Boarding School (43 page)

“Aw, Clint! You keep getting better at this son,” my headmaster gasped.

I made no attempt to respond other than to increase the pace of my head movements slightly. And then Mr. Stuart’s legs straightened and I found myself being hugged by his thighs. Despite a feeling of claustrophobia which was beginning to grow in me, I continued my efforts to get my headmaster off.

RING! RING! Suddenly the phone on his desk went off.

I didn’t allow myself to be distracted by the noise. I just continued to do what I had been brought to the man’s office to do.

“Hello?” Mr. Stuart answered the phone. He tried to make himself sound businesslike, but I could tell that my work by now was having a major effect on his emotions.

“Yes, sir!”

He then sat up and put his hand on the top of my head for a moment to indicate that he wanted me to stop going down on him. So I stopped my head movements, but maintained my hold on him with my lips. At this moment, I still didn’t understand how serious this phone call was.

“Yes, I can talk right now,” my headmaster continued. “No, his cast isn’t due to come off for something like two more weeks, I believe.”

I realized then that Mr. Stuart must be talking with Fatso about me. I hadn’t seen either Fatso or Sweetie since my return from Christmas break, so I decided to listen more closely to see why he was inquiring about me.

“No, I’m sorry,” my headmaster then patted me twice on the top of my head which I interpreted as his desire for me to disengage. So I let go of the man’s member and sat back in my spot beneath his desk. “I’m afraid I’m not going to send him over there while he’s healing, and I’m not sending the other one in by himself. We’ve already been all over this issue before. You and I agreed years ago that I don’t send my boys out on jobs alone. That business in Worcester might have ended up very differently if I hadn’t sent them in as a pair. I still have to return these boys to their parents intact, you know.”

Apparently Fatso was putting a lot of pressure on my headmaster and I thought as the conversation progressed that I could detect a slight quiver in his voice every so often, but I was surprised at how forceful Mr. Stuart was sounding as he held firm with his Boston benefactor. In the past, whenever I had seem these men together, my headmaster always appeared to me to be afraid to say anything that might be construed as counter to whatever Fatso’s wishes happened to be. But on this occasion, the head of our faculty wasn’t backing down, and I was grateful that he was finally showing evidence of having a spine, particularly since it was to my benefit that he was. And as I sat there under his desk and listened, I found myself wondering whether or not this man really did care about the welfare of his students after all. And perhaps he even felt a bit guilty for having been the one who had sent Matt and me into that violent bunch of misfits up in Worcester. In any case, I was relieved that he was standing up for us now. I really didn’t feel ready just yet to get back out there, anyway. Then, as an obvious reaction to something that Fatso had just said to him, I watched as Mr. Stuart push himself back in his chair a bit and sat up even straighter.

“Are you threatening me?” Mr. Stuart’s voice got a bit louder at this point also. “Listen, it’s not my fault you overbought from your friends in South America. I’ve already got all of my other boys out every day for you. Why don’t you just siphon the money you need from one of your legitimate operations so you can pay them on time?”

While my headmaster listened on his phone again, I watched as he shoved his penis back into his pants and then zipped up.

“Well, I’m sorry you’re having so much trouble these days, but the conditions under which we provide you with boys for the inn haven’t changed, and I ‘m not risking their health or their safety any further than our agreement with you requires.” Another brief pause. “Well… yes I suppose you could say that this is my final word on the matter.” Then I could tell that something happened.

“Hmm! He hung up.” Mr. Stuart then placed the receiver back down on his phone and pushed his chair way back so he could stand up. “Ok, Clint, you can come out of there. I’m not in the mood anymore to finish.”

“Was that Fatso?” I asked as I climbed out from under his desk and stood up again.

“Ah, yes it was.” My headmaster then glanced away to avoid looking at me directly.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked with concern.

“Nothing you need to worry about, son. You just run along now and don’t worry about anything. Ok?”

“Ok,” I answered. I then walked to the door in his office which led to the hallway and opened it. “Do you want me to leave your door open now, sir?”

“What?” Already Mr. Stuart’s mind was somewhere else. “Oh, yes. That’s fine. Go ahead and leave it open and I’ll see you later on, Clint.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. And then I left his office, grabbed my winter coat and headed for the front door of Ulster Hall so I could go outside and make my way back over to my own dormitory. I figured that Matt needed to hear about what I had just been through.

* * *

A few days later, when the weekend arrived, it was time for another of the Academy’s extended weekends. I never really understood why it was that we even had extended weekends, but on three different occasions throughout the school year nearly all of the students and the teachers went home after lunch on Friday and then did not return until dinner time on the following Monday evening.

Scattered in the two neighborhoods which lay just beyond the front gate were four houses which the Academy rented for the teachers who had their own families. Usually one of these poor souls would be made the AOD for the entire weekend. On this particular weekend, Mr. Kelley was assigned this job. Mr. Kelly was a nice man who rarely smiled. He and his wife and his three small children had come to America from Liverpool, England, for a better life and had wound up instead at the Academy. His children were bright and adorable and had become such a visible part of our lives at the Academy, they eventually wound up with their own individual photos in our year book. Mrs. Kelley was always trying to make us feel as if we had a home and were cared for at the Academy. Of course all of us knew better, but we appreciated her efforts just the same.

To make it easier for the AOD to keep an eye on the students who stayed behind because they couldn’t go home, all of us who lived in the outer dorms were made to move into rooms in Ulster Hall which were vacated for the weekend by other students. Since Matt and I had still not resumed our weekend excursions, we moved into another kid’s room which was located at the south end of the building and looked out onto the circle below. For the entire weekend we would not be permitted back into our own dormitory, so once we had moved into Ulster Hall, we prepared ourselves for another weekend of excruciating boredom.

At dinner that first night, the fifteen or so of us in the student body who were left behind were given box lunches for our meal. In fact, for the entire weekend box lunches were all we got to eat because Thomas Jefferson was one of the staff members who had taken advantage of the Academy’s excuse to goof off for four days. And at this particular meal, I recall a discussion about how the local fire marshal had recently visited our not so fair campus and had proclaimed that if Ulster Hall were ever to catch on fire, the entire structure would be engulfed within thirteen minutes. At the time Matt and I simply filed this news away as another bit of depressing trivia about the place we called home. And we went to bed that night—in that building—quite oblivious to the events which were about to change our dreary existence that weekend into one of sheer terror.

The next morning we were awakened abruptly by the sounds of some of the kids running through the upstairs hallway, banging on our door and others yelling “FIRE”! At first we remembered the discussion of the night before and decided that we were the victims of a boarding school prank, perpetrated by some bored striplings who had nothing better to do with their time. Besides, Matt and I were among the youngest students there and bigger kids were always trying to put one over on us. But then Matt leaned over in his bunk and pulled back the blind so he could look out the window.

“Hey, I can’t see anything out there but smoke,” he announced with alarm.

“What?” I then hurled the covers off of me and dashed over to the window so I could see for myself. “Jeeze! You’re right. I can’t see anything out there but smoke, either!”

Immediately, Matt and I threw on whatever clothes we could find, and then we rushed out into the hall and made our way down one of the sets of stairs and outside into the circle in front of Ulster Hall. When we were clear of the building, we discovered that part of the reason why we hadn’t been able to see out our window upstairs was because of the dense fog which had rolled in off the lake during the night with the heaviest drizzle I had ever been in. Just the same, there was indeed smoke all around us because there really was a fire. However, a quick inspection of the structure before us revealed that it wasn’t Ulster Hall that was burning. So as the fifteen of us began to scan the other buildings on the campus, we were all shocked when we saw flames to the south of us shooting out from the roof of the headmaster’s house, and there was no sign of Mr. Stuart anywhere.

As our little band of students huddled together in the early morning cold, talk began to go around about the need for one of us at least to call the fire department. But since the phones in Ulster Hall were all locked up, and there was no one among us who had keys to the offices, the fire department had not yet been summoned. So as the others continued to stare at our headmaster’s house while it burned and debate the issue, I took off running across the upper campus toward the AOD’s house.

Once I was in the trees behind the gym, I picked up a faint trail which led me through the forest and eventually into the back yard of the Kelleys’ house. When I reached the house, I banged on the back door and continued to do so for a short while until their middle child—a boy of about six—opened the door, recognized me and let me into their kitchen. I didn’t realize it at the time, but apparently I had become drenched by the heavy drizzle because the boy told me later that I was dripping wet when I stepped inside. And while the family was in the midst of having their breakfast, I told Mr. Kelley about the headmaster’s house being on fire. After a moment of disbelief, the man picked up the receiver on his phone and called in the emergency to the local fire department. He then grabbed his coat and ran with me back to the scene.

It was terrifying to stand there and watch the flames as they rose from the section of the upstairs where Mr. Stuart kept his bedroom. And I don’t know if anyone tried to break into his house to help the poor man, but in just a short time the fire department arrived and went to work immediately to douse the flames. Shortly after that Mr. Stuart emerged from his burning house and seemed to be all right. Though a bit shaken from the experience, he explained that he had been downstairs in his kitchen when the fire had started in his bedroom, and he theorized that when he had fallen asleep a few hours earlier, he had neglected to put out his cigarette. He believed that it had been that cigarette which had fallen onto his mattress while he slept, which had eventually caused the fire to occur.

Before long, the firemen had succeeded in putting out the flames. They had saved the house, but the whole of the insides were a blackened smelly mess and Mr. Stuart ended up having to spend the next two months living somewhere else while the house was rebuilt. For as long as I knew the man after that day, our headmaster insisted that the entire affair had been nothing more than an accident with a cigarette. But the following Tuesday, after the rest of the school was back from their extended weekend away, and even though my arm was still in a cast, Matt and I were driven to the Friendly Inn and made to resume our daily duties as boy prostitutes.

* * *

For the rest of that winter and into the spring, we continued to be rented out every weekend to customers who were willing to pay the exorbitant fees that Fatso was charging for an overnight of sexual depravity with two young boys. One of the more memorable of these occasions during these months started for us when Joe stopped by the campus late one Friday afternoon to pick us up.

“Where are we going this time, Joe?” Matt asked as he climbed into Joe’s car, after I had gotten in, and then closed the passenger door.

“We’re headed for Providence this time, boys.” Joe would answer our questions usually, but he rarely offered us anything more.

“Is it a man or a woman?” I asked. This was a legitimate question because, as it was at the motel, some of our weekend clients were women.

“It’s a man.” Joe turned over the engine and then handed Matt a slip of paper. “Here’s your safe number for tonight. If you need to use it, I’ll be the one who’ll be staying close by.” Then the large man began to drive us off of the Academy grounds.

“Thanks,” Matt said as he stuffed the paper into one of the pockets in his pants.

“Hey, you two are supposed to memorize that,” Joe barked.

“Oh yeah,” Matt replied. And so he pulled the paper out of his pocket again, looked at it for a moment and then handed it to me. Then he looked at Joe again. “Is the man tonight management or labor?” It was time for us to continue with our little interrogation so we could learn what we could about the things that were in store for us on this night.

“Labor,” Joe grumbled.

“Really?” I responded. “People who are labor usually don’t make enough money to be able to afford us do they?” I really had no idea what I was talking about. I was just trying to get whatever information I could from our driver.

“Well this one has paid. I guess maybe he’s been saving up for a while.” Instead of taking a right turn when we reached the highway—which would have taken us into town—Joe turned his car to the left which was indeed the correct way to go toward Providence.

“Is he someone we’ve serviced already at the motel?” Matt was good at knowing when the time was best for him to take over the task of asking our questions.