Miscreant

He knew he’d made a mistake even before the stone left his hand.

Henry was tired. Great crevices carved his eyelids. A blackness more thorough than that perceived of him threatened his sunken features, and all of it was nothing compared to the weight that tugged his brow. That is what madness does to a person, and he must be mad. Why else would they mock him so?

He had been out here all morning tossing stones at anything that dared stir. At first it was the fruit on the stems of the big pear tree behind the stone wall. Then it was the bugs skimming the puddles that filled the tyre tracks in the mud. And now this.

The stone sailed through the air with precision. He had thrown stones at other kids, at cars, at windows, rogue dogs and cats. But all of them could take it. It was always antagonistic. Never malicious. Even the bugs were just amusement. The smear an insect left upon the moment was so rewarding. What accuracy it boasted.

On the stone went. A jagged, brown thing, wet and stained from its home in the puddle. Smoothed faces, pronounced edges. It cut through the air without arc.

Henry cringed. He closed one eye, too guilt-ridden to look away entirely.

Too late.

A feather erupted. A single, small, soft thing, downy at its base, vibrant at its tip. It spiralled in the air before catching its descent, sinking in slow rocking tumbles.

“No,” he whispered. It was as silent as the sudden pin drop in his mind. Today would be just as fickle as all the others.

In the hollow of the nest he heard another chirp, shrill, and angry. A second bird launched itself to the ground where its companion now lay still.

Henry shuffled awkwardly over to the pair. The bird squawked away at him, moving no further than a foot clear of its dead partner. Henry dropped to his knees, cradling the mass of green and red feathers in his palms, a blue coat across the head marred by a gaping cut above the beak from which life had been spilled.

The bird bit him on the leg.

Henry squealed, more high pitched than he would have preferred.

It didn’t stop. Twice more it ripped at his skin, fiercely, drawing blood before Henry could bring himself to swipe at it. The lorikeet tumbled before flying back to the nest overhead, screaming down at Henry in a fluttering tirade of feathers and fury.

“I’m sorry.” Henry reddened. He felt the warmth trickle down through him, so angry. Angry at himself. Angry at the bird for not moving. Angry at the stone for not missing. Angry at the day for doing this to him. Angry at everyone who thought him capable of this.

The lorikeet swooped close and scratched at Henry’s forehead with its sharpened claws.

“Piss off!” He exploded, his temper once more taking over as he threw the dead bird in his hand against the tree just below its former nest.

The second lorikeet flew away in fright. Henry collapsed backwards, so very shocked by his own hand. The incident replayed. The noise echoed.

“I’m sorry!” He screamed.

He rose from the dirt he had fallen in, dusty knees and socks. His trousers had grass stains across them and blood spots where the other bird had broken skin.

The stone he had thrown had a dark patch fouling its most prominent edge. It became the object of his scorn, a kick as his instrument of destruction.

His first strike missed. His second sent it no more than a few inches. The third caught a root of the pear tree and tore the front section of sole from his shoe.

Enraged, Henry picked up the stone, he crushed it with a hand most unsuited to the task, staring with scrunched nose and brow, saliva venting from his hot mouth with a most sustained rage. The words he cursed that stone with were practiced on his tongue, and together, were it not an object without any notion of soul to it, those words would have sent the stone into such despair and loss of self-assurance that it may have promptly committed itself to the debris Henry so desired. In short, Henry tried to smite said stone from its earthly tether. A futile task.

He roared violently.

The stone did not turn to debris. In fact it did little more than receive a few spots of spittle that glimmered upon its surface in the rising sun.

Henry launched the stone with a savage curl into the pear tree, hacking a splinter of bark from its trunk as he did so. Dust scattered in the air and the stone tumbled away unspoilt.

Henry paced in a tight circle, breathing fast and unsteady, fists balled with sweat pooling in his palms. His teeth were gritted so firmly they drove deeper into his jaws, and his temples throbbed with a pulse manifesting an unhealthy tempo. He stomped the ground, he tugged at his hair, he twisted handfuls of his shirt menacingly. Nothing worked.

He hurled his school bag again and again against the stone wall until the side split and his books and lunch tumbled out. He jumped upon his sandwich and flattened it within its foiled wrap until sauce oozed from three very distinct rips.

He was so tired. Tired of it all.

Then, an engine in the distance.

Henry composed himself as best he could, sweeping his short hair across his head, jamming the mess of his sandwich back in the bag as he tried to hold the rip together so it didn’t spill everything out again.

The bus crept to a stop, ten metres past where he was waiting. Henry trod to the door where he knocked for the driver to open it. Every day, the same routine. The same struggle for permission.

The bus driver stared at him. Henry knew that stare.

As the door folded to its side the driver rolled his eyes at the sight of Henry’s dirty trousers and twisted shirt. Henry just bowed his head and climbed aboard, already defeated.

And so it began.

With tremulous advance he made his way past the first two rows, the primary-school kids staring at him with dumb astonishment. He dared not raise his eyes to the back of the bus. He could smell the waft of deodorants, cans probably stolen from the supermarket. He could sense the stirring already directed at him, the laughter bottled in the air. What would it be today? Maybe nothing.

The bus lurched before he had taken his seat. He fell a short way, only just catching his step to sling into an empty spot. He hated this bit. The time where he had to feign stoicism. Where he had to accept that something was about to happen, and if he reacted there would be only one outcome.

Henry waited, a sickening feeling settling in his stomach.

There was a quick grinding sound followed by a foul smell. It was hair. Burning hair.

He pulled his head forward to an eruption in laughter, his hand swatting at the back of his head where the lighter had done its work. Behind him sat Dale, glaring with his ugly, freckled, half grin, sparking the lighter again and again.

The older kids at the back of the bus were in hysterics, the fat one baring his rabbit teeth while he sucked down lungfuls of his own acrid scent, the four from the new estate slapping the backs of chairs and windows in triumph, and the two brothers from the twin bridges smiling with their rancorous eyes. All the rest just laughed to avoid themselves being targeted, but Henry didn’t hate them any less for it. The younger kids were the worst. Early grades of high-schoolers committed to the fallibility of the nervous. They would control the backseat one day, and on and on this would go, a culture in and of itself.

Dale shrugged. “What?”

Henry turned towards the front and slowly leant back again.

Another spark. Another whiff of burning.

He spun around with a half-swing smacking Dale’s hands aside as he stood.

“Stop!” The driver yelled. He was a horribly obese and fierce man. The glasses perched on his nose did not weaken the animosity he held for Henry.

“Henry! Sit down, or so help me!”

Henry watched the nasty twinkle in the eyes of everyone on board as they stared back, demanding his complicity. Even Dale who sat there continuously sparking his lighter. A hundred eyes all stabbing him to bits.

He dropped into his seat.

The driver continued.

The sniggers continued.

His anger continued.

Then, the lighter sparked again.

-

While the bus emptied Henry once more found himself waiting until everyone else was gone. The driver took a final look at Dale’s black eye then heaved himself from the sticky vinyl seat, stomping down the aisle, his loins collecting on the rails of each row of chairs, finally reaching Henry.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Henry recoiled, routinely. “They were… He had a lighter, and—”

The driver interrupted with a bellow. “I don’t care what they do! I’ll not have you attacking another kid on here ever again! Do I make myself clear?”

Henry burned inside, but he nodded his head.

“Just get out. Go to the office.” The driver moved aside as best as his girth could accomplish.

Henry grabbed his bag, spilling his books and sandwich remains, leaving the mess of sauce that had landed on the floor for the driver to find later.

-

“Now have your mother come in tomorrow morning and we’ll discuss the suspension. I will be calling her again if I don’t see her!”

The vice principal was eager to humiliate Henry in front of his parents. But it wasn’t something that would yield results in an empty house. Instead he would deposit Henry on the roadside and make him walk the rest. A small victory for a small man.

Henry obliged, wordless as he exited the car.

With growing distance his anger had space to fill. His lips started to motion words. His skin reddened. Henry saw the stone he had thrown earlier. He contemplated picking it up and throwing it after the departing chariot of that despot of a vice principal, but was stirred by where it lay.

Close to it was the pear tree, standing defiantly to Henry’s earlier aggression. There, near its base was the small lesion in the bark where he had thrown the stone this morning. He took a few disheartened steps towards its trunk, peering over the stone wall, but what he sought was not there.

He looked up. There was no female lorikeet screeching away at him this time. Below, there was no decaying body of a male bird. But there was something that tightened his throat with guilt.

A small ball, fluffy with brown and green. Sort of a dark beak and tiny dark legs. It was trembling, huddled against one of the roots of the tree while a nest of ants stirred around it. At Henry’s appearance the little thing made a horrible whimpering sound, a sort of repeated chirp, as much fear and melancholy as expected.

Henry gazed down upon it, realising the extent of his misdeed. He couldn’t look away. Ants were swarming upon its form as it occasionally tried to shake itself free of them. He could tell what was happening.

He looked up again. He looked around the canopy, across the field, searching for a blur of bright green, a mane of blue feathers. He looked hopelessly and wished for its mother’s return, wondering where her own fear had taken her.

Henry reached down to dislodge some of the ants. The small bird chirped, so very afraid. His attempts at swatting away the colony so frenzied by the possibility of a feast were in vain. Henry knew what he had to do.

The bird trembled again. He took off his shirt and scooped the little ball up into it, wrapping the material around the little thing, so light, so fragile. He knew what he must do, just not how to do it.