Boarding School (4 page)

“Ok, Dad. I’ll be fine,” I said as the rain began to come down harder now.

We then said our good-byes and as I stood there by myself in the downpour in front of my dorm and felt the cool drops of rainwater begin to soak down through my hair and come to rest against my scalp, only my mother had a sense, as she and my father drove away toward the front entrance, of the peril in which I had just been placed. Because later that night, after they had both gone to sleep in their hotel room in New York, my mother awakened suddenly in a panic and quickly awoke my father to tell him that they needed to return to the Academy immediately to get me out of the awful place. My parents never came for me though, because my father pointed out in their ensuing conversation that by this late date in the year, it was impossible for them to place me anywhere else. He also assured my mother that everything for me would be fine because, after all, I was a strong and capable boy who would be able to handle any challenge which might come my way. And so instead of returning to Massachusetts to rescue me, my parents simply turned over in their bed and went back to sleep.

To this day, I don’t fault my folks for sticking to our original plans. Because frankly, how could any of us have known that as I returned to my room that afternoon and unpacked my belongings so I could get myself settled, I was now living in a place which was gripped by a sickness that was easily hidden from the view of the casual observer. In fact, it was years later before I learned that this infirmity is so common, it actually has a name. And so as I became acquainted during the rest of that day with the layout of my new world, I often found myself reflecting on those several minutes I had spent standing in the rain and watching as my parents’ rental car disappeared amid the pine trees in the distance. Every time I recalled this image and relived in my mind the feeling of becoming drenched in my first New England rain, I also would remember how lonely seeing them leave made me feel. Later that night, as I lay between the sheets of my freshly made new bed and closed my eyes so I could drift off to sleep, I was utterly unaware that on this day my parents had left me at an institution which was plagued by what was likely the worst case ever of English Boarding School Disease.

The next morning at seven o’clock we were awakened by the first clanging school bell of the year. During the night before, Matt and I had hit it off as friends right away. It was odd but even though we were from different areas of the country, we actually had a lot in common. Like me he was pretty resourceful. Besides the salami and chips, he had actually been able to pick up a
Playboy
without his aunt noticing while they had been at Logan Field the day before. In those days it was considered extremely taboo for boys our age to be in possession of such material. And physically we were similar. At that time, we both stood at five feet two inches and Matt weighed perhaps ten pounds less than I did then at one hundred and eight pounds. Also, it would be another year or more before either of our voices would begin to drop.

The rest of the students had returned to the Academy from the James Taylor concert at a little after ten o’clock the night before. When that happened, we learned that another pair of first-year students had been assigned to live in room three next door to us. We hadn’t been able to spend much time with them, though, because by then they were tired and wanted to go to sleep. But we were able to find out at least that both boys, Juan and Carlos, were from Venezuela. Also we discovered that apparently one person per room had been assigned to rooms one and four, and in each case they were older kids. When they entered our hall, Matt and I made a point to be friendly and say hello, but each guy just grunted at us and then went straight into his room and slammed his door shut behind him.

As we slowly climbed out of our beds during the half-hour period we were given between the wake-up bell and breakfast, we realized that we were both a little weary from the traveling we had done the day before. So it took us a few minutes to get moving that Friday morning. Nevertheless, within the allotted time, we were dressed and standing in front of a seating chart which was hanging on a bulletin board just outside the entrance to the dining room in Ulster Hall.

“We’re at table one, Mr. Stuart’s table,” Matt read out this information once he had found our names. “Who’s he?”

“He’s the headmaster around here. Didn’t you meet him yesterday?” I was a little surprised that I knew who Mr. Stuart was, but Matt didn’t.

“No, some woman from the office checked me in when I got here.”

“Oh,” I replied blankly.

The kitchen and dining room were both located at the end of the north hallway in Ulster Hall. As we passed by the opened door to the kitchen and made a right turn to enter the dining room, we found that this unremarkable-looking room with a wood floor, was roughly the same size as the library, and just like the library, had large windows which looked out the rear of the building toward the lake.

Table one was the first table we came to once we were standing in this room. And as other kids began to file in for breakfast, we moved quickly to find empty seats and sit down together. Each table in this place was round, made from wood and seated six guys comfortably or seven uncomfortably. We had arrived a couple of minutes early, so my roommate and I watched as the rest of the student body and the faculty sleepily walked in and fillied the tables in only the front half of the room. When we were all finally assembled and sitting down, I counted sixty-two students and ten faculty in a dining room which was built to hold one hundred and thirty people.

Next, like an emperor entering his court, Mr. Stuart walked into the room quickly and then stood behind the chair we had left empty for him at our table. Once he was still, the rest of the room stood up, apparently knowing that this was their cue to do so. Instantly Matt and I stood up as well. A moment later, once the room was quiet again, Mr. Stuart spoke.

“For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen!”

“AMEN!” came the refrain from everyone else in the room, and then we were all seated again.

The tables had been set for us in advance, and in the center of each one stood a tower of bowls and a meager assortment of individual boxes of cold cereal. I didn’t know it then, but this was to be our meal for nearly every breakfast we were to have for the rest of my days at the Academy. And though I liked cold cereal at the time, to this day I have refused to touch the stuff ever again because of how often we were given it then.

While I ate, I was eager to get a good look at the other kids with whom I would be living for the next three seasons. Right off, I noticed something that I thought looked odd. At every table there seemed to be a random assortment of ages among the students seated, but at our table nearly every kid was first year. At this stage in my life, I was still pretty much blind to the shortcomings— real or presumed—of the adults I encountered, so I shrugged my observation off as an attempt on the part of a sympathetic headmaster to make young boys, who had probably never been away from home, feel more secure by seating them with the Academy’s father figure. Then about halfway through the meal, Mr. Stuart stood up and tapped his empty glass with his spoon to get the attention of everyone else in the room. As soon as he had the room quiet, he spoke again.

“Good morning and welcome to another fine year at Ulster Academy. By now you should all be settled in your rooms and have your schedules. Classes begin at eight-thirty this morning, so make sure you’re on time and where you belong when the bell rings. If any of you don’t know where you’re supposed to be, come by the office right after breakfast and see Mrs. Wellesley, my secretary.” He then paused for a moment to let what he had just said be absorbed by our brains. “Also, let me remind you that attendance at breakfast, and for that matter for all meals except the ones you have on Sundays, is mandatory every day just as it is for all of your classes. The only way you can be excused from breakfast is with a note from the school nurse, whom you will find in the school infirmary every weekday morning for half a day.” Again our headmaster paused for a moment. “I’ll save the rest of my announcements for lunchtime. So for now, enjoy your breakfast and become acquainted or reacquainted, whichever the case may be, with each other and then go ahead and head off to your classes as soon as you’re done eating.” And with that, the man sat down to finish his breakfast.

Throughout breakfast and as we began to go through our first full day at the Academy, Matt and I tried to become acquainted with the other students. Most of them had come from the corridor which begins at Boston and then extends down through Providence and onto New York to end up in Philadelphia. There were also some foreign students attending. We had at least half a dozen kids from Venezuela, one from Iran, one from Turkey, and one from Colombia. And no matter how hard we tried to be friendly, practically everyone ignored us whenever we said hello. And we weren’t just being shunned whenever this happened to us. It actually seemed as if we were being held in contempt for daring to socialize with easterners.

Our daily schedule was as follows:

For some reason which I never fully understood, we never had any classes on Wednesday afternoons. Apparently the reason for this quirk in our schedule was based on some ancient New England tradition which called for no work to be performed on Wednesday afternoons. In fact, I don’t know if this midweek vacation is still observed today, but shops in town actually closed their doors and refused to do business on Wednesday afternoons. And so, to make up for our lost class time, the Academy scheduled classes for us to attend every Saturday morning. But come Saturday afternoon, our time was our own until breakfast the following Monday.

In the afternoon, that first day, Matt and I decided to go out for the school’ s soccer team. I had wanted to play soccer for some time by then, and I had been frustrated by the fact that at that time, there were virtually no teams set up yet in the west. Only in the eastern part of the U.S. had the sport begun to catch on. But after practice we learned that there were no locker room facilities where we could shower and change out of our gym clothes, so all of us on the team simply returned to our respective dormitories and took our showers there.

The next day, after we had finished with our first round of Saturday morning classes, we found hamburgers waiting for us in the dining hall.

“Oh, man. My favorite,” I announced to the others at our table as I took a bun and a patty from the serving platters when they were passed around the table.

“Pass the ketchup please,” Matt asked of a kid who was sitting across the table from us. “And the mustard too.”

“I’ll take those squeeze bottles when you’re done, Matt,” I remarked cheerfully. “A good hamburger has got to have ketchup and mustard on it.”

While the rest of us were preparing our plates, Mr. Stuart got up again and tapped his glass with his spoon so he could make some more announcements.

This time he started off by introducing the school proctors to us. In other schools they were usually known as prefects or resident assistants, but at Ulster, the students who were paid a few dollars to have authority over the rest of us were called proctors. Of course all five of the students now standing before us were seniors. In order of rank, we were introduced first to the head proctor, who was essentially the leader of our entire student body. Next came the head waiter, whose job it was to assign students to be waiters in the dining room on a rotating basis and who also assigned kids to KP duty in the kitchen. Then the remaining three were introduced to us as being in charge of the three dormitories. It was true that some of the teachers lived in the dormitories also, but the proctors were the ones who were in charge of us outside the classrooms. As a result, each day after classes were over, the teachers would simply disappear and, with the exception of dinner time later in the evening, not be seen again usually until the next morning. So once these introductions were completed, the proctors were then told to sit down again so that Mr. Stuart could go on to inform us on other matters.

“This afternoon, as it will be for every Saturday afternoon, the school van will be available to take anyone into town who needs to go. It will leave from right outside in front of Ulster Hall by the circle at one o’clock, two-thirty, and four o’clock. And then in town the van will leave to come back here at two o’clock, three o’clock and four-thirty. And if you’re still in town after the four-thirty van leaves, then you’re on your own for getting back here. All drop-offs and pickups in town will be made at the Duncan Donuts. From there you can walk to wherever else in town you need to go.

“At all times of the day or evening, there will always be one teacher who will be carrying the book you need to sign in or out of if you leave the campus. Around here we call this teacher the AOD, which means the authority on duty.”

Suddenly the kid sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, “I bet it really means the asshole on duty.”