by Brady Udall
Cecil, for his part, seemed to recede. Not much of a talker to begin with, he could go days without saying anything. The skin around his eyes began to take on a drained, yellowish tint, and when we went up in the hills together we would sit, completely silent, and stare out into the wild colors of dusk, not a single thing to say.
It didn’t take Cecil long to follow my lead: he began to carry rocks in his pockets to throw at anyone who got near him and would hunker down into a half-squat, ready to battle at the smallest provocation. Of course, fighting back only made things worse. When we fought back, we stopped being invisible. Instead of allowing ourselves to quietly get beat up, which the teachers and dorm aides generally allowed, we were raising a ruckus, causing problems for everyone. In the space of only a few weeks we had gone from being model Willie Sherman students, the kind who knew how to pass through their school years unnoticed, to the worst kind of troublemakers. Pretty soon we had more hours of kitchen and bathroom detail than anyone in school.
Cecil and I were a tribe of two and that, we quickly came to understand, would never be enough.
Cecil took two more weeks to finish making the arrows. He had found the perfect arrowheads, beautifully flaked and sharp as razors, hawk feathers for fletching, and thin shafts of willow that he hardened over a fire and straightened the crooks out of with an old bottle opener. He made four arrows in all and weighted each one on the tip of his stubby forefinger.
“Good arrows,” he said one day, with the barest hint of a smile. “Not too shabby.”
One December Sunday, Cecil took his bow and arrows out to look for rabbits. I started out after him but he stopped me, said he wanted to hunt alone because I made a lot of noise when I walked, like a bear walking on lightbulbs.
For the entire afternoon I waited and sulked. I couldn’t help but show how pleased I was when he came back empty-handed, a consternated look on his face.
“Rabbits!” he cried.
After a few practice shots into a rotting bale of hay, Cecil hid his weapons under a pile of rusted roofing tin behind the old armory.
Nearly every day, I couldn’t help myself, I would ask Cecil if he really intended to kill Nelson. Cecil would always stare at me, those eyes of his black and fathomless, and would raise his eyebrows just a little as if to say: Who knows what might happen?
I had come to the conclusion that assassinating Nelson with a bow and arrow in broad daylight wasn’t a very good idea at all. Couldn’t we, I wondered, find a better method, something quieter, sneakier, something we could get away with? I had worked for Nelson long enough to know the value of stealth, of slipperiness, of covering one’s tracks, and I asked Cecil if maybe we should try one of the methods we talked about before: slitting Nelson’s throat with a razor in the middle of the night. This, to me, seemed like the perfect plan.
The William Tecumseh Sherman School had its own secret lore: stories, told after Lights Out, about the spirit who inhabited the grain silo, about a witch doctor who lived in a wickiup far out in the hills and shambled around at night, hairy and deformed, gathering animal bones and casting spells, about the boys who jumped into the canyon and came this close to flying. There was a story I heard a couple of times about students—boys and girls both—waking up to find themselves murdered, their throats slit, their bunks covered with their blood. Over the years, this happened time and time again and nobody was ever caught. Some said it was the witch doctor, some a madman who slept under an abandoned house in Whiteriver, some the ghost of a cavalryman killed by Indians and out to take revenge.
We could slit Nelson’s throat, I figured, just like the story, and we could blame the madman or the witch doctor or the ghost. Cecil wouldn’t have to be sent away forever and I wouldn’t have to stick it out alone at Willie Sherman. I couldn’t lose Cecil, this I knew. As long as Cecil was around, I could stand the beatings, the torment, the boredom. Without him, I wouldn’t last.
“No.” Cecil shook his head. “Bow and arrow is far away, safe. You try to kill him close by, with a razor, maybe he kill you first.” Cecil drew back on an imaginary bow, aimed at me, let the arrow fly. “Shhhhhhhhhh-zap! See? No problem.”
We looked at each other. I was not going to sway him. So I came up with another plan, one that I would have to execute on my own.
EDGAR’S PLAN
ON A FEBRUARY night with snow howling to the ground in funnels, I got out of bed, unlatched the window, slipped through the bars and climbed down the wall, feeling blind for the familiar hand- and toe-holds in the gaps of the great sandstone blocks, pressing myself flat as windblown snow hit me in waves. I marched right into the wind, leaning my way across the parade grounds, plumes of white rising hundreds of feet into the air, snow pellets like pinpricks on every inch of exposed flesh; I was wearing nothing but my underwear and a T-shirt. By the time I made it to the main building my skin felt like it had been rubbed briskly with rough-grade sandpaper and doused in alcohol.
I broke into Maria’s office through the air exhaust vent: yanked off the steel grate, crawled through a narrow ventilation shaft, my breath like a roar in my ears, the tin under my knees buckling and popping, then pushing off the narrow rectangular vent inside and sliding down on top of Maria’s desk, headfirst like a floundering snake. From there, it was only a matter of getting the key from the front drawer of her desk and opening the door to Principal Whipple’s office, easy as you please.
The bag of CONTRABAND was right where it had always been, in the big lower left drawer. The principal kept none of his filing cabinets or desk drawers locked; who would be crazy enough to steal something from him?
I slung the bag over my shoulder and on my way out swiped half a dozen spools of typing ribbon from the supply closet. The bag was heavy and unwieldy, making the journey back much more difficult. Climbing through the vents and up the wall of the dormitory, I had to hold it clamped in my mouth until I was sure my teeth would be ripped out by the roots. Once I made it back up to my window, the snowstorm was petering out. I sat on the ledge—three stories up—and rested, catching my breath, looking out over the snow-clumped parade grounds to make sure I hadn’t left any tracks.
Inside, I crept among the beds of sleeping boys, down the dark hallway to the big boys’ room, where Nelson and seven of the oldest, and therefore most privileged, boys stayed. Someday, if I lasted long enough, I would sleep here too.
Nelson’s bunk was in the corner and he lay on top of it, under a single green blanket, as big as a propane tank. I stood not two feet from him and looked down on his wide, yellow face, jolly even in sleep.
So easy, I thought.
I rummaged through the sack, came up with a beautiful, bone-handled bowie knife with a handguard made of nicked silver. I could stab him fifteen times, fill him full of holes, before he knew what had hit him. I pulled out an ice pick, imagined perforating him with it, and the way he might deflate, like a fat, gas-filled balloon, collapsing into nothing. I held the straight razor above his throat and thought of the single, easy stroke, like passing your hand through smoke.
I stood for a long time, shivering, the snow on my shoulders and hair turning to droplets of water that crawled slowly down my back. I put the razor to his throat, the sharp edge barely touching his skin, and held it there until my arm ached.
Do it, Edgar, I thought. Easy, easy.
On the other side of the room somebody called out something unintelligible and mournful, snorted and fell silent again.
Edgar couldn’t do it. No, he wasn’t strong or mean enough, not yet, and he was so disappointed in his own cowardice that for a second he considered using the straight razor on himself.
Nelson shifted in his bunk, which creaked under his weight. I decided to go with my original plan: I put the razor back into the bag and quietly, slowly, shoved it under Nelson’s bunk, as far as it would go.
Halfway down the hall back to my room, I had an inspiration. I crept right back and retrieved the bag from under Nelson’s bunk. I lifted t
he corner of his mattress and slipped the bowie knife and a few homemade Chinese stars between the lumpy cotton batting and the slab of plywood underneath. Next I went to Rotten Teeth’s bunk, where I left a switchblade and a pair of brass knuckles, then to Glen, who got a crude shunt made out of a sharpened broomstick and the graceful Mexican bullwhip. I passed the contraband all around the room. The only person I spared was a buck-toothed Hulapai boy named Bruce who had once slipped me his box of raisins after Rotten Teeth knocked my tray of food all over the cafeteria floor.
The next morning, the sky had cleared and the snow melted quickly into silver puddles that reflected the dazzling light like a thousand scattered mirrors. I took my shower, brushed my teeth, ate my breakfast, and had to constantly remind myself to keep my breathing regular, to act normal. I had a hard time keeping my hand off my groin.
On my way to Principal Whipple’s office I forgot to dodge the puddles and walked right through them.
Maria was at her desk, sipping at a mug of coffee. “Edgar?” she said.
“The principal here?”
“You want to talk to him? You sure?”
I nodded, looked up at the ceiling, thought I might faint.
Principal Whipple had one of his big orange feet up on the desk and was working at the nail of his big toe with what looked like a pair of tin cutters. Even though I had been in this very room only hours before, it looked entirely different illuminated with rippling webs of light.
“What?” he said.
I stood in the middle of the room, paralyzed, my shoes sopping.
“What is it?”
“Hah…” I said, having trouble getting my breath.
He put the tin cutters on the desk, took off his glasses to wipe them with a cloth. Without his glasses his eyes seemed to disappear right off his face. “Something you want to tell me?”
“Nelson,” I breathed. I was relieved when he put his glasses back on.
“Nelson?”
I nodded fiercely. “It’s Nelson.”
“It’s Nelson what?”
“It’s Nelson got the contraband. Up under his bed. Contraband everywhere.”
Principal Whipple wrenched open the drawer, which made a loud metal bark. His face went a shade dark and he looked up at me.
“How do you know this?”
“He wanted me to do it, I said no, so he did it himself.” Like someone eavesdropping from another room, I heard my own voice saying these things.
Principal Whipple stood up to go, realized he had only one shoe and sock on, sat back down. He opened the drawer again. “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”
“I saw him do something else,” I said. “Bad things with a lady.”
I had decided to go all the way. I wanted to make sure Nelson would be sent far away and never come back. I couldn’t take any chances.
“I saw him doing…ficky-fick.”
Principal Whipple moved closer, cocked his head. “Ficky…?”
“Ficky-fick,” I said. “With Mrs. Whipple. Had her shirt open. They were making the noises.” In a weak, airy voice I made the noises. A couple of oh-ohs and a few ai-ai-ais.
Principal Whipple seemed to melt in his chair. He grabbed his cheeks and pulled at them. He said, “Nelson?”
He staggered to his feet and pointed at me. “You stay here. Don’t go anywhere.” And clomped out of the room with only one shoe on. I went to the window and watched him make his way through a mass of kids heading toward the auditorium. Today was the big speaker the teachers had been telling us about for weeks. The great Native American poet Vincent DeLaine, some famous guy we’d never heard of. Native American, they said, like it meant something. I still wasn’t sure what the difference was between a Native American and a regular Indian.
I lost sight of Principal Whipple for a moment and then he emerged from the crowd, holding Nelson by the biceps, as much of it as he could get in his hand. His face was a blaring red warning light and his sockless foot looked like it had been covered in chocolate. Some of the kids were whispering behind their hands and pointing; it wasn’t every day Principal Whipple hauled Nelson into his office wearing only one shoe.
I ducked past Maria and fell in with the rest of the kids going into the auditorium. I wasn’t about to face Nelson after what I’d done, even with the principal in the same room. I hoped that Principal Whipple would be angry enough with Nelson to forget about me.
We watched as a shiny metallic green Town Car shished through the mud and stopped near the big double doors. Out stepped a tall, regal Indian wearing braids and wire-rimmed glasses, and a short white woman holding a box with some papers on top. The woman leaned into the passenger-side window and said to the driver, “Make sure you lock the doors.”
Inside, Mr. Hansen stood up and announced into the microphone that Principal Whipple had been detained momentarily and that he, Mr. Hansen, would be more than honored to introduce a Native American poet of great stature, author of five books at only thirty-three years of age, a voice of his generation, we’re terribly lucky he’d take time out of his busy schedule and speak to us for such a small fee, a wonderful thing indeed, please help me welcome Mr. Vincent DeLaine.
Mr. Hansen paused and the only sound in the auditorium was the creak of chairs and some girls whispering in the back. “You can clap now,” Mr. Hansen said into the microphone, and we clapped as hard as we could, really put up a roar until the Native American poet Vincent DeLaine shushed us down with his hands.
The first poem Vincent DeLaine read was something about stealing horses, and ponies neighing and the blood of the horses on the grass. Vincent DeLaine read his poem in a strange voice with an exaggerated singsong to it, the way white people talk when they want to make fun of Indians, the way we sometimes heard the cooks or the teachers imitating the students. Some of us laughed, but immediately quieted down when he looked up from his book and glared into the darkness. He wore a tomato-red shirt, a necklace with beads and animal claws, and braids that lay rigidly on his shoulders like brightly polished billy clubs. He was not, we finally understood, trying to be funny.
Vincent DeLaine read more poems in that singsong voice, poems about Indians getting butchered, about the sorrow of old women, about the coyote and the eagle and the crow and a bunch of other animals walking around talking to each other. Everybody around me seemed baffled or bored and I was glad to know I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what he was talking about. Sometimes Vincent DeLaine raised up his arms and yelled some of his poems in a loud, angry voice; his mouth would twist up and his eyes shrink into the skin of his face and he would bark out the individual words with something like contempt. With his green Town Car and his own pretty lady friend and such nice clothes, I didn’t see what he had to be mad about.
I sat up in my seat and looked over the expanse of black heads for Cecil. I wanted to tell him what I had done, that if everything went alright we wouldn’t have to worry about Nelson. While Vincent DeLaine went on about the dancers and the feathers and the jingle-jingle of bells, I allowed myself to imagine how it would be without Nelson—negotiating the playground without fear, taking a shower without checking my back all the time, walking with Cecil without worry in the hills.
Near the end, Principal Whipple came in from the side of the stage. His face was still red and the cuffs of his pants were crusted with mud. One shoe was smeared brown while the other was as shiny as a bottle. He tried to screw his face into a smile but didn’t seem to be having much luck.
For his last poem, Vincent DeLaine sang some old Indian song: eynah-ah, ey-no-oh. He chanted and intoned, really working himself up, and turned out to be pretty darned good at it. For his big finale, he held his hands in fists and shouted out over our heads, in his exaggerated Indian voice, “It’s a good day to die! It’s a good day to die, my sisters and my brothers!”
There was a long, rustling silence and he looked down at us from the lectern, waiting for a response. That was when Russell Binten, who everybody kne
w was the dumbest kid in school, dumber even than me, whispered to nobody in particular, “It ain’t a good day for me!”
Oh, did we laugh. It took Principal Whipple a few smacks on the microphone to get us quiet. He then thanked Mr. DeLaine for coming and sharing his art with us and reminded us that there would be copies of Mr. DeLaine’s books in the back available for purchase.
The doors in the back opened up, the bright day pouring in, and we all rushed to the exits like moths to a light.
Out on the parade grounds I searched for Cecil among the other kids splashing in the puddles, the girls and boys giddy with the chance to mix freely while the teachers and principal stayed inside to shake Vincent DeLaine’s hand and tell him what a great Native American he was. I spied Cecil trying to look inconspicuous behind the bleachers and I started off toward him when I felt a hand on my neck and I was jerked off my feet, straight up in the air.
I was done for and I knew it. Somewhere along the line I had made a mistake—how could I have known that Nelson, locked in Principal Whipple’s office, would be angry enough to throw himself against the door, splintering the jamb, and come out, like an angry bull busted out of his pen, to find me?
I turned to look at Nelson and what I saw terrified me: he wasn’t smiling. His lips were turned down in rage and his eyes were like black cinders pressed into clay. He hit me so hard that I felt the wind rush past my ears as I hurtled backwards and landed in a puddle, icy water enveloping my face for a moment. I rolled over and lay in the mud, doomed. I thought about running, but my arms and legs felt dead to me, inert and useless as limbs of wax. My sole hope was that one of the teachers would come out of the auditorium and catch Nelson in the act of killing me.
