“Die, too, you little gutless punk. You might as well be dead, dogging it the way you do.
“Die, die, all of you die,” he repeats under his breath, wishing it was in everyone’s soup, the officers’, too, and he envisions the two mess halls as one, sees a dining room full of bodies, sees stiffened and intertwined limbs of blue, white, and khaki sprawled all over the tables, the benches, and the aisles, sees them until he sees the Buzzer only two boys away from him, sliding his metal tray along the counter.
One boy away and their eyes meet. Victory shines in the Buzzer’s eyes like the dull glow of shoe polish. He waits for his bread. Aaron scoops with the spatula, lifts high, reaches, pauses, then twists and dumps the bread into the soup bowl with a cackling laugh, and continues to cackle, as the Buzzer, lips contorting but making no sounds, backs away, then turns and hurries to his table, where he turns again, looks curiously at Aaron before sitting down, looks once more from his seat, and, as if no longer bothered by the strange behavior, jerks the soup pitcher out of another boy’s hand and pours the thick creamy liquid into his tin bowl.
Drops spatter over his tray as sweat streaks down Aaron’s face.
Aaron tells himself that he doesn’t want to commit a mortal sin, that he doesn’t want to kill, that he does not want to go to Hell. He then tells himself that it is not his fault, that all he wants is to be left alone, to do his own time, and go home in September. He has to wipe the slick handle of the spatula. The bread box is almost empty. Queens’ Row is now before him, but he does not see the faces nor the trays.
He watches the Buzzer. He can distinctly hear the click of the Buzzer’s spoon handle as it hits the edge of the tin bowl for a first spoonful of chowder. He can feel the Buzzer’s breath as the Buzzer blows upon the hot soup, feel the metal spoon against his own teeth, taste the thick soup, detect the minute grains of undissolved powder upon his own tongue, and feel them scratch down his own throat. His Adam’s apple bobs with the Buzzer’s. He does see Rattler’s head hovering an inch above a bowl, too, shoveling the soup down, hurrying for seconds. But his eyes are fixed upon every lifting spoonful of soup the Buzzer takes, upon the raised and motionless spoon when the bowl is empty, upon the pitcher as the Buzzer jerks it away from another boy, upon the pouring soup, and upon the final creamy dribble.
The din of silverware against metal trays, the clamor of voices, the heat from bodies and warm food and steam tables which fill the room bring Aaron close to a faint, for his need to protect himself now that the deed is done weakens him and quells an impulse to break into hysterical laughter at the Buzzer’s greedy rush to self-destruction. He gets dizzy, and he has to hold onto the bread box for support. He feels feverish. His tongue is thick. He waits for something to happen and he is afraid that something will happen.
The Buzzer finishes his soup and starts on his tray. But nothing happens. Aaron is the only person left at the food counter. The others have gone to the cool shade of the back porch to relax. Yet, nothing happens. Open mouthed, he eats the breaded filet of sole bite by bite with the Buzzer. And nothing happens. He watches for some sign of pain, of discomfort, of nausea, of vomit, and he watches so long, with such expectation that nausea rises in his own stomach, and he has to look away to keep from vomiting. Still, nothing happens.
He looks for signs of sickness among the other boys at the table. But he sees nothing.
Fish and salad finished, the Buzzer starts on his cake. He is in the middle of his first bite, gold teeth upon chocolate frosting, when he notices Aaron’s anxious stare, and the lack of hate in it seems to confuse him. He pulls the cake back and looks curiously at Aaron, then stuffs the cake into his mouth, gets up from the bench, lifts his tray, and goes to the scullery counter, where he drops the tray upon the stack with a clatter, deposits the silverware in a wire rack, the cup in its rack, the bowl in another, and steps to the door. He looks back at Aaron for a long obviously confused moment, steps aside for some other boys, and disappears in the direction of the gym.
Aaron stays at his station until every member of the dairy crew has gone, then hurriedly gets his cart from the kitchen and rolls it out to the table. He picks up the pitcher and stares inside. A thin film of soup scum coats its metal dents and hollows. He sniffs at it, trying to detect some odor of poison, but there are only the sharp smells of spices and clam. He begins to doubt that the poison will work. For it got the rats before they could get back to their holes, and it should have got the Buzzer before he left the table.
He then feels strangely lightheaded, almost buoyant. The pitchers lift from the tables like bubbles. His shakers stack themselves on the cart. His damp cloth wipes cleanly and freely, hardly touching the table tops. His cart rolls before him with the slightest push, and he returns it to its proper place in the kitchen before any of the other waiters are through with their jobs, and goes out into the cool air, the long shadows of the late afternoon.
But the gym’s shadow stretches across the visitors’ lawn and near to the compounds, whose yards and roofs are squares and rectangles of concealed black which hide the answer his strained nerves quickly demand to know. Yet he moves away from the compounds, toward the gym, and, head down and his hands tucked into his back pockets, he begins a compulsive, fast-stepping pace to work off the restless fear that begins to churn in his stomach again. He had jumped to conclusions and he realizes it now. A human being cannot be judged by a rat.
He changes direction and zigzags along the gravel paths which crisscross the visitors’ lawn, with its scent sharp and irksome to his nostrils, wanting something to happen: good or bad; but since he no longer wants to kill the Buzzer nor die himself, he begins to hope for a compromise: stomachaches and no deaths, pain without serious injury.
He scans each knot of boys he passes without leaving the gravel paths, stares at the boys who stand in front of the compounds, the pairs who pace the gym ramp, and the loners who move about on solitary routes, searching for a member of the dairy crew to see if any of the effects of the poison show.
He crosses and recrosses the lawn several times without success, but with a pictured dorm of blue corpses, overturned beds, and a vomit-smeared floor gradually taking on the set and unshakable outlines of a tableau; and he stops, and decides to risk going to the dorm, and finds himself in front of the chapel.
He starts toward the dorm, but stops, and takes another step, but stops, and turns, and hurries across the road to the chapel, without a plan or any idea of what he is going to do.
In four steps he crosses the porch and opens the heavy door, and he is several benches down the aisle, head lowered, still worried about a dorm full of dying boys, when a wheezing moan stops him in midstep, and his gaze freezes on his brogan toe.
Another moan makes his head lift, and his gaze shifts from his toe to the floor and shoots down the aisle to the altar, to the Buzzer on his back below it, twitching with the spasms of a headless chicken, and reaching with spread fingers for the angels.
With another moan, the sight vanishes, for Aaron turns and runs to the door and claws for the handle before he realizes what he has seen, before he realizes that the Buzzer is down, hurt, helpless, maybe dying, that this is what he has been planning and hoping for, that this is what he used the rat poison for, that he is running away from the victory he has dreamed of, that he is letting panic cheat him of the pleasure of winning, and of winning now!
“He’s down! He’s down!” he repeats to himself and keeps repeating until his fear gives way to hate, hate to rage, and rage gives him the nerve to turn around, to start down the aisle once more, back toward the altar, slowly toward the twitching body, but still careful, still not sure the Buzzer is really helpless, still suspicious of a possible trick, of a practical joke, still expecting the dark pimple-specks of Boomby’s smile to pop up between the benches, the bloated cheeks of Bobby Shuck to appear by the altar, and Rattler’s cross to come out of the chaplain’s office, or all three foes to come from the front door behind him; and h
e stops again and looks back at the door, truly fearful that it will spring open and that they will charge at him; and he does see their ghostly forms run down the aisle toward him, as if it were the dairy, through the flood of discolored light from the stained glass windows; and he tightens for a clash that never occurs, which a chilling moan from the altar stops, which snaps the tension; and with a shout of fear and elated rage, spurred on by his cry, he charges down the aisle and kicks the Buzzer in the ribs with all the force of his unslackened momentum and trips and almost falls and has to grab at the altar rail; and yet the soft thump of his brogan toe is disappointing, and the Buzzer’s shriek and sudden convulsion is so frightening that only the rail keeps him from falling, and only one-legged hops sidewards help him escape the backward snap of the muscular body and the wild jerking and twisting of the arms and legs.
He then holds onto the rail to keep from collapsing, but holds on entranced as the body bends back, arches off the floor, rolls on its side; and the bulging eyeballs pinpoint him for a horrible instant, then puff bigger with another wheezing moan, another suffocating gasp for breath; and Aaron shouts to avoid them and starts kicking at the exposed belly, kicks when it sucks in for air, kicks while it stretches and shivers and snaps as if it will burst, kicks it as he had wanted to kick it in the darkened dormitory, in the tumult of the dairy, kicks it with the fury and hate of those hospital visions, kicks it and kicks it and kicks it until he can’t lift his leg, until he, himself, is gasping for breath, until he notices that the convulsing body and the twitching arms and legs are insensible to his kicks, that the grimace on the Buzzer’s face is frozen with internal pain, that his kicks are as weak to the Buzzer as his punches on the kitchen porch, as the crack of the nozzle, as ineffectual as all his threats, as the blade he never used; and a scream rumbles as deep as a growl within him and splits his lips; and he kicks the black head back on the rigid neck, and balances on one foot, and growling and cursing and wishing he had a blade to stab with, drives his heel into the gritting teeth, lifts it to drive it down again, but screams with shock at the sudden wild shudder and limp collapse of the convulsing body, at the blood-flecked foam that slobbers out of the mouth; and he staggers back, afraid to look, whining with fear at his murderous crime, sure he is surrounded by accusing witnesses; for the bench rows swim in dizzy waves, silence crackles like malicious gossip, stained windows burn as bright as cop-car lights; and an eerie beam from a pale-glass pane spotlights him, but it paralyzes him, too, at the foot of the altar, and it holds him captive, and it holds him for the chaplain to burst through the door and condemn him for murder with a bullet-swift glance, for the angels to behead him, for God to strike him dead; and he moans and drops to his knees to beg forgiveness, to prove that he is sorry, that he didn’t want to kill, to pray for the Buzzer’s soul, to pray for his own soul, and to pray for everyone’s soul; but the button-size pupils then seem to dilate with recognition of him; and another wheezing moan whistles past the jeering teeth and through the foaming mouth, mocking him, mocking his fear, mocking his prayer, mocking his remorse, mocking his pity, mocking his poison, mocking his kicks, mocking him now as always in the past; and he jumps to his feet, and angry enough to kill but too tired to kick, determined to prove he can’t be mocked but too tired to shout, he begins to taunt and to taunt as if an audience of boys sat on the benches, to taunt because it’s all he can do, but to taunt with pleasure, to taunt slowly and relish the satisfying hate in every single taunt, to taunt and drag his victory out:
“Need help, Buzzer? Ole buddy?” he taunts and pants for breath.
“An equalizer?” he taunts and pants again.
“A doctor, maybe?” he taunts and pants.
“A month’s rest in the hospital?” he taunts while he pants, for he cannot pause, and he continues to taunt and pant, but taunt, taunt:
“How about a prayer?
“That’s what you came for, huh?
“Or should I pray for Barneyway?
“Or me?
“Or you get what you deserve?
“How’s that?
“How about a good punking?
“I’ll pray those bull-dike angels ball you with their swords.
“Up your big black ass!
“How’s that?
“Ram yuh, Buzzer, while you’re moanin’ and groanin’.
“Like you, Buzzer.
“Like you.
“How’s that?
“Jerk your goddamn pants off!
“Buzzerrrrrrrrrrr!” and he grabs the Buzzer’s wrist, inspired by the taunts, raging and strong again, but shudders at the touch of icy skin, and fears he’s been taunting a dead man, for there is no pulse, then fears he is losing his mind, for there is a pulse, although feeble and tiny, the second he thinks of one; and then he is sure he is losing his mind, for his touch seems to start the horrible convulsions all over again; and the arm starts snapping, violently, angrily; but he can’t let go, and he can’t let go because, somehow, his grip is all that convinces him the Buzzer really lives, that he, himself, lives, that keeps him conscious, and because he senses that if he lets go …? that together, they’ll …? And he starts kicking again, and he kicks to prove that it is the Buzzer who is dying, kicks to prove that he wants him to die; and he kicks until the motion of kicking finally frees his hands; and although the body collapses again and the wheezing moans stop and he wants to run, his legs buckle beneath him and he falls back on the altar rail, where his useless legs will not only not carry him away, he is too tired to even turn away from the sight of the bright sweat oozing out of the black skin before him, too tired to clap his hands over his ears and shut out the weak groans and the short gasps that bubble through the foaming lips; too tired to deny that the gold teeth still jut out, that they still offend him, that they have jeered him from his first day in the institute and that they will jeer him until the last day of his life, that they will jeer him in Hell, even in Hell; and because he is too tired to deny them, all the jeering memories crowd for attention in his mind; and he sees them one after the other, one imposed upon the other, and many at once: the “Ha-ha, ha-ha” with the grotesque dance and the taunts in the school and the crouching menace in the dairy; and he sees them as he sees the jeering teeth; and he hears them as he hears a tiny squeak; and he hears them and he hates them, but the squeak is so pitifully little to come from such a husky bully that it arouses a sympathetic tremor in him; and the memories are so unbearable that he fastens upon the teeth as he waits for another squeak, and he lets himself succumb to the sympathy; but the teeth still jeer, the memories still crowd into his mind, and his own pity doesn’t help him; and he bursts into a rage at his own weakness, at his need to feel pity for the Buzzer, when he is finally defeated and dying beneath him, and he shouts:
“Remember what you did to me when I was down, Buzzer? Remember?” and he grabs the balls and crushes them in his fist and twists with all his strength, and he twists harder at the Buzzer’s shriek, twists although the shriek is faint, and he uses his free hand like a wrench on his own wrist for leverage, and he twists still harder as the body starts convulsing again, aware while he twists that the trembling is different this time, that it is still strong and horrible but smoother, as if the muscles are somehow contracting together, in one unbroken movement now, not separately and wildly as before; but he is afraid he is imagining this and he denies it as the body arches backward so severely that he swears the heels will touch the head; and he denies this as he denies that it is his own voice that is yelling and cursing, that it is his own voice that is trying to convince the Buzzer of how much he is hated, of how good his dying is, of how good his suffering is, of how much more it, his voice, would like him, the Buzzer, to suffer; and he denies this as he denies that he can no longer understand his own words, that they are not as angry as his grip, and that they cannot be angry enough to really express his hate and his anger; and he denies this as he denies that he is not even making words but only a hoarse, growling soun
d; and he denies this as he denies that the crotch is rising in the air as if his grip is lifting it; and he denies this as he denies that the foaming mouth is gasping for breaths it can’t breathe anymore; as he denies that the convulsions have gone on for an uncountable amount of time and have not lessened in intensity as before; as he denies that the body is flipping about in angry contractions while suspended a full foot above the altar floor, arched from head to heels and kept upright by his grip; as he denies that the suffering will go on as long as he can grip; and he denies all of this and keeps twisting and shouting and crying until his arm cramps with pain, until the fingers of both of his hands ache with a numb stiffness, until he can no longer even feel the balls, until he no longer wants to see the convulsions, until they torture him as much as the Buzzer; and he jerks his hand loose and jumps back but croaks as he pulls the back-bent body over on its side toward him; and he croaks as he bumps into the altar, screams at the carved anguish on the crucified Christ, ducks at the sight of the grotesque angels; and trips backward over the Buzzer and falls to the floor, where he starts screaming at the touch of the convulsing body; and he screams as he scrambles to his feet and runs down the aisle, the icy sweat still sticking to his fingers; and he screams as he fumbles with the door handle in his clumsy haste, but he stops screaming when he throws the door open and bounds across the porch, and he has stopped screaming before he jumps the steps to the sidewalk and starts running down the hill, and he is no longer screaming when he runs past metal shop windows as screened and sin-haunted by the murderous blade as the dark-screened, sin-haunted lattices of confessional booths; and although he is no longer screaming, he runs from a chapel as haunted in his stricken brain as his mother’s hospital bedroom, as haunted as if the blood-flecked foam spewed from his mother’s emaciated grin, as haunted by the carved altar cross as by the scratched pachuco cross in the isolation cell; and, haunted, he runs past fields of dead weeds and dry grass, runs with a heart that pounds in his chest with all the force and deafening panic of beating, praying fists, runs into a wind that whines as hauntingly as the electric trains on those lonely nights, that murmurs like the unhappy memories in that empty house, that throbs as deeply as all the sobs of all his family at his mother’s coffin, that cuts his throat and sears his lungs; and, haunted, he starts running faster, although he cannot run faster, but runs faster, runs from every haunting fear and every haunting misery, runs from every fight and act of forced courage, runs from every humiliation and shame, runs from guilt, from the blade, from the chaplain, from Big Stoop, from Barney way, from himself and from that tattooed beauty mark, runs from that tattooed beauty mark, and, running from that tattooed beauty mark, he runs past the baseball diamond and from the boys playing on it, runs toward the blurred brown fields, runs madly, blindly, runs to hide, to escape, to obliterate himself forever, somewhere, soon, runs, runs, runs, runs until he stumbles and almost falls, staggers, with dragging steps, crouched, but still running, completely across the road, and discovers, while still running, that he is exhausted, that his legs are pulpy, that each breath sucks his insides dry and that he is running toward the dairy compound! that he has unwittingly turned back with the curve in the road and is heading back toward the main grounds, where he will be caught! but he doesn’t stop running because he can’t stop running! fear and momentum carry him toward the compound with the unescapable force of a skidding car! toward an inevitable crash with a group of boys in front of the compound! but he can’t stop running! and he can’t go back! and he zigzags with confusion, breaks his plunging speed, and slows to a trot, but can’t change direction; and his will-less body runs on, carries him with it, gulping air to soothe his seared lungs, to ease the side pain that splits his ribs with every jarring step; and though his feet finally begin to drag and the jolting heels to brake his speed a little more, he fears it will be too late, that the boys ahead will capture him; and they grow to Big Stoop’s size before him, while each knee bends less and less sharply, lifts less and less high below him, and each foot kicks forward with less and less energy and covers less and less ground; and he sees the pavement come into focus, and he recognizes strange color variations in the asphalt, a shallow darkened pool where rain water had stood, and molten tar layers from the summer heat; and he steps on an ash-white high spot that shortens his step and snaps his kneecap and slows him to a walk; and he walks now with plodding steps, each shoe lifting robot slow below him, lifting with a trembling effort of all his muscles, and slapping, flat-footed only a short space ahead of him; but he plods on, still unable to stop, still unable to turn, still unable to change direction; and he passes the smooth, calm dormitory windows, windows which conceal his murderous secret; and he sees that the group is still another compound away, but that the boys in it are close enough to notice how his white shirt trembles from his pounding heart, how his chest heaves, how he gasps for breath, close enough to see the guilt in his eyes, to be able to tell that he is a killer! but he still cannot stop because he might collapse if he tries and really attract attention; but he is so close to them that he is positive they can see how his hands tremble; and he jams his hands into his back pockets to hide them, and he squeezes his arms against his sides and binds his shivering body with them, and he squints his eyes to hide any expression in them, and he forces himself to take half breaths so he won’t gasp, and he tries to appear nonchalant by making himself walk right past the boys and prove that there is nothing wrong with him, and prove that he is not scared, and prove that he is not a killer! but the word is so chilling that it stops him; and he begins to tremble badly again, and he has to walk to avoid a collapse and to hide his shaking; and he walks past the dairy compound, past the field between the compounds, and straight toward the group of boys, straight toward them because, decision or not, he cannot change direction, because he is incapable of any thought but the immediate one of somehow getting past them; and he walks toward them as toward waiting cops, walks as if to his death, walks toward them and almost to them when the smack of running feet behind him stops him, and stops him, he is sure, forever, stops him with his hands still clenched in his back pockets, stops him so he may be grabbed, stops him and keeps him stopped while his last feeble strength ebbs away with the smacking sound, too weak and too afraid to discover the source of the sound, yet positive that it can only come from the only dormitory behind him, and just as quickly positive by the rapid and unflagging sound that he will not be grabbed, but just as positive, grabbed or not, that he cannot possibly take any more misery, that he will drop dead if anyone else besides the Buzzer is sick, and positive that he will drop dead, he stands with the dead ache of a heart that has already died inside him, a heart that can’t be hurt any more or any worse than it has been, as the quiet colored boy who replaced him on the garbage wagon runs by with a high-stepping panic, soles flashing behind him, and side-steps the group and the good-natured grab of another boy, and speeds beyond the group, without slowing, and cuts across the visitors’ lawn, and climbs the hill, body slanting forward, fists and arms and knees churning, and runs into the office, and lets the door slam behind him; and Aaron stands motionless, with that dead ache of a dead heart inside him, hands clenched in his back pockets, as the station wagon backs up behind the office in a cloud of gravel dust and burning rubber, swings forward and down the service road next to the eucalyptus trees, then onto the paved road, siren wailing, tires rippling, motor grinding in second gear, whizzes past him, khaki caps in the front seat, the colored boy in the back, and screeches to a halt in front of the dairy compound, where the doors swing open, the two men and the boy jump out, the men grab stretchers, and all three of them disappear through the gate; and Aaron stands motionless, with that dead ache inside him, although he can hear yelling and Big Stoop shouting orders, although he knows what is going on and what can be seen inside the dormitory; but he continues to stand motionless, with that dead ache inside him, as boys run toward the compound from all over the grounds and mill and shout in its courty
ard and in front of its gate, and more men run to the compound and push their way through the crowd, a crowd that swells, in what seems seconds, to riot size; and, with that dead ache inside him, Aaron finally begins to drift toward the crowd, drifts toward it with as effortless and motiveless and strong and incomprehensible a pull as an iron filing toward a magnet, drifts toward it without curiosity or panic or fear or even remorse, drifts toward it with an ache so dead within him that his pounding heart has no effect upon his winded body; and he reaches it, with that dead ache inside him, as Big Stoop and another man come out of the dairy dorm, carrying someone on a stretcher between them; and he lets himself, with that dead ache inside him, be pushed into the excited crowd, lets himself be pushed so far forward that he catches a glimpse of the stretcher; but he lets himself, with that dead ache inside him, be pushed still farther back and then forward again, and, then, back, and forward, and back again, and he begins to feel hot and giddy, but lets himself be pushed around because he doesn’t care if he is shoved, because he doesn’t care if he can see or not, because he doesn’t care if anyone else is sick or dying, because no care can help the dead ache, but because he doesn’t care, it all seems so stupid, he feels an urge to smile, because he doesn’t care, it all seems so useless, he feels an urge to chuckle, because he doesn’t care, it all seems so hopeless, he feels an urge to laugh loudly, to laugh desperately; but the urge diminishes as the crowd thins before the gate in order to allow the stretcher to pass, and a numb expectant horror grips him instead, and his dry tongue swells and grits against the ridged roof of his mouth, and his blood pounds into pain in his temples, and though he slaps his hands to his mouth to stifle a scream at the sight of Barneyway’s puny body flipping around on the stretcher like a hooked fish, at the bulging eyes, at the peeling lips, at the gums and teeth putting out in a jackass’s grin, he cries:
Tattoo the Wicked Cross Page 30
