A Troublesome Boy (15 page)

I sort of snoozed through geography and math. Next up, history. So much for snoozing.

“Mr. Clemson. Would you be so kind as to describe some of the ways — two or three examples will suffice — in which American culture and politics have influenced Canada since World War One.” Docherty could be a dink during mail call, but I kind of liked him. Get him in the right mood, and he was fun.

“We get their magazines,” I said.

“Have you read any of those magazines?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean, Yes, Father?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Which magazine springs to mind?”

“
Life. Time
. Things like that.”

“And how do you think those magazines might influence people here in Canada?” Docherty was pacing back and forth at the front of the room as he talked.

“Well . . .”
Give me a minute here, Father.
“I think they're mostly writing about American things. American politicians and movie stars. So if Canadians read a lot of that, then they'll start to think like Americans.”

“I see,” said Docherty. “And could you name an American politician who might have been profiled in
Life
magazine. Or in
Time
?”

“Certainly. President Eisenhower.”

“Does he have a first name?”

“Yes, he does.”

Cheers and whistles.

“Would you care to divulge it, for those of your classmates who may have missed the last few years or so of current events?”

“Certainly. Dwight D.”

“And for another round of applause, Mr. Clemson, can you tell us what the initial D. stands for?”

“I think so.”

He extended an up-raised palm in my direction. “Whenever you're ready.”

“David.”

Docherty led the applause.

“And does President Eisenhower have a nickname?”

“Yes.”

“Don't keep us in suspense, Mr. Clemson.”

“Ike.”

“Bravo, Mr. Clemson. You are a wizard of history. We'll have a medal struck in your honor. You may take your seat.”

—

“WHAT'S WITH DOCHERTY?”
said Klemski. We were on our way to English.

“Beats me,” I said.

“Never seen him in that kind of good mood before.”

“Me, either.”

“Too bad they aren't all like Docherty,” said Cooper. Where the hell had he come from? “This place wouldn't be such a hellhole.”

“Ever wonder why they're such bad-tempered old men?” said Klemski.

“You'd be bad tempered if you had to swear off women and booze and poker and they made you walk around in wool robes all the time,” I said. “Makes you wonder why they signed up in the first place.”

“My mom says a lot of them signed up when they were kids. Seventeen, eighteen,” said Klemski. “Before they knew any better. And it was a big deal to have a priest in the family.”

“If they're so miserable all the time, why don't they just quit?”

“What would they do?”

“Painting barns would be better than this,” I said.

The best thing about Sullivan getting the big hook, apart from the fact he wouldn't be beating the shit out of me or anyone else, was that Bro Joe took over his English class. Bye-bye Oliver. Bro Joe said we could talk about any books we wanted.

“What do you boys like to read?” A couple of guys said they liked detective books. Someone said they liked cowboy stories. “What about you, Teddy?”

I told him I'd just finished
The Old Man and the Sea
.

“What do you think it's about?” he said.

I said it was about an old man looking for the big catch of his life.

“And why would an old man be so determined to land the fish of his life?”

“He wanted to show everyone that he still could. That he was still a fisherman.”

“And why was that important?”

“Because they were all laughing at him. Making fun of him. They all thought he was washed up.”

“And why would that matter to him?”

“He was proud,” I said. “He was the best once and he wanted to prove that he hadn't lost it just because he was old.”

“He was indeed a proud man,” said Bro Joe. “Proud and brave and determined not to be defeated. Do you remember that wonderful line? ‘A man can be destroyed but not defeated'? What do you think Hemingway meant by that?”

Klemski's hand shot up.

“Something to do with dying? Maybe he meant that the old man had to die, but he didn't have to die a beaten man.”

“Very good, Walter.”

Walter? He was beaming a big smile at Bro Joe.

I put up my hand.

“Yes, Teddy.”

“Maybe the old man knew that he was going to die, but he wanted to die his way, to be a fisherman right to the end. Maybe his fight with the fish was the way he wanted to go out, to be remembered. Not for catching the big fish necessarily, but for going after it and fighting it even if in the end he lost it to the sharks. He'd still made his point.”

“Which was?”

“To show them what kind of man he was. Now that he caught his fish he can die a proud man. He can go out on his own terms. Maybe that's the main point.”

Brother Joe looked at me. He nodded. “Maybe that is the main point,” he said. “To live your life on your own terms, right to the end. Perhaps it's the fight that matters, not the prize.”

“So you can die and still win?”

“Yes,” said Bro Joe. “We're all going to die. That's not what's important. What's important is how we live.”

Lunch was the usual crap. Noodles with cheese slathered all over it. They'd been left out so long the cheese had gone all crusty and wrinkly. Disgusting. I gave that the pass. Peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Hard to screw that up. I took two. Glass of milk. Handful of potato chips. A couple of cookies.

Brother Wilbur was standing guard at the end of the line. What a dink. He gave our trays the once-over as we passed him on our way to our table.

Cooper was ahead of us in line, took his tray and headed for a table at the far side of the room, sat at the end facing the wall, reading Wordsworth, scribbling stuff in the margins and eating at the same time.

“What's with him?” said Henderson.

“Leave him alone,” I said.

Anderson was lifting the top piece of bread to see what the kitchen goofs had done to his peanut butter and jam.

“What are all these little lumps?”

“Peanuts, by chance?” said Klemski.

“They don't look like peanuts.”

“What do they look like?” Klemski lifted the top piece off his sandwich.

“I dunno,” said Anderson. “Maybe some kind of pills.”

Laughter all around the table.

“Laugh all you want. But those guys are putting something in our food. I'm tellin' you.”

I wolfed down my last sandwich and stood up.

“What's your hurry?”

“Got to get out of here before Anderson comes down with the Bubonic Plague. Or Hatfield comes out with another of his jokes.”

I'd just about had it with both those guys. Anderson and all his nutty talk about food, Hatfield and his jokes. I was feeling like the walls were closing in on me.

Klemski kept on eating. “Can I have your chips?”

“Be my guest.” I dumped the chips from my plate onto his. “See you in class.”

—

“HI, ROZEY.”

“Hey, Teddy.”

Rozey was sitting on his chrome-legged chair eating a sandwich. His metal lunchbox was on the floor beside him, top open, the Thermos sitting beside it.

“If I knew you were coming, I'd have made two sandwiches. Want a cookie?”

“Sure.”

I opened up the wax paper and took a cookie, handed him the rest.

“No. Help yourself. I got lots more at home.”

I got my wooden box, set it on its end and sat down. The cookie was great. I had another. I was thinking about Cooper asking Rozey why he didn't have kids and about Rozey's answer about the one who got away.

“Rozey, you ever have a girlfriend? A real one, not an air freshener.”

He chewed on his sandwich and swallowed and looked at me.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I had a girlfriend one time.”

“How come you never got married?”

He shook his head. “Turned me down.”

“What was her name?”

“Lucy.”

He leaned to his left and pulled the wallet from his back pocket, opened it up and pulled out a black-and-white snapshot.

Lucy was a looker. Big cloud of black hair, dark eyes, a smile that would keep you awake at night. It was like she was thinking about something, or about someone, and couldn't help but smile. Her eyes were smiling, too.

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” said Rozey. “Me and her went to grade school together. When I came back from the woods, she was finished school, working in her father's store. They own the hardware.”

“She still in town?”

“Yup. Married, three kids. Two boys and a girl.” He shook his head. Had a sad little smile on his face. I handed him the picture. He slipped it into its spot, then opened the change pocket of the wallet and pulled out a ring. “Should've bought her a bigger one, I guess.” He handed me the ring: gold with a shiny little diamond.

“You gave her this?”

“Tried to,” said Rozey. He laughed and put the ring back in his wallet. “Took her out for a fancy dinner at the hotel. When we were done eating, we ordered pie and ice cream. While we were waiting I said, ‘Lucy, would you marry me?' She got tears in her eyes. I thought for sure she was going to say yes, but she handed the ring back and got up from the table and ran out of the room.”

Rozey's eyes welled. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket.

“What'd you do?”

“I put the ring back in my wallet, had my pie and ice cream and went home.” He laughed. “I woulda ate hers, too, but I was too full from the steak.”

“You never asked her again?”

“Nope,” he said.

“You still see her around?”

“Oh, yeah. She's took over her old man's store. You go in there, it'll be Lucy behind the counter.”

“Isn't it kind of weird? Running into her?”

“The first couple of times. But we're kind of pals now. We say hi and smile at each other.”

“That's the saddest story.”

“My old man, he told me, your heart's gotta get broke at least once for it to work right. So mine's workin' just fine now.”

—

I COULDN'T GET
Rozey's story out of my head. All during religious studies while Bartlett blathered on I was picturing Rozey and Lucy in that hotel dining room — Rozey all sweaty and nervous, Lucy with no clue what was going on in Rozey's head. I could see Rozey bringing out the ring and Lucy running out of the room. I saw all the heads turn to look at her and then turn back to look at Rozey sitting there having his pie and ice cream all by himself.

Brother Julius wanted us to do pencil sketches.

“You can do a still life. You can draw what you see out the window. You can sketch your neighbor, or sketch from memory.”

That was easy. I could see Lucy's face as clearly as if I had Rozey's little black-and-white snapshot in front of me.

I drew her looking down so that you saw her big halo of hair and then her forehead. Her eyes looked like they were shut. I tried drawing tears, but they didn't seem right, somehow, so I rubbed them out. I drew her nose and her chin.

But it was her mouth that stumped me. I wanted to draw her lips so they would look like the lips of someone who knew she had just made the biggest mistake of her life.

I drew and erased and drew and erased. Finally I left the face blank where the mouth would be.

“She looks very sad,” said Brother Julius.

“Yes,” I said. “She's just broken someone's heart.”

“Seems she broke her own as well.”

“I can't seem to get the mouth right.”

“I'm not surprised,” he said. “The entire drawing will be in those lips. That's why you've left them until the last. You'll need to think about them. Leave it for now and come back to it.”

—

END OF THE
day, I was out in the alcove. Jeezus freezing January. Wind, snow, the works. Cooper rounded the corner, collar turned up. Lit a smoke, put his back to the wall, just stood there for a few minutes.

“Sorry,” he said. “About the other day.”

“No problem,” I said. “I didn't mean to go behind your back, Cooper. It's just that Joe showed up, told me they'd gotten rid of Sullivan and I said — ”

“It's all right,” he said. “Everybody knows anyway.”

He was looking across the yard at the hill, the trucks and cars heading west.

“I used to dream about getting on a boat, one of those ocean freighters, maybe get a job as a cabin boy or something and work my way around the world. I'd look at the atlas and pick places I wanted to see: Shanghai, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Athens, Rome, London. All those places sounded so great to me. I could picture myself getting off the boat and just wandering around. I convinced myself I really could do it some day. I had no idea.”

“About what?”

“That it would never happen.”

“What do you mean? You're fourteen. You've got your whole life ahead of you.” I pointed to the road that snaked up the hills and out of town. “All we've got to do is go up there and stick out our thumbs.”

He shook his head. “I can't.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Prince told me if I leave, it'll be considered escape custody. The courts sent me here and if I run away it'll be like escaping from jail. He said they'll haul me back into court and sentence me to juvenile. And instead of six months, it would be a year, maybe more. I couldn't take that,” he said. “But the thing is, I can't take this, either.”