Beyond the Chocolate War Read online

  Sensing all of this, knowing that only the sophomores were content (but sophomores were a breed apart), Archie had responded with a perfect solution: a day off from school. But not a day arranged through subtle blackmail of Brother Leon. No, this day would have an Archie Costello sting. Every student at Trinity—and there were almost four hundred of them—would simply stay away from class on a certain designated day. They would vanish. No one would be able to find them. When the brothers began frantically to call the various homes—absenteeism was always checked with a telephone call to the student’s home—they would learn that Jimmy or Joey or Kevin or whoever had gone off to school as usual. Thus, the scheme would have a double impact: on the school, and on the homes of the students. And then Archie had gone one step further. He had learned, in advance, the date of the Bishop’s visit to Trinity. The traditional annual visit always began before classes with a high mass and holy communion in the school auditorium, which was converted into a chapel for the occasion. This year, the auditorium would be without students.

  Carter had been horrified at the thought of humiliating the Bishop, an act that could have serious repercussions. But he had said nothing. Like everyone else, he had learned not to oppose Archie’s schemes. Play along and go along. He felt helpless, wishing he had the courage to make a protest. He had courage enough on the football field and in the boxing ring. But that was different. He felt alone these days, an exile in this school he loved. Everybody thought he was only bone and muscle. Didn’t see that a jock could be sensitive. And his sensitivities told him that the Bishop’s visit would spell disaster. He didn’t want to be a part of that disaster, not at this point, so near to graduation when he’d be rid of Archie Costello once and for all time.

  “I’ve got a suggestion,” Bunting said.

  Obie looked at the sophomore with new respect, the way he was bouncing back after the earlier attack by Archie and risking another with a suggestion. Ordinarily, only Archie made suggestions. And they weren’t suggestions, they were orders, more or less.

  “Let’s hear it,” Archie said. “But watch the language, right?” Almost primly, lips pursed.

  Bunting nodded.

  “What I figure is this,” he said, gathering confidence. “Why not have everybody stay out of school except one kid? I mean, if everybody’s absent, there’s no …” He was at a loss for a word.

  Archie grabbed one out of the air. “No contrast.” Then another: “No emphasis.” He regarded Bunting with admiration, or what passed for admiration coming from Archie because he still maintained his coolness, the distance he managed to keep between himself and everyone else. “Beautiful, Bunting. I can see it now. The Bishop and Brother Leon and all the faculty up there on the stage, near the altar. And one kid sitting in the audience, right in the middle of the place, surrounded by all those empty seats, not another kid in sight.”

  “We have to pick the right kid,” Bunting went on, really rolling now. “He’ll be part of the plot, with orders to act normal, like he’s not alone in the audience. As if everything is happening as usual.”

  Archie lifted his hands, palms downward, almost as if he were about to bless the congregation, but the Vigils had come to know that the gesture meant he wanted instant silence. Suddenly the gathering seemed to be holding its collective breath, a stillness pervading the room. Obie marveled at Archie’s ability to take command of all situations, the way he was able now to take the spotlight away from Bunting effortlessly and bring all eyes in the place to himself. Archie’s eyes were mere slits: he was thinking, concentrating. Or pretending to be thinking and concentrating. Obie had seen him perform this stunt a thousand times. Or was it a stunt?

  The heat in the storage room had grown almost unbearable, heat saturated with the smell of boys’ bodies. Vigil meetings were always brief, because Archie couldn’t stand the smell of perspiration, couldn’t stand the sight of sweat on flushed skin. Obie surreptitiously surveyed the boys as they sat there immobile, focused on Archie, not daring to move. Nobody wanted to be noticed or singled out by Archie. Bunting alone seemed at ease, sure of himself, his black curly hair glistening in the harsh glow of the unshaded bulb hanging from the ceiling. He looked as if he’d just stepped from a shower: cool and refreshed. Obie almost shuddered. He knew that Archie was grooming Bunting to be the new Assigner, the student who would take Archie’s place next year. Although Bunting was short and dark and muscular in contrast to Archie’s tall and slender blondness, there was a similarity between them, something Obie could not pin down precisely. Maybe ruthlessness.

  “Okay,” Archie said, coming out of his trance or whatever it was. Voice crackling. Blue eyes flashing. “What we need is one more touch. The kid who’s coming to school that day.” He shot a glance toward Obie. “I want a new kid. Somebody who hasn’t been involved in anything yet.”

  As if by reflex, Obie flipped his notebook open. And hated himself for leaping to action at Archie’s slightest wish. “There’s a kid who came to Trinity for the second term. His family moved here from the Cape. His name is Raymond Bannister. He’s a sophomore. B-minus average student but got a D in chemistry. He’s a loner.”

  “Why haven’t we heard about him before?” Archie asked, a mild rebuke in his voice as he used the editorial we, as if he was the Pope, for crying out loud. We.

  Obie shrugged an answer. New kids were always Vigil bait. Archie loved nothing better than putting a new kid through the hoops.

  “Did you slip up, Obie?” Archie asked. Slyly, tauntingly.

  Obie felt the color creep into his face, like a stain of guilt. Archie was a master at this, humiliating someone in front of others.

  “I didn’t think it was the right time psychologically,” Obie replied. “Ray Bannister is a loner, like I said.” He looked meaningfully at Archie, wondering if he was getting the message. The message of the chocolates.

  Something flickered in Archie’s eyes, as if an invisible branch had snapped across his face. Pause. But only for a beat. “Maybe it’s time to get around to him,” he said, looking directly at Obie. “Get to this Bannister kid. If he’s a loner, he’ll love sitting there all by himself. Fill him in. Tell him the part he has to play. Impress upon him the importance of his role. How we don’t put up with failure.”

  The Vigils murmured their approval.

  Archie turned to Bunting, swiveling away from Obie as if dismissing him.

  “Nice work, Bunting.”

  Bunting glowed and couldn’t resist shooting another glance of triumph at Obie.

  “Any other business?” Archie asked, addressing nobody in particular.

  Silence, as Archie looked around the room, inspecting each of them in turn, studying them with those cold, intelligent eyes and managing as usual to look superior to them.

  “What about Fair Day?” Bunting asked.

  A shadow crossed Archie’s face. Obie thought with glee: Bunting has pushed his luck too far.

  “What about Fair Day?” Archie’s voice held a hint of cool mockery.

  What Bunting didn’t know: Archie was less than enthusiastic about Fair Day. Bored, in fact. Fair Day was a family fun day at Trinity, the last social event before graduation, a day of hot dogs and hamburgers, booths and merry-go-rounds and other rides for the kid brothers and sisters of Trinity students. The Vigils always kept a low profile during the day except, of course, for the Fool. The Vigils even maintained a hands-off policy during Skit Night (which some guys called Shit Night), the evening of Fair Day. All of which Bunting should have known. But Bunting was the classic sophomore: Act now, think later.

  “Let’s get the visit over with first,” Carter growled, exercising his privilege as Vigils president. Wanting to end the meeting, tired of all this crap.

  Archie chuckled, looking with feigned exasperation at Bunting, the father now indulging the favorite son. “Slow down, Bunting,” he said. Then nodded at Carter.

  Carter banged the gavel and stood up. The atmosphere became tense, like an el
astic band stretched to the breaking point. Carter drew a black box from a shelf within the crate. He held it in his hands as if it contained all the crown jewels of Europe.

  Archie sighed, wearily, resignedly. He turned to Harley and Cornacchio, the two sophomores who had watched the proceedings with awe and wonder and maybe a bit of fear.

  “Your first meeting, right?” Archie asked them, kindly, gently. The master actor, Obie thought, turning facets of his personality on and off to suit his purposes.

  The sophomores nodded in unison, gulping, as if they had rehearsed their response.

  Archie nodded toward the black box.

  “This is what I have to face after every assignment,” Archie said. Then, wryly: “To keep me honest.” Looking at Bunting now. “This is what you’ll have to put up with, Bunting, if you step into my shoes.”

  The sophomores regarded the box warily. The box was legendary at Trinity and had been seen in public on only one occasion.

  As Carter held the box reverentially aloft now, Archie said: “Whenever an assignment is given out, I have to face the box. There are six marbles in there, five of them white, one black. If I pull out a white marble, no sweat. The assignment stands. But if I pull out the black, I have to take on the assignment myself. Some creep years ago came up with this concept. It’s supposed to keep an Assigner from getting too fancy, too dangerous, if he knows there’s a chance he’d be carrying out the assignment.”

  Carter and Obie approached Archie, Carter extending the box, Obie holding the key. The box was an old jewelry container some nameless student years ago had stolen from his mother’s bedroom.

  “In this particular case”—Archie continued his explanation to the sophomores—“if I draw the black marble, I have to take Bannister’s place in the audience. Which isn’t bad at all. There have been worse risks.”

  Archie laughed again, this time with obvious delight. Obie wondered, as usual, what kind of blood ran in Archie’s veins. Or was it blood at all?

  “Look at Obie,” Archie said.

  Obie almost dropped the key. Uncanny, as if Archie could reach into his mind.

  “Obie’s hoping the black marble will turn up. He never used to hope that. But now he does.” As he spoke he reached up and shoved his hand into the box, swiftly, without hesitation. In almost the same motion, he withdrew his hand and tossed a white marble in the air, the whiteness glinting in the bulb’s stark glow, and caught it effortlessly as it came down. In all his time as the Assigner, Archie had never drawn the black marble.

  “Sorry, Obie,” he said, laughing.

  Obie realized that somehow he and Archie had become enemies. He didn’t know when it had happened or why. He knew only that something existed between them now that hadn’t been there before. As Carter banged the gavel, adjourning the meeting, Obie shivered in the heat of the storage room and realized that he had just gone five minutes without thinking of Laurie Gundarson.

  Everything had been going along smoothly, life returning to normal, the horror and the betrayal receding and diminishing—and then the telephone call came.

  He had started running again, flying over the streets, up and down the hills, moving with easy, fluid grace, invigorated by the chilly morning air, eyes dazzled by the sun setting fire to eastern windows. A collie that belonged to someone on Spruce Street had taken to running beside him, and he felt a sense of kinship with the animal. Often he and the collie were the only living things on the streets at that hour.

  His father was happy to see him running again. “Good, Roland, good,” his father said, meeting him at the end of the run as he departed for work.

  Drawing up beside his father, breathing deeply, the air sweet in his lungs, his moist body cooling in the morning breeze, the Goober felt great.

  “You see, Roland? Time heals all things,” his father said, waving the lunch pail as he made off down the street.

  His father was a very formal man. He didn’t believe in nicknames; he never called his son the Goober or Goob as others did. The Goober watched him walking off to work, erect, head held high, and was overcome with an emotion he could not identify. Love? Affection? He wasn’t quite certain. Maybe it’s what a son felt for his father when the father had helped the son through a bad time of his life. Time heals all things.…

  The Goober lived five miles from Trinity, too far to run, especially with books and other stuff to carry. He ran part of the way, though, passing up the bus stop nearest his home and boarding a bus downtown near the library. This bus didn’t carry as many Trinity students as the other, which was fine with Goober. He still planned to transfer to Monument High next fall; his father had frowned at a midyear transfer and had asked him to stick it out until June. But although he felt much better about Trinity these days, the Goober still didn’t mix much with the other guys. No problem: He was a freshman and hardly knew anybody. Trinity drew students not only from Monument but from the entire area, and only a few had enrolled from St. Jude’s Parochial School, where Goober had gone. Anyway, he had decided to play it cool until June. The fourteen-year-old heart is a marvelous thing, his father had said. It can be ruptured but it does not really break, no matter what the poets say.

  The Goober wasn’t sure whether his heart had ruptured or broken completely during those terrible chocolate days last fall. All he knew was that a numbness had finally seeped through him, like a novocaine of the spirit. But time and the running had also helped him emerge from the bad days. He still felt like a traitor, however, and he avoided, whenever possible, Archie Costello and Obie and the other Vigils. He also avoided Room Nineteen, even though it sometimes meant a long detour through the halls and stairways. Room Nineteen and Brother Eugene. The chocolate days and Jerry Renault. Under control now, he passed his hours at school without undue panic or depression. He could do nothing about Brother Leon, of course, and had learned to live with his presence. Leon popped into the classrooms now and then, turning up when he was least expected, substituting for teachers on occasion or observing the class and teacher from the rear of the room. The Goober felt he had scored a personal triumph recently: He had met Leon in the corridor and was able to look into those milky moist eyes without feeling nausea gathering in his stomach.

  And then the telephone call.

  He was alone in the house when the phone rang: his father at work, his mother out shopping. He picked up the receiver.

  “Roland?”

  For a moment he thought his father was on the line. And panicked slightly. His father never called from work. An accident? No one else but his father called him Roland.

  “Yes,” he said, warily, tentatively.

  “This is Jerry Renault’s father.”

  The words echoed in the Goober’s ears as if they’d been shouted, bellowed.

  “Oh, yes,” Goober heard himself say. He had met Jerry’s father only once. The night they had admitted Jerry to Monument Hospital. His memory of the man had been blurred by the incidents of that night, plus the tears that kept welling in his eyes. “How’s Jerry?” the Goober asked now. Forced himself to ask. Afraid of the answer. Am I being a traitor again? he wondered.

  “Well, he’s home,” Mr. Renault said, voice quiet and subdued, as if he were speaking from a sickroom where the patient must not be disturbed.

  “Oh,” the Goober said. Stupid, unable to say anything more. He felt the old November panic again, the novocaine wearing off, the pain coming back.

  Jerry Renault had spent several weeks at Monument Hospital before being transferred to a hospital in Boston. A few weeks later Mr. Renault had called to report that the boy had gone to Canada to recuperate with relatives. “I think the change of scene will do him good,” Mr. Renault had said. And then had added: “I hope,” his voice filled with a tone of impending doom. The Goober had not seen Jerry since those first days at the hospital.

  “I think it might do Jerry some good to see old friends,” Mr. Renault said now. “He always spoke very warmly of you, Roland.” Pause,
then: “The Goober, isn’t it?” Then hurried on: “At any rate, I’m hoping that seeing some of his friends, people like yourself, will help him.”

  “You mean he’s not okay?” Goober asked. And thought: Don’t answer that. He didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “I think he needs to get adjusted after being away so long. He has to pick up the pieces of his life.” Was he choosing his words carefully? “That’s why I think a friend like yourself can help.”

  But what kind of friend am I?

  “When would be a good time to visit?” Goober asked, hating the thing in him that hoped Mr. Renault would say, Forget it, this is a mistake, Jerry’s not home, he’s still in Canada, he’ll be there forever.

  “Anytime. We’re just getting settled. How about tomorrow afternoon? After school?”

  “Fine,” Goob said. But it was as if somebody else was using his voice.

  He held the receiver at his ear a long time after Jerry’s father had hung up, the dial tone like a warning signal of disaster.

  The Stripper Deck is a trick deck, but its secret is simple: The cards are tapered at one end. Thus, if a particular card is turned around and slipped back into the deck, it can be detected by touch because it sticks out from the other cards. The object of the trick is to locate the projecting card with fingertips or thumb tip. This is called “stripping the deck.”

  When Ray first tried the trick he was instantly discouraged. He picked up the cards at odd moments, however, and as he fooled around with them, shuffling and reshuffling, his fingertips developed sensitivity. After a few weeks he was able to locate the reversed card without hesitation. The Stripper Deck was a good time-killer, blunting the edge of his loneliness.

  As spring burst into vivid life without warning, Ray became aware for the first time of the beauty of an inland spring. Weeping willow trees that he had never noticed before wore halos of soft yellow as the buds came to life. He grudgingly admitted that Monument was not as gray and ugly as it had been at first sight. Sweet fragrances filled the air, and the hills surrounding Monument, while not exactly alive with the sound of music, were beautiful in their sweep and radiant in their colors.