clumsy and hot and stupid. Eddie wouldn't be around anymore and even though he was a retard, and I didn't even like him, I felt bad.
Sometimes I still think about Eddie, about Edward Thompson.
I remember his goofy pants and his stupid words and his mumbling and that dumb walk of his. I remember how his Dad saved the town.
But most of all I remember what happened two days after Eddie died. Things were still pretty quiet around the school. You know.
At lunchtime I went out to my usual spot. But I stopped dead still when I saw it.
I had that hot sick feeling again. You know what I mean?
In the gym alcove where Eddie used to sit at lunch, there was a candle. It was on the floor and on the seat. Burning. Even from where I stood , I could see a little circle of yellow light.
Gees. Gees.
I walked over. A couple of kids were standing around looking too. There was a piece of paper stuck to the noticeboard with a flower and a photo of Eddie with his big bug eyes pinned on it. It just said "For Edward".
And then printed underneath, in a kid's writing,
Out out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. Shakespeare.
I knew then it what Eddie said that day with the rat.
Funny. When I look back, the thing I remember most of all is that right then - right at that moment, standing there with that candle and stuff and the poxy photo of Eddie and his bad haircut pinned up in front of me - that was the first time I cried since I was a little kid.
PETER DOWNEY