At last, forcing down his emotions, he looked at his little brother once more. “What time were you supposed to be home tonight, Kev?” he inquired.
“Steve please, I’m sorry!” Kevin tried to pull away, but Steve held him fast and Kevin looked instinctively at Danny as panic overtook him.
“I did not ask if you were sorry, Kevin. I asked what time you were supposed to be here.” Kevin was still desperately seeking Danny's eyes, and Ryan nudged his brother. Danny looked up in an effort to meet Kevin’s gaze, but the expression of shocked betrayal on his little brother’s face was too much for him, and he looked down again as tears began to streak his face. Ryan squeezed his shoulder as Kevin looked back at his oldest brother and swallowed hard, using all his concentration in an effort not to cry.
“I’m waiting,” Steve looked sternly into his eyes.
“Steve, please,” he pleaded, struggling a little once more as reality penetrated his initial feeling of shock. “Please don’t do this!”
Steve regarded him silently for another moment, and then he let him go and said quietly, “Tell me, Kev, do you think you deserve to be punished?” Kevin was taken off guard as he stood rubbing his arm. He felt confused and didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent. “Listen to me very carefully, Kevin,” Steve continued after a minute. “If you truly feel that this punishment is undeserved, if you agree with your friends that you are being treated unfairly, you do have a choice, and the choice is this: You may choose right now to go upstairs to your bedroom, pack all the belongings you have, and be ready to leave the house first thing in the morning. If you make that choice you will no longer be a member of Rho Beta Chi (Kigh) and after I talk to Coach, you will no longer be on the football team, either. The choice is yours to make.”
“Do it, Kev!” James prodded from his powerless position. “I’ll go with you! Who needs this shit, anyway?”
“Me too, Kevin!” Alex added, disregarding Patrick’s scathing glare of disapproval.
The rest of the room waited breathlessly as Kevin struggled with his emotions. The decision was not as easy for him as it was for his friends. Neither James nor Alex was a starter on the team yet, nor were they on scholarship as Kevin was. Danny covered his face and Ryan squeezed his shoulder even tighter. Finally, Kevin looked back at Steve and in a voice so tiny not even Steve heard him, he said, “Ten o’clock.”
“What?” Steve prompted gently.
“Ten o’clock,” Kevin choked. “I was supposed to be here at ten o’clock.” His voice was still not very loud, but Ryan, Steve, and Danny all heard him. Danny’s tears came faster, and Ryan and Steve regarded their little brother with pride. The kid did have guts, as Danny was always telling them.
“That’s right,” Steve reproached him, sounding more relieved than anything. “You were supposed to be home at ten. You were almost forty minutes late, Kevin! Come here,” he gently took hold of Kevin’s arm once again, and drew him forward.
“No! Fuck you! You let him go!” With one desperate pull James ripped himself from Jesse’s grasp, taking everybody off guard as he lunged at Steve. Danny and Ryan had just enough time to step in front of their oldest brother, taking the brunt of the assault, and falling backwards as James knocked them off balance. James fell on top of them, and blindly he let his fist fly as Ryan and Danny both tried to cover their face. A moment later, James was dragged to his feet by Jesse and Sean.
“Take him out!” Steve ordered as he dropped to his knees by his younger brothers.
Sean and Jesse hauled the fighting freshman towards the backdoor, and Patrick followed with Alex. He had his little brother well in hand for the time being, but after the scene James had just made, he wasn’t taking any chances. A shocked silence settled over the room as the screen door at the back of the room slammed shut, and one of the juniors got up to close the heavy wooden door behind them.
File Six
The Questions and Answers
“True friends, like ivy and the wall, both stand together, and together fall.”
-Thomas Carlyle
“Let me go! Let me go!” James was still battling Jesse and Sean, and as the door closed behind them, they finally released him.
“Kevin is about to get licked in front of the whole fraternity, Man!” Jesse admonished. “You want to be up there with him? Is that what you’re trying to accomplish?”
“Maybe I don’t necessarily want to be,” yelled James, “but I should be! I’m just as guilty as he is!” Alex started to cry as he twisted resentfully away from Patrick, and Pat let him go.
“Have you guys got this, then?” Sean asked. “I want to make sure Danny and Ryan are ok.”
“Oh yeah, we’ve got it all right!” Jesse retorted, and Sean turned to go back in as Jesse grabbed James roughly by his arm again. “Come with me!” He yanked his little brother down the hill towards the woods behind the house. Alex started to follow, but Patrick pulled him back.
“Oww, Jess! What are you doing? Oww! You’re hurting me!”
Jesse stopped at the edge of the woods, and took his army knife from his pocket. “Take your pants down!” he commanded.
“What?” James gaped at him. “Why?”
“Well,” Jesse replied coolly, as he reached up to the nearest tree and cut himself a thick switch, “I could stand here and tell you that you’re not as guilty as Kevin is because you at least are passing your classes, because you at least until tonight have been listening to me and respecting my advice, and because you are not letting football go so far to your head that you forget about everything else in life! All of this is true,” he continued as he stripped the switch of its twigs, leaves, and bark until it was green and supple, “but it won’t stop you from feeling like you belong up there with him. So, I am going to give you the barest glimpse of what Kevin is about to go through, and then if you still want to play the hero, I won’t stop you! Didn’t I tell you to take your pants down?”
“Jess . . . .”
“Come on, Big Man, you’ve earned this tonight! Let’s go!” Jesse’s voice was so commanding that James didn’t dare disobey, and with trembling hands he unsnapped his jeans, unzipped them, and pulled them to his knees. “And your underwear!” Jesse pressed. James chewed his lip, fighting back tears as he once again complied.
“What is he doing?” Alex protested, watching the scene below in wide-eyed disbelief.
Patrick was sitting on the hill now, and he took Alex’s arm and pulled him down beside him. “Stay out of it, or I’ll do the same to you!” he cautioned.
“Bend over!” Jesse ordered his little brother.
“Jesse, please!” James stammered.
“Come on, James! I thought you wanted to share Kevin’s punishment!”
“I don’t want to! I just know I deserve to!”
“Well, if you’re so sure you deserve it, we’d better do something to ease your conscience! Bend over!” Finally James acquiesced, presenting his naked bottom for punishment as silent tears began to streak his face.
“Oww!” he yelped as the switch cut him for the first time. “Oww! Oww! Oww!” he shrieked as Jesse really lit into him. His big brother was holding nothing back. “Damn Jess! I’m sorry!” James screamed.
“Watch your mouth!”
“Oww! Oww! Ok! I’m sorry! Please! Please!” He was gripping his ankles tightly now and sobbing. “Oww! Oww! Oww, Jesse! Oww! OK! I’m sorry! Oww! Please! I’m sorry!”
“All right, James!” Jesse finally relented. “Stand up!” James did so gratefully, his hands going immediately to his bottom as he tried to rub out the burn. “You still want to go up there now? Keep in mind, that’s nothing compared to what Kevin’s going to get.” James shook his head, too broken up to speak. “Good! Then pull up your pants and behave!” James nodded and with a final rub to his burning posterior, he bent stiffly to pull up his underwear and jeans. He and Jesse then silently walked up the hill towards Patrick and Alex. James avoid
ed his friend’s eyes, sitting gingerly on the hill beside Patrick, drawing his knees to his chest, and hiding his face for a good cry.
“You need this?” Jesse offered the switch to Patrick and Pat hesitated, looking at Alex. His little brother was already crying and didn’t seem likely to cause anymore trouble so Patrick started to shake his head.
“Why not?” Alex sniffed contemptuously surprising both Jesse and Pat. “I deserve it as much as Kevin and James do, I guess! I’m just as guilty as they are!” Pat and Jesse exchanged glances. There was no sense, they knew, in trying to reason with Alex. They knew exactly how he was feeling, and without a word, Pat removed the blade of grass he had been chewing on from his mouth, and took the switch from Jesse.
He got to his feet, and then put his hand under Alex’s elbow. “Let’s go, Bud,” he encouraged gently, pulling him to his feet. Jesse sat down next to James, but remained quiet as Patrick drew his little brother to the side of the house and ordered his pants down. He then bent Alex over his knee, raised his little brother’s t-shirt and, the next moment, Alex’s screams and heart rending wails filled the air as his big brother began to switch his bare bottom. Patrick had a real little brother at home who he had spanked on one or two occasions in lieu of, “telling mom and dad,” so the activity was not a completely foreign one to him. Consequently, when he finally brought Alex back, he sat at least as uncomfortably as his friend, and he was crying just as bitterly. Pat sat down quietly next to Jesse, placing the switch on the ground, and stretching out his legs. They remained silent, letting their brothers cry, and keeping their thoughts to themselves.
“Why’d it have to be so near his birthday?” Alex finally sobbed.
Jesse and Pat were quiet for another moment, but finally Jesse shrugged. “It was convenient,” he replied with a tired sigh. “They always do it around this time of the semester.”
“Always!” James blurted brokenly. “What the fuck are you talking about, always?”
“There’s a meeting every year, James,” Pat responded soothingly.
“Yeah,” Jesse affirmed, “and it always takes place around this time because there is so much going on all over campus. All the activity helps them disguise the meeting’s true agenda. This year, Kevin’s birthday just happened to be one of those things adding to the activity . . . .”
“But why?” Alex fumed, cutting Jesse off. “Why do they have to lie?”
Pat gave Alex a funny look. “Well, if it was you, and you knew, would you come? Would you have come tonight, if you had known what was going to happen?” Neither Alex nor James had an answer to that.
“Besides,” Jesse added quietly after a minute, “technically they didn’t lie.”
“Bullshit!” James spat as he looked accusingly again at his brother.
“Technically,” Jesse went on patiently, “Kevin concluded on his own that tonight’s meeting was a party. Danny and Ryan could not dissuade him because they were already afraid he wouldn’t come, and if they told him anything that led him to the truth, they would have been in serious trouble as well.”
“Well that’s still the same as lying!” James returned in exasperation. “Even to let him think tonight was an ordinary, everyday meeting was a kind of lie. To let him think it was a party was just mean!”
“Well, what did you want them to say, James?” Patrick demanded. “Have fun at your party, Kev; oh and by the way don’t forget the mandatory meeting at ten o’clock where we’re going to bend you over in front of the whole fraternity and whack your ass with a paddle?”
“Well, something closer to the truth than what he got would have been nice,” Alex defended his friend's point hotly.
“Well, you’ve been told what the situation was,” Jesse returned. “You obviously have your feelings on the matter and we have ours, so let’s just drop it.” Alex and James were both crying hard again now, and Pat and Jesse were silent for a while.
“Danny didn’t want to do it this weekend,” Jesse finally spoke again quietly after a few minutes, when James and Alex had still not shown any signs of calming. “He was devastated when Kevin told him the date of his birthday, and he really wanted Steve to move the meeting. They were really going at it over the whole thing earlier in the semester. They looked for a better time, but there was always one objection or another. No time seemed like a good time, and in the end Steve decided it was best where it was. Danny continued to argue with him after that, but by then Steve was resolved, and Danny was furious with him.”
“Yeah he sure was,” Pat sighed. “It was an awful coincidence that Kevin’s birthday happened to fall around this weekend. All his brothers felt awful when they realized that was the case, and certainly no one meant for him to think that tonight was going to be a party. You can’t imagine what Danny and Ryan went through when they learned that was what Kevin thought.”
“Well what was he supposed to think after all that emphasis they placed on his attendance?” James protested.
“That it was a mandatory meeting,” Jesse scoffed.
“Well you said they always use the stuff going on around campus at this time to ‘disguise their true agenda,’” James challenged. “What does ‘disguise’ mean, if not lying?”
“Way to go, Jess,” Pat smirked, stretching out further on his side, and placing another blade of grass in his mouth as he prepared to watch his friend worm his way out of this one.
“Well, when I said ‘disguise,’ I really more meant ‘distract,’” Jesse started. “With exams, and the end of the season, all the parties, and . . .,” Jesse’s lip twitched and he glanced at Patrick. Patrick grinned at him, and Jesse looked quickly away again. “And . . .,” he started again with obvious difficulty; Pat laughed. “Shut up!” Jesse poked him. “There’s just a lot of stuff, ok? There are a lot of initiation kinds of things happening. All the fraternities and sororities are having meetings and that keeps the ‘chosen one’ for lack of a better phrase distracted, so his ears and eyes don’t pick up things they don’t want him to see. It keeps the rest of you rooks busy too for that matter, but that’s all it’s supposed to do. It’s not supposed to be some elaborate scheme of deception. This is the second year in a row that the strategy backfired.” Pat was smirking again in an effort to control himself, but he could not help the little chuckle that escaped and Jesse gave him a shove. “Shut up, you idiot!” he hissed.
“I don’t see what’s so funny!” Alex snapped, and that brought Pat to his senses. He rolled over and looked at his little brother who was staring at him with red, swollen eyes, and he sighed.
“Nothing bud,” he said. “Nothing’s funny. We all feel terrible for Kevin.”
“And nobody,” Jesse added, “is more empathetic than Danny.” Patrick looked quickly back at his friend, as he bit his lip to keep from laughing once more. This time Jesse too was fighting the urge, and he dared not look at Pat.
“You asshole,” Pat chided with a smirk.
“Ok, fine!” James rejoined. “Why Kevin? Why is he the ‘chosen one’?” Jesse and Pat became serious once more and exchanged glances again. For a moment, neither one of them spoke.
“We all knew it would be Kevin,” Jesse admitted, finally. “Right from the beginning of the semester, we knew.”
Alex and James looked shocked. “But how?” Alex asked.
Jesse shrugged. “That’s just the way it is.”
“Theoretically,” Pat mused, “I guess things could play out differently, but to my knowledge, they never have.”
“And I doubt they ever will,” Jesse added quietly.
“What are you talking about?” Alex demanded.
“You’ll know in time,” Patrick reassured.
“But we’ve screwed up almost as much as he has,” Alex began to cry again as he thought of his friend. “So have a lot of other people.”
“That’s true,” Pat replied. “That’s what this night is all about, a wake up call for all you newbies. If you
guys don’t straighten up fast, I would definitely expect a summons. Steve doesn’t play around. You may already get one, James, for jumping Ryan and Danny like that. That’s a big no, no, attacking the president’s brothers! Steve may let it go because of extenuating circumstances, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m sure Danny and Ryan will do their best to get you off, but like I said Steve doesn’t kid around, and he has a soft spot where those two are concerned. He’s probably pretty pissed right now.”
“Yeah, if I were you, I wouldn’t go anywhere near Steve tonight, while he’s got that paddle out,” Jesse cautioned his little brother. There was a long silence, but at last Alex looked at Patrick.
“What’s a summons?” he asked timidly.
The Fraternity Files Page 6
