Beyond the Chocolate War

  Turning his attention to the stage, Brian pondered the presence of the guillotine, acknowledged its ugliness and the threat it represented. He was aware of the wild stories about Ray Bannister accidentally cutting a student’s head off down on the Cape. Another rumor, of course. Just like the rumor that Obie and the Vigils had engineered Archie Costello into picking the black marble the other day. After all these years. Which meant Archie would be placing his neck on the block.

  Brian searched for Archie, saw him in the seat near the front, surrounded by the Vigil members as usual. He wondered whom he disliked more—hated, really—Brother Leon or Archie Costello. He conjured mental pictures: Leon wounded and gasping for help, the blade descending on Archie’s neck.

  Shuddering a bit, he tried to escape the images—and wondered whether these were sins he would have to tell the priest the next time he went to confession.

  Carter sat next to Archie Costello.

  He did not look at Archie at all during the entire program.

  And Archie did not look at Carter.

  Archie, in fact, did not seem to be looking anywhere. He stared at the stage, but he neither laughed nor groaned nor shook his head like other students as the antics unfolded before him. Some of the skits were downright funny, Carter thought, although Carter did not laugh either. He could recognize the funny part of a skit without having to laugh. Which was funny—strange, that is—in itself, wasn’t it?

  At first Carter had been uncomfortable sitting silently beside Archie. Carter did not like silences. But when Archie seemed content to sit there, immobile, like a figure in a trance, Carter shrugged and permitted himself silence as well. The other Vigil members took their cues from Archie and Carter, did not make conversation but responded to the crazy stuff on stage. Laughed at the good jokes, and groaned and hissed at the jokes that fell flat, the skits that failed. A lot of the skits failed, probably because this year nobody dared poke fun at the faculty. The skits mostly had to do with student life. And what was funny about homework, lockers with broken locks, the furnace that gave no heat, and all the other inconveniences of life at Trinity? That was not stage stuff. That was real life.

  Carter moved only once. He glanced at his watch. Impatient for the show to end, for the entire evening to end. He refused to think of the guillotine, blotted it from his mind as if erasing a piece of music from a tape.

  And all the while, Archie sat there, impassive, expressionless, looking as if he could sit there forever, through eternity, although Carter knew that Archie recognized no eternity, neither heaven nor hell.

  The moment.

  The stage cleared away, the lights subdued except for one spot on the guillotine.

  And the hush.

  Along with bodies leaning forward in the chairs, knees pressed together, faces thrust upward, eyes bulging slightly, an entire audience caught in one reaction, one pose, as if the students were multiplications of themselves in a hall of mirrors.

  Even the faculty seemed to sense that this was a special moment, although Carter realized that they could not know what was going on.

  Obie walked to center stage, dressed in a neat dark suit, plaid shirt, plain dark tie, followed by Ray Bannister, also in suit and tie, walking haltingly behind Obie as if maimed in a way, leg wounds. They stood on either side of the guillotine. Obie looked down, squinted, found Carter with his eyes, and nodded.

  Carter touched Archie’s shoulder but did not look at him.

  “It’s time,” Carter said. Like a warden in a prison movie.

  Archie rose to his feet, twisted away from Carter’s hand. Like the condemned prisoner in the same movie.

  This time the head of cabbage did not explode into a thousand pieces of raw vegetable as it had in Ray’s cellar. Instead, the blade cut through the folds of cabbage precisely, and so swiftly the eye could not catch the movement as the cabbage split into two pieces, one piece remaining on the block and the other bouncing to the floor of the stage, then rolling awkwardly, crazily, drunkenly, to the stage’s lip, where it hovered for a moment and then dropped out of sight.

  The silence in the assembly hall was awesome as the audience regarded the figures on the stage—Ray standing beside the guillotine, his hand a fraction of an inch away from the button; Obie beside him, slightly hidden from the audience; Archie calm on the other side of the guillotine, looking at the apparatus as if it were the most fascinating piece of merchandise he had ever encountered; plus Carter, bulky and massive, like a bodyguard who didn’t quite know whom he was guarding. After that immense silence, the audience drew one big collective breath that seemed to Carter strong enough to suck them all offstage.

  Ray bowed, came up again, managed to say “Voilà” in his best imitation French, realized that his voice had been too soft and reedy, cleared his throat, and called out, stronger now, “Voilà!”

  For some reason the audience began to applaud and whistle, as if someone had scored a touchdown or hit a home run. Ray flushed with pleasure—cripes, he hadn’t done anything yet, wait until they saw the real tricks—and bowed again.

  Obie prodded him gently, reminding him of the next step, and Ray, frowning, stepped aside, reluctant to share the spotlight.

  “And now,” Obie called, “the pièce de résistance.” Pronouncing the words as Ray had taught him: the pea-ess duh ray-ziss-tahnce.

  The audience hushed again.

  Obie glanced at Carter. And Carter nudged Archie.

  Archie ended his contemplation of the guillotine and looked up, beyond the audience somewhere, smiling remotely, as if he found this all very, very amusing but nothing to do with him, really: he was merely lending his body to the affair, as if it were out on loan like a library book.

  Obie’s hands were itchy, tingling. He realized it was nerves, like the nerves of an Olympic star waiting for the starting gun to go off, the nerves that sing a sweet song, not jangled or out of tune. He was eager for Archie to reach the guillotine, to stoop, kneel, and place his head upon the block. As Obie watched, Archie did those very things, easily and smoothly as if it had all been rehearsed, his body loose and relaxed as usual, all his movements casual and almost in rhythm. He’d always hated Archie’s coolness and hated him more at this moment for displaying that cool, that aloofness, at a time when he should be shaking in his shoes or at least showing signs of embarrassment.

  Archie was lodged now in the guillotine, neck resting on the block, facedown. Obie smiled, ignored his itching fingers, and looked at Ray Bannister.

  “Begin …” he said, letting his words carry over the audience.

  And Ray began. His bag of tricks. Making the deck of cards appear as if at will and playing them along his sleeve, tumbling them this way and that. Ray felt in command. Went down the brief steps to the audience, asked a student to select a card and then cajoled the kid—he made sure ahead of time that he was young, a freshman from the looks of him—onto the stage.

  While Obie watched. Watched Ray and his magic show, but also watched Archie in his perch on the guillotine. This was part of the plan. To let him squirm. To make him wait. To prolong the drama. To build up the anticipation.

  Ray Bannister was performing beautifully. He wished his mother and father were here to see the way he had mastered the tricks. He had chosen surefire effects, blowing his savings on tricks at the magic store in Worcester. The deck of cards he now worked with would be effective in the hands of a ten-year-old, but the audience didn’t know that. They also didn’t know the secret of the unending scarves, the rainbow cascading from his mouth. So deceptively simple. The old Chinese ring trick was equally effective, although it required at one particular point a touch of sleight of hand, the kind of deception that Ray had been a bit apprehensive about. But didn’t need to be, he learned. The audience was in the palm of his hand, and he was able to misdirect them without problems. He forgot about Archie Costello and Obie and everything else, even his rotten first semester at Trinity, as he clicked the rings in triumph, bowed, and fe
lt carried away on the waves of applause.

  He turned, breathless, exhilarated, the way people must feel when they take a whiff of oxygen from a tank, feeling light as air, and looked at Obie. Then at Archie. Archie still on his knees, waiting.

  Ray had performed in silence, except for occasional thrusts of applause or approving murmurings from the audience. Now, as his final applause ended, a burst of music jarred the air, martial military music deafeningly loud, played on Obie’s cue. The music stopped as Ray moved toward the guillotine.

  Now the hush again.

  Ray Bannister and Obie stepped up to the guillotine as they had rehearsed, with Obie nearest the button on the right side of the apparatus.

  Obie glanced at the button, small, mother-of-pearl, no larger than a dime. His eyes traveled downward, saw the small disk in place. Which meant that everything was in readiness, that Ray Bannister had touched the almost-invisible disk that had placed the mechanism in the slice position, causing the blade to slice through the cabbage. The rehearsal had called for Ray to advance now to the guillotine, run his hand over the top bar casually but actually touch a lever, likewise almost invisible, that switched the mechanism to the second position, so that the lethalness of the guillotine was removed and the blade would fall harmlessly, without touching Archie’s neck at all.

  Obie observed Ray’s casual movement and admired the offhand way he now ran his hand along the guillotine, touching the lever. Then bowing to Obie.

  Obie turned to the audience:

  “And now the climax of the evening, by the illustrious master of illusion. May we present Bafflement by Bannister!”

  Good-natured cheers and jeers filled the air, the crowd enjoying itself, all of them vicarious magicians for the moment.

  Now it was Obie’s turn for deception, the sleight of hand, for putting to use again the lessons Ray Bannister had taught him. This was where Carter came in. And Carter acted perfectly on cue, following the instructions Obie had given him earlier.

  As Obie stepped to the guillotine, Carter left his position at the side of the stage and approached Ray Bannister, catching his attention.

  That was all the time Obie needed to imitate Ray’s manner precisely. He ran his hand across the top bar of the guillotine. He had instructed Carter to distract Ray, using whatever gimmick he could come up with, it didn’t matter. “Tell him he’s got a speck of dirt on his cheek.” By the time Ray had returned his attention to Obie and the guillotine, the deed was done.

  I actually did it, Obie told himself, looking at the audience and then unable to resist glancing at Archie, still patiently waiting.

  The hush continued. Obie felt as though a thousand suns burned down on him but it was only the spotlight. He glanced toward Carter and Ray Bannister, saw something on Ray’s face—what? He couldn’t place it, couldn’t name it—and then looked down at Archie again, his neck white and naked and vulnerable.

  Obie stepped forward.

  I am going to press the button.

  No you’re not.

  Of course I am.

  But that’s—

  Don’t say what it is. Whatever it is, it must happen. For Laurie, for me, for Trinity, for every rotten thing that Archie did and made others do.

  His arm traveled a million miles as it went through the air, his finger like the barrel of a pistol. He touched the button, pressed, heart stopped, breath held, time halted, clocks frozen.

  He heard the click of the mechanism as it changed gears inside the guillotine.

  He waited for the blade to fall.

  Thinking for the first time of blood.

  All that blood.

  At that moment he heard the swish of the blade.

  The railroad tracks so far below looked like the tines of a fork, like his mother’s best silver, gleaming in the twilight.

  Leaning over the iron railing, he felt dizzy but a good dizziness, lightheaded really, and he drew back, started a prayer: Hail, Mary, full of grace … sighed, why pray now? Prayer couldn’t help. Too late for prayer.

  He had botched everything, spoiled everything, but must not spoil this final act.

  Lifting his head, he listened. For footsteps, for cars that might be following.

  Heard no one, nothing.

  Oh, he’d been clever enough, as if to compensate for failing so completely at the residence, allowing Brother Leon to trick him like that. Fleeing, he had known that he must hide. Like an animal. Ah, but with animal cunning.

  He had slipped through the streets of Monument, running behind cars, through parking lots, heard sirens in the distance, felt hunted and at bay. Like in the movies. The movies, of course.

  Purchasing a ticket to a matinee at Cinema 3, he had padded into the darkened theater, slouched in a seat, knees drawn up, only a few people scattered around, did not know the name of the movie, distantly recognized the actors on the screen, Dustin Hoffman maybe, whom he always mixed up with Al Pacino. Clung to himself. Waiting. Clever. Then out again, running the streets again, wanting to go home but not able to.

  Listening, on the bridge, a car approaching, sweep of headlights interrupting dusk, making him feel like an insect pinned against a wall. But the light moved across and away, the car passing, motor purring catlike.

  He looked down. A long way down.

  It’s now or never, David.

  The last thing you can do to reclaim yourself, save yourself, obliterate the humiliation.

  He grabbed the railing, testing it for firmness, and then climbed onto it, perched himself there, legs dangling over the edge, looking down into the blackness, pondering the height of the drop. Two hundred feet, maybe. To the tracks below.

  This was the best way, the clean way, a flight through air, like a dive from the high board at the Y pool and then beautiful blessed oblivion. All of it over. And no one hurt except himself. And he himself did not matter.

  Carefully, slowly, he slipped off the railing, stood on the narrow ledge where the bridge jutted out about a foot or so. Mustn’t lose his footing and go hurtling below unprepared, undignified.

  A sob escaped him.

  Such a sad sound.

  But it was too late now to cry.

  This was the moment he had awaited for so long. The command he had been awaiting for so many days and weeks and months.

  He took a deep breath, leaned his body into the night, but still held on, with his arms thrust behind him, his hands still grasping the rail.

  Good-bye, Mama.

  Good-bye, Papa.

  Using the names he had called them as a baby.

  Good-bye, Anthony. Little Tone-Tone, he had called him.

  Paused. Sad now. Thinking how nice everything could have been.

  All he had to do was loosen his grip on the railing, bring his arms forward, pretend he was diving—a swan dive, maybe—and then a nice flight through the air.

  He did exactly that.

  Relaxed his grip, let his fingers come loose. At the same time, he drew himself up, chest out, neck arched, face raised to the darkness, aware of a sweep of headlights approaching, the cough of a faulty engine. He thrust himself forward, felt the pull of gravity, the yawning emptiness of nothing in front of him or below him, he was falling, not diving, falling …

  And Mama, I don’t want to … I didn’t mean to … this terrible flash of clarity like lightning striking … What am I doing here?… Mama … Papa …

  Trying frantically to hold on, grab something, not fall but, yes, he was falling, loosened from the bridge, wrong, a mistake, I didn’t mean to do this.…

  Heard his scream in the night as he fell.

  But did not hear the hollow thudding sound his body made as it struck the railroad tracks below.

  “You wanted to kill me, Obie.”

  Archie’s voice was softened with a kind of awe and his eyes were wide with disbelief as he spoke.

  “Right, Archie.”

  “But you couldn’t do it, Obie, could you?” The old Archie voice restored,
casual, edged with contempt.

  “What do you mean—I couldn’t do it?”

  “Just what I said. You turned chicken at the last moment.”

  They were standing near Archie’s car in the parking lot, watching the kids scattering after the program, heading home with hurried footsteps. The evening had turned cool, a chill in the air. The deserted booths gave the campus a surreal look, like an abandoned movie set.

  “I wasn’t chicken, Archie. I rigged the guillotine so the blade would fall, the real blade.…”

  “And cut my head off?” Archie mocked. “But what happened, Obie?”

  “Ray Bannister happened. There was a foolproof safety catch he had never bothered to tell me about. Not until tonight after the show.”

  Obie pulled away, still stung by the swift turn of events on the stage.

  He had waited, eyes shut, knowing that in a split second the blade would fall and the screaming would start, plus the blood and Archie’s head on the floor or dangling from the block … murder, for crissake, he was committing murder … and trying to deny the thought while knowing the terrible truth of it. Then, the absence of sound, a pause, only a split second but like an eternity, and then an explosion of sound, not screams of horror but applause, a thousand hands clapping and hoots and cheers, and Obie opened his eyes to look down and see the blade below Archie’s neck and Archie safe and untouched, body intact. He had looked toward Ray Bannister for an answer. But Ray was taking his bows, responding to the wild applause and the drumming of feet on the floor, always reserved for special accolades. He gestured toward Archie, who leaped to his feet in a quick, graceful movement and stood motionless, erect as a knife blade as the air sizzled with applause and shouts of approbation.