Garden of Evil (15 page)

‘Simon? He got something, sir. Don't know what it is exactly, but it's like he got
mojo
, only stronger than
mojo
. My grannie would have called it
brujeria.
'

‘You feel that?' asked Jim. He knew what both of those words meant.
Mojo
meant self-confidence and personal magnetism and sex appeal.
Brujeria
meant serious magic, which would normally be cast by a
brujo
, or a worker of spells.

‘Don't know what it is exactly,' Al Alvarez repeated. ‘But, yes. I feel that.'

‘So when you came out with all that orgy stuff, and slitting women's throats . . . do you think maybe that it was Simon who made you think of that?'

Al Alvarez glanced at Jim and Jim could tell that he was nervous. ‘I don't know, sir. I wouldn't like to say nothing like that.'

‘What are you afraid of?'

‘I ain't afraid of nothing, Mr Rook. I don't want to cause no trouble, that's all.'

‘Yesterday, Al, I would have picked you out as the joker of the class. So what's different today?'

Al Alvarez looked down at the floor and wouldn't catch Jim's eye. ‘I don't want to cause no trouble, that's all.'

Jim hesitated for a moment, and then he opened the studio door and ushered Al Alvarez back into the classroom. Immediately, the boys stopped throwing their baseball around and the girls stopped swaying their hips and waving their arms in the air.

‘OK, everybody,' said Jim. ‘The situation is now settled and it's time to carry on with some work. I'm going to read you another poem and then I'm going to give you a half-hour to make some notes about what you think it means.'

He went across to his desk and picked up one of his poetry books. ‘This is by a poet called John Lupo, and it's called
The Book of Years
.

‘Hey, that's a tearjerker, man,' called out DaJon Johnson, from the back of the class. ‘Next time why don't you read us a poem that make us all bust out laughing.'

Jim smiled and said, ‘I will, don't worry.' He held up another book, with a yellow cover. ‘Ogden Nash, one of America's most humorous poets. Next time I'll read you his poem
A Tale of the Thirteenth
Floor
. It's about a bum who goes to a hotel, intent on murder, but Maxie, the elevator boy, takes him to the thirteenth floor, where murderers have to shuffle around and around together with their victims in a conga, for all eternity.

‘Here,' he said, and opened the book, and read a few lines.

‘That don't sound at all humorous to me!' DaJon Johnson protested. ‘That sounds real scary! The dead and the living, dancing a frickin' conga together, for ever and ever? Hooo-
wee
!'

But it was Simon Silence that Jim was looking at. He wasn't just smiling now, he was grinning, and showing all his teeth. Jim could almost have sworn that his eyes lit up like two quartz-halogen pinpricks.

‘OK . . . I'll be back in a minute,' said Jim. ‘Jot down some of your thoughts about
The Book of Years
. Try to relate what the poet is saying to your own lives. Did your parents make a point of telling you that they loved you, or did they keep it to themselves? Did you listen to your teachers, or did you always think that you knew better? Did you ever lose anybody that you really cared about? If you wrote a book about your own life, what would you choose for a title?'

‘
How Gorgeous Am I
?' suggested Jesmeka Watson.

‘
Stupid And Fucked-Up But With Really Cool Hair, Part One
,' said Rudy Cascarelli.

Jim left Art Studio Four and went downstairs to the main corridor. He walked past the open door of his usual classroom, Special Class Two, and saw that the decorators had nearly finished replastering and redecorating the ceiling. The floor was covered with white-spattered sheets and the air was filled with a strong smell of emulsion paint.

As he passed Senior Spanish, Sheila Colefax came hurrying out, with a clutch of plastic folders pressed against her bosom.

‘Jim!' she said. ‘How are you?'

Jim stood in front of her and lifted both his hands to stop her. ‘Wait a second, Sheila, let me get this right.' Very slowly and carefully, he said, ‘
No debemos comer la carne como esto
.'

Sheila blinked at him. ‘What are you trying to say to me, Jim?'

‘I'm trying to say, “We must stop meeting like this.” It's only a joke, Sheila. You know how much I like you.'

‘Well, all right. I understand it's a joke. But next time say, “
Debemos parar el encontarnos como esto
.” What
you
said was, “We must stop eating meat like this.”'

‘Oh, shoot, I'm sorry. Back to the phrase book. But you knew what I was getting at, didn't you?'

‘No, to be truthful, I didn't. I'm a vegetarian.'

‘Oh. OK. How were the Woodpeckers?'

‘The Woolspinners. I didn't go.'

‘Not because of me, I hope?'

‘No. Yes, a little, maybe. I guess I wasn't in the mood.'

‘Maybe some other time, huh? Things are kind of fraught at the moment.'

‘I know. I'm surprised they haven't closed the college altogether.'

‘If that last victim had been a student, I think they would have done.'

Sheila said, ‘What's going on, Jim? Do you have any idea? I mean, you know quite a lot about those black magicky sorts of things, don't you?'

Jim thought about Ricky's Satanic painting, and the look on Simon Silence's face when he had quoted Ogden Nash's line about ‘
a whiff of kingdom come
.'

‘Yeah, I guess I know a little about those black magicky sorts of things. But I have no idea at all what this particular ritual is all about – if it
is
a ritual. The white paint, and the eight white cats. I've never heard about anything like it, ever.'

Sheila touched Jim's arm. ‘I have to go this way, to have these test papers copied. I'll see you later.'

Jim watched her go, in her high-necked white blouse and her black pencil skirt, and he thought he could detect a slight suggestion of sashay in the way she was walking. It occurred to him that maybe she liked him more than she had previously let on. In fact, maybe, in her own suppressed way, she was flirting with him. Pity this wasn't the time for it.

He knocked on the door of Dr Ehrlichman's office. Dr Ehrlichman was smooth-talking someone on the phone, and repeatedly smoothing his bald head with his hand as he did so. When Jim stepped into his office he mouthed ‘sit down' and pointed to the chair in front of his desk. Jim waved his hand to indicate that he would prefer to stand. He knew from experience how low down that chair was.

‘Well, that's so generous of you,' said Dr Ehrlichman, on the phone. ‘That really is so generous. We'll be seeing you at Thanksgiving, I very much trust?'

He hung up and then he steepled his hands and raised both eyebrows and said, ‘Jim? And what can I do for you?'

‘I want that kid out of my class,' Jim told him.

‘I'm sorry. Which kid?'

‘You know what kid I'm talking about. Simon Silence. Only son of the Reverend John Silence of the Church of the Holy Outburst, or whatever it's called.'

Dr Ehrlichman gave an exaggerated double-take. ‘Simon Silence? I talked to him myself, when the Reverend Silence brought him here. I thought he was unusually polite, and articulate, and eager to learn.'

‘Exactly. Everything that my usual students are
not
.'

‘I thought you would be delighted to have a student like that in your class. Somebody to set a level of excellence to which all of his fellow students could aspire.'

‘Walter – Special Class Two does not have levels of excellence. Special Class Two exceeds my expectations if they make any kind of sense at all. These are kids who don't know how to make letters into words, let alone words into sentences, and most of the time they speak in riddles. Like, what the dilly yo?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘What's going on, Walter?'

‘I still don't understand why you should want Simon Silence out of your class. He can only improve your end-of-year average.'

‘The reason why I want him out is nothing to do with his academic ability. The reason I want him out is because he's creepy, and he's having a very bad influence on all of the rest of Special Class Two, and he's even having a bad influence on
me
. I have never been so bad tempered and erratic in my behavior in my life.'

Dr Ehrlichman tugged a Kleenex out of a box on his desk and made an elaborate performance of blowing his nose. ‘Ragweed,' he said. ‘It always gives me post-nasal drip.'

‘I want him out,' Jim insisted. ‘I want him out today. You can put him into any other class you like, but not mine.'

At the same time, strangely, he thought about Simon Silence's offer of an apple. He could picture what it would have looked like, pink and green, and what it would have tasted like. That sweetness, that sudden burst of acidity. And that calliope playing, far, far away.

Here – would you like an apple
?
I have plenty
.

Dr Ehrlichman carefully folded up his tissue and tossed it into his wastebasket. Then he gave a grimace and said, ‘I'm sorry, Jim. No can do.'

‘Of course you can. You principal, he student. You tell him, “Go to other class, student,” he have to go. End of smoke signal.'

‘Well, in this particular case it's a little trickier than that. Without beating around the bush, the Reverend Silence specifically requested that Simon be enrolled in Special Class Two.'

‘That's insane. He doesn't need remedial English. All he needs is somebody to sort out his face. Goddamn kid keeps smiling all the time, like he thinks something's funny.'

‘Jim, this is beginning to sound very much like personal dislike.'

‘Walter – no wonder they made you principal! You have such a keen understanding of human nature!'

Dr Ehrlichman jabbed his finger at Jim and said, in a bunged-up voice, ‘Don't you get sarcastic with me, Jim. The Reverend Silence believes that Simon needs to learn more street slang in order to spread the word of God into the ghettoes and among the gangs. The way he speaks now, they won't listen to what he says for a moment.'

‘So he's joined Special Class Two not to improve his English but to dumb it down. You know something, Walter, I don't think there's an antonym for “remedial English”. Maybe West Grove should invent one. We could call it “stupedial English.”'

‘That's enough, Jim. I'm very sorry that you're not interacting constructively with Simon Silence, but the plain fact is that the Reverend Silence donated a very substantial sum of money toward the upgrade of our sports facilities.'

Jim said, ‘What? Say it isn't so.'

‘The pool, as you know, is in a serious state of disrepair. It urgently needs a new filtration plant, and new pumps, and new tiling. The Reverend Silence has agreed to give us three-point-five million toward it.'

‘Three-point-five million dollars? He wants his son to speak like a wanksta and he's prepared to pay three-point-five million dollars for it?'

Dr Ehrlichman shrugged. ‘You should be proud of yourself, Jim. Your reputation has obviously spread far and wide. The Reverend Silence insisted that Simon be tutored by you, and you alone. You've done this college a very great service.'

Jim slowly shook his head. ‘I think you'll find that I've done exactly the opposite, Walter. Is your nose still blocked up?'

‘Well, yes. It's the ragweed.'

‘If your nose is still blocked up, that's why you can't detect the sickening whiff of kingdom come.'

Jim stalked back along the main corridor, fuming. As he reached the foot of the stairs the math teacher, Roger Ball, came squelching past in his thick-soled sneakers, with his unkempt brown beard and his brown check shirt and his brown corduroy pants.

‘Jim! Where have you been? How was your vacation? Laura and me, we went to Cancun! What a time we had there! We had one of those bottles of tequila with an agave worm in it, and Laura – goddamnit, you're not going to believe this – Laura swallowed the damn thing! She
swallowed
it!'