The clatter of a cup and the loud click of the dipper against the big pot told him the chocolate wagon had arrived at the next room, although he was preoccupied with whether or not he had been playing a part when he had risked a battle with the Buzzer in the dorm. Could anger or pride be the real cause? as it was in his fight against Rattler? He could remember now that against the beans, the Buzzer, and Rattler, he had really believed that he would win and that he wouldn’t get hurt, although all the odds were against it, and he had felt no fear.
The door closed in the next room. Wheels squeaked with the start of the chocolate wagon, and it then rolled, with a tinny rumble, toward his door. Maybe you had to be play acting to risk? Maybe you had to pretend if you wanted to keep believing in things? in people? in yourself? Otherwise, you’d see nothing but nothin’ and quit. The rumble stopped. A cup rattled. The door opened. But it didn’t matter to him. They could throw away the chocolate for all he cared. And they could throw away the blade, too.
VI
Potato rot blackened and dampened the lug box that Aaron had saddled with a burlap sack to protect his white trousers. And its rotten odor set an appropriate boundary of stinking taboo between his seat by the potato closet and the gossiping, smoking, white-uniformed boys on the opposite end of the shaded kitchen porch, who, like him, were taking advantage of the few minutes of rest before the dinner whistle.
A pale bruise, thickening his left eyebrow, and a bloodshot eye corner were all that showed of the beating, although he wore a padded cloth protector over his bruised ribs. But not even indifference had been able to protect his bruised pride. A week of silent treatment and harassment made him tighten now with every remark. All laughter seemed at his expense. Every unusual move made him suspicious. The dry grass and weeds which covered the sloping hill gave suspect ripples, for he could feel no wind. The eucalyptus trees which grew out of the gully on the opposite side of the graveled yard formed a giant fence and closed him into a blind corner between the side wall of the officers’ mess and the back wall of the dining hall, where he couldn’t depend upon the chance of a scuffle being seen to protect him.
His meek questions had floated unanswered in the chilly air. He had been forced to learn his waiter’s job by himself. At least once a day, the salt, sugar, and pepper shakers which he had so carefully filled and wiped clean were replaced by grimy empty shakers and his clean hand-washed towels by dirty food-spotted ones. The nasty remarks had also become so numerous and so direct that his thin hope of lasting until September began to fade once more and he feared that he would never hope again.
Secret sounds were muffled by cupped hands in the circle of boys. But he could almost spell his name with the suspicious wrinkles of their white shirts. He could read the dirty writing in Bobby Shuck’s crooked blond curls, too, although the cadet captain made a slouching question mark of his hunched back. He could trace the sly smile in the dark pimple-specks that scattered like freckles over Boomby’s pitted cheeks, and it was a smile of the cheeks alone, for the big duke’s mouth did not move, and his stony Mexican eyes lied.
Sticks and stones could break his bones, Aaron repeated to himself, but words, wisecracks, snubs, being put down and played for shine meant nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing, he said again with the nigger slur of his name, and he knew that it had spilled out of a drooping corner of Bobby Shuck’s mouth. He despised Bobby Shuck for imitating the Buzzer’s drawl, for trying to copy Boomby’s cold smile, for playing the part with a pachuco slouch, but only proving, with all his play acting, he was only a paddy.
The porch shade blended the dark pits into the dark complexion on Boomby’s cheeks and made the smile harder to detect. But Aaron had learned to define it on his first day in the dorm when his box of candy bars had been stolen. The theft had been as ironic as the smile, for Aaron had cared as little about the candy as he did about the blade, which he had hidden and forgotten deep in the hospital trash, and he would have given the candy bars to anybody who asked for them.
But he did fear the smile. He feared it when he saw Boomby tease a little guy so bad he cried. He feared it because he only saw it when there was trouble, and he feared it because he was afraid that the smile combined with another obnoxious practical joke, like hiding his waiter’s cart in the mop closet, or with a pummeling, like the little guy had taken, might force him into a battle that he could only win with a butcher knife or with a meat cleaver or with a lucky blow of a frying pan or a slashing tray, a loser’s battle that he no longer had the guts to fight.
September and freedom were all that counted, he reminded himself, and tried to pretend that the smile wasn’t for him, that he couldn’t see the smile, that the smile wasn’t on the smirking brown face, that it didn’t even exist, and it suddenly didn’t. For his heart leaped into pumping excitement, as the Buzzer and Rattler came trudging, loud-talking, and laughing around the corner of the office, into the graveled yard.
A blue cap flattened the Buzzer’s head, lengthened the heavy droop of his lips, shaded his scheming eyes. He shuffled through the gravel, swaying, ungainly, hopped up onto the porch, and joined the group around Boomby and Bobby Shuck.
Rattler followed, but kept his bony limbs behind the Buzzer, and aimed quick glances with his tattooed cross at Aaron, although he helped stir the white mass of kitchen uniforms into a whirl of excitement.
Dinner count was due, so they had only come for trouble, but Aaron had already endured a week of their wisecracks in school, and leaving right away meant worse trouble later. They had driven him out of the gym once, though, and he now haunted the stacks in the library, where the enforced quiet protected him, and where he could also avoid Skip and his embarrassing gang-war games.
“Hee-hee!” he heard and recognized as Rattler’s cue for the Buzzer’s snigger, which followed immediately and was followed, in turn, by a chuckle from Bobby Shuck, a giggle from another guy, and Boomby’s smile.
He then waited for some remark, fearing a round of them.
“Rot-rot! Is that all that punk on that box there got?” the Buzzer said; and Aaron dropped his hands between his thighs with the trailing chuckles, let himself droop into a slouch, and told himself to relax, told himself that nothing counted but the short month until September, but Boomby added:
“He got more than rot./He got a sweet little knot.”
And Bobby Shuck said: “Now don’t tell me/that boy ain’t dear./He got the cutest,/the smallest,/the whitest rear.”
And Aaron got up to leave with the loud laughter, for the dozens were on, and the kitchen hall was a screened sanctuary beyond the swinging doors, but a sanctuary which he had to reach and tried to reach, as Rattler and Bobby Shuck both tried to drop a cap at the same time.
He heard them and he didn’t hear them. He heard their voices but he closed his mind to the jumbled words: pussy and punk intermingled with little fat boy and clean old man. He didn’t know who said what, and he didn’t care, and he didn’t look, but kept himself aimed for the screen doors, and almost reached them before the Buzzer, flanked by the white uniforms of Boomby and Bobby Shuck, blocked his way.
“Ha-ha, ha-ha,” the Buzzer laughed, and Aaron turned to go around them.
But they shifted in front of him with a snigger.
He stopped, with an angry pressure in his chest, and turned back.
They shifted again.
He stopped again, as an impulse to strike quaked through him, but, grinning and dangerous, he knew they would ruin any chance of a go-home, and hurt him.
He turned again, but completely around, planning to circle the officers’ mess and enter the mess hall by its front doors, listening to the Buzzer’s drawl as he crossed the porch, but not grasping what it said until he leaped from the porch:
“Fu-ucked the son, li-ike to get the mama’s cu-unt!”
And he landed with a flat-footed crunch on the crushed pebbles that jarred his entire body.
He heard himself say, “Go-home, go-home.”
But he turned again, and snorting like a punch-drunk fighter, he leaped up onto the porch and charged into the Buzzer, punching wildly with both hands, punching with all his power, but punching with punches that felt as light and as weak as fly swats, but he kept punching and he kept punching, and he kept screaming:
“You mother fucker, I’ll kill you. You mother fucker, you mother fucker, you mother fucker,” until his voice was a screech, but he screamed it as Boomby and Bobby Shuck each grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked him to the concrete floor, screamed it as they twisted him over on his back and held him down, screamed it when the Buzzer dropped on his bruised chest and knocked his breath out of him and pinned his arms to the porch with bony straddling knees and Boomby and Bobby Shuck kneeled on his legs, screamed it when the Buzzer began to slap his face back and forth between both palms, screamed it when Boomby started running a hand along the seam of his crotch, screamed it when Bobby Shuck pinched the cheeks of his butt and Rattler swung an arm in wide circles and poked with a finger and sang:
“Ro-ly, Po-ly, tickly my Ho-ly!” and he screamed it as Boomby warned:
“Don’t hurt the little punk, Buzzer. Don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt him. Get goodies, instead. Cop a feel, Buzzer. Cop a feel,” and he screamed it as the Buzzer reached back and crushed his balls in a black hand, and he screamed it until the curse changed to a shout of pain, then one prolonged screeching cry of anger, of frustration, of hate, and, finally, a stomach-deep sob; and then, unable to shout or scream, he began to spit, and still sobbing, he spit in the Buzzer’s face; his voice a wounded croak, he spit on Bobby Shuck; his lips a white froth, he spit on Boomby and tried to spit on Rattler and made them all duck and get mad and threaten to hit him; but the dinner whistle blew and resounded like a siren along the porch, and they let go and ran, disappeared in a sweep of white pant legs, a quake of hustling footsteps on the concrete floor, and a rapid beat of footsteps across the gravel, leaving him alone, but still sobbing, still spitting, still croaking, and stamping his feet, stamping his feet, stamping his feet.
But he suddenly stopped. He stopped stamping and stopped croaking and stopped spitting, and his sobbing settled into a quavering whimper; and he jumped up, his hair falling in his eyes, his white uniform dirty and wrinkled, his face burning with concentration, for he knew how to get them and right away, and if he couldn’t whip them, he’d kill them.
He staggered drunkenly through the swinging doors, while hot tears streamed out of his eyes and ran salty into his mouth and mucus stuffed his nose; and although a door snapped back and struck him across the ankle, it did not slow his reeling lurch down the empty hall; and he pressed on, almost toppling forward, and stubbing each shoe toe with each reeling step.
Hot blood fired every muscle, heated every inch of vein and artery, flooded his head, and drowned the clamor in his ears of the voices, the pans, the carts, and the last minute instructions from the main dining room.
Hot blood enlarged the pumping need of his heart for compensation for the wronged good will, for the spurned friendship, for the ruined reputation, and speeded the palpitating tempo of its demands for revenge for almost two months of punishment, mutilation, and despair. Hot blood churned through his body with the hot rage of a body that wanted to die destroying, but die, ease, free all pain of mind and body in one stupendous self-destructive act.
Yet, as he staggered down the hall, whimpering, sniffling, eyes hot and blurred, his mind was separate from his body and very lucid and very cunning and yet divided. One part, the controlling central part, self-consciously directed his walk along the hall toward the supply room door and watched to see that he was not seen, although he did not care if he was seen, would have liked to be seen so someone, anyone would try to stop him, and he could explode into immediate suicidal action. This part held the memory of the delivered supplies, the skull and crossbones on the rat poison cans, which he had helped to put away upon the supply room shelves a few days earlier, when the idea had first registered that it might be a clever way to get revenge without getting caught.
The second part of his brain hovered above the other and kept warning him, telling him what he was doing. It did not try to stop his entering the supply room door, nor slow his beeline path through the darkened musty shelves, nor tell him to stop when he grabbed the foot ladder from the back wall, set it next to the shelf he wanted and climbed, stumble footed but surely, up its steps, and reached, reached for the small circular cans, dropped one to the floor with a clatter, jammed another one under his shirt, climbed down, picked up the fallen can, put it, too, under his shirt, and was conscious of the sagging weight.
It did not try to stop any of this. It only told him exactly what he was doing and where it would end. It did not say stop! it said look! It said, “Now you close the door, still crying, sniffling, not caring. Now you turn and stagger down the hall, into the main dining room, where everyone turns to look at you and, then, self-consciously, turns away, avoiding you, giving you a clear path. Now you stagger straight down the main aisle of the dining room, all the way to the end, through the heavy odor of clam chowder and its steaming transparent clouds. You look around you once, although you don’t care if you are seen, then jerk open your shirt, and pull out a can with sweating hands. Somebody must be looking at you!”
The other section of his mind self-consciously takes control, and he turns his back, conceals his actions by holding the can carefully in front of him, still crying but slightly, still whimpering but softly, still sniffling but less so, but still desiring revenge, still wanting to explode in a fit of suicidal rage, but also wanting to win, to win, to win.
The reflective brain continues:
“Now you are using your shirt for a better grip and twisting the tin cap loose. Now you are dumping the heavy powder into the clam chowder and taking a step you will never be able to retreat from. This is murder and suicide, and you say you don’t care. You don’t stop with one. You even leave the can lying by the pitcher and move down the table to the second pitcher, but return to the first because you remember that the Buzzer sits at this end of the table, in the same spot, as cadet captain, for every meal. You are repeating the same suicidal process, killing yourself with them. You twist the cap loose, lift the can and dump the white powder into the thick hot spicy soup, stir it with a fork even, a cunning act. You’ve done it, and now you and they will be destroyed, destroyed, destroyed.”
But the other portion of his brain takes control again, and he picks up the cans, stuffs them into his shirt, leaves by the front doors of the dining room, runs crying and at a trot around the officers’ mess, through the crunching graveled yard, onto the porch, where he flattens each can with a single stamp of his heel, and carefully jams them into a large trash can.
He moves stealthily now that it is done and enters the washroom. He splashes water on his face and blows his nose, but he is not refreshed. He looks in the mirror. The whites of his eyes are a rabbit pink. His lower lids are as heavy and dark as coffee rings. His lower lip trembles. He cannot really look into his own eyes, the faded green of the iris or the deadly black of the pupil, for he is afraid to see the change in himself.
“It is over,” the reflective mind continues, “and you go out into the changed hall, changed forever by yourself. You have done it. You have poured rat poison into the Buzzer’s soup. Two cans of rat poison. You may get more than him. It is strychnine. You know that. You have seen its quick effects. You have seen the carcasses of field rats lying in the dairy, where they had eaten the poisoned grain, unable to escape from the man’s trap before they died in it.”
Sweat trickles all over his body. The thought of the skull and crossbones makes him dizzy, but it is too late. He walks slowly out to his place at the food counter and picks up the bread spatula. He usually likes the fresh bread odor, but now he cannot even smell it, let alone care about it. He knows all the guys are looking at him. He also knows that none of them will let him catch them at it, for they are afra
id of the scene he will cause. He looks around him and sees only profiles and the backs of heads. He doesn’t care, anyway. He’s done it and he’s going to win, any … way.
The wait for the sound of marching feet seems much longer than usual, and then he hears it: an explosive sound of thick-heeled brogans striking rhythmically against the asphalt. A quarter of an hour then seems to pass before the first two boys reach the wide double doors and both lines swing into the dining room and down its opposite sides to the twin food counters. The lines bring noise in with them. Happy noise. Dinner time noise. Trays clatter. Voices laugh, loud talk, hurrah. Shoes scrape. Lines stretch thin and close. And the sound of the marching feet continues in a rhythmical pattern.
Sweat flushes break out on Aaron at short intervals, tingling, tingling all over him. He itches and wants to scratch the slow slide of sweat drops, but he mechanically begins to slip the spatula, with a practiced motion, under two, only two slices of bread, and lifts and drops them into the corner pocket of each passing tray. He does not look at the trays nor at the boys pushing them. For from his position at the end of the food counter, he can see straight down the middle of the dining room to the front doors, and he watches and waits for the Buzzer and Rattler to enter with the last company. The last and final company, he thinks and sees them.
Twin shadows in the doorway, they part inside the doors and move down opposite lines, and the Buzzer, luckily, will get his bread from Aaron. Aaron will serve the Buzzer his last helping of food, at his last supper, on his last Friday. A final meal of clam chowder and fish. Clam chowder mixed with two cans of strychnine. A perfect seasoning for a nasty bastard. Poison chowder, hah!
“Poison chowder, hah! Poison chowder, hah!” Aaron keeps chanting to himself, letting the monotonous beat build up the pitch of his feelings, wishing the smell of poison chowder was all over the room, hanging in steamy odorous clouds above all the tables, and adds, when he notices Barneyway:
Tattoo the Wicked Cross Page 29
