Tuxedos and queer moustaches, we still need to chop all them up. Rich pig, poor pig, middle income, they’ll all die once they see me come!
There you are dear, feast on this here, pig ribs, feet and thighs. After you’re done, there’ll be pig ears with its tongue and eyes! Eat the heart and brain. You’ll hear no more cries!
The lyrics were bad enough, but Billy also noticed something else. The man sang with a strong southern accent. The more he saw of the stranger, and the more he’d heard of the things he was doing, the more Billy despised him. Within exactly one week since the man known as Jack White had come to St. Andrew’s, he’d managed to stir up trouble.
On only his second day at the rectory, for example, he’d been involved in a spat with Mrs. Keats when he’d taken an entire loaf of her hot-out-of-the-oven, homemade bread for himself. She had chased after him with a kitchen knife. At first he let her chase him, finding it amusing to watch an old fat lady try to run, but he became angry when she threw the cleaver at him. Jack White seized her by the shoulders and screamed, “WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM? DO YOU HEAR ME, BITCH? WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM?” before knocking her down.
Later that day Father Poole hollered from the bathroom just outside his office. The toilet had backed up and begun to overflow into the hallway. He called Jack White to shut off the valve, unclog the pipes, and clean up the mess.
Little Ziggy, who had an obsession with toilets and even sleepwalked almost every night to the bathroom just to flush it, approached the stranger as he was sopping up the unpleasant mess.
“Does our toilet go up now?” asked Ziggy innocently.
The stranger stared the little boy down without saying a word. When Ziggy returned his glance, Zachary Black became enraged. He hated people looking at him, regardless of their age or size. Grabbing Ziggy’s shirt collar, he yanked the boy toward him, pulled down Ziggy’s pants, and forced him to sit down on the floor. As the child began to cry, Black’s crooked smile formed once again.
“Don’t move from that spot, Piggy, or I’ll have to squash you like the parasite you are.”
“My name’s Ziggy,” the boy said, sobbing softly. “Not Piggy.”
“But you’re nothing but a little piggy to me,” Zachary replied.
Ziggy reported all this to Billy, Jordan, Theo, and me as we helped him change out of his clothes a while later.
“I’ll kill him,” Billy said, pulling off Ziggy’s soaked trousers.
“No,” Jordan cautioned. “Let’s just tell Father Fin.”
“That won’t do any good,” said Theo. “He didn’t do anything thith morning when Mithter White attacked Mitheth Keatth. He told Father Fin that she fell and never even athked any of uth if we’d theen anything.”
“Let Father Fin find out for himself,” I urged. “Otherwise that guy will get even with us. I think he’s dangerous. I mean, we can all see it. Father Fin will see it soon enough.”
So Billy kept his mouth shut, realizing how much Father Poole had been duped by the stranger. Billy was eager for Sister Ignatius to meet Jack White because he knew that she would see right through the stranger immediately. No one could ever pull the wool over her eyes. If you lied to her when she asked whether you had eaten cookies before dinner, she’d check the corners of your mouth for crumbs and even squeeze your nose until you opened your mouth wide open.
Regrettably, however, Sister Ignatius never did set eyes on the stranger. As she got weaker and weaker, getting up less often from her bed, she hadn’t been able to make it out of the Benson house since shortly before Jack White arrived. Her only companionship was Father Poole and Jessie. We boys weren’t allowed to see her because Father Fin figured that we were too loud and rowdy and that we might put her in a “fractious state.” When Father Fin and Jessie weren’t there, they’d leave General Lee in the bedroom with her. Sister liked his company. Passing hours at a time with an animal that couldn’t carry on a conversation suited her fine, since lately she hadn’t felt much like talking. Whatever was draining her energy increased bit by bit and day by day.
The stranger had some free time on his hands the first Wednesday he was with us. It wasn’t too hard to believe he was idle since we boys had done the lion’s share of the work around the grounds before his arrival. Our chores became his job description, and what took four of us an entire day to do he finished in three hours. His strength was remarkable, and sometimes we’d watch him work from up in the maple so that he wouldn’t see us.
We marveled at the ease with which he’d carry armfuls of lumber from one end of the summit to the other or how fast he’d chop wood for Mrs. Keats’s stove and the rectory’s fireplaces, splitting each block clear down the middle on the first try with machine-like accuracy. We also were astonished at his balance on the rectory roof as he walked along its edge without so much as a wobble. To us, whether or not we admitted it, this stranger was god-like.
Once he slammed a hammer down on his thumb. The blow was hard enough to have smashed every bone in his finger, yet he only flinched and dismissed the pain with a couple of shakes of his wrist. We all studied his thumb covertly later on at supper. It stayed erect the entire time he was eating, as if he’d had an invisible splint attached to it. The thumb was bruised to the darkest blue, almost black, but he didn’t grimace once during dinner. As he always did, the stranger kept his eyes down at his food and never spoke a word to anyone, unless it were in response to a question posed to him by Father Poole.
Jack White never did care for any of us one way or the other. The only time he’d ever pay us any mind was when he would tease and torment the little ones. It was obvious that he enjoyed admiring at the girls whenever they walked by, especially Sue Ellen who tended to flaunt herself in his vicinity. He’d pay more attention to their bodies than their faces, but the girls never noticed it as did we boys.
The interloper stayed clear of Billy, perhaps because he knew that Billy was a challenge. The rest of us were nervous around White, but Billy always kept his chin up and his chest extended, as if he were forever taking a deep breath. Billy was foolish enough to boast, sometimes loud enough for the stranger to hear, that he wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone, yet no one doubted Jack White’s superior strength. He was about five inches taller than Billy and outweighed him by about thirty pounds. Unknown to us at the time, though, was that the stranger needed to keep a low profile. He could only afford little instances of torment, such as his assault on Mrs. Keats and Ziggy.
For our part we all stayed away from the stranger after we saw what he had done to little Ziggy. If he was that mean to a five-year-old, we didn’t want to think of what he could do to children our age. Our first real skirmish with Jack White came relatively early during his tenure at St. Andrew’s. It all started because he had our only baseball and had been bouncing it against the side of the Benson house. Gabe, Dylan, and Charlie had come outside with General Lee to play a game of Monkey in the Middle but couldn’t find the ball, at least not until they heard it thumping against the Benson house. The three ran over and told the stranger to stop, citing Sister’s bedridden state.
“Get lost,” he said to them.
“But mister,” Charlie said innocently. “Sis is sick; she’s not feeling good at all.”
“Yeah,” Dylan agreed, nodding. “We were told to keep real quiet. And besides, we want our baseball.”
“YOU’RE ALL LITTLE PIGGIES!” shouted the man before again launching into his favorite ditty with a pronounced southern accent…
Here they are, they’re big fat piggies, shittin’ out their brains! Hear them fartin’, poopin’, crappin’, shittin’ out again! Pissin’ on themselves, just watch it happen!
General Lee, who always barked at the man more than he barked at anyone else, had to be held back by all three the boys while the man taunted them.
He stopped singing and smil
ed. “Here fellas. You want your ball?” He extended it to Charlie.
As Charlie approached to take the ball, White pulled it away, kicked Charlie in the testicles, and threw the ball far beyond the maple. When Charlie collapsed near the stranger’s feet, succumbing to the immense pain and burying his face in the grass, General Lee broke free of Dylan’s grip and charged the man, who booted the dog hard in the side. General Lee yelped loudly and fell not far from where Charlie lay.
Dylan and Gabe lunged at the man, screaming incoherent things, while Charlie clutched his crotch, fighting off waves of gut-wrenching nausea. Meanwhile the stranger just giggled. “C’mon, little piggies,” he growled, holding them back with the heels of his hands pressed against their foreheads as they swung into empty air, missing him by several inches. “You can’t hurt me, you piggly wigglies! You’ll get yours, I promise. No one touches me. You’ll be sorry if you touch me, piggies!”
Just then Theo came running out of the rectory. He’d been up in his room, which faced the Benson house, and he’d heard the baseball’s thumping. He also had seen Charlie, Gabe, and Dylan approach the man, although he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Theo had observed, however, that Gabe and Dylan were attacking Jack White, who was taunting and laughing at them. Both boys were finally able to strike a weak blow or two at White’s firm stomach. “Oh, you’re in trouble now, you little assholes. No one touches me.” said Jack White, and paused to guffaw. “You just wait.”
When Theo intervened, pulling Dylan and Gabe away, the man’s eyes lit up in a fury. The stranger pulled his hand back in a fist and punched Gabe in the mouth. When Gabe fell hard to the ground and saw the blood streaming from his jaw, the man merely laughed.
“Hey!” yelled Theo. “He’th only a boy.”
The stranger’s eyes were still wide and angry. “Oh, ith that tho?” Jack White said, mocking Theo’s lisp.
Theo overlooked the insult. “Yeth, that’th tho,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you, mithter.”
The stranger’s eyes narrowed as he walked slowly over to Theo and took hold of his arm. “You should be afraid of me, piggy,” he whispered to Theo.
“Well, I’m not,” Theo said bravely, although the stranger could hear a tremor in the boy’s voice.
“Then you’re even stupider than that lisp of yours, pig shit.”
“I-I’ll tell Father Fin,” Theo said, now clearly frightened as the man’s grasp around his arm tightened like a blood-pressure cuff.
“You do that, piggy, and I’ll slash all the throats of all the piggies in their sleep! I’ll start with the littlest piggy.”
“Thiggy?” Theo said, now on the verge of tears, his chest beginning to heave.
“Yes,” the stranger whispered. “Ziggy the Piggy. I’ll kill him first. Then I’ll go into all your rooms and do the same. But you, I think, I’ll kill last. And do you know why that is, pig shit?”
Theo didn’t answer. He just stood frozen with absolute terror in his eyes, which were now pooling up with tears. The stranger’s yellow eyes were so close to his own that they frightened Theo to the point of wetting himself. The boy moaned from the painful hold that Jack White had on his arm.
“Because then I could show what you made me do. If you tell Father Fuck what I did, he’ll send me packing, but that won’t be the end of me. No sir!”
Amid all his horror Theo was still coherent enough to notice that the man’s accent was different than it had been before. He now sounded like Sister Ignatius when she would mimic a Confederate soldier during her lesson on the Civil War.
“I’ll come back in the dead of night, little piggy,” the stranger continued. “I’ll take my switchblade that I keep right here in my back pocket, and I’ll use it to slit every throat on this goddamn hill. I’ll even kill the dog.”
Theo squeezed his eyes shut to hold back the tears that were already dripping down his face while down his legs ran thin streams of warm piss.
“What’s going on here?” a voice in the distance called. Zachary Black didn’t move an inch. It was Father Poole.
The man turned quickly back to Theo, whose eyes were focused on the approaching priest. “Look at me,” his assailant growled, stepping in front of Father Poole’s view of Theo so that he couldn’t see Jack White grab Theo by the collar. The stranger pressed his knuckles hard up against the boy’s Adam’s apple. “You remember what I said. You let me do all the talking. And don’t say a word unless it’s to agree with what I say. You understand me?”
Theo nodded anxiously so that the man would release his grip, just in time for Theo to intercept a geyser of vomit that had rushed up his throat.
The stranger let go of Theo’s shirt just as the two heard Father Poole yell, “What in the name of heaven happened to you, Gabriel Sparks?”
Zachary Black and Theo walked back toward the three other boys as Father Poole knelt by Gabe and Dylan.
“What happened, Gabe?” Father Poole asked again, dabbing the boy’s bleeding lip with two embroidered handkerchiefs.
Before either Gabe or Dylan could reply, Theo spoke. “We were playing catch, and… and Dylan pitched the ball to Gabe and hit him right in the mouth.” Theo glanced up at the stranger for a split second as if to check for approval of what he’d just said.
Dylan and Gabe looked bemused. They tried to contradict Theo’s explanation, but as they were about to speak Father Poole turned to Charlie. The boy was lying on the ground, still holding his crotch. Phineas noticed the tears on Charlie’s cheeks.
“And what happened to Charlie Ryder?” the priest asked.
Theo was about to answer, but this time Jack White spoke first. “It was just the craziest thing you ever did see a ball do, Father Fin,” he said in a southern drawl. “I pitched the ball to Charlie here, and it curved down. You know how baseballs sometimes do? It cracked the little bugger right in the nuts!”
White began to laugh, but Father Poole didn’t find it funny at all. He paid no heed to the man’s cackling and walked over to Charlie, whose grip tightened on his crotch as if he were afraid that Father Poole was about to perform testicular surgery on him.
“It’s alright, Charlie,” Father Poole said as he tried to pry Charlie’s hands away. “You know that I only want to help. Is it that bad?”
Charlie squeezed his eyes shut and began to nod his head in answer to the priest’s question.
“Alright, boys. I think you’ve had enough play for one day. Theo, why don’t you take the General for a walk. Gabe, go up with Dylan and Charlie to your rooms and change.”
Charlie got up with the help of Father Poole, then joined Gabe and Dylan as they walked back to the rectory. Father Poole took a clean area of his handkerchief and began rubbing Gabe’s blood off his hands. At that moment, instinctively knowing that he was being watched, the stranger slowly turned in Theo’s direction and grinned.
“C’mon, boy,” Theo said in a low voice, tugging at the dog’s collar.
“Didn’t you find it funny?” Dylan asked his two injured brothers.
Both Gabe and Charlie appeared ready to give Dylan a dose of the beating they’d endured and from which Dylan had been lucky enough to escape unscathed.
“What?” Gabe said angrily, his voice muffled by one of Father Poole’s handkerchiefs pressed firmly against his mouth.
“The man,” replied Dylan. “He spoke funny.”
Gabe and Charlie exchanged glances. “Yeah,” Charlie said in a shaky voice, “but so what? You gonna go up to him and tell him he was talkin’ funny?”
“That’s just it,” added Dylan. “Father Fin’s not afraid of this guy, and he didn’t say anything either.”
I think it’s safe to assume now, after the incident involving the baseball, that, if Father Poole had been told by Jack White himself that he was really Zachary Black, it wouldn’t h
ave made any difference. The priest couldn’t recognize a potentially dangerous man who was once an animal-murdering, lying, and conniving child. All he saw was a man much like the boy who got away from him, the one he believed that he had failed.
Billy Norwin and Jessie lingered patiently atop the maple, waiting for the stranger to go back up to his room in the rectory. He had been allotted a tiny room on the second floor opposite the boys’ rooms. In fact, it had once served as Sister Ignatius’s paint room, a place where she’d once caught Zachary Black sleeping.
Billy breathed a sigh of relief, though not loud enough for Jessie to notice, as Jack White finished his apple, tossed the core as far as he could past the maple, and went back around to the front of the rectory.
Jessie was almost sorry to see him go. Although she’d never admit it to Billy, something about the stranger had an almost hypnotic effect on her. Possibly it was the confidence with which he carried himself. There was something forebidding and mysterious about him. It was the same thing the rest of us felt, although not with the same attraction as Jessie. Whatever it was, for Jessie it was thrilling.
The two quickly climbed out of the tree and stole back to the Benson house. Because the front door was locked, Jessie was forced to climb back up the lattice with Billy Norwin behind her. Halfway up, as she turned slightly, her left hand lost its grip. Jessie screamed the instant she realized that she was going to fall. Billy reacted promptly, grabbing her robe, but her weight and momentum were too great for the small piece of wood to which he was clinging. The two fell together onto the grass.
All the commotion roused General Lee from his sleep. Billy and Jessie surveyed themselves, looking for cuts, tears in their clothing, or more serious damage such as broken bones, but they seemed fine albeit a little shaken. As General Lee’s barking grew louder, they heard him running anxiously down the stairs.
Embracing Darkness Page 41
