The Whipping Club (29 page)

             
“You’ll be in Adrian’s dormo now. It’ll be okay,” Brother Mack whispered to Peter and then left.

             
Adrian and Peter found themselves walking toward the chapel after classes that afternoon, no interest in watching the annual hurling game—the Brothers against the monitors and outside teachers. The rest of campus was deserted. No monitor was seen for what felt like hours.

             
“Any free moment away from the monitors makes ya giddy,” Peter said. “I’ve something to show you,” he added. Strands of his hair, the color of corn, stuck straight up like alfalfa. “Brother Mack took me behind the altar to the sacristy. My eyes almost fell out.”

             
Peter brought Adrian to the large white closets, in which hung the embroidered robes worn by the Brothers, all the vestments, extra sets of big red and white candles, boxes of incense. The small back room exuded mysterious smells. Unlike Brother Ryder, who somehow fell through the cracks, Adrian believed Brother Mack indeed rose above his personal frustrations and had empathy for the boys, especially those with parents, funny enough, who knew what they were missing.

             
Adrian opened a tall cabinet by the side door and saw the storage spot for the host, all those circular piles of toasted bread in rectangular white boxes, and he felt his ravenousness wash over him. He was starving; hunger pains were always his downfall.

             
“I could eat a child’s arse through the rungs of a cot, Peter.”

             
“You can’t be thinking what–”

             
“Just one or two. What would be the harm to have more of Jesus inside us?” He looked around the solemn room, hearing shouts from the playing field.

             
“If we did it quickly? Make up your mind, will you,” Adrian said. “Before we’re bloody caught. I swear, Peter, you’re such a wanker sometimes.”

             
“Feck off. I wouldn’t bother me arse about it.”

             
“Look at this, Peter.”

             
Adrian took one of the boxes off the shelf. It had been days since he’d had a piece of bread. He wondered when he’d be allowed tea with a bit of pandy. A gray moldy mush of mashed potatoes would be better than the grass he’d considered eating yesterday. Rice tapioca would taste delicious. He grabbed a bunch of the crackers and quickly gave Peter a handful. He reached for another batch before he fumbled the box closed and ran outside toward the woodlands, Peter right behind him, their pants pockets filled. And there in the woods, underneath a beech tree, they crunched the dry crackers until all were gone, leaving not a crumb, they thought.

             
“That wasn’t so bad,” Adrian said, kicking an acorn across to Peter.

Peter sat quietly.

             
“At least our stomachs are full,” he added, noticing red robins feeding on germinating seeds, as if they expected a famine.

             
Peter tugged at the grass.

             
“For the love of Mike, would you say something? You look like a boiled shite.”

             
“Have you heard from anyone?”

             
“Not a word. Although Ryder delighted in discussing the eggs Nurse sent me, rubbing his big belly.”

             
“Sorry about that.”

             
“You?” Adrian asked.

             
Peter shook his head. “My ma’s not feeling well. She won’t be visiting this year, she said.”

             
“You’ll sit with my family at the Easter picnic, then. Wouldn’t we murder for an orange. They’ll bring plenty.”

             
“We’d better get back,” Peter said. While Peter had a sickly mother, and only make-believe stories about other relatives, somehow this seemed better than the rejection that accompanied Adrian’s separation from his real family. Even Brother Mack had explained that he, too, knew the pain of loneliness. So the make-believe stories gave Peter a sense of hope in a make-believe future.

             
“Yeah, and when we get to the fields, walk away from me, will you?” Adrian kept his voice low. “Monitor Two’s been spreading talk that we’re faggots, and you know Brother Ryder would beat us black and blue if–”

             
“Ryder is after me, Adrian.”

             
“You’re not alone. He’s after everybody. The smell on him, he’d drink out of a whore’s boot.”

             
Peter wiped sweat from his fair eyebrows, the faint hairs on his cheeks bleached white, his pale, fine-boned face blanched and moist as the inside of a fresh potato.

             
“He told me, ‘You ought to be very good to me.’ He said that to me.” Peter puffed his chest and turned down his face to give the impression the words were coming from an older, gruffer man.

             
“The day Molloy went clattering?”

             
Ryder had held the boy Molloy by the collar, up to the front of the class. The room hushed. Molloy began to weep and moan and beg for relief as the leather strap came hard against his buttocks.

             
“I saw Molloy’s skin ripping off!”

             
“Did you have to faint, Peter? For feck’s sake, I tried to help you, but Ryder threw me back in my chair. Told me I don’t need Catechism. ‘I’ve got a job for you to do when I teach this class,’ he says. ‘Be in the chapel mopping floors, Cracker Jack.’ The bastard. I heard him dismiss the rest so he could attend to you, sleeping on the floor.”

             
“Yeah, well he took me to the showers.”

             
A darkness inched over Adrian. “But it wasn’t Saturday.”

             
“What choice did I have? How would I have been able to make a run for it?” Peter confided that he had trailed behind Ryder into the last stall of the concrete shower room. Brother Ryder picked up Peter’s shirt to examine his soft, bruised back, sharing with him that his father had knocked him in the head, much worse than this, with a shoe on several occasions. Once, with a good-sized rock. “Told me I don’t have much in the way of parents, but parents hit, too, you know. I finished lathering up. The water changed from cold to freezing.”

             
Adrian picked at the grass, lowered his eyes.

             
“Ryder reached for the towel and rubbed me down.” Peter hesitated. “I tried to fight him, backed away. Ryder leaned all his weight on me, pushed me onto the cement.”

             
“Shh,” Adrian looked around.

             
“Dropped the towel, grabbed me, put a hand over my mouth. Keep still, just keep still.” Peter wiped his nose, covered his face. “I faced the wall, repeating to myself the nine ways of being accessory to another’s sin. By counsel, by command, by consent, by provocation, by praise or flattery, by concealment, by partaking, by silence, by defense of the ill done.”

             
“Why didn’t you scream?”

             
He
had
screamed, but no one came. The cold water lashed out in fury. He lay on the cement floor, listening to Brother Ryder buckle his belt and march away. Peter dragged himself to his feet, stood under the numbing water. As he dressed, he listened to the distant bells coming from the chapel, the quickened steps of bodies bracing themselves against the bitterness, heavy rain pounding against the old gutters.

             
“One day, I’m gonna kill that
bastard
,” Adrian said.

             
Peter bit his lip, drawing blood. Adrian reached over to wipe it.

             
“Don’t tell anyone.”

             
Adrian offered Peter his hand now and pulled him to his feet. “You won’t be here much longer, think of that.” Release from Surtane was assured on a boy’s sixteenth birthday. Adrian didn’t know Peter’s exact birthday nor would he embarrass him by asking, in case he didn’t know himself.

             
“Come on.”

             
They walked silently from the dirt road, and as they neared the chapel, Brother Ryder bellowed to them. Adrian saw the box of hosts in the man’s hand. “Come here, you dirty queers.”

             
They walked to him slowly, their heads down, no time for Adrian to make up a story about where they’d been.

             
“You left a trail of crumbs behind,” he said, grabbing Adrian and Peter by their necks and dragging them into the sacristy. The cabinet door was slightly open; a few cracked hosts were on the floor.

“I’m putting in for a full stay for you, Ellis. You’ll not be leaving until I get through with ya.”

             
Adrian wet himself and felt ashamed, afraid, certain he would spend eternity in damnation.

             
“You like studying your times table, do you, Cracker Jack?” Brother Ryder asked Adrian.

             
“I do, sir. I like studying forests, too.” Adrian had noticed the

favoritism given to the strongest boys that worked past the open field, cutting logs in the nearby woods, felling old chestnut trees.

             
“Do you?” Brother Ryder seemed interested.

             
“I think I’m strong enough to work the timber trade, build my arms and legs for my future career.”

             
“Have you big plans, Cracker Jack?” Adrian noticed the mockery but kept on.

             
“Yes, sir. A firefighter, sir.”

             
“Well, we’ll teach you a bit of humility, won’t we lads?” he shouted toward the ended hurling game. A shame it was that many of the Christian Brothers were already turning inside, unaware of the scene Ryder was drawing. Some of them would surely have put a stop to his taunts, but the game was over. Adrian saw the Brothers walking together toward the road.

             
“You’ll not learn to be bigger than your boots in here. You’ll not be getting an instrument. You’ll work in the kitchen with Brother Tyrone, and let the Peter Pansy work felling the trees with yours truly. Come with me.”

             
Amidst cheers, they were marched to the playing field, and with the generous help of monitors, were tied to the main post. Each monitor was allowed to spit on them, their slobber making Peter cry.

             
“I don’t think these two are fit to play in our band. As sure as there’s a hole in your arse, tell the boys here what you did, Peter Pansy.” Brother Ryder took off his thick leather belt, metal bits sewn into the leather. “Remove their shoes.”

             
Peter struggled, but Monitor O’Neill pulled off his boots and socks.

             
“Lift ’em.”

             
“Please, sir. I’m sorry. Please, don’t do–”

             
“He’s a bit of a molly, isn’t he? I knew it the minute I laid eyes on him.” The monitor slapped him in the face.

             
“Keep ’em up,” Brother Ryder shouted. Two monitors grabbed his legs and held them straight out.

             
“Tell us, you wanker. What did you do? We’re waiting,” Brother Ryder said.

             
“I stole the host from the chapel. I’m sorry.”

             
Brother Ryder slashed his belt across the bottom of Peter’s feet. Peter went crazy from pain.

             
“Don’t cry, Peter,” Adrian urged.

             
“His name’s not
Peter
,” Brother Ryder said, punching Peter hard in the stomach. “He’s to be called
Biscuits
from now on.”

             
“Babby Biscuits!” a monitor roared. Laughter and spittle swirled as Peter was kicked by the monitors.

             
“He’s a little fart of a fella.”

             
“A sparrow fart, he is. Cute as the dickens, isn’t he?”

             
“Leave him alone, you fucking shites!” Adrian screamed.

             
“You want some of what he’s getting, you tough Cracker?”

             
Brother Ryder nodded to two monitors, who rushed over to pull off Adrian’s boots.

             
“Go ahead, you bastards!”

             
“It’s your own fault, Crackers.”

             
Adrian flailed, kicking anyone he could. It was all over now; he didn’t care what happened. He felt punch after punch in the stomach until they got hold of his legs and held him up for Brother Ryder.