The Chocolate War

  Then he pushed back his chair and left the office without waiting for the teacher’s dismissal.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  “YOUR NAME IS GOUBERT?”

  “Yes.”

  “They call you The Goober?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  Archie was disgusted with himself even as he said it. Yes, what? like a scene from out of an old World War Two movie. But the kid Goubert stammered and then said, “Yes, sir.” Like a raw recruit.

  “Know why you’re here, Goober?”

  The Goober hesitated. Despite his height, he was easily six-one, he reminded Archie of a child, someone who didn’t belong here, as if he’d been caught sneaking into an Adults Only movie. He was too skinny, of course. And he had the look of a loser. Vigil bait.

  “Yes, sir,” The Goober finally said.

  Archie was always puzzled about whatever there was inside of him that enjoyed these performances—toying with kids, leading them on, humiliating them, finally. He’d earned the job of Assigner because of his quick mind, his swift intelligence, his fertile imagination, his ability to see two moves ahead as if life were a giant checker or chess game. But something more than that, something nobody could find words to describe. Archie knew what it was and recognized it, although it eluded a definition. One night while watching an old Marx Brothers movie on the Late Show, he was held entranced by a scene where the brothers were searching for a missing painting. Groucho said, “We’ll search every room in the house.” Chico asked, “But what if it ain’t in the house?” Groucho replied, “Then we’ll search the house next door.” “What if there ain’t no house next door?” And Groucho, “Then we’ll build one.” And they immediately started to draw up plans for building the house. That’s what Archie did—built the house nobody could anticipate a need for, except himself, a house that was invisible to everyone else.

  “If you know, then tell me why you’re here, Goober,” Archie said now, his voice gentle. He always treated them with tenderness, as if a bond existed between them.

  Someone snickered. Archie stiffened, shot a look at Carter, a withering look that said, tell them to cut the crap. Carter snapped his fingers, which sounded in the quiet storage room like the banging of a gavel. The Vigils were grouped as usual in a circle around Archie and the kid receiving the assignment. The small room behind the gym was windowless with only one door leading to the gymnasium itself: a perfect spot for Vigil meetings—private, the solitary entrance easily guarded, and dim, lit by a single bulb dangling from the ceiling, a 40-watt bulb that bestowed only a feeble light on the proceedings. The silence was deafening after the snap of Carter’s fingers. Nobody fooled around with Carter. Carter was the president of The Vigils because the president was always a football player—the muscle someone like Archie needed. But everyone knew that the head of The Vigils was The Assigner, Archie Costello, who was always one step ahead of them all.

  The Goober looked frightened. He was one of those kids who always wanted to please everybody. The guy who never got the girl but worshipped her in secret while the big shot hero rode off in the sunset with her in the end.

  “Tell me,” Archie said, “why you’re here.” He allowed a bit of impatience to appear in his voice.

  “For … an assignment.”

  “Do you realize that there’s nothing personal in the assignment?”

  The Goober nodded.

  “That this is tradition here at Trinity?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that you must pledge silence?”

  “Yes,” The Goober said, swallowing, his Adam’s apple doing a dance in that long thin neck.

  Silence.

  Archie let it gather. He could feel a heightening of interest in the room. It always happened this way when an assignment was about to be given. He knew what they were thinking—what’s Archie come up with this time? Sometimes Archie resented them. The members of The Vigils did nothing but enforce the rules. Carter was muscle and Obie an errand boy. Archie alone was always under pressure, devising the assignments, working them out. As if he was some kind of machine. Press a button: out comes an assignment. What did they know about the agonies of it all? The nights he tossed and turned? The times he felt used up, empty? And yet he couldn’t deny that he exulted in moments like this, the guys leaning forward in anticipation, the mystery that surrounded them all, the kid Goober white-faced and frightened, the place so quiet you could almost hear your own heartbeat. And all eyes on him: Archie.

  “Goober.”

  “Yes, yes sir.” Swallow.

  “Know what a screwdriver is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you put your hands on one?”

  “Yes, yes sir. My father. He has a tool chest.”

  “Fine. Know what they use screwdrivers for, Goober?”

  “Yes.”

  “What for?”

  “To screw things … I mean, to put screws into things.”

  Someone laughed. And Archie let it pass. A relief to the tension.

  “And also, Goober,” Archie said, “a screwdriver takes screws out of things. Right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A screwdriver, then, can loosen as well as tighten, right?”

  “Right,” The Goober said, nodding his head, eager, his attention fastened on the thought of the screwdriver, almost as if he were hypnotized, and Archie was carried on marvelous waves of power and glory, leading The Goober toward the ultimate destination, feeding him the information little by little, the best part of the lousy job. Not really lousy, though. Great, in fact. Beautiful, in fact. Worth all the sweat.

  “Now, do you know where Brother Eugene’s homeroom is located?”

  The anticipation in the air was almost visible at this moment, blazing, electric.

  “Yes. Room nineteen. Second floor.”

  “Right!” Archie said, as if giving The Goober an A for recitation. “Next Thursday afternoon, you’ll make arrangements to be free. Afternoon, evening, all night, if necessary.”

  The Goober stood there, spellbound.

  “The school will be deserted. The brothers, most of them, the ones who count, will be off to a conference at Provincial headquarters in Maine. The janitor is taking a day off. There’ll be no one in the building after three in the afternoon. No one but you, Goober. You and your screwdriver.”

  Now, the final moment, the climax, almost like coming—

  “And here’s what you do, Goober.” Pause. “You loosen.”

  “Loosen?” The Adam’s apple dancing.

  “Loosen.”

  Archie waited a beat—in strict command of the room, the silence almost unbearable—and said, “Everything in Brother Eugene’s room is held together by screws. The chairs, the desks, the blackboards. Now, with your little screwdriver—maybe you’d better bring along various and assorted sizes, just in case—you start to loosen. Don’t take out the screws. Just loosen them until they reach that point where they’re almost ready to fall out, everything hanging there by a thread …”

  A howl of delight came from the guys—probably Obie, who had gotten the picture, who could see the house that Archie was building, the house that didn’t exist until he built it in their minds. Then, others joined in the laughter as they envisioned the result of the assignment. Archie let himself be caressed by the laughter of admiration, knowing that he’d scored again. They were always waiting for him to fail, to fall flat on his face, but he’d scored once more.

  “Jeez,” The Goober said. “That’s going to take a lot of work. There’s a lot of desks and chairs in there.”

  “You’ll have all night. We guarantee you won’t be disturbed.”

  “Jeez.” The Adam’s apple was positively convulsive now.

  “Thursday,” Archie said, a command in his voice, no nonsense, final, irrevocable.

  The Goober nodded, accepting the assignment like a sentence of doom, the way all the others did, knowing there was no wa
y out, no reprieve, no appeal. The law of The Vigils was final, everyone at Trinity knew that.

  Somebody whispered, “Wow.”

  Carter snapped his fingers again and tension quickly built up in the room once more. But a different kind of tension. Tension with teeth in it. For Archie. He braced himself.

  Reaching under the abandoned teacher’s desk he sat behind as presiding officer, Carter pulled out a small black box. He shook it and the sound of marbles could be heard clicking together inside. Obie came forward, holding a key in his hand. Was that a smile on Obie’s face? Archie couldn’t be sure. He wondered, does Obie really hate me? Do they all hate me? Not that it mattered. Not while Archie held the power. He would conquer all, even the black box.

  Carter took the key from Obie and held it up.

  “Ready?” he asked Archie.

  “Ready,” Archie said, keeping his face expressionless, inscrutable as usual, even though he felt a bead of perspiration trace a cold path from his armpit to his rib. The black box was his nemesis. It contained six marbles: five of them white and one of them black. It was an ingenious idea thought up by someone long before Archie’s time, someone who was wise enough—or a bastard enough—to realize that an assigner could go off the deep end if there wasn’t some kind of control. The box provided the control. After every assignment, it was presented to Archie. If Archie drew a white marble, the assignment stood as ordered. If Archie drew the black marble, it would be necessary for Archie himself to carry out the assignment, to perform the duty he had assigned for others.

  He had beaten the black box for three years—could he do it again? Or was his luck running out? Would the law of averages catch up to him? A tremor ran along his arm as he extended his hand toward the box. He hoped no one had noticed. Reaching inside, he grabbed a marble, concealed it in the palm of his hand. He withdrew his hand, held the arm straight out, calmly now, without shiver or tremor. He opened his hand. The marble was white.

  The corner of Archie’s mouth twitched as the tension of his body relaxed. He had beaten them again. He had won again. I am Archie. I cannot lose.

  Carter snapped his fingers and the meeting began to break up. Suddenly, Archie felt empty, used up, discarded. He looked at the kid Goober who stood there in bewilderment, looking as if he were going to cry. Archie almost felt sorry for the kid. Almost. But not quite.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  BROTHER LEON WAS GETTING READY to put on his show. Jerry knew the symptoms—all the guys knew them. Most of them were freshmen and had been in Leon’s class only a month or so but the teacher’s pattern had already emerged. First, Leon gave them a reading assignment. Then he’d pace up and down, up and down, restless, sighing, wandering through the aisles, the blackboard pointer poised in his hand, the pointer he used either like a conductor’s baton or a musketeer’s sword. He’d use the tip to push around a book on a desk or to flick a kid’s necktie, scratching gently down some guy’s back, poking the pointer as if he were a rubbish collector picking his way through the debris of the classroom. One day, the pointer had rested on Jerry’s head for a moment, and then passed on. Unaccountably, Jerry had shivered, as if he had just escaped some terrible fate.

  Now, aware of Leon prowling ceaselessly around the classroom, Jerry kept his eyes on paper although he didn’t feel like reading. Two more periods. He looked forward to football practice. After days of calisthenics, the coach had said that probably he’d let them use the ball this afternoon.

  “Enough of this crap.”

  That was Brother Leon—always trying to shock. Using words like crap and bull and slipping in a few damns and hells once in a while. Actually, he did shock. Maybe because the words were so startling as they issued from this pale and inoffensive looking little man. Later on, you found out that he wasn’t inoffensive, of course. Now, everyone looked up at Leon as that word crap echoed in the room. Ten minutes left—time enough for Leon to perform, to play one of his games. The class looked at him in a kind of horrible fascination.

  The brother’s glance went slowly around the room, like the ray of a lighthouse sweeping a familiar coast, searching for hidden defects. Jerry felt a sense of dread and anticipation, both at the same time.

  “Bailey,” Leon said.

  “Yes, Brother Leon.” Leon would pick Bailey: one of the weak kids, high honor student, but shy, introverted, always reading, his eyes red-rimmed behind the glasses.

  “Up here,” Leon said, finger beckoning.

  Bailey went quietly to the front of the room. Jerry could see a vein throbbing in the boy’s temple.

  “As you know, gentlemen,” Brother Leon began, addressing the class directly and ignoring Bailey completely although the boy was standing beside him, “as you know, a certain discipline must be maintained in a school. A line must be drawn between teachers and students. We teachers would love to be one of the boys, of course. But that line of separation must remain. An invisible line, perhaps, but still there.” His moist eyes gleamed. “After all, you can’t see the wind but it’s there. You see its handiwork, bending the trees, stirring the leaves …”

  As he spoke he gestured, his arm becoming the wind, the pointer in his hand following the direction of the wind and suddenly, without warning, striking Bailey on the cheek. The boy leaped backward in pain and surprise.

  “Bailey, I’m sorry,” Leon said, but his voice lacked apology. Had it been an accident? Or another of Leon’s little cruelties?

  Now all eyes were on the stricken Bailey. Brother Leon studied him, looking at him as if he were a specimen under a microscope, as if the specimen contained the germ of some deadly disease. You had to hand it to Leon—he was a superb actor. He loved to read short stories aloud, taking all the parts, providing all the sound effects. Nobody yawned or fell asleep in Leon’s class. You had to be alert every minute, just as everyone was alert now, looking at Bailey, wondering what Leon’s next move would be. Under Leon’s steady gaze, Bailey had stopped stroking his cheek, even though a pink welt had appeared, like an evil stain spreading on his flesh. Somehow, the tables were turned. Now it seemed as if Bailey had been at fault all along, that Bailey had committed an error, had stood in the wrong place at the wrong time and had caused his own misfortune. Jerry squirmed in his chair. Leon gave him the creeps, the way he could change the atmosphere in a room without even speaking a word.

  “Bailey,” Leon said. But not looking at Bailey, looking at the class as if they were all in on a joke that Bailey knew nothing about. As if the class and Leon were banded together in a secret conspiracy.

  “Yes, Brother Leon?” Bailey asked, his eyes magnified behind the glasses.

  A pause.

  “Bailey,” Brother Leon said. “Why do you find it necessary to cheat?”

  They say the hydrogen bomb makes no noise: there’s only a blinding white flash that strikes cities dead. The noise comes after the flash, after the silence. That’s the kind of silence that blazed in the classroom now.

  Bailey stood speechless, his mouth an open wound.

  “Is silence an admission of guilt, Bailey?” Brother Leon asked, turning to the boy at last.

  Bailey shook his head frantically. Jerry felt his own head shaking, joining Bailey in silent denial.

  “Ah, Bailey,” Leon sighed, his voice fluttering with sadness. “What are we going to do about you?” Turning toward the class again, buddies with them—him and the class against the cheat.

  “I don’t cheat, Brother Leon,” Bailey said, his voice a kind of squeak.

  “But look at the evidence, Bailey. Your marks—all A’s, no less. Every test, every paper, every homework assignment. Only a genius is capable of that sort of performance. Do you claim to be a genius, Bailey?”

  Toying with him. “I’ll admit you look like one—those glasses, that pointed chin, that wild hair …”

  Leon leaned toward the class, tossing his own chin, awaiting the approval of laughter, everything in his manner suggesting the response of laughter
from the class. And it came. They laughed. Hey, what’s going on here, Jerry wondered even as he laughed with them. Because Bailey did somehow look like a genius or at least a caricature of the mad scientists in old movies.

  “Bailey,” Brother Leon said, turning his full attention to the boy again as the laughter subsided.

  “Yes,” Bailey replied miserably.

  “You haven’t answered my question.” He walked deliberately to the window and was suddenly absorbed in the street outside, the September leaves turning brown and crisp.

  Bailey stood alone at the front of the class, as if he was facing a firing squad. Jerry felt his cheeks getting warm, throbbing with the warmth.

  “Well, Bailey?” From Leon at the window, still intent on the world outside.

  “I don’t cheat, Brother Leon,” Bailey said, a surge of strength in his voice, like he was taking a last stand.

  “Then how do you account for all those A’s?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Brother Leon whirled around. “Are you perfect, Bailey? All those A’s—that implies perfection. Is that the answer, Bailey?”

  For the first time, Bailey looked at the class itself, in mute appeal, like something wounded, lost, abandoned.

  “Only God is perfect, Bailey.”

  Jerry’s neck began to hurt. And his lungs burned. He realized he’d been holding his breath. He gulped air, carefully, not wanting to move a muscle. He wished he was invisible. He wished he wasn’t here in the classroom. He wanted to be out on the football field, fading back, looking for a receiver.

  “Do you compare yourself with God, Bailey?”

  Cut it out, Brother, cut it out, Jerry cried silently.

  “If God is perfect and you are perfect, Bailey, does that suggest something to you?”

  Bailey didn’t answer, eyes wide in disbelief. The class was utterly silent. Jerry could hear the hum of the electric clock—he’d never realized before that electric clocks hummed.