James Roderick Burns
A Crack on the Head
is What You Get for Not Asking,
And A Crack on the Head
is What You Get for Asking
SKINNER COULDN’T WIN. As a coal merchant’s son marooned at a minor public school, he was ranked insufficiently below the other boys to earn their bluff condescension (and the boys, naturally, despised him) but was merely an ongoing irritation to the masters.
His subtle, questioning pieces on class, money, sport in the school magazine enraged one and all; so, too, his requests for additional funding, and a greater degree of control for the volunteer editorial staff. The English master took rather pointed pleasure in quashing each one.
One Sunday they found themselves converging in a long, deserted corridor.
‘What do you have there, Skinner?’ the master demanded. The lamps were dim, and the bursar miserly. Nothing walked in the shadows but cold. ‘A lump of coal, what? Well, boy?’
‘No, sir. I believe that kind of pressure takes aeons.’ He tightened his grip. The lamp above the laundry-chute flickered at the end of the corridor. The tin chute been cleared yesterday, the muck and residue of years scrubbed out and pumped down onto the cobbled yard.
The master turned and the billiard ball rolled into his fingers like a small, resplendent sun.
About the writer:
James Roderick Burns’ work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Flash Fiction Magazine and La Piccioletta Barca, as well as a short-fiction chapbook and three poetry collections. His story “Trapper” (Funicular Magazine) was nominated for Pushcart 2020. He lives in Edinburgh and serves as Deputy Registrar General for Scotland.
Image: Corridor of Saint Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy: My Dream by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Black chalk and gouache (Digital reconstruction of the original colors). 61.5 x 47 cm. 1889. Public domain.
