The Chocolate War (6 page)

That was the last moment of intimacy he and his father had shared. The routine of school for himself, and work for his father, had been taken up and they both threw themselves into it. His father sold the house and they moved to a garden apartment where no memories lurked around corners. Jerry spent most of the summer in Canada, on the farm of a distant cousin. He had fallen into the routine of the farm willingly, hoping to build up his body for Trinity and football in the fall. His mother had been born in that small Canadian town. There was a kind of comfort walking the narrow streets where she herself had walked as a girl. When he returned to New England in late August, he and his father fell into a simple routine. Work and school. And football. On the field, bruised and battered or grimy and dirty, Jerry felt as if he was part of something. And he sometimes wondered, what was his father part of?

He thought of that now as he looked at his father. He’d come from school to find his father napping on a sofa in the den, arms folded across his chest. Jerry moved soundlessly through the
apartment, not wanting to awaken the sleeping figure. His father was a pharmacist and worked all kinds of staggered hours for a chain of drugstores in the area. His work often included night shifts which meant broken sleep. As a result, he’d developed the habit of falling off into naps whenever he found a moment to relax. Jerry’s stomach was weak from hunger but he sat quietly down across from his father now, waiting for him to waken. He was weary from practice, the constant punishment his body took, the frustration of never getting a play off, never completing a pass, the coach’s sarcasm, the lingering September heat.

Watching his father sleep, the face relaxed in slumber, all the harsh lines of age less defined, he remembered hearing that people who had been married a long time began to resemble each other. He squinted his eyes, the way one inspects a fine painting, searching for his mother there in the face of his father. And, without warning, the anguish of her loss returned, like a blow to his stomach, and he was afraid that he would faint. Through some nightmarish miracle, he was able to superimpose the image of his mother’s face on his father’s—and for a moment the echo of all her sweetness was there and he had to go through all the horror of visualizing her in the coffin again.

His father awakened, as if slapped from sleep
by an invisible hand. The vision vanished and Jerry leaped to his feet.

“Hi, Jerry,” his father said, rubbing his eyes, sitting up. His hair wasn’t even mussed. But then how could a stiff crew cut get mussed up? “Have a good day, Jerry?”

His father’s voice restored normalcy. “Okay, I guess. Another practice. One of these days, I’ll get a pass off.”

“Fine.”

“How was your day, Dad?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good.”

“Mrs. Hunter left us a casserole. Tuna fish. She said you liked it fine last time.”

Mrs. Hunter was the housekeeper. She spent every afternoon cleaning up the place and preparing some kind of evening meal for them. She was a gray-haired woman who constantly embarrassed Jerry because she insisted on tousling his hair and murmuring, “Child, child …” like he was a third grader or something.

“Hungry, Jerry? I can get it ready in five or ten minutes. Heat the oven and there it is …”

“Fine.”

He was throwing one of his father’s
fines
back at him although his father didn’t notice. That was his father’s favorite word—fine.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Yes, Jerry?”

“Were things really fine at the store today?”

His father paused near the kitchen doorway, puzzled. “What do you mean, Jerry?”

“I mean, every day I ask you how things are going and every day you say fine. Don’t you have some
great
days? Or
rotten
days?”

“A drug store’s pretty much the same all the time, Jerry. The prescriptions come in and we fill them—and that’s about it. You fill them carefully, taking all precautions, double-checking. It’s true what they say about doctors’ handwriting, but I’ve told you that before.” He was frowning now, as if searching his memory, trying to find something that would please the boy. “There was that attempted holdup three years ago—the time that drug addict came in like a wild man.”

Jerry made an effort to hide his shock and disappointment. Was that the most exciting thing that had ever happened to his father? That pathetic holdup try by a scared young kid brandishing a toy pistol? Was life that dull, that boring and humdrum for people? He hated to think of his own life stretching ahead of him that way, a long succession of days and nights that were fine,
fine
—not good, not bad, not great, not lousy, not exciting, not anything.

He followed his father into the kitchen. The casserole slid into the oven like a letter into a
mailbox. Jerry wasn’t hungry suddenly, all appetite gone. “How about a salad?” his father asked. “I think there’s lettuce and stuff around.”

Jerry nodded automatically. Was this all there was to life, after all? You finished school, found an occupation, got married, became a father, watched your wife die, and then lived through days and nights that seemed to have no sunrises, no dawns and no dusks, nothing but a gray drabness. Or was he being fair to his father? To himself? Wasn’t each man different? Didn’t a man have a choice? How much did he know about his father, really?

“Hey, Dad.”

“Yes, Jerry?”

“Nothing.”

What could he ask him without sounding crazy? And he doubted whether his father would level with him, anyway. Jerry recalled an incident that had taken place years ago when his father worked in a neighborhood pharmacy, the kind of place where customers came to consult the druggist as if he possessed a doctor’s certificate. Jerry had been hanging around the store one afternoon when an old man entered, bent and gnarled with age. He had a pain in his right side. What should I do, Mister Druggist? What do you think it is? Look, press here, Mister Druggist, do you feel the swelling there? Is there a medicine to cure me? His father had been patient with
the old man, listening sympathetically, nodding, stroking his cheek as if he were preparing a diagnosis. He finally convinced the old man to go see a doctor. But for a moment there, Jerry had seen his father acting the part of a physician—wise and professional and compassionate. A regular bedside manner, even there in a drugstore. After the old man’s departure, Jerry had asked, “Hey, Dad, did you ever want to be a doctor?” His father glanced up quickly and hesitated, taken by surprise. “No, of course not,” he said. But Jerry had caught something in his manner, in his tone of voice, that ran counter to his answer. When Jerry tried to pursue the subject, his father suddenly became very busy with prescriptions and stuff. And he never brought up the subject again.

Now, seeing his father presiding in the kitchen, getting supper, for crying out loud—such a far cry from being a doctor—and his wife dead and his only son full of doubts about him, his life so pale and gray, Jerry was plunged into sadness. The stove signaled—casserole ready.

Later, preparing for bed and sleep, Jerry looked at himself in the mirror, saw himself as that guy on the Common must have seen him the other day: Square Boy. Just as he had superimposed his mother’s image on his father’s face, now he could see his father’s face reflected in his own features. He turned away. He didn’t want to be a mirror of his father. The thought made him
cringe. I want to do something, be somebody. But what? But what?

Football. He’d make the team. That was something. Or was it, really?

For no reason at all, he thought of Gregory Bailey.

LATER, ARCHIE HAD TO CONCEDE that Brother Leon had dramatized the sale too vividly and therefore put himself and The Vigils and the entire school on the spot.

To begin with, he called a special assembly at chapel. Following prayers and a lot of other religious hoopla, he started talking about all that school spirit crap. But with a difference this time. Standing at the pulpit, he gave the signal to a few of his stooges to bring in ten big cardboard posters which listed in alphabetical order every student in school. A series of blank rectangles had been drawn beside each name which, Leon explained, would be filled in as each student sold his quota of chocolates.

The student body watched with glee as Leon’s stooges tried to scotch-tape the posters to the wall at he rear of the stage. The posters kept slipping to the floor, resisting the tape. The walls were made of concrete blocks, and tacks couldn’t be used, of course. Hoots filled the air. Brother
Leon looked annoyed, which increased the hoots and catcalls. There was nothing more beautiful in the world than the sight of a teacher getting upset. Finally, the posters were secured and Brother Leon took charge.

Archie had to admit that the Brother turned in one of his great performances. Academy Award caliber. He poured it on like Niagara—school spirit, the traditional sale that had never failed, the Headmaster lying sick in the hospital, the brotherhood of Trinity, the need for funds to keep this magnificent edifice of education operating on all gears. He recalled past triumphs, the trophies in the display case in the main corridor, the do-or-die determination that made Trinity a place of triumph through the years. Etc. Crap, of course, but effective when a master like Leon was at work, casting a spell with words and gestures.

“Yes,” Brother Leon intoned, “the quota is doubled this year because we have more at stake than ever before.” His voice an organ, filling the air. “Each boy must sell fifty boxes, but I know that each boy is willing to do his share. More than his share.” He gestured toward the posters. “I promise you, gentlemen, that before this sale is ended each one of you will have the number ‘fifty’ inscribed in that final box, signifying that you have done your part for Trinity …”

There was a lot more but Archie tuned him out. Talk, talk, talk—that’s all anybody ever heard in
school. Archie squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, thinking of the Vigil meeting at which he had announced that Brother Leon had asked support for the sale and how he’d pledged the backing of The Vigils. Archie had been surprised at the ripple of doubt and skepticism from the members of The Vigils. “Christ, Archie,” Carter had said, “we never get mixed up in this stuff.” But Archie had overcome them as usual, pointing out that Leon’s need for an endorsement from The Vigils was a symbol of how powerful the organization had become. And it was only a crappy chocolate sale. But now, listening to Leon sounding as if the school was embarking on the Crusades, for crying out loud, Archie was doubtful.

Looking at the posters and seeing his own name there, Archie plotted how his own fifty boxes would be sold. He wouldn’t dream of selling the chocolates himself. He hadn’t touched a box since his freshman days. Usually he found some willing kid who’d gladly sell Archie’s quota along with his own, figuring it was something special to be singled out by the assigner of The Vigils. This year, he’d probably spread the burden around, picking out five guys, say, and have them sell only ten boxes each. It was better than sticking one kid with the entire quota, wasn’t it?

Sitting back in comfort, Archie sighed now, contented, gratified by the heights his sense of fairness and compassion could reach.

IT WAS AS IF somebody had dropped The Bomb.

Brian Kelly started it all when he touched his chair. It collapsed.

Then, everything happened at once.

Albert LeBlanc brushed against a desk as he made his way down the aisle and it fell apart after trembling crazily for a moment. The impact sent out vibrations which shot down two other chairs and a desk.

John Lowe was about to sit down when he heard the noise of collapsing furniture. He turned and in doing so touched his own desk. The desk disintegrated before his astonished eyes. Leaping backward, he hit his chair. Nothing happened to his chair. But Henry Couture’s desk behind it shivered violently and tumbled to the floor.

The racket was deafening.

“My God,” Brother Eugene cried as he entered the classroom and beheld the bedlam. Desks and
chairs were falling apart as if being demolished by mysterious unheard dynamite explosions.

Brother Eugene rushed to his desk, that haven of security behind which a teacher always found protection. At his touch, the desk swayed drunkenly, shifted gears into a lopsided position and—miracle of miracles—remained upright at that strange tipsy angle. But his chair collapsed.

Boys scrambled madly and merrily around the room. Once they realized what was happening they dashed around Room Nineteen testing all the desks and chairs, watching with glee as they fell apart, and toppling the stubborn pieces of furniture that refused to go down without help.

“Wow,” somebody yelled.

“The Vigils,” somebody else called out—giving credit where credit was due.

The destruction of Room Nineteen took exactly thirty-seven seconds. Archie timed it from the doorway. A sweetness gathered in his breast as he saw the room being turned into a shambles, a sweet moment of triumph that compensated for all the other lousy things, his terrible marks, the black box. Witnessing the pandemonium, he knew that this was one of his major triumphs, one of those long-shot assignments that paid off beautifully, certain to become legend. He could picture Trinity students of the future discussing in wonder the day Room Nineteen
exploded. He found it hard to suppress a howl of delight as he surveyed the havoc—
I made this happen
—and saw Brother Eugene’s trembling chin and horror-stricken expression.

Behind the brother, the huge blackboard suddenly tore loose from its moorings and slid majestically to the floor, like a final curtain dropping on the chaos.

“You!”

Archie heard the voice in all its fury at the same instant that he felt the hands spinning him around. He swiveled to encounter Brother Leon. Leon wasn’t pale at this moment. Scarlet splotches glistened on his cheeks as if he had been made up for some grotesque stage show. A horror show maybe, because there was nothing funny about him at this moment.