Gerbrand Bakker - June

He’s six. Black hair, a fairly sharp, slightly freckled nose and sullen grey eyes that look bright in his dark face. His bike is lying on the ground behind him; there were already two bikes leaning against the trunk of the tree closest to the gate. He is wearing a light-blue T-shirt, shorts and wellies. Plasters on both knees.

They stand opposite each other: him and three bare-chested men.

‘Hello,’ says one of the men after a while.

‘Yes,’ he says.

‘What have you got there?’

‘Shit.’ There’s no point lying, it’s plain to see. He could have said ‘nothing’ or ‘none of your business’, but that wouldn’t get him very far either.

‘What’s your name?’ This time it’s another man who’s asking the question. They’re quite hard to tell apart. Only one of them, the biggest, with the longest hair, is different.

‘Leslie.’

‘L-eslie? Wh-at kind of name is th-at? Are you from Africa?’

‘Africa?’ he says. ‘Why would I be from Africa?’ This guy talks really weird. He looks at the man who said hello to him and gestures at the long-haired one with his thumb. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘What makes you think there’s something wrong with him?’

‘He looks a bit slow and talks funny.’

‘I never noticed,’ the first one says to the second one.

‘Me neither,’ the second one replies.

The third one takes a step forward. ‘D’you w-ant me to grab you?’

‘No.’

‘O-K.’

It’s kind of scary, having three big ginger men in front of him. But he’s not going to let it show. He doesn’t care about any of it. It just makes him wish he’d gone to the swimming pool instead. It’s not as if they can do anything to him anyway.

‘If you ask me, Leslie’s a friend of Dieke’s,’ says the first one.

‘How do you know that?’ he asks.

‘And Dieke thought Leslie was at the swimming pool. But it turns out he’s not.’

‘No.’ He keeps looking from one to the other. Actually, he thinks they look a bit weird like this. Without tops on. Old men. And one of them is apparently Dieke’s dad. But which one? ‘The pool’s boring,’ he says, for the sake of saying something.

‘What are you doing here?’ the second one asks.

‘I wanted to make things dirty,’ he says.

‘Why?’

‘I’m bored.’ That’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. He started because he wanted to see what would happen. No matter what it was. And there was an article in the paper. About him. Without his name, of course, because nobody knows he’s the one who’s doing it. But still. In the newspaper. His father read it out loud. They called him ‘unknown vandal or vandals’. None of his classmates got called that.

‘Where’d you get the cow shit?’

‘A field.’

‘With your hands?’

‘Yes.’

‘How come your hands aren’t dirty then?’

‘I washed them in a ditch.’ The bucket’s starting to cause problems. He feels a tendon in his arm start to vibrate. But he doesn’t want to put it down. If he does that, he might just as well turn around and walk away. ‘Are you brothers?’

‘Yep,’ says the first one. ‘I’m Jan.’

‘And I’m Klaas,’ says the second.

‘J-ohan,’ says the third.

‘Do you live in the village?’ asks the man called Jan.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know him?’ Jan asks the man called Klaas.

‘I’ve heard the name now and then.’

‘I haven’t lived here very long,’ he says.

‘Aren’t you scared someone will catch you at it?’ the man called Klaas asks.

‘No. Why? There’s never anyone here.’

‘Yeah? It’s p-retty busy here today. Are you really called Les-lie?’

‘Yes. Is that such a strange name?’ Now it really is time for these questions to stop; more tendons are starting to quiver. He moves the bucket to his other hand — why didn’t he think of that before? ‘Is there something wrong with your head or something?’

‘Y-es, there’s some thing wrong with my h-ead.’

Klaas and Jan look at each other. It’s the same kind of look his father and mother give each other before deciding on something he’s not going to like. What were they going to do with him?

‘You see that headstone there?’ Jan says.

He looks in the direction Jan’s pointing. It doesn’t help, the place is full of headstones. ‘No,’ he says.

‘Come with us a minute,’ says Klaas.

They lead the way. The man called Johan stays put. A few yards into the cemetery they point again.

‘The tall one, see? With the weeping willow on top of it,’ says Jan.

‘Is that her husband’s grave?’ Klaas asks.

‘Yep,’ Jan says. ‘Can you see it now?’

‘I see it,’ he says.

‘Go ahead,’ Klaas says. ‘And if we find out that you smeared shit on any other stones at all, we know your name’s Leslie and it won’t be hard to find you.’

Now they’re threatening him too. He hesitates.

‘Go on.’

He stares at the men. ‘Don’t think I’m going to do something just cause you want me to.’

‘Of course we don’t think that,’ Klaas says.

‘No, OK then.’ Now he has to get away. They’re letting him go. He moves the bucket back again and walks over to the headstone the men have pointed out and puts the bucket of cow shit down on the ground. He looks at the writing on the headstone.There aren’t that many letters and he can read it, if slowly. K-e-e-s-G-r-i-n-t. B-a-c-k-H-o-m-e, it says. What’s that supposed to mean? Home? In the ground? As long as they don’t think he’s going to start with them still standing there. Maybe he’ll just go away or choose another stone. No, he’ll wait till they’re gone and then make a run for it through the back gate. Get rid of the bucket somewhere, circle around on the road, pick up his bike and ride home. Or somewhere else. He sees the three men pulling on their tops. He hears them laughing. Are they laughing at him? ‘What a f-unny little kid,’ the man called Johan says loudly. Then he yells ‘Pic-ca-nin-ny!’ at the top of his voice. ‘Will you stop shouting for once?’ says Klaas. Funny little kid? He’ll show them. Piccaninny, is that a swear word? When they turn their backs and disappear through the gate, he plunges his hands deep into the bucket.

Standing on the big boulder next to the green letter box, Dieke can hardly wait. She’s got her yellow boots back on. ‘Hey, Uncle Johan!’ she cries.

Uncle Johan jumps off the pannier rack. Uncle Jan’s given him a ride from the cemetery on the back of his bike. He rubs his bum, picks her up and gives her a loud slobbery kiss full on the lips.

‘Yuck!’ she says, but doesn’t care. ‘You should see what Grandpa’s done!’

‘You’re not swimming?’ Uncle Jan asks.

She doesn’t have time for pointless questions like that now, there are much more important things happening. Uncle Johan still hasn’t put her back down on the ground. ‘He’s cut down all the trees! And Grandma’s up on the straw!’ she bawls in his ear.

Her father lifts the lid of the letter box, but doesn’t take anything out of it. When he lets the lid fall back down again, the wooden post the box is attached to cracks and the whole thing lurches to one side. He kicks the post, and then it breaks completely and the letter box falls into the grass.

‘Hey, Re-kel!’ shouts Uncle Johan.

Rekel comes running up and Uncle Johan puts Dieke down so he can lie flat in the yard and let the dog jump on top of him and lick him. He doesn’t even put his hands over his face.

‘That’s dirty,’ she says.

‘N-o, it’s nice.’

‘Has Uncle Jan finished painting, Dad?’