The Diary
Created by Plexus.Net
The Scouts of SMK Batu Delima are having the annual camp again. This time Joe Wong gets to be the leader of his group. There are about 10 groups competing each other in various competitions and prizes, but Joe is in it mainly for the certificate he will get at the end of the camp. Most people mistook him for a smart and intelligent goody-two-shoes type of person. Maybe it’s because of his quiet demeanor. Wong is pretty much of a lazy person. He rarely took part in these school activity crap.
Both his parents are dead in a car accident 5 years ago, when Joe was 11 years old. His 23 years old brother takes care of him. A mechanic working for a auto repair shop, he is not much of a role model. Samuel Wong always brings a different girl home late at night, keeping the younger Wong awake with all the noise. But Joe is used to it all. Money is always at the bottom of their minds, because they don’t have much of it.
Joe is sitting in a sun next to a pile of dirt, cursing himself probably for the hundredth time for taking part in this camping bullshit. He is poking constantly at the hole in the ground with a crowbar, loosening the dirt and digging it up. He is trying to make a straight hole about an arm’s length deep so that he could slide in a long stick of bamboo to make a flagpole. He cursed himself again for choosing this chore. His other team members are doing something else, working on the tent, and sawing at the bamboo.
His crowbar struck something solid. “Shit, another rock,” he thought. Those assholes who camped here last here kept filling the ground with rocks and shit like that. He had cut himself earlier by a piece of glass in the dirt. It means that he had to make the hole wider to pull the rock out. After about 20 minutes it was out. It turned out to be a box, almost like a music box, but not quite. It was some sort of a metal case like the ones women use to keep their jewelry. He opened it and found a book. It was full in handwritings, each page with a date on top. One of them was 7 October 1949.
“Ahmad, come see this” he called to one of his teammates.
“What’s that?”
“I think it’s a diary,” Joe said. “Maybe it belongs to Bradford.”
“You mean sir Patrick Bradford? No way that book can last that long in the ground.”
Patrick Bradford was once a rich Englishman during the occupation. The main building of SMK Batu Delima was the home of Bradford until his death in 1952. It was later converted to a school and other buildings were added. There were many stories about the school’s history, and Wong has heard them all.
“There’s his name on the first page, I didn’t know he has a diary,” Ahmad was flipping trough the pages.
“Okaylah, we should go back to work,” as much as he hates this camp, Joe was still the leader of his group.
To Be Continue............
