A Troublesome Boy (4 page)

The pagans sat at the back, in the pew just inside the door. There were eight of us, including me and Cooper. We got our own personal Brother.

Brothers were sort of like priests, but a notch down. They had brown robes and they didn't get to do the big jobs like working the altar. They were sort of helpers, doing odd jobs like guarding the pagans during chapel. Brother Joe usually got the nod.

I liked Bro Joe. He was probably forty-five or fifty, gray wavy hair and gray beard. A bit simple, but nice. When he wasn't guarding us his main job seemed to be to tend the gardens around the building and feed the birds. All summer and fall he slept out under the trees in a sleeping bag. Someone said he actually slept out there in the winter sometimes. In the morning he'd just be a lump under a drift of snow. Weird, but nice.

Bro Joe never ragged us out like the priests did. If we got a little noisy, started giving each other the elbow, stuff like that, he would just lean forward and look down the row of us and raise a finger to his lips. We didn't like to hassle Joe, so we pretty much behaved.

The Catholics were herded right up front where the priests could keep an eye on them. Chapel was incense and hocus-pocus, all in Latin. I didn't have a clue what any of it meant. I just closed my eyes and went along for the ride.

The Catholics were a lot more trouble than we were, forever smacking each other in the crotch and giving each other the wet finger in the ear, ripping big wet farts. There was hardly ever a chapel service where one of the guard priests wasn't hauling a Catholic out of the pews by the ear and dragging him out the door and into the hall. You could hear the whacks and slaps and the kid hollering out in pain. Then a minute later the kid would come back in all hunched over and red-faced, the guard priest right behind him, shoving him on the back and giving all the other kids one of those you-could-be-next looks.

So far this morning, no serious crimes up in the Catholic section. At the back, we were all pretty much semi-conscious.

The priest in charge was droning along.
“Pater noster, qui es in
 . . .
”

I nudged Bro Joe. “What's he saying?”

“The Our Father,” said Joe. “You know, ‘Our Father who art in Heaven.' You do know that, don't you?” He gave me a kind of sad little look.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I know that one. Backwards and forwards.”

Joe leaned toward me, all whispery. “Did you ever go to church? Before you came here, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah.” I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Truth was I hadn't been in a church in years before I turned up at St. Iggy's.

Joe gave me a little nudge with his elbow. “Here's one for you.”

The priest up front was really getting into it, his voice echoing around the walls and up to the rafters:
“Domine Iesu, dimitte nobis debita nostra
 . . .
”

“What's that mean?”

“Oh, my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell: lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need of your mercy.” Joe gave me a special nudge right there.

“Oh, my Jesus,” whispered Cooper. “Save us from babbling priests. Lead us into the cafeteria so we can get some fucking breakfast.”

Father Sullivan came charging down the aisle, gave Bro Joe a death stare for letting things get out of hand in the pagans' pew, grabbed Cooper by the ear and hauled him up to his feet.

“Jesus, man, you're going to rip my fucking ear off.”

Sullivan's eyes lit right up. I half expected flames to shoot out. He gave Cooper a whack on the side of the head that sent him reeling, then picked him up off the floor and hustled him out the door.

Holy shit. My heart was racing.

“You're going to pay for this outrage, Cooper. You're going to pay dearly.” The doors swung shut.

If Cooper had been cool for another five minutes, he'd have been wolfing down cold scrambled eggs and greasy sausages with the rest of us.

There were four long rows of wooden tables in the cafeteria, wooden chairs on either side, the kind that could be folded up and stacked. On the counter along the one wall were boxes of cereal, stacks of cold toast, jam and peanut butter. A little further on were vats of porridge like gray barf, lumpy and disgusting. Further on, powdered scrambled eggs, warm if you were lucky, but tasteless; sausages that made a pool of grease on your plate and were pretty well always cold.

“What do they do?” Anderson wondered. “Cook all this stuff in the middle of the night and just leave it out?”

I took some eggs and sausage, two slices of toast with peanut butter and jam, headed to our table by the door. We left an empty chair in Cooper's honor. Hatfield put half a piece of toast, minus one bite, on the table.

“A burnt offering for Brother Cooper.” We all laughed.

“One of these days one of these priests is going to kill Cooper,” said Klemski.

“Nah,” said Anderson. “They can't kill him. It'd be against their religion.”

“Against their religion?” said Klemski. “You haven't been reading your history, Anderson. The Catholics are about the most bloodthirsty cult in the history of the world. They've started more wars than the rest of religions combined. Ever heard of the Spanish Inquisition? My God, Catholics have killed millions down through the years. What's one more sniveling little heretic?”

Klemski reached over and picked up the piece of toast that Hatfield had left in Cooper's place.

“He won't be needing this,” said Klemski. “Besides, wasting food is a sin.” He took a bite. “What I don't get is all this love-thy-neighbor and turn-the-other-cheek crap. If they really believed any of that, they wouldn't be beating the shit out of Cooper.”

“You got a point there,” said Anderson, mouth full of toast.

“You are disgusting,” said Hatfield. “No one ever teach you not to talk with your mouth full?”

Anderson laughed, and then coughed. Toast flew everywhere.

“Jesus,” said Hatfield, wiping toast bits off his shirt. “That is so gross.”

“Hatfield! I heard that,” said Brother Wilbur. “Step over here.”

When he came back, Hatfield had a detention slip: Blasphemy. Two hours today, two hours tomorrow. Brother Wilbur had underlined Blasphemy.

“Shit,” Hatfield whispered. “Today is football practice.”

“Mr. Hatfield! Would you mind joining me here for a moment?”

When he came back he had another detention order. Swearing. One hour.

“How did he hear that?” whispered Anderson.

“I can hear through walls, Mr. Anderson. And I can see around corners and I can read minds and I can see in the dark. Something you should all remember.”

The rest of breakfast was pretty quiet. A couple of mushrooms of conversation, the odd dropped knife or fork and a couple of farts. Hatfield came out with one of his terrible jokes.

“What do you call a dog with no back legs and steel balls?”

“I give up,” said Anderson.

“Sparky.”

Groans all around.

Anderson was turning his scrambled eggs over with his fork. The eggs had congealed into one big mass.

“Eggs shouldn't behave like this.”

“The cooks are all retards,” said Campbell. Campbell's hair was so red and wild it looked like his head was on fire. “That's the only problem with the eggs.”

“It's not just that,” said Anderson. “Don't you taste something weird? There's some kind of metallic taste. Not just in the eggs. It's in the sausage, it's in everything.”

“What?” said Hatfield. “You think they're trying to poison us?”

“Not exactly,” said Anderson.

“Then what, exactly?”

“I dunno. Something to mess with the way we think.”

“C'mon,” said Hatfield. “You don't really believe that, do you?”

“I wouldn't put anything past these bastards.”

“Mr. Anderson!”

Swearing. One hour. That pretty well shut up our end of the cafeteria. We finished our breakfast, except for Campbell who said now everything tasted metallic and he wasn't going to eat again all day.

“Time's up! Trays to the window.”

I wrapped up my toast in a paper napkin, opened a button, shoved it inside my shirt.

“Saving for a rainy day?” said Klemski.

“Something like that.”

After breakfast we had clean-up. Brush your teeth, comb your hair, make yourself presentable if possible. Then we had half an hour before classes. Some guys finished their homework. Most of us headed outside. Klemski turned toward the stairs leading up to the dorm. I turned the other way.

“Where you going?” said Klemski.

I patted my shirt. “Got a little errand.”

“Jeezus,” whispered Klemski. “They catch you, you're dead.”

I took the back stairs to the second floor. There were two time-out rooms by the chapel, one on either side of the hall. I opened the door on the right. Then I opened the one on the left. Cooper looked up, startled. His face was all red from where Sullivan had shoved him against the pew.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.”

I opened my shirt, pulled out the toast, tossed it to him.

“See you later.” I shut the door, flipped on the light and made for the stairs to the dorm. A little echoey “Thanks” from Cooper.

Five minutes later, Klemski and I were standing in a little alcove outside the back door.

The playing fields — football, track, baseball diamond — were out back, the whole area fenced off, fences lined with the spruce trees where Bro Joe liked to roll out his sleeping bag. It actually looked kind of nice out there and you could imagine for a little while that you were somewhere else, somewhere more or less normal.

A bunch of guys were playing pickup soccer, whooping and hollering and elbowing each other to the ground.

“Heathens.” Klemski definitely could not do sports. He was a pork chop, five feet nothing, had to be close to 180 pounds. One flight of stairs would leave him all sweaty and out of breath. Fat, out of shape, but smart. I loved to get him going.

“What exactly is dogma, Klemski?”

“Dogma is what comes out of your mouth once you've shut off your brain.” Then he was on about priests.

“They've been brainwashed since they've been in diapers. Priests filled their heads with horror stories from the time they were old enough to walk. ‘Do this and you'll go straight to hell. Do this and you'll go straight to heaven.' Now they're doing the same. Organized religion is all about controlling people, making them do what you want. Scare them witless and you have them eating right out of your hand and filling up the collection plate every Sunday. They don't call their followers sheep for nothing, Clemson. That's why they're so keen to get you and me and the rest of the heathens to go to chapel. I don't think they should be able to force us to listen to that crap.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I've written my cousin. He's a lawyer. I asked him to threaten to sue the bastards unless they stop forcing their religion down our throats. I'm expecting his reply any time now.” Klemski had the most amazing grin. Somewhere between smugness and absolute evil. “If you want people to listen to you, you have to speak a language they can understand. Say this about the priests, they certainly seem to understand when you start talking money.”

Then the bell rang.

Classes began at eight o'clock sharp. Four classes in the morning — geography, math, history and English. An hour for lunch and then four more in the afternoon — religious studies, art, gym and science. It was enough to fry your brain.

Geography, math and history passed without incident. No detentions. No one sent off to The Dungeon.

It was too good to last. In English we were studying
Oliver Twist.
Last period before lunch, our stomachs growling.

“Dickens makes great use of symbolism in all his novels and
Oliver Twist
is no exception,” said Father Sullivan. “So perhaps that would be something worth discussing.” Sullivan was tall, white-haired and hefty. Looked like he might weigh about two-twenty. Would've made a good truck driver, or a deckhand.

He was walking with his hands behind his back, but now he stopped at the front of the class and he was giving us the beady eye, searching for a victim.

“Mr. Cruickshank.”

“Yes,” said Cruickshank.

“Yes, Father,” said Sullivan.

“Yes, Father.”

“Let's try that again, standing up, if that wouldn't be too great an inconvenience.”

Klemski and I shot each other glances. This was not going to end well. Looked like Sullivan still had a burr up his ass from chapel.

Cruickshank stood six-two and couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds. He was so skinny it looked like his pants would drop right off him. His face was constantly erupting and he couldn't resist the urge to pick and scratch. He looked like he'd just escaped from the contagion clinic.

“Now, then, Mr. Cruickshank. Have you been reading
Oliver Twist
?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Very good, Mr. Cruickshank. Have you been enjoying it?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Which parts have you particularly enjoyed?”

“The bits where the kids run around stealing.”

“And why do you like those ‘bits,' as you so quaintly call them?”

“The kids are cool.”

“Cool?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Thieving little scoundrels are cool, are they?”

“I think so.”

“And why is that?”

“Because they've had a miserable life.”

Sullivan was on the prowl again. “They've had a miserable life and have turned now to a life of crime.” Sullivan was nose to nose with poor Cruickshank. “And for that, for turning to a sordid life of crime, they are rewarded by Mr. Cruickshank with the description of being ‘cool.' Is that correct, Mr. Cruickshank?”