A Troublesome Boy (9 page)

Jesus God.

—

WE WERE ALMOST
done for the day. Father Dyer was humming on about the periodic table. Another twenty minutes to go, then free time in the yard, except for the guys who'd gotten detentions.

Suddenly, the fire alarm started ringing. Dyer was startled, looked up at the big red bell on the wall as if he didn't quite believe what he was hearing. People herded for the door.

“Single file! Single file!”

By the time we got down two flights and out the door, we could hear the sirens. A few guys cheered and whistled. This was definitely better than the periodic table. Before Dyer got out the door, we were all around at the front of the building — all two hundred of us — cheering and applauding when the fire trucks arrived. The priests were doing their best to get us to stand back, as if maybe the whole building might blow up before our eyes. Father Stewart was standing near the front doors, waiting for the fire crew.

“The basement,” he said. “The laundry room.”

The firemen hooked up their hose to the hydrant on the front lawn and headed inside. They were in there quite a while. We all just stood around. There was the usual pushing and shoving and screwing around. The priests were too preoccupied with the fire to worry about us.

The firemen opened a couple of basement windows and smoke started pouring out.

Finally the smoke thinned out. A little while after that, the firemen emerged.

Whistles and applause. It took them a while to roll up their hoses. The chief was over by the front door talking with Stewart. We couldn't hear what they were saying. Stewart shook the chief's hand and watched him go. Then he looked at us.

“Everyone into the gym. Now!”

Cooper and I were way back at the end of the line, and the line was just inching along. No one was in a hurry to hear whatever Stewart had to say.

I nudged Cooper, nodded to my left. Mather and Grainger rounded the corner. A couple of minutes later, O'Hara came around the end of the building, heading for the line. What Cooper had started, Mather and Grainger finished. O'Hara's left eye was swollen shut. His mouth was all bloody.

Brother Wilbur spotted him, grabbed him by the shoulder. “What happened to you?”

“I fell.”

People started laughing. Brother Wilbur gave us the evil eye. “Keep moving, gentlemen.” He turned back to O'Hara. “Go to the infirmary. Get yourself looked at.”

O'Hara shook his head. “I'll be all right.”

Wilbur shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He went up the line, trying to get the guys to put a move on.

I turned to look at O'Hara. “Every asshole gets his due,” I said.

O'Hara gave me The Look with his one good eye. Didn't say anything.

Ten minutes later we were all in the gym, standing at attention. Stewart stood up on the stage. His face was almost purple.

“We are going to hear confessions, gentlemen. Starting with the junior grades and working our way up. Grade nine students will go first. The rest of you will remain here. Those who are not Catholic will go with Brother Joseph to the study hall. We will deal with you in due time.”

“They can't do this,” said Klemski. He was huffing and puffing his way up the stairs behind me, speaking in a whisper. “Confessions are supposed to be confidential.”

“What's the chance no one will confess to setting the fire?” I said.

“Hundred per cent.”

“Which means?”

“The pagans are about to be in deep shit.”

Klemski was right, as usual.

Stewart came into the study hall about an hour after we'd left the gym. He marched up the middle aisle, then turned to face us.

He was pissed. Capital P.

“Well, gentlemen. It wasn't one of us. Which means it must be one of you. Who threw the cigarette down the laundry chute?”

No hands went up. Stewart took his time, glaring at one face after another. Still no volunteer.

“We have all the time in the world, gentlemen. You will remain here until the culprit confesses. If it takes all night, so be it.”

It took all night.

Try that some time. Sitting on a hard seat attached to a desk. You can slide down until the back of your head is almost resting on the back of the chair, but ten minutes of that and the back of your head is killing you. Then you can sit up straight and just stare at the board and then you can cross your arms on your desk and put your head down. But you can't do any one of them for more than fifteen minutes.

The priests knew all about torture. Must've learned from the Indians who put Brébeuf through his final paces.

But after a couple of hours in study hall, it wasn't the priests I was thinking of killing. It was Henry, that son of a bitch.

I was trying to remember how Henry had managed to squirm his way into our lives in the first place, creepy bastard. One day it's me and Mom and Dad. Then I'm twelve and there's a big scene in the middle of the night and my dad disappears and it's just me and Mom. Then I'm thirteen and Henry's plumping his fat ass down on the sofa and telling me to get him a beer.

“Get your own beer.” I headed for my room, slamming the door. He let it pass. But a few months later he'd hung his salesman suits in my father's closet and slipped into my father's side of the bed. He had Mom wrapped around his finger, the one with the big fake diamond pinkie ring.

From then on it was two against one. I spent all the time I could out of the house, hanging around at friends' places, around downtown, in the park. I came home late and left early. The less I saw of Henry and my mother the better. I wouldn't say two words to Henry if I could help it. I froze the bastard right out. But it was only a matter of time before he figured out how to get me out of the house entirely. Scheming, weaselly little bastard. What my mother saw in him with his little salesman's moustache and salesman's paunch and crappy checkerboard salesman's clothes was anyone's guess.

Beats me how she could go from being married to my father to letting a slug like Henry move in. But six months after he first started coming around, he showed up with all his stuff in boxes and bags. I sat there with my feet on the coffee table, a bag of chips in my lap, reading a hot rod magazine. Just watched him huff and puff his way up and down the stairs.

When he was all done, he came over and grabbed my feet and pushed them off the table.

“You don't do that in my house,” he said.

I looked at him and then at my mother. She didn't say a word.

Since when did a boyfriend count more than your own son?

I could still hear his voice coming down the phone line like a bullet: “No.” And I could just see his smug little smile as he hung up the phone. I could see him turning to my mother with a shrug: “Wrong number.”

He could shove the phone where the sun don't shine.

But the one who really pissed me off was my father. Where'd that bastard get to, anyway? Me and Cooper had that much in common. Disappearing fathers.

I wondered if vanishing fathers ever stopped for a minute before they dropped their drawers and jumped into bed with their new girlfriends and thought about how they were totally screwing the lives of everyone they were leaving behind. I had a hard time imagining that my old man ever gave me a second thought. But there wasn't a day went by that I didn't wish I could see him. And there wasn't a day that I didn't think how much I'd love to kill him as soon as I laid eyes on him.

“Bastard.”

“Who's a bastard?” Cooper had snuck up on me. I was standing at the windows at the end of study hall. I could see the lights of the cars heading west on the highway out of town.

“My father, for one,” I said. “And my mother's sorry excuse for a boyfriend.”

“My old lady was a magnet for losers,” said Cooper. “They just seemed to crawl out of the sewer and show up at our place all tattoos and B.O. One night I woke up and one of those jerks was in my bed, groping me. I was, like, maybe six years old. I started to struggle, tried to get away and he said, ‘One word out of you and I'll kill you,' and I knew he meant it and I had to just lie there and let him do it to me, had to bite my pillow so I wouldn't scream. I was shitting blood for a week after that.”

“Holy shit, Cooper.”

We stood there for another minute. Cooper was looking out the window.

“Does it ever piss you off?” I said.

“Does what piss me off?”

“How your life turned out.”

“Every day,” said Cooper. “I can't figure it out. I was only a little kid when my life went all to shit. How bad could I have been to deserve all this? I swore a lot. I set a fire once.”

“You didn't deserve it.”

“So why all the shit raining down on my head? Some kids wind up in nice homes with nice families. You and me, we wind up in St. Iggy's? What is it, luck of the draw?”

“I guess.”

“Well, I wish they'd reshuffle the deck. Let me pick another card.”

He was still looking out the window. It was so dark you couldn't really see the highway except when a car went up the hill, tail lights winking and blinking out of sight.

“What I wouldn't give to be in one of those cars.” He didn't say anything more for a few minutes. Just kept on looking out the window.

“I thought you were getting out of here, end of September,” I said. “What happened?”

“Things changed.”

“What things?”

“Things.” He walked away, went back to his desk, put his head down on his arms. A few of the other guys were doing the same, but a couple of them had given up on desks and stretched out on the floor. Eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.

I went back to my desk, put my head down and somehow managed to fall asleep.

Stewart marched in at six in the morning.

“Would the guilty party be willing to admit to setting yesterday's fire?”

No volunteers.

“Very well. Go now and get ready for the day. You will go to classes and at the end of classes you will return to the study hall and you will stay here again all night. You can blame the criminal among you for your discomfort.”

Cooper shot up his hand.

“Well,” said Stewart. “An honest man at last.”

“Did it cross your mind that one of your Catholics might have lied in confession?”

Stewart's face went red. “That's completely out of the question, Cooper, and if you were a Catholic you would understand that.”

“They lie about all sorts of other things. Why wouldn't they lie about setting a fire?”

“I won't grace that with a response, Cooper.” And he stormed out.

We slept in study hall for four nights running. Stewart finally gave up.

—

THE THING ABOUT
St. Iggy's was you could never tell when the sky would start to fall. You knew it was going to happen, but you could never quite tell what would set things off.

All it took the last Saturday in October was bigmouth bully Patrick Stewart picking on his favorite target, Zits Cruickshank. Stewart was a no-neck body-builder senior who was always making life miserable for everyone in grade nine. Zits was gangling his way down the main hallway, head down, a stack of books under his arm. Stewart was coming the other way. He was looking right at Zits and you could tell by the smirk on his face that he had Zits in his sights.

When he got beside Zits, Stewart punched the stack of books Zits had under his arm. Books went flying everywhere.

Zits looked up.

“You fucking sonofabitch, Stewart.” Cruickshank looked at his books all over the floor and just lost it. He took a swing at Stewart and missed. Then Stewart took off and Zits took off right behind him. Stewart rounded the corner into the main hallway. You could hear his laughter echoing off the walls as Cruickshank chased him down the hall toward the main office. “Stewart, you fucking prick. I'm going to kill you, you cocksucker.”

Which is exactly the moment Father Stewart came out of his office to see what all the noise was about. Cruickshank just about ran right into him. Looked like he wanted to die. His eyes were wide open and his face was red and his pimples were flaming.

“That's the filthiest language I have ever heard. I will not tolerate that kind of language in my school, Mr. Cruickshank.” He was standing chest to chest with Cruickshank.

It looked like Cruickshank was going to burst into tears. “Stewart knocked my — ”

“We're not talking about Mr. Stewart. We are talking about you and your filthy mouth. Drop your trousers.”

“What?” Cruickshank looked at Stewart. He knew exactly what was coming next. We all did.

“Drop your trousers. Now!”

Cruickshank fumbled with his belt, undid the buckle, undid the button, undid his fly, held on to his pants by the waistband.

“Father, I . . .”

“Drop them!”

Cruickshank let go of his pants. They dropped to his ankles.

“Your shorts.”

“Father, please . . .”

“Drop your shorts. Now!” Stewart's voice echoed down the hall. Stewart pulled the strap from the pocket in his robe. Cruickshank looked at the strap, then at Stewart. His eyes started to well up. He opened his mouth to say something, but then just dropped his shorts.

“Turn and put your hands against the wall.”

“Please, Father, don't . . .”

“Put your hands against the wall.”

Cruickshank turned, put his hands against the wall.

“Lower.”

Cruickshank lowered his hands so that he was bent at the waist, leaning against the wall. Stewart reached back and swung, caught Cruickshank square on the ass. Sickening sound. Cruickshank screamed. Stewart hit him again and again, raised his hand to hit him once more and Cruickshank screamed again.

“Shut up,” said Stewart and brought the strap down even harder. Cruickshank was wailing, couldn't help himself. It just seemed to make Stewart even madder, lashing and lashing until Cruickshank finally just crumpled to the floor, curled up and held his hands over his ass.