THE OAK TREE
By Andrew Rough

I was fifteen when I met him. He was twelve and getting beaten up by some older kids for looking poor or something like that. They were the sort who didn’t really need an excuse to pick on you. When I think back to it, it makes me laugh, the sort of crap they would come up with to find a reason to be insulted by you, their depth of imagination was embarrassing. ‘What you looking at?’ Or ‘you a jewboy or a fagot?’ They never really picked on me, I was skinny back then but had a mean face, and so they were never sure if I could handle myself or not. They weren’t the type to test something out when it wasn’t a sure thing.

My brother Dave was rock ‘ard and had tattoos, no one fucked with him. He was well known in our little seaside town, a name, a face. Never mind the fact that he died a junkie, alone in a bed sit in a pool of his own vomit.
It’s been two years now, I hadn’t seen him in five; he was the only person who ever gave me a beating and that was when he found out I nicked his dope. Dave said “Don’t you fukin dare you little shit. You’ve got the brains in this fukin family, don’t fukin pickle em in this shit.” He always did have a limited vocabulary, and I mean talk about hypocrite, it was dope for Christ sake, it’s hardly junkie status. Course back then I didn’t know about his habit, I didn’t know to look for track marks on his arms. I thought he’d caught a weird form of eczema.

I was walking home from school, the day I met the boy. He lived in a caravan in the gyppo field by the seafront. There was an old oak tree by his house; I guess his parents must’ve been somewhere else because no one was helping him. There were three of them, two holding him down and one laying into him. They were all about eighteen, I can’t remember there names now, but they were the ones without enough brains to leave town, so they hung around popping fourteen year olds cherries and beating the shit out of wimpy looking kids. I guess it made them feel big and important to make up for the fact that they were no hopers destined for factory work for the rest of their lives and marriage at twenty-two to their seventeen year old girlfriends who have already got two kids by different men. Anyway, the weird thing was, the boy was just taking it, he wasn’t struggling or even making a sound. He had a weary look in his face like he was tired or something, almost like he was bored. I shouted at them,
“Hey, leave him alone.” They stopped and looked at me. “Or what?” The tall one who was doing all the punching said. I didn’t really know what to do then, I’d only ever fought Dave and that was only for real that one time, “Never mind or what, just leave him alone. Christ there’s three of you against one weedy gyppo, hardly impressive is it?”
I Don’t know if my words got to them or if they realised I was Dave’s brother but they let go of him then, giving him a parting kick in the belly as they ran off down the sea front to cadge fags of the tramps.

I went over to him and picked him up. He pointed to his caravan so I helped him over there. I didn’t say a word, the only thing I could think of was ‘are you OK,’ and that sounded a bit lame. He opened the caravan door and stood there shakily, looking at me. “Thank you,” he said. “Sure, no problem.” I left feeling slightly embarrassed, like I should have said more. He was younger than me, or looked it at least, but I felt like I should have made friends with him that day. A part of me felt ashamed, he was a gyppo kid, three years younger than me, it shouldn’t matter but it did. I wondered what Dave would say when he found out; probably take the piss out of me for protecting Gyppo’s. He never did say anything though, I don’t know if he ever knew.

The real problem was everyone hated them. The Gyppo kids only ever appeared in school when the fair was in season, and even then they ran to their own rules. They came and went at their own pleasure. Nothing ever got done about it, they always moved away again before anything could happen. This led to a lot of resentment with other kids, and the fact that they seemed so close and fucking in bred. You fucked with one of them; they would fuck you back, and all of your family as well. They were like a seasonal mafia, here one day, gone the next, definitely not to be messed with.

The boy was different though. His family didn’t really mix with the rest of them, but they were forced to live there, it was the only place the council would let caravans like theirs go. It was like a soap opera at times, every one knew the families, the gangs of brothers who were the biggest dealers of smack in the Suffolk area. That’s why the boy always got it, everyone knew they were outcasts so you could do what you wanted to them and the other Gyppos wouldn’t bat an eye-lid. That was why I couldn’t be his friend after I stopped his beating that day, I was fifteen; I cared more about my own image than my conscience.

The family moved away again soon after that and I didn’t see him again for nearly a year. I was doing my GCSE’s then and I was the only one in my family who looked like getting anything more that a qualification in woodwork. My dad didn’t really care, too boozed up in his own shit life to bother, but my mum saw it as some sort of personal dream, like me succeeding could change the way her life went. She was up the duff with Dave at thirteen and she never went back to school. Six years later she married dad and had me. He’d just got a new job at Birds Eye as a supervisor, which means going places where I come from. He’s never been able to hold done a job, that bastard; always got a snifter of booze and fucked himself up. He fucked mum up to and that’s why she wanted to live through me. I did all right as well. Went on to ‘A’ levels and got a place at Uni. I didn’t speak to the boy again, he didn’t do school anymore, but I would sometimes see him by the seafront sitting by that tree were I saw him that day.

The summer before I moved away I got into dope. I would spend lazy summer evenings philosophising about coming from the stars, with my mate Keith. We were both going to different Uni’s and both a little scared about leaving the life we knew so well. That was when Dave caught me stealing his stash and beat the shit out of me. He’d never beat me like that before. He’d started hanging around with some of the dodgy Gyppo’s, the ones who were dealers. The only thing I found funny was the fact I hadn’t befriended the boy because I was worried that Dave would laugh at me being friends with one of them and now here he was hanging around with them. I felt my conscience really kick in about then, about the same time as I felt Dave’s steel toe-capped boots kick into my stomach. I didn’t speak to him again after that; I couldn’t even look him in the face. A week later I left for good.

I got a taxi to the train station, I had already cried my tears with mum and downed a pint with dad in the pub. We went past the caravan site on the way and I made the driver stop by the old oak tree. The boy wasn’t there, but I got out and walked to the tree. I put my hand on the trunk and whispered, “I’m sorry,” like he was really there. I felt a tear roll down my cheek. Once I left I didn’t come back. London was too exiting, too different. The people I met were bright and intelligent. So they still wanted the same things, to shag girls and get drunk, but at least you could have an interesting conversation with them and you knew that they probably wouldn’t spend the rest of their lives working in a factory.

I had to go back though, two years ago for Dave’s funeral. It was only then that I realised he’d been trying to do me a favour. I hadn’t smoked another joint or tried anything else since the day he gave me my beating. I realised what he had been trying to tell me; don’t end up like me little brother. He must’ve known where he was heading, but either couldn’t, or wouldn’t stop it. Mum seemed strangely happier after the funeral, dad went straight back to the pub.
I drove to where the caravan site used to be. The council had moved it after the massive drugs bust; twenty three people arrested, the largest operation of it’s kind ever discovered in East Anglia, it even made the national news at the time. The tree was still there and the ground near by showed where the caravan had stood. I sat down by that tree after Dave’s funeral and listened to the wind. I felt myself begin to cry, I wasn’t sure if it was for Dave or my old guilt about the boy. Something kept going over in my mind I couldn’t quite figure out.

When I got back to town I went for a drink with my dad, for old times sake. He had told me this horror story about three local lads who had been found murdered, here, by the old caravan site. They had all been strung up to hang on this very oak tree, no one ever found out who did it but the fair was in the next town down so everyone suspected the gyppo’s. I recognised the names he told me and that’s what made me think of the boy again, it was the three who had beaten him, eight years before.

I sat there for hours and tried to imagine them swinging from the branches. No one ever stopped them at the time, except me that is. The other gypsy’s just watched impassively as the whole town took their frustrations out on that one family, but I guess blood is thicker than water after all and some debts need to be re-paid.

After that I moved back home for a while, helped keep mum company. I tried to talk dad into AA meetings but it was a losing battle. Mum just kept looking at me with that strange smile, but it was fading fast. One day she asked me,
“When are you going to leave again?”

The funny thing was they way she said it, it didn’t sound like she wanted me to stay. That’s when I realised what the debt I had to pay was. I wasn’t here to save anyone; that was never going to happen. I left the next day, kissed my mum good bye; downed a pint with my dad, just like before. This time I didn’t stop by the oak tree; I went straight to the station and home, back to my own life. I didn’t look back, just silently thanked Dave for the one good thing he did in his life and wondered what ever happened to the twelve year old gypsy boy I saved from a beating one summer afternoon.