Beyond the Chocolate War

by Robert Cormier

  His voice trailed off.

  After.

  The word lingered in the air as they ran. Cars and buses and people, young and old, flowed past them as if on movie screens, outside their own isolated world of running.

  After Room Nineteen.

  Propelled by guilt, the Goober left Jerry behind in a burst of speed. Not only running now but running away. But impossible to run away, of course. As he zoomed around a corner, he was back in Room Nineteen again, in the middle of the night, terrified, the screwdriver so tight in his hand that blisters exploded in his palm.

  Jerry followed him around the corner in his own kick of speed, spotted him up ahead, and hung back, knowing he could never catch up.

  But the Goober put on the brakes, came to a sudden stop, and looked back over his shoulder.

  “Sorry,” he called, waiting, running in place, legs churning.

  As Jerry came abreast, the Goober pointed to an unoccupied bench at a nearby bus stop. “Let’s rest,” he suggested, noticing Jerry’s labored breathing, his face grooved with the agony of exertion.

  Jerry was grateful for the pause, realizing that he was very much out of shape. He knew that he had to convince the Goober that he was not to blame for what had happened to Brother Eugene, hoped he could find the proper words.

  “I hope you’re not feeling guilty,” Jerry said as he sat down, waiting for his body to calm, his heart to resume its normal silent beat. “It can’t be your fault, Goob.”

  “I keep telling myself that,” the Goober said. “But I keep wondering what would have happened if we hadn’t taken Room Nineteen apart. Would Brother Eugene still be alive?”

  “You can’t second-guess a thing like that, Goober,” Jerry said, groping for the right words. But could any words mollify his friend? “Room Nineteen happened last fall. Brother Eugene wasn’t young anymore. You’ve got to forget the past—”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “I know,” Jerry said, thinking of the chocolates.

  “I can’t wait to leave that rotten school,” Goober said, voice bitter, pounding the earth with his foot.

  “I’m not going back either,” Jerry said. “I might go back to Canada,” he added, discovering that possibility only as he spoke the words.

  “You liked Canada that much?”

  Jerry shrugged. “It’s peaceful there.” He thought of the Talking Church, knew he couldn’t possibly explain to the Goober how he felt about those weeks in Quebec. “This parish I lived in with my uncle and aunt is only a few miles north of Montreal. Maybe I can commute to an English-language school in Montreal.” More possibilities that he had not realized existed until this moment.

  “Monument High for me,” Goober said flatly. “No more Brother Leon. No more Archie Costello. No more Vigils. No more crap—”

  “Is Archie Costello still riding high?” Jerry asked tentatively, wondering if he really wanted to know.

  “I try not to pay attention,” Goober said. Then amended his reply: “Yeah, sure he is. You hear rumors all the time about assignments. Secret stuff. Some poor kid given a stupid stunt to perform.” Like me, he thought, and Room Nineteen.

  “Let’s run some more,” Jerry said, on edge suddenly. All this talk of Brother Eugene and Archie Costello brought back memories he had been avoiding. Room Nineteen was bad enough. But what about the chocolates? He didn’t want to think about the chocolates.

  They ran now in companionable silence, like last fall, finding a balm and benediction in the movement of their bodies, down hills and across streets, arriving finally at Monument Park and coming to a halt near a Civil War cannon. Sitting, stretching, Jerry was languid in the aftermath of exertion, felt as though his bones and muscles were deliciously melting.

  “Why so quiet, Jerry?”

  “Know what I keep thinking, Goober? How many Archie Costellos there are in the world. Out there. Everywhere. Waiting.” A thought crept into his mind: It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace. Nuns retreated to their convents. Priests lived in rectories, separate from other people, or in monasteries. Was it possible for him to do the same? Become a priest? Or a brother? A good and kind brother like Brother Eugene? And take his place in the world, someone to fight the Archie Costellos and even the Brother Leons? Hey, what’s going on here? Me a priest? A brother? Ridiculous. Yet he remembered those exquisite moments of peace in Canada.

  “What do you want to do with your life, Goob?” he asked.

  “Who knows?” the Goober mused. “Sometimes I wake up at night in a panic. Wondering: What will my life be like? And sometimes I even wonder: Who am I? What am I doing here, on this planet, in this city, in this house? And it gives me the shivers, makes me panic.” This is what he liked about Jerry Renault. He could talk to him like this, tell him his fears and hopes.

  “That happens to me, too,” Jerry said. “I remember a poem from somewhere, school, probably.

  “I, a stranger and afraid

  In a world I never made.

  “That’s me, Goob. That’s us.” That was also Trinity. A world he had not made. In which he had been afraid. He didn’t want to be afraid anymore. He remembered the poster in his locker: Do I dare disturb the universe? He had disturbed the universe of Trinity. Look what had happened. He would do no more disturbing.

  “Oh, Christ.”

  Jerry looked up as the Goober spoke, startled at his words, knowing that the Goob seldom if ever swore.

  “What’s the matter?” Jerry asked. And then followed the Goober’s eyes. Goob was staring at something across the street. Jerry looked and saw that it was not something but someone. There was no mistaking who that someone was. Emile Janza. The blunt, compact body, head sunk into his shoulders, the small eyes visibly piglike even at this distance. Or maybe he couldn’t see the eyes after all but remembered them vividly. He remembered vividly everything about Emile Janza. The fight in the boxing ring; the day Emile and his buddies had attacked him in a wooded area near the school. And now Emile Janza stood across the street, hands on hips, looking in Jerry’s direction. The noise of passing cars and trucks, the movement of pedestrians on the sidewalk, the quick dart of a small kid faded into the background. And for a moment Jerry and Janza seemed to be locked in a confrontation by eyeball. But were they? Jerry couldn’t be certain. Too far away to tell, really. Janza might be merely staring vacantly into space, eyes unfocused.

  A bus lumbered into view from Jerry’s right and slowed down, veering toward the curb, passing in front of Janza, obliterating him completely as if wiping him from the surface of the earth. Jerry waited, not looking at the Goober, not speaking, not even thinking. Remaining blank, a cipher, zero. The bus lurched into action again, belching purple exhaust, moving forward, revealing the sidewalk and the spot where Janza had stood. Janza was no longer there. Had evidently boarded the bus. Or walked away while the bus paused at the curb.

  “Do you think he saw us?” the Goober asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “What an animal.”

  “I know.”

  Jerry leaped to his feet.

  “Come on, Goober,” he urged. The hell with Emile Janza. “I’ll race you to the library.”

  And as he started to run, he knew he was really racing toward another place altogether, to Canada. Hey, Canada, here I come.

  “What time is it?” Janza asked.

  Obie glanced at his watch. “Ten after.”

  “Ten after what?”

  Obie tried to hide his exasperation. “What do you think? I told you to meet me here at seven o’clock. That was ten minutes ago. You think an hour’s gone by?”

  Obie wondered whether he had made a mistake by enlisting Janza’s aid in his confrontation with Cornacchio. They were standing in a shadowed doorway across the street from Vivaldi’s Supermarket, the small grocery store where Cornacchio worked part-time. The store closed at seven, but
Cornacchio always stayed behind to bring inside the vegetables and other groceries the market displayed on the sidewalk. Obie had once worked in a store after school, but was fired for being late because of the demands of Archie and the Vigils.

  “I’m getting hungry,” Janza said.

  Obie didn’t bother to answer. He didn’t want to engage in conversation with him. He hated the thought of using Janza, becoming involved with him at all, and yet Janza was the muscle he needed. Both Cornacchio and Janza were brutes: either one would cancel the threat of the other. Obie’s instructions to Janza had been simple: “You don’t have to say anything. Just play dumb.” Which wouldn’t require any acting at all on Janza’s part. “Look menacing.” As if he had to make an effort to look menacing.

  The evening had turned cool, and the wind hustled assorted debris along the sidewalk: pages of a newspaper, dry leaves, candy wrappers. Obie’s eyes were slits. Painful dry slits. As if someone had removed them for inspection and put them back in the wrong sockets.

  Cornacchio finally emerged from the store, arching his back, stretching his muscles. Looked tough. Which made Obie glad now that he’d brought Janza along.

  “There he is,” Janza said. He had a faculty for stating the obvious.

  Cornacchio walked with a swagger, the rhythmic bouncing gait of an athlete, as if his shoes contained hidden springs. Broad shoulders, legs like tree stumps.

  As Cornacchio crossed the street at an angle, Obie moved forward to intercept him, Janza at his elbow. Obie checked the damaged loafer, the brass buckle winking in the dusk, and felt again the anger and horror of that terrible night.

  “Hi, Cornacchio,” he said, stepping in front of him.

  Cornacchio looked at Janza, although Obie had greeted him. And he got the message immediately, knew what this was all about. Turned his attention to Obie, Obie’s deadly calm, his attitude of determination joined with Janza’s silent menace. Cornacchio was not a coward and not shy about using his muscle: he had emerged triumphant from countless schoolyard skirmishes since the third grade. But he knew when he was hopelessly outclassed, not only by Janza, who was probably the only guy in school whose strength he respected, but by Obie, who was a key figure in the Vigils, powerful, next to Archie Costello. He knew that Bunting couldn’t help him at this moment, no matter how clever Bunting was.

  “What’s happening?” Cornacchio asked, dancing a bit like a fighter warming up, instinctively putting up a front, not wanting to betray his nervousness.

  “It’s not what’s happening, Corny,” Obie said, deliberately using the nickname Cornacchio despised. “It’s what’s already happened.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cornacchio said, making an effort to pass by.

  Janza stepped into his path.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Obie said. So calm, so certain of himself, so implacable. Voice flat, deadly, quiet. And something terrible in the quietness.

  “Okay, okay,” Cornacchio said, lifting his arms, his shoulders, like a spy discovered in enemy territory, knowing that he would be shot at dawn, alone and friendless, abandoned by his comrades.

  “It’s not what you think it was,” Cornacchio said.

  Obie felt himself sagging, relaxing, unfolding, the relief from his tension so sudden and strong that he was afraid he would collapse on the sidewalk like a puppet whose strings had been severed. “What was it, then?” he asked.

  Cornacchio hesitated, glanced down at his feet, kicked at a piece of broken glass, looked up at Obie, then at Janza, then at Obie again. Held on to Obie’s eyes. Obie sensed a hidden message there. Then got the message. Of course: Janza. Cornacchio didn’t want to talk in front of Janza. And Obie realized how ridiculous it was to have brought Janza along. He had been duped by loss of sleep, the obsessive nature of his search for the attacker, had lost all perspective. He realized that he certainly didn’t want Janza to know what had happened. The less Janza knew, the better it would be for everybody.

  “Hey, Janza,” Obie said.

  Janza had not removed his eyes from Cornacchio for an instant. He had decided that he didn’t like Cornacchio. He didn’t like the way Cornacchio had ignored him, had barely glanced his way. Janza liked to be recognized, did not like to be ignored.

  “What?” Janza said, his voice a brief bark.

  “Check the other end of the street,” Obie said. “I thought I saw someone there.”

  Janza didn’t want to appear to be taking orders from Obie or anybody else. On the other hand, if somebody was lurking down the street, it was an opportunity for action, for the use of muscle.

  “Okay,” he said, spitting out the word, continuing to glare at Cornacchio to show that he was not simply an errand boy.

  Obie and Cornacchio watched Janza lumbering away, shoulders swinging.

  “I hate that scumbag,” Cornacchio said.

  Obie ignored the remark. He knew that he and Cornacchio were connected with each other by the Vigils and that Janza was an outsider. But the brotherhood of the Vigils did not make any difference to Obie as far as the attack was concerned. Cornacchio was the enemy; he was the scumbag, not Janza.

  “Okay, Corny, explain. If it’s not what I think it was, then what was it?”

  Cornacchio flinched at the use of his nickname, knew that Obie was deliberately taunting him. But he was in no position to protest.

  “The Vigils,” Cornacchio said.

  Obie stepped back as if Cornacchio had spit in his face.

  “An assignment,” Cornacchio said, pleased at Obie’s reaction, gaining confidence. “Bunting told Archie Costello about you and that girl. How we spotted you one night making out at the Chasm. He told Bunting to do something about it. Said the Vigils would provide an alibi.”

  More than spit in Obie’s face: as if a bomb had detonated nearby, leaving his body intact but sending shock waves throughout his system.

  “Archie Costello gave the orders?” Disbelief in his voice. Impossible. Yet nothing was impossible with Archie.

  Cornacchio nodded, gulping nervously, surprised at the way Obie had gone pale, hands groping at the air. Cornacchio was still troubled about that night at the Chasm, had replayed it a thousand times in his mind. He’d never done anything like that before. Actually, he hadn’t done anything, after all, had merely held Obie a prisoner under the car. He was aware of feeling horny as he and Bunting and Harley approached the car and saw Obie and the girl. His lust and desire died, however, as he held Obie on the ground, realizing the rotten thing they were doing. But nothing had happened. That’s what Bunting claimed, and Cornacchio believed him, needed to believe him. Bunting said later that it was all Archie Costello’s idea, an unofficial assignment. This knowledge had greatly relieved Cornacchio. The involvement of Archie and the Vigils made it seem less serious, not such a rotten thing, more like a kind of stunt.

  And nobody, but nobody, had been hurt.

  Obie had regained his composure.

  “Okay, tell me. What did Archie say? Precisely?”

  “I can’t be precise,” Cornacchio said. “I wasn’t there. Bunting told us later that it was an assignment. Unofficial but still an assignment. Look, Obie, nothing happened. Okay, I held you down, but I was only following orders.” Cornacchio knew he was stretching a point here, but he was a bit alarmed by what he saw in Obie’s eyes. Wasn’t sure what he saw but knew it was something to beware.

  Obie’s mind reeled and he ran his hand through his hair. His thoughts were a jumble of images—Archie and Laurie and Janza and Bunting and this kid in front of him, Cornacchio. Who seemed to be telling the truth. Was too smart to lie, knowing that his story could be checked. With Archie. With Bunting.

  “The assignment,” Obie said. “What was the assignment? To bushwhack? Or to do more than that?” Obie didn’t want to use the word rape.

  “Bunting said Archie told him: Do something. He didn’t say what. Do something about Obie and the girl. So we did.” Cornacchio was confused now
, realizing that Bunting had not gone into detail about the assignment. And he was worried—had he told Obie too much? He was happy to see Janza approaching.

  “Nobody there,” Janza said to Obie.

  His voice jolted Obie.

  “Nothing but shadows.”

  “I’ve got to get home,” Cornacchio said, doing his fighter’s dance again, avoiding Obie’s eyes, sensing the study Obie was making of him.

  Obie nodded, eyes huge, face still pale. Looked lost. Cornacchio felt sorry for him, then remembered that Obie had called him Corny. He hated every bastard who’d ever called him Corny.

  “Okay, get out of here,” Obie said at last, turning away, his voice weary, shoulders drooping.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Janza asked, keeping his eye on Cornacchio until he had disappeared around the corner.

  “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” Obie said. Numb now, bones singing with the pain of exhaustion, all exhilaration gone. And thinking: What a guy knows can hurt him.

  Rain. Pelting the streets and sidewalks and lashing at Obie as he walked toward Laurie’s house. He had taken to keeping a vigil across the street from her house at various times of the day and evening, drawing comfort from being near the house she lived in, slept in, took showers in (the vision of her naked under the water’s spray caused an ache in his groin), ate her meals in. The house was precious to him because she lived in it. Standing under a leafy tree for shelter, clothes soaked, hair matted—he had neglected to wear a hat or raincoat—stamping his feet now and then, he realized the futility of the solitary watch.

  He saw her brother approaching from the far end of the street. Clutching a book bag to his chest, he kept his eyes down as he approached Obie, as if afraid he might be robbed. He always looked as if he expected the worst to happen. And only twelve years old. Wait until he gets to high school, Obie thought.

  “When’s Laurie coming home?” Obie asked, not wanting to ask this particular kid anything but the question emerging from his frustration, soaked and lonely here on this rotten street when he should be home trying to catch up on homework.