Beyond the Chocolate War

He kissed her lightly on the cheek, not daring anything else. She didn't flinch but did not respond. 'I'll call you tomorrow after school,' he whispered. She did not reply. Then she went into the house, walking slowly, robotlike. Watching her go up the steps, he dreaded the possibility that he had somehow lost her, that things would never be the same again. And told himself: Tomorrow everything will be different, will be better. He clung to that thought. That's all he had.

Now, on top of all that, a Vigil meeting. The last thing in the world he needed.

Carter saw the Finger and swore.

He'd avoided Archie this morning, feared somehow that Archie would look into his eyes and know immediately that he had sent the letter to Brother Leon. Carter knew his strengths and weaknesses, knew what he was good at and what he lacked. Confident about his prowess as an athlete, he was no great shakes when it came to Archie's specialties: intimidation, outguessing people, anticipating their thoughts and actions. Archie was always one step ahead.

Frowning at the bulletin board, as if the л would disappear if he stared long enough, he wondered whether he had made a mistake. He'd taken a terrible chance when he'd decided to tip off Brother Leon about the visit That kind of thing was outside his experience. He had painstakingly written the letter in fourth-period study, printing with his left hand. Delivering it to Leon had been easy — he had merely slipped it into the letter box inside his office door. The agony came after the letter had been delivered. The realization of what he had done. The possibility that Leon would know through 'some shrewdness who had written it And would inform Archie. Leaving the school, looking over his shoulder, feeling as if unseen watchers were stalking him, Carter was filled with regret. He should have minded his own business, let the Bishop come, let the chips fall. Jeez. Head down, moving in his muscular, athletic way — movements that always kept people out of his path — Carter began hours of torment. Found it hard to concentrate on his homework. Pushed his food around on his plate at supper. Finally plunged into dreamless sleep. But didn't feel rested or refreshed when he woke up.

He turned away from the bulletin board, blinking away the afterimage of the inverted Y that remained printed on his brain. He spotted Archie Costello heading in his direction, surrounded by stooges, as usual. Carter looked around in panic, spotted the door to the janitor's storage room. He stepped into the room, closed the door softly behind him, didn't turn on the light Listening to the hammering of his heart, he waited, picturing Archie passing by in all his swagger and insolence. What's happened to me? he thought.

Ah, but he knew what had happened to him. Why he was hiding here in the storage room among the mops and brooms and buckets.

Writing the letter had been the action of a rat.

An informer.

A traitor.

He had become one of the things he'd always hated, a thing hiding in the dark now, afraid to face the world.

And all because of Archie Costello.

A German shepherd sat, silent and still, beneath a hovering tree on the sidewalk in front of the white cottage with black shutters on Hale Street, watching the Goober's progress with baleful yellow eyes. He had seen the dog before, and always hurried past. He felt that someday the dog would strike, attacking him swiftly and viciously, without barking, without warning.

This morning he had more than the German shepherd to worry about, however. As he left the dog behind on Hale Street and turned into George Street, he felt as if he were running away from a ghost, the ghost of Brother Eugene, and he shivered in the morning air even though his body pulsed with the exertion of running. He had still not fully absorbed the fact of Brother Eugene's death, although the announcement over the intercom and the memorial mass had taken place days ago. Leon's voice on the intercom was still fresh in his mind. Death, after a lengthy illness. How long was lengthy? As long as the time between last fall's destruction of Room Nineteen and the moment Brother Eugene took his last breath?

Cut it out, he told himself now, as he almost twisted his ankle on a corner of sidewalk jutting slightly higher than the rest of the pavement. You had nothing to do with Eugene's death. It's a coincidence, that's all. Okay, a terrible coincidence, but a coincidence all the same. He had shouted the word coincidence in his mind a thousand times in the last few days. The scene in Brother Eugene's classroom, the clutter of collapsed desks and chairs, and Eugene in the middle of the rubble, tears streaming down his cheeks, his chin wobbling like an infant's, was burned into the Goober's mind.

The Goober had been the student assigned to take Brother Eugene's room apart. Archie Costello had given the orders: to loosen the screws in the chairs and desks — including Eugene's chair and desk — to the point where the furniture would collapse at the slightest touch. He was assisted in the job by masked members of the Vigils during the long night he spent in the classroom. The next morning he had witnessed the destruction of Brother Eugene, a shy and sensitive teacher who often read poetry aloud in the final moments of class, despite certain snickers and smirks. Brother Eugene had stood devastated in the midst of the classroom's debris, unable to believe the assault on his beloved room. Shocked, crying — the Goober had never before seen a grown man crying — shaking his head in a refusal to believe what his eyes told him must be so. He had immediately gone on sick leave. Had never returned to Trinity after that shambles of a day. He had died last week in New Hampshire, but the Goober knew that his death had really taken place last fall. And the Goober was responsible, as if he had held a gun to the teacher's temple and pulled the trigger. No, it wasn't like that at all, a small voice within him protested. A collapsing classroom is not fatal, doesn't bring on a heart attack or whatever physical illness caused Eugene's death. But who knows? He repeated the words now, gasping them out of the depths of his guilt and despair, as he ran blindly through the morning. Who knows?

I know. I should have refused the assignment from the Vigils. But nobody refused Vigil assignments, nobody denied whatever Archie Costello demanded.

He found himself on Market Street, with its rows of high-rise apartment buildings and condominiums. His arrival here was not accidental. Jerry Renault lived in one of the apartment buildings. The Goober refused to look up at the building, kept his eyes riveted on the pavement. The ghost of Brother Eugene following him down the street was bad enough; he didn't need another ghost joining the pursuit. Jerry Renault wasn't dead, of course. Yet something of him had died. Although he looked like the friend he had known last year, that Jerry Renault was now gone. The guy who had been subdued and distant the other day was someone else altogether. Which was just as well. He had betrayed that other Jerry Renault. Just as he had betrayed Brother Eugene. .

He looked down the street toward Jerry's apartment building. He searched the facade, the rows and rows of windows, fastening finally on the fourth floor. Wondering if Jerry was standing behind the curtain at one of the windows, staring out.

Aw, Jerry, he thought. Why did things have to turn so rotten? Life at Trinity could have been so beautiful. He and Jerry on the football team, the quarterback and the long end, linked by the beautiful passes Jerry threw, linked even more by a budding friendship. All of it gone now. Brother Eugene dead and Jerry Renault maimed. And him, Roland Goubert, the Goober, dogged with guilt, almost afraid to look at his hands, afraid he'd see bloodstains.

Stupid, he told himself. You were stupid. Acting that way when the Goober came. Stupid. The word was a theme weaving its way through his thoughts, and he got up from the chair, threw down the magazine he'd been holding for ten minutes without reading a word of it, and went to the window. Pulled the curtain and looked out at the street. Everything gray outside: the street, the cars, the buildings, the trees. Glancing back at the room, the drabness of the beige walls and the nondescript furniture, he wondered whether he was the one at fault, had gone colorblind, would forever see the world in muted tones.

All of which was evading the question, of course.

What question?

The question of the Goober and why he'd acted so stupidly when the Goober visited him.

I should have stayed in Canada, he thought, turning from the window. I shouldn't have come back.

After those bruised weeks of pain and desolation in the Boston hospital, he had accepted without protest or any emotion at all his father's decision to send him to Canada, to spend a few months with his uncle Octave and aunt Olivine. They lived in the small parish of St. Antoine on the banks of the Riviere Richelieu, where his mother had lived as a child. His small Canadian world had three focal points: the modest farm operated by his uncle and aunt; the village, which consisted of a few stores, a post office, and a Sunoco service station; and the ancient