The Chocolate War (16 page)

“Okay,” Carter said, banging the gavel. He always banged the gavel when he was unsure of
himself. The gavel was an extension of his fist. But feeling that Archie had somehow eluded him, had somehow won a victory, Carter said, “Look, Archie, if this backfires, if the sale doesn’t work, then you’ve screwed yourself up, do you understand? You’ll be all done and it won’t take the Black Box.”

Blood stung Archie’s cheeks and a pulse throbbed dangerously in his temple. No one had ever talked to him that way before, not in front of everyone like this. With an effort he made himself stay loose, kept that smile on his lips like a label on a bottle, hiding his humiliation.

“You’d better be right, Archie,” Carter said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re on probation until the last chocolate’s sold.”

The final humiliation. Probation.

Archie kept that smile on his face until he felt his cheeks would crack.

HE HANDED THE BALL off to Guilmet, slapping it into his belly, and then hung in there, waiting for Carter to lunge through the line. The play called for Jerry to hit Carter low and send him toppling, an assignment Jerry didn’t relish. Carter was easily fifty pounds heavier and he was used by the coach to keep the freshmen squad on their toes. But the coach always said, “It doesn’t matter how big the body, it’s what you do with it.” Now, Jerry waited for Carter to emerge from the jungle of skirmishing bodies as Guilmet plunged off tackle. And there he was like a freight train on the loose, out of control, rampaging wildly, trying to careen toward Guilmet but too late, too late. Jerry leaped toward him, low, aiming for that vulnerable territory of the knees, the target pinpointed by the coach. Carter and Jerry collided like a street accident. Colored lights whirled—Fourth of July on an October afternoon. Jerry felt himself lunging toward the ground, arms and legs askew, all mixed up with Carter’s arms and legs. There was
exhilaration in the collision, the honest contact of football, not as beautiful maybe as a completed pass or a fake that threw your opponents off balance but beautiful nevertheless and manly, prideful.

The good damp smell of the grass, the earth, rushed into Jerry’s nostrils and he let himself be carried on the waves of the sweet moment, knowing he’d carried out his assignment: get Carter. He glanced up to see Carter raising himself in astonishment, shaking his head. Jerry grinned as he got to his feet. Suddenly, he was struck from behind, a vicious blow to his kidneys, sickening in its impact. His knees caved in and he sank to the ground again. As he attempted to turn around to find out who had attacked him, another blow landed, someplace, and Jerry felt himself hurtling off-balance to the ground. He felt his eyes watering, tears spilling onto his cheeks. He looked around and saw the fellows getting into position for the next play.

“Come on, Renault,” the coach called.

He got to one knee, then managed to stand on both feet. The pain was subsiding, translated now into a dull spreading ache.

“Come on, come on,” the coach urged, irritable as usual.

Jerry made his way tenderly toward the lineup. He thrust his head and shoulders into the huddle, considering what play he should call
next, but a part of him was not concerned with the play or the game. He lifted his head and scanned the field, as if he were figuring out what to do next. Who had assaulted him that way? Who hated him so much that he’d racked him up so viciously?

Not Carter—Carter had been in full view. But who else? Anybody. It could have been anybody. From his own team, maybe.

“You okay?” somebody inquired.

Jerry plunged into the huddle again. Called his own number—a run-keep. At least if he carried the ball, he’d be in full view of everyone and not as vulnerable to a sneak attack.

“Let’s go,” he said, putting juice into the words, letting them all know that he was fine, great, ready for action. He found that his rib cage ached when he walked.

Lined up behind the center, Jerry raised his eyes again, sweeping the players. Somebody was trying to wipe him out.

Give me eyes behind my head, he prayed, as he barked the signals.

The telephone rang as he inserted the key in the front door. Turning the key swiftly, he flung the door open and tossed his books on the chair in the hallway. The ringing went on unendingly, a lonely sound in the empty apartment.

Finally, he grabbed it off the wall.

“Hello.”

Silence. Not even a dial tone. Then out of the silence, a faint sound, from a distance, getting closer, like someone chuckling, privately, at a secret intimate joke.

“Hello,” Jerry said again.

The chuckle was louder now. An obscene phone call? Only girls got those, didn’t they? Again that chuckle, more defined and louder but still somehow intimate and suggestive, a chuckle that said, I know something you don’t know.

“Who is this?” Jerry asked.

And then the dial tone, like a fart in his ear.

That night at eleven o’clock the telephone rang again. Jerry figured it was his father—he was working the late shift at the drug store.

He lifted the receiver and said hello.

No response.

No sound at all.

He wanted to hang up but something made him hold the instrument to his ear, waiting.

The chuckle again.

It was weirder than three o’clock this afternoon. The night, the darkness outside, the apartment riddled with lamplight shadows seemed more menacing. Forget it, Jerry told himself, it always seems worse at night.

“Hey, who is this?” he asked, the sound of his voice restoring normalcy.

Still the chuckle, almost evil in its quiet mockery.

“This some creep? Some flaky nut? Some stupid jerk?” Jerry asked. Draw him out, make him angry.

The chuckle turned into a hoot of derision.

Then the dial tone again.

He seldom kept anything of value in his locker. The school was notorious for “borrowers”—kids who weren’t exactly thieves but walked off with anything that wasn’t nailed down or locked up. No sense buying a lock—it would be busted the first day. Privacy was virtually non-existent at Trinity. Most of the kids didn’t give a damn or have any respect for the rights of others. They rummaged desks, pried lockers open, sifted through books on a perennial search for loot—money, pot, books, watches, clothing—anything.

The morning after that first night phone call, Jerry opened his locker and shook his head in disbelief. His poster had been smeared with ink or some kind of blue paint. The message had been virtually obliterated.
Do I dare disturb the universe?
was now a grotesque jumble of unconnected letters. It was such a senseless, childish act of vandalism that Jerry was more awed than angered. Who’d do such a crazy thing? Looking down, he saw that his new gym sneakers had been slashed, the canvas now limp shreds, rag-like.

He’d made the mistake of leaving them here overnight.

Ruining the poster was one thing, a gross act, the work of the animal—and all schools had animals, even Trinity. But there was nothing prankish about ruining the sneakers. That was deliberate, somebody sending him a message.

The telephone calls.

The attack on the football field.

Now this.

He closed the locker quickly so no one would see the damage. For some reason, he felt ashamed.

He’d been dreaming of a fire, flames eating unknown walls, and the siren sounded, and then it wasn’t a siren but the telephone. Jerry scrambled from his bed. In the hallway, his father was slamming the receiver down on the hook. “Something funny’s going on around here.” The grandfather clock chimed twice.

Jerry didn’t have to blink the sleep from his eyes. He was wide awake, chilled, the floor cold beneath his feet.

“Who was it?” he asked. Although he knew, of course.

“Nobody,” his father answered, disgusted. “Same thing happened last night about this time. But it didn’t wake you up. Some nut on the other end of the line, laughing away like it’s the
biggest joke in the world.” He reached out and tousled Jerry’s hair. “Go back to bed, Jerry. There are all kinds of nuts running around loose.”

It was hours before Jerry fell into a strange dreamless sleep.

“Renault,” Brother Andrew called.

Jerry looked up. He’d been immersed in his new art project—copying a two-story house in order to learn perspective. A simple exercise but he loved the ordered lines, the neatness, the stark beauty of planes and angles.

“Yes, Brother?”

“Your watercolor. The landscape assignment.”

“Yes?” Puzzled. The watercolor which was a major project had taken a week of painstaking work, simply because Jerry was not at his best in free art. He was more at ease with formal or geometric designs where the composition was well-defined. But the watercolor would account for fifty percent of his mark this semester.

“Today’s the final day for handing it in,” the Brother said. “I don’t find yours here.”

“I put it on your desk yesterday,” Jerry said.

“Yesterday?” Brother Andrew asked, as if he’d never heard of yesterday. He was a fastidious, precise man who ordinarily taught math but had been filling in for the regular art teacher.

“Yes, sir,” Jerry said firmly.

Eyebrows arched, the Brother looked through the pile of drawings on the desk.

Jerry sighed quietly, in resignation. He knew that Brother Andrew wouldn’t find the drawing there. He wanted to turn, to scan the faces of the kids in the class, to find that one kid who’d be gloating in satisfaction. Hey, you’re getting paranoid, he told himself. Who’d sneak in here and remove your drawing? Who’d watch so close that they’d even know you submitted the drawing yesterday?

Brother Andrew looked up. “To use a cliché, Renault, we are locked on the horns of a dilemma. Your landscape is not here. Now, either I have lost it and I do not make a habit of losing landscapes …” the teacher paused here as if, incredibly, he expected a laugh, and incredibly, the laugh did come “… or your memory is faulty.”

“I handed it in, Brother.” Firmly. Without panic.

The teacher looked steadily into Jerry’s eyes. Jerry saw the honest doubt there. “Well, Renault, perhaps I
do
make a habit of losing landscapes, after all,” he said, and Jerry felt a rush of camaraderie for the teacher. “At any rate, let me check further. Perhaps I left it in the teacher’s lounge.”

For some reason, this remark also provoked
laughter and even the teacher joined in. It was late in the period and late in the day and everyone needed to relax, let down, take it easy. Jerry wanted to look around, to see whose eyes gleamed with triumph over the missing watercolor.

“Of course, Renault, as sympathetic as I am, if I do not find the landscape, then I must fail you this semester.”

Jerry opened his locker.

The mess was still there. He hadn’t torn down the poster or removed the sneakers, letting them remain there as symbols. Symbols of what? He wasn’t certain. Looking wistfully at the poster, he pondered the damaged words:
Do I dare disturb the universe?

The usual corridor pandemonium surrounded him, slammed locker doors, wild yells and whistles, pounding feet as the guys hurried to the afterschool activities, football, boxing, debating.

Do I dare disturb the universe?

Yes, I do, I do. I think.

Jerry suddenly understood the poster—the solitary man on the beach standing upright and alone and unafraid, poised at the moment of making himself heard and known in the world, the universe.

BEAUTIFUL.

Brian Cochran added the totals again and again, toying with them, playing with them, as if he were a juggler and they were fascinating figures of delight. He couldn’t wait to report the totals to Brother Leon.

In the past few days, the volume of sales had risen staggeringly. Staggeringly was the correct word. Brian felt as if he were drunk on the statistics, the figures like liquor, making him lightheaded, giddy and dizzy.

What had happened? He wasn’t certain. There was no single reason for the sudden turnabout, the surprising upswing, the unexpected rash of sales. But the proof of the change was not only here in the figures before him but everywhere in the school itself. Brian had witnessed the feverish activity and how the chocolates had suddenly become a vogue, a fad, the way hula hoops had caught on when they were kids in the first or second grade, the way demonstrations had been
the big thing a few years ago. Rumors indicated that The Vigils had adopted the sale as a special crusade. And that was possible, although Brian hadn’t made any inquiries—he always steered clear of The Vigils. However, he’d seen some of the more prominent Vigil members waylaying kids in the corridors, checking on their sales, whispering menacingly to those who had sold only a few boxes. Each afternoon, teams of fellows left the school, loaded down with chocolates. They piled into automobiles and drove off. Brian heard that the teams drove to various sections of town and invaded neighborhoods, ringing doorbells, banging on doors, a massive sales effort as if they were all encyclopedia salesmen on commission, for crying out loud. Brian heard reports that someone had gotten permission to solicit at one of the local factories—four guys had circulated through the place and sold three hundred boxes in a couple of hours. The feverish activity kept Brian hopping, maintaining the records and then rushing down to the big boards in the assembly to post the results. The hall had become the school’s focal point. “Hey, look,” a kid had yelled out during the last posting. “Jimmy Demers sold his fifty boxes.”

That was the creepy aspect of the sale, the way the credit was being distributed among all the students. Brian didn’t know whether this was
fair or not but he didn’t argue about methods—Brother Leon was interested in results and so was Brian. And yet Brian was made uncomfortable by the situation. A few minutes ago, Carter had walked into the office with a fistful of money. Brian treated Carter with utmost care—he was head of The Vigils.

“Okay, kid,” Carter had said, flinging the money, bills and change, on the desk. “Here’s the returns. Seventy-five boxes sold—one hundred fifty dollars. Count it.”