A Troublesome Boy (6 page)

I was lucky. Dyer remembered where he'd put me, but I'd missed supper.

“Sorry about your luck, Mr. Clemson. But breakfast isn't that far off.” I could have killed him on the spot with my bare hands. “Off to bed, Mr. Clemson. Sweet dreams.”

I made a beeline for the john. From there, straight to the phone booth on the main floor, just across from the office. I stepped in and shut the door, picked up the receiver and waited for the operator.

I told her I wanted to make a collect call. I wanted to tell my mother about Sullivan. I wanted to tell her about The Dungeon and the freaky priests sneaking around the dorm with their flashlights late at night. I wanted to tell her to spring me out of this madhouse before someone killed me, or I killed someone.

I gave the operator our number.

“Your name?”

I told her, and waited. The phone rang twice. Henry answered.

“You have a collect call from Teddy Clemson. Will you accept the charges?”

“No.” Henry hung up.

“I'm sorry sir, but — ”

I hung up.

“Bastard.”

—

I WAS JUST
in time for showers. Same routine as usual. Prince standing guard in the doorway between the locker room and the shower room. Same drooling look in his beady little eyes.

He was a creepy, creepy man. When you had your back to him it was almost as if you could feel his eyes on your ass. When you turned around, it was worse.

“He's always crotch-shopping,” Klemski said one day out in the yard. “It's like he's at the buffet, deciding which dish to try.”

“Yum, yum,” said Anderson.

We laughed. Nervous laughs. That was out in the yard. Nobody laughed in the showers.

Forty minutes after showers, most of the kids sleeping, those same creepy rubber-soled footsteps that I heard every night, flashlight scanning each bed.

Then he came to Cooper's bed. He tapped Cooper with his yardstick, whispered, “Come with me.” Waited. When Cooper didn't move, Prince tapped him harder. “Come with me, Cooper. Now.”

Cooper threw off the covers, reached under the pillow for his glasses, put them on, stood up and followed Prince out of the dorm, bare feet slapping the floor.

The door swung shut behind him.

3

SEPTEMBER CAME AND
went. You couldn't say the same for Cooper. Middle of October, he was still ghosting around, but he wasn't the same Cooper. Ever since Prince started calling him out at night, he'd changed. Sometimes he'd hang around, sometimes he wouldn't. Sometimes he'd talk, other times you couldn't get two sentences out of him. Go out of your way to find him, sit with him and have a smoke, you never knew which Cooper you were going to find.

“You okay, Cooper?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm fine.”

Lousy liar. Even Saturdays didn't cheer him up, and Saturday was the best day of the week. Saturday morning was like any other morning — wake up, chapel, breakfast — except after that we had two hours of study hall and then we were free until supper time.

You could tell Saturday was different as soon as the guard priest opened the door and flipped on the lights. By then some guys had already finished making their beds and were half dressed. Cooper, though, was still just a lump under the covers. The priest — The Pear this morning — gave him a rap on the ass with his yardstick.

“Rise and shine, Mr. Cooper.” Cooper mumbled something. Bartlett grabbed the blanket that Cooper had hauled over his head and ripped it right off the bed. “Up, Mr. Cooper. Now!”

Fifteen minutes later, The Pear was marching us to a classroom just down the hall from the chapel.

“Enjoy your reflections,” he said. “Brother Joseph will be along presently. And I'd better not hear a sound out of this room.” He shut the door.

Klemski's cousin had come through. Thanks to a letter from him threatening legal action, Klemski didn't have to go to religion class anymore, and the rest of the pagans got sprung from chapel.

“Thanks, Klemski. This is just great.” This was Campbell, slouching in his desk, chewing a toothpick. “Now we get to sit here and stare at the blackboard for half an hour. At least in chapel we could listen to all that weird stuff they chant.”

“That's exactly the point,” said Klemski. “They want you to start to like all that weird shit. And as soon as you start asking questions about it, wham.” He slammed his palm against the desk. “They spring the trap.”

“What trap?”

“The conversion trap, you moron. Ask a couple of questions, then it's, ‘Well, Mr. Campbell, if you'd care to learn more, we'd be happy to instruct you.' Next thing you know you'll be carrying beads around and crossing yourself and praying to plaster statues.”

“Hey, Klemski.” This was Hatfield at the back of the room.

“What?”

“If your cousin can spring us out of chapel, how come he can't spring you out of this hellhole?”

“My mother told him to leave me right where I was. Said maybe the priests could work a miracle. Get rid of my shitty attitude.”

“Doesn't seem to be working so far.”

Cooper was at the back of the room working on his nails. He'd been doing it for a couple of weeks. Not nibbling. Biting and chewing like a madman. His nails were right down to the quick and he was still going at them. Now he was working on the skin around the edges. His fingers were a mess — red, raw and bleeding.

“Jeezus, Cooper, what are you doing?”

He gave me a spacey look. “Huh?”

“Your fingers.”

He looked down at them, turned his hands over and curled his fingers so they were all in a row. Inspected them. Found one to his liking and began working on it, gnawing at the skin at the top of the nail.

I slid into the desk beside his. He made like he hadn't noticed, but then a minute or so later he looked at me.

“What's the worst thing you ever did?”

“Jeezus, Cooper, where do you get these questions? Give me a minute.”

“If you take more than a minute, you're bullshitting me. The worst ones are right at the front of your brain. Can't ever forget them.” Gave me the old Cooper grin. Went back to nibbling one of his fingers. “Go on,” he said, “I promise not to be shocked.”

“One time, I beat the shit out of a kid who was half my size.”

“Not bad,” said Cooper. “What else?”

“I dunno.”

“Yes, you do.”

“How do you know?”

“You had to do something worse than that.”

“All right, smartass. What's the worst thing you ever did?”

“I cursed God,” said Cooper.

“Why?”

“For giving me such a shitty life.” That grin again.

“You get hit by a bolt of lightning, or what?”

“Nope. But the shit's been raining down on me ever since.” He gave a little shrug. Then he put his head down on his arms and made like he was having a nap.

For the next half hour we just killed time. Hatfield tried another of his lame jokes.

“What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?”

“Beats me,” said Klemski.

“A stick.” Hatfield put himself in stitches.

“Jeezus, Hatfield,” said Campbell. “That is truly awful.”

A couple of guys were playing cards. Some were reading. A few had their heads down on their desks, trying to get a little more sleep. Bro Joe came from wherever he'd been.

“All right, boys. Chapel's over. Chow time.” We let out a little cheer and herded for the door.

Same crappy food. I was looking forward to lunch — one of Freddy's burnt bus-stop burgers and one of Rita's shakes — so I just went with a couple of pieces of toast. The toast was cold and limp.

Jeezus. You'd think they could at least get the toast right.

“Mind?” I said. I was standing beside Cooper, eyeing the chair beside his.

“Be my guest.”

I put my tray beside his and sat down.

He was pushing his eggs around the plate with a fork. He'd chewed the corner off a piece of toast, had maybe a mouthful of eggs. That was it.

“What's up, Cooper?”

He turned, one eye focused on me, the other one looking over my shoulder. He looked back down at his food. Started shoving the eggs around again.

“I was thinking about my dad,” he said. “On my tenth birthday my dad was supposed to come and get me. We were going fishing. I was so excited I could hardly sleep. I kept getting up to check my tackle box. Open it up, move things around, close it up. I had the box and my rod by the door of my room for a week before my birthday. That morning I got up around six, got dressed, carried everything out to the front step.

“I was still there at noon. My mother yelled at me to come in out of the sun before I fried my brains. ‘That useless piece of shit ain't comin', Timmy. Get your ass in here.' She didn't even wish me happy birthday. Probably didn't even know it was my birthday. One day just drifted into the next for her, all a blur of drugs and booze and boyfriends. Then one day the cops came and took her and her loser friends away. That was it for home. It was foster homes after that, and then group homes, and then here.”

“Your old man never came back?”

“Never saw him again.”

“Your mom?”

“Haven't seen her in maybe two years. She asked to see me one time. My worker took me over. Mom was flaked out on the couch. No shirt, no pants, just her panties. Bottles and pizza boxes all over the place. Some guy passed out buck naked on the floor. The worker got me out of there in a hurry, said, ‘That's no place for you, honey.'”

He dropped his fork on top of the eggs, shoved the plate away.

“No one's gonna miss me when I'm gone,” he said, almost in a whisper.

Sometimes when people say things like that they're looking for sympathy, hoping you'll say something dumb like, ‘Hey, that can't be true.' But the look on Cooper's face left you with nothing to say because you just knew from the look of him that it was true.

How come a nice kid like Cooper wound up with such assholes for parents?

Cooper pushed his chair back and stood up. Didn't even grunt goodbye.

I finished my toast. Took my time. Cooper wouldn't be too hard to find. Fifteen minutes later, there he was down on his haunches, ass about an inch above the pavement, back against the school wall, him and Wordsworth. He was scribbling something in the margin. Closed the book when I sat down beside him.

I lit him a smoke and handed it over, lit one for myself.

“You're welcome,” I said.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Dick the size of mine, that's a bit tricky.”

He smiled. “Thanks.” He drew on his cigarette. “Sorry,” he said. “I'm not in a very good mood.”

“I noticed.”

“I've been thinking about a lot of bad stuff.”

“Your parents?”

“Them. And other stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Stuff,” he said.

“Wordsworth help?”

“Wordsworth always helps.”

He smiled again. Fiddled with his cigarette.

“Where'd you get that book?”

“Teacher gave it to me. Ed Stevens. Back in grade seven. He was our homeroom teacher. He was really neat. He'd come into class in the morning reciting poetry. You could hear him coming down the hall. Some of the kids made fun of him at first. But after a while, everyone just shut up and listened for him. By the time he walked into the class, the only sound was the sound of his voice. He had a great voice.” Cooper dropped his voice down. “Like this.” He laughed. “He was amazing. He knew all kinds of stuff off by heart. It made you want to read it, just listening to him. Wordsworth was one of his favorites.

Be now forever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind . . .”

“What is that?”

“It's from
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
. It was one of Mr. Stevens' favorites. He kept reciting bits of it and I kept bugging him to recite more. Finally he just tossed me his book. I took it home and must've read it twenty times that night. Next day I came in and started reciting it. I went to give his book back and he just shook his head. ‘It's your book now,' he said.

“The worst thing about that year was, they moved me from one foster home to another and I had to switch schools. Came and got me on a Friday. Monday I was in a new school. I never even got to say goodbye to him.” Cooper tossed his cigarette and put his head down on the book on top of his knees.

“Jeezus,” he said.

“You want to be alone?”

“Yeah.”

I got up and headed for the door.

Cooper was right. About the shit raining down.

—

STUDY HALL WAS
torture. Two hours of read a few pages, look at the clock, read a few more pages, look at the clock. There wasn't a sound in the room except for the swish-swish of Sullivan's robes as he snuck up and down the aisles. No one wanted to give him any excuse to send them to The Dungeon. There was nothing he seemed to love more than to catch at least one culprit and totally put the screws to his Saturday.

No luck today. We were all as good as choirboys and then we were saved by the bell.

Fifteen minutes later, I was at the counter of Rita's diner.

“Hey, there, killer. You've survived?”

“So far.”

“Don't see too many bruises.”

I smiled. “Want me to take my shirt off?”

“I'll take your word for it. What'll it be?”

“One of Freddy's famous burgers and one of your famous shakes. Vanilla. Please.”

“Well, they haven't beat the manners out of you yet.”