Boarding School (52 page)

“Yeah, ya did,” I recalled. “So what is this place you guys brought me to?” I now wanted to hear what had taken place after I had become unconscious.

“Well, it’s a free clinic, I guess. The doc runs this place out of the downstairs of his house here in Newton.”

“We’re in Newton?” I was surprised that they had gotten me so far away from Framingham.

“Yeah,” Frank confirmed.

“Well how the hell did you know about this place?”

Frank then pulled his chair closer to my bed. “Well while we were loading you two into my cousin’s car, Matt filled us in on the stuff I hadn’t already figured out for myself. The thing is, nobody seems to know how big these South Americans or this guy Fatso really is. But we figured if their organizations were anything like the setups we’ve got down in Brooklyn, there was a pretty good chance they’d have people watchin’ for ya at the hospitals. So as soon as we could find a payphone, my cousin called this buddy of his he works with down in New York who’s from this area originally. And right away the guy told us about this doctor he knew in Vietnam who came back home after his hitch was done and opened up this free clinic not too long ago. So while we were driving here like a bat out of hell, the guy in New York called ahead for us. And since Matt told us what your blood type was, the doc had time to get the blood you were going to need.”

“Oh, that’s right. They made us learn each other’s blood type,” I remarked.

“Yeah, so we got you here and then the doc fixed you up. End of story,” Frank concluded.

“Thanks.” I was truly amazed at the effort that everyone had made to keep me alive. And since my life was now an open book, I figured the time had come for me to bring up one other issue. “Ah, speaking of fix, Matt and I have a pretty heavy drug habit goin’, ya know?”

Frank’s expression then seemed to become more serious. “I know, and so does the doctor. Actually I knew it when you were at my place over Christmas and you had cocaine stuffed in those dopey cans of shaving cream.” This was news to me. “Really? How did you figure that out?” “Come on. You’re only thirteen. What do you need with shaving cream?” “I guess,” I admitted. “I don’t know, it had seemed like a clever idea at the time.”

“Anyway, as soon as you’ve done some healing, you guys are gonna have to kick the habit.”

“I know,” I replied as I turned my head away and stared at one of the walls in the room. “I guess I’ve always known.”

“Well,” Frank continued. “Don’t worry about all that stuff right now. Just get some sleep and let my cousin and me worry about everything for a while.

Ok?”

“Ok,” I agreed. Considering the way I felt at the moment, I was happy to turn everything over to Frank.

The next day everything worked out according to the arrangements Frank and his cousin had made for us. The plan was to hide us both in Frank’s cousin’s rabbit hutch of an apartment in Manhattan which was located somewhere on the lower east side. Frank’s mom was there to welcome us with a hot meal when we arrived, and for the rest of the time we were there, she made it a point to come into the city twice a week to bring us fresh home cooking to eat and to store for later.

In those days there were many who sought different and innovative ways to solve social problems. And sometimes these pioneers had to go against convention to achieve their ends. As for my problems, to keep me from ripping out my stitches during withdrawals, the decision was made to keep us both high—we never knew how our doctor pulled this off—until the time came for Doc to pay us a visit in Manhattan a few weeks later so he could remove my stitches. He no doubt broken a few laws to help us in this way, but there were two thirteen-year-old drug addicts who might not have made it through their odyssey if he hadn’t gone the extra mile to help us.

When my wounds were finally healed, it was time then for Matt and me to get off the drugs that the upperclassmen had gotten us hooked on all those many months before. I don’t recall any longer just how long it took for us to get clean again, and I won’t go into the details of what it was like for us as we sweated and shook and wailed and threw up our way back to sobriety. Instead I’ll simply admit that since we were by ourselves most of the time, sometimes I had to hold Matt, other times Matt had to hold me, and still other times all we could do was to hold onto each other. But eventually we did manage to come through our withdrawals and kick our habits. Of course nothing is ever that easy, and in the years which followed Matt had more trouble staying clean than I did. But in that tiny apartment, we were finally able to reclaim our lives.

I’m walking now back to my rental car which I left parked a while ago on what used to be the main drive of my old Academy. I’ve just finished speaking with a very kind woman who lives in one of the three narrow two-story row houses—typical for this area—which now stand on the site where Ulster Hall used to be. She told me that during the many years she’s lived here, men who at one time had attended the Academy will stop every so often at her door and inquire as to what ever happened to the old place. Of course I knew how the Academy had met its demise soon after the event had occurred.

As I reach the driver’s door and extend my hand to open it, I consider for a moment that I’ve gone to a lot of trouble today to be here, so I should allow myself a few more minutes, at least, to see everything I can before I get back on the road. Perhaps a quick look around at what used to be the grounds is what I should do next. From where I’m standing at this moment, I can easily see across the field where I once played soccer in a driving rain storm, the other buildings on the upper campus which, I’m amazed to discover, still remain.

East Hall, my old dormitory, now looks to have been converted sometime ago into a single-family home. But even though this building now seems to serve a higher calling, nothing really about it—on the outside at least—has changed. I can say this because I am amused by the black Pontiac I see propped up on cinder blocks on the building’s front lawn. I’m not going to take any time to examine my thought more closely on this issue other than to suggest that some sort of poetic justice seems to be at work here today. The headmaster’s former house next door seems to be faring about the same. And from where I’m standing at the moment, I can only make out the back side of the second story of the house where the neighbor kid Danny and his family used to live. The woman I just spoke with had thought that Danny had gone off to college when he had gotten older, but she didn’t know anything about him or his family beyond that.

Speaking of a higher calling, as I continue my gaze on around now to my right and look past the spot where the tennis court used to be, I’m looking again back along the drive to where the front entrance used to stand, and to the right of that is the gym, still. From the outside the building looks exactly the same as I remember, but I see it’s now a Baptist church of all things. This, I decide, I have got to see. So I leave my car for the moment and begin to walk along the drive to the building that I came to know so well on a particular night a lifetime ago.

As I walk, I’m thinking now about what it was that Matt and I had finally told our families. We hated to do it, but for our own safety, we had waited to resurface until after summer vacation had begun so there would be no chance for us to be sent back to the Academy to finish out our term. Actually, Frank’s cousin had figured out where my dad’s New York office was located. So when we were ready, Matt and I simply walked into the office and announced to the people there who we were. A secretary who had been familiar with the case of my disappearance took us both immediately into the conference room and helped us then to make our phone calls.

Of course, Matt’s aunt was relieved beyond words to learn that her nephew was alive and safe after being told by the Academy that we had both run away. Matt did explain that the Academy had turned out to be an awful place where we among many other students had been forced into arduous labor for a local business owner so that the school could collect our wages as a way to earn extra money. And he admitted that the situation had become so intolerable that running away and waiting until after the Academy had closed down for the summer seemed to be the only way out for us. But this was as much information about our year in New England as Matt chose to reveal to his aunt. After all, she probably would have found the entire story hard to believe, anyway. For that matter, if we hadn’t lived through it ourselves, I’m not sure that we would have believed it either.

My own phone call to my parents went pretty much the same way. They couldn’t understand why I hadn’t contacted them sooner, but their relief from learning that I was alive and safe ruled their emotions that day. And as we talked, I told them how close Matt and I had become as friends and that on many occasions he had placed my interests above his own. In fact, I made a point to let my parents know that the two of us had become inseparable. Like brothers. Of course they had questions for me later which I had to find ways to answer but like Matt, I saw no reason to make my parents suffer any more than they already had.

The ride, at long last, was over and that secretary wound up offering to my dad to take us in for a few days and help us to get around the city so we could buy ourselves some new clothes, since we had left everything we had owned back at the Academy. It was actually an amazing experience for both of us to behave and be treated once again as ordinary thirteen-year-old boys. Each day we were with this young woman, we spoke on the phone to our families. And in every conversation with my parents, I campaigned on Matt’s behalf. So that by the weekend, Matt and I were both accepting my parents’ invitation to fly to Europe so we could join them for the summer. Interestingly enough, Matt’s aunt was delighted to place her nephew in our care. It seemed that the Hollywood director she had recently begun to date had been counting on her to spend the summer with him on location somewhere in Canada.

I’m now entering through the same door on the front side of the gym that I went through that night when they first brought Matt here. I don’t see anyone at the moment, but the lights are on and the place is open. The pews, the carpeting, the altar at the other end of the room… this is obviously now a church. But I can’t get it out of my mind that this building is really just a gymnasium with a bunch of furniture in it now. As I take a few steps inside, it seems to me all of a sudden as if there might be someone in the back somewhere. It could be interesting to talk with this person for a minute or two, so I begin to make my way along an aisle toward the back of the building. Almost immediately as I walk, I can feel how badly warped the flooring underneath this champagne-colored carpeting still is. And then I stop. Suddenly I don’t feel like talking to anyone anymore. I’ve just flashed back on a memory of Frank making a lay up over where the altar now stands, and the image puts me out of the mood to be sociable. Quickly then I turn around so I can get out of here before anyone can discover me.

After they had tucked us away that first day in that tiny Manhattan apartment, Frank did come back here to finish out his year at the Academy. Matt and I knew we would never be back here again and we could deal with the loss of everything we had owned in exchange for our lives. But the more I thought about it, the more I found the idea of never having my guitar again impossible to bear. Also Matt begged Frank to get the picture of him with his parents from our dresser top. For the rest of that semester, Frank kept to his routine and stayed away from our dormitory. But on the last day, as his cousin waited for him out in front, Frank went into our dorm, unlocked our door with the key we had given him and took the two items we had asked him to bring to us. He nearly got away with it too. But before he could stash our belongings into the Fury’s trunk, he had the misfortune to run into the head waiter.

Well… since the head waiter played guitar also, he knew every guitar player on campus (I think there were five of us). Frank was not one of those who played, so when he saw Frank carrying my guitar, it didn’t take much for the upperclassman to put it all together. With his cousin nearby, Frank was able to get away that day. But before the summer had ended that year, a fire had broken out one night in his mom’s apartment in Brooklyn. Frank had gotten his mother and his little sister out safely as the flames raged through their modest home. But when Frank turned around to go back inside for his grandparents, his mother did everything she could to hold him back while she pleaded with him to stay outside. It was tragic, but his grandparents had lived long lives, she reasoned. And the fire had become too advanced now to make a rescue possible. The woman stated emphatically that there was no way any longer for him to get them out. But Frank broke free from his mother’s grasp and ran back inside anyway. That was the last time Frank’s mother and little sister ever saw the boy alive. Along with his grandparents that night, Frank perished in the flames. The kid who had been such a good friend to me was gone. He had just turned fifteen, and I have not been able to pick up my guitar to play it ever since. Outside once again, I’m looking back now toward the east where I’ve parked. I’ve had enough remembering now, so I begin to walk back toward my car so I can get in it and leave this place for the last time in my life. As I walk, I look once again beyond my car to where Ulster Hall used to stand, and I remember the phone call I made to Jamie the kid who used to live across the cove, from Kennedy Airport right before Matt and I took off for Europe. I had wanted to say good-bye to my friend and to ask him to say so long to Charlie and Danny for me. Jamie was excited to hear from me and was bursting with news he was sure I’d be interested to know. “What is it?” I asked.

It seemed that on a recent night, Ulster Hall had mysteriously caught fire and burned to the ground. “It made a big orange glow that night,” Jamie said as he described the event to me. “My mom and step-dad and I all sat out on our dock in the dark and watched across the water as it burned. It made a big orange glow and lit up the night. I wish you could have seen it. It was really something to watch.”