Language Arts (40 page)

“Yeah,” Mitch said, considering. “I suppose we could keep playing that . . .”

Charles realized that Mitchell didn't really have a plan beyond luring him here. If he kept his mouth shut, things might be all right.

Then Mitchell noticed Charles's police-detective notebook.

“What's this?” he asked, withdrawing the notebook from Charles's shirt pocket. Charles's favorite pencil, sharpened to a fine point, was wedged into the spiral coils; Mitchell pushed it out and flipped the notebook open.

There it was, the damning evidence: all the notes Charles had taken, the clubs and their members (
BULLIES: MITCHELL RUDD AND BRADLEY WILCOX
), the list of summer plans he and Donnie had made last year, the loops he'd demonstrated for Dana.

Charles expected Mitchell to react, to get angry, to say something, but he just kept reading, looking up every now and then.

Finally he said, “You really like making those Palmer loops, don't you?” His eyes slid from Charles to Dana and back again. “Know what? Now that Charlie's here, I think we should do some Palmer practice.”

“Yay!”
Dana shouted.

“So,” Mitchell said, smiling, “which one of you wants to make Palmer loops?” Charles understood that now Mitchell
did
have a plan; he'd solved whatever problem he'd been wrestling with.

“I do! I do!” Dana raised his bound hands.

“But wait,” Mitchell said. “It's a special challenge, because it's Field Day.”

Dana bellowed, “I
like
Feed Day!”

“You have to make Palmer loops without holding the pencil in your hands.”

“Ha!”
Dana said. “How we do
that?
How we make
loops
without
hands,
Miss-
Shel?
”

“How do you think, Dana?”

“Don't
know! Show!
”

“Well . . . ,” Mitchell said—and it wasn't just the absence of malice in his voice that was chilling, it was the perfectly modulated evenness with which he spoke, as if he were a benevolent nursery-school teacher: a perfect mimicry of compassion. “You could put your pencil in your ear, like this.” He demonstrated; Dana giggled.

Mitchell put the pencil between his teeth, like a cigar, and tried to articulate around it. “Or you could put it in your mouth, like this . . .”

Dana howled even louder. “You
fun
-eee, Miss-
Shel!
”

“Or in your nose,
or,
” Mitchell said enticingly, “you could do it another way.”

“What?” Dana asked, entranced. “What way?”

“Stop,” Charles said.

“But he wants to know,” Mitchell said. “Don't you, Dana?”

“I
do. Show!”

“Do
you
know, Char-Lee? Do
you
know where a pencil can go besides your ear or your nose or your mouth?”

“Stop,” Charles said again, weakly. It was hot; he'd eaten too much.

“I bet you do. Maybe
you
want to show him.”

Charles threw up.

“Char-Lee sick,” Dana stated, his face serious.

It kept coming, everything Charles had eaten that day, hot dogs and relish and potato chips and brownies; the enclosed space and the heat intensified the smell, and even after there was nothing left, he kept heaving.

“Jesus,” Bradley said, plugging his nose with his fingers.

“
Jeeeee
-zuhs!” Dana added, and then, “Char-Lee sick.”

“So which one of you is going to do the special challenge?”

“Me,” Dana volunteered. “I make loops. Char-Lee sick.”

“Okay, Dana. Attaboy.”

Mitchell started pulling down Dana's pants. Bradley looked surprised but didn't say anything.

Stop,
Charles tried to say, but the sight and smell of the vomit was awful, and the convulsions kept coming.

“Char-Lee,” Dana asked, “Char-Lee Mar-Low, you okay?”

Mitchell said, “Okay now, Dana, get on your knees.”

Dana complied, still looking at Charles.

“Now bend over . . . that's right. Just like a dog.”

Bradley spoke. “Shit, Mitch. Are you sure—”

Mitchell pinched the pencil between his fingers, as if it were a dart he was trying to align with the bull's-eye, and studied Dana's bottom.

Bradley spoke again. “Geez, Mitch, are you sure you should do that?”

“Christ, Brad. Don't be such a faggot. Didn't your mommy ever take your temperature when you were a little-bitty baby? Shut up, it's fine. Get over here and help me. Spread his butt cheeks.”

Bradley cast a dubious look in Charles's direction but obeyed.

Mitchell shoved the ground-down eraser end of the pencil into Dana's bottom. Then he sat back with a bemused look on his face, as if he had no connection to what he was seeing.

“There you go, faggot,” he said, his voice expressionless.

Dana frowned; he looked puzzled.

“Okay, you're ready,” Mitchell said, his voice growing impatient. “What are you waiting for? Get to work,
ree-tard!
Make those Palmer loops!”

Dana's voice was small. “How?” he said.

“Oh, come on. You know what to do. Charlie here, he taught you how to make Palmer loops, didn't he?”

“Yes. We make loops. Char-Lee teach me all the time.”

Mitchell gazed quizzically at Charles, as if seeking guidance, as if
he
were the one running the show. Then, slowly, a look of realization and delight spread across his face. “
You
tell him, Charlie,” he said. “You're the teacher. He's not listening to me.”

“What?”

“Tell the
ree-tard
to make loops.”

“Char-Lee?” Dana asked.

“What—”

“Or maybe
you
want to do the challenge too. Brad, get another pencil.”

“No!”

“Okay, then. Tell him. If you tell him, I'll untie you.”

“Char-Lee?” Dana repeated, his voice now tinged with fear.

“Tell him,
faggot,
or you're next.”

“Dana,” Charles said. “Make loops.”

“Noooooo!” Mitchell's voice had resumed its expressive malice. “His name isn't
Dana.
It's Ree-tard. Say it:
Ree-tard.
”

“Ree-tard.”

“Now say, ‘Ree-tard
,
Charlie says make loops.'”

“Ree-tard. Charlie says. Make loops.”

Mitchell grabbed Dana from behind and started moving his bottom in circles.

“That's it! Now say, ‘Faggot, make loops.'”

“Faggot.”

“What? I didn't hear that.”

“You said you were going to untie me.”

“Not yet. The
ree-tard
needs more practice. Come on!”

“Faggot. Make loops.”

“Now say, ‘Queer.' ”

“Queer. Make loops . . .”

Mitchell kept moving Dana's bottom around in ever larger, quickening circles so that Dana lost his balance; he pitched forward beyond his bound forearms and ended up lying on his face, his cheek grinding into the dirt.

“Hey!” someone called. It was Astrida, standing at the end of the tunnel, slack-jawed, beady-eyed. “Someone's coming. You better quit that. You better get out of there right now!” Then she ran out of view.

“Shit,” Bradley said.

“Goddamn it,” Mitchell said. He yanked Dana up off the ground, but Dana fell back and sat down hard. Mitchell hauled him to standing, pulled up his trousers, and unbound his arms and feet. “Untie the other one, stupid!” he barked.

Bradley rushed over to Charles and started freeing him.

“You feel better, Char-Lee? I did Feed Day loops for you. Did you see?”

Charles stumbled out of the bushes in time to see Miss Vanderkolk striding across the playground with Astrida jogging beside her.

Mitchell and Bradley emerged from the other end of the hedge, flanking Dana, arms around him, propping him up as if they were designated drivers seeing a soused pal home at the end of an evening.

“What's going on out here,” Miss Vanderkolk called as she approached.

“Sorry, Miss Vanderkolk,” Mitchell said, his voice nauseating in its unctuousness. “We found Dana playing out here and we were trying to bring him back.”

Miss Vanderkolk looked skeptical but said, “All right, then. Go back and join the others. Charles? What's wrong with you?”

“I'm sick.”

She accompanied Charles to the nurse's office, where he was given a bromide and some apple juice—
No Vanilla Wafers for you, young man,
the nurse said,
not
until your stomach settles down
—and from there into the Quiet Room, where he recuperated on one of the army cots until his mother arrived to take him home.

•♦•

When Mrs. Braxton took attendance the following Monday, neither Mitchell nor Bradley was present. Dana was there, less ebullient than usual, but otherwise the same as always.

After their final Language Arts class of the year, Mrs. Braxton and the other children trooped back into room 104, where Mrs. Hurd was finishing up her lesson on sentence diagramming, whatever that was, and where Dana had his head on his desk. He seemed to be taking a nap.

As Charles passed by, Dana roused himself and said weakly, “Char-Lee. Char-Lee Mar-Low.” He reached out, stood up, and then fell, slumping into Charles's arms.

Immediately, there were gasps from the children behind him, then screams, then they started pointing: on the backside of Dana's white linen trousers, a blooming splotch of blood.

“Oh my God,” Mrs. Braxton said, rushing over to help keep Dana upright, putting a hand on his forehead. His eyes were glazed. His face was blotchy and slick with sweat. “Oh my God,” she repeated. “He's burning up.”

She kicked off her too-small high-heeled shoes, hoisted him into her arms, and took off running. “Char-Lee, Char-Lee Mar-Low,” Dana continued to cry, his strange voice, normally so joyous, now a keening, hollow moan that reverberated through the halls of Nellie Goodhue.

•♦•

Not long after Charles got home and sat down in front of his snack, there was a phone call.

“Hello? Yes, this is Charles's mother, Mrs. Marlow . . . No, he didn't mention anything . . . I'm sorry, what did you say? What happened? When? Are you telling me that Charles was involved? . . . I see . . . Yes, yes, of course, I'll speak to him about it . . . I understand, thank you very much for calling.”

Generously buttered saltines alternating in a semicircle with precisely cut squares of processed cheese, a julienned dill pickle, a cup of tomato soup, two Fig Newtons, Rita Marlow's signature apple rosette.

It had been three days since the playground, but the lingering taste of vomit (or its memory) made Charles barely able to look at this display, much less eat any of it.

His mother lit a cigarette and leaned against the counter. “That was your school principal,” she began, her voice quiet, impartial. “She said you were in some kind of a fight during Field Day, a disturbance . . . Why didn't you say anything?”

Charles wished he could get up—he wanted to brush his teeth—but his body felt like cement.

“Charles? Charles. Look at me. What happened?”

He opened his mouth, but then, fearing he might gag on the air itself, closed it.

“One of your classmates, that
Dana,
has been very seriously injured. No one knew he'd been hurt until today. He's in the hospital, in intensive care. They're saying he might . . .” She paused and took a deep drag on her cigarette. “Were you involved with any of this?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“Some other boys, they . . . did something to Dana.”

She paused again to draw on her cigarette. “Did you see what they did?”

Charles nodded his head. He felt dizzy.

“Did they do it to you too?”

He shook his head no.

“Did you try to stop it? Charles?”

He shook his head again.

“Well, that's good,” she said. “That's very good. You might have been seriously injured yourself if you'd tried to intervene.”

I didn't intervene,
Charles thought.
I didn't do anything except call Dana McGucken a ree-tard and a faggot and a queer and now he's going to die.

The next day, midmorning, Mrs. Braxton sent Charles to the office on some errand, and there, standing at the main counter, was Mrs. McGucken.

She looked destitute: a wrinkled, untucked sleeveless blouse over a pair of too-long slacks, soot-smeared Keds, oily, uncombed hair.

The moment she saw him she pulled him into her arms.

“Oh,” she sobbed. “Charles.”

To this day, Charles remembers the way she prolonged and filled the sounds of those two words, and in the years since, having spent so much time trying to impart to his students the brilliance of Shakespeare's language—not as fancy, pretentious poetry for poetry's sake, but as simple, potent physical expression—he has often heard echoes of Mrs. McGucken's voice in Ophelia's
Oh, woe is me;
Juliet's
Oh, be some other name!;
Romeo's
Oh, teach me how I should forget to think!

“I am so glad I ran into you,” she went on. “I came by to pick up Dana's things.”

She released Charles to arm's length, then squatted and regarded him at close range. Charles noticed things about her face that he hadn't seen before: she was slightly walleyed, a flaw that somehow only enhanced the qualities of compassion and serenity that her countenance expressed; her pale skin, unlike Dana's, bore a light dusting of cinnamon-colored freckles; precisely centered in the space between her brows was a small mole.