The Long Run (13 page)

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.

“I went to the bathroom, Brother.”

“And then what?” McMurtry removes his glasses, bites the tip of an arm and stares at Ryan. Specks of dust float behind him near the sunlit window.

“I can't remember, Brother.” For a moment the classroom is silent. Bug wipes sweat from the back of his neck. McMurtry stares blankly at the floor. A faint smile ripples across McCann's face.

“
You can't remember?
” The force of his words seems to push us back in our desks. “You weren't trying to run away again, were you?”

“No, Brother. I was sleepy, Brother. I fell asleep.” Ryan scratches the veins on his skinny neck.

“You fell asleep?”

“Yes, Brother.” A loud mocking hiss from the radiator.

“On the toilet?”

“Yes, Brother. On the toilet, Brother. I was drying. Like Brother Walsh told us to do.”

A pause. McMurtry's face muscles stiffen. He asks Ryan if he fell asleep
before
he used the toilet or after.

“I can't remember, Brother. Before, I think. No, before and after. I used the toilet again after I woke up.

“And then what?” A grin, like a shadow, creeps across his face.

“Then I wiped myself, Brother, and went back to bed.”

“Very well, Mr. Ryan. We shall continue this conversation later.” He strokes his hair, which is white as the driven snow, as his wolf eyes scan the class. “Brother McCann and I shall be holding a series of, shall we say, interviews. With a number of, shall we say, suspects. You will be the first on the list, Mr. Ryan. It appears someone, not necessarily Mr. Ryan, not necessarily one of our suspects, but someone, some boy or two or, God knows, more . . .
someone
is responsible for stealing wine from the sacristy. It is our intent to find the culprit, or culprits. These thieves. These wine smugglers. These smugglers of holy wine. And punish them. Even if we have to strap the entire orphanage.”

I can feel the back of my shirt dampen against my chair as McMurtry leaves the room. McCann stares at us, stone-faced, until the buzzer sounds.

After class Blackie calls an emergency meeting with the Klub executive and Ryan, out by the incinerator.

“Interviews, my ass,” Oberstein says. “Interrogation is what the Nazis called it.”

“What are Nasties?” Bug says.

“Stick to your guns, Ryan,” I say. “They'll try to trip you up. Don't say anything new, for God's sake. Stick to your guns. Remember what happened to the guy on
Perry Mason
.”

Blackie and Oberstein grill Ryan over and over until they're certain he won't screw up.

“Did you say anything else to Spook?” I ask.

“Don't think so. Not that I remember,” Ryan says.

“They ask you who you knock around with, just say everyone. Say, just about everyone,” Blackie says. “And remember. Interrogation's like a card game. Silence is your trump card. Understand? Silence.”

“I understand,” Ryan says.

“No information, 'less they ask,” Blackie repeats.

When we finish the cross-examination, as Oberstein calls it, Ryan gets up and walks off, scratching his greasy black hair. He is dazed and worried. We follow him, silently. We are all dazed and worried. This is the sort of thing that makes a bout of spells get worse. Bug and Anstey are the only ones who never get the spells. You avoid Bug like the plague if you have them because he really gives you a hard time. “Sissy baby, got the spells. Nah-nah, nah-nah-nah.” He just loves teasing and mocking anyone who has the spells. He pays criers with comics and marbles to shout it through the halls: “Oberstein's got the spells again. Sissy baby's got the spells. Oberstein's got the spells again. Sissy baby. Sissy baby.” Once Bug teased me about not having a mother and father. “And you'll never ever have one in this world,” he said, “for the rest of your life.” The way he said it really hit me. I couldn't shake the spells for the longest time.

Last Sunday, after my sister, Clare, visited, they started up again. The minute she left, I could feel them coming on. The Great Panic, as Oberstein calls it. And I haven't been able to shake them. We're all so worried about the wine stealing, it makes it a hundred times worse.

I may have to talk to someone. Oberstein and some of the other boys say that talking to someone about the spells can give you a lift. I've never done that before, and I don't want to, but I don't think I have a choice. I'm considering talking to Blackie. He's the most sensible in many ways. He may say something that helps. Or maybe I'll talk to Ryan or Kavanagh. Or Oberstein. Oberstein is certainly the most intelligent. Any one of them would probably be a big help at this stage. No, I think I'll talk to Blackie. The others don't need to be reminded of the spells. Especially Oberstein. And Blackie only gets them once in a while, like the time he was watching the news on TV. A bunch of black students at a college in the States refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter after the waiter wouldn't serve them. They talked to them right there, live on the TV. The oldest said, “We ain't movin' for nobody. We stayin' till we treated same as white folk.” The news announcer said it would probably spark sit-ins and race riots. It certainly sparked the spells in Blackie. “I don't get it,” he said. “Not servin' someone a hot dog 'cause of the color of their skin.” He turned off the TV and started to cry. I tried to perk him up, but he wouldn't speak for the rest of the week. That's how Blackie deals with the spells. He just doesn't talk. Oberstein gets sick. Kelly stops eating. We all have our different ways.

I might even talk to Rags. His face turned so sad last week when Brother McMurtry told him the U.S. Supreme Court was cutting out praying in schools. I was sure he was getting the spells. But I don't think the brothers get them.

Sometimes, the spells last a long, long time. I had them two years ago off and on all winter. It was a really cold winter, freezing all the time, and we were buried in snow, which made it worse. So cold nobody even wanted to go outdoors after school. And at night the dormitory was freezing. You had to slide under your blanket and breathe hot air to get warm. Spells are always worse at night. When I get into bed, I feel so empty, like I'm living outside my body, on the empty bunk above mine, looking down at myself.

To fight the empty feelings, and so I can get some sleep, I often close my eyes and pretend Clare and I are with Mom and Dad in Dad's big old blue bus, driving down to Torbay or out to Manuels for a picnic. Mom singing her favorite songs—“Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary's” and “Time Would Tell”—the ones Clare told me she loved singing and sang to her all the time. And Clare and Dad and me joining in. Mom had such a beautiful voice and sang to us all the time, Clare says. Even now when I hear a woman singing a beautiful song I think of Mom. I must have got her gift because the brothers always get me to sing the Gloria and the Sanctus at Mass. I'm not as good as Oberstein but I can carry a note in a basket, as Brother Walsh says.

We'd be bouncing along in the big old bus, and I'd be up in the driver's seat in Dad's lap at the steering wheel, pretending I was the driver the way he'd let me sometimes. In my mind, we'd race along, and Dad would be the tour guide commenting on just about everything, the way Rags does when he takes us on an outing. “Oh, there's Murphy's goats on the left. Best goat's milk around the bay. You can spot O'Reilly's horses further on in the meadow. Ladies and gentlemen, if you look to your right, you'll see the property of Mr. Willam Nash, who died last year trying to rescue four fishermen lost on the high seas. The story of Newfoundland, ladies and gentlemen, the characters change, but the ocean and the story always remain the same.” As Rags says, it's the story “of doors held ajar in storms.” And all at once Dad's face would turn sad, and his mouth would take on an odd shape, and tears would appear in his sad gray eyes.

I can picture everything so vividly it is just like watching a movie. Every once in a while I'd clear my mind of everything except the image of the four of us at a picnic in Manuels, out in the canyon, where the brothers take us to swim during the summer. And I feel the warm summer sun on my face and the hardness of the rocks, the big boulders where we'd sit with our picnic basket, eating sandwiches and watching the river. And I pray to them to help me get over the spells. I don't know if they could or not, but I pray hard to them and to Mother Mary that they hear me and help me. Sometimes it feel like they answer. For a little while. Once, it got so bad I was gonna run away to St. Martha's, to be with Clare, but Blackie and Oberstein stopped me.

Every now and then, I escape the spells by daydreaming about running away, being the only boy from Mount Kildare to ever perform Brother McMurtry's impossible trick. In my mind, I would take up his challenge. I would hide out somewhere. In the shed at the Mount Carmel graveyard for a few days. It would be cold at night, but I would have blankets and an extra sweater and provisions stashed away and a friend, someone smart like Oberstein, to bring me reports every so often about where they were looking for me and when it was safe to change my hideout. When the time was right, I'd steal some money and head for the ferry terminal at Argentia or Port aux Basques and sneak on the big boat that sails to Nova Scotia. Over there I'd get a job in a garage, maybe, or a restaurant, washing dishes or waiting on tables. I'd do that for a year or so till I could save enough money to get to the United States. New York, maybe, or Washington, where Oberstein says there's a
HELP WANTED
sign in every window. I ask him if that's because it's where the president lives in the big white house, and he says no, it's because they have a special economy with special budgets that the other states don't have. It's really amazing the stuff Oberstein knows.