Make them Cry (3 page)

Peter was trying a little too hard, and while the other boys were a good audience, they obviously sensed his desperation to please. Once the formal talk was over, they didn’t approach him. For a few moments, Peter stood alone by the table—until Jack patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks for loosening everybody up,” he said. “You really have a great sense of humor, Pete.”

Most of the boys wanted to meet Peter’s sullen, pouty friend, and they came up to shake John’s hand. Jack figured this sullen punk was going to be a real problem.

He was scheduled for a one-on-one with him that night. Part of his job on this orientation day was to check with each boy at curfew to make sure he had settled in his room. Jack thought imposing a curfew on eighteen-year-olds was ridiculous. But he didn’t make the rules.

Checking Peter Tobin’s room, he found that Pete already had several of his drawings up on the walls. He was a talented artist. He let Jack see one of his sketch books, and even showed him his portable case of art supplies. It was stocked with paper, coloring pencils, and markers, and a box full of special fine-point pens from Calgary, Alberta:
GOWER GRAPHIC, THE FINE POINT FOR FINE ARTISTS
. He also demonstrated his juggling abilities for Jack, and admitted that he was a little homesick. So he was grateful to have his best friend, Johnny, just down the hall.

But John Costello wasn’t down the hall. Jack knocked on his door, then waited—and waited. Finally, he used his pass key to let himself in. The room was empty, and the boy hadn’t even unpacked yet. The sheets were still stacked and folded at the foot of his bare mattress.

Jack checked the bathroom down the hall, then glanced out the window at the end of the corridor. A full moon reflected on the lake’s ripply surface, and he could see the silhouette of a young man sitting at the end of the boat dock.

Jack headed down the stairs and outside. He reached the dock, then stopped suddenly. Past the sound of water lapping against the breakers, he could hear John Costello quietly crying.

Jack stood there a moment. He cleared his throat and started down to the dock. “John?”

John Costello glanced over his shoulder. He quickly brushed his sleeve beneath his nose. “Yeah?” he replied in a raspy voice. He stood up and turned around.

In the moonlight, Jack could see tears in his eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” he muttered.

“Didn’t you read the list of rules they gave you at check in?” Jack asked gently. “You’re not supposed to be out of your room past eleven on weeknights—unless you have permission or you’re using the bathroom.”

John sighed, but said nothing. He wiped his eyes.

“Didn’t you know about the curfew?”

“No,” he mumbled. “Guess I’m off to a bad start with you, huh?”

Jack managed to smile. “It’s okay. I’ll cut you a break.”

“Thanks.” John shoved his hands in his pockets. He caught Jack’s eye for a second. “You’re new here, too, aren’t you? I heard a couple of the other priests talking—”

“That’s right. We’re in the same boat.” Jack nodded toward the dorm. “Now, why don’t you head inside? You ought to get your room set up.”

John turned away, then gazed out at the water again. “I’m worried about my sister,” he said. “She—well, she practically raised me and my other two sisters ever since my mom died. My other sisters are married now, and moved away. I’m still with Maggie. She’s married, too. His name’s Ray. He’s a real asshole. I’ve seen him take off after her. He and I have tangled it up a few times, because I don’t like the way he smacks her around. I’m scared what he might do to Maggie with no one there to protect her. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m dumping all this on you. I’m just worried.”

“There’s a phone in my room,” Jack said. “Would you like to call her? Make sure she’s okay?”

Johnny turned to him. “Really? God, that would be great. We didn’t have much time to talk yesterday. Three other guys were waiting to use the phone.”

Once in his room, Jack dialed the number for Johnny. He handed him the phone, then stepped out. All was quiet as he made a couple of rounds, checking the hall. When he passed his own door, Jack heard snippets of what Johnny was saying: “…this really cool priest let me use his phone…. Yeah, Pete’s room is just down the hall from me…. I’m fine, really….”

Jack gave him a few more minutes, then tapped on the door and opened it. John was sitting at his desk. He glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, listen, Maggie,” he said into the phone. “I should go. Talk to you again soon, okay?”

He hung up, then got to his feet. “Good news.” He smiled at Jack. “My sister went apartment shopping on the sly this afternoon. She’s dumping Ray’s sorry ass, and putting in an application for a place—two bedrooms, one for me. Isn’t that cool?”

Jack nodded. “That’s great. Now, why don’t you go get some sleep?”

“Sure thing. Thanks, Father.” Suddenly Johnny hugged him.

For a moment, Jack stood with his arms at his sides. Then, awkwardly, he hugged the boy back. He felt as if he was breaking some kind of guideline for the resident priests: no displays of affection with the student charges. It was all right to hit them—but not hug them.

Jack had made a friend that night. John Costello became something of a surrogate son to him. He didn’t have a father, and he looked up to Jack. They sometimes ran together in the morning, though not lately. Jack figured it was just as well. He wanted John to spend more time with guys his own age. Besides, he wasn’t supposed to have any favorites among the students.

Jack pressed on. Rounding the curve on the lake side of the track, he felt his lungs reach that last-lap burning point.

“Father Murphy! Oh, God, Father Murphy!”

Jack stopped, then bent forward. Hands on knees, he tried to catch his breath. He gaped at Ernesto Rodriguez, who stumbled from the forest trail. “Father Murphy, there’s a body!” he cried, pointing toward the lake. “Somebody’s drowned…. Come quick….”

Jack started toward him. “Where?” He glanced down the narrow path through the trees, and saw Art Vargas urgently waving at him.

Jack patted Ernesto’s shoulder. “Ernie, go inside, call 911, okay?” Then he took off down the trail toward Art.

“Over here, Father!” Art yelled. He led the way, off the trail and through the trees toward the edge of Lake Leroy. Twigs snapped underfoot, and Jack dodged rocks and shrubs as he caught up with Art. The young man pointed ahead to a pale, blue-white thing that had washed up on the rocky shore. “Emie saw him first,” he explained, out of breath. “I think it’s what’s shisname—Costello.”

Jack told himself that he didn’t hear it right. It wasn’t Johnny; that lifeless creature draped over the rocks and mire couldn’t be his young friend. Yet something inside him knew better, because his eyes were tearing up, and a sudden tightness grabbed him by the throat.

“Oh, God, please, no!” Jack whispered, staggering into the muddy waters. He grabbed Johnny from under his arms and pulled him out of the icy lake.

John Costello was clad only in his underwear. His blue eyes were half-open, and his face had a gray tinge. Wet leaves and bits of debris clung to his slippery, cold body. His right foot must have dragged across some rocks, because it was mangled—with a couple of toes missing.

Jack let out a strangled cry. Holding on to his young companion, he pressed his face against John’s and stroked his wet, matted-down hair.

He swallowed hard, then reached down and closed John’s eyes. “We—we pray for the repose of the soul of our friend, John Costello,” he said, tracing a sign of the cross on John’s forehead. He could hardly speak past the ache in his throat. “Come to meet him, angels of the Lord. Give him eternal rest, dear God, and may Your light shine on him forever….”

Except for the huge attendance, the special church service for John Costello was almost too much like a regular Mass. Jack wished a few of John’s classmates would cry, but the freshmen from St. Bartholomew Hall were a stoic crowd.

They were packed into the small chapel this morning, about one hundred and eighty students, along with nine priests. At least forty of them were standing in the back and along the side aisles. Within minutes, the temperature in the little church shot up to about eighty degrees, and the place smelled like a locker room.

Jack studied the sea of faces, and wondered if any of these freshmen knew what had really happened to Johnny last night.

Peter Tobin wasn’t among the mourners. John’s best friend didn’t attend the service. Up on the altar, Father O’Leary, the superintendent of St. Bartholomew Hall, said the Mass. He probably couldn’t have picked John Costello out of a lineup, yet Father O’Leary gave a sermon about Johnny’s virtues, calling him an “inspiration,” and a “soldier of Christ.”

The chapel was built as an attachment to St. Bartholomew Hall in the late thirties. Here the freshmen could worship without having to boat across the lake to Our Lady of Sorrows Church. The chapel had a certain rustic, old-world charm. Its pint-size stained-glass windows, which depicted the Stations of the Cross, were works of art. And in tradition with Catholic churches of the day, the rose-marble altar had enshrined in it the bone-chip of a saint, the martyr St. Gabriel Lalemant.

The chapel was named after Gabriel, who had been canonized in 1930. Considering its troubled origin, St. Bartholomew Hall was a fitting place for Gabriel Lalemant to lend his name and a sliver of his remains. At twenty, Gabriel entered the Jesuit order and offered his services for the foreign missions. Bouts of ill health kept him in his native France for several years. Finally, he was shipped off to Quebec, and joined the Huron mission. Six months later, they were attacked by the Iroquois and Gabriel was captured. The Iroquois beat him with clubs and thorn branches, then doused him with boiling water. His tongue was cut out, and they filled his mouth with burning coals. They plucked out Gabriel’s eyes, then forced fiery embers into the empty sockets. The frail, little priest continued to hang on—even after they’d hacked off his hands and seared the bloody stumps with sizzling-hot axes. He finally died from a blow to the head with a tomahawk.

The story of St. Gabriel Lalemant was drummed into the minds of arriving freshmen at St. Bartholomew Hall—lest they feel any hardships under the tyranny of their teachers and spiritual advisers. Jack remembered Johnny once joking that St. Gabriel might have preferred the Iroquois over a couple of rounds with Father Zeigler.

As Jack glanced across the aisle, he saw his colleague poke his fist into the spine of the young man in front of him. The seminarian had committed the cardinal sin of whispering something to a classmate.

In the pulpit, Father O’Leary referred to Johnny as “young Joseph,” while most of the boys looked half-asleep. Two pews ahead, Jack noticed a couple of students, Steve Goldschmidt and Greg Reimen, nudging each other and chuckling. Jack cleared his throat, and Steve glanced over his shoulder.

The young man was grinning helplessly. Jack stood up and crooked his finger at him a couple of times.

Steve followed him down the aisle and out the chapel door. The morning sun seemed so bright after the gloomy little church. It shone on Steve’s blond curly hair. He seemed too skinny for his blue denim shirt and baggy gray trousers.

Jack closed the heavy wooden door. The fresh air was a relief. “Okay, Steve, get it out of your system,” he said.

“Sorry, Father,” he said, catching his breath. “I don’t…mean any disrespect for Johnny….”

Jack managed a smile. “I know. I’ve seen John Costello get the giggles in Mass often enough. He’d be the first to understand.”

“It’s just when O’Leary got Johnny’s name wrong, Greg and I started cracking up.”

“
Father
O’Leary,” Jack said.

“Sorry.
Father
O’Leary. He shouldn’t be up there anyway. You ought to be the one saying Mass. Johnny really looked up to you.”

Jack let the remark pass.

“How did he drown exactly? I mean, do they know what happened?”

Jack shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Well, Pete Tobin said it was no accident. He acts like he knows something. But if you ask me, they ought to talk to somebody over at the college. That’s probably where Johnny was coming from—a party in one of the dorms—just like with what’s-his-name, Julian Doyle.”

“Who?” Jack asked.

“Julian Doyle, about three years ago. My older brother told me about it. This Doyle guy drowned swimming back from some kegger with the upperclassmen.”

Jack nodded. He remembered now. The Julian Doyle “incident” was what discouraged most kids from swimming across the lake alone late at night. It had happened before Jack had come to Our Lady of Sorrows.

He couldn’t imagine John partying with a bunch of upperclassmen. Yet there was no other explanation for why he had drowned—unless what Peter said was true, unless it wasn’t an accident.

Frowning, Jack nudged Steve, then opened the chapel door. “C’mon, let’s go back inside….”

Jack knocked on Peter Tobin’s door and waited.

The narrow hallway was perpetually drafty. The cold, green-tiled floor discouraged bare feet. Above every seminarian’s doorway hung a small wooden crucifix. Framed sepia portraits of long-dead priests (some of them buried in the cemetery outside) lined the corridor walls. Stern, ever watchful sentries for the young men on the floor, some of the priests had a crazed, almost possessed look in their eyes. Only one appeared rather young and benign, and someone had scribbled
faggot
along the bottom of the portrait.

Jack knocked on Peter’s door again. No answer.

He hadn’t seen Peter since they’d taken John’s body away in the ambulance this morning. All freshman classes had been canceled today—so they could “pray and meditate.”

“Peter, it’s Father Murphy,” he called, knocking for the last time. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

No answer.

Jack finally dug out his pass key and unlocked the door.

Peter kept his small room tidy. The place had that faint, goatlike smell detectable in most of the boys’ rooms. Peter’s juggling pins and balls were neatly displayed on the shelf, along with his art supplies and books. Hanging on the wall was a large watercolor he’d painted of a blazing sunset. There was also an M. C. Escher poster and an illuminated Coke clock, the type delis displayed. The dorm-issue, pea green—colored drapes were closed.

An open sketchbook sat on Peter’s desk. Jack glanced at a cartoon Peter had created with a family of sea monkeys, called “More Amazing Amoeba Adventures!” It was a cross between Dr. Seuss and something from
MAD
magazine. He flipped back a page to a sketch of Johnny looking like a Greek god and a self-portrait that Peter had crossed out.

Sighing, Jack headed out to the hallway. He locked the door, then started down toward the lavatory. The overhead light by Room 410 was flickering.

Room 410 had been converted from a dorm bedroom to a storage area sometime in the early sixties. They were never able to board anyone in that room, not after the “bad business” in there so many years ago.

Jack moved on into the lavatory. He didn’t see any feet under the doors to the five toilet stalls. But he heard water running. He went into the shower area. All the stalls were empty, but one of the showers was going full blast. Jack drenched the arm of his suit jacket shutting off the water. He took some paper towels from the dispenser by the sinks and dabbed at his sleeve. A steady drip echoed within the tiled walls.

“Father Murphy?”

He glanced in the mirror and saw one of his students, Matt Scanlin, in the bathroom doorway. “Yes, Matt?”

“Father Zeigler’s been looking for you. He said to tell you that you should check your phone messages.” Matt moved around the corner toward the urinals.

“Thanks,” Jack called. “Hey, have you seen Pete Tobin?”

“Not since early this morning, Father,” Matt called back.

Jack stepped out of the bathroom and started up the hallway. He paused by Room 410 and glanced up at the flickering overhead light.

“No use trying to fix that.”

Jack swiveled around.

It was Duane, the janitor. Duane seemed to enjoy sneaking up on him whenever possible. Of the three custodians at St. Bartholomew Hall, he was the only one who boarded there. He had a studio apartment in the basement. Duane was about thirty-five, with a lean, wiry build, and unkempt light brown hair. He had a slick, ultracool, lady-killer manner that reminded Jack of Mickey Rourke. A lot of the freshmen looked up to him, and they swapped stories about Duane’s prowess with women. Duane never discussed his legendary love life with Jack. But he clearly liked him. As a way of sparking a rapport, he often challenged Jack with criticisms of the Catholic Church: “
Did you know that there was a Pope Alexander that had an illegitimate kid? What do you think of that, Jack?
” Duane would usually sneak up on him with these obscure facts when Jack was in a hurry to get someplace.

“Oh, hi, Duane,” Jack said, pausing by Room 410.

Duane held a feather duster. He wore his blue custodian shirt open, revealing a dirty T-shirt. He had an unlit cigarette behind his ear. He nodded at Jack, then gazed up at the overhead light. “Those fluorescent tube numbers are a pain in the ass to change. Besides, that light’s screwy, haunted—just like the room.”

Jack managed a smile, then he started walking backward down the hall. “Yeah, you’re probably right. See you, Duane.”

The janitor followed him. “Hey, Jack, you know, Father Zeigler was asking around for you. I guess some big shot from administration has been trying to get ahold of you.”

Jack continued to back away. “Thanks. Yeah. I was just going to check my phone messages.”

“Shame about the Costello kid, huh?”

“Yes, it is,” Jack said quietly. He pulled out his room key and unlocked the door.

“I know you and he were buddies.” Duane fingered the feather duster. “I guess I can tell you, now that he’s dead and all. Your friend, John, used to sneak out a lot at night. Were you aware of that?”

Frowning, Jack shook his head. “How do you know?”

Duane shrugged. “I’d see him from my basement window, coming and going. And a few times, driving back from a hot date, I’d see him on College Road. On a couple of occasions, I even gave him a lift.”

“Do you know where he was going—or coming from?” Jack asked.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Duane said. “I hear he was missing a couple of his toes when you fished him out of the lake.”

“Where did you hear that?” Jack murmured.

“Oh, I know pretty much everything that’s going on around here.” Duane leaned against the door frame. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Want to hear something pretty bizarre, Jack? Three years ago, when they fished the Doyle kid out of that same lake, he was missing a couple of fingers on one hand.”

Jack just stared at him.

“Pretty bizarre,” Duane repeated. He turned and sauntered down the hallway, pausing under the faulty light by Room 410. Duane casually brushed his feather duster over the glass cover, then moved on.