A Troublesome Boy (3 page)

“Detention? You shittin' me?” Sounded like someone choked on his cookie, spitting and coughing. “School hasn't even started. How can you give out detentions?”

“I can give out detentions whenever I feel like it, Mr. Cooper. And I feel like it right now. You'll report to the detention room tomorrow right after supper. Two hours. The first hour for disobeying the rules. The second hour for swearing.”

Cooper made for the cookies.

“No cookies for you, Mr. Cooper. You're late and it's time to go up to your dormitory.”

I pocketed my last cookie, put my plate and glass on the counter. We single-filed out of the cafeteria and up three flights of stairs to the dormitory. Cooper fell in beside me.

“Here,” I said. I handed him the cookie.

“Thanks.” Gone, in one bite.

“Locker room, gentlemen. Time for showers and bed.”

“What's the routine?” This was a pudgy little kid, brush-cut brown hair, glasses, still sweating and flushed from running up and down the gym chasing Mather.

“The routine, Mr. Klemski?” said Brother Wilbur. “The routine is, you get out of your clothes and into the shower. Then you dry yourself off and get into your pajamas and get into bed. Can you handle that, Mr. Klemski?”

Klemski nodded.

“Well, then, get moving.”

Klemski and the rest of us got out of our clothes and walked naked down the locker room and into the shower room. Brother Wilbur stood in the doorway. Across from him was a table piled with towels. You had to inch between Wilbur and the table to get into the showers. The shower room was long and narrow, white tiles on the floor and the walls.

“Let's get to it, gentlemen.”

A priest showed up in the doorway. Black hair. Big shoulders. Big hands.

“I'll take over here, Brother.”

You could tell Brother Wilbur wasn't expecting this. He had a kind of what-the-hell look on his face, like he'd just been outranked.

“Yes, Father Prince. Of course.” Wilbur made himself scarce. Father Prince took over in the doorway. “Let's go, gentlemen. We don't have all night.”

We were all sizes, all shapes: thin kids and tubby ones, scrawny ones and muscled ones. And what seemed to matter most to Father Prince came in every size and shape as well: stubby ones and dangly ones, short and long, circumcised and not.

We soaped and scrubbed. He watched. It gave me the creeps. Capital C.

“That'll do, gentlemen. Turn off the water.”

One by one we shut the water, grabbed a towel and started heading for our lockers.

“Towel off here,” said Father Prince. “Drop your towels in the hamper, then go to your lockers and get your pajamas.”

He watched us the whole while.

I pulled my bag from my locker, unzipped it. Right on top, a note from Cooper.
You're right. Nothing worth stealing. But you shouldn't trust anyone in a place like this.

I looked across the aisle. Cooper had the last locker on the far side of the row. He was pulling on his pajama bottoms. I held up the note. He smiled. I got into my pajamas and shoved the duffel bag back into the locker, hoped Cooper was right about nothing worth stealing.

“Let's go, gentlemen.”

We single-filed out of the locker room, down the steps, across the landing, into the dormitory and into our beds. Father Prince switched off the lights. The door clicked shut behind him.

A couple of minutes later, from one of the beds near the door: “No jerkin' off, boys.” Laughter. Someone was bouncing on his bed, making the springs squeak. More laughter. Then the place quieted down. A little later someone was snoring.

I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling that was bathed in a red glow from the exit sign over the door at the end of the dorm.

My mind was buzzing. Bad thoughts. I could have killed Henry. I should have killed him the first night he slept over at our house. Smug bastard. The look on his face when it became obvious he was there for the night, that he was going to be pulling back the covers on my father's side of the bed and getting in beside my mother. A kind of so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it smirk on his fat face.

What the hell was my mother thinking, shacking up with a car-salesman goof like him? What the hell was my father thinking, walking out on us in the first place so he could go screw his secretary, leaving the door open so a snake like Henry could slither right in?

Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad.

I could have killed both of them.

Thanks to them, here I was in some weird school where sicko priests locked people in closets just because they felt like it, told you where to go and how fast.

I had a bad feeling. I was with Cooper. There was no way I was going to last a year. If he was out, I was out with him. B.C. sounded pretty good to me.

I was drifting off, visions of beaches and ocean in my head, when the door opened. I turned to look: the silhouette of a priest, rubber soles squeaking on the floor as he made his way down the aisle between the beds, flashlight in hand. He paused at the foot of every bed, shining the light on the sleeping faces. He stopped at the foot of Cooper's bed just across from mine, two down.

It was Prince.

He ran the light slowly from Cooper's feet to his face, then back down to his feet, then back up to Cooper's crotch. He stood there for a moment, just looking down at Cooper, then flicked off the flashlight, turned and walked back down the dorm and out the door.

Jeezus.

2

BY THE SECOND
week of September, Cooper had become a kind of hero. He was famous for turning up, hair a mess, shirt-tail hanging out, dragging his ass into class a few minutes after the rest of us had settled into our seats, reciting poetry in the hallways and in the yard and even in the john, staying by himself — one of the
“
vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods
” — as much as it was possible to stay by yourself in St. Iggy's.
He became a pro at getting detentions.

“Mr. Cooper?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you mean to say, Yes, Father?”

“No.”

“Try saying, Yes, Father.”

Cooper would purse his lips, cross his arms over his chest, slide down in his seat, and the priest would scribble another detention slip to be presented at the door of the detention room, the slip outlining the offense (Insolence, Repeat Offense) and the punishment (Two Hours).

Cooper became the Whiz of Awkward Questions.

Father Bartlett taught religious studies. The Pear, to us. He looked like one. Small little head, hardly any shoulders, mile-wide ass.

One day he was going on about the Jesuits in Upper Canada. He was in his element. Once he got to Brébeuf and Lallemant he was beside himself. He sang the praises of the selfless priests whose only goal was to help the natives and pave the way straight to heaven. The Indians, of course, saw things differently, tied them to stakes, scalped them, poured boiling water over them, sliced up their bodies.

“The brave Brébeuf did not utter a single cry. In fact, he was so brave that after he finally expired the Indians cut out his heart and ate it, hoping that by doing so they might become as brave as this saintly priest.”

Cooper's hand shot up.

“Yes, Mr. Cooper?”

“How do you know that?”

“Know what?”

“That he died without uttering a sound.”

“It's been written by the historians.”

“How did they know?”

“There would have been witnesses.”

“Indians?”

“I would suppose so.”

“And who would they have told their stories to?”

“To whom would they have told their stories?”

“Yeah. To whom.”

“Other priests.”

“My point, exactly.”

“What point is that?”

“The priests would obviously want to paint themselves in the best light. Better a brave Brébeuf dying without a sound than Brébeuf all snotty and crapping himself and begging for his life. What else would the priests write down? It's all just a bunch of church propaganda. It's all bull.”

“That'll be enough, Mr. Cooper.”

It was never enough for Cooper.

“Another thing,” he said. “What is it with you guys and bones?”

“What bones?”

“Brébeuf's bones. The priests who came to get his body boiled him. Boiled him, for God's sake!”

“Careful, Cooper.” The Pear gave him the Big Furrowed Brow.

“Kept his skull and bones,” said Cooper. “Put them on display somewhere and now people pray over them. If the Indians did that you'd call them savages.”

That was it for Cooper. Again.

“Step outside, Mr. Cooper.” Cooper stood up, collected his books and followed The Pear out the door. Whistles and applause. Then we heard the door of the time-out room close. And then, kind of echoey, Cooper's voice.

“You want to check your brains at the door, be my guest. But don't expect me to buy that bullshit.”

No one saw Cooper again until supper time.

He was a regular in the time-out room. Two or three times a week. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for an entire morning. One week, Father Dyer locked him up in the middle of the last period in the afternoon — “What kind of nitwit could possibly believe that Mary was a virgin?” — and left him there until lights out, when Father Dunlop looked around the dorm and wondered, “Where's Cooper?” Cooper came out grinning, and he was even grinning when Dunlop made him go back and mop up the puddle of piss he'd left behind.

Cooper and me were hanging around just about every day. Laughed and joked, went out and had smokes together. Talked a blue streak.

One afternoon we were sitting on a bench out in the yard.

“What do you want to do, Teddy?”

“Do?”

“With your life.”

“Paint and draw,” I said.

“Be an artist?”

“I guess.”

“How come?”

“It's the only thing I'm any good at.”

“What kinds of things do you draw?”

“Boats, cars, houses, beaches, farm fields. Whatever catches my eye.”

“People?”

“Sure.”

“Me?”

“I've already done you. Maybe a dozen times.”

“You shittin' me?”

I opened up one of my notebooks, flipped the pages until I found a sketch of Cooper that I'd done in the margin.

“Here.” I turned the book so he could see himself.

“Not bad,” he said. “Even looks a little like me.”

“Fuck off.” I flipped through the notebook, found a few other sketches of him — some in profile, some full face, one showing just his eyes.

“I always thought I was kind of weird looking. On account of my eyes.”

“You're not weird looking, Cooper.”

“Do you think I'm good looking?”

“You're not the ugliest kid at St. Iggy's.”

He smirked, reached over and gave me a shove. Almost sent me off the end of the bench.

Squirrely eyes or not, Cooper was becoming everybody's favorite at St. Iggy's. Even Mather and Grainger and the other jocks who thought at first he was some kind of poetry-­reading pansy dink now thought he was about the coolest thing since sliced bread. Anyone tried to mess with him, Mather and his jocks would move right in and defend him.

Anyone except the priests. There wasn't much anyone could do about them, and they had it in for Cooper. Capital I.F.C.

Cooper almost seemed to like it. “You got a bull's-eye on your back, wear it proudly.” He was always the last kid in dorm to haul his scrawny ass out of bed in the morning. When the priest of the day flicked the lights on sharp at six and hollered, “Rise and shine, ladies,” most of the kids jumped right out of bed. A few would moan and groan and complain but then they'd get up, too, doing their best to hide their early-morning boners behind crossed hands.

And then there was just one lump left in one bed.

“Mr. Cooper, would you care to join us for our morning routines?” A grunt. Sometimes a fuck off if he felt like spending the morning in The Dungeon.

Most mornings, though, he would haul the covers up over his head and wait until the priest came along and gave him a sharp rap on the crotch with his yardstick.

“Haul it, Cooper. Now!” Cooper would get up as slowly as it was possible to get up, giving the priest in charge the evil eye.

“Beds, gentlemen. You, too, Cooper.”

We had to make our beds military style: plump up the pillow, tuck in the sheets and blankets so there were two neat diagonal creases at either side of the foot of the bed. If there was a wrinkle anywhere on the blanket, the priest would rip the blanket and sheets right off the mattress and dump them on the floor. “Let's give that another try.”

Once the last of the beds had passed inspection, we had fifteen minutes to go to the john, throw some water on our faces, comb our hair and climb into our clothes. Six-thirty we were out the door and heading down the stairs.

“Come along, gentlemen. You, too, Cooper. Time to have a word with The Lord.”

“I'm not feeling particularly conversational this morning, padre.”

“Be that as it may, Mr. Cooper, the Lord may wish to have a word or two with you.”

“He hasn't felt the need so far. And I'm going on fifteen.”

“Patience in all matters, Mr. Cooper. Patience in all matters.”

Chapel was agony. We were all sleepy and hungry and pretty well everyone was dying for a smoke (except the few of us who had made it a habit to get up early and slide into the john, where we cracked open the window and lit up).

“I'm not even Catholic,” I said. “How come I have to go to chapel every morning?”

“We're hoping for miracles, Mr. Clemson. Hoping for miracles. We are praying constantly.”

“Patience in all matters, Father. Patience in all matters.”

—

THE CHAPEL WAS
at the back of the building. There were double oak doors and just inside them a little pot of water that the Catholics dipped their fingers in, making a sign of the cross over themselves. One of many weird things the Catholics did.