The Boy Avengers (7 page)

I DON'T BELIEVE I HAD MY MIND COMPLETELY MADE up about Jack Foster, but what happened the following day, Sunday, was sufficient to make action against him inevitable.

Jeff and I were listening to the Bach
English Suite,
an excellent harpsichord recording, when Jack knocked on the door. It was most unusual, I should add, for a master to seek out a student, except through the office. Looking not entirely at his ease, he asked me to step into his room, or any other place that suited my convenience. I invited him in, offering to suspend the concert. I should like to see you alone, he said.

It doesn't concern Jeff then?

He gave me an odd look, and I knew it very much
did
concern Jeff, and that Jack, and possibly the whole school, now regarded me as the only person to see in matters concerning him. It gave me a small thrill of power. If I requested going anywhere but his room it might have suggested that I feared him, so I resisted the temptation to suggest we go to the chapel, and agreed to his room.

Go on with the music, I told Jeff.

I intended to, he said with a smile that forgave my presumption.

When we reached Jack's room, I belatedly noticed something significant; he seemed to be wearing a jockstrap, or at least his overflowing genitals were rigidly contained, exactly as when he had been my tutor. Significant?

This is not for me, he began. A lie, of course, for what was good for his boys was good for him. I know you think me callous at how glibly I dismissed what happened to your... friend.... The hesitation before friend was an insinuation, whether he consciously meant it or not. But I ignored it. To rush in with a denial could have been counterproductive. The prep-school world is a special world, rightly or wrongly. I have been here long enough that I tend to be swayed by its... values. At least he had the decency to hesitate a fraction of a second before values

But just as I under-reacted, I believe you may have over-reacted to the situation. It may have been a somewhat brutal introduction to the realities for young Talbot, but they are realities he'd have had to face sooner or later.

I have never once complained of the realities. If you think I was shocked by the act of sodomy, you are mistaken. I've been aware of the realities of sodomy for a long time, as you have, I added, and gave him a long look. He instinctively started to place a protective hand on his crotch, then hastily diverted it to his knee, gripping it strongly. My one complaint, I went on, is that they
forced
Jeff Talbot. It is none of your business, of course, but we were
not
friends until after the event, brought together by a mutual aversion to the
realities
of Cornhill, as you call them. At first it was only natural compassion on my part, but I could see what a splendid chap young Talbot was and it was natural we become friends. Unlike some others, I can value someone beyond his asshole, willing or unwilling, and his abilities on the soccer field.

Touche. I seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. I didn't mean to defend what happened. I wanted to explain my first reaction, which was a superficial and thoughtless one.

It was indeed.

After thinking about it, I had a stem talk with the boys.

I didn't tell you who they were. You wouldn't let me.

Didn't you?

If I had told you that someone forced Jeff Talbot to eat their shit you'd have taken action quickly enough, wouldn't you?

I don't see your point. They have nothing in common.

Oh, but they do! With some people, eating shit is as joyful a sexual act as sodomy, and related to it.

I find that hard to believe.

There are books on the subject.

I suppose so.

There are those, I pressed on, who would be no less horrified by sodomy than by eating shit.

He shuddered. I wish you wouldn't keep saying that! Obviously the thought of it turned his stomach, whereas the rape of an innocent boy had only amused him.

Actually, eating shit isn't one of my favorites, of the so-called perversions. In fact, it appalls me. I am a lover of beauty, and what appeals to me sexually is part and parcel of that love. Jack Foster's genitals had been, for me, a thing of beauty, apart from the rest of him. But finally it
did
matter on whom they hung.

I didn't mean to appall you, I said insincerely. I meant only to show you that to my mind one is as much a violation as the other.

But surely... he protested.

Only a matter of degree, I insisted.

The point I am trying to make, he said with a trace of desperation, is that I agree with you that what happened was wrong... and now
they
believe it was wrong.

Then they approached you?

I think he was tempted to say yes, but perhaps he feared I would learn the truth from others. No, he admitted, but by the time I talked with them, they already had serious misgivings...

Misgivings, I murmured, shaking my head. And why did you approach them? I meant to keep him on the defensive. Unfortunately my question allowed him to seize the initiative. It warned me again not to underestimate him.

It was clear they were suffering. Regardless of what you may think, I don't like to see boys suffer, so I asked if there was any way I could help.

Did you have a salve for
that?

He smiled, determined not to be at a disadvantage again. In a way. Didn't you find it effective? It has several uses, actually. I have more should you need it.

Did you inspect their pricks to make sure Jeff's asshole hadn't damaged them?

He looked startled, and I was startled when he admitted that he had. It was partially psychological. I wanted to impress on them that what they did was wrong, that it might justly have backfired, that they might have injured themselves.

You'd have been good delivering lectures on the dangers of masturbation for the YMCA.

I know you think us provincial here, he said smugly, so it may surprise you to learn that the headmaster specifically instructed me
not
to deliver lectures against masturbation. He told me if a boy should ask me if it was wrong, I was to tell him that like many other things, it was wrong only in excess.

I'm relieved to hear it. I'd always believed it made your ears drop off.

Yours seem to be on solidly, he said, pretending to stare at mine. I felt a moment's chill. Had he known I crouched at that peephole masturbating frantically as his lubricious genitals swung before my passionate view?

And were their pricks intact?

Perfectly. Probably hardened by years of self-abuse.

Suddenly I felt intense regret I couldn't have witnessed that scene, didn't even have a friendly witness to it, as with Jeff's rape. How much it could have told me about my enemies! The pity was, I already knew that I could easily have witnessed the scene. I glanced quickly up at the beamed ceiling of the room, very like my own. I mentioned earlier discovering a trap door in the ceiling of the closet of our room. Natural curiosity had already caused me to investigate. Not only did it give easy access to the attic over all the rooms in our wing, but in achieving the sophisticated rusticity the architect desired, the workmen hadn't been able to make the ceilings airtight. One could peer down with relative ease into the rooms below. Because of the rough-hewn beams this was not apparent from the rooms below, even upon close inspection. As for our own room, I had immediately bought a box of patching plaster and made the ceiling airtightand especially peek-proof. So how easily I could have witnessed the sadistic five having their penis inspection here in Jack's room.

Did they ask you to apologize for them to Jeff Talbot? I asked, knowing they hadn't.

I was glad to see this put him back on the defensive, for he could see this was
exactly
the least they should have done. They asked me how much you resented what had happened, he answered with a little frown.

I
resented! I let this sink in. And what did you tell them?

I told them you were extremely angry, and had every right to be.

And what did they say to that?

He smiled. They said, how were they to know Jeff Talbot was
your
boy.

Which one said that? I asked too sharply.

He looked startled. The smile faded. It was a peacemaking conference he'd called, and it was turning into something else. He frowned. I believe it was Applegate.

Well, this matter had to be settled. I am flattered they'd have hesitated to bugger anyone they thought was
my boy,
I said, accenting the my boy contemptuously, but they were and are wrong. Given the atmosphere here at Cornhill, I can see why it is natural for them to assume that if two boys are friends, one of them must be cornholing the other. As for me, I don't expect my stay here to alter my views
or
my respect for personal inviolability.

I see.

I remembered my purpose was to seem to make friends, to forgive and forget. So you can tell them for me, I said reasonably, that they need not lie trembling in their beds fearful I might slip in and forcibly rape them, driven mad by their beauty. He laughed aloud. This was the sort of humor that seemed to appeal to the prep-school mind. Did they want something of me? I asked. Besides a guarantee not to rape them?

They don't want to bugger
you,
he said, trying to keep it light.

I can't tell you how that relieves me, I said caustically. I could see he was sorry he'd tried to be flippant.

They want to be friends, he said. Friends?

You know what I mean. They want bygones to be bygones; they want to know if you'll forgive and forget.

Are they afraid of me? I brought it out in the open at last.

He looked me straight in the eye. Yes. That's what it amounts to.

Did they say as much?

Yes.

Then I forgive and forget.

And Talbot?

What about him?

Does
he
forgive and forget?

Am I my brother's keeper? Does it matter?

Yes.

I think he can be persuaded.

He stood up and held out his hand. I shook it gravely. I noticed a bulge at his crotch, which hadn't been there before. Had our conversation excited him beyond the powers of the jockstrap? Curious.

See you around, I said, and left. How easy it had been!

Grunt! I was startled. He was calling to me from the door of his room, using a name he'd used only in light, almost fond moments when he had been my tutor; actually it was the only private thing we'd ever had between us. I was almost touched.

I returned. I just remembered, he said. The boys. They're coming tomorrow at five for sherry before dinner. Just the five. Why don't you come too?

And Jeff?

Of course, he said too quickly. I could see he hadn't thought of it himself.

Do they know about you and me?

What about you and me? he asked, as though we had so many secrets between us he didn't know which I was referring to.

Grunt.

Yes, they know I was your tutor, though I'm not the one who told them. Not that I'd have minded. I didn't think it anyone's business. Of course the headmaster knew ...

Do you suppose they wanted you to intercede because of that, and not because they think of you as a father figure?

I hope so, he said, though he didn't mean it.

I'll ask Jeff.
I'll
be there in any case.

Good. And I hope Jeff will come, too. But don't tell anyone, of course.

Of course, I promised.

This last deserves a word of explanation. Seventeen was the magic age at Cornhill, as far as alcoholic beverages went, so that he was breaking what was actually one of the strictest rules by inviting meand Jeff to take sherry with him and the rapists. I think I'd have accepted in any case, since it suited our purposes, but it was flattering that he was sufficiently impressed by the importance of kissing and making up that he'd break a rule he himself had, as far as I knew, always observed to the letter. So I knew the five would also be impressed to see me and Jeff drinking our illegal sherry, and would probably recognize it as a gesture that we were to be fearfully respected.