Then he turned and still carrying the boy like a balsa log under his arm went up the stairs and toward the door leading to the roof.
"Hey, let me down. You let me down or.. "
"I'm going to smack your head, kid," Remo said. He did. Charley cried.
Remo tossed the boy through the door onto the roof just in time for Charley to smash into three boys approaching the door, carrying them down to the roof surface.
Then Remo was low, moving through the door, and jamming it behind him so no one could escape.
As the door closed, the roof was swallowed up in darkness again. Remo opened his pupils wider than normal pupils were supposed to dilate. He could see almost as if the roof were lighted. He moved through the crowd of boys.
He slapped a face and took a gun and jammed it into his belt.
"Ooooh, shit, that hurt."
"Good," Remo said. "Try this."
He slapped again, then turned and kicked a behind and took another gun.
"Son of a bitch," the boy snarled. He was ten years old.
"Naughty, naughty," Remo said. He slapped the boy alongside the ear. "No cursing in school."
The boys spun around on the rooftop, like puppies looking for a hidden piece of meat that they could smell but not see, afraid to fire for fear of hitting each other, and Remo moved among them, hitting, smacking, slapping, spanking and collecting guns.
"Hey. That fucker's got my gun."
"Mine too."
"Anybody got a gun?"
Smack!
"Mustn't go calling names, big mouth," Remo said. "I'll send you to the principal's office."
"Who's got a gun?" someone cried, in a voice that bore more anguish than it was possible to experience in eleven years.
"I have," Remo said. "I've got them all. Isn't this fun?"
"I'm getting out of here. Fuck Kaufperson. Let her do her own dirty work."
"You get away from that door," Remo said, "while I put these guns away."
The biggest boy on the roof, thirteen years old, got to the door and yanked. One second he was yanking, the next instant he was sitting on the gravel-topped roof, the sharp small stones pressing into his rear.
"I said stay away from that door," Remo said. "And no peeking for the guns. That's not the way you play huckle buckle beanstalk."
Remo slipped the top grate from the ventilator shaft and dropped the small handguns in the top. He heard them slide and then thump below, as the first one landed, then the clicks as the later ones landed atop other guns. He didn't know where the chute led, but wherever it ended was exactly seventeen-and-one-half feet away, his ears told him.
Behind him, he heard whispering. It was meant to be too soft for him to hear.
"The door's jammed. I can't open it."
"All right, we'll rush him."
"Yeah. Everybody jump him. Stomp him in the balls."
The boys huddled around the door as Remo walked back. They were able now to make out his silhouette even in the dark. Remo saw them as if it were light.
"Can all of you see all right?" Remo asked. "No? Let me fix that."
The boys nearest the door felt nothing except a brush of air by their faces, then they heard a thud and a ripping sound and then a splash of light as beams shone on the roof from a hole Remo had just torn open in the metal door with his bare right hand.
"There," said Remo backing up. "That's better, isn't it?" He smiled at the boys. His teeth glinted gravestone marble white in the dim light, and there was not a sound as the boys looked first at him, then at the hole in the door.
"Attention, class," said Remo, wondering how Sister Mary Elizabeth would have handled this bunch back at the Newark orphanage. Probably with a ruler across the backs of their hands, and Remo had a hunch it would still have worked. It was decades of time and social light years away from Sister Mary Elizabeth and her corporal methods of teaching, but Remo guessed that if she had had these children when they were smaller, they would not now be huddled frightened on a roof with a man they had just tried to murder.
"You're probably wondering why I called you all here," Remo said. "Well, at the board of education, we've been getting bad reports on you. That you're not doing your homework. That you don't pay attention in class. Are those reports true?"
There was only sullen silence. From the darkness, Remo heard a half-whispered, "Go fuck yourself."
Remo singled out the whisperer for a blinding smile. "That's not exactly the answer I was looking for," he said, "but we'll get back to that. All right, now, what is the capital of Venezuela? Anybody who knows speak right up."
Silence.
Remo reached forward to the nearest two faces and slapped them hard, across both cheeks with his left and right hands.
"You're not trying, class. Again. The capital of Venezuela?"
A voice ventured: "San Juan?"
"Close, but no cigar," said Remo, who did not know the capital of Venezuela but knew it was not San Juan.
"All right now, all together, the square root of one-hundred-sixty-eight. Come on, don't be shy. The square root of one-hundred-sixty-eight."
He paused. "Nobody knows. Too bad. You don't know arithmetic, either. That'll have to go into my report to the board of education."
He smiled again. "Let's try grammar. Is 'walking' past tense or an infinitive?" asked Remo, who would not know either if it was mailed to him in an envelope.
"Hey, mister, can we go home?"
"Not while class is in session. What kind of child are you, wanting to miss out on your education? 'Walking.' Past tense or infinitive? Don't all speak at once."
There was deathly silence on the roof. Remo could hear only the worried shallow breathing of ten frightened boys whose decision to jump him and stomp him had evaporated when he put his bare hand through a steel door.
"I've got to tell you that this is probably the worst response I've had in all my years in the classroom."