A Troublesome Boy (8 page)

Dinner time was always quiet on Saturdays. Being cooped up was that much worse after you'd had the afternoon to wander around town with no priests looking over your shoulder.

I was actually glad to go to bed. I pulled the blanket over my head. Must have been asleep in two minutes flat.

Next thing, I heard the dorm door squeak open. I looked out from under my blanket and there was Cooper silhouetted against the light from the landing. The door swung shut behind him. He headed straight for the washroom. He was in there a long time.

I got up and went in. Cooper's feet in the stall at the end.

“Cooper, you all right?” He didn't say anything.

“Cooper?”

“Fuck off. Leave me alone.”

4

ONE DAY, MIDDLE
of October, Cooper and I were out in the yard sitting on the ground, our backs against the wall. We had our jacket collars up against the wind. The sky was just a mass of grumpy-looking clouds, all different shades of gray. Storm clouds.

We were having a smoke before morning classes. Cooper kept flicking his cigarette with the tip of his finger.

“I'll tell you this much. I can't take this place much longer.”

We could see the cars and trucks heading up the hill out of town, heading west.

“We could break out together,” I said. “Head out to the highway, stick out our thumbs. Next thing you know, we'd be at that beach of yours out in B.C.”

“I dream about that beach.” Cooper was flicking the lid of his lighter, snapping it shut, flipping it open. “It's what gets me through my time in The Dungeon. I saw a picture of it once. A rocky beach with big logs all over the place. They float in from the ocean. That's what the people use to build their shacks.”

“They live right there on the beach?”

“Up at the edge of the bush that comes down to the beach. They go surfing and swimming. Spend their days just hanging around doing what they want. They go fishing for their dinner and grow things in clearings above the beach. They get their water from a stream. They don't need jobs because they don't need money. Everything they need they've got right there. Paradise, brother.”

“How long do you figure it would take us to get there?”

“A week if we got lucky with rides, if we got on with a trucker who was heading straight through. Couple of weeks otherwise. But who gives a shit? As long as we're on the road.”

We sat there for quite a few minutes just looking at the cars and trucks disappearing over the top of the hill.

I nudged him with my elbow. “Well, what's keeping us?”

He didn't answer. He lit up another smoke.

He'd just pocketed his lighter when O'Hara and his pack of nitwits came around the corner. O'Hara looked at his buddies and then down at Cooper. Wicked smile.

“How's the Little Prince?”

There are assholes in every school and in St. Iggy's we had more than our share. O'Hara was a grade ten weenie. Parted his hair in the middle and pasted it down on either side with Brylcreem. Way too much Brylcreem. He had a little piggy nose and little piggy eyes. You just wanted to smack him as soon as you saw him.

Cooper looked up at him, and then at the pack behind him. If O'Hara had had any brains he would have shut up and moved on. But when they were handing out brains he thought they said trains and he got on the wrong one.

“Have fun last night?”

Cooper was on him before O'Hara knew what hit him.

I'd never seen Cooper in action before, but he was something to see. O'Hara was a mess of blood and snot and tears, and the blood just seemed to make Cooper go wild. He was kneeling on O'Hara, pinning both arms with his knees and he just hammered him. Left, right. Left, right.

“Enough!”

Who knew where Father Sullivan came from, but he had Cooper by the jacket and hauled him off O'Hara who was blubbering like a baby. Sullivan turned Cooper around so that he was facing him.

“What do you think you're doing?”

“Beating the crap out of him.”

O'Hara had managed to sit up. His nose and mouth were a mess.

“He just jumped me, Father. I was minding my own business and he jumped me. He's crazy.”

“That's not true,” I said. “O'Hara started it.”

“You stay out of this.” Sullivan wasn't in the mood to get to the bottom of things. He just grabbed Cooper by the arm, hauled him inside and shoved him in the nearest dungeon.

O'Hara had managed to get to his knees. I was standing right in front of him. He was wiping his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. He looked up at me.

“What the fuck are you looking at?”

“You, you retard. You make one more smartass crack to Cooper and after he beats the shit out of you, I'll finish you off.”

“Fuck you.”

“You wanna go, right now?” I gave him a swift kick in the ribs. “Let's go. Right now, asshole.” He looked around for his buddies. They had pulled the vanishing act. O'Hara got up and ran for the door.

Such a chickenshit.

I sat back down where Cooper and I had been sitting. I lit up a smoke. My hands were shaking, I was so pissed.

Next thing, I was looking at a pair of size tens and there was Mather.

“What happened?”

“O'Hara was being an asshole.”

“He's always being an asshole. He was born an asshole. Then he took lessons. What'd he do to Cooper?”

I told him.

“That little prick.” Mather turned and walked off.

—

SAY THIS ABOUT
Father Dunlop. He was the easiest guy at St. Iggy's to derail. Ask him a question about geography and no matter what he was intending to do during class, he'd be off on a wild goose chase. We'd take turns seeing if we could keep him off topic for an entire class. We did it twice.

Cooper had twisted my brain talking about his beach. I shot up my hand, asked Dunlop about Vancouver Island.

“It's very mountainous,” he said. “There's a ridge of mountains pretty well from one end of the island to the other. Some pretty big mountains, too. Give me a second.”

He turned to his bookshelf, ran a finger along the spines until he found the book he was looking for. Took another couple of minutes flipping pages.

“Yes,” he said. “It's almost three hundred miles long and about fifty miles across. A pretty big island. The tallest mountain . . .”

There was a knock on the door. Dunlop went over and opened it.

“Ah, Mr. Rozell.” Rozey came in carrying a stepladder.

“This one right here,” said Dunlop, pointing to the dead light over his desk. Rozey set up his ladder.

“Where was I?” said Dunlop.

Someone chirped out from the back. “Vancouver Island.”

Dunlop went on for a few minutes about some of the things he'd done out there: whale watching, fishing, hiking. He'd seen eagles and bears and, just once, a cougar.

Rozey was fiddling with the globe over the lightbulb. There was a little screw thing you had to undo. Then the globe came off. He climbed down the ladder and set it on Dunlop's desk. Then he climbed back up and unscrewed the bulb, climbed back down and set it on the desk.

“How many men does it take to change a lightbulb?” This was Henderson, leaning over and whispering. I shrugged. “One,” he said. “But it could take all day.”

I gave Henderson the glare. Whispered, “Shut up, asshole.”

“You were saying something, Mr. Clemson?”

“No, Father.”

Rozey looked at the bulb he'd taken out, and the one he'd brought to replace it.

“Sorry, Father. I brought the wrong one. I'll be right back.”

Henderson snickered. Rozey headed out the door.

I asked Dunlop about the beaches.

Dunlop watched Rozey go, then turned to face us.

“The beaches. Yes, the beaches. They're mostly pebbles and rocks. They call them cobble beaches. You need to wear running shoes to walk along them. They tend to be piled with driftwood, and during the winter there are wonderful storms. Waves ten, twenty, thirty feet high crashing ashore. They pick up those driftwood logs and toss them around like matchsticks. It's quite a sight.” He paused, and it looked like he was remembering it all from a long time ago.

“You should go there some day, Mr. Clemson. You would be enthralled.”

A couple of the guys at the back giggled. I turned around and told them to shut up. I felt bad for Dunlop. He made himself an easy target with words like that but he was a pretty decent guy. I turned back around and put up my hand.

“Is it true that you can live on those beaches year round?”

“That's what they say. It's a very temperate climate.” He looked at me and smiled. “Thinking about it, Mr. Clemson?”

“Yeah,” I said. “One of these days I might give it a try.”

—

I WAS IN NO
mood for The Pear's religion class. We were talking about God's grand design. I put up my hand.

“Yes, Mr. Clemson.”

“Does anything happen without God knowing about it?”

“No, Mr. Clemson,” said Bartlett. “God knows about everything. Even your innermost thoughts. Which is why you might choose to be careful what you're thinking.”

“So he's spying on us all the time?”

“I wouldn't say he was spying, Mr. Clemson. More like keeping a watchful eye.”

“So he sees everything?”

“Yes, he does. Even the little sparrow who falls.”

“What about when an innocent person is killed. Like accidentally being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe crossing the street and gets hit by a car. Could God have seen that coming?”

“Of course. God sees everything.”

“Well, if the person was innocent, was just walking into it, why wouldn't God save him?”

“God works in mysterious ways, Mr. Clemson. We never really know why he does what he does.”

“Suppose someone who should be protecting you, taking care of you, decides to take advantage of you. Decides to hurt you.”

“Do you have an example in mind?”

“Suppose a father decides to beat up a kid. Does God see that?”

“Yes.”

“Why would God allow that to happen?”

“Sometimes it's difficult to discern God's grand design. We just have to be assured that he knows what he's doing.”

“Even when he lets fathers hurt kids?”

Bartlett got a weird look on his face. “I think we've taken this as far as we can today. It's time to move along. And Mr. Clemson has inadvertently paved the way.” He gave me The Look. “Let's talk about the proper way to pray in order to ensure that the good Lord hears our petitions.”

What a load of crap.

—

“HEY, CLEMSON.” HATFIELD
was running up the hall and then fell in beside me. “Why do bees hum?”

“I have no fucking idea, Hatfield. Why do bees hum?”

“Because they don't know the words.”

“That's horrible, Hatfield.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

We turned the corner and there was Prince standing in the doorway of the gym.

“Move it, gentlemen. We haven't got all day.”

He was always a bastard in gym class, but today was worse than usual. He was barking orders from the time we got into the gym until the time we left. Nothing anyone did was good enough. When he was in a mood like that, all you did was work as hard as you could so you wouldn't give him an excuse to give you a detention or send you to The Dungeon.

It worked for most of us. But it wasn't Klemski's day. Leave it to a prick like Prince to pick on a poor lump like Klemski.

“Grab the rope.”

Klemski looked at the rope, and then at Prince. He knew he was doomed. There was no way he could haul his ass three feet up that rope, never mind get himself all the way to the ceiling and back down.

“Go!”

Klemski gave it his best shot. His face turned pink and then red and almost purple as he tried to haul himself up. His feet never got more than two feet off the mat.

“You're pathetic, Klemski. You know that?”

Klemski didn't say anything.

“Did you hear me, Klemski?”

Klemski dropped to the floor. “Yes, Father.”

“Is that ‘Yes, Father, I heard you,' or ‘Yes, Father, I know that I'm pathetic.' ”

Klemski looked at Prince the way he'd look down the barrel of a loaded gun.

“Both, I guess.”

“You guess?” Prince turned to look for another victim.

My turn. I grabbed the rope and managed to get maybe five feet off the floor before my arms gave out. I dropped to the mat.

“Mr. Clemson.”

I couldn't stand to look at him. It gave me the creeps. I just looked down at the mat.

“Look at me when I'm talking to you, Clemson.”

I looked at him.

“Who said you could stop climbing?”

“I couldn't go up any further.”

“Try again. Now.”

It was even worse this time. I got up three, maybe four feet, and just dangled there.

Prince was in a rage.

“You are all pathetic. All of you. And I won't tolerate an entire class of pathetic weaklings. For the next four weeks we are going to do nothing other than chin-ups, push-ups and sit-ups. You are going to get in shape even if it kills you.”

I dropped to the mat.

“Starting now. Everyone down.”

For the rest of the class we sweated it out. Sit-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, while Prince marched up and down yelling at us and insulting us. It wouldn't have taken much for all of us to jump on him like a pack of dogs.

“Pathetic,” he yelled. “Repeat after me. ‘I am pathetic, Father.'”

We repeated it.

“Louder!”

We hollered it out. He made us keep chanting it until the bell went.

“Get out of my sight!” The veins in his neck were bulging.