Authors: Robert Cormier
“And where’ll my money come from?” Obie asked.
Archie waved his hand, signaling that he was tired of the conversation. You could see him physically withdraw although he was only a foot or two away from Obie on the bleacher bench. The shouts of the fellows from the football field below echoed feebly in the air. Archie’s lower lip dropped. That meant he was concentrating. Thinking. Obie waited in anticipation, hating the thing in him that made him look at Archie in admiration. The way Archie could turn people on. Or off. The way he could dazzle you with his brilliance—those Vigil assignments that had made him practically a legend at Trinity—and the way he could disgust you with his cruelties, those strange offbeat cruelties of his, that had nothing to do with pain or violence but were
somehow even worse. It made Obie uncomfortable to think of that stuff and he shrugged the thoughts away, waiting for Archie to talk, to say the name.
“Stanton,” Archie said finally, whispering the name, caressing the syllables. “I think his first name is Norman.”
“Right,” Obie said, scrawling the name. Only two more to go. Archie had to come up with ten names by four o’clock and eight were now listed on Obie’s pad.
“The assignment?” Obie prodded.
“Sidewalk.”
Obie grinned as he wrote the word. Sidewalk: such an innocent word. But what Archie could do with simple things like a sidewalk and a kid like Norman Stanton whom Obie recalled as a blustering bragging character with wild red hair and eyelids matted with yellow crap.
“Hey, Obie,” Archie said.
“Yeah?” Obie asked, on guard.
“You really going to be late for work? I mean—would you really lose your job?” Archie’s voice was soft with concern, his eyes gentle with compassion. That’s what baffled everyone about Archie—his changes of mood, the way he could be a wise bastard one minute and a great guy the next.
“I don’t think they’d actually fire me. The guy who owns the place, he’s a friend of the family.
But I mean getting there late doesn’t, like, help the cause. I’m overdue for a raise but he’s holding it back until I get on the ball.”
Archie nodded, all businesslike. “All right, we’ll wrap it up. We’ll get you on the ball. Maybe I ought to assign someone to the store, and make life interesting for your boss.”
“Jeez, no,” Obie said quickly. He shivered with dread, realizing how awesome Archie’s power really was. Which is why you had to stay on the good side of the bastard. Buy him Hersheys all the time to satisfy his craving for chocolate. Thank God Archie didn’t go in for pot or that stuff—Obie would have had to become a pusher, for crying out loud, to supply him. Obie was officially the secretary of The Vigils but he knew what the job really demanded. Carter, the president who was almost as big a bastard as Archie, said, “Keep him happy, when Archie’s happy, we’re all happy.”
“Two more names,” Archie mused now. He rose and stretched. He was tall and not too heavy. He moved with a subtle rhythm, languidly, the walk of an athlete although he hated all sports and had nothing but contempt for athletes. Particularly football players and boxers, which happened to be Trinity’s two major sports. Usually, Archie didn’t pick athletes for assignments—he claimed they were too stupid to absorb the delicate shadings, the subtle intricacies
involved. Archie disliked violence—most of his assignments were exercises in the psychological rather than the physical. That’s why he got away with so much. The Trinity brothers wanted peace at any price, quiet on the campus, no broken bones. Otherwise, the sky was the limit. Which was right up Archie’s alley.
“The kid they call The Goober,” Archie said now.
Obie wrote down “Roland Goubert.”
“Brother Eugene’s room.”
Obie smiled in delicious malice. He liked it when Archie involved the brothers in the assignments. Those were the most daring, of course. And someday Archie would go too far and trip himself up. In the meantime, Brother Eugene would do. He was a peaceful sort, made to order for Archie, naturally.
The sun vanished behind floating clouds. Archie brooded, isolating himself again. The wind rose, kicking puffs of dust from the football field. The field needed seeding. The bleachers also needed attention—they sagged, peeling paint like leprosy on the benches. The shadows of the goal posts sprawled on the field like grotesque crosses. Obie shivered.
“What the hell do they think I am?” Archie asked.
Obie remained silent. The question didn’t
seem to require an answer. It was as if Archie was talking to himself.
“These goddam assignments,” Archie said. “Do they think it’s easy?” His voice dripped sadness. “And the black box …”
Obie yawned. He was tired. And uncomfortable. He always yawned and got tired and uncomfortable when he found himself in situations like this, not knowing how to proceed, surprised at the anguish in Archie’s voice. Or was Archie putting him on? You never knew about Archie. Obie was grateful when Archie finally shook his head as if warding off an evil spell.
“You’re not much help, Obie.”
“I never thought you needed much help, Archie.”
“Don’t you think I’m human, too?”
I’m not sure
. That’s what Obie almost said.
“All right, all right. Let’s finish the damn assignments. One more name.”
Obie’s pencil was poised.
“Who was that kid who left the field a few minutes ago? The one they wiped out?”
“Kid named Jerry Renault. Freshman,” Obie said, flipping through his notebook. He searched the
R
’s for Renault. His notebook was more complete than the school’s files. It contained information, carefully coded, about everyone at Trinity, the kind of stuff that couldn’t be found in
official records. “Here it is. Renault, Jerome E. Son of James R. Pharmacist at Blake’s. The kid’s a freshman, birthday—let’s see, he just turned fourteen. Oh—his mother died last spring. Cancer.” There was more information about courses and records in grammar school and extracurricular activities but Obie closed the notebook as if he were lowering a coffin lid.
“Poor kid,” Archie said. “Mother’s dead.”
Again that concern, that compassion in his voice.
Obie nodded. One more name. Who else?
“Must be hard on the poor kid.”
“Right,” Obie agreed, impatient.
“Know what he needs, Obie?” His voice was soft, dreamy, caressing.
“What?”
“Therapy.”
The terrible word shattered the tenderness in Archie’s voice.
“Therapy?”
“Right. Put him down.”
“For crying out loud, Archie. You saw him out there. He’s just a skinny kid trying to make the Freshman team. Coach’ll grind him up like hamburger. And his mother’s barely cold in the grave. What the hell you putting him on the list for?”
“Don’t let him fool you, Obie. He’s a tough one. Didn’t you see him get wiped out down there and still get to his feet? Tough. And stubborn.
He should have stayed down on that turf, Obie. That would have been the smart thing to do. Besides, he probably needs something to keep his mind off his poor dead mother.”
“You’re a bastard, Archie. I said it before and I’ll say it again.”
“Put him down.” Ice in the voice, cold as polar regions.
Obie wrote down the name. Hell, it wasn’t his funeral. “Assignment?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“You’ve only got till four,” Obie reminded.
“The assignment must fit the kid. That’s the beauty of it, Obie.”
Obie waited a minute or two and couldn’t resist asking, “You running out of ideas, Archie?” The great Archie Costello running dry? The possibility was staggering to contemplate.
“Just being artistic, Obie. It’s an art, you know. Take a kid like this Renault. Special circumstances.” He fell silent. “Put him down for the chocolates.”
Obie wrote down:
Renault—Chocolates
. Archie would never run dry. The chocolates, for instance, were good for a dozen assignments.
Obie looked down at the field where the guys were skirmishing in the shadow of the goal posts. Sadness seized him. I should have gone out for football, he thought. He had wanted to—he’d been hot stuff with Pop Warner at St. Joe’s.
Instead, he had ended up as Secretary of The Vigils. Cool. But, hell, he couldn’t even tell his parents about it.
“Know what, Archie?”
“What?”
“Life is sad, sometimes.”
That was one of the great things about Archie, you could say things like that.
“Life is shit,” Archie said.
The shadows of the goal posts definitely resembled a network of crosses, empty crucifixes. That’s enough symbolism for one day, Obie told himself. If he hurried he could make the four o’clock bus to work.
THE GIRL was heart-wrenchingly, impossibly beautiful. Desire weakened his stomach. A waterfall of blond hair splashed on her bare shoulders. He studied the photograph surreptitiously and then closed the magazine and put it back where it belonged, on the top shelf. He glanced around to see if he’d been observed. The store owner positively prohibited the reading of magazines and a sign said N
O
B
UY
N
O
R
EAD
. But the owner was busy at the far end of the place.
Why did he always feel so guilty whenever he looked at
Playboy
and the other magazines? A lot of guys bought them, passed them around at school, hid them in the covers of notebooks, even resold them. He sometimes saw copies scattered casually on coffee tables in the homes of his friends. He had once bought a girlie magazine, paying for it with trembling fingers—a dollar and a quarter, his finances shot down in flames until his next allowance. And he didn’t know what to do with the damn thing once it
was in his possession. Sneaking it home on the bus, hiding it in the bottom drawer of his room, he was terrified of discovery. Finally, tired of smuggling it into the bathroom for swift perusals, and weary of his deceit, and haunted by the fear that his mother would find the magazine, Jerry had sneaked it out of the house and dropped it into a catchbasin. He listened to it splash dismally below, bidding a wistful farewell to the squandered buck and a quarter. A longing filled him. Would a girl ever love him? The one devastating sorrow he carried within him was the fear that he would die before holding a girl’s breast in his hand.
Out at the bus stop, Jerry leaned against a telephone pole, body weary, echoing the assault of the football practices. For three days his body had absorbed punishment. But he was still on the roster, luckily. Idly, he watched the people on the Common across the street. He saw them every day. They were now part of the scenery like the Civil War Cannon and the World War Monuments, the flagpole. Hippies. Flower Children. Street People. Drifters. Drop-Outs. Everybody had a different name for them. They came out in the spring and stayed until October, hanging around, calling taunts to passersby occasionally but most of the time quiet, languid and peaceful. He was fascinated by them and sometimes
envied their old clothes, their sloppiness, the way they didn’t seem to give a damn about anything. Trinity was one of the last schools to retain a dress code—shirt and tie. He watched a cloud of smoke swirl around a girl in a floppy hat. Grass? He didn’t know. A lot of things he didn’t know.
Absorbed in his thoughts, he didn’t notice that one of the street people had detached himself from the others and was crossing the street, dodging cars deftly.
“Hey, man.”
Startled, Jerry realized the guy was addressing him. “Me?”
The fellow stood in the street, on the other side of a green Volkswagen, his chest resting on the car’s roof. “Yes, you.” He was about nineteen, long black hair brushing his shoulders, a curling mustache, like a limp black snake draped on his upper lip, the ends dangling near his chin. “You been staring at us, man, like every day. Standing here and staring.”
They really say
man
, Jerry thought. He didn’t think anybody said
man
any more except as a joke. But this guy wasn’t joking.
“Hey, man, you think we’re in a zoo? That why you stare?”
“No. Look, I don’t stare.” But he did stare, every day.
“Yes, you do, man. You stand here and look at us. With your homework books and your nice shirt and your blue-and-white tie.”
Jerry looked around uneasily. He confronted only strangers, nobody from school.
“We’re not sub-humans, man.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But you look it.”
“Look,” Jerry said, “I’ve got to get my bus.” Which was ridiculous, of course, because the bus wasn’t in sight.
“You know who’s sub-human, man? You. You are. Going to school every day. And back home on the bus. And do your homework.” The guy’s voice was contemptuous. “Square boy. Middle-aged at fourteen, fifteen. Already caught in a routine. Wow.”
A hiss and the stench of exhaust announced the arrival of the bus. Jerry swung away from the guy.
“Go get your bus, square boy,” he called. “Don’t miss the bus, boy. You’re missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus.”
Jerry walked to the bus like a sleepwalker. He hated confrontations. His heart hammered. He climbed aboard, dropped his token in the coin box and lurched to his seat as the bus moved away from the curb.
He sat down, breathed deeply, closed his eyes.
Go get your bus, square boy
.
He opened his eyes and slitted them against the invasion of the sun through the window.
You’re missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus
.
A big put-on, of course. That was their specialty, people like that. Putting people on. Nothing else to do with their lives, piddling away their lives.
And yet …
Yet, what?
He didn’t know. He thought of his life—going to school and coming home. Even though his tie was loose, dangling on his shirt, he yanked it off. He looked up at the advertising placards above the windows, wanting to turn his thoughts away from the confrontation.
Why?
someone had scrawled in a blank space no advertiser had rented.
Why not?
someone else had slashed in answer.