The Invisible Hero (5 page)

I forgot to write about what a villain is. I suppose that's because I'm not sure I believe in such a thing. Let's take Machiavelli, for example. Sure, some pretty heavy types like Napoleon and Hitler were into Machiavelli, but all he was writing about was the truth. Is that evil? And Napoleon was just good at winning his wars. Was that evil? I suppose Hitler is a bit iffy – killing more than ten million people on purpose is over-doing it, but my history book says that for quite a few years before World War II, Hitler managed to get Germany prosperous after a lot of suffering following World War I.

A few kids in our class might see me as a villain, but I wasn't voted Captain for nothing. I'm doing it the Machiavelli way. I've just run a class sausage-sizzle fundraiser for World Vision – we made a profit of $240. Second fundraiser in a fortnight! They'll be calling me the Charity King soon. I'm on the SRC and my motion for a Save our Environment Power-Free Day was passed unanimously.

I'm the good guy, so no one gives a toss if I cold-shoulder a few losers, like that new girl Raphaela. Posh voice, bookworm, English teacher's instant pet, wavy red-gold hair. She probably thinks I'd go for her big time, but I hardly look at her even if she's in front of me. What an upstart name to begin with – and she corrected Quayle when he called her Raph. She said it was her Italian grandma's name, ‘I prefer not to have my name shortened. You pronounce it,
Raph –ai – el -a.
' Well she's Australian now, isn't she? So I call her Raph – and Genelle has started to as
well. Last week Raph tried to shoulder in on the sausage sizzle fundraiser, but Genelle put a stop to that – not sure how but, as my hero Macca 1st would agree, the end justifies the means. And the Raph girl has shot herself in the foot by dobbing on my mates for that practical joke with Dugan's lunch. What a moron. No harm in keeping him on his toes. My group enjoys a bit of sport with him – cornering him in the locker room and roughing him up or making his books disappear from his locker and then reappear somewhere else (like the toilets). But the bus is the best place to toughen up Dugan. We stick our feet out on the bus so that he trips as he walks up the aisle and those stupid blue-tinted glasses nearly slip off his face. Our favourite game is sitting right round Dugan and making him face the front. If he turns his head slightly left or right we thump him one. Good fun.

Iv ben thinking abowt vilans agen and its true that weve al been vilans at times but its wen its a habit that its a wory. I sort of undrstan why sum of the kids in my clas are lik they are. Ms Canmor ses that bulies are just week but i think it's a bit mor compclatd. Sur Charlie relis on Maccas support. (I carnt kwit figr owt Sam.) Withowt Macca Charlyd be prity mutch on hes oan but lets tak Macca he dosnt fit the derscriptshon of a week and fritened person in fact the oposit. Ive known Macca sins Primry and hes alays semd confdent and strong. I wunda if he had the nicnes stampd owt of him by sumwun wn he was a litl kid. Or mebe its that he has neva lernt to use his strength wisly or for the benfit of othrs.

The othr day I was listning to my HOBBIT CDs for the therd tim and I relised that the King of the Dwarvs, Thorin, was a bit lik Macca – a natral leder fisicaly brav but a bit of a buly speshly wen it cam to his treetment of Bilbo in there fite over the Arkstone and the tragdy is that Thorin only lerns his leson wen hes diing. In his last breth Thorin tels Bilbo that if only more peple valud god fod and god compny mor then richs the wrold wuld be a beta plac.

Having a cupa with my Nan at the kichen table her old hans holding her wilo paten cup and hering her storees abowt the old days shood be more impotant than me been a reel state millonair (wich il neva be enyways). Youd like to think that sumone like Macca wil wak up to hiself befor to long but the trooth is that mite not hapn.

Wen it coms to bulling ther is a strang paten for egsampl her
am I the clas looser. Its esee to see why im pikd on. You cant get lower than me im the only one in our yere groop who eets lunch by hiself day afta day. Im lik the lepars in Jesus day unclean unclean ring a bell to worn peple to kep away. Its lik if you efan lok at me youll be infectd. Efan in clas its like this with me siting by myself unless a techer lik Ms Canmor orders sumone to sit next to me poor sukers I can see the pane on there faces. They carnt efan begin to rlax been next to me 'cos they now the class is loking at them and its uncool to be nex to me. So even then I kep to myself and say nex to nothing to sav them the embrasment.

But the point Im getting to is that its not just loosers lik me who get bulled. Wot abowt Rafela shes the oposit of me shes butiful lik a madona paynting green eyes milky skin tal and you now ive relised how much buty cums form the exprshon on a girls face bcos to lok at Rafela you are loking into a deep pool of gentlnes and thortfulnes. And mor then that Rafela is probly clevrer than Macca shes wot you cal an al rownder good at maths, scienc art and English. Wich brings me to anuther thort and that is it dusnt pay to be to good at everything. Peple can hate you for that. Jus lik me Rafela is to scard to giv her opins in class discushons unless its Ms Canmors English class. Maks you wunder what skool is suposd to be abowt.

Well, I've been a bit distracted by more important things than schoolwork. I'll just write a bit of rubbish somewhere else in this journal so that I fill the pages up. Like I could write a bit about how Macca and I have had a bit of a laugh thinking how to stir up Phil the Dill and that new girl, Raph. Spotted the two of them in the library the other day. That Raph needs to learn how to choose more ‘suitable company' – I fully like those words. Apparently Mrs Canmore used them the other day when she was dishing it out to Tiffany about hanging out with Genelle, Amber, Cheung, me and Macca. Anyway, more on my villains. Both Bills. William Burke and William Hare. Both Irish immigrants to Scotland back in the early 1800s. Killed those 16 people in less than a year but for a strange reason – a body trade! Yeah, I'd no idea that back in those days, doctors who wanted to carve up bodies and study them for research had a hard time getting any bodies.

Would you believe, it was against the law to carve up a dead body unless it was an executed criminal? And it turns out they were going soft on crims back in the 1800s and there weren't as many executions as there used to be. What a shame. It says here only two or three bodies a year were handed over to medical students.

Now I'm starting to learn something about studying medicine. It seems that two or three bodies a year is not enough for lots and lots of students to learn about anatomy. And I hadn't thought about it before, but I s'pose you have to look inside a body to get to know how it works, just like you pull apart a computer to see what's going on.

Back in them days, professors and students got around the problem of not having corpses to pull apart by buying dead bodies off people who stole them from graveyards. These thieves were called ‘resurrection men' by the folks who lived in Edinburgh. I've looked up ‘resurrection' and it means to rise again, like they say happened to Jesus.

The grave robbing by the resurrection men was causing big problems. I mean, you bury your dear old granny or your little girl who got kicked by a horse or died from the flu, and you bowl up to the grave a few days later with a bunch of flowers, and your beloved is gone – just a great big hole. In the end, graveyards started to build high walls with watchtowers and guards to man them.

This anatomy lecturer bloke, Dr Robert Knox, paid Hare and Burke to supply bodies for Knox and his students to chop up –
dissect
is the proper word. First time sounds pretty above board. Hare had shacked up with this widow lady who owned a boarding house and some old army bloke on a pension who lived in the boarding house went and died. Quite cut and dried, if you'll excuse the pun. Not murder.

Hare and Burke got seven pounds and ten shillings for the old soldier's body. That was a good lot of money for those days. Like I asked Mrs Canmore what seven pounds would be worth nowadays and she said that a farm worker in Australia at about the same time might of got ‘a pound a week and his keep'. Your ‘keep' meant food and a bed and that. So a bit over seven pounds is easily seven weeks wages – or three if you count that Burke and Hare were sharing the profits. In business talk, you could call that an incentive. I mean, a trade in dead bodies is a bit like recycling,
isn't it? No outlay. You're taking what's going to get tipped out and re-using it.

And talking of incentives, Macca has just SMS-ed me. We have business to do.

Genelle and Amber say I shouldn't let myself be pushed around by teachers like Mrs Canmore. They say that telling me to find ‘more suitable company' is interfering in what she doesn't understand. I asked Charlie Cheung what he thought. Charlie just shrugged and said, ‘My parents are always going on about the same thing.' I then asked him if he's found out more about his penicillin hero. Then Charlie kind of came to life.

Charlie's become a real expert on this penicillin thing. He reckons that people way back BC knew that moulds could get rid of infections in wounds. For once, I could hardly shut him up. Seems like lots of countries used moulds. Greece, Sri Lanka, India, Russia, Serbia. It was the Scottish guy who put a name to it and then a couple of other scientists figured out how to make loads of it. Charlie said that their ideas got kind of pinched by some other guy who whacked a patent on penicillin. The patent thing means the other guy got to own the stuff.

Charlie went on and on about patents being abused. And he said that goes to show you should keep yourself to yourself. That people are always out to use you. No one does anything for another person without some sort of reward in mind.

When he said that, I told him about 15-year-old Lachlan Edwards. How when he twice swam seventy metres out to a rip at Point Impossible to save a man and then try to save a woman, he wasn't thinking of a reward or how he could use those people. Charlie nodded, ‘Yeah. But was it worth the risk of dying at the age of sixteen?'

‘That's called being a hero,' I said.

‘But what if you've just gone and saved someone you actually wouldn't like if you got to know them?'

‘At least he got his photo in the paper,' I said.

‘That's a pathetic answer,' said Charlie. Then he said he was going to go look for Macca and de Grekh because, ‘at least I can have an intelligent conversation with them.'

I don't care what Charlie says. That Lachlan is the bravest kid I've ever heard of. I'd like to meet him. And I'd like to ask him what it is that makes some people show that much care for strangers. And would he do it again?