Gib Rides Home (4 page)

A couple of hours later, when the potatoes were all peeled and the soup was starting to smell wonderful, the time came for Gib to report back to Miss Berger. On the way upstairs he’d been thinking about trying one last time to get her to look at the eraser marks, but as soon as he saw her face and the way she picked up his test paper like it was something nasty, he gave up. Except for a couple of sideways glances, they walked all the way to the headmistress’s office without even looking at each other.

The office was a large room with a marble fireplace, tall, narrow windows, and, in the center of the room, a big desk with an enormous chair behind it. The woman sitting in the big chair was Mrs. Hansen, all right, but for a moment Gib wasn’t entirely sure. In the year and a half he’d been at Lovell House he’d seen the headmistress many times. A tiny figure in a long, dark skirt and high-necked blouse, saying grace in the dining room or visiting classes, she’d always seemed small and wispy to be such an important person—but now she seemed to have shriveled away to almost nothing. Although he’d heard that Mrs. Hansen had been poorly lately, Gib wasn’t prepared for the change. He was trying to keep his face from showing his surprise when he became aware of Miss Berger’s jittery voice saying, “I’m sorry to bother you about this, ma’am, but I was just so shocked I couldn’t think what else ...

Miss Berger’s voice trailed off as she brought out Gib’s spelling paper, unfolded it daintily with the tips of her fingers, and spread it out on the desk. “There it is, ma’am,” she said, pointing and blushing. “There, plain as day, on Gibson’s spelling test. I just can’t tell you what a shock it was. Never in my whole life—”

“Yes, yes. I see.” Mrs. Hansen’s voice was weak, but it still had a no-nonsense, headmistressy sound to it. “Thank you, Miss Berger. We’ll handle this now. You may leave if you wish.”

Until Miss Berger had fluttered out the door, Gib’s attention had been so concentrated on Mrs. Hansen that he’d been only vaguely aware of the other person in the room. Although he’d seen her only once or twice, he knew it was the new teacher, Miss Offenbacher. A tall, top-heavy woman, with thick braids that coiled around her large face like fat gray snakes, Miss Offenbacher was the sort of person who stayed in your mind, like a chunk of something dry and painful that sticks in your throat no matter how hard you try to swallow.

According to Miss Mooney, Miss Offenbacher had come to Lovell House to teach history and mathematics, and to help in the office until Mrs. Hansen felt better. And Miss Mooney also said that Miss Offenbacher was a fine teacher and Lovell House was lucky to get her.

Miss Mooney had told the truth—as far as she knew, anyway. Gib had heard some things from the older boys about their new teacher, and he could see for himself how Miss Offenbacher was helping out in the office: helping Mrs. Hansen decide what should happen to Gibson Whittaker for letting Elmer Lewis get ahold of his spelling test.

As Gib sidled closer to the desk he could see his test right there in front of Mrs. Hansen. And he could also see, plain as day, the rubbery marks that Elmer’s eraser had left behind. He wanted to point out the marks and say how he’d seen Elmer take the new kid’s eraser, but the moment he started to talk Miss Offenbacher cut him off.

Sounding shocked and angry, she said, “Just a moment, young man. You will wait to speak until you are asked.” So Gib backed off and waited—and waited some more. But nobody ever asked him anything.

Instead Miss Offenbacher went on jabbing her finger at the spelling test and whispering in Mrs. Hansen’s ear. Gib didn’t hear everything she said, but when Miss Offenbacher finally finished, Mrs. Hansen leaned her head against the chair’s high back, closed her eyes, and said in a worn-out voice, “Yes, I’m sure you’re right, Miss Offenbacher.” She opened her eyes briefly, looked at Gib, and went on. “Do as you see fit.”

And so Gib, instead of just missing out on the potato soup, did as Miss Offenbacher saw fit, and paid his first visit to the Repentance Room.

A
LL THE WAY UP
the three flights of stairs, grand marble, shiny hardwood, and then the narrow, creaky flight that led to the fourth floor, Miss Offenbacher kept a firm grip on Gib’s shoulder. A hard, tight hold, as if she was expecting him to try to break away and make a run for it.

To tell the truth, it probably wouldn’t even have crossed Gib’s mind to run if the grip on his shoulder hadn’t made it clear that he was expected to. But even after he thought about it, he didn’t come close to trying. For one thing, he couldn’t think of anyplace to run to, and for another, he was still hoping he could get the new teacher to listen about the erasure marks. But every time he started, “About Elmer Lewis, ma’am, he—” and then, more desperately, “Ma’am, ma’am. I wasn’t the one who—” she only made a sharp hushing noise and tightened her grip.

So, except for a few chopped-off syllables and some tight-lipped hisses, nothing was said before they reached the entrance to the Repentance Room.

The first thing Gib noticed was the sign on the door. In fancy curlicued letters on shiny new paper it said,
Except ye repent ye shall perish
. And the padlock and hasp on the door looked new, too. Taking a key out of her pocket, Miss Offenbacher opened the padlock, shoved back the hasp, and nodded for Gib to go inside. And when he hung back a little she gave him a hard push.

“All right, ma’am, I’m going,” Gib said, grabbing the door frame and trying to talk as fast as he could. “But I just want to tell you—”

The clawlike grip again fastened itself on Gib’s shoulder and angry red blotches appeared on Miss Offenbacher’s long, rawboned face. Her voice tightened into a stutter as she said, “Young man, it’s obvious to me that what you’ve b-b-been wanting to do is to add to your s-s-s-sins. To add lying and t-tattling to your use of filthy language.” Gib staggered backward, the door slammed shut, and the key rasped in the lock.

Inside the Repentance Room there was nothing but deep, solid darkness. Darker than midnight in winter and—Gib soon discovered—almost as cold. Clutching his arms around his chest and closing his eyes to blind himself to their uselessness, he sank slowly down to a squatting position and stayed that way until at last the cramping cold forced him to move. Forced him to stand up, shake one stiff leg and then the other, and then, as he stretched out his arms, discover that the walls were surprisingly near.

The Repentance Room was no bigger than a large closet. A storage room for linens, perhaps, from which the shelves had been removed so that the entire space was bare and empty, except for what felt like a kind of pad or carpet on the floor. Kneeling down, Gib ran his fingers over the floor covering and decided that it was a small braided rug.

The exploration didn’t take long but somehow it helped a little, as if the worst part had been not knowing what was around him in the darkness and being afraid to find out. But then, when he’d checked out all four walls, there was nothing left to do except wait—and think. Think about what had happened, and what might happen next. Crouched again on the rug with his shoulders hunched against the cold, Gib very soon decided that under the circumstances, thinking about certain subjects only made matters worse.

It was particularly bad, for instance, to do too much thinking about Elmer Lewis, because being really angry had always done uncomfortable things to Gib’s stomach. And at the moment his hungry, growling stomach had enough problems without asking for more.

Another thing not to think about, he decided early on, was breathing. The air in the Repentance Room had a dusty, closed-off feel to it, along with a faint whiff of something really bad-smelling, as if a long time ago some Repentance Room prisoner had been so scared that they’d up and ... But that was as far as he wanted to go with that line of thought.

It was a good bit later, while he was trying not to think about how Miss Offenbacher had told him to wait to speak until he’d been asked, and then never asked him, that Gib suddenly realized he’d forgotten about what he was supposed to be doing. Repenting. He knew, of course, what the word meant. It was a subject that came up pretty often in Lovell House Sunday school classes. But none of the words he remembered seemed to fit very well. For instance, the ones about asking for forgiveness for “what I have done and what I have left undone” didn’t make a whole lot of sense when you weren’t the one who’d done it. But he decided to give it a try anyway.

Kneeling down on the smelly rug, Gib asked God to forgive him for what he had done. Especially for being dumb enough to let Elmer Lewis get ahold of his spelling test. But as for the next part about what he had left undone, the only thing he could think of was what he had so far left undone to Elmer. So, just to be on the safe side, he also asked for forgiveness for what he might do to Elmer later if he got a chance.

Although he stayed on his knees for quite a while, nothing else came to mind except a lot of things he could always feel real sorry about when he let himself. Like being awful sorry, for instance, that he’d forgotten pretty much everything about where he came from and who he used to belong to.

Thinking about not belonging always seemed to make a painful thickening in Gib’s throat. And the lump got even bigger if he let himself think about how unlikely it was that he’d ever be part of a family again.

He’d been having hope dreams about being part of a real family for a long time by then, but lately it had been getting harder to believe that it might really happen someday. At least not while he was still a junior. The problem was that although Lovell House boys got adopted all the time, not many of them were taken from Junior Hall. Babies were taken from the Infant Room quite often, and once in a while older boys were chosen from among the seniors. Nobody, it seemed, was interested in four- to eight-year-olds. He didn’t know why that should be, but it certainly seemed to be true.

There were times, though, when he needed his dreams enough to pretend he still believed in them, and this looked to be one of them. So after shutting off the unbelieving part of his mind he curled himself up on the rag rug and tried to follow Miss Mooney’s instructions about picturing everything you hoped for as clearly as you possibly could.

But as time crept slowly by, and the cold deepened in Gib’s bones, and hunger growled and scratched at his stomach, it was easier just to feel sorry. Sorry for a poor orphan who had no one to worry about him or even remember where he was. No one to care if he was left forever in a freezing cold closet, until there was nothing left of him except maybe some bones and a new rotten smell oozing up out of the old rug.

But finally, just when he’d convinced himself it would never happen, there was a sound from the stairs. Hobbling, uneven footsteps, the grate of a key in the lock, a burst of light, and there was Buster Gray with a lamp in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other. At that moment, scruffy old Buster with his big ugly ears, pale blotchy skin, and crippled foot was the best-looking person Gib had ever seen.

I
T TOOK A BIT
for it to sink in. It wasn’t until Buster said, “Okay, jailbird. You want out, or you just going to go on sitting there blinking like a big old owl?” that Gib realized it was really true. He hadn’t been forgotten after all. Someone had sent Buster to let him out. Staggering to his feet, he lurched through the door, grabbing his rescuer and almost knocking the lamp out of his hand.

“Hey, take it easy,” Buster said. Backing up, he put the lamp down a safe distance away and came back to take hold of Gib’s shoulders and turn his face toward the light. “You all right, kid?”

“Boy, am I glad to see you.” Gib’s openmouthed surprise had turned into his ordinary widemouthed grin.

Buster looked surprised. “Well, what do you know? Looks as how you’re doing all right after all. I was figuring to scrape up the pieces this time for sure.”

Gib managed a shaky laugh. “Nope. No pieces,” he said. “Not now anyways. I’m”—he gulped, gulped again, and went on—“I’m fine now.” But when he looked back into the dark hole beyond the Repentance Room door, he couldn’t stop the deep shiver that snuck up his spine and jittered in his voice. “But let’s g-g-get out of here. Okay?” He started for the stairs, and, picking up the lamp, Buster slowly followed.

Buster never had been speedy because of his crippled foot, but that night, with the heavy lamp to carry, he seemed to be as slow as a big old snail. Right at first Gib tried to match his pace to Buster’s, but before long the relief of being free, of having the Repentance Room over and done with, was too much, and on their way down the long hall he must have kicked up his heels a little, like a colt put out to pasture. Buster was chuckling when they got to the door of Junior Hall.

“What’s funny?” Gib whispered.

Buster was still smiling as he said, “You are, kid. You are one tough little ...

Gib didn’t hear the last word. “Tough little what?” he asked.

Buster shrugged. “Junior,” he said. “I said one tough little junior.”

“Hey.” Gib grabbed the older boy’s arm and whispered, “Buster, I been wondering. How come juniors don’t get adopted?”

Buster frowned. “What do you mean?” he asked. “No law against it, far as I know.”

“I know,” Gib said. “But they don’t very often, do they? Infants do, and seniors sometimes, but not—”

“Shhh!” Buster put his finger to his lips and nodded toward the door to the dormitory. “It’s silence time. Remember?” And then, when Gib let his disappointment show, he added, “Later, kid. You’ll find out all about it later.”

Inside the dormitory there was silence and, except in the night lamp’s small circle, a far-reaching, overlapping jungle of shadows. But at least here in the hall the darkness was a bit warmer, and the smell, a musty mix of polished woodwork, dirty socks, and bedwetters’ mattresses, was comfortingly familiar. Gib moved forward eagerly. At cot number nine he was taking off his shoes when he heard an approaching rustle and then a quavering whisper. “Gib? That you? You all right?”

“Hey, Jacob,” Gib whispered back. “You still awake?”