The Long Run Read online

  As if hearing us, the crow caws.

  “I hate crows,” Brookes says. “They’re ugly.”

  “I love them,” Cross says. “Look how black their feathers are. And they’re smart.”

  “Let’s see,” Brookes says, picking up a stone and firing it. The crow doesn’t move.

  “Dumb bird.”

  “He knew you’d miss,” I say.

  We run without speaking until the turnoff to Sugar Loaf. Pulling ahead, Brookes says, “See you at the water hole.” But he advances only a few strides. This run is a hard one. We are all lazy. It’s one of those days when you run like you’re half asleep. Today, our pack will not catch the others, coming or going. We are tired and sluggish, like we’re having a bad sleep.

  At Sugar Loaf Pond, the others cluster around, waiting for us to drink. A creamy mist hovers high above the water. Brookes and Cross take off their baseball caps, and the steam rises from their wet hair. Cross dunks his head in the water twice, while Brookes slurps greedily. I lay down, exhausted, with a severe pain in my head. I close my eyes and put my face in the water, hoping the pain will go away.

  “Pick it up,” Blackie hollers, as the sun comes out from behind a cloud bank. “We’re losin’ time. And the Logy Bay fog’s rollin’ in.”

  Halfway home, as it starts to drizzle, my throat is parched again. A hot flash races through my body, and I can hear my heart beating heavily. I consider asking Cross to jump my temperature when we get back so I can spend a day in the infirmary. But I know that thought too, like so many others, will pass. As we near Logy Bay Store, the sun pales, barely burning through the gray sky. A crow shakes its black feathers. I think how right Cross is. Crows are beautiful. And I think of Nicky and the other pigeons and wish they were as strong as crows. Then I think of that poor little mouse in the crow’s beak, and I’m glad Nicky’s just the way he is.

  Surprisingly, we close the gap on Blackie’s pack. I peek over my shoulder. Murphy has stopped to wipe his foggy glasses. The drizzle turns to cold rain and falls through the black boughs onto the swirling leaves as we pass Bally Haley Golf Course, where any day now we’ll come during free time to slide for hours on the snowy hills. As we pass Fort Pepperrell and head up through the bog, we watch Shorty Richardson race toward a tiny piece of the sun peeking over the edge of the soccer field.

  6

  * * *

  WHENEVER BROTHER WALSH has something very important to say, he stands in front of the class and stares at the floor for several minutes, tapping his foot. He’s a short, stocky man, with a face that looks like it’s been chipped out of stone. He has two nicknames—Jawbreaker because of his huge square jaw and Killer because of the way he straps.

  “Some of the boys, not all, mind you, some . . . quite a few, too many boys . . . are using too many squares.”

  Silence. I look over at Ryan, who shrugs and looks at Kavanagh, who looks oddly at Murphy, who also shrugs and stretches his big, sneakered feet.

  “Too many. Too many squares. And it must stop. It is an unnecessary, an ungodly expense. Too many, too many squares. Four per sitting is plenty. Six at most.”

  It is Jawbreaker’s manner to lecture a group of boys in a sort of code. He lectures away, warning and threatening dire consequences for those boys who don’t pull up their socks. Those are two of his favorite expressions: dire consequences and pull up your socks.

  “Too many squares, far too many. We have to pull up our socks. It has to stop.” He walks through the speckles of light lying across the floor. “There is just too, too much waste. You are living, boys, in an orphanage. This is not Buckingham Palace, boys. Money does not grow on trees. There is no money tree at Mount Kildare. If we had a money tree, boys, there would be no need of the bakery, no need of the raffle. Each and every boy will have to pull up his socks. If every boy does his little bit, the problem will be licked. Dire consequences will be avoided.”

  Connelly raises his hand. “What squares, Bruh? What do you mean by squares?”

  Jawbreaker frowns. “Why the squares of toilet paper, Mr. Connolly. What other squares are there? Some of you boys are using twenty, fifty, over a hundred squares of toilet paper per sitting. It’s outrageous. I once found a whole roll of unused paper in a toilet bowl. An entire roll! Shameful. Four squares, boys, four squares is sufficient. Five at most per sitting is plenty. The brothers use only four squares per sitting, and we are adults. Some boys are going through almost half a roll of toilet paper per sitting. Do you think we are rich? Do you think toilet paper grows on trees? Do you . . .”

  Rowsell interrupts. “Brother Walsh, doesn’t paper come from trees?”

  Jawbreaker thinks he’s being a wiseass, reaches across the aisle to Rowsell’s desk and whacks him on the side of the head with the back of his hand.

  “Not ordinary paper, boy, toilet paper. Don’t be a smarty-pants, Mr. Rowsell.”

  We find this hilarious because Rowsell couldn’t be smart if you paid him.

  “And don’t forget that there is an angel standing by each toilet keeping a record of the number of squares you use. Each time you use the toilet, boys, each time you tear off a square, it’s recorded by your guardian angel. If you use more than six squares, it is an item for the confessional, to be revealed on the day of judgment. Unless, of course, you are absolved from the sin by the seal of the confessional.”

  Silence. Steam rushes from the classroom radiator like a snake hissing at the seriousness of it all. The room is getting unbearably hot. The classrooms are always too hot, and the dorms are always too cold.

  “How many squares do you use, Mr. Murphy?”

  “Four, Bruh, never more than four.” Murphy licks his cracked lips and pushes back his shock of hair.

  “Kelly?”

  “Usually three, Bruh, sometimes four.”

  “O’Neill?”

  “Three or four, Burr.”

  “Littlejohn?”

  “Three or four, Bruh.”

  “Mr. Bradbury?”

  “Four. Sometimes five.”

  “That’s at least one too many, Mr. Bradbury, especially for someone your size. Someone your size should get by with one or two. Cut back. Pull up your socks.”

  “How many squares, Brookes?”

  “Three, Brother.”

  “Good. Very good. It appears that, with one exception, you are not the boys who have to pull up your socks.” Silence. He stares at the floor for a full minute. “Now, there are times, those rare occasions, when a boy may use more than four squares. If a boy is ill, for example. If a boy has the stomach flu or diarrhea, he may use twice the number of squares permitted per sitting. He may use eight squares, maybe even ten. Depending.”

  “Is that the only time, Bruh?” Bug asks, sucking up.

  “Yes, that is the one and only exception. Illness. Then, and only then, may a boy double up. Only during illness may a boy use twice the number of allotted squares.”

  “Are there any other times you can double up, Brother?” Bug asks. “And when you do, is it a matter for the confessional?”

  “No. It is not. And there are no other exceptions.” Brother Walsh moves to the board and writes in very large capital letters: FOUR SQUARES. He turns and looks at the floor briefly and says, “But . . . But, boys, before you use even one square, before tearing off one simple square from the roll, you should simply sit. That is correct, boys. After you finish your business, you should sit for at least five or ten minutes. You will find, boys, that five or more minutes of sitting will help immensely.”

  Brookes raises his hand. “Brother, if I’m finished using the bathroom, why should I sit there for five or ten minutes?”

  Silence. The radiator hisses softly again, a tiny steam leak.

  Jawbreaker walks slowly to Brookes’s desk and hovers over him. Brookes looks up sheepishly.

  “To dry, Mr. Brookes. To dry. Dry.” He turns to the class. “How many times have you been told, if you sit and dry for five minutes or more, boys, you w
ill find, all of you will find, that you will not need to use even four squares. You would get by quite nicely with two, maybe even one. Remember boys, this is not Buckingham Palace. And toilet paper, toilet paper, Mr. Rowsell, does not grow on trees.”

  The buzzer jolts us. In the next class, McCann hunches his shoulders, tilts his head and stares at the ceiling. He’s breathing so heavily we can hear the air whistling in and out of his nostrils. Monologues and Dialogues today deals with mortal and venial sin. This class, McCann has only one prop, a baseball. He rolls it back and forth between his palms. He has just read from the Baltimore Catechism that a mortal sin is deadly, entailing spiritual death, whereas a venial sin is not mortal. It is pardonable, not deadly like a mortal sin. He uses the game of baseball to explain. I close my eyes and fast-forward to the moment he drills the ball at some boy’s head. I open my eyes and pray it does not happen. I stare at the ball and will it not to happen.

  “Take this baseball,” he says. “Just an ordinary object, a sphere, a simple geometric shape. Or is it? You have all watched professional baseball, boys. You all know who Whitey Ford is. Whitey Ford throws strikes and balls every time he stands on the mound at Yankee Stadium. Think of a strike, boys, as a mortal sin and a ball as a venial sin. If Whitey Ford decides to deliberately hit a player . . . If in full conscience he decides to bean a batter because, say, that player hit a home run the last time up, or simply because he doesn’t like him, and Whitey Ford beans that player and knocks him down. Out cold. Kaput. Maybe even out of baseball forever. Then Whitey Ford, class, has committed a terrible sin, a deadly sin, a mortal sin.”

  “What about if he just nicks him, Brother, and the batter only gets a slight headache?” Bug Bradbury shows his teeth he’s so proud of his question.

  “Ahh, good question. Mr. Bradburys is asking about intent. But the intent is to harm. Whitey Ford tried to seriously injure the batter. There is intent, Mr. Bradburys. Therefore it is a mortal sin. Clearly a mortal sin. The intent, you see, is everything, boys. The intent supersedes the act. Ergo, Whitey Ford would have committed a grave sin, a mortal sin.”

  “What would be an example of a venial sin, Brother McCann?” Bug asks, sucking up. “How could Whitey Ford commit a venial sin? And could you give us another baseball example, Brother?”

  McCann smiles, tilts his head and stares at the ceiling. He taps his lips with his index finger. Tiny greenish white saliva spots dribble from the corners of his mouth.

  “Well . . . if . . . say . . . yes! If, say, Whitey Ford wanted to bean a batter, and just before he released the ball he changed his mind . . . But it is too late. He is finished his windup. The ball is released. But Whitey Ford had clearly changed his mind. Then the intent is not to harm, even though he may have done so, may have harmed. Even killed the batter. The intent, which is all, at the last split second, is not to harm. Ergo, no mortal sin. One might even argue, boys, that Whitey Ford had committed no sin at all.”

  “No sin at all?” Oberstein says.

  “Perhaps, Mr. Oberstein.”

  “Like a deathbed conversion, Brother,” Bug shouts.

  “Yes, Mr. Bradburys. Precisely!” The whites of McCann’s eyes are visible as he rolls his head back and stares at the ceiling.

  “But what if Whitey Ford just wanted to nick the batter, to just hurt him a little bit. But he hit him in the temple and he died. Would that be a mortal or a venial sin?” Kavanagh asks.

  “What is the intent, Kavanaghs?” McCann growls. “Is the intent to kill? Or is the intent to wound? Killing is murder. Murder is a deadly sin. Ipso facto, it is a mortal sin. And if Whitey Ford died that day, he would go straight to hell.”

  “Unless he confessed on the way to the hospital or had a deathbed conversion,” Bug cries out.

  “What if you felt you had to kill someone, but you didn’t want to,” Ryan says. “That wouldn’t be a sin, would it?”

  “What kind of question is that? Killing is murder, Mr. Ryans. Plain and simple.”

  Silence. Another hiss from the radiator. Oberstein looks at Blackie, who stares at Ryan.

  “Now where was I? Mr. Bradburys, of course. Deathbed conversion,” McCann says. “Confession always obliterates the stain of mortal sin. Are there any more dialogues, class?”

  Littlejohn says that last class we were told that it’s a sin to eat anything before Mass. He asks if it’s a venial or mortal sin.

  McCann asks Oberstein, who says it’s a venial sin.

  “Correct!” McCann says.

  “So if I don’t eat before Mass,” Bug says, “and I take communion and after Mass I get hit by a truck, I’ll be so holy I’ll go straight to heaven. Right?”

  “Straight to heaven! That’s correct. That is, if you have no mortal sin staining your soul, you are in a state of sanctifying grace.”

  Several hands go up, including Oberstein’s. But McCann ignores Oberstein. He rarely calls on him because Oberstein’s questions are too difficult. Oberstein could give a rabbi a hard time about the Talmud. If he does call upon Oberstein, McCann usually goes on and on, making no sense. He concludes by asking Oberstein what he thinks the answer is to his own question. McCann always agrees with Oberstein’s answer, adding a few meaningless comments to make it sound like his own solution.

  Oberstein, for example, might ask what if somewhere between the windup and the release Whitey Ford had doubts about whether to nick or injure the batter, and as he released the ball he definitely wanted to injure but not seriously maim the batter, and his footing slipped on the mound as he was thinking about this, and the ball got away from him and seriously injured the ump, who, many times, Whitey Ford had wished to injure because of his calls. Wouldn’t that still be a mortal sin, ipso facto, given the history of his thought, even though the ump and not the batter got hurt?

  McCann would get on with a lot of gobbledygook for a few minutes, and then ask Oberstein what he thought the right answer was. If Oberstein said it was a mortal sin, McCann would agree with him. If Oberstein said it was a venial sin, McCann would agree with that. But McCann usually avoids asking Oberstein to participate.

  Ryan asks if these are the only two types of sins. McCann says no, there is one other kind of sin, the worst sin of all, the most vile of sins, especially for Romans.

  “The sacrilege!” McCann shudders and stares off into space. “The unforgivable, the unpardonable sin! It is a sin against the Holy Spirit and cannot be blotted out. It is the sin of despair, the total rejection of the Almighty, the total rejection of God’s holy light. The deliberate demonic alignment with darkness, the evil one, Satan. Only a Roman can commit such a sin. It is reserved for Romans, the true believers. Protestants and unbelievers cannot commit a sacrilege because they do not know the difference. Romans are enlightened, boys. Romans know the difference.” He stares at the picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help on the side wall. “Defamation of that picture of Our Lady by a Roman would constitute a sacrilege.”

  “Would Whitey Ford be able to commit a sacrilege?” Bug asks.

  “If he is a Roman. Most certainly.”

  “Couldja give us a baseball example of a sacrilege, Brother?” Kavanagh asks.

  McCann moves his index finger slowly back and forth across his lips. He sighs, squints his eyes and furrows his brows so that we will think he is contemplating.

  “Perhaps Mr. Bradburys could give the class an example.”

  “Well, if Whitey Ford is a Roman Catholic, he could commit a sacrilege in many ways,” Bug squeaks.

  “Correct! Name one,” McCann interjects, spraying spit. “What would be an example?”

  “Well, say Whitey Ford had a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help taped to his locker door in the club house during the season. And he prayed to it every day for protection and good luck, and one day he lost a big game, say the seventh game of the World Series. And he spit on the picture and cursed on it and tore it up into a tiny million pieces and threw it into the toilet and used the bathroom on it and flushed it
down. Wouldn’t that be an example of—”

  “A sacrilege! Excellent example, Mr. Bradburys. Excellent!” McCann showers the front row. “A perfect example of sacrilege!”

  Bug cocks his head, turns to the class and grins.

  “What about if you burned a crucifix in the incinerator, one that is blessed with holy water by the Archbishop?” Anderson asks. The incinerator is an oversized barrel with gashes in it that the brothers use to burn old clothes and odds and ends.

  “Sacrilege!” McCann shouts.

  “Or a set of rosary beads blessed by the Pope in the Vatican?” Murphy says.

  “Sacrilege. Another example of a sacrilege.” McCann foams at the mouth.

  “Or you stole a host from the tabernacle and buried it in the graveyard,” Pat Fitzpatrick shouts.

  “Oh, sacrilege! That too would be a sacrilege.” McCann is almost out of control.

  The examples are fast, one after the other, like gunfire, each one forcing from McCann a more frenzied response. I look over at Oberstein, who sits with his arms folded tightly, his eyes glued to a paperback hidden inside the hardcover catechism he pretends to read.

  “What if someone urinated in the chalice?” Bug Bradbury squeaks.

  “Sacrilegious, oh yes, sacrilege . . . Sacrilege,” McCann cants, as the front row prepares for another shower.

  There is a sudden pounding at the door, and Brother McMurtry rushes in. The classroom becomes a morgue.

  Bug, scrunched in his seat, his fist jammed against the side of his mouth, becomes stiff as a board. Oberstein rubs his wrist against his hairline. Blackie’s eyes nervously dart between McMurtry and McCann. Murphy bites his lower lip and picks at the hockey tape on his glasses. Rowsell’s drowsy look changes as he stiffens, sniffs the sour classroom air and sits up in his seat. Father Cross rubs his acned jaw, hunches his shoulders and picks lint off his woolly sweater.

  McMurtry never interrupts a class unless someone is gonna be punished. The silence is deafening. A shudder passes through the room. We all have goosebumps. My stomach tightens, the way the panic starts before the spells. McCann folds his arms across his black soutaned chest, unfolds them again and picks up a pen to jot things down. Brother McMurtry clears his throat and questions Ryan about his whereabouts the other night.