The Long Run (28 page)

“He sings in his sleep,” O'Connor says. He calls O'Connor the last of Ireland's high kings. He brought a big picture book to class once on Irish castles. One of the pictures was the castle of the high kings of Connacht, whose family name is O'Connor.

“Your family's castle has been in ruins since Cromwell destroyed it, lad,” Madman said to O'Connor, throwing the open book on his desk. “Hold it up for all the class to see, now. Show off your castle, King O'Connor.”

O'Connor held up the open book and showed it around. It was a beautiful Victorian-Italian mansion. It was made of cement and stone and looked an awful lot like Mount Kildare.

“And why wouldn't it, Dumbos?” Bug snarled after class. “The guys who built this place were the Christian Brothers of Ireland, not Singapore.”

With Christmas coming, it's hard to concentrate, and Madman has given our class a tough assignment. He wants us all to know more about our roots. We have to find out everything we can about where we came from and write an essay about the place. But before he gives us the final details, he lectures us on sliding down Tracey's Hill. We love sliding there every winter. Going down lasts forever, and it has a thousand bumps. We ski down on barrel staves or slide on homemade toboggans or hubcaps or by the seat of our pants. It's so exciting when it's icy. Mr. Tracey, the owner, always chases us off the hill, but we always return. He has come to see Brother McMurtry, who has laid down the law. Madman is playing policeman, forbidding us to use the hill ever again. The sun streams through the windows as he speaks.

“It's a very dangerous thing, to be sliding on that hill, very, very dangerous, indeed. Do ye hear me, now?” His Irish brogue is hard and serious and seems more Irish than ever. He is trying to frighten us. “A very, very dangerous thing for a young lad. Several years ago, a lad—not a Mount Kildare lad, a lad from town—a young lad your age was severely injured when he hit a bump, flew through the air and landed on a broken stick that was lodged in the snow. The lad landed . . . well . . . on his backside
. . .
” (“Arse,” Ryan mouths to the boys in the opposite row.) “. . .and the stick . . . the stick came right out his front. It was a terrible, terrible thing, a very dreadful injury, very dreadful. Do ye hear, now? He was rushed to the General Hospital in an ambulance. Do ye hear me, now?”

“Do you mean his stomach, Bruh?” Kavanagh asks.

“No, I do not mean his stomach,” Madman says. “And the word is Brother, not Bruh, Mr. Kavanagh.”

“His leg, Brother?” Littlejohn asks.

“No, not his leg, you fool.” Outside the classroom window, the orange-red sun lingers for a moment in the sagging icy branches.

“Then where?” Bug Bradbury squeaks.

“There are other organs, boys, other parts of the anatomy.” Madman looks slyly at his fly.

We all look at each other. Bug's jaw drops to his knees. Murphy looks at his crotch and cringes.

“Did he die, Bruh?” Kavanagh asks.

“No, he did not die, Mr. Kavanagh. But his sliding days were over, I can tell ye that. There were no more sliding days for that young lad, I can tell ye that, now. That young lad's sliding days were over—for good.”

“So were his baby-making days,” Ryan whispers.

Bug slips me a note: Helluva way to snap the lizard.

“Now for the new geography assignment,” Madman says. “Remember boys, we live on a rock, seven hundred miles out in the cold Atlantic. Where do we live, now, Mr. Kavanagh?

“On a rock, Brother, seven hundred miles out in the cold Atlantic.”

Madman says the new assignment will teach us a lot about Newfoundland geography and history. Poetry memorization is bad, but nothing's as dreadful as Madman Malone's geography tests. We sit in a circle around the room and he calls a random place name and a random boy's name. “Mr. Murphy, the Avalon. We are sailing north, due north from Harbour Main.” Poor Murphy has to name every nook and cranny along the Baccalieu Trail until he's told to stop because of a mistake or because Madman wants another boy to continue.

Murphy answers, “Harbour Main, Bacon Cove, Collier's Point, South Point, Brigus, Cupid's, Bareneed, Port-de-Grave, Ship Cove, Hibb's Hole, Mercer's Cove, Bishop's Cove, Spoon Cove, Upper Island Cove, Southside, Bryant's Cove, Harbour Grace—”

Madman interrupts, shouting, “Hands up, Mr. Murphy. You missed Feather Point. Feather Point, sir, is after Bryant's Cove, before Harbour Grace. Hands up, Mr. Murphy.”

He checks with the class recorder, Adams, to see if Murphy has any credits. Credits are points you get from Madman for doing a cleanup in the classroom, or for doing well on a test, or for anything, really, that Madman decides. Once, he gave Pittman two whacks, thinking he'd misspelled the name Ferryland, but Oberstein pointed out that Ferryland didn't have a hyphen, so Madman gave Pittman a credit. Needless to say, Adams is a very popular guy. Everyone sucks up to Adams because he can get away with adding a point to your name every once in a while. Madman gives Murphy a whack for each word missed. Had he missed Upper Island Cove, he would've gotten three whacks.

After the strapping, Murphy squeezes his big hands underneath his armpits and continues: “Bristol's Hope, Carbonear, Freshwater, Flatrock, Blow-Me-Down, Salmon Cove
. . .
” until he reaches the tip of the trail, Grates Cove, and Madman calls on another boy. Another time, Murphy might be told to continue down the trail on the Trinity Bay side, listing another twenty or so names. Or Madman might stop Murphy in his tracks and call another boy's name and say, “Let's do the Cape Shore or the Burin Peninsula.”

We all hate geography class. Only Oberstein seems able to avoid the Rocket, Madman's two-foot strap, which he keeps rolled up in his pocket under his soutane when it's not in use.

At the library, I've been studying my grandfather's home, Swains Islands, a bunch of islands in Bonavista Bay, near Wesleyville. Most of the islands were settled years ago, but eventually everyone left to go to Wesleyville. Tiller's Island, where my Dad's father, Jonathan Carmichael, was from, was the first place settled. It was one of the best spots to get to the fishing grounds. Clare told me Dad's father's father sailed a schooner. He used to catch seals. Anstey and Lionel were pretty happy to find out there's a sea captain in my family. But the truth is, if you go back far enough, there's one in every Newfoundland family. That's our history—fishing and sealing.

Studying your heritage is all pretty interesting, I guess. I'm really enjoying finding out about the early settlers, especially the skippers who braved the cold Atlantic in the stormiest seas. We're supposed to find out all we can about the place we're from, if there is a fish plant there or nearby, if there's a church, if there are roads, if you can only get there by boat. All the information we can find in books or from maps or from writing our relatives. After we've gathered enough information, we're to organize it under headings: Place Name Origin, Geography, History, Biographies. Stories about people from there, maybe your aunts or uncles or cousins.

Oberstein is sullen.

“What's wrong?” I ask.

“I can't find any information about my father. Or his father.”

“That's okay.”

“No, it isn't. I need to know my ancestry. I don't think I'm a typical Jew.”

“You seem pretty Jewish to me,” I say. “Jeez, you even know how to talk Talmud.”

“But I don't look Jewish. Most Semites are dark. I look albino compared to most Jews. Look at my hair. I must of gotten my mother's genes. Her great-grandfather was Scandinavian. Either I got her genes, or my father's father was a convert.”

I tell him it doesn't matter. All that matters is if you feel Jewish in your heart. “If you feel Jewish, you
are
Jewish,” I tell him. That seems to cheer him up.

“The heart is half a prophet,” he says. “Thanks, Carmichael. You'd make a good Jew.”

Hynes is from Queen of Maids Cove on the Port au Port Peninsula. It's on the west coast of the island. He's beside himself because he can't find a shred of information on the place. It's not even on the map. There isn't a thing in the library on Queen of Maids Cove. And Hynes is a real norphan. He has nobody in the whole world to ask about his roots. Oberstein told him Queen of Maids Cove is like a lot of Newfoundland communities: the names change as people resettle. Brookes is helping Hynes make up stuff about the place in exchange for half his next month's canteen card. Under the heading Place Name Origin, Brookes told him to say the name came about as a result of two fishermen who got into a big fight during a game of cards, and one claimed the wind blew his Queen of Maids overboard and he could see it floating toward the cove. “If Madman asks you for your source,” Brookes says, “tell him your dead Uncle Ned told you about it when you were little. He'll believe you. He has no choice. He doesn't know if you had an Uncle Ned or an Aunt Bessie.”

Brookes is a lot braver since his shunning ended. By the time Hynes passes in his assignment, he'll believe everything he's written. Brookes looked up a bunch of names in the telephone directory and some information on the neighboring towns and is helping Hynes write a pretty convincing essay. “You'll have the best paper in the class,” Brookes says. “You'll be so proud of your mark, you'll swallow your Adam's apple. Just like Rags.”

“Only McMurtry was there,” Murphy says between classes, pushing back his hair with his big hand. He's really jittery. He was called to McMurtry's office during geography class.

“Not McCann?” Oberstein asks.

“No. Only McMurtry. Brother Walsh came into the room once, but it was just to tell McMurtry that supper was delayed 'cause the older boys weren't back from Signal Hill.” Murphy licks his index finger and dabs his parched lips.

“Only McMurtry. Strange.” Blackie goggles his eyes.

“What did he say?” I ask.

“It was weird. He went on and on about how good boys have it at the Mount, how we all have three good meals every day and a bed and books and teachers and a place to study and organized games and so many opportunities. He said millions of children around the world have nothing. Half the world goes to bed hungry, he said. But every boy in Mount Kildare is blessed. He gave me this weird look and asked me why anyone would want to steal. He said it's like stealing from yourself. He asked me if I had a baseball glove or a hockey stick. I said yes and he asked if I saw any sense in stealing my own hockey stick. I said no. He wanted to know why anyone would steal from the chapel. Stealing from God, he called it. God's house, of all places, he said. He was pretty upset. He looked pretty pale, paler than usual. He was walking around the room. He interviewed me in the TV room, and at times he walked from one end to the other. He was pacing the whole time. He wasn't angry though, just upset. Every now and then he would take off his glasses and nibble on an arm tip.”

“What did he say about the missing wine?” Oberstein says.

“He just kept asking me over and over why anyone would want to do it. Steal from the chapel. From himself. From God.”

“You
say
anything?” Blackie asks. “Screw up?”

“No, nothing. I'd say nothing, and he'd keep pacing and saying how he couldn't understand it, how he'd never be able to understand it. He stood still a couple of times and stared at me and said, ‘Would you please explain it to me, Mr. Murphy?' Finally he said, ‘Maybe someday someone will be able to explain why people do things like that, steal from themselves, steal from God.' Then he just shook his head and left. I was sitting all alone in the TV room for about ten minutes, waiting for him to come back. I thought he'd gone to get McCann to ask me more questions. After a while I figured he wasn't returning, so I came back to class.”

“It wasn't an interrogation,” Oberstein says. “Or an inquisition. It wasn't even an interview.”

“Was it a soliloquy, like in
Julius Caesar
?” Murphy asks.

“He'll call you again,” Blackie says.

“I don't think so,” Murphy says. “I got this feeling he doesn't want to talk to anyone about it anymore. It was like . . . like he's come to a dead end, just thinking about it.”

“He'll come to a dead end when he catches us, not before,” Blackie says.

“Maybe he's trying to trick us, set us up,” Ryan says.

“We'd better not let our guard down,” Oberstein says. “Ryan's right, it might all be a big act.”

“Maybe,” Murphy says, “but I don't think so. I think he came to a dead end.”

“Still, we'll keep our guard up,” Blackie says. “Like Floyd Patterson. In case Ryan's right.”

We don't have to worry about keeping our guard up for very long. During lunch they call Kavanagh to the TV room and question him for twenty minutes. When he returns, he tells us they offered him a reward, a puck and a hockey stick, if he finds out any information leading to the thieves. Blackie and Oberstein are starting to really worry.