Beyond the Chocolate War

'I always wonder about guys like that, Archie. Guys like Bunting and Janza.' He could have added: You too, Archie. But didn't. Hated himself for his cowardice but accepted it. 'Know what gets me? They're bastards and it doesn't bother them. They enjoy it. They don't even think of themselves as bastards. They do lousy things and think it's great.'

'You know what the secret is, Carter?' Archie asked in that superior tone of his.

'Tell me.'

'This: Everybody likes the smell of his own shit,' Archie said, looking away.

Carter frowned, looked about him at guys running for buses, cars roaring out of the parking lot with shrieking brakes and wheels, the frenzy of an improvised touch-football game on the lawn.

'That's the story of life, Carter, and why things happen the way they do.' Pause. 'You like the smell of yours, don't you?'

'Jesus, Archie. .' Carter began to protest but he didn't know what words to use, didn't know what to say to a thing like that. A few minutes ago he had bowed his head in prayer for the soul of Brother Eugene. Felt guilty for some reason, although he had had no part in the Room Nineteen assignment. Prayer hadn't helped. He had felt a void within himself, an emptiness, couldn't wait for the mass to end, for a chance to escape. Escape to what? To Archie Costello and his terrible words.

'Think about it, Carter,' Archie said, rising to his feet, stretching, yawning, moving off. Without saying good- bye. Archie never said hello or good-bye.

Archie walked across the lawn, passing easily through, clusters of students, knowing they were all conscious of his presence and making way for him, stepping aside to allow him passage.

Everybody likes the smell of his own shit.

Archie's voice echoed in Carter's mind.

You like the smell of yours, don't you?

Okay, okay.

There had to be more than that.

Had to be.

But Carter couldn't say what it was.

David Caroni waited until he was alone in the house, his father still at work at the Hensen Transportation Company, where he was employed as traffic manager, and his mother downtown shopping with his brother, Anthony. Anthony was a terrific tennis player, a natural, and he was shopping for a new racquet. His mother, who couldn't resist a shopping trip, had left a note saying she'd run her own errands while Anthony cruised the sports stores. His mother liked to write notes and make lists. Anyway, David knew that it would be at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half, before anyone came home. That was enough time.

He had not known this morning when he emerged from sleep at the ringing of the alarm that this would be the day. Yet this act he contemplated now was not the result of a sudden decision. The knowledge that his life would end sometime this year, probably before summer arrived, had been with him for weeks, months. He wasn't quite certain when the knowledge had flowered within him, at which precise moment he knew that he must end this desperate, pointless thing his life had become. He knew only that it must happen, that he must terminate what had become not even a life, really. Then what was it? A sunless, airless desert in which he trudged wearily and purposelessly, like a being from an alien planet, out of place and out of touch, Without appetite or desires. Blank, unreachable, friendless, loveless. Funny. Only the knowledge that he would end this life made it bearable. Until the right moment, the right time. Which was now, this afternoon, this hour.

He seemed lifted by a light breeze as he went upstairs, placed his books tidily on the table near his bed, looking at them lingeringly, knowing there would be no need to do homework tonight, that marks did not matter. This made him smile, but it was a smile without joy or warmth. All during these past weeks he had continued to do his homework, eat his meals, take showers, shampoo his hair, wait for the school bus, take notes in school, carry on conversations with his classmates and his family, and nobody but nobody could see that he wasn't really there, that he was contributing nothing of himself to conversations or classes or mealtimes, holding back the essential ingredient that was himself. Me. David Caroni, son, brother, student. But it didn't matter, really, it was merely amusing in an unfunny land of way because it would all end soon. He was thankful for that knowledge, clung to it. Otherwise he might not have made it through the dry monotony of his days and evenings.

Yet there were moments of startling surfacings, as if he were emerging from deep waters into sunlight, and for a brief moment, suspended in time, he would see the ridiculous thing his life had become, making no sense. Just as the Letter made no sense. (Of course the Letter made no sense in itself — the use of the word Letter was a sly and furtive substitute for the real thing.) And then the burst of sunlight would end and he would be plunged again into the sterile, austere life that was the life he now knew, no sun, no sky, nothing. No place to go and no place to hide.

He surveyed his room for a final time, remembering a poem he had read once long ago:

Look thy last on all things lovely,

Every hour.

His stereo, which he had loved once and played now only as a cover, a disguise, pretending that the music had meaning. The books lined up on his shelves, well-thumbed paperbacks that he had not opened for weeks although he'd always had a compulsion to read and reread favorite passages time and again. He sighed, thinking of all the faking he'd had to do in order to act normal, protecting his family so that they would not know, would not suspect, talking, listening, acting, Academy Award stuff, but hugging all the time his little secret within him. His eyes encountered now the posters he had plastered to his walls. Stupid, they were, really. After the Rain, the Rainbow. Words. Meaningless. Vowels and consonants. Letters. Twenty-six letters in the alphabet. That one fatal deadly letter. But don't think about that now. Look thy last. .

He began to undress. Removed his shirt and pants. Folded them neatly on the bed. Slipped off his socks, frowning at the faint smell of foot odor, his feet having a tendency to perspire even on the coldest winter day. Pulled off his blue-plaid boxer shorts and drew his T-shirt over his head, dropped socks and shorts and shirt into the hamper, Stood naked, a bit chilly, avoiding his reflection in the full-length mirror near the closet. He had avoided his reflection for months, grateful that he hadn't yet begun to shave.

He was strangely calm and almost lifted himself on tiptoe as he felt that pleasant rising wind again, but within him, not outside. He was more than calm: it was a sleepwalking kind of feeling, drift, as if he were being drawn by some invisible current to an inevitable destination. He had contemplated other forms of the act but had discarded them. Had read books at the library, studied statistics, looked up methods in an encyclopedia, pondered stories in newspapers — astonished but gratified by the frequency of the act — and had finally decided on the best way. For him.

He walked, seemed to glide, toward the bureau, still avoiding the mirror, and opened the bottom drawer. He shifted odds and ends of clothing around, then lifted the white lining paper. He withdrew two envelopes and held one in each of his hands for a moment, as if his hands were plates on a scale. One envelope contained a letter that would explain to his mother and father and Anthony why this act had become necessary. He had struggled long and hard with it, knowing they must not feel guilt or blame. He had written and rewritten the letter a hundred times, finding it, guiltily, the only act of any pleasure in the previous months. Now he placed the letter on the bureau, against the picture they had taken of him when he won highest honors at his graduation from St. John's Parochial School. All A's for eight years. He stared at the picture, thinking of the Letter, and then turned away, eager to open the other envelope.

The other envelope contained a steel single-edged razor blade, gleaming lethally in the slant of afternoon sunlight. Pleasantly lethal. His friend, his deliverer. Carrying the blade delicately between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, he walked to the bathroom, placed the blade on the top of the toilet tank, and began to run water into the bathtub. After a few moments the hot water splashed steamily into the tub, vapors rising from the water's surface, clinging to the tile walls, fogging the mirror above the small sink. He looked at the turbulent water, feeling neither hot nor cold, feeling nothing, really. He tested the water with his right hand and then increased the flow of cold. He waited patiently, conscious of the blade nearby. He tested the water again and found it to be satisfactory. He shut off the faucets.