The Chocolate War

by Robert Cormier

  “Then I don’t feel that I have to sell the chocolates.”

  A ripple of resentment across the classroom.

  “You think you’re better than we are?” Darcy shot out.

  “No.”

  “Then who do you think you are?” Phil Beauvais asked.

  “I’m Jerry Renault and I’m not going to sell the chocolates.”

  Damn it, Goober thought. Why didn’t he bend a little? Just a little.

  The bell rang. For a moment, the boys sat there, waiting, knowing that the issue hadn’t been settled, something ominous in the waiting. Then the moment broke and the boys began to push back their chairs, rising from the desks, shuffling as usual. No one looked at Jerry Renault. By the time Goober got to the door, Jerry was walking swiftly to his next class. A crowd of boys, Harold Darcy among them, stood sullenly in the corridor, watching Jerry’s progress down the hallway.

  Later that afternoon, The Goober wandered to the assembly hall, attracted by cheers and hoots. He stood in the rear of the hall, watching as Brian Cochran posted the latest returns. There were probably fifty or sixty guys in the place, unusual for that time of day. Every time Cochran wrote in new sales, the fellows burst forth in cheers, led by, of all people, big bruising Carter who probably hadn’t sold any chocolates at all but had others do his dirty work.

  Brian Cochran consulted a sheet of paper he held in his hand and then went to one of the three big boards. Beside the name Roland Goubert, he wrote down the number fifty.

  For a moment, it didn’t occur to The Goober who Roland Goubert was—he watched, fascinated, unbelieving. And then—hey, that’s me!

  “Goober sold his fifty boxes,” someone called.

  Cheers, applause and ear-splitting whistles.

  The Goober started to step forward in protest. He had only sold twenty-seven boxes, damn it. He had stopped at twenty-seven to show that he was supporting Jerry, even though nobody knew, not even Jerry. And now the whole thing evaporated and he found himself sinking back in the shadows, as if he could shrivel into invisibility. He didn’t want trouble. He’d had enough trouble, and he had held on. But he knew his days at Trinity would be numbered if he walked into that group of jubilant guys and told them to erase the fifty beside his name.

  Out in the corridor, The Goober’s breath came fast. But otherwise he felt nothing. He willed himself to feel nothing. He didn’t feel rotten. He didn’t feel like a traitor. He didn’t feel small and cowardly. And if he didn’t feel all these things, then why was he crying all the way to his locker?

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  “WHAT’S YOUR HURRY, KID?”

  It was a familiar voice—the voice of all the bullies in the world, Harvey Cranch who used to wait for Jerry outside the third grade at St. John’s, and Eddie Herman at summer camp who delighted in the small tortures he inflicted on the younger kids and the complete stranger who knocked him down at the circus one summer and tore the ticket from his hand. That was the voice he heard now: the voice of all the bullies and troublemakers and wise guys in the world. Mocking, goading, cajoling and looking for trouble. What’s your hurry, kid? The voice of the enemy.

  Jerry looked at him. The kid stood before him in defiant posture, feet planted firmly on the ground, legs spread slightly apart, hands flat against the sides of his legs as if he wore two-gun holsters and was ready to draw, or as if he was a karate expert with hands waiting to chop and slice. Jerry didn’t know a thing about karate, except in his wildest dreams when he demolished his foes without mercy.

  “I asked you a question,” the kid said.

  Jerry recognized him now—a wise guy named Janza. A freshman-baiter, somebody to stay away from.

  “I know you asked me a question,” Jerry said, sighing. He knew what was coming.

  “What question?”

  And there it was. The taunt, the beginning of the old cat-and-mouse game.

  “The question you asked me,” Jerry countered but knowing the futility of it. It didn’t matter what he said or how he said it. Janza was looking for an opening and he’d find it.

  “And what was it?”

  “You wanted to know what was my hurry.”

  Janza smiled, having won his point, gained his little victory. A smug superior smile spread across his face, a knowing smile, as if he knew all of Jerry’s secrets, a lot of dirty things about him.

  “Know what?” Janza asked.

  Jerry waited.

  “You look like a wise guy,” Janza said.

  Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?

  “What makes you think I’m a wise guy?” Jerry asked, trying to stall, hoping someone would come along. He remembered how Mr. Phaneuf had rescued him once when Harvey Cranch had cornered him near the old man’s barn. But there was nobody around now. The football practice had been miserable. He hadn’t completed a pass and the coach had finally dismissed him. This ain’t your day, Renault, take an early shower. Turning away from the coach, Jerry had seen the secret smirks, the quick smiles on the faces of the players and had realized the truth. They’d dropped his passes purposely, had refused to block. Now that Goober had quit the team, there was no one he could trust. More paranoia, he chided himself, trudging along the pathway that led from the football field to the gym. And had encountered Janza who should have been out there practicing but had been waiting for him.

  “Why do I think you’re a wise guy?” Janza asked now. “Because you put on a big act, kid. You try to get by with a sincerity act. But you’re not kidding me. You live in the closet.” Janza smiled, a knowing, this-is-just-between-us smile, intimate, creepy.

  “What do you mean—closet?”

  Janza laughed, delighted, and touched Jerry’s cheek with his hand, a brief light touch, as if they were old friends engaged in friendly conversation on an October afternoon, leaves whirling around them like giant confetti as the wind rose. Jerry figured he knew the meaning of Janza’s light tap—Janza was aching for action, contact, violence. And he was getting impatient. But he didn’t want to start the fight himself. He wanted to provoke Jerry into beginning—that’s the way bullies worked so they could be held blameless after the slaughter. He started it, they’d claim. Strangely enough, Jerry felt as though he could actually beat Janza in a fight. He could feel a gathering of outrage that promised strength and endurance. But he didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to return to grammar school violence, the cherished honor of the schoolyard that wasn’t honor at all, the necessity of proving yourself by bloody noses and black eyes and broken teeth. Mainly, he didn’t want to fight for the same reason he wasn’t selling the chocolates—he wanted to make his own decisions, do his own thing, like they said.

  “This is what I mean by closet,” Janza said, his hand flicking out again, touching Jerry’s cheek, but lingering this time for the fraction of a second in faint caress. “That you’re hiding in there.”

  “Hiding what? Hiding from who?”

  “From everybody. From yourself, even. Hiding that deep dark secret.”

  “What secret?” Confused now.

  “That you’re a fairy. A queer. Living in the closet, hiding away.”

  Vomit threatened Jerry’s throat, a nauseous geyser he could barely hold down.

  “Hey, you’re blushing,” Janza said. “The fairy’s blushing …”

  “Listen …” Jerry began but not knowing, really, how to begin or where. The worst thing in the world—to be called queer.

  “You listen,” Janza said, cool now, knowing he had struck a vulnerable spot. “You’re polluting Trinity. You won’t sell the chocolates like everybody else and now we find out you’re a fairy.” He shook his head in mock, exaggerated admiration. “You’re really something, know that? Trinity has tests and ways of weeding the homos out but you were smart enough to get by, weren’t you? You must be creaming all over—wow, four hundred ripe young bodies to rub against …”

  “I’m not a fairy,” Jerry cri
ed.

  “Kiss me,” Janza said, puckering his lips grotesquely.

  “You son of a bitch,” Jerry said.

  The words hung on the air, verbal flags of battle. And Janza smiled, a radiant smile of triumph. This is what he’d wanted all along, of course. This had been the reason for the encounter, the insults.

  “What did you call me?” Janza asked.

  “A son of a bitch,” Jerry said, measuring out the words, saying them deliberately, eager now for the fight.

  Janza threw back his head and laughed. The laughter surprised Jerry—he’d expected retaliation. Instead, Janza stood there utterly relaxed, hands on his hips, amused.

  And that was when Jerry saw them. Three or four of them emerging from bushes and shrubbery, running, crouched, keeping themselves low. They were small, pigmy-like, and they moved so swiftly toward him that he couldn’t get a good look at them, saw only a smear of smiling faces, smiling evilly. More coming now, five or six others, slipping into view from behind a cluster of pine trees, and before Jerry could gird himself for a fight or even raise his arms in defense, they were swarming all over him, hitting him high and low, tumbling him to the ground as if he was some kind of helpless Gulliver. A dozen fists pummeled his body, fingernails tore at his cheek and a finger clawed at his eye. They wanted to blind him. They wanted to kill him. Pain arrowed in his groin—somebody had kicked him there. The blows rained upon him without mercy, with no let-up, and he tried to curl up and make himself small, hiding his face but somebody was pounding his head furiously, stop, stop, another kick in his groin and he couldn’t hold down the vomit now, it was coming and he tried to open his mouth to let it spray forth. As he threw up, they let him go, someone yelled “Jesus” in disgust and they withdrew. He could hear their gasps, their running feet receding although somebody stayed behind to kick him again, this time in his lower back, the final sheet of pain that drew a black curtain over his eyes.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-TWO

  SWEET, SWEET IN THE DARK, SAFE. Dark and safe and quiet. He dared not move. He was afraid that his body would come loose, all his bones spilling out like a building collapsing, like a picket fence clattering apart. A small sound reached his ears and he realized it was himself, crooning softly, as if he were singing himself a lullaby. Suddenly, he missed his mother. Her absence formed tears on his cheeks. He hadn’t cried at all from the beating, had lain there on the ground for a few moments after the brief blackout, and then had dragged himself up and made it agonizingly to the locker room at school, walking as if on a tightrope and one misstep would send him hurtling into depths below: oblivion. He’d washed himself, cold water like liquid fingernails inflaming the scratches on his face. I won’t sell their chocolates whether they beat me up or not. And I’m not a fairy, not a queer. He had stolen away from the school, not wanting anyone to witness his painful passage down the street to the bus stop. He kept his collar up, like a criminal, like those men in newscasts being herded into court. Funny, somebody does violence to you but you’re the one who has to hide, as if you’re the criminal. He shuffled to the back of the bus, grateful that it wasn’t one of the crowded school buses but a maverick bus that appeared at odd hours. The bus was full of old people, old women with blue hair and big handbags and they pretended not to see him, sailing their eyes askew from him as he stalked to the rear of the bus, but their noses wrinkled as they caught the smell of vomit when he passed. Somehow, he’d made it home on the jolting bus, made it to this quiet room where he now sat, sun bleeding low in the sky and spurting its veins on the den window. Dusk moved in. After a while, he took a warm bath, soaking in the water. Then he sat in the dark, quiet, letting himself mend, not stirring, feeling a dull ache settle in his bones now that the first waves of pain had moved away. The clock struck six. He was glad that his father was on the evening shift, at work until eleven. He didn’t want his father to see him with these fresh cuts on his face, the bruises. Make it to the bedroom, he urged himself, undress, curl into cool sheets, tell him I came home sick, must be a virus, twenty-four-hour flu, and keep my face hidden.

  The telephone rang.

  Oh no, he protested.

  Let me alone.

  The ringing continued, mocking him the way Janza had mocked him.

  Let it be, let it be, like the Beatles sang.

  Still ringing.

  And he saw suddenly that he must answer. They didn’t want him to answer this time. They wanted to think that he was incapacitated, injured, unable to make it to the phone.

  Jerry lifted himself from the bed, surprised at his mobility, and made his way through the living room to the phone. Don’t stop ringing now, he said, don’t stop ringing. I want to show them.

  “Hello.” Forcing strength into his voice.

  Silence.

  “I’m here,” he said, shouting the words.

  Silence again. Then the lewd chuckle. And the dial tone.

  “Jerry … oh Jerry …”

  “Yoo hoo, Jerree …”

  The apartment Jerry and his father occupied was three floors above street level and the voices calling Jerry’s name reached him faintly, barely penetrating the closed windows. That distant quality also gave the voices a ghostly resonance, like someone calling from the grave. In fact, he hadn’t been certain at first that his name was being called. Slouched at the kitchen table, forcing himself to sip Campbell’s Chicken Broth, he heard the voices and thought they were the sound of kids playing in the street. Then he heard distinctly—

  “Hey, Jerry …”

  “Whatcha doing, Jerry?”

  “Come on out and play, Jerry.”

  Ghostly voices from the past recalling when he was a little boy and the kids in the neighborhood came to the back door after supper calling him to go out and play. That was in the sweet time when he and his parents lived together in the house with the big backyard and a front lawn his father never got tired of mowing and watering.

  “Hey, Jerry …”

  But these voices calling now were not friendly after-supper voices but nighttime voices, taunting and teasing and threatening.

  Jerry went into the living room and looked down cautiously, careful not to be seen. The street was deserted except for a couple of parked cars. And still the voices sang.

  “Jerree …”

  “Come out and play, Jerry …”

  A parody of those long ago childhood pleadings.

  Peering out again, Jerry saw a shooting star in reverse. It split the darkness and he heard the dull plunk as a stone, not a star at all, hit the wall of the building near the window.

  “Yoo hoo, Jerree …”

  He squinted at the street below but the boys were well hidden. Then he saw a spray of light sweeping the trees and shrubs across the street. A pale face flared in the darkness as the ray of a flashlight caught and held it for a moment. The face disappeared in the night. Jerry recognized the plodding gait of the building custodian who evidently had been drawn out of his basement apartment by the voices. His flashlight swept the street.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted. “I’m gonna get the police …”

  “Bye, bye, Jerry,” a voice called.

  “See you later, Jerry.” Fading into the dark.

  The telephone ruptured the night. Jerry groped upward from sleep, reaching for the sound. Instantly awake, he glanced at the alarm clock’s luminous face. Two-thirty.

  Painfully, his muscles and bones protesting, he lifted himself from the mattress and poised, on one elbow, to thrust himself from the bed.

  The ringing persisted, ridiculously loud in the stillness of the night. Jerry’s feet touched the floor and he padded toward the sound.

  But his father was already at the phone. He glanced toward Jerry and Jerry drew back into the shadows, keeping his face hidden.

  “Madmen loose in the world,” his father muttered, standing there with his hand on the phone. “If you let it ring, they get their kicks. If you answer, they hang up and still g
et their kicks. And then start all over again.”

  The harassment had taken its toll on his father’s face, his hair disheveled, purple crescents under his eyes.

  “Take the phone off the hook, Dad.”

  His father sighed, nodded assent. “That’s giving in to them, Jerry. But what the hell. Who are them, anyway?” His father lifted the receiver, holding it to his ear for a moment, then turned to Jerry. “The same thing, that crazy laugh and then the dial tone.” He placed the receiver on the table. “I’ll report it to the telephone company in the morning.” Peering in at Jerry, he said, “You okay, Jerry?”

  “Fine. I’m just fine, Dad.”

  His father rubbed his eyes, wearily.

  “Get some sleep, Jerry. A football player needs his sleep.” Trying to keep it light.

  “Right, Dad.”

  Compassion for his father welled in Jerry. Should he tell his father what it was all about? But he didn’t want to involve him. His father had given in, taken the receiver off the hook, and that was defeat enough. He didn’t want him to risk more.

  In bed once more, small in the dark, Jerry willed his body to loosen, to relax. After a while, sleep plucked at him with soft fingers, soothing away the ache. But the phone rang in his dreams all night long.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-THREE

  “JANZA, can’t you do anything right?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? By the time we got through with him, he’d been willing to sell a million boxes of chocolates.”

  “I mean those kids. I didn’t tell you to make it a gang bang.”

  “That was a stroke of genius, Archie. That’s what I thought it was. Let him get beat up by a bunch of kids. Psychological—isn’t that what you’re always talking about?”

  “Where’d you get them? I don’t want outsiders involved in this?”

  “Some animals from my neighborhood. They’d beat up their own grandmothers for a quarter.”