“You can’t have gotten that wound from simply falling over,” Mr. Jonkers said in his Dutch-accented English when David unwrapped the undershirt from his wound.
“Yes, sir, I did,” David protested.
Mr. Jonkers gave him a disbelieving look and questioned the other boys, who all agreed that David had fallen on the way home and cut his leg.
David breathed a silent sigh of relief when they all stuck by his story, but then he shouldn’t have been surprised. Not ratting out another homie, no matter what, was the credo the boys at Sedgley lived by. If Mr. Jonkers had found out just how David had injured his leg, he certainly would have punished the boys severely for their stupidity.
Soon the wound on David’s thigh healed, and David was back into the routine of life at Sedgley. He was kept busy with chores and attending school, yet he still had time to play various games of sport with the other boys on the lawn surrounding the main house. As usual, David excelled in whatever sport the boys played. He also became accomplished in something else—gymnastics. Each Tuesday night, Stan and Rex Tatton, brothers who had been New Zealand gymnastic champions, came to Sedgley and taught the boys gymnastics. David eagerly awaited their arrival, and he quickly proved himself adept at the sport. He learned to tumble on the mats and vault over the horse, but most of all he liked the parallel bars and the Roman rings. On these two pieces of equipment he would push his agility and upper-body strength to their limits.
Bicycles played a big part in the lives of the boys at Sedgley. Since owning his own bike gave a boy a measure of independence, David decided that he needed a bike. The Sedgley boys’ bikes were not bought from a store; that was not in the budget. Instead the bikes were built from old parts salvaged from the local dump. David made several trips to the dump, where he found old bicycle wheels and a twisted bike frame.
Once he had collected enough bike parts, David set to work in the workshop at Sedgley, beating the buckles out of the wheel rims and putting new spokes in them. He then straightened the front forks and the rest of the frame before sanding and painting it. However, he hadn’t been able to find a few parts at the dump or among the pile of old bike parts at the back of the workshop. To get these parts, David turned to another misguided credo of the boys at Sedgley: steal what you need. He stole a seat from a bike parked at school and the handlebars from another bicycle left outside the local cinema. Before long he had built himself a bike and was soon riding all over town.
Now that he had one bike, David decided that he had enough parts—or could “acquire” enough parts—to build a faster, more stripped-down bike to use when he raced the other boys on the bike track on the Sedgley grounds. However, David soon found himself on the receiving end of the stealing credo, as the other boys stole parts from whatever bike he wasn’t using at the time.
The Sedgley boys had a whole range of late-night adventures, which began soon after the lights went out. When they were sure the coast was clear, each boy pushed his pillow under his blanket to create a boy-sized hump and then quietly slipped out the dorm window. Some nights the boys would ride their bikes to one of the orchards that dotted the outskirts of Masterton and raid it, piling as many apples, pears, or peaches as they could fit into their pillowcases, and then ride back to Sedgley. Once home, the boys would head for one of the underground forts they had constructed on the edge of the property and feast on their “booty.”
David had another booty he liked to feast on—cookies. He and several of the other boys had found a way into the back of a nearby grocery warehouse. David would scramble up the back wall of the warehouse and then squeeze through the gap at the top of it, just below the roof. Then he would carefully lower himself down and stuff as many packets of chocolate cookies as he could fit down his sweater before escaping back the way he had come, being careful not to crush the pilfered cookies. Once back at Sedgley, another feast would ensue in one of the boys’ forts. However, this activity came to a halt when the owners of the warehouse discovered how the thief was getting in and plugged the hole at the top of the wall.
And then there was Spooky Bill. This was basically a game of hide-and-seek played in the darkened gym. The catch to the homies’ version of the game was that they played it not on the floor of the gym but rather in the rafters, high above the floor. This injected an exciting and dangerous element into the game. In fact, it was not uncommon for someone to slip and fall to the floor, breaking an arm or a leg in the process. Of course, if the boys were caught playing this dangerous game, it would mean swift punishment from the master, both for being out after lights-out and for engaging in such a dangerous activity. As a result, whenever someone fell, the other boys would carry him back to the dorm, slide him through the window, and arrange him in his bed. The boy would suffer in silent agony through the night, and in the morning it would be reported that he had fallen out of bed and injured himself. David decided that Mr. Jonkers probably thought he had New Zealand’s most accident-prone group of sleepers under his care.
After completing elementary school, David began attending the local high school, Wairarapa College, located just a few streets from Sedgley. As in elementary school, he struggled with classroom work, but he more than made up for his mediocre academic performance with sports. Once again he excelled, playing on the college’s cricket team in the summer and on the soccer, rugby, and hockey teams during the winter months.
During summer vacation, David liked to work to earn money. In his first summer at Sedgley he worked on a farm about ten miles south of Masterton, in Carterton, where he dug potatoes from the field and placed them into sacks. This was hot, backbreaking work as he hunched over all day long. At night, when he stretched out to sleep in the barn, his body ached. To David this was a minor inconvenience. He liked to work hard and tried to do the best job he possibly could, hoping to beat the expectations of his employer along the way. For another summer vacation, David worked at an orchard in Featherston, twenty-five miles south of Masterton.
On the weekends the boys were allowed to do odd jobs around the neighborhood to earn money. David liked to mow lawns, and he would canvass the neighborhood, offering his services. However, it wasn’t always easy to convince a homeowner to let David mow his or her lawn, especially when the homeowner learned that David was a homie from Sedgley. The Sedgley boys’ reputation as petty thieves preceded them, and most people did not want the boys anywhere near their homes. But on those occasions when someone let him mow the lawn, David did the best job possible in the hope that the person would pay him well and invite him back to mow it again. He also tried his best not to steal from the people who hired him, though he couldn’t seem to help himself whenever he spotted a pack of cigarettes left unattended. He would scoop them up into his pocket, and at night after lights-out, he and several of his friends would sneak out to their fort and smoke them.
When he was fourteen, rather than spend his vacation laboring on another farm, David decided to take a job at Donalds, a local company that manufactured wool presses used on farms to compress freshly shorn fleeces from sheep into tight bales for shipping. The pay was much better than any of his previous jobs, and that appealed to David.
Wocky also went to work at Donalds, and on their first day of work, he and David rode their bikes together to the factory. The foreman shook their hands and welcomed them, saying, “Rob [as Wocky now preferred to be called], I’ll put you to work in the engineering area. And David, you’ll be upstairs in the carpentry shop.”
And so David found himself upstairs guiding lengths of timber across the spinning circular blade of a table saw to produce the various-sized pieces of wood needed to build the wool presses. The spinning, jagged blade of the saw had no safety guard over it, and it spewed sawdust into the air as it bit its way through the wood. David would hold the timber firmly against the guide with his hand and carefully feed it forward through the blade. It was precise work, and David enjoyed the challenge of getting it perfect.
Several weeks after starting work at Donalds, David was feeding a length of timber through the saw when the blade caught on a knot in the wood. In an instant the wood violently jerked up, dislodging David’s left hand from its grip and flinging his hand toward the blade. David became aware of a strange stinging sensation in his fingers, and he quickly pulled his hand aside. When he held up his hand to see what had happened, he saw four bleeding stumps where his fingers had been. His thumb had also been cut through and was dangling by a piece of skin. Instinctively David ripped off his shirt and wrapped it around his mangled hand as he called out, “Help me.”
David’s coworkers came running to his aid. When they saw what had happened, two of them quickly rummaged through the pile of sawdust under the saw and were able to find two of David’s severed fingers. They dropped the two fingers into a plastic bag and rushed David to the hospital. By now David was feeling faint from the loss of blood and from the realization of what had happened to him. And the stinging he had felt at the time of the accident had now turned into an excruciating, throbbing pain.
At the hospital, David was given anesthetic. When he came to he was lying in bed with his left hand bound in a mass of white gauze bandages. He was relieved that at least the pain seemed to have gone. He tried to focus his bleary eyes on the nurse as she explained that a surgeon had been able to reattach his thumb and index and middle fingers, but David’s ring finger and little finger now ended at his first knuckle. As David tried to comprehend what the nurse had just told him, he slipped from consciousness.
It wasn’t until the next day when David awoke that he fully grasped the reality of the situation. His mind was immediately filled with questions. Would he be able to use his hand again? How would it affect his life? And more important, how would it affect his ability to play sports? Most of his sporting endeavors required the use of his hands to catch and throw balls. How could you catch a cricket ball if you were missing fingers?
“Will I be able to play cricket again?” David finally asked the nurse one day.
“You’ll be fine,” the nurse reassured him. “Your fingers won’t look pretty, but they’ll eventually work again. You’ll be back playing cricket before you know it. Of course you’re never going to be able to play the piano or the guitar, but other than that you’ll do just fine.”
David tried to be encouraged by her words, but he had his doubts. As the lingering effects of the anesthetic wore off, the pain returned, and his fingers began to throb. As he lay in his hospital bed, David practiced strategies to help him deal with the pain. He finally trained his mind to dull the pain he was feeling and repress the images of the accident that kept replaying in his mind.
Despite the fact that he was recovering from a serious injury to his hand, David found himself enjoying his time in the hospital. The individual care and attention he received from the nurses was something he had never before experienced in his life. The nurses seemed to really care about him, and he enjoyed passing the time talking with them and flirting with the pretty, young nurses.
Finally after three weeks in the hospital, David returned to Sedgley. He was sad to have to leave the hospital and all the encouragement he received from the nurses. And he noticed the contrast at Sedgley right away. The other boys didn’t seem to care that he was back, and they showed little interest in the details of his accident. Despite his injury, David was soon put back on the duty roster. Of course, he could no longer milk the cows, and the risk of getting an infection in his injured hand meant he didn’t have to wash the dishes. However, David did soon learn to do most of the other chores adequately.
