In the Middle of the Night (3 page)

Brave words. Denny wanted to cheer his father on. But the moment passed and he pressed his lips together, thinking of all the nights ahead and all the telephone calls to come. Along with everything else.

Everything else, he thought, as he made his way through the warmth of the sunny morning to the bus stop. Meaning: the letters his father barely read before either burning them in the sink or flushing them down the toilet; reporters ringing the doorbell; the newspapers with his father’s name in headlines along with that old picture of him as a boy; his father’s face flashing on television. Not all the time, of course, and not every year. But certainly this year, a special year, the twenty-fifth-anniversary year.

Arriving at the bus stop, he looked dismally at the kids waiting there. Humiliating, starting every school day like this, the only high-school student in the neighborhood. The others at the bus stop were elementary-school students, the
oldest sixth-graders, some of them younger. It was a maverick bus, picking up unassigned and stray students.

“Hey, Denny, when are you gonna get a car and drive us all to school?”

Same old questions every day from Dracula, to whom Denny had confessed one day that his father wouldn’t allow him to get his license until he was seventeen. Too many crazy teenagers on the road, his father said. Denny had planned to wage a campaign for the license, to get it
now
and not wait. But that telephone call and all it meant complicated the situation.

“Hey, Denny, you need a license before you get a car, right?” Dracula persisted.

Denny ignored him. Ignored the other kids, too. Unruly kids, scuffling, fighting, filling the air with four-letter words. As usual, a couple of them started to fight. Frankenstein and The Wolfman this time. He had private names for all of them, most of them movie monsters. Even the small third-grader who was always getting pushed around by the older kids. Denny called him Son of Frankenstein, because he could be a pain, too, at any given moment.

Frankenstein and The Wolfman were really going at it now, grappling and scuffling and falling to the ground. Denny watched without emotion.

“Why don’t you do something?”

He turned at the words to confront a girl whose eyes were flashing with anger. She looked at him with the same kind of disgust he reserved for the little monsters. “They’re going to kill each other …”

“So—let them kill each other,” he said. But did not mean what he said, of course, letting his anger toward the kids, the girl, himself, come to the surface. Who was this girl to challenge him like that? He didn’t care if she was pretty or not. Actually, she was beautiful.

Shaking her head in disgust, she proceeded to stop the fight. She put down her bookbag, and began to tug at The Wolfman, who was on top of Frankenstein. While Dracula and Ygor and everybody else cheered them on.

Denny watched, astonished, as the girl wrenched The Wolfman away from Frankenstein and swung him around by the shoulders. When she let go, he tumbled to the sidewalk in a yelp of pain and humiliation.

She bent over Frankenstein. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He kicked out at her. “Let me alone, bitch,” he yelled, scuttling away.

The girl picked up her bookbag and looked toward Denny. “Thanks for all your help,” she said, voice dry as playground sand.

“You didn’t seem to need any,” he said.

Two other kids started pushing and shoving, calling each other names.

“See?” he said to her. “It’s like a war. You win one battle but the war goes on …” He thought that sounded pretty clever.

She did not reply. She walked to the other end of the bus stop. Surreptitiously, he glanced at her. Her blue bookbag hung from her shoulder. Her hair was as black as midnight. She wore a white blouse and a beige skirt.

On the bus, he sat alone as usual.

He was surprised when she sat down beside him. There were plenty of empty seats; she could have sat anywhere.

“Mind?” she asked, but already settling in.

“Free country,” he said, shrugging, his pulse leaping in his temple.

“Thank you.” Was she being sarcastic?

The bus lurched to a start. One of the little monsters slid off his seat and landed on the floor with a yelp. He was cheered and jeered.

“Why do you look so sour?” the girl asked.

“What?” he replied, startled. Did he actually look sour?

“I said: You look sour. What do you see out the window that makes you so sour?”

“The trees,” he said. Having to say something. “Trees?”

“Right. Look at them out there. Mutilated. The power company cuts the branches, hacks away at them, so that they don’t interfere with the wires. The trees all look … wounded.”

“But the wires bring electricity to the houses,” she said.

He shrugged, did not bother to answer. Was in no mood to argue.

“Would you rather be without electricity?” she asked. “Stumble around in the dark? Use candles instead of lightbulbs?”

The bus stopped for more passengers, doors opened and closed, exhaust smells filled the air.

They should bury the wires. That would protect the
trees. Also would prevent limbs coming down during storms and interrupting the power. Made sense, didn’t it? But he did not say any of this to the girl. Did not want further conversation.

“Well?” she said. Was she waiting for his reply?

“Look, what do you want from me?” Still not looking at her. Heat filled the bus. Hot for September.

“Nothing,” she said. “I don’t want anything from you. Except perhaps a bit of civility.”

Civility. Such an odd word to use in conversation. Meaning: Be civil, be civilized. Be nice.

Actually, he wanted to be nice. Wanted to be charming and witty and clever. She was beautiful in a way that made him ache. He could smell her perfume. Not perfume really but a clean outdoors kind of smell. Reminded him of breezes rippling across a pond. Miserably, he concentrated on the scenery outside the window. Not scenery at all but buildings and stores and commuter traffic. People hurrying along the sidewalk, going to their jobs. Inhaling the girl’s scent, he thought of Chloe. Hadn’t thought of her for weeks. Angry at himself now for thinking of her, angry at this girl for making him think of Chloe.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

He shook his head, not daring to answer, not trusting himself to speak.

She did not press him to talk. Did not ask any more questions or make any attempt at further conversation. He kept looking out the window.

The bus stopped at Barstow High. She rose from the seat, slung her bookbag over her shoulder. She stood there,
looked down at him in an attitude of waiting. Waiting for what?

“Hey,” she said.

He glanced up at her, caught her eyes, which were not crackling with anger like at the bus stop but soft, her expression gentle.

“I think that’s kind of nice.”

What’s kind of nice, he wondered, mystified.

“That you worry about the trees.”

And she was gone, making her way down the aisle and out the door, ignoring the shouts and whistles of the little monsters. He settled back in his seat, waiting to be dropped off at Normal Prep.

N
ormal Prep.

It was the nickname for Norman Preparatory Academy, named for Samuel J. Norman, a deceased Barstow millionaire, whose former home, a three-story mansion, now served as the academy’s administration building. It was so damn normal, which is exactly what Denny liked about it. And hated about it. Both at the same time.

The school looked almost
too
normal: two classroom buildings, located at right angles to the mansion, bright red brick with clinging climbing ivy, two stories in height. The lawn between the buildings was mowed to such perfection that it resembled artificial turf, although no one would dare play football on its surface or even walk across it. An iron gate guarded the entrance to the academy.

The students, all boys, wore navy blue blazers and gray trousers, the official school uniform. Students were
allowed to wear shirts and ties of their own choosing although the official Norman catalog asked that these be “tasteful in design and color.”

Denny’s father was enthusiastic about Norman Prep, even though the tuition meant that he had to work overtime at the factory to earn extra money. He said he wanted the best possible education for Denny, and Norman promised small classes and individual attention.

Denny didn’t want any individual attention, however. Just the opposite: he wanted to blend in and not call attention to himself. In his first nine days at Norman, he had not made any friends, hadn’t, in fact, tried to make any. He was a shadow without substance, gliding through his hours in the corridors and classrooms like a ghost, unseen and unheralded. In the classrooms, he tried to sit as far back as possible. He did not volunteer answers.

During lunch, he sat alone in the cafeteria. Actually, there were other guys at the table but he ate quickly, kept his eyes on his plate and faded out of the place as soon as possible. The athletic field was located behind the residence and he made his way there, jogging slightly. Then sat in the bleachers, looking down at the vacant field.

He liked being alone and didn’t like it, which was true of his entire life. Being pulled two ways. For instance, he was often lonely and wished for a best friend, above all for a girlfriend. No opportunities for a girlfriend at Norman. He wondered if he really wanted a friend.

He did not want to have happen here what had happened at other places, especially at Bartlett down on the Connecticut border. That had been a beautiful time, for a while. No telephone calls or letters or newspaper stories.
He had played intramural basketball; didn’t win any games but didn’t goof and lose any, either. He had a small part in a school pageant about the American Revolution, as a minuteman, carrying a musket. Had six lines and remembered them all. Had a best friend, Harvey Snyder, who turned him on to Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels and the exploits of Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer and the others, more than forty books waiting to be read. Most of all, there was Chloe Epstein. His first sort-of girlfriend. Met her at his first school dance ever. Eighth grade, wore his father’s blue and white striped tie, stood uncomfortably against a wall as the DJ spun the records. Girls’ choice. Chloe asked him to dance, after crossing the big gym floor toward him. “Don’t say no—I’d be so humiliated,” she said. Danced, both of them awkward at first, stumbling, then finding a beat, a rhythm, at last. She smelled of peppermint all over. Her cheek touched his and he melted with tenderness. Later they talked, and next day talked again, oh, about everything. Chloe was Jewish, Denny Catholic. He had never met a Jewish person before and she had never really
talked
to a Catholic. They exchanged facts about religion, surprised at all the similarities—Hanukkah and Christmas; bar mitzvah and confirmation; Passover and Easter.

Small and dark and energetic, she was like a hummingbird, going sixty miles an hour while standing still. Eager, talkative, on the move. Let’s do this, let’s do that. They wrote notes to each other. She signed one:
love.
Which made his heart a dancer, a line from one of his father’s old records. All of it wonderful. Until it happened. Damn it.

Shaking off that particular thought, he got up and
headed back to school, taking his time, because his next class was a study period and Mr. Armstrong played it loose with attendance.

At the school steps, he was stopped by Jimmy Burke, one of the few students Denny knew by name. Jimmy was senior class president and had given a “Welcome to Norman” speech at the academy’s opening ceremonies. He’d seemed like a nice guy, the right combination of confidence and modesty, as he’d stood on the stage.

“You’re Denny Colbert, right?”

Denny nodded, flinching a bit. He wondered whether he had been found out already.

“Listen, we’re organizing a new Student Council this year,” Jimmy Burke said. “And we’re looking for two representatives from each class. Would you be interested?”

“Why me?” Denny asked, genuinely puzzled.

“You’re new here. And we need new blood, new ideas.”

“I don’t know,” Denny said. Classic stall. He didn’t want to serve on the Student Council at Norman. He had seen a book one day in the Barstow Public Library titled A
Separate Peace.
Later, he had thought: I’ve declared a separate peace. That’s what he wanted to say to Jimmy Burke. But didn’t, of course.

Stepping back from Denny and pointing to the residence and the two classroom buildings, Jimmy Burke said: “Everything looks normal at Normal Prep, right?” Shaking his head sadly, he said, “Wrong. This is a great school. No drugs, no guns. But we’ve still got problems. Guys who want to take over, pushing people around, intimidating young kids. It happens at other schools, too. But it’s more
damaging here. We’re small, only two hundred students. Everything gets magnified …”

Denny had not noticed the problems Jimmy Burke talked about. But he hadn’t noticed very much, really.

He said, “I’ve got a lot of studying to do, trying to catch up. I don’t think I’d have time for the council.”

Jimmy Burke nodded thoughtfully. Then a frown creased his forehead and his eyes lowered. But he looked up immediately, eyes bright again with hope, possibilities. “Look, don’t give me a definite answer right now … Think about it …”

Denny admired guys like Jimmy Burke who passionately believed in a cause, who never took no for an answer.

“Okay,” Denny said, knowing his answer would not change.

Later, on the bus going home, he wondered whether he really wanted a separate peace, after all. At Norman Prep, maybe. But not at home. Not with his father, now that the telephone calls had begun.

The opposite of peace was war. Maybe that’s what he wanted—a battle against whatever or whoever had thrown a shadow over his family. But, he wondered, how do you start a war?

H
e entered the apartment to the sound of the telephone splintering the afternoon silence of the rooms. Closing the door behind him, he put down his books and stood in the small foyer, waiting for the phone to stop ringing. Five, six, seven.