Slot Machine (18 page)

“What did you do yesterday, Elvin?”

“Damn!”

“See, you need help.”

“Damn, damn, damn. How does everyone know everything around here?”

“You don’t want to know that.”

“Fine. Well anyway, I don’t care anymore. About anything. So I don’t want to go to any crappy Religion Sector, so I won’t go. I’ll swear all day if I have to, so they won’t want me. Shit. Shit, goddammit.”

Thor held his washboard abdomen laughing at me. “I am going to hate to see you leave, man. But seriously, this is a kind of plea-bargain thing. You go to Religious Studies as a sort of alternative substance-abuse program, or they tell your mother what happened.”

That shut me right up.

“Well what about him?” I said, pointing to Frankie, who was still detoxing in bed. I was so irritated, I didn’t care what a rat I was being.

“
He
didn’t turn himself in.”

“Grrrr,” I said.

“Yes, Elvin, grrr.”

“Assholes.”

“Well, yes.”

“Damn them to hell.”

“Wow you’re getting in the spirit.”

“Where do I go?” I sighed.

“Gymnasium basement,” he said.

“Of course.” I slunk on toward the door but didn’t go out before adding, “It wasn’t even my fault. They
made
me drink it.”

“Right, Elvin,” Thor said. “We never heard that one before. And you got pregnant by swimming in the pool with boys, right?”

“Ah, out of Babylon comes young Bishop,” Brother Flemming proclaimed as I
eek
ed open the door to the crypt-classroom.

“Oh Jesus,” I said, pulling the door closed again.

“Come back here, young man,” Flemming commanded.

I returned, reluctantly. After a quick scan of the class I knew that I had reached rock bottom. I had heard about this, the complete moral destruction drinkers suffer when they are finally tapped out. Seeing snakes and rats and mutant creatures with frogs’ bodies and Madonna’s face. Sleeping with the company of tiny devil-faced, knife-wielding versions of themselves sticking their flesh and laughing all night until they had to jump out of bed and dig up that last bottle of molasses-brown rum in the backyard and drink it all down like weak tea. Gurgling, gurgling. But I was on the ultra-fast track. I had been a problem drinker for less than twenty-four hours, and already I was surrounded by haunts.

Brother Flemming, head spook. He was here, in this slot of the brotherhood, because he simply could not exist anywhere else. His whole person screamed catechism and Latin Mass, pointer smashes across the knuckles, and you’ll go
blind
if you touch that. The little spectacles, the bleached-white head polished to a Turtle Wax sheen on top, fringed with eight or ten foot-long white hairs on the sides. The eyebrows like shaving brushes. Ditto the crops of nose and ear hair. The total absence of any eye movement unless he turned his whole head to look at you like the wax-museum version of Vincent Price. The long black dress that most brothers had given up by now but that Flemming wore down past his shoes to give the impression of levitating from point to point rather than walking. And then there was his trick of clearing his everbusy sinuses by hucking an egg-size lungy into his handkerchief, staring at it mesmerized for a minute as if nobody else was in the room, then folding the hanky neatly back into his pocket.

His flock wasn’t much better. There were only ten of them, but they were a whole stadium full of weirdness. The one closest to the door refused to lift his face out of the Bible on his desk, showing only the vivid bald spot—ringed with creeping crud—on the top of his head. A thirteen-year-old kid with a bald spot like Friar Tuck. Behind him were two guys comparing Jesus-head medallions across the aisle, bickering over which one displayed more anguish. Behind them were two guys who looked like they must have been brought in in leg chains but who managed to slip their drug-ravaged structures through the cuffs. Another guy sitting rigid and smiling with his hands folded on the desk—
my
idea of a real troublemaker. And the rest just appeared to be your run-of-the-mill scared stiffs like myself who were here seeking the traditional asylum of the church for the remainder of camp in hopes of not being wiped out altogether by the athletic Hun. The sports escapees aren’t necessarily hot for the religion thing but would make a deal with the devil to bail out of the slot rat race. Since locally god was more handy, the deal was this.

Not the fourth infantry division we had here, and yet I was nervous anyway. They were a mob. And any mob that is not your mob—and
every
mob was not my mob—is dangerous. Even a mob of wild wimps.

And they had a charismatic leader.

“Here is your Bible, Mr. Bishop. Take it with you to that seat there in back. And that Bible belongs to you for the remainder of the retreat, so you are responsible for it. Take it with you everywhere.”

“Everywhere,” I said with a little laugh. I had yet to discover that Brother Flemming did not recognize humor when he had committed it.

“Everywhere, sir. That amuses you?”

“Well, ya. As long as you’re going to have me haul a Bible around the place with me, why don’t you just slap a propeller on my head and paint a big red bull’s-eye on my butt? You’ll achieve the same thing.”

About one third of the class laughed, coincidentally, like hell. One third looked at me and scowled viciously, like You get the stake, I’ll get the matches. The final third sank into their seats, looking like Oh god, I hope he doesn’t make trouble for
all
of us.

I stopped to appreciate. I liked all of it, all three reactions. I could enjoy this, the only group I was ever in in which I was—The Maverick.

Whack
! I never should have taken my eyes off him. He made no sound when he moved.

“
There’s
your propeller, Mr. Bishop.” He had clopped me on the ear so hard, I could hear it reddening. “Would you like to further discuss the merits of the Good Book?”

He held the Good Book high overhead. Over
my
head.

“I think I’ll just listen for a while,” I said.

“See?” Flemming said as he reached for the hanky. “The word of god is already having a positive impact on your life.” Then he hucked.

“We here are all on the road to Damascus,” Flemming winded from back at his mountaintop desk. “Some of us have already been struck by the power of god’s will.
Others
of us”—he turned a fierce stare in my direction—“will need to be struck down off our high horse before we will be ready to change direction.”

I felt personally challenged by this guy. He apparently had me set up as his example for the week, but I wasn’t going to absorb any hellfire off of
him
, not after all I’d survived already. I raised my hand, almost involuntarily.

“Bishop.”

“Um, Brother. I just wanted to say in my defense that, you know, I drank some beer—didn’t even enjoy it very much, but that’s another story—but anyway, I didn’t kill somebody’s grandmother or sleep with a sheep.”

The reaction, again, was the same breakdown—one third laughs, one third burning stares, one third Leave me out of this. But this time I enjoyed it without taking my eyes off Flemming.

“Ooooo, you got him now.” The voice came from over my shoulder. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was one of the laughers. “You struck his pet theme. Bestiality. Makes him crazy.”

I smiled, looking right at Flemming as I did.

“You have amused yourself once again, Mr. Bishop?” Flemming growled.

“We take our amusement where we can get it, sir. You understand.”

“Uh-oh, watch out,” said The Voice. “You’ve done it again. Favorite theme number two—boys who amuse themselves.”

I laughed freely, as if Flemming were in on the joke and would join in any time now.

“I am a patient and forbearing man,” Flemming said, beating his pointer into the palm of his free hand like an old-time cop with a nightstick. “But do not test me.”

The Voice, from right behind me, would not let me go. “Better stop, Bishop. Don’t test him. Whatever you do, don’t mention Cub Scouts. For god’s sake don’t mention Cub Scouts. That was all in the past. They never proved a thing.”

“Can I go to the bathroom?” I blurted, spluttering laugh spits all over my desk.

“He was framed, Bishop. He was just walking by that shower stall, and that Cub Scout just happened to slip on the soap, and he accidentally impaled himself on the coincidentally naked brother.”

The Voice stopped, and the room was dead silent as I cackled, the way you can only laugh when it’s important not to. I held my belly and enjoyed every second. It felt good inside, way beyond eating. This was what was so terrible here at Camp Joyless, I realized. Nobody was into laughing.

Flemming bore down on me. “You are entering one of the finest Christian Brothers schools in America. If you think the study of religion is so funny...” His arm came down like he was dropping the checkered flag at the Indy 500. I pulled back, but it was going to split me like a great big log.

Until The Hand shot out. The Hand, belonging to The Voice.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Flemming asked with such menace that I got ready for him to try again.

“Ah, I’m stopping a crime,” The Voice said, standing now. “You can’t do that.”

I turned. Attached to a body, The Voice shrank to human scale. He was medium. Medium build, medium complexion, medium height. His actions made him bigger, though. His actions said, simply, “Totally unafraid.”

“Oh yes I can do that,” Flemming said.

Before the two of them got into an embarrassing duke-out over me, I intervened.

“Thanks,” I said to my protector, then stood to face the brother myself. “No, really, you can’t do that.”

“And why not?”

“Well, because I can’t let you. See, it’s like this: First there was the whole shanghai thing that got me here in the first place... then the football stompings, the baseball beanings... Jesus, the mole business, the humiliation... wrestling, running, not wrestling... and none of that did me in. I’m not broken, you see? So if I let myself be broken by one little guy with a big stick... well, you can see how that would mean it was all for nothing. So, brother, no, I can’t let you do that.”

“So suck on
that
,” The Voice cheered.

Flemming stared at me, dumbstruck, as if I was speaking in tongues. Maybe no other victim had ever tried to explain himself before. So he turned to The Voice instead. “Get out,” he said.

“Psyched,” The Voice answered. “New record, thirty minutes. I lasted in track and field a whole day.”

He brushed past Flemming, who had lost interest in me. The Brother went back to the front of the class and started firing up his brimstone again. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” he said, making a stiff-arm gesture at the exiting Voice.

“Fine,” The Voice answered. “Just as long as thee don’t get behind
me
.”

Again, I had that feeling of being alone in the audience of a comedy no one else was hearing. It wasn’t that I had anything necessarily against god—other than his sense of humor, which I didn’t share—or Flemming personally. It was just that I had had enough. I didn’t want to be bullied or instructed or improved in any way. I wanted a laugh. And I wasn’t scared of anything anymore, except the fear that I might never laugh again.

“Is that it?” I said, pointing at The Voice, who had stopped in the doorway. “That’s all he had to do, up and leave?”

The Voice started beckoning me to do it too.

“Shall I drive you someplace?” replied the totally disgusted Brother, pointing me to the door with his pointer. “Call you a cab, perhaps?”

I got up and walked toward the door, moving slowly, waiting for the catch. There was none, though. However, I did notice a strange thing in people’s eyes. Something like respect.

The most outrageous thing yet. They thought I was cool here. I was not a geek in this room, I was a hellion. I almost wanted to stay.

“You missed a great opportunity here, Bishop,” Flemming said triumphantly. “Your mother will now be informed of your transgression.”

“Well my mother already
knows
about the sheep. And she loves me anyway.”

I think even some of the religious geeky kids were snickering when I left.

“The name is Oskar, and I’m sorry I got you in trouble. Nah, never mind. I’m not sorry. You needed salvation from there, and I salvated you. And it’s Oskar with a K, the German one, not the baloney one with a C.”

Oskar walked along in way-too-big dungarees flopping over his sneakers, which was the style, and a way-too-small sweatshirt, which was not. Fine black hair kept draping down over one eye, and he kept brushing it back.

“Okay, Oskar, where are we walking to?”

“Our new assignment.”

“How do we have a new assignment already?”

“End of the line. Last-Chance Saloon. Bottom rung. The dregs. Underside of the rock. The Slot of Last Resort. Home.”

“How do you know already?”

“I’m a veteran. Second-year freshman. They figure as long as I am repeating the year, they might as well have me repeat the stupid damn camp too. Take another shot at reforming me, you see. Hah!”

He walked like a German Oskar. Fast, direct, sure of where he was going. I struggled to keep up.

“Fat chance they had at that,” he said proudly. “Same script as last year. Football, baseball, track, hockey, religion, then splash, hit bottom. I couldn’t wait.”

“But that’s you. Maybe they’ll have another plan for me. I should go back to Thor, just to check. They might not let me in.”

“Hah!” he said again. Oskar seemed fond of getting to the point. He took a long look at me, up and down, as he kept marching. “
First
,” he barked, holding up one finger, “they have to take you here. Nobody gets turned away.
Second
”—he held up the second finger now, making a rather aggressive peace sign—“you belong. You’ll love it”

Suddenly, we were there. “Here?” I asked, a great stretch of a grin opening on my face. He nodded and winked. We took the stairs two at a time. Well, he did. I took them two, then one, then two, then one.