The Chocolate War

by Robert Cormier

  “Dismissed,” Archie called out.

  Carter was surprised at the sudden dismissal and he banged the gavel too hard, almost splitting the crate he used as a desk. He had a feeling that he had missed a beat somewhere, had missed a crucial moment. Archie and all his subtle crap. What the kid Renault needed was a stiff jab to the jaw and another to the belly. That’d make him sell the frigging chocolates. Archie and his stupid let’s not have any violence. Anyway, the meeting was over and Carter felt like working out, like working up a sweat with the gloves and the big bag.

  He banged the gavel again.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  “HELLO.”

  His mind went blank.

  “Hello?”

  Was it her? But it had to be—this was the last Barrett in the book and the voice was fresh and appealing, the kind of voice that went with all that beauty he had seen at the bus stop.

  “Hello,” he managed, his voice emerging as an ugly croak.

  “Is this Danny?” she asked.

  He was instantly, insanely jealous of Danny, whoever Danny was.

  “No,” he croaked again, miserably.

  “Who is this?” she asked, annoyance now in her voice.

  “Is this Ellen? Ellen Barrett?” The name was strange on his tongue. He had never said it aloud although he had whispered it silently a thousand times.

  Silence.

  “Look,” he began, his heart beating desperately. “Look, you don’t know who I am but I see you every day …”

  “Are you some kind of pervert?” she asked, not horrified at all but good-naturedly curious, like, “Hey Ma, I’ve got a pervert on the line.”

  “No. I’m the fellow at the bus stop.”

  “What fellow? What bus stop?” Her voice had lost all its demureness. It had become a wise-guy, show-me kind of voice.

  He wanted to say you smiled at me yesterday, the day before that, last week. And I love you. But couldn’t. He suddenly saw how futile, how ridiculous the situation was. A fellow didn’t call up a girl on the evidence of a smile and introduce himself this way. She probably smiled at a hundred guys a day.

  “I’m sorry for bothering you,” he said.

  “Are you sure this isn’t Danny? Are you trying to put me on, Danny? Look, Danny, I’m getting tired of you and your crap …”

  Jerry hung up. He didn’t want to hear anymore. The word “crap,” echoing now in his mind, had destroyed all illusion about her. Like meeting a lovely girl and having her smile reveal rotten teeth. But his heart was still beating wildly. Are you some kind of pervert? Maybe I am. Not a sexual pervert but another kind. Wasn’t refusing to sell the chocolates a kind of perversion? Wasn’t it crazy to go on refusing to sell the chocolates, particularly after that last warning yesterday by Archie Costello and The Vigils? And yet this morning, he had stood his ground and fired a level and positive No at Brother Leon. For the first time, the word brought exultancy to him, a lifting of the spirit.

  With the latest No resounding in his ears, Jerry had expected the school building to fall or something dramatic to happen. Nothing. He had seen Goober shake his head in dismay. But Goober didn’t know about this new feeling, the sense that his bridges were burning behind him and for once in his life he didn’t care. He was still buoyant when he arrived home, otherwise, he wouldn’t have had the courage to call all those Barretts and to actually talk to the girl. It had been a miserable failure, of course. But he had made the call, taken a step, broken the routine of his days and nights.

  He went into the kitchen, suddenly ravenous, and dumped some ice cream from the freezer into a dish.

  “My name is Jerry Renault and I’m not going to sell the chocolates,” he said to the empty apartment.

  The words and his voice sounded strong and noble.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE PICKED Frankie Rollo for an assignment, of course. A junior, Rollo was insolent, a troublemaker. He was a non-participant, refusing to take part in athletics or extra-curricular activities that were so important in the Trinity scene. He seldom opened a book and never did any homework, but he managed to survive because he possessed a native and cunning intelligence. His major talent was cheating. He was also lucky. Under ordinary circumstances, he was the kind of guy Archie took pleasure in assigning, watching him bend or break. All these so-called rough characters melted into ninety-seven-pound weaklings when confronted by Archie and The Vigils. The scorn and the swagger evaporated as they stood ill-at-ease in the storage room. But not Frankie Rollo. He stood loose and easy, unintimidated.

  “Your name?” Archie asked.

  “Come on, Archie,” Rollo replied, smiling at all this foolishness. “You know my name.”

  The silence was awesome. But before that silence, a gasp from someone in the room. Archie was careful to keep his poker face, intent on not betraying an emotion. But he was shaken inside. No one had ever reacted this way before. No one had ever challenged Archie or an assignment.

  “Let’s not have any crap, Rollo,” growled Carter. “Let’s hear your name.”

  A pause. Archie swore silently. It was irritating to have Carter step in that way, as if he was coming to Archie’s rescue. Ordinarily, Archie ran the meetings his way, not anybody else’s way.

  Rollo shrugged. “My name is Frankie Rollo,” he announced in singsong fashion.

  “You think you’re a big shot, don’t you?” Archie asked.

  Rollo didn’t respond but the smirk on his face was an eloquent answer.

  “A big shot,” Archie repeated, as if savoring the word, but stalling, playing for time, shifting his thoughts, knowing it would be necessary to improvise, to turn this insolent bastard into a victim.

  “You said it, not me,” Rollo said smugly.

  “We like big shots here,” Archie said. “In fact, that’s our specialty—turning big shots into little shots.”

  “Cut the shit, will you, Archie?” Rollo said. “You’re not impressing anybody.”

  Again that terrible silence, like a shock wave, stunning the room, an invisible blow. Even Obie who had looked forward to the day when a victim would defy the great Archie Costello blinked in disbelief.

  “What did you say?” Archie asked, biting off every word and spitting it at Rollo.

  “Hey, you guys,” Rollo said, swiveling away from Archie and addressing the entire assembly. “I’m not a scared kid who pees his pants because the big bad Vigils call him to a meeting. Hell, you guys can’t even scare a punk freshman into selling a few lousy chocolates …”

  “Look, Rollo,” Archie began.

  But he didn’t have a chance to finish as Carter leaped to his feet. Carter had been waiting for a moment like this for months, his hands itching for action in the storage room instead of sitting there week by week as Archie played his little cat-and-mouse games.

  “That’s enough out of you, Rollo,” Carter said. Simultaneously, his hand shot out and struck Rollo on the jaw. Rollo’s head snapped back—snap like a knuckle cracking—and he bellowed with pain. As Rollo lifted his hands to his face in tardy defense, Carter’s fist sank sickeningly into his stomach. Rollo groaned and retched, doubled over, clutching himself in disbelief, gasping for breath. He was shoved from behind, and dropped to the floor coughing and spitting, crawling on all fours.

  A muffled roar of approval rose from The Vigils. At last, action, physical action, something you could see with your own eyes.

  “Get him out of here,” Carter said.

  Rollo was picked up by two Vigil members and half-carried, half-dragged toward the doorway. Archie had watched Rollo’s swift demolition in dismay. He resented Carter’s quick move into the spotlight, the way the guys had cheered Carter on. It had placed Archie at a disadvantage for the first time as assigner because Rollo had only been the curtain raiser, a bit of amusement Obie had arranged to enliven the proceedings. Actually, the meeting had been called to discuss Renault and what could be
done about the stubborn freshman who refused to fall into line.

  Carter called for order, banging his gavel on the table. In the developing silence, they could hear Rollo being dumped onto the gymnasium floor outside and then the sound of vomiting like a toilet being flushed.

  “Okay, quiet,” Carter demanded, as if he were yelling at Rollo to quit throwing up. Then he turned to Archie. “Sit down,” he said. Archie recognized the command in Carter’s voice. For a moment, he was tempted to challenge him but he realized that The Vigils had approved Carter’s action against Rollo. This was no time to have a showdown with Carter, it was time to play it cool, cool. Archie sat.

  “We’ve arrived at the moment of truth, Archie,” Carter said. “And here’s how I read it—tell me if I’m wrong. When a gross creep like Rollo comes in here and challenges The Vigils, then there’s something wrong. Very wrong. We can’t afford to have guys like Rollo thinking they can screw around with us. The word will spread and The Vigils fall apart.” Carter paused to let them imagine the dissolution of The Vigils. “Now, I said that something is very wrong. And I’ll tell you who’s wrong. We are.”

  His words were greeted with surprise.

  “How come we’re wrong?” Obie, the perennial straight man, called out.

  “First of all, because we let our name get connected with the goddam chocolate sale. Like it’s our baby or something. Second of all, like Rollo said, we let a punk freshman make fools out of us.” He turned to Archie. “Right, Archie?” The question was loaded with malice.

  Archie didn’t say anything. He was suddenly in a roomful of strangers and he decided to do nothing at all. When in doubt, play the waiting game. Watch for an opening. It would be ridiculous to disagree with Carter, of course. Word had been spreading throughout the school—the kid had refused to sell the chocolates in direct defiance of The Vigils. That’s why they had assembled here this afternoon.

  “Obie, show us what you found this morning on the bulletin board,” Carter said.

  Obie was eager to comply. Reaching under his chair he withdrew a poster that he had folded in two. Unfolded, the poster was about the size of an ordinary kitchen window. Obie held it up for all to see. The poster proclaimed in scrawled, scarlet letters—

  SCREW THE CHOCOLATES

  AND

  SCREW THE VIGILS

  “I saw the poster because I was late for math,” Obie explained. “It was on the bulletin board in the main corridor.”

  “Do you think many guys saw it?” Carter asked.

  “No. I’d shot by the bulletin board a minute before on the way to my locker for my math book. And the poster wasn’t there. Chances are hardly anybody saw it.”

  “You think Renault put it up?” someone asked.

  “No,” Carter snorted. “Renault doesn’t have to go around putting up posters. He’s been saying screw The Vigils and the chocolates for weeks now. But this shows what’s happening. The word is spreading. If Renault can get away with defying us, other people are gonna try.” Finally, he turned to Archie. “Okay, Archie. You’re the brains of the outfit. And you also got us into this mess. Where do we go from here?”

  “You’re pushing panic buttons for nothing,” Archie said, voice quiet and casual. He knew what he must do—regain his previous status, wipe away the memory of Rollo’s defiance and prove that he, Archie Costello, was still in command. He had to show them that he could take care of both Renault and the chocolates. And he was ready for them. While Carter had been making speeches and Obie flashing his poster around, Archie’s mind had been racing, probing, testing. He always worked better under pressure, anyway. “First of all, you can’t go around beating up half the kids in the school. That’s why I usually lay off the strong-arm stuff in the assignments. The brothers would close us down in no time and the kids would really start sabotaging if we started hurting people.” Noticing Carter’s frown, Archie decided to throw him a bone—Carter still ran the meetings and as Vigils president he could be a dangerous adversary. “All right, Carter, I’ll admit you did a beautiful job on Rollo and he had it coming. But nobody gives a damn about Rollo. He can lay in his vomit till kingdom come and nobody’d care. But Rollo’s an exception.”

  “Rollo’s an example,” Carter said. “Let the word spread about Rollo and we won’t have to worry about other kids acting wise or putting up posters.”

  Anticipating a deadlock on that topic, Archie changed directions. “But that doesn’t sell chocolates, Carter,” Archie said. “You told us The Vigils are linked up with the sale. Then the solution is simple. Let’s get the goddam sale over with as soon as possible. Let’s sell the chocolates. If Renault’s turning into some kind of rebel hero because he’s not selling the chocolates, how the hell is he going to look when everybody in the school is selling, except him?”

  Murmurs of assent came from the members, but Carter appeared doubtful. “And how do we get everybody in the school to start selling the chocolates, Archie?”

  Archie allowed himself the indulgence of a quiet, confident laugh, but closed his fists to hide his moist palms. “Simple, Carter. Like all great schemes and plans, it has the beauty of simplicity.” The guys waited, spellbound as always when Archie began to outline assignments and plans. “We make selling chocolates popular. We make it cool to sell the things. We spread the word. We organize. We bring in the class officers, the homeroom officers, the student council, the kids with influence. Do or die for good old Trinity! Everybody sells!”

  “Not everybody will want to sell fifty boxes, Archie,” Obie called out, disturbed because somehow Archie had taken charge again—he had them eating out of his hand.

  “They will, Obie,” Archie predicted, “they will. Do your thing, they say, Obie, do your thing. Well, we’re going to make selling chocolates the thing to do. And The Vigils will come out on top as usual. The school will love us for it—getting rid of their chocolates. We’ll be able to write our own ticket with Leon and the brothers. Why do you think I pledged support to Leon in the first place?” Archie’s voice was gentle with assurance, the old gentleness they all recognized as Archie’s hallmark when he was sailing high, wide and handsome. They admired the way Carter had employed his fists to demolish Rollo but they felt more secure with Archie in command, Archie who was capable of surprise after surprise.

  “How about Renault?” Carter asked.

  “Don’t worry about Renault.”

  “But I do, I worry about him,” Carter said, sarcastically. “He’s making patsies out of us.”

  “The Renault thing will take care of itself,” Archie said. Couldn’t Carter and the others see? Were they so blind to human nature, to developing situations? “Let me put it this way, Carter. Before the sale is over, Renault will be wishing with all his heart that he had sold the chocolates. And the school will be glad he didn’t.”

  “Okay,” Carter said, banging the gavel. He always banged the gavel when he was unsure of himself. The gavel was an extension of his fist. But feeling that Archie had somehow eluded him, had somehow won a victory, Carter said, “Look, Archie, if this backfires, if the sale doesn’t work, then you’ve screwed yourself up, do you understand? You’ll be all done and it won’t take the Black Box.”

  Blood stung Archie’s cheeks and a pulse throbbed dangerously in his temple. No one had ever talked to him that way before, not in front of everyone like this. With an effort he made himself stay loose, kept that smile on his lips like a label on a bottle, hiding his humiliation.

  “You’d better be right, Archie,” Carter said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re on probation until the last chocolate’s sold.”

  The final humiliation. Probation.

  Archie kept that smile on his face until he felt his cheeks would crack.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  HE HANDED THE BALL off to Guilmet, slapping it into his belly, and then hung in there, waiting for Carter to lunge through the line. The play called for Jerry to hit Carter low and send him
toppling, an assignment Jerry didn’t relish. Carter was easily fifty pounds heavier and he was used by the coach to keep the freshmen squad on their toes. But the coach always said, “It doesn’t matter how big the body, it’s what you do with it.” Now, Jerry waited for Carter to emerge from the jungle of skirmishing bodies as Guilmet plunged off tackle. And there he was like a freight train on the loose, out of control, rampaging wildly, trying to careen toward Guilmet but too late, too late. Jerry leaped toward him, low, aiming for that vulnerable territory of the knees, the target pinpointed by the coach. Carter and Jerry collided like a street accident. Colored lights whirled—Fourth of July on an October afternoon. Jerry felt himself lunging toward the ground, arms and legs askew, all mixed up with Carter’s arms and legs. There was exhilaration in the collision, the honest contact of football, not as beautiful maybe as a completed pass or a fake that threw your opponents off balance but beautiful nevertheless and manly, prideful.

  The good damp smell of the grass, the earth, rushed into Jerry’s nostrils and he let himself be carried on the waves of the sweet moment, knowing he’d carried out his assignment: get Carter. He glanced up to see Carter raising himself in astonishment, shaking his head. Jerry grinned as he got to his feet. Suddenly, he was struck from behind, a vicious blow to his kidneys, sickening in its impact. His knees caved in and he sank to the ground again. As he attempted to turn around to find out who had attacked him, another blow landed, someplace, and Jerry felt himself hurtling off-balance to the ground. He felt his eyes watering, tears spilling onto his cheeks. He looked around and saw the fellows getting into position for the next play.

  “Come on, Renault,” the coach called.