Just Some Stuff I Wrote

by William Bell

  I stood gaping, hardly noticed when Terry said something. She wasn’t a teacher at our school, that much I knew. She was taller than he was, almost radiant in a rose-coloured, scoop-necked gown, her blond hair swept up. She walked with the kind of casual elegance I had envied all my life, her hand on his shoulder as he led her toward the arch.

  I pushed my way toward them, his telephone statement that we should talk tonight uppermost in my mind. Perhaps she taught at the other school, I thought as I followed them out of the gym, my eyes on his shoulders. She was chaperone for her students. Or a relative. Maybe he was being cautious, covering himself so that when he danced with me, which he would want to do more than once, people wouldn’t wonder, wouldn’t take notice and gossip.

  The pair moved quickly along the hall to the outside door. I almost called his name, but checked myself, not wanting to attract attention. They ambled across the parking lot, past the boys, who tossed away their cigarettes and tried to look innocent. I veered off, circled around the lot along the edge of the football field. I caught sight of them again standing beside a small sports car. It wasn’t his. I stood just under the bleachers, beyond the faint light from the parking lot.

  She’s leaving, I thought. He’s seeing her off and then he’ll come back into the school and look for me. I’d better go, I decided, so I’ll be inside when he returns. And right then, the woman put her arms around his neck. She kissed him as his arms encircled her waist. It was not a kiss between friends. He bent her back slightly, one hand caressing her bottom.

  A cramp seized my abdomen, staggering me, and I leaned against the bleachers. My breath came in gasps, my knees threatening to give. I fell to my hands and knees, saw chewing gum wrappers, fast-food boxes, cigarette butts, and vomited onto the dewy ground.

  I love this place. The window is open, and the odour of fresh-cut grass slips across the sill and into my room, like a secret. The leaves on the window tree are full and broad, deep, waxy green on the weather side, pale and delicate underneath. This chair is like an embrace. Hot chocolate in my favourite cup on the table beside the phone sends up a tendril of steam that bends in the breeze from the window.

  Regret is a stone in my chest, regret for what has to be done. He can’t be allowed to prey on other girls, to dupe them as he did me. Until today I couldn’t bring myself to act. No, until my report card came in the mail and I saw the C beside “English,” I was unable to admit to myself the depth of his betrayal.

  It will be hard. The police will ask a lot of questions. Mother and Father will be upset, angry because their daughter was taken advantage of. The case might even reach the papers. If it does, I’ll hold my head up. The days when women felt guilty are long since gone. Besides, I have an obligation to others. And I’ll do my duty.

  I have to.

  chumley

  Item one in the “Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse” department: first day, second semester. Wet snow, blustery winds, the streets and sidewalks skirted with grimy slush. Half past eight in the morning. I reported as ordered (as threatened) to the principal’s office, stood on the blue carpet in front of his desk as he tapped computer keys, making me wait to show me how unimportant I was.

  “How many hours left, Vic?” he asked, finally looking up.

  “Um, two, sir.”

  “Nice try. It’s five.”

  One day last semester, during lunch period, a couple of retards in the graduating class tried to paint a design on the chest of my new rugby shirt by squirting mustard and ketchup from plastic dispenser bottles. As soon as they started in, I dropped my plate of fries and shoved the nearest one into the condiments table. As if they had rehearsed it, they flung their bottles aside and started pounding on me.

  The school has a zero-tolerance policy on fighting. The two goons got a week’s suspension; I got thirty hours’ “community service”—slaving for the principal. He told me he had let me off easy because I had been attacked first (assault with a deadly condiment). I would have preferred the suspension. Following his neatly typed list of instructions, I spent my lunch periods and an hour after school each day cleaning up the caf, shovelling snow from the sidewalks and wrestling huge recycling bins full of cans and bottles to the collection area behind the school. By the time the semester had ended, I had served most of my sentence.

  The principal said, “I have an assignment for you. A little bit of time each day until the end of the week. Then you’re a free man again.”

  “I can hardly wait to get started,” I said.

  His lips parted slightly to reveal an even row of off-white teeth, but the rest of his face was like a plastic mask.

  “We have a new student,” he said. “He’s in your grade. You are to show him the ropes. Make sure he finds all his classrooms, the cafeteria and so on. Try not to sour him on the teachers you don’t happen to like.”

  “So I shouldn’t mention math class,” I interrupted, but he rolled on.

  “At the end of each day you will escort him to his bus stop. On Friday afternoon, he will report to me and tell me how helpful you’ve been. You will be helpful, won’t you, Vic?”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “He’ll meet you by the head secretary’s desk at 8:45.”

  The fact that the principal wanted me to show a new kid around didn’t mean the kid was stupid. Our school was more than a century old and it had so many wings and additions stuck onto it that, until you’d spent a week or two, you needed a map to get from place to place.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “He’ll introduce himself,” the principal replied, giving me the same tight-lipped smile. “He’s a little … unusual. So you two should get on well together.”

  “What do you mean, ‘unusual’?”

  “Have a nice day, Vic.”

  I stood at the entrance to the main office. Students streamed in the front doors, unzipping coats, shrugging off backpacks, jostling and calling out to one another, taking places in the alphabetically organized lines for their new timetables. Then I spotted him.

  He strode into the school, a scuffed briefcase in one hand and a cane (that’s right, a cane) in the other. On his head, a checkered cap with a bill at the back as well as the front, with little ear flaps tied over the crown with ribbons. A long trench coat belted at the waist and buttoned to his Adam’s apple. And around his ankles, almost covering shiny black leather shoes, some kind of cloth wrapping. With buttons. He looked like an escapee from an old black-and-white movie on TV.

  My first thought was that he must be crazy. He was asking for ridicule in a get-up like that. The kids would tear him to shreds before he got two steps down the hall.

  He looked around calmly, then put down his briefcase and sat on one of the benches near the door. Twisting the cane between his hands, he broke it down into three pieces and put them in the briefcase. He bent, unbuttoned the anklet things, folded them and dropped them in after the cane. Next, the goofy hat. He stood, picked up the briefcase and, releasing the top button of his coat as he walked, headed toward me.

  Bounced would be a better word. As if he didn’t look nutty enough, he walked funny, shooting upwards with each step as if he had springs under the balls of his feet. He marched straight down the hall in this piston-like manner and stopped.

  “Excuse me. Are you, by any chance, Victor Kendall?”

  I was expecting a reedy drone, but his voice was strong and confident.

  And his accent was British. Really British.

  “Vic,” I corrected him.

  “How do you do. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Chumley N. Hyde-Barrington.”

  He held out his hand and we shook like insurance salesmen.

  “N.?” I said.

  “For Nigel, I’m afraid. After my maternal grandfather. I understand you’ve been assigned to assist me,” he said.

  Every word that came out of his mouth made him sound as if he thought he was better than you. As
if he was looking down on you.

  “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it,” I answered, thinking, I’m stuck with this weirdo for a week. “Let’s get our timetables, then I’ll show you around.”

  He stood behind me in line and I pretended he wasn’t there. Everybody around him did exaggerated double takes, or stared, or just smirked and laughed. A few dropped prickly comments in stage whispers. He stood like a post, eyes forward, as if he was alone on a deserted beach.

  I knew the gods were against me when I read our timetables. Not only had we been assigned lockers side by side, we shared two classes, math and English—probably the principal’s idea of a joke. With the new kid bouncing along behind me like an aristocratic kangaroo, I showed him his classrooms and then took him to the lockers.

  He removed his trench coat and put it inside. He was wearing a sports jacket, a white shirt and an ascot. (That’s right, an ascot.) He snapped the lock shut, picked up his briefcase and looked at me expectantly.

  “The last thing I need to show you is the caf,” I said. “Then you can be on your way.”

  The caf was a zoo, jammed with students milling around, waiting for first class to start. Maddie and Phil were at our usual table. Phil had a solitaire hand laid out and Maddie sat beside him, offering advice, as usual.

  “Hey, guys,” I said. I pointed over my shoulder with my thumb. “Meet Chumley Nigel Hyde-Barrington the Fourth.”

  Maddie’s big blue eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Phil, always cool, merely allowed his eyebrows to rise a little. The new kid stepped forward like a soldier volunteering for a difficult mission and put out his hand.

  “How do you do.”

  From his seat, Phil shook with him. Maddie struggled for control, her face pink, her lips pressed together as she bit back a laugh. She extended her hand like a queen.

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” she squeaked.

  Maddie wasn’t ordinarily a squeaker. She was a stocky (she’d cut out my liver if she heard me use that word) reddish blonde who always seemed as if she’d forgotten to take her hyperactivity medication. Most of all, she was LOUD, as if she spoke in capital letters.

  “What kind of name is Chumpey, anyway?” Phil asked, getting the name wrong on purpose, I was sure.

  “It’s Chumley, my dear chap. British, actually. And Victor is making a jest at my expense, I’m afraid. I am not, nor have I ever been, ‘the Fourth.’”

  Then he kissed Maddie’s hand before sliding onto the bench across from her. I sat down beside him.

  “Are you like this ALL the time?” Maddie demanded.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Phil smirked and tossed me a look that said, This should be fun.

  “Can you BELIEVE this guy?” Maddie elbowed Phil and put on a phony (and bad) English accent. “I say. PIP PIP. I BEG your pardon, OLD BEAN.”

  I looked at CN, as I had already begun to think of him. There wasn’t a trace of anger on his face. He even smiled.

  “People in glass houses,” he said.

  “HUH? WHAT did he say?” Maddie appealed to me. But Phil cut in.

  “Bad news on the academic front, Vic. Maddie and I both have Quinn for math again.”

  “So do we,” I said.

  “Oh, GOOD,” Maddie drawled, rolling her eyes. “We can all be TOGETHER.”

  I dragged CN around like an anchor for the rest of the day, pointing out as much as I could and giving him as little advice as possible. He asked no questions. When classes were finished he retrieved his old-spy-movie coat from his locker, put his cane together, pulled his cap tightly onto his head as if he was afraid a sudden wind would come along and buttoned up his anklets.

  “What are those things, anyway, and why do you wear them?” I asked.

  He looked up and smiled. “My dear chap—”

  “Listen, man. Get this straight. I’m not yours, I’m not a chap, whatever that is, and if you keep saying dear to people of your own gender someone around here is going to put you on the floor.”

  Way to go, Vic. I thought. No way this loser is going to give you a good report now. I waited for his reaction. He slowly buttoned the second anklet, stood, belted his trench coat—and laughed.

  “Fair enough, Victor—Vic. These items of apparel are called spats. Useful for keeping the footwear unsoiled. A trifle out of date, one knows. But I rather fancy them. So there it is.”

  There what is? I wanted to ask, but instead I muttered, “Let’s go,” and led him out of the school to the bus stop. He knew where it was, but the principal had said to escort him there.

  “This is it,” I said, then added uselessly, “your bus stop.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, looking the pole up and down as if he’d never seen one before.

  “Um … Look, er, Chumley. You know where everything is now, right? The caf, your classes, the whole thing.”

  He nodded.

  “See, the thing is,” I went on hopefully, “you won’t really need me the rest of the week, will you?”

  “Dreadfully sorry, old—ah, sport,” he said. “Know I must be a terrible bore. But I’m afraid you’re stuck with me until Friday at, ah—” he looked at his watch, a cheap discount store version, “at four on the clock. That was the bargain, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Bargain, my butt, I thought. In a bargain both sides get something out of it.

  “Perfect,” I said, turning away.

  CN was the biggest pain in the rear end that I’d ever met in my life. Everything about him, his stupid clothes, his snotty accent, the impression he gave that he could walk on water, that you weren’t fit to wash his undies—all that, along with his weakness, filled me with scorn and contempt. I made it through that first week, barely, without killing him, then brushed him off.

  But I shared two classes with him. So, without really wanting to, I watched him from a distance. The teachers didn’t know what to make of him. They treated him carefully, as if at any moment he might fall down foaming at the mouth. He was always polite, but you could see they didn’t trust his good manners, sensing mockery just under the surface.

  The kids kept up the attacks—ridicule and sneers and half-concealed giggles from the girls, not-so-gentle jostling and name-calling from the guys. CN let it all bounce off. And what amazed, confused and sometimes enraged me—he took it with his chin up. No trading insult for insult, no hurt looks, no revenge. You’d have thought he was in the middle of some invisible force field that nothing could get through.

  To be insulted and humiliated like that and not respond—how, I asked myself, could he put up with it? What a jerk, a weakling, a coward.

  It was Maddie who came around first. She saw Chumley, at first, as a pathetic loser, then, gradually, as a creature who needed to be mothered. “He’s not THAT bad,” she admitted one day when I was ragging on about him, and I knew that her heart had gone soft. CN’s fair good looks didn’t hurt. Maddie began to get that glint in her eye—Phil called it the fox-in-the-henhouse stare—whenever CN was near.

  Phil caved in next. “He’s okay, I guess.” Which, from Phil, was the ultimate stamp of approval. One day he even asked CN for his help with a math problem. And he got the help, with no strings or conditions, no You-wouldn’t-talk-to-me-for-a-month-and-now–you-want-my-help? guilt trip from CN. “Certainly, old sport. Delighted,” was all he said.

  And me? I didn’t join the chorus of approval. One afternoon when CN had put up with another snarky comment from a girl named Liz, just as he was closing his locker door beside me, I said under my breath, “Why do you let people talk to you like that?” surprised at my shaking hands and the fury in my voice.

  He looked at me, surprised. “Simple psychology, old sport. If I let her get to me, I give her power over me.”

  “What are you talking about? She just called you a limey fag.”

  “Quite. But as I am not, as she so delicately put it, a fag—and even if I were, I would take no offence, because there is no dishonour in being gay—no harm done.
”

  “That’s not the point, you moron. She insulted you. It doesn’t bother you that she acts like you’re a notch above swamp gas on the evolutionary chain?”

  “Not a whit.”

  “Jeeze, you’re something else. And what’s this crap about her having power over you?”

  “If I allow her to trouble me, she wins. If I take her seriously, I relinquish control of my life to her. Why should I give her the satisfaction?”

  “But doesn’t it piss you off when somebody takes a shot at you? Not that you don’t ask for it, Mr. Spats-and-ascot-and-Queen’s-English.”

  “Not at all,” he said, ignoring my own jab and snapping his lock shut. “I simply consider the source.”

  How do you reason with someone like that?

  Quinn, assistant head of the math department, was one of those teachers who thought that making kids look stupid was a way of motivating them. She was a thin, angular, black-haired crow, totally without a sense of humour. She tested us every Friday, and on Monday she stood at the front of the room, the blackboard behind her covered in formulas and equations, our graded tests cradled in one arm. She lectured us on the importance of discipline, slashing the air with her free hand as she rambled.

  Then she handed out the tests. One at a time. Starting with the one that had the highest mark. As this ritual unfolded, the tension in the room was as thick as oil. She called out a name, the victim walked up to retrieve the work and returned to his or her desk. The first few kids she would greet with smiles, the middle group were rewarded with a blank face, and the final bunch—my group—got the cold Quinn stare.

  On the first Monday of the semester Chumley got the top mark. And the second week. But that same day, after Quinn had finished her little humiliation exercise, Maddie, who always did fairly well, put up her hand.

  “Yes, Maddie?”

  “Do you HAVE to do this?” she asked. “I mean, couldn’t you just hand the tests back in RANDOM ORDER or something?”

  Murmurs of agreement rippled across the room, bringing a scowl to Quinn’s already pinched face.