It hadn't been much of a rape, really.
Not a rape at all, in fact.
Archie, frankly, grew bored as Bunting again went into the details. He realized Bunting habitually repeated himself, making a statement, then stating it again, and sometimes a third time, as if you were too stupid to understand what he had said in the first place.
Yet Archie was secretly delighted as he listened to Bunting's lurid recital of events. He was delighted because he saw that Bunting was perfect for what he had planned for the future. The audacity, for crissake: a rape. And then the botching of it Perfect.
Archie had enjoyed Bunting's discomfort as he listened to the details. But Bunting had not gone into all the details, of course. There were certain things Bunting kept to himself, would not share with Archie Costello. He told Archie about Harley and Cornacchio. How Cornacchio had taken care of Obie beautifully, seized him and dragged him from the car, held him in a fierce armlock, forced him to the ground, shoving his head under the car so that he couldn't see anything or anybody. That was important. Good job by Cornacchio. Harley had also performed above expectations. He had yanked open the door on the passenger side of the car, reached for the girl, and then, as if acting from instinct or long practice, had grabbed at her sweater and pulled it up over her face, blinding her, keeping her from witnessing anything, her arms imprisoned above her head.
The part that he did not tell Archie: how the raising of the sweater had revealed her bra. White, full, heaving. Like in the movies or the magazines. Beyond Bunting's wildest dreams. He hadn't realized Laurie Gundarson's breasts were so large, concealed as they'd always been by blouses and sweaters. Bunting lunged toward her, wanting to fill himself with her, wanting to fill her with him, aching with desire, lust, the necessity to grab her, hold her close, caress those beauties. He pinned her down with his body as she struggled and squirmed, small mews of protest muffled in the sweater. For one sweet, throbbing moment he held her right breast in his hand, full and firm in the nylon bra, yet soft and yielding at the same time. He'd never touched a girl's breast before, and he throbbed with such ecstasy that his breath came in sharp bursts. Beautiful. But without warning Laurie Gundarson kicked out, her legs churning and thrashing, and at the same time she managed to scream, loud and piercing. Pain arrowed through Bunting's groin. All desire left him; he grew limp. He released her in revulsion. Realized suddenly and with blinding clarity what they—he was doing. Rape, for crissake. That was sick. Nausea swept his stomach. He shouted to Harley: "Christ, let's get out of here," thankful that his voice emerged hoarse, almost a grunt, unrecognizable to his own ears and, he hoped, to hers as well.
They abandoned the scene as quickly as they had struck, withdrawing without pause, leaving the girl whimpering, face still covered, and Obie under the car, legs jutting out at a grotesque angle. They roared away, Harley laughing like a madman while Bunting managed to bring himself under control. Take it easy. As they raced away from the Chasm, Bunting's thoughts also raced, reliving the incident to see if they'd left behind clues to their identities. Was certain they hadn't. Almost certain. But even if the girl or Obie had caught a glimpse of their faces, what could they do? Three against two. The couple's words against theirs. Still, an alibi would come in handy. And Bunting knew immediately who would provide that alibi.
"Okay, okay," Archie said now, letting his annoyance and distaste finally show. "Why are you telling me all this?"
They were sitting in Archie's car in the parking lot, a half hour before the start of classes. Bunting had called Archie early this morning, rousing him from sleep. Ordinarily, Archie would have bristled with anger — home and school were separate entities in his life — but the urgency in Bunting's voice had held his anger in check. Something else: a bad dream during the night, of snowflakes large as letter-sized papers covering the entire city of Monument Soiled snowflakes, dirtied by scrawled words, falling suffocatingly on the world. Archie had leaped from sleep, glad to leave the nightmare behind.
"I had to tell someone, Archie. I mean, you've pulled a lot of stuff in the Vigils—"
"Never rape," Archie said quickly, contempt in his voice. "Never anything like that."
"We didn't rape her," Bunting protested. "I didn't even touch her." He knew he had to cling to that statement.
"Assault," Archie said. "I was going to say assault with a deadly weapon." He looked down at Bunting. "But I don't think the weapon's very deadly. . "
Bunting flushed but didn't reply, willing to take this abuse if he got what he wanted from Archie.
"Thing is," Bunting said after a pause, knowing the plunge he was taking, "we could use an alibi—"
"Alibi," Archie scoffed. "What is this—Saturday Night at the Movies?"
"I mean, in case they saw us. Caught a glimpse. I figure the Vigils could cover us. . "
"I thought you said they didn't see you. Or anything else. The girl's sweater over her head, Obie under the car. That you didn't touch her—"
"But just in case. . I flunk it's better to be prepared," Bunting said stubbornly. Then played his ace. "In fact. ." Letting the words dangle there.
"In fact what?" Archie asked, immediately suspicious. Until this moment, he had been half amused by Bunting's dilemma.
"I was thinking," Bunting said, choosing his words carefully, "that maybe Obie thinks this was a Vigil assignment."
"Are you crazy, Bunting? Obie is part of the Vigils. We always protect our members. Never touch them. He's at all the meetings. . "
Bunting sighed, then plunged.
"The other day when I told you about Obie and the girl at the Chasm — remember?"
"I remember."
"I asked if you wanted anything done about them."
"I didn't tell you to do anything."
"You didn't tell me not to do anything," Bunting said, speaking deliberately.
"Christ, Bunting, what are you saying?"
"I figured you wanted us to do something. That you were being. . subtle." Subtle: a beautiful word, Bunting thought, ready and waiting when he needed it.
"I don't have to be subtle," Archie responded, voice cold. "When I want something done, I say: Do it."
"But you're a subtle guy, Archie," Bunting said, pressing on, knowing that if he could make Archie a part of what had happened last night, his troubles were over. "Last, night we were driving around and went to the Chasm and I saw Obie's car there. Then I remembered our conversation. How you seemed to want something done about Obie. And the girl. And we figured we'd throw a little scare into them. Then. ."
"Then what?" Archie asked, realizing how dangerous this little bastard was. Had to be cautious. This was not assignment stuff, or fun and games on campus. This was assault. Attempted rape. Suppose the girl went to the police?
"Then. ." Bunting began. And halted. Because what had started out as a dare, a threat, a bit of fan, had turned into something else once he'd approached the car and seen Laurie Gundarson there. "Then. . what happened, happened." A bit panicky now, he said: "But it wouldn't have happened at all, Archie, if I'd thought you didn't want it to happen."
Archie drew a deep sharp breath. Then sank inside himself, as he often did when he needed to pull back, think things through, assess a situation, make a decision. Bunting was apparently shrewder than he had thought, trying to make Archie an accessory both before and after the fact. Obie, of course, was the key figure. All depended on what Obie and the girl had done after the attack, whether they had decided to remain quiet or report the incident. Archie didn't think they had gone to the police. That kind of news traveled fast', and all seemed peaceful this morning at Trinity: no police cruisers, no sign of unusual activity on the campus. With the police not involved, the case became much simpler. First of all, the assault did not have any Vigil trademarks. Obie knew that Archie did not operate on the level of assaults and rapes. Yet this stupid incident could have repercussions. The problem was that he did not know what effect the attack had had on Obie, what Obie was thinking at this minute, what he suspected. His first step was a confrontation with Obie. Obie had always been transparent to Archie, could hide no secrets.
"Bunting," he said, voice sharp and cold. "Here's the deal. A Vigil meeting today. The usual time. ."
Doubt formed a frown on Bunting's face.
"Dig into your notebook and find somebody for an assignment. Pick a name from the list I gave you the other day."
"But Obie will be at the meeting," Bunting said. The last thing he wanted was to meet Obie face to face.
"Exactly."
Let Bunting stew awhile. Let him worry through the day.
"Problems are never solved by delay," Archie said in his best lecturing tone, enjoying Bunting's growing discomfort. "We have a problem here, and the best way to solve it is to take action. So we meet today. Bring everybody together. Business as usual. That's why we need a kid for an assignment. Everything must look normal. And then let me read between the lines." This is what Archie loved. Showdowns, sixguns at sunset, adversaries coming face to face. To see what would happen, what explosions would be touched off or, if not explosions, what emotional collisions would occur.
There was an even more important reason for calling a meeting, however. The Obie-Bunting showdown was only a screen for Archie's real purpose — searching for the traitor. He suspected that the traitor was a member of the Vigils. More than suspected. Few kids outside the Vigils knew that the day off from school was to have coincided with the Bishop's visit. And the letter to Leon had focused on the visit. Thus, the meeting was a place to begin his pursuit of the traitor, and instinct — instinct that never failed him — dictated that he would find his betrayer there.
He turned again to Bunting, saw his troubled countenance, the beads of sweat dancing on his upper lip.
"And Bunting. ."
"Yes?"
"Forget the alibi. The Vigils don't provide alibis," Archie said The words final, like a trapdoor slamming shut.
Notices for Vigil meetings were always posted on the main bulletin board in the first-floor corridor, directly across from the Headmaster's office. Archie was entertained by the location of the notice right under Leon's nose. The notice was simple, involving the words TRINITY HIGH SCHOOL at the top of the board. On the day of the meeting, the Y of Trinity was inverted: л. Which made it look, as Archie said, like an upright finger. Thus, the Vigils giving the finger to the world while calling a meeting. That's what the upside-down Y was called: the Finger.
Bunting inverted the Y shortly before the bell sounded for the start of classes. Stepping away, from the bulletin board, he pondered his next move: delivering the invitation, without being spotted, to the victim selected for today's meeting. The invitation was usually a crudely written note left in the victim's desk in his homeroom, or in his locker, sometime during the day. Bunting delivered the note without difficulty a few minutes later — the victim's homeroom was empty, and he slipped the sheet of paper into the desk without risk of being seen.
As he headed for his first class, Bunting's mind was dark with doubts and forebodings. He wondered whether his confession to Archie this morning had been a mistake. He knew he could control Cornacchio and Harley. But Archie was different, so different that Bunting sometimes woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, almost sorry that he had ever gotten involved with Archie and the Vigils.
Obie had gotten into the habit of checking the bulletin board for a possible Vigil meeting ever since Bunting had come on the scene. There had been a time, only a short while ago, when Obie had controlled the meetings and inverted the Y. But Archie had been carrying on his own relationship with Bunting for a few weeks, obviously grooming him for the role of Assigner, and Obie had accepted the situation. Because Laurie had become more important than calling Vigil meetings.
Now he was like all the other Vigil members, at Archie's mercy, unable to plan what to do after school until he learned whether a meeting was scheduled. This morning, like all mornings, he headed for the board before going to 'his locker. Did it automatically. Still numb from the events of the night before, he trudged wearily down the corridor, feeling dull, eyes burning from lack of sleep, an anger he had never known before smoldering within him, consuming him, taking away his appetite, making him sleepless, feeding his thoughts — and his thoughts were agonizing as he played over in his mind last night's events.
Laurie. Her cries. The assault upon her body. The devastation to her — her being. As if they had violated the thing that made her a person, a girl, a woman. When he finally confronted her after scrambling to his feet, the echo of the departing car deafening in his ears, she had looked at him with such an expression of — what? Fear, loathing, revulsion. Eyes wide with panic, injury, and the most terrible thing of all — accusation. As if he himself had been the attacker.
In short hysterical bursts, she told him what had happened while he had been a helpless prisoner under the car. She had not been raped. It took her a long time to get the words out, and Obie winced as he saw how hard it was for her to talk. She was like a child crying in the dark, horrified, in the middle of the night. Not raped, no, but he, whoever he was, had touched her. Touched. As she said the word, the sobs began again. Obie was unable to comfort her. All the time that she was telling him what had happened, she kept herself shriveled away from him, huddled pathetically against the door. And then silence, snifflings, a sigh now and then. She refused to speak after that first outburst, sat silent and immobile as Obie drove her home. He felt hopeless, helpless.
In an attempt to provide reassurance, he reached out to touch her, hold her hand, caress her shoulder. She shrank away from him, shuddered a bit. He tried to apologize for what had happened, felt responsible, guilty, knew that he had failed to protect her. Christ, he thought as he drove carefully through the darkened streets, if only he'd had some warning. If only he was the macho type, knew karate, how to defend himself instead of being so easily, effortlessly subdued.
His arm still ached from the way the guy had pushed it far up his back. Would ache forever, it seemed. But it was not as bad as the ache he felt in his soul, his spirit, whatever it was in him that had suddenly come into existence in order to hold his anguish.
Now, in the corridor, he saw in dismay the Finger on the bulletin board. Could he face a meeting today? He only wanted to get through the classes somehow and then drive to Laurie's house this afternoon.
She had sent him away last night in silence. She was calm by the time they reached her house, in control, but a deadly calm, a part of her elsewhere, not in the car, out of his reach, beyond his presence.
"You okay?" he asked, frowning, emotions in a whirl, wanting to say something, the right thing, but confused, not knowing what to do or say.
"Yes," she answered. But the yes was unconvincing.
"Sure?"
"I'm sure."
They agreed to do nothing about the assault, decided not to report it to the police. After all, there had been no rape and no injuries inflicted; they had not really seen the assailants, had no evidence, no clues to their identities. What's more, Laurie said she did not want to talk about the attack, not to the police, not to anybody.
"Talking about it makes me feel dirty," she said. After a long pause: "I don't feel clean anymore."
He kissed her lightly on the cheek, not daring anything else. She didn't flinch but did not respond. "I'll call you tomorrow after school," he whispered. She did not reply. Then she went into the house, walking slowly, robotlike. Watching her go up the steps, he dreaded the possibility that he had somehow lost her, that things would never be the same again. And told himself: Tomorrow everything will be different, will be better. He clung to that thought. That's all he had.
Now, on top of all that, a Vigil meeting. The last thing in the world he needed.
Carter saw the Finger and swore.
He'd avoided Archie this morning, feared somehow that Archie would look into his eyes and know immediately that he had sent the letter to Brother Leon. Carter knew his strengths and weaknesses, knew what he was good at and what he lacked. Confident about his prowess as an athlete, he was no great shakes when it came to Archie's specialties: intimidation, outguessing people, anticipating their thoughts and actions. Archie was always one step ahead.
Frowning at the bulletin board, as if the л would disappear if he stared long enough, he wondered whether he had made a mistake. He'd taken a terrible chance when he'd decided to tip off Brother Leon about the visit That kind of thing was outside his experience. He had painstakingly written the letter in fourth-period study, printing with his left hand. Delivering it to Leon had been easy — he had merely slipped it into the letter box inside his office door. The agony came after the letter had been delivered. The realization of what he had done. The possibility that Leon would know through 'some shrewdness who had written it And would inform Archie. Leaving the school, looking over his shoulder, feeling as if unseen watchers were stalking him, Carter was filled with regret. He should have minded his own business, let the Bishop come, let the chips fall. Jeez. Head down, moving in his muscular, athletic way — movements that always kept people out of his path — Carter began hours of torment. Found it hard to concentrate on his homework. Pushed his food around on his plate at supper. Finally plunged into dreamless sleep. But didn't feel rested or refreshed when he woke up.
He turned away from the bulletin board, blinking away the afterimage of the inverted Y that remained printed on his brain. He spotted Archie Costello heading in his direction, surrounded by stooges, as usual. Carter looked around in panic, spotted the door to the janitor's storage room. He stepped into the room, closed the door softly behind him, didn't turn on the light Listening to the hammering of his heart, he waited, picturing Archie passing by in all his swagger and insolence. What's happened to me? he thought.
Ah, but he knew what had happened to him. Why he was hiding here in the storage room among the mops and brooms and buckets.
Writing the letter had been the action of a rat.
An informer.
A traitor.
He had become one of the things he'd always hated, a thing hiding in the dark now, afraid to face the world.
And all because of Archie Costello.
A German shepherd sat, silent and still, beneath a hovering tree on the sidewalk in front of the white cottage with black shutters on Hale Street, watching the Goober's progress with baleful yellow eyes. He had seen the dog before, and always hurried past. He felt that someday the dog would strike, attacking him swiftly and viciously, without barking, without warning.
This morning he had more than the German shepherd to worry about, however. As he left the dog behind on Hale Street and turned into George Street, he felt as if he were running away from a ghost, the ghost of Brother Eugene, and he shivered in the morning air even though his body pulsed with the exertion of running. He had still not fully absorbed the fact of Brother Eugene's death, although the announcement over the intercom and the memorial mass had taken place days ago. Leon's voice on the intercom was still fresh in his mind. Death, after a lengthy illness. How long was lengthy? As long as the time between last fall's destruction of Room Nineteen and the moment Brother Eugene took his last breath?
Cut it out, he told himself now, as he almost twisted his ankle on a corner of sidewalk jutting slightly higher than the rest of the pavement. You had nothing to do with Eugene's death. It's a coincidence, that's all. Okay, a terrible coincidence, but a coincidence all the same. He had shouted the word coincidence in his mind a thousand times in the last few days. The scene in Brother Eugene's classroom, the clutter of collapsed desks and chairs, and Eugene in the middle of the rubble, tears streaming down his cheeks, his chin wobbling like an infant's, was burned into the Goober's mind.
The Goober had been the student assigned to take Brother Eugene's room apart. Archie Costello had given the orders: to loosen the screws in the chairs and desks — including Eugene's chair and desk — to the point where the furniture would collapse at the slightest touch. He was assisted in the job by masked members of the Vigils during the long night he spent in the classroom. The next morning he had witnessed the destruction of Brother Eugene, a shy and sensitive teacher who often read poetry aloud in the final moments of class, despite certain snickers and smirks. Brother Eugene had stood devastated in the midst of the classroom's debris, unable to believe the assault on his beloved room. Shocked, crying — the Goober had never before seen a grown man crying — shaking his head in a refusal to believe what his eyes told him must be so. He had immediately gone on sick leave. Had never returned to Trinity after that shambles of a day. He had died last week in New Hampshire, but the Goober knew that his death had really taken place last fall. And the Goober was responsible, as if he had held a gun to the teacher's temple and pulled the trigger. No, it wasn't like that at all, a small voice within him protested. A collapsing classroom is not fatal, doesn't bring on a heart attack or whatever physical illness caused Eugene's death. But who knows? He repeated the words now, gasping them out of the depths of his guilt and despair, as he ran blindly through the morning. Who knows?
I know. I should have refused the assignment from the Vigils. But nobody refused Vigil assignments, nobody denied whatever Archie Costello demanded.
He found himself on Market Street, with its rows of high-rise apartment buildings and condominiums. His arrival here was not accidental. Jerry Renault lived in one of the apartment buildings. The Goober refused to look up at the building, kept his eyes riveted on the pavement. The ghost of Brother Eugene following him down the street was bad enough; he didn't need another ghost joining the pursuit. Jerry Renault wasn't dead, of course. Yet something of him had died. Although he looked like the friend he had known last year, that Jerry Renault was now gone. The guy who had been subdued and distant the other day was someone else altogether. Which was just as well. He had betrayed that other Jerry Renault. Just as he had betrayed Brother Eugene. .
He looked down the street toward Jerry's apartment building. He searched the facade, the rows and rows of windows, fastening finally on the fourth floor. Wondering if Jerry was standing behind the curtain at one of the windows, staring out.
Aw, Jerry, he thought. Why did things have to turn so rotten? Life at Trinity could have been so beautiful. He and Jerry on the football team, the quarterback and the long end, linked by the beautiful passes Jerry threw, linked even more by a budding friendship. All of it gone now. Brother Eugene dead and Jerry Renault maimed. And him, Roland Goubert, the Goober, dogged with guilt, almost afraid to look at his hands, afraid he'd see bloodstains.
Stupid, he told himself. You were stupid. Acting that way when the Goober came. Stupid. The word was a theme weaving its way through his thoughts, and he got up from the chair, threw down the magazine he'd been holding for ten minutes without reading a word of it, and went to the window. Pulled the curtain and looked out at the street. Everything gray outside: the street, the cars, the buildings, the trees. Glancing back at the room, the drabness of the beige walls and the nondescript furniture, he wondered whether he was the one at fault, had gone colorblind, would forever see the world in muted tones.
All of which was evading the question, of course.
What question?
The question of the Goober and why he'd acted so stupidly when the Goober visited him.
I should have stayed in Canada, he thought, turning from the window. I shouldn't have come back.
After those bruised weeks of pain and desolation in the Boston hospital, he had accepted without protest or any emotion at all his father's decision to send him to Canada, to spend a few months with his uncle Octave and aunt Olivine. They lived in the small parish of St. Antoine on the banks of the Riviere Richelieu, where his mother had lived as a child. His small Canadian world had three focal points: the modest farm operated by his uncle and aunt; the village, which consisted of a few stores, a post office, and a Sunoco service station; and the ancient church, a small white frame building overlooking the aimless river. He spent a lot of time in the church, although he found it spooky at first, creaky, buffeted by stiff river winds. The winds breathed life into the old building, made the floors squeak, the walls buckle, the windows rattle. He didn't pray; not at first, anyway. Merely sat there. The winter had been mild by Canadian standards but the wind was relentless, blowing away the snow that fell almost every day. The church was a good resting place after his daily walk from the farm to the village. He picked up a few groceries, checked the post office for mail (his father wrote at least once a week, brief, keep-in-touch letters that said nothing, really), and began to look forward to the church visits.
The wind made the church talk. The Talking Church. The small hum of the boiler addressing the hiss of the steam pipes. The walls and windows chattering to each other, and the creaking floor contributing to the conversation. He smiled as he listened to the small whispering, chatting sounds. His first smile in ages. As if the church had induced his smile. After a while he knelt and prayed, the old French prayers his mother had taught him long ago—"Notre Pиre"; "Je Vous Salue, Marie" — the words meaningless but comforting somehow, as if he and the church had joined each other in a kind of companionship.
His aunt and uncle treated him with gruff tenderness and affection. A childless couple, farmers, at the constant mercy of the elements, they were patient, quiet people. His uncle's only vice was television, and he watched it continuously when he wasn't out in the fields or the barn, marveling at the succession of programs on the glowing tube, uncritical, amused, whether watching a soap opera in French or a hockey game with his beloved Canadiens from Montreal. His aunt was a small peppy woman whose hands were never empty and fingers never still as she knitted, crocheted, sewed, cooked, dusted, swept, bustled around the modest house. She did all this in silence. The television provided the soundtrack to their lives.
Jerry spoke a bit of French, enough to get by, but he too enjoyed the absence of conversation, learned to accept the sounds of television. He immersed himself in the daily routine of chores, going to the village and the church, reading late at night, blocking from his mind all thoughts of Monument and Trinity, as if by some magic he was able to turn his mind into a blank screen at will.
More and more drawn to the church, he found comfort there, despite the chilled atmosphere. He had read somewhere of contemplatives, priests or brothers or monks, who spent their days and nights in solitude, praying, musing, contemplating, and Jerry could understand the peace these men must attain. The afternoon sun would lose its warmth, the church growing colder, the pipes rattling, and Jerry would shiver himself back to the warmth of the farmhouse.
So the winter passed, a succession of peaceful days and evenings, Monument and Trinity existing in another world, another time, having nothing to do with him. Until his father telephoned to say it was time to come home. "I miss you, Jerry," he said. And Jerry felt tears stinging his eyes. I miss you, Jerry. Although he was reluctant to leave the peace and serenity of St. Antoine, he felt a leap of gladness at his father's words.
Once back in Monument, however, he longed to return to Canada, to see the spring season bursting in the fields, wondering what kind of conversation the church would be carrying on with the windows open to the outside world. But knew that was impossible. He had to resume his life here in Monument. Enter Monument High in the fall. Live according to the rules he had established for himself after the chocolate sale. Don't make waves, go with the flow. Pretend the world wore a sign like the kind hanging on doorknobs in motels: DO NOT DISTURB. But the Goober's visit had upset his balance, taking him by surprise.
"I really acted stupid this afternoon. Right, Dad?" he had asked as they sat at the supper table that evening.
"I wouldn't say stupid," his father replied. "Besides, it was my fault. I didn't realize you weren't ready for that kind of thing. . "
"But I should be. And I should tell the Goober that he didn't double-cross me last year. Cripes, he acts like he was a traitor or something. And he wasn't."
Silence in the dining room. Their lives were filled with silences, but not the comfortable land that existed in the farmhouse in St. Antoine. Because his father was quiet and reserved by nature, they had never talked at length, communicated mostly in brief conversations with many stumblings. The death of Jerry's mother a year before had stunned them into a deeper silence, his father moving as in a trance through his days and evenings while Jerry had been immersed in his own troubles. Entering Trinity. Football and making the freshman team. The chocolate sale. And everything that followed. Which Canada had helped him forget. Until the Goober showed up.
"I should call him, right?" Jerry asked.
"Not if it hurts you, son. You're the important one. The Goober can always wait. . "
Again the silence. In the silence, Jerry was grateful for his father's words. Let the Goober wait. He felt bad for his old friend, but he had to make certain that he himself was back to normal again, restored and repaired, before he worried about others.
And yet. And yet.
Later, after his father had gone to work, Jerry found himself at the telephone, looking at the phone book under the instrument. Could almost recall the Goober's number, not certain of the last digit—6 or 7? Reached for the telephone book but, finally, didn't pick it up. Some other time.
He went to the window, glanced out at the dark street, and withdrew into the room. He knew that he had to get out of this apartment, pick up the pieces of his life. Walk the streets, drop in at the library, check the record store, breathe some spring air into his lungs. And call the Goober.
Maybe tomorrow.
Or the next day.
Or never.
Tubs Casper had sworn off girls forever. But the result of that decision was agonizing. He hadn't realized it would be this way when he broke up with Rita, said good-bye forever, stalked off in anger and desperation and, yes, pain. Jeez, what pain. Pain in his heart and in his groin. He felt wounded, as if he'd been through a war in the trenches like the soldiers in World War I — the War to Make the World Safe for Democracy, they had called it in Social Science — trudging through his days and nights like the walking wounded, trying to keep himself from feeling anything, which was impossible, of course. Worst of all, he was eating like a madman and had gained nine pounds, which meant he was now forty-five pounds overweight. Found it hard to breathe going up the stairs, sweated all the time, perpetually moist, oozing. And on top of all that, the Vigils.
He was bubbling with sweat now as he stood in the small storage room in the gym. He had to blink to get rid of the perspiration gathering in his eyes. He knew that he looked as if he was crying. But he wasn't. He didn't want anybody to think he was a weeper. Underneath this terrible felt that he couldn't get rid of or disguise, he was brave and strong and durable. As he stood before the members of the Vigils, he was determined to put up a good front, despite the fat and the sweat. He recognized some of the guys who sat in the room's dimness, knew their names but had never talked to any of them. Freshmen like Tubs kept out of the way of upperclassmen. He looked around for the kid called Obie but did not see him here. Obie was the only Vigil member he had talked with, and he preferred not to think about their association, because it had to do with Rita and the chocolates.
There was an attitude of waiting in the room, the guys talking together in low tones, acting as if Tubs didn't exist. Tubs knew who they were waiting for. Archie Costello. He dreaded Archie Costello's arrival. He knew all about him, his power and his assignments.
The door swung open, admitting a shaft of light. Without looking, Tubs knew that the great Archie Costello was now on the scene. All conversation ceased and the guys became alert, tension developing as if somebody had lit a fuse and everyone was waiting for an explosion to occur.
"Hello, Ernest," Archie said.
Caught off guard by the use of his real name (he really hated "Tubs" but had learned to accept the nickname), Tubs swiveled toward him.
A smile on his face, Archie regarded Tubs with something like affection. Tubs wasn't exactly put at ease, but his sense of doom and foreboding diminished a bit.
"Too bad about Rita," Archie said, after pausing a moment, speaking casually as if they were continuing a conversation begun earlier.
Tubs was caught off guard again. First, he'd expected the meeting to be called to order. Second, nobody was supposed to know about Rita and what had happened. But the kid called Obie knew about her. Too bad about Rita. Tubs's heart began to thud in his chest.
"Remember Rita?" Archie prompted, the smile still on his face, a fake smile, Tubs realized now, like the smile painted on a clown's face. But Archie was no clown.
"Yes, I remember," Tubs said, his voice small and squeaky. He hated his voice, couldn't control it, never knew when it would come out high and squeaky or low and rumbling. Either like a belch or like a fart. Embarrassing him, either way.
"Beautiful girl, Rita," Archie said, tilting his head a bit, voice soft, as if he'd known Rita and his memories were fond and gentle. "Isn't she?"
Tubs nodded, dumbfounded. How much did Archie know about Rita? Rita, his pride and his agony, his throbbing love, his ultimate betrayer. Hell, he'd almost gone to jail for her. Well, probably not jail but district court, at least. That's what Obie had threatened. Tubs had loved her, hated her now, of course, but still wanted her, still feverish for her, that body of hers, the only girl he'd ever touched, caressed, held. Those breasts. Willing to die for those breasts. Willing to keep the money from the stupid chocolate sale. Not stealing, as Obie had accused him of doing. Merely borrowing. Going into debt to buy her that birthday present, the bracelet she loved. $19.52 including tax. The amount was seared into his heart, his brain.
"You still believe in love, Ernest?" Archie asked.
Somehow, Archie didn't act like the bastard he was supposed to be. Maybe it was his soft voice, the Ernest on his tongue, the sympathetic eyes.
"Do you?" Archie asked gently.
It seemed as if they were alone in the room, just the two of them, the members of the Vigils receding, his heart beating almost normally now.
"Yes," Tubs said. He believed in love, believed in Rita, even now. In a small and secret place in his overweight and perspiring body, he harbored a belief that somehow there had been a mistake and Rita would come into his life again, apologetic, loving him, offering herself to him.
Obie chose that moment to arrive at the meeting.
Obie was late for the meeting because he'd been trying, without success, to call Laurie Gundarson. Her line had been busy. He'd waited in the corridor, stalling, placing the call again and again, greeted by the busy signal that taunted him agonizingly. It occurred to him that her line might not be busy at all. Laurie had once confessed that she often took the phone off the hook when she wanted to avoid certain people. Did she want to avoid Obie now? The possibility filled him with anguish.
His first impulse when classes ended for the day was to dash out of school and drive to her house. But the inverted Y on the bulletin board detained him. The Vigils meeting. He realized that the meeting might in some way be connected with last night's attack. He had not anticipated a meeting today, knew no reason why Archie should have suddenly called one. He also knew that news spreads quickly in a school like Trinity. Was the attack already common knowledge? Depositing the dime again, dialing, then hearing the blurt of the busy signal once more, Obie hung up and made his way downstairs, miserable and confused. He nodded to Jimmy Saulnier, who kept guard outside the meeting room, and entered "to find Tubs Casper the center of attention. Poor blubber of a kid who looked as if he might faint at any moment. Obie flushed with guilt at the sight of the kid. Hell, one more lousy thing on the lousiest day of his life.
Obie winced as he listened to the exchange between Archie and Tubs.
"Yes, what?" Archie was asking.
"Yes, I believe in love," Tubs said, his voice an agonized whisper.
Obie swore under his breath. He'd hoped that Archie had forgotten all about Tubs Casper. He should have known better: Archie never forgot. Archie, in fact, had goaded Obie into giving him Tubs's name, back in January, half a lifetime ago. Archie had been taunting Obie about his lack of proposed victims. Running on empty, Obie? Losing your touch? Obie had winced because Bunting and Carter and some other guys were present, gathered on the front steps of the school. Or maybe you just lack imagination. Obie's pulse throbbed in his temple; his cheeks grew warm. You haven't come up with a decent name in weeks. A decent name meant a victim, someone vulnerable Archie could use in an assignment.
Like Tubs.
Obie had learned about Tubs Casper's existence as a Trinity student in the final frantic days of the chocolate sale last fall. Checking the sales roster for delinquents — guys who had not sold their quotas — he had seen Tubs's name listed as having made two sales. Preposterous. It had taken Obie three days to track him down. Tubs had proved elusive, staying a few steps ahead of Obie, quite a feat when you considered Tubs and all that fat. Somehow, Tubs always seemed to have left a room moments before Obie got there. Or stepped on the school bus just as it drove away. Obie finally caught up with Tubs Casper at Cogg's Park one evening, spotting him with a girl, the girl clinging to Tubs the way ivy clung to the south-side wall of Trinity. Obie knew immediately what had been going on, knew that Tubs had been selling chocolates all along and not making returns, spending the money on the girl: typical. Sitting in his car, he watched Tubs and the girl cavorting as they strolled along, feeding the pigeons, pausing on a bench. The girl couldn't keep her hands off Tubs. She brushed him continually with her breasts. She was built beautifully, tight sweater, tighter jeans. Obie felt himself swelling with envy and lust (this was before Laurie, of course), and knew he had Tubs Casper exactly where he wanted him.
Obie had confronted Tubs later that night, waiting for him at his doorstep.
"But what about Rita?" Tubs had cried. "She's in love with that bracelet."
"That's the point, Casper," Obie had said. "She's in love with the bracelet. Not you. Figure it as a test. Make those returns tomorrow morning at school. Then see what happens with Rita. If she loves you, it won't make any difference to her if you don't buy the bracelet. . "
Confused, riddled with guilt, exhausted from lack of sleep, Obie shrank back into the shadows of the storage room wondering: What the hell am I doing here, anyway? But knew that he couldn't leave, not yet, not until he found out the real reason for the meeting.
"Do you know the procedure here?" Archie asked Tubs.
Obie watched Tubs Casper nodding his head eagerly. He had never intended to nominate Tubs for an assignment: The kid had enough troubles with his weight and with Rita, the teenage sexpot. Because Rita had broken up with Tubs when he hadn't bought the bracelet. Obie had met him on the street a few days later. "What happened?" he'd asked Tubs.
And Tubs, defeated looking, his pudgy face like that of an old man suddenly, said: "You know what happened." No resentment in his voice, no anger, only a heavy, weary acceptance of what life is.
"That's the way it goes, kid," Obie had said, strolling away, walking away from the temptation to tell the lad: Look, be happy, I'm not turning you in for an assignment. See the favor I'm doing you? Yet, taunted by Archie — and, yes, manipulated — he had eventually handed over Tubs Casper as a victim to save his own reputation as a selector of victims.
Archie's voice reached him again.
"You know, Ernest, there is nothing personal in these assignments?"
Tubs nodded, resigned, wanting to get it over with.
"Okay," Archie said, pausing.
This was the beautiful moment Vigil members looked forward to, the moment when Archie revealed his latest assignment, his newest caper, some of the beauty coming from the fact they were not victims, like the moment you are plunged into grief when a rotten thing happens to someone else and that small spurt of guilty relief when you tell yourself: It's not me.
"How much do you weigh, Ernest?" Archie asked.
Tubs squirmed, hated to talk about his weight. But knew he could not deny Archie any information he wanted.
"One hundred and seventy-five."
"Exactly?"
Tubs nodded disgustedly. "I weighed myself this morning."
"That's not so fat, Ernest," Archie said.
Again, Tubs had the sensation that he and Archie were alone in this place, that Archie was his friend.
"In fact," Archie said, "I think you could use a bit of weight. Say, like, twenty pounds. Give you more. . stature. Make you more of an imposing figure. ."
"Twenty pounds?" Tubs said, disbelief making his voice squeak.
"Right."
Someone sighed, the kind of sigh that comes with comprehension, and a slight shudder rippled through the room.
"That's the assignment, Ernest. Put on twenty pounds. In the next, say, four weeks. That will bring us almost to the end of school. Eat to your heart's content, Ernest. You love to eat, don't you? And four weeks from now we'll meet here. We'll have a scale."
Tubs opened his mouth. Didn't know why he opened his mouth. Certainly not to protest. Nobody protested an assignment. Stood there gaping, the prospect of more weight staggering to his mind. His life was dedicated to trying to lose weight, despite the fact that he was always hungry, always starved, and always lost the battle. But gaining purposely?
"Close your mouth, Tubs, and get out of here," Archie said, no longer the gentle Archie, the tender Assigner.
Tubs did just that. Hurried his ponderous body out of that terrible place, tripping on somebody's foot as he made his way to the door.
"Beautiful," someone called out. But certainly not Obie, who felt small and cheap as he watched Tubs stumbling out the door.
Archie called for the black box with a snap of his fingers, wasted no time as he thrust his hand inside and withdrew the white marble, looked at it with amusement, and tossed it back.
The members of the Vigils rustled in their seats, preparing for departure. But Archie held up his hand.
"I have an announcement to make," he said, his words as cold as ice cubes rattling in a tray.
He glanced at Carter, waiting for him to bang the gavel.
The gavel was an important part of Vigil meetings.
And Carter had become the master of its use.
Carter banged the gavel to emphasize Archie's words and actions, the way a drummer underscores the movements of a juggler or a magician on the stage. He'd hit the desk to prod some poor quivering kid into an answer. Or to provide impact for Archie's pronouncements.
Archie waited for attention to focus completely on him once more. Carter tensed himself.
"I've received word," Archie said, "that the Bishop's visit to Trinity has been canceled."
Carter dropped the gavel.
Archie looked at Carter with contempt, waited for him to pick it up, then spoke again.
"Which means that there will be no day off. It's canceled."
Quick intakes of breath, stirrings among the Vigils, a whispered "Aw, shit" from someone.
Archie searched the room with those cold and merciless eyes, assessing the impact of his news.
Obie caught Archie's questioning scrutiny, the intensity of his search. He knew the great Archie Costello intimately enough to realize that something had gone askew.
Carter's hand seemed welded to the handle of the gavel. Blood raced under the surface of his flesh, pounding its way to his face.
"But it also means something else," Archie said, drawing the words out slowly, and all the time studying his audience, looking at them as if he had never seen them before.
Obie frowned, puzzled, glad that he was standing in the shadows, virtually unseen.
Ah, but Archie saw everything, and he turned his eyes now on Obie.
"What do you think that something else is, Obie?"
Stymied, Obie shrugged.
"I don't know."
"Bunting?"
Bunting leaped with surprise as if someone had goosed him, one of the more ordinary pastimes at Trinity. He had been uncomfortable about Obie's presence in the room, had barely followed Archie's conversation with Tubs Casper. Hearing Obie's voice now, he gained confidence. Obie certainly wouldn't be answering Archie's questions so normally if he suspected that one of the guys who had attacked him and his girl was in the room.
"I don't know either," Bunting said.
"Carter?"
The blood was pounding a tom-tom beat in Carter's head now, but he tried to keep his features in control.
"You've got me," he said, giving his voice the proper amount of disdain. Acting as if it didn't matter.
But it did matter. He dreaded Archie's next move. The announcement that someone had tipped Leon off about the visit.
Silence as Archie's eyes swept the room again. Inscrutable eyes that revealed nothing, told no secrets. Did his eyes linger on me a moment longer than anyone else? Carter wondered, knowing the secret of that "something else." He was relieved to hear Bunting interrupt Archie's scrutiny.
"Can't we still arrange a day off from school?" Bunting asked. "Everybody's going to be. . teed off." He'd almost said pissed off, which would have landed him in trouble again. "We put a lot of work into the arrangements."
"The project is canceled," Archie said flatly. "Without the Bishop, it's pointless."
Carter didn't know what to do with the damn gavel. Was Archie about to end the meeting?
"Anybody know what the something else is?" Archie asked, not belligerent, seeming to be genuinely interested in a possible response.
No response. Everybody wanted simply to get out of there.
Archie glanced at Carter.
"The gavel, Carter," Archie reminded. "The meeting's over."
The gavel struck the desk like a hammer driving a nail through wood into flesh.
Although he hated the smell of the storage room, the stench of boy sweat and overripe socks and sneakers, Archie remained behind after everyone had gone.
To add up the score.
He hadn't managed a confrontation between Obie and Bunting, but none had been necessary. He knew Obie intimately, could almost read his mind, could certainly read his expressions, Obie's face like a relief map with nothing hidden. He had seen a stunned and subdued Obie, obviously still reeling from the events of the night before, but not suspicious, not ready to spring into action. Obie had barely glanced at anyone in the room, had not sought out Bunting in any way. Archie was willing to bet his reputation on the fact that Obie did not know who had attacked him and his, girl in the car.
The other result of the meeting was even more obvious to Archie. And more satisfying.
Carter was the traitor, of course. Carter, who had showed no enthusiasm for the Bishop's visit from the start. Carter, who obviously hated his role as gavel wielder. Carter had stumbled through the meeting as if in a trance, missing his cues with the gavel. Dropping it, for crissakes. Guilt had spread on Carter's face like a coat of paint. Paint the color of blood. Carter the jock, lost without his stupid sports. Carter, who had suddenly developed a conscience. From the moment the meeting started, Archie had been aware of Carter's haunted eyes, pale face, the jock turned jellyfish, turned stool pigeon.
Carter was the traitor.
Further proof would be needed, of course, to eliminate any doubt. But Archie would get that proof.
He stood in the foul, fetid air of the storage room and thought:
Poor Carter.
Carter's We would never be the same again.
Laurie wasn't home.
Or maybe she wasn't responding to the doorbell, just as she might have been refusing to answer the telephone.
He pressed the button again, heard the faint echo of the bell — ding, ding, ding — within the house. But no activity. Somehow, the house felt empty. Laurie's presence had always been blazingly immediate to him, charging the air, alerting his senses. Now: nothing. Her mother's VW wasn't in the driveway either.
He rapped on the door, not expecting a response now, but having to do something.
Damn it. He ached to see her. Was filled with guilt and loneliness and longing. Felt hounded, his thoughts swirling around like the snowflakes in those glass globes people keep on mantelpieces.
Turning away, walking down the steps, feeling as though he was in retreat from a skirmish he had just lost, he plodded to his car. The merriment of the spring day mocked him. Brilliant sun, whiff of lilac in the air, all of it empty somehow.
This was his second visit to Laurie's house this afternoon. He had come here directly from Trinity, found no response, and driven to Monument High. The campus was deserted. Peering in the front door, he had seen a custodian pushing a mop down the corridor. He was an outsider at her school. As he walked back to his car, he realized how little he knew about her life, her daily existence. She talked sometimes of her girl friends and he had met two or three of them — but their faces were a blur and their names a vague litany of Debbies and Donnas.
Resting his chin on the steering wheel now, disconsolate, he stared at Laurie's house. His vigil seemed hopeless; the house wore an air of vacancy, abandonment.
His mind went to the Vigils meeting and Archie's strange performance. Under ordinary circumstances he would have been figuring out all the angles, pondering the potential meaning of Archie's behavior. But he couldn't concentrate on Archie now. Laurie and his anguish dominated everything else.
Fifteen minutes went by. More frustrated than ever, sighing almost to the point of hyperventilating — he often had trouble drawing a deep breath when he faced tough situations — he started the car, raced the motor. Couldn't stand doing nothing any longer.
There was only one bright spot in the day, not exactly bright but at least not as downbeat, grim, and depressing as everything else: Ray Bannister's deliverance from his assignment on the day of the visit. The project had been canceled and so had Ray's part in it all.
At least he could deliver a bit of good news to someone on this most rotten of all days.
A while later Ray Bannister's mother directed him to the cellar.
"He's working on his secret project, so he might not let you in," she said good-naturedly. She had the most astonishing tan Obie had ever seen. Deep and rich, like melted caramel. He followed her directions through the house and down the cellar stairs. "Don't forget to knock," she called after him.
The door at the bottom of the stairs was closed. Secret project? He knocked.
"Who's there?" Ray's voice was faint on the other side of the door.
"Obie."
A few moments later Obie confronted the secret project. It looked, for crying out loud, like a guillotine.
Which, as it turned out, was exactly what it was, Ray Bannister said. Then explained: "Well, not exactly a guillotine. It's an illusion. But one of the best."
"Did you build it yourself?" Obie asked, both attracted and repulsed by the apparatus, sensing a threat in its presence, ugly in the cellar's dim light.
Ray seemed shy suddenly. "I always liked working with my hands." Running his hand over the side of the blade, he said: "I was just about to test it. Want to help?"
Obie stepped back instinctively, wanted nothing to do with this lethal piece of machinery. Yet he had to admit that he was fascinated. His eyes kept straying to the crossblock with the carved-out groove on which the victim's neck would rest. Victim was the wrong word, of course. After all, this was only fun and games. Illusion, like Ray Bannister said.
Ray walked over to the workbench and picked up a shopping bag. Smiling wickedly at Obie, he pulled out a head of cabbage. "See, Obie? I'll give a demonstration, just like a regular magician. A real cabbage — my mother got it at the supermarket for forty-nine cents. She's a good egg, didn't even ask me what I needed a head of cabbage for."
Ray Bannister placed the cabbage in the curved groove, about three feet below the slanted blade. The blade looked menacing, extremely dangerous poised above the cabbage. Suppose it wasn't a head of cabbage but a real head? Obie recoiled from the thought.
"Watch," Ray Bannister said, drawing out the syllable, letting his voice trail off dramatically. He pressed a button near the top of the guillotine. The blade plummeted, flashing brilliantly for a moment as it caught a ray of light from the ceding bulb, hitting the cabbage, exploding the vegetable into a thousand pieces of moist green and yellow leaves.
"Not as clean as slicing somebody's neck, but you get the idea, don't you, Obie?" Ray asked, chuckling.
"Messy," Obie said, hiding his queasiness. What a terrible day. And a guillotine demolishing a cabbage to top it all. "Now," Ray said, with a flourish, bowing toward the guillotine, assuming the role of Bannister the Great. "Be my guest."
"You're kidding," Obie said.
"Don't you trust me?"
Trust? Obie thought of Archie and Bunting and the attack at the Chasm and now Laurie unapproachable. "I don't trust anybody," Obie said.
"Hey, it's only a trick, an illusion," Ray said, frowning. Frankly, he was a bit nervous about this first demonstration. Knew it was foolproof, nothing to worry about, but edgy. He had been edgy ever since Obie had approached him, plunging him into the strange world of Trinity. "Look, I'll offer myself as the victim." Keeping his voice light. "I'll lay my neck on the line. Literally. And you press the button."
Obie eyed the deadly blade and the remnants of the demolished vegetable. The smell of raw cabbage filled the air. "I'd rather not," Obie said. Then, also trying to keep it light so that Ray Bannister wouldn't think he was chicken, "I can see the headlines if anything goes wrong: 'Student Loses Head Over Trick.' "
"Come on," Ray said, stepping smartly to the guillotine. He knelt down and bent over, placing his neck in the groove, facing the floor now. "All you have to do, Obie, is hit the button."
"Not me," Obie protested.
Ray craned his neck to look up at him. "There's no risk. Do you think I'd be crazy enough to take a chance like that?"
Obie wondered whether he was being ridiculous and paranoid.
"Let's go," Ray commanded, adjusting himself once more, wriggling his body a bit. "This isn't the most comfortable position in the world."
"Are you sure it's foolproof?" Obie asked.
"Is anything really sure in this world?" Ray asked. Then quickly: "Just fooling, Obie. Come on, push the damn button."
Obie sighed, accepting his fate, realizing that this was a day in which nothing could go right, and if the trick didn't work, then the hell with it. The hell with everything.
"Well, it's your neck, not mine," Obie said, stepping up to the guillotine. "And I'm not kidding." Glancing down at Ray, he said: "Ready?"
"Ready." A bit muffled. Was that a quiver in his voice?
Obie pressed the button.
Nothing happened. For an agonizing moment, the blade remained still, poised dangerously, of course, but unmoving. And then a sudden swish, so startling and unexpected, catching Obie as he drew breath, that he leaped back in surprise. The blade fell so quickly that his eyes could barely follow its descent. The most startling thing of all was the way the blade penetrated Ray's neck — or seemed to penetrate it — and yet did not. Ray's neck was undisturbed, no terrible rending, no blood. The blade now rested below the curved groove as if it had passed through Ray's flesh.
"Jesus," Obie said, awed.
Ray leaped from the kneeling position, smiling triumphantly, smirking really, immensely pleased with himself. "Voilа," he pronounced, waving toward the guillotine and then bowing sweepingly, his arm moving as if doffing a hat.
Obie shook his head in wonder. "How the hell does that work?" Actually, he was shuddering inside, realizing that for a stunning moment he had wanted the blade to slice through human flesh, imagining that the neck on the block was the neck of whoever had assaulted Laurie, had touched her.
"A magician never tells his secrets," Ray Bannister said, a little breathless.
Obie narrowed his eyes as he regarded him. Had Ray somehow doubted, just a little bit, the effectiveness of the trick? Had there been a chance it might not have worked?
He'd never know, of course, because it was an impossible question to ask. Anyway, Ray Bannister was now basking in his triumph, running his hands across the walnut-stained wood and the gleaming blade.
Remembering the original purpose of his visit, Obie said: "Listen, Ray, that assignment I told you about? The Bishop's visit?"
Ray nodded, remembering, his features twisted into a look of distaste.
"Well, it's canceled, called off. The Bishop can't make it that day. You're off the hook."
Ray gave a whoop of relief. "Great! I really didn't want to get mixed up in that Vigils business you told me about."
Obie didn't reply, feeling a small stab of pity for Bannister. He knew that Archie never forgot and that Bannister was doomed to become involved sooner or later.
Ray Bannister turned his attention to the guillotine again, eyes full of affection. Obie squinted, studying the apparatus, then turned his eyes to the remains of the cabbage strewn across the floor. He shivered for some reason.
When he arrived home a half hour later, he found a note from his mother.
At hairdresser's. Laurie's mother called. She and Laurie off to visit relatives in Springfield for a few days.
Obie's thoughts were insects chasing each other bewilderingly. Why hadn't Laurie herself called? Why her mother? And where in Springfield were they visiting? He crumpled the note and threw it into the wastebasket. A moment later he retrieved it, smoothed the paper out, read the words again. He sensed doom in the message.
His dreams were wild that night. Were they really dreams? Or simply thoughts and emotions racing just below the surface of his mind as he lay uncomfortably in bed, restless, heaving himself from one side of the mattress to the other? Images flooded his mind. Laurie, of course, beautiful, full lips, a teardrop of ketchup at the corner of her lips, in the car. The guillotine swishing down and splitting the cabbage, suddenly not the cabbage but a human neck, blood spattering around the room instead of cabbage leaves. The smell of blood in his nostrils. Did blood have a smell? He was helpless as the images continued, the slash of light in the car's interior, Laurie gasping, then screaming, the rough hands forcing him to the ground, holding him prisoner, the slashed loafer with the dangling buckle.
Loafer?
He saw the loafer distinctly. Scuffed brown, ripped or torn as if someone had slashed the instep with a knife.
And the dangling buckle, hanging by a thread, dull brass, never polished.
He burst awake as if flying into the air from the upper part of a seesaw while the lower part banged the earth violently. He sat up in bed, head aching, squinted at the digital alarm clock. 2:31. Throwing the blanket aside, he rubbed his forehead as if he could erase the ache like figures from a blackboard. Had he been dreaming? But the loafer did not seem like an image from a dream, receding as you come awake. The loafer had been real, not a manifestation of his weariness and frustration and disappointment, but a reality exploding out of memory.
This memory:
As the unknown assailant had held him prisoner on the ground, while somebody else had assaulted Laurie in the car, he had peered into the awful thing his life had suddenly become and had seen, a mere few inches from his eyes, the torn loafer worn by the bastard who held him captive.
Staring now into the night, eyes wide as if toothpicks held his lids open — something he had seen in a kung fu movie — he was wild with the knowledge of what his subconscious mind had uncovered.
A clue.
More than a clue.
A piece of evidence that could identify without any doubt one of the attackers at the Chasm that night. He saw himself unmasking the bastard, forcing a confession out of him, getting information about the others who had been involved, all of this while Laurie watched, her eyes shining with admiration and love.
He lay back, breathing deeply, exhausted, as if he had just completed a perilous mission, avoided a thousand pitfalls, escaped with his life. . and he fell into a deep sleep in which an army of men wearing slashed and ruined loafers trampled across his body all night long.
When the telephone rang, Carter answered it immediately, his hand shooting out to pick up the receiver. In the past few days he had become jumpy, nervous, glancing over his shoulder occasionally to check if he was being followed (which was paranoid, of course). Ordinarily Carter did not admit to nerves. He'd always been able to nap minutes before a big football game, always fell asleep instantly at night when his head hit the pillow. Not these days, however, not anymore. He walked around as if a great cloud of doom hung over him and would collapse upon his head at any moment. Thus, when the telephone rang, he acted as if it were a summons. To a trial by jury.
"Hello," he said, snapping the word, using the old gusto of the jock.
Silence on the line. But a sense of someone there. The hint of a person quietly breathing.
"Hello," he said again, trying to keep the wariness out of his voice. "Got the wrong number, chum?" Beautiful: keeping it jaunty. But a bead of perspiration traced a cold path as it ran down Carter's leg from his crotch.
Still nothing.
Carter thought, The hell with it, summoning bravado. He decided to hang up.
The caller's timing was perfect, speaking just as Carter was about to remove the receiver from his ear.
"Why did you do it, Carter?"
"Do what?" he asked, responding automatically but groaning inside. Archie knew. Knew what he had done.
"You know. . "
"No, I don't know." Stall, admit nothing. And for crissake try to control your voice. His voice sounded funny to his ears.
"I don't want to have to spell it out," the voice said.
Was it Archie's voice? He couldn't be sure. Archie was an expert actor and mimic. Carter had observed his talents at a thousand Vigil meetings.
"Look, I don't know what you're talking about—"
"It will be much easier on you if you confess, Carter."
"Confess what?"
A pause on the line. Then the chuckle. The all-knowing, lewd chuckle, the kind of chuckle someone might utter during an obscene phone call.
"Actually, we don't need your confession. But it might ease your conscience a bit if you confessed. Make you feel better. Let you sleep better at night. . "
Carter recoiled, told himself to keep in control. He knew Archie's tactics. Knew how Archie prided himself on his insights, always taking shots in the dark and winning. Like now. Guessing that Carter had trouble sleeping nights. So, beware. Don't let him talk you into giving yourself away.
"Still there, Carter? Still thinking it over, Carter?"
"Thinking what over?" In command a bit now, calming down, feeling ready and able to handle the phone call. Like in the ring. Feinting and faking. Sizing up an opponent. The first thrusts and advances and retreats as you felt out the adversary.
"Oh, Carter, oh, Carter. ." The voice tender, full of understanding, suddenly.
"What's all this oh, Carter bullshit?" Strong, firm. Feeling good.
"Don't you see, you poor bastard? If you hadn't done it, you'd have hung up right away. Slammed the phone down. Christ, Carter, you've got guilt written all over you."
Carter knew he had somehow walked into a trap just by talking on the phone. He should have hung up right away. Should hang up right now. But couldn't.
"Look," Carter said. "I know who you are. And I know what you're trying to do. Intimidation. I've seen you do it a thousand times, Archie. But it won't work this time. I didn't write that letter. You don't have any proof, couldn't have any proof, because I didn't write it."
Big silence on the line.
Then the laughter.
Carter told himself: Hang up. Hang up now while, you're ahead.
But couldn't. Caught and held there by the laughter. Something in the laughter that wouldn't let him go, had him snared.
"You pathetic sucker, Carter. Nobody ever mentioned a letter. Nobody knows about any letter. . "
Carter's mind raced, his thoughts tumbling wildly, He knew the fatal mistake he had made. Had to backpedal somehow.
"At the Vigils meeting, when the Bishop's visit was called off. ." he began.
"The letter was never mentioned. Nobody knows about the letter, Carter. Except Brother Leon and Archie Costello and the guy who wrote it. You, Carter."
Carter tried to prevent the moan that escaped his lips.
"You're going to pay for it, Carter," the voice that Carter knew had to be Archie Costello threatened. "Pity on traitors. Pity on you, Carter."
Carter opened his mouth to call back the groan, to deny the accusation, to shout his innocence, to denounce Archie, to—
But the connection was broken.
And above the found of the dial tone, he heard the echo of that hideous, insinuating voice:
Pity on you, Carter. .
Brother Leon reached for the parcel that had been left on his desk — special delivery — a few moments before. Afternoon sunlight filled the office with radiance.
Curious, Brother Leon inspected the package, touching it gingerly. The size of a shoe box, wrapped in plain brown paper, tied with white string. His name and the address of Trinity were printed on the package. Blue, by a Flair pen. In the upper left-hand corner, the name of the sender: David Caroni.
It was important that Brother Leon should know David Caroni's identity; that was essential to the plan.
Frowning, puzzled but pleasantly mystified, identifying Caroni in his mind as the quiet, sensitive student who seldom met anyone's eyes, Brother Leon drew his trusty red Swiss knife from his pocket. He cut the taut string, and it collapsed like a fatally wounded snake. He gently unwrapped the package, careful not to tear the paper. Brother Leon was fastidious, precise in his movements, never a wasted motion.
He removed the cover.
The explosion was tremendous. The blast blew off Leon's head, shattered his body into a thousand pieces of flesh and blood and tissue that spattered the walls and floors of the office.
His head left a bloody trail as it bounced across the floor. .
Or:
Brother Leon stood on the stage of the auditorium, addressing the student body. Berating the students. Criticizing some kind of activity. He was never satisfied, never happy, never content with student behavior, always finding fault.
Suddenly a small angry red hole appeared in the center of his forehead. Blood spilled from the hole, spreading in two streams on either side of his nose, down his cheeks. Dark, ugly blood.
Brother Leon pitched forward as if trying to flee some unspeakable horror behind him. But striking an invisible stone wall. The echo of the sniper's rifle shot reverberated off the walls of the assembly hall, startlingly magnified in the stunned silence.
The sniper, smiling as he watched Leon's body plunging to the floor of the stage with an enormous thud, was, of course, David Caroni.
Or:
But David Caroni was tired of the game of killing Brother Leon. Tired of himself as well. Tired of this charade he was living. He longed for action, for the moment of decision, but had to wait. Wait for what? He would know what when the moment arrived, when the command was given. What command? Ah, but he knew what command. And knew that his duty was to wait. He was allowed to indulge in visions and fantasies — Brother Leon blown apart or mortally wounded with a rifle shot — but these were only small diversions to pass the time while he waited patiently for orders.
Sitting in the chair in the kitchen, he held himself erect, back straight, chin tucked in, at attention. Had to be alert. Had to be silent and still. Speak only when spoken to. So that he would be ready and able when the command came.
May I have a glass of water? he asked nobody in particular. (Knew who he was asking, of course, but must not acknowledge that presence. Not yet.)
Yes. Drink the water.
He drew water from the faucet, drank mechanically, wasn't really thirsty but had found the secret of killing time by filling up the minutes and hours of his life with little actions. That was the secret. To keep doing, moving, eating, talking, fighting the desire for drift, for going limp. Had to play the many roles his life demanded now. Had to do anything to keep them from knowing. Them: his mother and father and Anthony. Them: his classmates, teachers, people on the bus, in stores, on the sidewalks. Had to hide from the world, had to be clever. The best way to hide, he had learned in his cleverness, was to use camouflage, protective coloration. Hey, Mother, everything's fine. School was good today. A nice day, Mother. What he didn't say: I stood at the guardrail on the bridge over (he railroad tracks today but did not jump. Wanted to jump but did not. Could not. Because the command did not come. When would the command come?
He left the kitchen, walked through the dining room, conscious of his movements, arms and legs working together, and paused at the French doors leading to the parlor. After a moment's hesitation he opened the doors and stepped into the room, like going from one century to another, the musk of the past engulfing him like ancient perfume.
The parlor was only used for special occasions, major holidays, family gatherings (like when relatives from Italy visited), graduations, first communions, and such. Thick carpet, gleaming furniture that his mother kept polished despite its lack of use, the upright piano with closed lid. Nobody had played the piano since the death of his grandmother a year ago. David had taken lessons at St. John's Parochial School from a forbidding, tone-deaf nun who delighted in rapping his fingers with a ruler when he struck a wrong note. His mother played "by ear" — terrible chords, everything in the key of C.
He lifted the lid now, like opening a coffin, looked at the grinning keyboard, hideous grin, yellowing teeth. His finger touched middle C, the sound surprisingly deep and full here in the room. He was held immobile by the sound.
C. A piano note but also another Letter, like the Letter that had ruined his life. Brother Leon's Letter.
David closed the piano lid, cutting off the horrible grin of the keyboard. Then stood there for a moment. Would the command come from an inanimate object, like a piece of furniture or the piano, or from a person? He didn't know. Yet he knew he would recognize the command as soon as he heard it. And what he must do. To himself. To Brother Leon.
He carefully shut the French doors and went to the dining-room window, looked out at the backyard. A bird cried piercingly, as if wounded. The soil that his father had turned over in preparation for planting the garden lay in turmoil, like a new grave.
Problem: finding a brown loafer with slashed instep and a dangling brass buckle among hundreds, hell, thousands of pairs of shoes worn by guys everywhere in Monument. Impossible? But he had to make it seem possible. Had to take action. Make the search. Start somewhere — and the somewhere was Trinity. Then go on from there.
Trinity's dress code was not overly strict. It required students to wear shirts, ties, jackets, and trousers" of no particular color. Banned were sneakers (except during gym classes), boots, and jeans. The most popular footwear on Trinity's campus were loafers and buckled shoes.
Think positively, Obie told himself as he dressed for school, having trouble as usual knotting his tie so that the two ends came out even. He could not allow himself to be pessimistic. With pessimism would come utter futility and desperation. And, finally, defeat. He couldn't let that happen. He felt that his entire life was in danger of collapsing, and he couldn't just stand there and let it happen.
Somewhere, right this minute, some guy in his own home was probably putting on that damaged shoe just as Obie was slipping into his own loafers.
Obie inspected his reflection in the mirror. He looked terrible. Bloodshot eyes. Yellow flecks in the corners of his eyes that always showed up when he was tired. A new colony of acne on his chin. Hair lusterless, like dried grass. As if his body — even his hair, for crying out loud — was giving up, giving in. Something that must not happen, that he couldn't let happen.
He felt like bawling, saw the corners of his mouth drooping. Time for a pep talk, Obie. You've got a clue. Follow it up. Find the shoe and find the kid. Then go on from there. It was better than doing nothing, better than just waiting for Laurie to get back and having nothing to offer her when she did return.
He had mapped out his strategy on awakening. Had decided not to drive his car to school but to take the bus. This would give him access to the other students, on the sidewalks, in the bus, as he searched for the loafer. He hated the thought of riding the bus — have I become that much of a snob? — but knew that the search was more important than driving to school. He would have to mingle with the mob, eyes sharp and probing.
He hurried out of the house, but his steps were those of an old man, legs heavy, feet dragging as if in winter boots. At the bus stop down the street, he stood apart from a cluster of waiting students. They were frisky and impatient in the morning air, stamping their feet, hitting each other with elbows, hips. Obie's eyes went to their shoes. Three lads wore faded, beat-up sneakers: Monument High kids, no dress code at MHS. Some other pairs of shoes; two pairs of loafers, black and brown, with buckles intact; high black boots; two pairs of laced shoes.
Obie felt like a derelict walking through life with head down, searching for lost coins, cigarette butts, whatever bums look for on the ground.
In the next few hours — on the bus, in the school yard, in the classrooms, in the corridors — Obie encountered a bewildering jungle of footwear, an eye-boggling array of shoes of all shades and styles and conditions. Clean shoes, scuffed shoes, mud-encrusted shoes. Brown, black, mottled gray. Buckles of all kinds. Fancy, plain, brass, silver. Silver? No, not silver but a silvery kind of dull metal. You could tell that the school year was drawing to a close. No shoes sparkling with newness, no fresh articles of clothing. Instead, faded shirts, limp ties, threadbare trousers thin at the seat. Scuffed shoes that no polish could revitalize. Occasionally he spotted a loafer with a buckle that was broken or missing or askew, and a pulse would beat in his throat, but he looked in vain for the slash across the instep. False alarm. A day filled with false alarms, frustration, weariness.
Waiting for the bus after classes were over for the day, hoping that Archie or any of his own friends would not spot him standing alone, he realized again the impossibility of his search. How could he hope to check every pair of shoes in the entire city? Suppose the attackers had come from out of town?
His shoulders sagged; his chin dropped to his chest.
Tears of frustration gathered in the corners of his eyes. He turned away in shame, not wanting the other guys to see him this way. He left the bus stop, wanted to be alone. The search, he knew, was futile. Not only the search but his entire life as well. Futile, empty, without any meaning at all.
What Archie liked about Morton was that she was both smart and dumb. But, before that, beautiful. Long and slender and blond. Compliant. Bending like the willow, as the song went. And so Archie usually came to Morton, his favorite of all the girls at Miss Jerome's, and she never failed him.
He told her everything. And nothing. She listened. But more than listened. She was attuned to his moods and his needs, needs he did not admit to anyone else, and her touch was deft and expert. He could also talk to her. Up to a point, of course. Ordinarily, he talked to her in riddles, and somehow she understood. Not the riddles, but the necessity for him to talk in riddles. Morton was fine. She sometimes got on his nerves, but most of the time she was just fine.
Like now, in his car, hushed in the darkness, Morton and her willingness to please and her knowing ways, and Archie relaxed, drifting, giving himself over to the pleasures of her touch.
"Do you like that, Archie?" Morton asked, her tone indicating that she already knew the answer.
Archie murmured indistinctly, no need for words, his reactions to her ministrations easily decipherable.
"You haven't been around for a while," Morton said, breathing the words into his ear, her breath warm.
"Busy," he said, touching her hair, caressing her cheek. He inhaled the subtle cologne she wore, a hint of lilac, but would have preferred a. complete absence of scent.
"How busy?" Morton asked. Keeping busy herself, letting Archie know what came first.
He wondered what he could or should tell her, missing Obie, missing the way he could bounce ideas off Obie, gauging his future actions by Obie's reactions. Obie was the only person who knew how Archie's mind worked, had seen him come up with dozens of assignments, pulling the rabbit out of the hat at the last moment, walking the high wire, taking the risks, and never failing. Meanwhile, he had Morton. She gave him what Obie could never give him and he responded now to her touch. And to her question.
"There's this guy on the campus," Archie said, relieved to be talking about Carter, his thoughts always clearer when he verbalized them. "Football hero. Macho man. Lots of trophies. Tall, dark, and handsome. ."
"Can I meet him?" Morton asked throatily. She was least sexy when she tried to be sexy, and Archie ignored the question, recognizing Morton's automatic response for what it was: automatic.
"This guy has a sense of honor, too. A social conscience," Archie said, thinking of the letter Brother Leon had waved in his face. "Respects his elders, the authorities. Willing to risk a lot to stick by his principles." His voice as dry as wood crackling in the cold.
"Sounds like the last perfect guy left in America," Morton said.
"That's where you're wrong, Morton," Archie said. "Nobody's perfect." Remembering Carter's shaky voice on the telephone.
"Jill," she said. "People call me Jill. Only teachers call me Morton. And then it's Mizz Morton."
"Okay, Jill," he said, giving her name such a, twist of his tongue that she should be glad to be called Morton again. "But back to the point. And the point is nobody's perfect. There's always a flaw. A secret. Something rotten. Everybody has something to cover up. The nice man next door is probably a child molester. The choir singer a rapist. Look at all the unsolved murders. Which means the man standing in line next to you could be a murderer. Nobody's innocent."
She withdrew her hand. "God, Archie, you're really something, know that? You always make a person feel like a piece of shit. . "
"Don't blame me," he said, surprised at her reaction. "Blame human nature. I didn't make the world."
Morton pulled away from Archie and he let her go, immersed in his own thoughts and the pursuit of Carter's personality, probing for weaknesses. Some of Carter's weaknesses were not hidden at all. For instance, the pride he took in his athletic accomplishments, the way he checked the trophy case fifty times a day, the way he strutted around the school, his swinging shoulders and athletic gait an advertisement for his jock image. Honor and pride, the twin facets of Carter's personality, and also the chinks in his armor. The problem, of course, was to exploit those chinks.
He reached out and touched Morton, who was staring into the 'darkness, watching the car headlights splashing and clashing down on the highway. She hated the part of herself that always responded to Archie Costello. She was pretty and popular and intelligent. Had not missed a prom or Saturday-night dance since the seventh grade. Independent and self-possessed. But had this weakness for Archie, this response to his demands, a certain excitement springing to life when she heard his voice on the telephone. So maybe he was right, after all, when he said everybody had a touch of something rotten in their lives. Archie Costello was hers. She would never accompany him to a prom {but then, he had never asked her to one) and yet could not deny the pleasure, however guilty, she kept discovering and rediscovering whenever they were together. She did not let herself go like that with anyone else. And now she responded again as he caressed her.
She yielded. . and for the next few moments Archie Costello and Jill Morton knew only the small sensual world of an ancient Chevy until the quick spurt, the sweet seizure, and an eruption of beauty and fury that left both of them shaken with delight, a moment they abandoned so swiftly that they barely had a memory of its existence a minute later.
They sat awhile in a drifting lassitude, all spent. Archie let himself go in the drift, enjoying these few moments of silence because he knew that eventually Morton would begin to talk. She always began to talk afterward. And lie hid his irritation and impatience, knowing that she had a need for talking that was as strong as her need for something else had been a few moments earlier.
"What's bothering you about this all-American hero?" she asked lazily.
Archie recoiled, drawing away. "Nothing's bothering me," he said.
"Then why all that talk about him?"
Archie realized anew why he always kept himself distant from people. Let them approach a bit and they come too close, take too many liberties.
"Forget it," he said, turning the key in the ignition, the engine leaping to life.
"Hey, don't get mad," she said. "You brought up the subject, not me." She reached for the key and turned off the engine.
Archie did not answer, knew that Morton was right. Carter was bothering him. And he knew why. He needed to take special action against Carter, not some minor assignment that would be temporary or fleeting. Carter was a special case. He would begin by attacking that special honor of his, but must end elsewhere, something longer lasting.
Morton intruded on his thoughts again, Morton and her knowing, expert touch, hands busy, mouth open, tongue like a small, sweet, darting snake. And Archie let himself be drawn into her orbit, forgetting Carter and everything else, giving himself over to Morton, carried on waves of sensuality that he knew would erupt into a deep dark flower of ecstasy that was almost, almost but never, never quite happiness.
He completed dialing the Goober's number on the third try, having missed the first two times, his finger slipping from the rounded slot — a Freudian slip of the finger? he wondered, smiling grimly, but glad that he could make a bit of a joke at a moment like this — and then heard the phone ringing at the other end.
Bracing himself, planting his feet solidly on the floor, he felt as though he were about to face hurricane winds that would sweep him across the room. Crazy. He was merely making a phone call to his old buddy.
Three rings, four, the sound like an invisible strand of rope between this room where he stood and the living room at Goober's house. Where, apparently, no one was present to answer the phone.
Seven. . eight.
Good, he thought, nobody home, I've done my part; some other time. Relieved, about to hang up, he heard someone say "Hello." Out of breath, exhaling the word. And again: "Hello."
Jerry gulped Where do I begin?
"Hello?" The voice again, still out of breath, a question mark at the end of the word and a hint now of annoyance.
Jerry rushed in:
"Hello, Goober? How are you? This is Jerry Renault, just thought I'd call. . " Too much too fast, the words running together. "Been out running?" Cripes. Living in silence all this time and now I can't shut up.
"That really you, Jerry?" Goober asked, taking a deep breath, probably just ending a run, and Jerry envied him, wanted to run, jump, careen around in the spring air, realized how suffocating and deadly dull the apartment had been since his return.
"It's really me," Jerry said, wanting to sound normal, like the Jerry Renault that Goober knew and remembered.
"Great to hear your voice," the Goober said, but a bit guarded, the words fine and normal but his voice tentative.
Let's get this all out of the way as soon as possible, Jerry thought. And plunged again: Give me the ball and the hell with the signals.
"Look, Goob. Can I say something? A couple of things, in fact? First, I'm sorry about the other day. When you came here. I wasn't ready, I guess. I was really glad to see you but not ready for other things. I mean, not ready for Monument. I must have looked like a nut. . "
Goober's laugh was easy, almost grateful. "Well, it wasn't your everyday kind of hello-how-are-you. But you sound okay now, Jerry." And, after a slight pause: "Are you?"
"I think so. Yes." Having to make it clear: "I'm fine. Really."
"Great. And Jerry, let me say something too, okay? Something I've got to say before anything else—"
"Look, Goober, I know what you want to say. . and you don't have to. You're my friend."
"But I've got to say ft, Jerry, and you have to listen and then you have to make a decision. Don't say anything yet. Let me. Let me tell you that I know that I betrayed you last fall. Stayed home as if I was sick when you were going through hell because of the chocolates, that beating from Janza. ."
"But you were there, Goob. I saw you. You helped me. . " He almost said: You held me in your arms when I was all broken inside and out.
"But I got there too late, Jerry. Stayed home until the last minute. And was too late to help you. . Okay, I've said it. It had to be said. And I don't blame you if you hate me."
"Cripes, Goober, I don't hate you. You're my friend."
"I didn't act like a friend that night. . "
"Goober, Goober. ." Admonishing gently, as if Goober were a child to be soothed and reassured.
"Do I get another chance?"
"You don't need another chance, Goob. You're my friend — so what's all this about another chance?"
"I'll never let you down again, Jerry."
"Hey, look, Goob. Will you do me a big favor? As a 'friend forever?"
"Sure." The Goober's voice was easier now, lighter. "Name it — and consider it done."
"Okay. The favor is this: Don't talk about that night anymore, don't talk about letting me down or anything like that That was last fall — this is now. Let's forget it ever happened."
"There's one thing I can't forget. What you told me that night, Jerry. Because it's the truth. It's the way I live my life now. You said to play ball, play the game, sell the chocolates or whatever they want you to sell. That's what I'm doing, Jerry. What I'm always going to do. ."
The words made Jerry uneasy. It was one thing to believe in them yourself: it was another to know that someone else, a friend, believed in them, too. Changing his life because of words you spoke. Jerry felt engulfed by sadness at the words, although he knew them to be true.
"Let's not talk about it anymore," he said, wondering if he had called too soon, whether he should have waited, whether he should never have called. Desperate to get away from the subject, he searched for another subject, seized one: "You still running, Goob? You were all out of breath when you answered the phone."
"Right. I didn't run for a long time, but I started again."
"I'd like to run," Jerry said, glancing around the room at the sterile furniture, not home, really, but like a waiting room in a doctor's office or air terminal.
"Hey, you always hated running," Goober chided.
Jerry responded to the Goober's good-natured jibe.
"I know — but it feels so good when you stop. Like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer. . "
They both exploded with laughter. His remark hadn't been that funny, but Jerry sensed that they needed to grab on to something to bring them together again. Like old times.
"Want to run again? With me?" Goober asked.
"Why not? I need the exercise."
"Tomorrow afternoon?"
"Sure. ." Jerry hesitated. "On one condition, Goob. No more talk about what happened. No more of that stuff—"
"Okay, okay," Goober said. "I give up. But get ready for tomorrow, Jerry. I'll run you ragged. . "
"Tomorrow," Jerry said, hanging up, weak with relict, breathing his thanks. His thanks to whom? God, maybe, thinking of the Talking Church in Canada.
Obie spotted the slashed loafer with the dangling buckle at a moment when he was not looking for it. Climbing the stairs to the third floor for the final class of the day, forced along by the between-classes stampede of students, Obie was engrossed in his thoughts, barely aware of the press of bodies. About the two tests today he had either flunked or scored no higher than a D on, thus falling further behind in his studies. Angry thoughts. Angry at his parents and all grown-ups who thought that school life was a lark, a good time, the best years of your life with a few tests and quizzes thrown in to keep you on your toes. Bullshit. There was nothing good about it. Tests were daily battles in the larger war of school. School meant rules and orders and commands. To say nothing of homework.
The loafer appeared before his eyes without warning, so unexpected that his brain did not immediately register the sight. His brain was still concerned with this lousy life called high school, adolescence, the teen years. But then: the loafer. The cruel slash across the instep. He stopped in his tracks, one foot on the step above him, the other in midair as his brain intercepted what his eyes had recorded.
"Wait a minute," he said.
Nobody among the rampaging students coming and going up and down the stairs heard his words or paid attention.
Obie sprang into action. The guy wearing the loafer had been coming down the steps: At one point the shoe had been at his eye level. Turning, looking below, he spotted a familiar figure hurrying across the second-floor corridor, trying like everyone else to beat the final bell to the class. Torn between getting to his own class on time (he'd already been tardy once today) and tracking down his quarry, Obie threw caution aside. His life depended on that loafer: the hell with being late for class. The hell with everything else. He set off in pursuit, going against the mainstream now, darting in and out of the streaming students, getting jabs in his ribs from sharp elbows.
He caught up with the student (he was almost sure of his identity, had recognized him from behind but had to be absolutely certain, without a shadow of a doubt, because this was life and death now, not fun and games) at the doorway to Room Nineteen. Ironic, of course. Putting on the brakes, his own shoes skidding on the wooden floor, he almost crashed into the guy. Looking down, he confirmed the evidence. Yes, the loafer was slashed, the buckle was loose. He looked up again as the kid, perhaps sensing his scrutiny or hearing the skidding arrival of someone behind him, turned around and regarded him. Full face.
No doubt now. No doubt at all.
Cornacchio, the sophomore. Bunting's stooge.
The bell rang, splitting the air as Cornacchio, after a hurried, puzzled look at Obie (but was it puzzled or more like horrified?) jammed through the door, shouldering his way between two other students.
Obie remained alone as the corridor emptied and the doors slammed shut. Stood there, caught and held, his heart like the ticking of a bomb about to explode.
The fever that coursed through his body now made him sharp and alert He had gone beyond fatigue and 'exhaustion into a land of hyper state, senses sharp, body on the alert, a new energy pulsing with the beat of the fever. He used all the old strategies and methods that he had learned during his years as Archie's right hand, setting up the assignments, compiling his notes and data on students. His notebooks were filled with the names of students and the background details of their lives that had been valuable for the assignments. Hundreds of names. And, of course, Cornacchio among them.
Vincent Cornacchio. Sixteen years old. Height, five seven; weight, one sixty-five. Father, factory worker. B-minus average. Not stupid. In fact, did not live up to his potential. An underachiever. Hobbies, none. Unless you call hanging around downtown eyeballing the girls or reading dirty magazines in drugstores a hobby. Nickname: Corny. Which he hated. Worked after school at Vivaldi's Supermarket.
That night in bed, curled up fetuslike, still not sleeping but not wanting now to sleep, thoughts alive and sharp like needles pricking his consciousness, Obie plotted and schemed and mapped his strategy. Cornacchio had held him down and under the car. But somebody else had attacked Laurie, had touched her. Bunting, probably. Cornacchio was Bunting's stooge. Bunting, whom he already had reason to hate. But must be sure. And Cornacchio was the key.
He finally fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that was more of a coma, a little death, than anything else. He awoke in the morning without any sense of having slept. Eyes still flaming, pulse still throbbing in his forehead, stomach still rejecting the thought of food. But his mind keen and knife-edged, eager for action, in a hurry for the day to pass until this evening, when he would confront Cornacchio. Cornacchio of the slashed loafer with the dangling buckle, who would lead him to the guy who had touched Laurie.
"Brother Eugene's dead."
"Oh, no. . "
They rounded the corner of State Street into Stearns Avenue past the Hilite Dry Cleaners (In by 9, Out by 5) and Rasino's Barber Shop, the wind assailing their bodies, brushing their cheeks, cool air on moist warm flesh.
"He died in New Hampshire," the Goober said, eyes straight ahead, back arched, legs pumping. "He never came back to Trinity after. ."
His voice trailed off.
After.
The word lingered in the air as they ran. Cars and buses and people, young and old, flowed past them as if on movie screens, outside their own isolated world of running.
After Room Nineteen.
Propelled by guilt, the Goober left Jerry behind in a burst of speed. Not only running now but running away. But impossible to run away, of course. As he zoomed around a corner, he was back in Room Nineteen again, "in the middle of the night, terrified, the screwdriver so tight in his hand that blisters exploded in his palm.
Jerry followed him around the corner in his own lack of speed, spotted him up ahead, and hung back, knowing he could never catch up.
But the Goober put on the brakes, came to a sudden stop, and looked back over his shoulder.
"Sorry," he called, waiting, running in place, legs churning.
As Jerry came abreast, the Goober pointed to an unoccupied bench at a nearby bus stop. "Let's rest," he suggested, noticing Jerry's labored breathing, his face grooved with the agony of exertion.
Jerry was grateful for the pause, realizing that he was very much out of shape. He knew that he had to convince the Goober that he was not to blame for what had happened to Brother Eugene, hoped he could find the proper words.
"I hope you're not feeling guilty," Jerry said as he sat down, waiting for his body to calm, his heart to resume its normal silent beat. "It can't be your fault, Goob."
"I keep telling myself that," the Goober said. "But I keep wondering what would have happened if we hadn't taken Room Nineteen apart. Would Brother Eugene still be alive?"
"You can't second-guess a thing like that, Goober," Jerry said, groping for the right words. But could any words mollify his friend? "Room Nineteen happened last fall. Brother Eugene wasn't young anymore. You've got to forget the past—"
"It's not that easy."
"I know," Jerry said, thinking of the chocolates.
"I can't wait to leave that rotten school," Goober said, voice bitter, pounding the earth with his foot.
"I'm not going back either," Jerry said. "I might go back to Canada," he added, discovering that possibility only as he spoke the words.
"You liked Canada that much?"
Jerry shrugged. 'It's peaceful there." He thought of the Talking Church, knew he couldn't possibly explain to the Goober how he felt about those weeks in Quebec. "This parish I lived in with my uncle and aunt is only a few miles north of Montreal. Maybe I can commute to an English-language school in Montreal." More possibilities that he had not realized existed until this moment.
"Monument High for me," Goober said flatly. "No more Brother Leon. No more Archie Costello. No more Vigils. No more crap—"
"Is Archie Costello still riding high?" Jerry asked tentatively, wondering if he really wanted to know.
"I try not to pay attention," Goober said. Then amended his reply: "Yeah, sure he is. You hear rumors all the time about assignments. Secret stuff. Some poor kid given a stupid stunt to perform." Like me, he thought, and Room Nineteen.
"Let's run some more," Jerry said, on edge suddenly. All this talk of Brother Eugene and Archie Costello brought back memories he had been avoiding. Room Nineteen was bad enough. But what about the chocolates? He didn't want to think about the chocolates.
They ran now in companionable silence, like last fall, finding a balm and benediction in the movement of their bodies, down hills and across streets, arriving finally at Monument Park and coming to a halt near a Civil War cannon. Sitting, stretching, Jerry was languid in the aftermath of exertion, felt as though his bones and muscles were deliciously melting.
"Why so quiet, Jerry?"
"Know what I keep thinking, Goober? How many Archie Costellos there are in the world. Out there. Everywhere. Waiting." A thought crept into his mind: It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace. Nuns retreated to their convents. Priests lived in rectories, separate from other people, or in monasteries. Was it possible for him to do the same? Become a priest? Or a brother? A good and kind brother like Brother Eugene? And take his place in the world, someone to fight the Archie Costellos and even the Brother Leons? Hey, what's going on here? Me a priest? A brother? Ridiculous. Yet he remembered those exquisite moments of peace in Canada.
"What do you want to do with your life, Goob?" he asked.
"Who knows?" the Goober mused. "Sometimes I wake up at night in a panic. Wondering: What will my life be like? And sometimes I even wonder: Who am I? What am I doing here, on this planet, in this city, in this house? And it gives me the shivers, makes me panic." This is what he liked about Jerry Renault. He could talk to him like this, tell him his fears and hopes.
"That happens to me, too," Jerry said. "I remember a poem from somewhere, school, probably.
"I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
"That's me, Goob. That's us." That was also Trinity. A world he had not made. In which he had been afraid. He didn't want to be afraid anymore. He remembered the poster in his locker: Do I dare disturb the universe? He had disturbed the universe of Trinity. Look what had happened. He would do no more disturbing.
"Oh, Christ."
Jerry looked up as the Goober spoke, startled at his words, knowing that the Goob seldom if ever swore.
"What's the matter?" Jerry asked. And then followed the Goober's eyes. Goob was staring at something across the street. Jerry looked and saw that it was not something but someone. There was no mistaking who that someone was. Emile Janza. The blunt, compact body, head sunk into his shoulders, the small eyes visibly piglike even at this distance. Or maybe he couldn't see the eyes after all but remembered them vividly. He remembered vividly everything about Emile Janza. The fight in the boxing ring; the day Emile and his buddies had attacked him in a wooded area near the school. And now Emile Janza stood across the street, hands on hips, looking in Jerry's direction. The noise of passing cars and trucks, the movement of pedestrians on the sidewalk, the quick dart of a small kid faded into the background. And for a moment Jerry and Janza seemed to be locked in a confrontation by eyeball. But were they? Jerry couldn't be certain. Too far away to tell, really. Janza might be merely staring vacantly into space, eyes unfocused.
A bus lumbered into view from Jerry's right and slowed down, veering toward the curb, passing in front of Janza, obliterating him completely as if wiping him from the surface of the earth. Jerry waited, not looking at the Goober, not speaking, not even thinking. Remaining blank, a cipher, zero. The bus lurched into action again, belching purple exhaust, moving forward, revealing the sidewalk and the spot where Janza had stood. Janza was no longer there. Had evidently boarded the bus. Or walked away while the bus paused at the curb.
"Do you think he saw us?" the Goober asked.
"Maybe."
"What an animal."
"I know."
Jerry leaped to his feet.
"Come on, Goober," he urged. The hell with Emile Janza. "I'll race you to the library."
And as he started to run, he knew he was really racing toward another place, altogether, to Canada. Hey, Canada, here I come.
"What time is it?" Janza asked.
Obie glanced at his watch. "Ten after."
"Ten after what?"
Obie tried to hide his exasperation. "What do you think? I told you to meet me here at seven o'clock. That was ten minutes ago. You think an hour's gone by?"
Obie wondered whether he had made a mistake by enlisting Janza's aid in his confrontation with Cornacchio. They were standing in a shadowed doorway across the street from Vivaldi's Supermarket, the small grocery store where Cornacchio worked part-time. The store closed at seven, but Cornacchio always stayed behind to bring inside the vegetables and other groceries the market displayed on the sidewalk. Obie had once worked in a store after school, but was fired for being late because of the demands of Archie and the Vigils.
"I'm getting hungry," Janza said.
Obie didn't bother to answer. He didn't want to engage in conversation with him. He hated the thought of using Janza, becoming involved with him at all, and yet Janza was the muscle he needed. Both Cornacchio and Janza were brutes: either one would cancel the threat of the other. Obie's instructions to Janza had been simple: "You don't have to say anything. Just play dumb." Which wouldn't require any acting at all on Janza's part. "Look menacing." As if he had to make an effort to look menacing.
The evening had turned cool, and the wind hustled assorted debris along the sidewalk: pages of a newspaper, dry leaves, candy wrappers. Obie's eyes were slits. Painful dry slits. As if someone had removed them for inspection and put them back in the wrong sockets.
Cornacchio finally emerged from the store, arching his back, stretching his muscles. Looked tough. Which made Obie glad now that he'd brought Janza along.
"There he is," Janza said. He had a faculty for stating the obvious.
Cornacchio walked with a swagger, the rhythmic bouncing gait of an athlete, as if his shoes contained hidden springs. Broad shoulders, legs like tree stumps.
As Cornacchio crossed the street at an angle, Obie moved forward to intercept him, Janza at his elbow. Obie checked the damaged loafer, the brass buckle winking in the dusk, and felt again the anger and horror of that terrible night.
"Hi, Cornacchio," he said, stepping in front of him.
Cornacchio looked at Janza, although Obie had greeted him. And he got the message immediately, knew what this was all about. Turned his attention to Obie, Obie's deadly calm, his attitude of determination joined with Janza's silent menace. Cornacchio was not a coward and not shy about using his muscle: he had emerged triumphant from countless schoolyard skirmishes since the third grade. But he knew when he was hopelessly outclassed, not only by Janza, who was probably the only guy in school whose strength he respected, but by Obie, who was a key figure in the Vigils, powerful, next to Archie Costello. He knew that Bunting couldn't help him at this moment, no matter how clever Bunting was.
"What's happening?" Cornacchio asked, dancing a bit like a fighter warming up, instinctively putting up a front, not wanting to betray his nervousness.
"It's not what's happening, Corny," Obie said, deliberately using the nickname Cornacchio despised. "It's what's already happened."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Cornacchio said, making an effort to pass by.
Janza stepped into his path.
"You know what I'm talking about," Obie said. So calm, so certain of himself, so implacable. Voice flat, deadly, quiet. And something terrible in the quietness.
"Okay, okay," Cornacchio said, lifting his arms, his shoulders, like a spy discovered in enemy territory, knowing that he would be shot at dawn, alone and friendless, abandoned by his comrades.
"It's not what you think it was," Cornacchio said.
Obie felt himself sagging, relaxing, unfolding, the relief from his tension so sudden and strong that he was afraid he would collapse on the sidewalk like a puppet whose strings had been severed. "What was it, then?" he asked.
Cornacchio hesitated, glanced down at his feet, kicked at a piece of broken glass, looked up at Obie, then at Janza, then at Obie again. Held on to Obie's eyes. Obie sensed a hidden message there. Then got the message. Of course: Janza. Cornacchio didn't want to talk in front of Janza. And Obie realized how ridiculous it was to have brought Janza along. He had been duped by loss of sleep, the obsessive nature of his search for the attacker, had lost all perspective. He realized that he certainly didn't want Janza to know what had happened. The less Janza knew, the better it would be for everybody.
"Hey, Janza," Obie said.
Janza had not removed his eyes from Cornacchio for an instant. He had decided that he didn't like Cornacchio. He didn't like the way Cornacchio had ignored him, had barely glanced his way. Janza liked to be recognized, did not like to be ignored.
"What?" Janza said, his voice a brief bark.
"Check the other end of the street," Obie said. "I thought I saw someone there."
Janza didn't want to appear to be taking orders from Obie or anybody else. On the other hand, if somebody was lurking down the street, it was an opportunity for action, for the use of muscle.
"Okay," he said, spitting out the word, continuing to glare at Cornacchio to show that he was not simply an errand boy.
Obie and Cornacchio watched Janza lumbering away, shoulders swinging.
"I hate that scumbag," Cornacchio said.
Obie ignored the remark. He knew that he and Cornacchio were connected with each other by the Vigils and that Janza was an outsider. But the brotherhood of the Vigils did not make any difference to Obie as far as the attack was concerned Cornacchio was the enemy; hie was the scumbag, not Janza.
"Okay, Corny, explain. If it's not what I think it was, then what was it?"
Cornacchio flinched at the use of his nickname, knew that Obie was deliberately taunting him. But he was in no position to protest.
"The Vigils," Cornacchio said.
Obie stepped back as if Cornacchio had spit in his face.
"An assignment," Cornacchio said, pleased at Obie's reaction, gaining confidence. "Bunting told Archie Costello about you and that girl. How we spotted you one night making out at the Chasm. He told Bunting to do something about it. Said the Vigils would provide an alibi."
More than spit in Obie's face: as if a bomb had detonated nearby, leaving his body intact but sending shock waves throughout his system.
"Archie Costello gave the orders?" Disbelief in his voice. Impossible. Yet nothing was impossible with Archie.
Cornacchio nodded, gulping nervously, surprised at the way Obie had gone pale, hands groping at the air. Cornacchio was still troubled about that night at the Chasm, had replayed it a thousand times in his mind. He'd never done anything like that before. Actually, he hadn't done anything, after all, had merely held Obie a prisoner under the car. He was aware of feeling horny as he and Bunting and Harley approached the car and saw Obie and the girl. His lust and desire died, however, as he held Obie on the ground, realizing the rotten thing they were doing. But nothing had happened. That's what Bunting claimed, and Cornacchio believed him, needed to believe him. Bunting said later that it was all Archie Costello's idea, an unofficial assignment. This knowledge had greatly relieved Cornacchio. The involvement of Archie and the Vigils made it seem less serious, not such a rotten thing, more like a kind of stunt.
And nobody, but nobody, had been hurt.
Obie had regained his composure.
"Okay, tell me. What did Archie say? Precisely?"
"I can't be precise," Cornacchio said. "I wasn't there. Bunting told us later that it was an assignment. Unofficial but still an assignment. Look, Obie, nothing happened. Okay, I held you down, but I was only following orders." Cornacchio knew he was stretching a point here, but he was a bit alarmed by what he saw in Obie's eyes. Wasn't sure what he saw but knew it was something to beware.
Obie's mind reeled and he ran his hand through his hair. His thoughts were a jumble of images — Archie and Laurie and Janza and Bunting and this kid in front of him, Cornacchio. Who seemed to be telling the truth. Was too smart to lie, knowing that his story could be checked. With Archie. With Bunting.
"The assignment," Obie said. "What was the assignment? To bushwhack? Or to do more than that?" Obie didn't want to use the word rape.
"Bunting said Archie told him: Do something. He didn't say what. Do something about Obie and the girl. So we did." Cornacchio was confused now, realizing that Bunting had not gone into detail about the assignment. And he was worried — had he told Obie too much? He was happy to see Janza approaching.
"Nobody there," Janza said to Obie.
His voice jolted Obie.
"Nothing but shadows."
"I've got to get home," Cornacchio said, doing his fighter's dance again, avoiding Obie's eyes, sensing the study Obie was making of him.
Obie nodded, eyes huge, face still pale. Looked lost. Cornacchio felt sorry for him, then remembered that Obie had called him Corny. He hated every bastard who'd ever called him Corny.
"Okay, get out of here," Obie said at last, turning away, his voice weary, shoulders drooping.
"What the hell was that all about?" Janza asked, keeping his eye on Cornacchio until he had disappeared around the corner.
"What you don't know can't hurt you," Obie said. Numb now, bones singing with the pain of exhaustion, all exhilaration gone. And thinking: What a guy knows can hurt him.
Rain. Pelting the streets and sidewalks and lashing at Obie as he walked toward Laurie's house. He had taken to keeping a vigil across the street from her house at various times of the day and evening, drawing comfort from being near the house she lived in, slept in, took showers in (the vision of her naked under the water's spray caused an ache in his groin), ate her meals in. The house was precious to him because she lived in it. Standing under a leafy tree for shelter, clothes soaked, hair matted — he had neglected to wear a hat or raincoat — stamping his feet now and then, he realized the futility of the solitary watch.
He saw her brother approaching from the far end of the street. Clutching a book bag to his chest, he kept his eyes down as he approached Obie, as if afraid he might be robbed. He always looked as if he expected the worst to happen. And only twelve years old. Wait until he gets to high school, Obie thought.
"When's Laurie coming home?" Obie asked, not wanting to ask this particular kid anything but the question emerging from his frustration, soaked and lonely here on this rotten street when he should be home trying to catch up on homework.
The kid didn't stop walking and called over his shoulder: "She's home. She's been home two days."
"Oh," Obie said stupidly, mouth hanging open, the taste of rain bitter on his tongue.
"I don't think she likes you anymore," her brother said, not viciously but with the uncluttered honesty of a twelve-year-old kid.
Obie did not reply, said nothing, stood miserable and abandoned, all the lights in the world dimmed and dying, knowing in the deep places of his being that he had lost Laurie Gundarson forever.