Passion Play

by W. Edward Blain

  He looked around for Greg but didn’t see him. Nathan Somerville was dressed in a black robe at the altar and lighting the candles with a long brass taper. When he finished, he went down to the front pew and sat with his grandfather. There was no choir, but Mr. Carson, the music teacher, was playing some improvisation quietly on the organ. He saw a couple of boys with tears on their cheeks. Thomas felt his own throat start to tickle and felt embarrassed. This was stupid, a conditioned response. He glanced to his left. Richard was dry-eyed but looked very solemn.

  Mr. Heilman stood up, called the assembly to order, as if it needed to be, and told them what they already knew: that Russell Phillips had taken his own life last night. After he read a passage from the Bible and said a long prayer that melted into the Lord’s Prayer, he started talking about getting in touch with your feelings and dialoguing, and the proper ways to grieve, and all the other stuff he was always tossing around in chapel services. Thomas thought the assembly would have been better without Mr. Heilman involved.

  Dr. Lane spoke next. Thomas didn’t know Dr. Lane very well. As headmaster, he was distant from the students most of the time. Often he was off in New York or Atlanta or somewhere trying to raise money for the school. He didn’t teach any classes or coach any sports, and he handled only the most serious disciplinary cases and the honor offenses sent to him by the board of councilmen. He spoke in an elegant Richmond accent, in which “house” rhymed with “gross” and the final “r” on words did not exist.

  He told them something that they did not know.

  “I do not wish to add to your grief,” he said, “but I have spent the morning talking with Russell’s parents in Louisiana and to his roommate and to several of his teachers. These people have indicated to me that Russell was not at all obviously suicidal. He had been planning a skiing trip to Colorado for the Christmas holidays, and he was preparing for the big wrestling tournament on Saturday afternoon. He even had a date for the mixer.”

  He paused. “What I’m saying is that you can’t take anything for granted. Somebody who seems perfectly happy on the surface can be miserable underneath. I am therefore asking you, in these next months at school, to make a conscious effort not to let anyone be alone. No boy is to be alone on the dormitory during the academic day, and no boy is to walk the campus alone at night. Let’s stick together. Let’s behave with thoughtfulness toward one another. And let us make no mistake about my words. This is not a suggestion, but a new school rule: no boy is to be alone on this campus after dark.”

  Thomas felt the unpleasant churn of annoyance transform his grief into exasperation. That was so typical of the school, to lay down another rule on the students just because of one special case. He didn’t like the way Dr. Lane had implied that one of them might have prevented Russell’s death if they’d been more attentive. Why the hell does everything always have to be the students’ fault? From the murmuring and the hum of tension he knew that others in the chapel felt the same way.

  “Dr. Pain,” said Richard. He got shushed by one of the teachers sitting behind them.

  Dr. Lane went on to say that all faculty advisors should be available for any boy who wished to come by to discuss Russell’s death.

  “Otherwise,” said Dr. Lane, “I urge you to get back into your routine as quickly as possible. It may seem difficult at first, but I assure you that it’s the best thing. Classes will meet this afternoon as usual, but any boy who would prefer to meet with Mr. Heilman will be allowed to do so.”

  That was shrewd, thought Thomas. He gives us a choice between bullshit for credit and just bullshit. Thomas preferred to get credit.

  On his way out, at the back of the chapel, Thomas saw Angus Farrier, same old crew cut and same old olive trousers, but, unbelievably, wearing a tie and a jacket instead of the usual tee shirt.

  “You hear that new rule, Angus?” he asked. He was referring to Lane’s demand that nobody be on campus alone after dark. You could usually count on Angus to say something funny about Dr. Lane, but today he was all business.

  “Maybe it’ll help,” said Angus. He was looking down at his shoes as he spoke. “I can’t do it all by myself.”

  “What’re you talking about?” said Thomas. People were crowding by him to get out of the chapel.

  Angus shook his head and departed for the gym. Thomas went on to lunch. He figured Angus had misunderstood his question.

  That afternoon he made an even greater mistake.

  SCENE 4

  Only three hours had passed since the special assembly this morning. To Thomas it seemed like a million years. One minute to the bell, and it would be three o’clock, and classes would at last be over. The rotating schedule had rotated English class into last period today. Of course Farnham had gone right ahead with Othello as though nothing unusual had happened at all. He was jabbering on about major themes, and he was pointing to where he had written, in big block letters, APPEARANCE on one side of the board and REALITY on the other.

  The whole class sat in silence. Everybody had closed his notebook and had piled his books on the desktops. Half a minute to go, and Farnham was acting like somebody who’d just translated the Rosetta stone.

  “Othello starts off as a military hero, but he ends up as a tragic hero. He makes a terrible mistake, but he learns from that mistake. He achieves self-recognition at a terrible cost. Thomas Boatwright—”

  Saved by the bell. Almost.

  “—see me after class. The rest of you are dismissed.” Across the room Richard stuck his teeth out and made his samurai face, stolen from the old clips of John Belushi on Saturday Night Live.

  Mr. Farnham was erasing the board. “Why didn’t you come by for an audition yesterday?” he asked.

  “I did come by,” Thomas said carefully, “but I didn’t see you on the stage.” That was true enough, but Thomas knew he was quibbling with the truth, and hence was violating the spirit, at least, of the honor system.

  “Do you still want to try out for a part? Mrs. Kaufman is coming by to read for Desdemona today.”

  Thomas said he thought Mrs. Warden had that part.

  “She does if she can manage it,” said Mr. Farnham. “She’s been ill.”

  Thomas had seen her at dinner last night. He asked what was wrong.

  “Nothing major, I’m sure.” Why did adults always think they needed to protect you from bad news?

  Thomas said he’d decided to try out for a part, but that he wasn’t interested in Brabantio. “I don’t want to be an old man.”

  “You could read for Roderigo,” said Farnham. “He’s young. You and Nathan Somerville could rehearse on your dorm, couldn’t you? Nathan’s playing Iago. And Roderigo’s a good part.”

  “What’s so good about it?” said Thomas. “He’s pretty stupid, isn’t he? Isn’t he the one that doesn’t know what’s going on?”

  “It’s fun to play stupid people,” said Farnham. “Besides, you get to die.”

  Thomas thought about the conversation on the way to practice. They’d decided that Thomas would come by the auditorium if he got out of practice before 6:00. “You get to die.” That was supposed to be the big drawing card, getting to gasp for breath, choke, stare in shock off into the middle distance, then slump to the stage. Thomas had seen a lot of stage deaths in his life. Three years ago his father had taken his family to England, where they’d gone to see Hamlet in Stratford. Thomas had been disappointed to see both Hamlet and Laertes breathing heavily at the end of their sword fight even after both were supposed to be dead. He had pointed it out to his dad.

  “Being dead is hard,” his father had said, “though I don’t think those actors were giving it their best.”

  At the end of a Shakespearean play, nearly everybody important ended up dead. He figured it was the same way in Othello. But who could tell? The only one he was really sure would die would be Desdemona, since he’d seen posters of Othello strangling her ever since he was a little kid. Maybe after what Farnham was saying t
oday about reversing your expectations, it would turn out that Othello would get to live. What if the bad guy turned out to live at the end? That was the neat thing about Shakespeare; even when you anticipated exactly what was going to happen, he twisted the formula just enough to keep you surprised.

  As usual, Robert Staines was running his mouth in the basketball locker room.

  “Hey,” said Staines, “you hear about the cops being out here? They say there’s something weird about Russell Phillips’s death.”

  Ralph Musgrove asked him what he was talking about. “They said his neck got twisted completely around, like in The Exorcist. I say it was one of the niggers on campus practicing voodoo spells.”

  Coach McPhee’s voice came from the other side of the room, from behind the island of lockers hiding him.

  “That’s the stupidest comment I’ve ever heard,” he said. He walked out from where he’d been sitting and rolling towels to help Angus. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Staines.” He said Staines was lucky there weren’t any black kids on the team to overhear him. He was angry, and the whistle he wore around his neck bounced against his white coach’s shirt. “You weren’t there. I was. His neck twisted because he hit his head on the side of the building when he jumped, and because he landed on a guy wire supporting a telephone pole down below. You are not going to turn this tragedy into some stinking racist propaganda. You understand me?”

  Staines was staring at the carpet. He said he understood.

  “You better have a hell of a good practice today, Staines,” said McPhee. “And that means I don’t hear your voice.” And Staines did have a good practice. They all did. Somehow every time Thomas touched the ball, Staines or Musgrove had broken free under the basket where Thomas could hit him. He was handling the ball well, dribbling with either hand automatically, working the ball around the perimeter and then zipping it inside or even shooting once in a while when he was open. Everything went well until the end, when they got to the free throws. They paired up at the six different baskets in the gym, Thomas with Ralph Musgrove. Thomas hit only five of ten shots.

  “Concentrate,” said Coach McPhee, who seemed able to watch everybody at the same time. “Do your routine, Boatwright. Two dribbles only, look at the basket, bend your knees, and follow through.”

  At 5:30 Coach McPhee called them all together. “It’s getting dark outside,” he said. “You remember what Dr. Lane told you today. Nobody walks around the campus alone after dark. Pair up when you leave the building.”

  “We’re not depressed, Coach,” said Staines.

  “Yeah, Mr. McPhee,” said Ralph Musgrove. Everybody on the team reacted with him.

  “We can look after ourselves.”

  “I’m not afraid of the dark.”

  “If some guy wants to be alone, he’ll find a way.”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “We’re not babies.”

  “That’s enough,” said Mr. McPhee.

  Everybody got still. “Not babies,” said Mr. McPhee. “No, you’re not. Babies like to have somebody look after them. Adolescents want to get on with their own independent lives.” Thomas had never heard him sound so bitter. “Let me tell you something about babies, gentlemen. I had a baby brother who drowned in a bathtub because his sitter was careless. His teenaged adolescent sitter was given a responsibility, but he didn’t take it seriously, and my baby brother drowned.” He paused. “And gentlemen, I was that babysitter. I was your age, and I thought I had better things to do than to look after a two-year-old kid in a bathtub.”

  He seemed to be staring at each one of them at the same time. Nobody said a word. Thomas looked away, down at his shoes.

  “Think unselfishly,” said Coach McPhee. “Try a little self-discipline. Your duty is to look out for each other. If I catch you breaking that rule, I’ll see to it that you get plenty of demerits and plenty of time to sit on the bench for Saturday’s game. Dr. Lane is serious about this policy, and so am I.”

  So Thomas ended up walking back to the dorm with Robert Staines. They agreed that the new policy was dumb.

  “It’s just another damn excuse for them to take away some of our freedom,” said Staines. “I should have gone to Exeter or Andover.”

  Why not just straight to Harvard, Thomas thought. Staines had never earned over a C in any course since he had been here.

  Back on the dorm they split up. “Good practice,” said Staines.

  “Yeah, good practice,” said Thomas. Staines was actually behaving like a human being.

  The room was empty. It was 5:45. At the same moment he realized Greg must still be at play practice, Thomas remembered his appointment with Mr. Farnham. If Coach McPhee had not just lectured them, he would have ignored the new rule and walked over to Bradley Hall by himself. That story about his little brother was horrifying. Maybe Staines would go with him. He hurried next door to Staines’s room, where Tracy Chapman was blasting on the stereo.

  Staines was getting high.

  He had taken a can of Right Guard and put a towel over the nozzle. When Thomas walked in, Staines was huffing the aerosol spray coming through the towel as the deodorant liquid got filtered out by the terry cloth. Supposedly the chemicals in the aerosol spray got you stoned; Thomas had heard about the procedure but had never seen it before. He knew only that it was illegal at school. He turned around immediately to leave, but not before Staines grabbed him and pulled him back into the room.

  “Hey,” Staines said. “You’re going to be cool about this, aren’t you?” He was swaying as he held Thomas’s arm. He held it hard, and he shouted because of the volume of the music.

  “If you want to rot your brain, that’s your problem,” Thomas shouted back. There weren’t all that many drugs at Montpelier, not at least in comparison with a lot of schools, because Dr. Lane was so strict about kicking you out even for possession. But some people tried getting off on “legal” substances like aerosol sprays, glue, and record cleaners. Carella had told them in biology class that such stuff could eat your brain cells, and Thomas had believed him. Hell, Thomas had never even smoked pot before.

  “You want to try it?” said Staines.

  “How could such a good athlete—” Thomas started.

  Then Mr. Carella was in the room. He was still wearing his sweats from wrestling practice. At the sight of him Thomas nearly hyperventilated. Staines let go of Thomas’s arm and casually tossed the towel with the Right Guard can onto the bed.

  Carella turned down the volume to nothing. Then he looked at them both. He said he could hear the noise all the way downstairs in the lobby. He looked at them hard. “Anything going on here?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said Staines.

  “Thomas?” said Mr. Carella.

  What could he say? Mr. Carella was a cool young teacher, but he was still a teacher, and he was fanatic about eliminating drug abuse.

  “I’m just talking to Robert,” said Thomas.

  “Nothing illegal going on here?”

  “No sir,” said Staines.

  Thomas thought carefully. “Talking’s all right, isn’t it?” he said.

  Carella looked at them in silence for several seconds. “Fine,” he said. “Just remember the rules about noise.”

  He left. Thomas started to follow him out the door.

  Staines grabbed him by the arm again. “Where are you going?” he said.

  “Back to my room.”

  “Back to nark to Carella, you mean.”

  That wasn’t true. “Let me go, Staines,” said Thomas.

  Staines said they needed to talk. “Look,” he told Thomas, “this is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this. I was depressed after McPhee jumped all over me before practice. I was trying to cheer myself up.”

  It was all bull. But so what? If only Thomas were better at making quick decisions. He was not sure of what to do.

  Staines was encouraged by the silence. “Be cool,” he said. “I promi
se you it will never happen again.” He released Thomas’s arm and picked up the towel and the can from his bed.

  He put the Right Guard into his top dresser drawer and tossed the towel into his open closet. “Now let’s think about this,” said Staines. “There’s nothing illegal about spraying a can of deodorant. Remember that. There’s no rule against it.”

  Thomas knew the rules. There was a rule against getting high.

  “Everything’s fine,” said Staines. “I learned my lesson. Boy, what a stupid stunt for me to pull.”

  “Are you talking about discipline or honor?” said Thomas. Honor violations were different from disciplinary infractions. You lied, cheated, or stole, and that was an honor violation. Then you had to appear in front of the honor council. Convicted, you could get one of two punishments: immediate dismissal or honor probation. People on honor probation could remain at Montpelier, but they were automatically dismissed if they were ever found guilty of a second honor violation. If, on the other hand, you broke a regular old school rule—like a rule about drinking or going off dorm or staying up after hours—that was a disciplinary matter. Breaking a rule in the disciplinary code could get you kicked out of school too, if it was serious enough, but it would not be considered a moral blemish, the way an honor violation would be.

  The distinction in this case was moot. As Thomas saw it, Staines had violated both codes: the disciplinary rule about intoxication, the honor rule about lying.

  “What about honor?” said Staines.

  “What you told Mr. Carella. That wasn’t true.”

  Staines hit him hard on the shoulder with his open palm. It was a half punch half slap that forced Thomas back a step and rattled him.