Wild Jack Read Online Free PDF Page B

gave was misleading, as I had discovered on my first evening in camp.
    The camp consisted of tents pitched in what had once been a field but was now just beaten earth. Each tent housed about twenty boys, and on arrival I had been given a couple of blankets and escorted to one of them. My first shock was realizing I was supposed to sleep there and that there were no beds, only the bare ground.
    When the guard had gone, the other boys started asking questions: who was I, where did I come from? I wasn’t feeling very sociable. I was confused and uncertain, and my intention of treating the whole thing as an amusing break from school routine was somewhat blunted by the prospect of the night ahead. My bed at home was air-sprung, silk-sheeted, temperature-­controlled, and had a TV screen fitted into the foot. I looked from my blankets to the scuffed earth of the tent floor with no enthusiasm at all.
    So I was short in my answers, possibly rude, which did not go down very well. Questions turned to comments on my appearance and behavior, and the comments rapidly became pointed. A sharp-faced, fair-haired boy mimicked my voice in an exaggerated accent. I told him to shut up, and he mimicked that, too. Then I hit him.
    He went sprawling across the tent, cannoning into others. Two of his friends went for me together, and he got back on his feet and joined in. It wasn’t long before I was on the ground myself, with one of them kicking me.
    Up to this point Kelly had been lying on his blankets some distance away, presumably asleep. He went into action very fast; he had scattered them by the time I realized what was happening. I got up and we stood side by side. They looked at us and after a moment’s hesitation retreated, grumbling.
    I put a hand out. “Thanks a lot.”
    â€œNo sweat.”
    We exchanged names and afterward chatted. I felt better after the fight, less on edge. Kelly made one of the other boys move up so that I could lay out my blankets next to his and showed me how to arrange them for maximum warmth. He told me, with feeling, that it got cold in the small hours.
    I didn’t at that point realize just how lucky I had been in falling in with Kelly and being befriended by him. The blankets on the other side of his belonged tohis friend Sunyo, and the pair had established a strong ascendancy inside the tent. No one was anxious to interfere with them, and being accepted as a third member of the alliance gave me a share in the prestige.
    Sunyo, Kelly told me, was Japanese, from Kyoto. I looked around for a yellow skin and slant eyes, but Kelly shook his head.
    â€œHe’s outside somewhere.”
    â€œOutside?” The tent was full and people were clearly settling down for the night. “Is that allowed?”
    Kelly shrugged. “They don’t bother to restrict our movements when we’re not working or on parade. There’s no reason why they should; after all, we’re stuck on the island. There are caves you could hide in, and you might try living on rabbits and seagulls—raw—if you could catch them. Not for long, though. The food in the camp is terrible, but it keeps you alive. You would have to come back when you were starving, and then you’d get the stockade.”
    â€œThe stockade?”
    He pulled a face. “Let’s not talk about that, not right now anyway. No, Sunyo’s just gone outside to meditate.”
    Again I repeated his word, idiotically: “Meditate?”
    Kelly grinned. “We’re both fond of sitting down—I guess you could say it’s a bond. But Sunyo uses it to contemplate life at a higher level, while all I do is think about getting out of here, getting a proper meal, taking a tub. I settle for a few minutes’ sleep. The higher life requires a bit more privacy.”
    Sunyo came back not long after, and Kelly introduced us. I had been expecting someone thin and pale, spiritual-looking, but he proved to be short