The Goober was waiting for him at the school’s entrance, standing tense and troubled among the other fellows waiting for school to start, like prisoners resigned to execution, taking their final drags from cigarettes before the bells began to ring. The Goober motioned Jerry aside. Jerry followed him guiltily. He realized that Goober wasn’t the cheerful happy-go-lucky kid he’d known when school first started. What had happened? He’d been so wrapped up in his own concerns that he hadn’t bothered about Goob.
“Jeez, Jerry, what did you do it for?” Goober asked, drawing him away from the others.
“Do what?”
But he knew what Goober meant.
“The chocolates.”
“I don’t know, Goob,” Jerry said. It was no use faking out Goober the way he had faked out that kid on the bus. “That’s the truth—I don’t know.”
“You’re asking for trouble, Jerry. Brother Leon spells trouble.”
“Look, Goob,” Jerry said, wanting to reassure his friend, wanting to wipe that look of concern from his face. “It’s not the end of the world. Four hundred kids in this school are going to sell chocolates. What does it matter if I don’t?”
“It’s not that simple, Jerry. Brother Leon won’t let you get away with it.”
The warning bell sounded. Cigarettes were flipped into the gutter or mashed into the sand-filled receptacle near the door. Last drags were inhaled lingeringly. Guys who’d been sitting in cars listening to rock on the radio switched them off and slammed the doors behind them.
“Nice going, kid,” somebody said, hurrying by, the pat on the ass Trinity’s traditional gesture of friendship. Jerry didn’t see who it was.
“Keep it up, Jerry.” This, a corner-of-the-mouth whisper from Adamo who hated Leon with a vengeance.
“See how the word is spreading?” Goober hissed. “What’s more important—football and your marks or the lousy chocolate sale?”
The bell rang again. It meant two minutes left to get to your locker and then to your homeroom.
A senior by the name of Benson approached them. Seniors were trouble for freshmen. It was better to be ignored by them than to be noticed. But Benson was clearly headed in their direction. He was a nut, known for his lack of inhibitions, his complete disregard of the rules.
As he neared Jerry and Goober, he began a Jimmy Cagney imitation, shooting his cuffs and hunching his shoulders. “Hey, there, guy. I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t be in your shoes … I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a thou, boy, a mill …” He punched Jerry playfully on the arm.
“You couldn’t fit those shoes anyway, Benson,” somebody yelled. And Benson danced away, Sammy Davis now, wide grin, feet tapping, body whirling.
Walking up the stairs, Goober said, “Do me a favor, Jerry. Take the chocolates today.”
“I can’t, Goob.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t. I’m committed now.”
“The goddam Vigils,” Goober said.
Jerry had never heard Goober swear before. He’d always been a mild kind of kid, rolling with the punches, loose and carefree, running around the track while the other kids sat uptight during practice sessions.
“It’s not The Vigils, Goob. They’re not in it anymore. It’s me.”
They stopped at Jerry’s locker.
“All right,” Goober said, resigned, knowing it was useless to pursue the subject any further at the moment. Jerry felt sad suddenly because Goober looked so troubled, like an old man heaped with all the sorrows of the world, his thin face drawn and haggard, his eyes haunted, as if he had awakened from a nightmare he couldn’t forget.
Jerry opened his locker. He had thumbtacked a poster to the back wall of the locker on the first day of school. The poster showed a wide expanse of beach, a sweep of sky with a lone star glittering far away. A man walked on the beach, a small solitary figure in all that immensity. At the bottom of the poster, these words appeared—Do I dare disturb the universe? By Eliot, who wrote the Waste Land thing they were studying in English. Jerry wasn’t sure of the poster’s meaning. But it had moved him mysteriously. It was traditional at Trinity for everyone to decorate the interior of his locker with a poster. Jerry chose this one.
He had no time now to ponder the poster any longer. The final bell rang and he had thirty seconds to get to class.
“Adamo?”
“Two.”
“Beauvais?”
“Three.”
It was a different roll call this morning, a new melody, a new tempo, as if Brother Leon were the conductor and the class the members of a verbal orchestra, but something wrong with the beat, something wrong with the entire proceedings, as if the members of the orchestra were controlling the pace and not the conductor. No sooner would Brother Leon call out a name than the response came immediately, before Leon had time to make a notation in the ledger. It was the kind of spontaneous game that developed in classes without premeditation, everyone falling into a sudden conspiracy. The quickness of the responses kept Brother Leon busy at his desk, head bent, pencil furiously scribbling. Jerry was glad that he wouldn’t have to look into those watery eyes.
“LeBlanc?”
“One.”
“Malloran?”
“Two.”
Names and numbers sizzled in the air and Jerry began to notice something curious about it. All the ones and twos, and an occasional three. But no fives, no tens. And Brother Leon’s head still bent, concentrating on the ledger. And finally—
“Renault.”
It would be so easy, really, to yell “Yes.” To say, “Give me the chocolates to sell, Brother Leon.” So easy to be like the others, not to have to confront those terrible eyes every morning. Brother Leon finally looked up. The tempo of the roll call had broken.
“No,” Jerry said.
He was swept with sadness, a sadness deep and penetrating, leaving him desolate like someone washed up on a beach, a lone survivor in a world full of strangers.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
“AT THIS PERIOD OF HISTORY, man began to learn more about his environment—”
Suddenly, pandemonium reigned. The class exploded in frantic motion. Brother Jacques looked aghast. The boys leaped from their chairs, performed an insane jig, jumping up and down as if to the beat of unheard music, all of this in complete silence—although the sound of their jogging feet was noisy enough—and then sat down again, frozen-faced, as if nothing had happened.
Obie watched the teacher sourly. Brother Jacques was obviously bewildered. Bewildered? Hell, he was on the edge of panic. The ritual had been going on for a week now and it would continue until the cue was heard no more. In the meantime, the class would suddenly erupt into a confusion of waving arms and jogging legs, unsettling poor Brother. Of course, Brother Jacques was easy to unsettle—he was new and young and sensitive, raw meat for Archie. And he evidently didn’t know what to do about it and so he didn’t do anything, figuring apparently that the thing would run its course and why risk a futile showdown when it was obviously a prank. What else could it be? Funny, Obie thought, how everybody—the kids as well as the teachers—knew these stunts were planned or carried out by The Vigils and yet they still maintained that air of mystery, refusing to acknowledge it all. He wondered why. Obie had been involved in so many Vigil assignments that he’d lost count of them and he was continually amazed at how they got away with it all the time. In fact, he’d been getting tired of the assignments, of playing nursemaid for Archie and his trigger man as well. He was tired of being the fixer, making certain the assignment went off on schedule in order to maintain Archie’s big shot reputation. Like the Room Nineteen assignment when he’d had to creep in there and help the kid Goober take the place apart—all that work so that Archie and The Vigils would look good. Even this particular assignment involved him—if Brother Jacques failed to come up with the cue, then Obie had to find a way to feed it to him.
The cue was the word “environment.” As Archie
had said when he announced the assignment, “The world today is concerned with ecology, the environment, our natural resources. We at Trinity also ought to get involved in this environment thing. You guys,” he said, indicating the fourteen students of Grade Twelve Class II, of whom Obie was a member, “will carry on our environmental campaign. Let’s say Brother Jacques’ U.S. History class—history should be concerned with environment, shouldn’t it? Now, whenever Brother Jacques says the word ‘environment,’ here’s what happens …” And Archie had outlined the instructions.
“Suppose he doesn’t use the word?” someone asked.
Archie looked toward Obie. “Oh, Brother Jacques will use the word. I’m sure somebody—Obie, maybe—will ask a question that will produce the word. Won’t you, Obie?”
Obie had nodded, disguising his disgust. What the hell was Archie involving him in an assignment at this stage of the game for? He was a senior, for crying out loud. He was secretary of the goddam Vigils, for crying out loud. Jesus, how he hated Archie, that bastard.
A new kid, a transfer from Monument High, asked, “What happens when Brother Jacques finds out we’re putting him on? When he finds out that the key word is environment?”
“Then he stops using it,” Archie said. “Which is the point of the whole damn thing. I’m getting sick and tired of all this environment crap—and at least we’ll have one teacher in the frigging school who’ll cross it off his vocabulary list.”
For his part, Obie was getting sick and tired of Archie, of picking up the pieces behind him, of performing those little services—like Room Nineteen or cueing in Brother Jacques, feeding him a question that could only lead to the word “environment” in the answer. Anyway he was getting fed up with the entire deal. And he was also biding his time, waiting for Archie to overreach himself, to make a mistake. The black box was always there and who could tell when Archie’s luck would run out?
“In any discussion of the environment …”
Here we go again, Obie thought in disgust as he found himself leaping up and down like a madman, jogging his heart out, hating every minute of the damn thing. And his energy was wearing down.
Brother Jacques used the word “environment” five more times in the next fifteen minutes. Obie and the other guys were practically wiped out from all that jumping up and down, weary, out of breath, their legs beginning to ache.
When Brother Jacques used the word a sixth time and a weary battalion of students struggled to their feet to perform their task, Obie saw a small smile play on the lips of the teacher. And he knew immediately what had happened. Archie, that bastard, must have tipped Brother Jacques off, anonymously, of course, to what was going on. And the teacher had turned the tables. It was now the teacher who was in command, making the guys jump up and down until they almost collapsed in exhaustion.
When they left the classroom, there was Archie leaning against the wall, that smirk of triumph on his face. The other guys didn’t realize what had happened. But Obie did. He gave Archie a look that would shrivel anybody else, but Archie just kept that silly smile on his face.
Obie stalked off, insulted, injured. You bastard, he thought, I owe you for that.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
KEVIN CHARTIER HAD GONE to seven houses after school and hadn’t sold a box. Mrs. Connors next to the dry cleaners had told him to come back at the end of the month when her Social Security check came from the government but he didn’t have the heart to tell her that it would probably be too late by then. A dog chased him halfway home. It was like one of those terrible dogs the Nazis used for hunting down concentration camp prisoners who escaped in those old TV pictures. At home, disgusted, he telephoned his best friend, Danny Arcangelo.
“How’d you make out, Danny?” Kevin asked, trying to ignore his mother who stood near the phone making sounds at him. Kevin had learned long ago to translate whatever she was saying into gibberish. She could talk her head off now and the words reached his ears without meaning. A wild trick.
“I made out terrible,” Danny whined. He always sounded like he had to blow his nose. “I sold one box—to my aunt.”
“The one with diabetes?”
Danny howled. One thing about Danny, he was a great audience. But not Kevin’s mother. She was still chattering away. Kevin knew what was bugging her. She never wanted him to eat when he was on the telephone. His mother didn’t realize that eating wasn’t something you did separately. Eating went along with whatever you happened to be doing at the time. You could eat doing anything. Well, almost anything. It’s not polite to be on the phone with your mouth full of food, she always said. But right this minute, Danny also had his mouth full of food at the other end of the line. So who the hell was being impolite to who? Or whom? Screw it.
“I think maybe that Renault kid’s got the right idea, after all,” Kevin said, his mouth thick with peanut butter which, he wished he could explain to his mother, gave his words more resonance, like a disc jockey’s.
“The freshman who’s giving Brother Leon a hard time?”
“Yeah. He came flat out and said he wasn’t going to sell the junk.”
“I thought it was a Vigils thing,” Danny said tentatively.
“It was,” Kevin said, leering in triumph as his mother gave up and went into the kitchen. “But now it’s something else.” He wondered whether he was saying too much. “He was supposed to take the chocolates a couple of days ago. The assignment was over. But he still refused to take them.”
Kevin could hear Danny chewing like a madman.
“What’re you eating, anyway? Sounds delicious.”
Danny howled again. “Chocolates. I bought a box myself. The least I could do for good old Trinity.”
An awkward silence fell between them. Kevin was in line to become a member of The Vigils next year when he became a junior. No one could be sure, of course, but there had been some hints from the guys. His best friend, Danny, knew about the possibility—and he also knew that there was a certain secrecy about The Vigils that had to be maintained. They usually avoided Vigil talk although Kevin often had inside information about assignments and stuff and he often fed it to Danny in bits and pieces, finding it hard not to show off a bit. Yet he was always afraid that Danny might say something about The Vigils to some other guys, strictly by accident, and screw up the whole situation. They had reached that point now in their conversation.
“What happens now?” Danny asked, still unsure about poking his nose in but made reckless by curiosity.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said truthfully. “Maybe The Vigils will take some action. Maybe they don’t give a hell. But I’ll tell you one thing.”
“What?”
“I’m getting sick of selling stuff. Jeez, my father’s starting to call me ‘my son, the salesman.’ ”
Danny guffawed again. Kevin was a natural mimic. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m getting tired of this selling crap. The kid’s probably got the right idea.”
Kevin agreed.
“For two cents, I’d stop,” Danny said.
“Got change for a nickel?” Kevin said, all in fun, of course, but thinking how beautiful—bee-yoo-tee-full—it would be not to have to sell anything anymore. He looked up to find his mother approaching him again, her mouth moving and sounds coming out, and he sighed, tuning her out, like shutting off the sound on television while the picture remained.
“Know what?” Howie Anderson asked.
“What?” Richy Rondell answered, lazily, dreamily. He was watching a girl approach. Fantastic looking. Tight sweater, clinging, low-slung jeans. Jesus.
“I think the Renault kid is right about the chocolates,” Howie said. He’d seen the girl too, as she moved along the sidewalk in front of Crane’s Drug Store. But it didn’t break his train of thought. Watching girls and devouring them with your eyes—rape by eyeball—was something you did automatically. “I’m not going to sell them anymore, either.”
The girl paused to loo
k at newspapers in a metal rack outside the store. Richy gazed at her with wistful lust. Suddenly he realized what Howie had said. “You’re not?” he asked. Without taking his eyes off the girl—her back was turned now and he feasted himself on her rounded jeans—he pondered the meaning of what Howie had said, sensing the importance of the moment. Howie Anderson wasn’t just another Trinity student. He was president of the junior class, an unusual guy. High honor student and varsity guard on the football team. He could also hold his own in the ring and almost knocked out that monster Carter in the intramural matches last year. His hand could shoot up in class to show he had the answer to a tough question. But that same hand could also shoot out and floor you if you screwed around with him. An intellectual roughneck—that’s what one teacher had called him a while back. A freshman-nobody like Renault not selling chocolates—that was nothing. But Howie Anderson—that was something.
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Howie went on.
Richy plunged his hand in his pocket, grabbing shamelessly, something he couldn’t resist whenever he got excited, about a girl or anything else.
“What principle, Howie?”
“This is what I mean,” Howie said. “We pay tuition to go to Trinity, don’t we? Right. Hell, I’m not even a Catholic, a lot of guys aren’t, but they sell us a bill of goods that Trinity is the best prep school for college you can find around here. There’s a case full of trophies in the auditorium—debating, football, boxing. And what happens? They turn us into salesmen. I have to listen to all this religious crap and even go to chapel. And sell chocolates on top of it all.” He spat and a beautiful spray hit a mailbox, dripping down like a teardrop. “And now along comes a freshman. A child. He says no. He says ‘I’m not going to sell the chocolates.’ Simple. Beautiful. Something I never thought of before—just stop selling them.”