WHALE FALL

A video in the museum foyer depicts the dismantling of a rotting whale that had beached itself on a nearby coast. The machinery hauling away its distended remains and the workers standing knee-deep in the guts of the creature make my throat catch. For the longest time I thought the death of a whale one of the saddest things imaginable. My teacher, Mr Maurice, schooled me otherwise. What's worse than death is death without purpose.

Most whales don't die on sand but in open water. As the carcass descends, sharks savage its soft hide and spill a fecund chaos that will nourish sea creatures for a century. This harassment was Mr Maurice's lesson. For months the mobile scavengers gorge themselves on this flesh with the relish of a child who has happened upon a forbidden idea, thinking themselves the first in history to have encountered such an abundant resource, even countenancing the possibility that this will see them right for life (the shark) or make the older boys laugh (me), neither of us realising that as we tear chunks from the descending whale we send tiny, scuffed and unhonoured remnants travelling ever upward, nourishing strata we will never meet – plankton and other forms of ocean lint – while the slurry of nutrients cascading towards the ocean floor equally invite creatures to burrow into whale marrow and flesh, and – we're not done yet, grinned Mr Maurice – at the same time bacteria feast on the viscera and in turn vomit up hundreds of years of dinner for clams and snails, the meals kept refrigerated by the plummeting temperatures (like the Titanic, those that fall into deep waters are doomed to preservation, he said) and so as generations of land-dwellers rise and crumble, this single whale will slowly pass through the ocean's twilit realms towards the midnight zones, where frankly obscene bottom-feeders who have never seen light will still suck sustenance from the sinking hulk.

Mine was a small school for boys of shallow prospects. The buildings were in a state of protracted collapse, rendered invisible to the outside world by the many evergreens in whose shadows they cowered. The branches hiding the sagging tiles kept the grounds in a perpetual dusk so that even at the height of summer the earth was damp underfoot and the air was absent of the sunny screams of cicadas looking to mate.

Whether due to their own diminished fortunes or a more pragmatic impulse not to foster disappointment, the teachers of the school had developed subtle, ongoing methods by which to discourage their students from gazing too long at the horizon. A particular set of the mouth or slow slump were enough to rein in our enthusiasms, bridle our glee. The nasal whistle of a sigh could cut across a classroom as sharply as whipped leather.

Mr Maurice was the exception. He strode the yard with the swagger of a seagull on a concourse, his grey eyes forever ensnared by some far-off phantom insensible to the rest of us. This seeming state of distraction was misleading. He remained attuned to his environment, as though his true apprehension of the world was through sound, or even scent. He commanded a general schoolyard respect that caused other teachers to bristle, their envy further compounded by the self-disgust familiar to any adult who seeks validation from children. But Mr Maurice was liked by all of us, even the older boys.

We knew what older boys wanted because knowing that is everyone's full-time job. You had to stay alert to their intentions or you might find yourself press-ganged into some horror-show, often involving the various humiliations of Bernard Tusk – his toilet-dunking, de-underwearing, eyebrow-shaving – on account of how Bernard Tusk's pale and soft features and general B.O. collaborated against him. Tristan was the first to tell the older boys about Bernard's stink; we watched them descend like raptors.

What came next was normal. To be expected, you could say, though nobody ever said it out loud. Not in my experience, which is limited or was limited when into my view first lurched the chalky frame of Bernard Tusk, who wore his quivering smile like a warding spell, so it was immediately obvious that he had been routinely belittled. His arrival was accompanied by all kinds of rumours – his account of both the country and condition in which he was raised varied according to which kid you asked, which cemented an attitude of mistrust among the older boys, who were forever seeking wall cracks and chinked armour.

We laughed when they made jokes, not because we got the joke – and if you did it was rarely funny-funny – but because we had learned to recognise the shape of the jokes they told, in which everyone played their role, so that even the least among us had some importance. They – the older boys – would get pretend-angry if we didn't laugh. Not that they were upset. It was just another aspect of the ritual. We never understood why someone would want to pretend to be angry, but older boys were big into that. They'd flex abruptly, about to smash you, but you knew it was merely performance or lesson. We didn't blame them for their brutality. They were siege engines, for sure, but propelled by someone else's grievances.

There was this YouTube we saw once where these older boys smashed chairs on each others' backs.

We had teachers who lectured us about ocean breathing and we liked Cosmic Kids yoga but our thoughts always returned to the boys bashing and breaking those beige plastic seats across their friends' spines. To some of us the video felt like porn – the boys were shirtless and there was swearing – but they were doughy and pale, like Bernard, whereas both the fighters and porn stars we were used to ingesting were brown and brawny. Mostly it felt like a coded message from the future.

I am a boy, it must also be said, and older now, which is important. I know that a person can be permanently extinguished. I should have paid better attention to Bernard Tusk and the circumstances of his extinction.

No clothing suited him. His bones were coathangers at best. His lanky gait, all shoulders and elbows, I knew would attract attention. Got dressed in the dark? An older boy would gesture at the too-large shorts held like bunched curtains by a strip of vinyl, or the shirt whose not-quite-right hue gave away its thrift shop provenance. The boy would poke Bernard's ribs, hard, after a colleague had dropped to all fours behind the poor victim's knees. Both would end up caked with the rich humus that carpeted the yard, but the humiliation only stuck to Tusk.

I should note that we weren't exactly afraid of the older boys or that we might suffer Tusk's fate; fear implies a knowledge we simply didn't possess. I'd never felt real fear, or couldn't remember having done so. This I can say, then: I'd never felt the kind of fear you can't forget. I'd been scared a few times, but that amounted to loose change, nothing that would buy you couch time as an adult. While it stood to reason that I might die, on a conceptual level, it seemed at the same level of probability as time travel, which was also worth pondering.

We just weren't afraid of anything as trivial as death, I suppose. I'd seen two goldfish ascend and I'd scratched my itchy grey-suited bum while grandpa Jay's coffin trundled down the conveyor belt. But nobody important vanished from our lives for good. Real people went missing all the time, like how Lincoln from Prep B moved to Toowoomba for a bit or how my best friend Jenna from kinder moved to New Zealand because her dad was rich from technology and New Zealand was the safest place to build a hole in the ground, like in the hobbit movies, except this was in case of the end of the world. We did a Facetime where she was in a kayak. Nobody really went away forever, is what I'm saying.

There is a form of psychic annihilation, though, that feeds those around it. One carcass can provide sustenance for all kinds of beings.

Like most of us, Bernard Tusk sought the secret signs and gestures that would render him cool; none of us were burdened by the horrible understanding that coolness shared similarities to equally nebulous concepts such as honour or grace, in that other people decide whether or not you have it. Bernard's efforts to affect a casual nonchalance had been doomed from the moment the older boys had marked him out as deeply uncool – contagiously uncool – a verdict that brought with it that other quality decided not by an individual but a community, which is shame.

He should have seen where things were headed, with his thin shoulders and all that leaky kindness.

Once the demonisation of Bernard Tusk had spread beyond isolated instances of name-calling and private torture – once species other than the dreaded older boys had begun darting in to tear off shreds of their own – a near-permanent transformation could be observed in his body. He would walk the halls pre-flushed, red-faced before anyone had yet had a chance to remind him of the slow social dismemberment he was experiencing.

Bernard's crimson tint galvanised us as a community. Petty differences persisted but the perpetual sundown that blushed his cheeks gave us all something to pity and revile.

I remember clambering the peppercorn tree some musty afternoon and spotting the tiny, comma-like figure crossing the parched soccer oval, trailing what seemed like the spread of the entire student body, like dust rising behind a far-off desert vehicle.

We should categorically rule out any personal failing on Bernard's part when it came to his distinctive odour. During his mother's childhood the punishment of choice had involved shoving the fully clothed offender under a cold shower, instilling a lifelong aversion to bathrooms; his father, meanwhile, felt the smell of human sweat was evidence of a day fully lived. Bernard had no idea that he was a type, a dirty kid, until a well-meaning teacher directed him home before classes even began with a letter to his parents instructing them to bathe him before his return.

Though Tristan was the direct instigator, how the older boys caught wind of this deviation from the day's routine was beside the point. The predation would have occurred regardless; only its object was determined in this moment. Older boys were merely the most visible flesh-eaters in a complex ecology of interdependence and symbiosis whose digestive processes could take years, even decades to fully play out.

It might seem as though all of this is injustice of the highest order, because you have been blessed with the moral sense to recognise such inhumanity. But perhaps you are no more responsible for your ethical uprightness than is a shark for its endlessly regrowing teeth. It is terribly well suited to its environment, this eating machine, but I don't assume it had much choice in the matter. You may not be the architect of your own finely tuned sense of right and wrong, either, in which case your moral luck, as it were, is equalled by the moral luck of the older boys, who were simply born into different circumstances. We can only hope this is not the case.

I don't blame the older boys for the blow that ultimately penetrated Tusk's heart, any more than I blame myself. In a gloomy, locker-lined corridor the older boys had formed a tight ring with Tusk and myself thrust into its centre. With shoves and kicks they howled at us to fight one another, warning of what would come if we failed to comply. I had never thrown a punch in my life – had no desire to – but it was plain to see that Bernard Tusk was even more harrowed by the prospect. He was emitting a noise, no words, his voice a fierce alarm growing higher and higher, like a melody that could ascend forever. It strikes me now that being the object of assault was something he could weather, but being forced to inflict suffering on another was a kind of moral injury; a bruising of the soul itself. Instead of raining fists on each other, I called Tusk an idiot. He replied that I was the idiot, and I reached for the nearest retort, hardly thinking.

Some words lodge themselves in your brain like parasites. Even the most popular of us had been called something. We'd been gross, fat, stupid, weird. Those leeches will still be feeding years on, though it's possible you can tear the bloodsuckers out with enough effort. You try to think of another way of thinking, and sometimes discover there's a modicum of pride available to slurs. Some people are disgusting on purpose. Thicc and chonky got hot. Acting stupid can be a career move and weird people are only weird because they love something a lot, which they know is better than the alternative.

As I threw my insult at Tusk, his eyebrows twisted not in horror but in comprehension, lightning striking the ocean.

Oh!, those eyebrows announced. I am ugly!

Say it out loud: even the word feels ugly in your mouth.

Of course, nobody could ever seriously accuse Bernard Tusk of being ugly. The creaturely innocence of his blinking gaze and the thinness of his hide lent him a natural prettiness. But Tusk now understood his place in a system, and the reason for his torment. He was wrong about his ugliness, but it afforded him a lever with which to pry open the entire complex machine of which he was merely one component.

It was the day of the sports carnival. Parents were screaming. Hats and sunscreen and even umbrellas were stuffed into backpacks, teachers interrogated about waterbottle refill zones and we gathered it was going to be a scorcher. Many of us heard the word heat-stroke for the first time. It was noted.

With his long lashes and his kindness, we figured Bernard Tusk was not prepared for sports day.

We had all been hardened by the quiet fears engendered by older boys, the way soft ferns left in corners accrue a stiff dust. That day, however, we were all rattled by the sight of Bernard Tusk as he took off running. No events had begun, no starter gun fired, yet he was sprinting as those chased by demons. He raced around the track past children barely out of nappies and older boys who could break him over their knee. His gait was as awkward and ungainly as ever, but for the first time it persisted. Teachers tutted and eventually yelled. Lit further aflame by his exertions, he evaded their grasp, panting in his protests. From the bleachers this pantomime left the entire school in hysterics.

Mrs De Souza's sandals threw up tiny mushroom clouds as she stormed across the long jump sand and tried to catch hold of Bernard's passing elbow. He wove away at the last minute and the waiting athletes hooted.

He just kept running, was the thing. Past triple jump and relay. Hatless and bare-limbed, his sad shape clowned out for what seemed like hours. Teachers swore in our vicinity. Nobody could withstand the day's rays for so long. The comedy grew stale. His skin took on the sheen of grilled meat. Still he fled, cavorting for the stand's approval.

I ran to Mr Maurice. As sports teacher, he felt the most responsible here.

What's doing, jabroni? he asked.

I was too winded to speak at first, but pointed at the pink demon reeling across the landscape.

The grey eyes took in the faraway scene. He inhaled.

Bernard Tusk isn't doing himself any favours, he said. His fingers plucked scroggon from his bum bag. But you're not doing yourselves any favours either.

I licked salt from my lips.

Some of you older boys want to be getting in there, teach him what's what. Doesn't look good for any of us, this kind of thing. Teachers at other schools will be roasting me for years to come.

When the day ended Tusk had been so burned by the sun, so deliberately scorched, that we marvelled as he pulled strips of skins from his arms and neck and dangled them in our faces. He was so violently red we felt sick from it, enriched by it.

I want to note that I ran into Bernard Tusk a few years ago. The zebra crossing was slick with rain and as my feet skidded I looked up from my phone, panicked, only to find strong hands catching me from behind and preventing my fall. Before I could apologise the grown Bernard Tusk, now bear-like in aspect, simply lumbered off into the downpour.

Or I could report the time we met eyes along a bar, two clapped souls waiting for someone's attention, both aware we were too old and looked too poorly to command it. We exchanged an understanding. Those days were behind us. If we run into each other now, we just... pretend? one of us signalled. That none of it happened? I'd respect that, the other would nod.

Or I could tell you of the news report about Bernard Tusk the international peace keeper, airlifting aid to beleaguered lands; or Bernard Tusk the biologist, whose sacrifices saved untold lives; or even Bernard Tusk the lottery winner, fortune finally throwing him a bone.

I want to say any of this happened, but the brutal demands of daily life prevent that kind of lie, and I am afraid of becoming an older boy. The only reason I've thought of him in the last however many years is that I noticed on social media that his funeral was being livestreamed. He'd died in a foreign war. I was tempted to log in but don't need to know more about what remains, or who would turn up to the event, or what last nourishment there is left for them. For all I know Bernard Tusk remains skinless, pecked at. I slide that day back into its drawer.

I did run into Mr Maurice, however. Arriving at the museum I hurried past the video of the whale only to collide with my former teacher. Though he face had been ravaged by the years, I instantly recognised the grey eyes I had torn from the screen.

Over the succeeding awkward minutes we ricocheted across various moments, none shared. My mind went to Bernard Tusk, whose recent death had hit me like a rail spike. Mr Maurice confessed that the name didn't ring a bell.

The sports carnival? I said. He blinked patiently and listened to my description of that day with a faint smile.

No recollection, he said. We had a boy like that in my year, though. In my experience every school has one. What a clown act. Good for a laugh, those sorts.

Bernard got all blown up, I stammered.

He shook his head. I'll bet you this Trusk character landed on his feet, he said. Survive school and you can survive anything.

His eyes were distant but his teeth were bare.