Through the Hidden Door

by Rosemary Wells

  I woke at five, halfway under my bed. Senior boys on honors are allowed private rooms. I had one. Tomorrow, if I were still at Winchester, I’d be rooming with a lower former or maybe three of them.

  I dressed in track sweats and crept downstairs. Then I trotted across the common and three miles into Greenfield, down Hancock Street to the Finneys’ house. Only an orange cat, flicking his tail from a fence top, took notice of me.

  Four times I circled the house, each time trying to peer in without seeming to. Finally I hid in some juniper shrubs under the living room window, popped up, and looked in for one and a half seconds.

  No collie slept by the fireplace. Nor in the familiar chintz-covered wing chairs. I’d had formal Sunday tea in that living room a dozen times with Finney and Dr. Dorothy. The collie usually growled at us boys from behind a gateleg Hitchcock table. But the collie wasn’t there either. I sprinted out of the bush and back toward campus. Since I detested jogging and only did it when the coaches forced me to, I knew I’d live on aspirin for a week.

  “I’ll jog all year if it’ll make you happy, God,” I gasped, my breath steaming, tears welling in my eyes. “Please, God, let that dog live. I’ll do anything if you let that son-of-a-bitch collie live unharmed. If you help me, God, I’ll give my year’s allowance to the ASPCA. I’ll save the whales when I grow up. If there’s a next life, I’ll volunteer for a hitch as a Tibetan yak herder. Somebody has to do it and it will be me (pant), Barney Pennimen (huff), and I’ll give my yaks (puff) expensive food! I swear to God, God.”

  Chapter Two

  INLAID MAHOGANY BOOKSHELVES LINED Mr. Finney’s office, floor to ceiling. Scattered among the calfskin-bound volumes were Indian pots and a couple of model clipper ships. The rug was a purplish Sarouk, worth a mint, and the chairs dark squeaky leather, ancient, British, grand. In one of them sat Mr. Finney, full bellied, white eyebrowed, and smoking a pipe that had gone out. In the other, Mr. Silks, hair in place, diddled with the finial on a silver humidor.

  “Sit down, Pennimen,” said Finney, pointing to an uncomfortable straight-backed chair, from which he promptly removed both his feet. The feet dropped with a thud. One leg was said to be wooden.

  I tried to shut off the trembling in my hands by exchanging glances with an Indian mask with a horsehair moustache. If the mask was real, I priced it at about five hundred bucks.

  “Talked to your father, Pennimen,” said Finney, emptying a dollop of black gook out of his pipe and stuffing it with long shreds of tobacco. “He hopes we can straighten this out.” Finney’s gentle blue eyes lit on mine like lasers. What awful things had he told my dad?

  “So now,” Finney said, “exactly what happened yesterday afternoon, Pennimen? Think hard. One lie and you will not only be scratched from Hotchkiss next year, you’ll be out of Winchester tomorrow. Back to where the deer and the antelope play.”

  I began to cry.

  “Stop that!” shouted Silks. “Immediately!”

  “Leave him alone, Martin,” said Finney, striking a kitchen match on the sole of his shoe. “Cry away, Pennimen. It’s emetic.”

  “What’s emetic?” I managed to sob out.

  “If you were to swallow a cigar butt,” he explained, “I would give you syrup of swills. Then you would be good and sick. The cigar butt would be thrown from your system, and you’d feel much, much better. Syrup of swills is an emetic. So is crying. Now. Tell me what happened without shilly-shallying around. Who threw the first stone at my dog?”

  “I did. I was the only one who did,” I answered as grittily as I could, tears beginning to run down my cheeks and snot dripping from my nose.

  “Come on, Pennimen. I’ll only kick you out for a good lie.” He pulled heartily on his pipe and blew out four perfect smoke rings. They would have been bull’s-eyes around my nose if we’d been playing horseshoes. “We’ve spoken to Clarence Cobb, Pennimen. His vision isn’t particularly good, and his glasses busted before he could see who the boys were, but he did tell us one thing. There were five or six boys. One of them was trying to stop the others apparently.”

  Clarence, I thought distractedly. So that’s what his real name was. “How could he tell if he had no glasses?” I asked in a sudden tenor voice. “Snowy’s as blind as a bat.”

  “So he is. He is legally blind without his glasses, as a matter of fact. But his hearing’s awfully good. He told us one boy was jumping up and down yelling at the others, ‘Thtop! Thtop or we’ll get Thaturday detention!’ This boy was not throwing any stones at all. He had some good intentions. This boy could only be you, Pennimen. Who were the other boys?”

  “I don’t know who they were,” I droned like a microwaved Nathan Hale.

  “Pennimen, what did I say about lies?”

  I wondered if he and Silks could smell me. “One lie and I’m out of here, sir.”

  “That’s right. This is your last chance. Give me your right hand.”

  “My hand?”

  “Your hand. Put it right flat on mine. That’s it. Now look at me. That’s right. Now we’ll start off slowly. Okay?”

  My God, I thought. The man’s a human lie detector. But my eyes didn’t dare waver from his.

  “Your name is Barney Pennimen?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen and one month, sir.”

  “Who are your friends here?”

  My hand discharged a pint of sweat into his. “Rudy, I guess. Danny Damascus. Matt, Shawn, Brett MacRea.”

  “Good. Keep your hand there on the table.” Finney wiped his palm on his pants and slapped it back under mine. “Is it true, Pennimen, that two years ago you poured a quart of vodka into your housemaster Mr. Greeves’s vaporizer while he was asleep?”

  I breathed very deeply and shut my eyes. “Yes, Mr. Finney.”

  “I thought so. Was that your idea?”

  I wondered if the statute of limitations had run out. My hand felt like a freshly caught mackerel. “No,” I answered.

  “I see. Was it true, Pennimen, that a year ago you stole the March of Dimes donation card off the counter at the Liggett drugstore and spent the money in the video game machines at the movie theater?”

  “Yes, Mr. Finney, but I returned it by mail with five dollars extra put in.”

  “Was stealing it your idea? Open your eyes and look at me, Pennimen.”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Is it true, Pennimen, that you have been seen pulling all kinds of wild mushrooms out of the ground and eating them willy-nilly because Rudy and his friends dared you to?”

  Visions of past emergency-room nightmares ran by me. “Yes.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you could kill yourself eating wild fungus?”

  “Yes, Mr. Finney.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  I began to cry again. “I don’t know.”

  “Have you ever cheated in an exam, boy?”

  “No. Yes. Well. I’ve never cheated myself, but I let other boys make cheat sheets from my notes.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “So they’d like me.” I began to gag. I stopped it by driving my fingernails into my palms. You’re a human banana, I told myself.

  “By doing that, even if you don’t cheat yourself, you are robbing honest boys of top grades. Do you know that?”

  “I ... I didn’t think of it that way.”

  “Answer this question.”

  “Yes?” I swiped at my streaming eyes and nose with my left sleeve.

  “Did you throw any stones at my dog?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Who did?”

  Sobs from me.

  Finney peppered his next words one by one, like darts. “Do you think it was cruel, beastly, disgusting, Pennimen, to torture a helpless animal like that?”

  I could not speak. I nodded vigorously.

  “Name them, Pennimen!”

  The strangling collie appeared in my mind’s eye. My stomach tu
rned and I threw up again, right on the priceless Sarouk. Finney didn’t seem to notice. Silks’s body began to twitch like a rabbit’s nose. “Sader,” I said softly, gulping. “Damascus. Hines, Swoboda, MacRea.”

  “Who threw the first stone?”

  “Rudy.”

  “Clean up your mess or I’ll fry your ears, Pennimen,” said Silks.

  “Mr. Silks, it’ll take an hour and alcohol-based cleaning fluids. This rug is worth thirty thousand bucks,” I said.

  “What are you talking about, you cheating, lying little devil?” Silks asked, standing. When Mr. Silks got angry, his face reddened from the bottom up, like a jar being filled with cherry juice.

  “Easy, Martin. The boy’s right about the rug. His father’s an antiques dealer. Mail order world wide. Pennimen even does the drawings for his father’s catalogue. Get some newspaper from that table,” said Finney gently, emptying his pipe into an ashtray and then spilling the ashtray on the floor. “Put it over the mess. We’ll clean it up later.” He looked at me.

  “Mr. Finney, how’s the dog?” I asked.

  Finney sat back in his chair and looked at me quizzically, tapping his pipe stem on his front teeth. “Good for you, Pennimen,” he answered at last. “The dog is fine, or will be. You just saved your neck, by the way.”

  “How?”

  “By asking ‘How’s the dog?’ rather than ‘What will my punishment be?’ An unfeeling boy would have looked after himself first.”

  I didn’t react to this slight ray of sunshine. Finney went on. “The dog had jammed a bone between two of her teeth and couldn’t get it out. As for the stoning, she has some cuts that will heal. Her trachea, that’s the windpipe, was badly bruised. She’ll have a plastic tube in it for three days, until she can swallow and breathe properly again. She’ll be home Thursday. As for her future attitude toward boys, I can’t say. This brings me to what happens to you.”

  “Yes?” I swallowed hard, wishing the plastic tube were in me instead.

  Silks picked up the telephone and ordered somebody at the other end of the line to round up Rudy and the rest. I only prayed that I would be long out of the headmaster’s office by the time they showed up.

  Over Silks’s voice Finney went on. “You acted stupidly and shamefully, Pennimen, but you were not craven or savage like the other boys. You certainly weren’t brave like Clarence Cobb.”

  “I know, Mr. Finney. I am sorry from the bottom of my heart ... I can’t say anything else.”

  Finney passed a tobacco-smelling handkerchief across to me. “I’m glad you are sorry. I hope you mean it. I hope you’re sorry for all the other things you’ve done too.”

  “I promise never—”

  “We’ll see. You have been extremely stupid. You’re lucky to be alive after eating a bunch of toadstools. Despite your good grades you so far have a record at Winchester of being a total idiot as far as I’m concerned. And dishonest. But I have never wrecked a boy’s life when he tells the truth. So ... Saturday detention for you until Christmas. All honors canceled. All privileges and free weekends canceled until semester’s end. Up in the morning at five thirty for kitchen duty for the next six weeks. None of it on your permanent record if you have a clean sheet from now on. I will not destroy your future at Hotchkiss just because you’ve been a block-headed ass.”

  Silks had been wiggling to say something. He slammed down the phone. I didn’t allow him to catch my eyes with his. I stared instead at the leather tassels on his loafers. “All right, Pennimen,” he began, “I want you to learn something about suffering.”

  “Yes, Mr. Silks.”

  “You go to the library. I don’t want to see you outside that library for the next month.”

  “Yes, Mr. Silks.”

  “I want you to write me a hundred pages on the ten worst disasters in history. I want the black plague, the wipeout of Mexico City. I want tidal waves, famines, floods, and avalanches. Got it? Now get out of here and start writing.”

  There was a slow, grudging knock on the office door.

  “That’ll be Rudy Sader and friends,” said Silks.

  I thought I would dissolve, like a germ in a dish of penicillin.

  “Go out this way, Pennimen,” said Finney, and grinning, he pushed open a window to the outside.

  Chapter Three

  SADER AND DAMASCUS WERE in my room when I got back from the library at ten. Finney had expelled all five untouchables from Winchester.

  “I didn’t open my mouth, guys! Finney’s old lady saw us. Dr. Dorothy saw us,” I told them over and over. When that didn’t work, I lied more colorfully. “Silks put my fingers in a finger vise and got it out of me.”

  “Yeah?” said Danny. “Let’s see your hands.”

  Oh, why hadn’t I prepared myself? Lying effectively means good groundwork, like preparing for an exam. I could have roughed up my knuckles a little. Dragged them through the driveway.

  “Not a mark on his hands!” said Danny. “The turd is lying. How about I show you what I can do to your hands, huh, creep? I’ll break each finger for you four ways.”

  Rudy put out a restraining hand. “We can’t touch him now.” He smiled broadly at me. “Not yet,” he added. “But we want you to know fear, Blossom. We want you to stink of fear. Got that? Because some day, some way, I’m gonna get you, and then Danny’s gonna get you, and after that your own mom won’t recognize you.”

  “My mom’s dead,” I said.

  “Yeah? Well, how would you like to pay her a visit?” said Danny sweetly.

  During the next three days I might have been on the dark side of the moon. No one in my class talked to me and I talked to practically no one. The five boys had left the campus. I spent almost all my time in the library, taking notes on the bubonic plague of 1348. At night, I was exhausted from morning kitchen duty, which got me up long before sunrise.

  Then suddenly, Saturday morning at breakfast, mimeographed slips were on everyone’s plate. They explained that Mr. Finney had resigned because of a sudden illness. Mr. Silks was to take his place as headmaster and had taken the oath of office that very morning, so to speak. By noon Rudy and Danny and the three others were back. They played first string against North Hampton Prep that afternoon, with Rudy at quarterback.

  At four o’clock, when I left the library, I noticed orange-topped stakes in the ground in one of the empty meadows near the school. I went over to have a look. On the seat of the pickup truck that was parked along the road was a clipboard. The top paper on it was an invoice reading, Karlo V. Damascus Memorial Swimming Pool, Winchester Acad.

  That night the school was heaving with rumors. None of them was true but one. Rudy, Danny, Shawn, Brett, and Matt had been granted full pardons for whatever it was they had done. Not many people seemed to know exactly what that was.

  Next morning I went right to Mr. Silks. The headmaster’s office had been transformed overnight. Gone were the rug and the leather chairs and the Indian art. No calfskin-bound volumes lined the walls. The bookshelves themselves had been taken down. The office was painted avocado and harvest gold. The furniture was grisly Danish modern.

  “I know why you’re here, Pennimen,” said Silks. “Your punishment stands.”

  “But the others!” I pleaded. “They got off scot-free.”

  “That was a decision of the board of trustees,” said Silks. “You were given a punishment by the former headmaster. I see no reason to lift it.”

  I knew that arguing would probably get me a bath in the septic tank. Still I said, “But, Mr. Silks it isn’t fair.”

  “You’ll find one thing changed here, Pennimen,” said Silks.

  “Yes, Mr. Silks?”

  “We don’t like whiners, tattletales, toadies, or stool pigeons here at Winchester.”

  “Yes, Mr. Silks.”

  “You put liquor in your housemaster’s vaporizer, Pennimen. Possession of liquor is grounds for expulsion here at Winchester, not to mention all the other tricks you’ve pulled.”r />
  “But they did them too. All of us did those things. This whole mess started because of the collie, and I didn’t do anything to the collie.”

  “I believe that, Pennimen, like I believe the moon is made of green cheese. You were in it as much as they were. All you did was wiggle off the hook and point the finger at the other boys. I make it a policy never to believe a boy who rats on his friends. If I’d been headmaster last Monday, I’d have thrown you out of this school so fast you wouldn’t have seen the door slam in your face. If you don’t like your punishment, go to the board of trustees.”

  I shifted my feet and stared at the floor. I didn’t know the board of trustees from the Chicago White Sox.

  “While you’re in the library, Pennimen, look up Kipling’s poem ‘If.’ The one we read first term to cure your speech defect. Memorize it by Monday. Every morning before class I want you to come in this office and recite it to me. You hear me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Silks.”

  “If I can train a boy not to lisp, I can train him out of other bad habits. Now get out of here. You make me sick.”

  The next week and the week after I closeted myself in the Herbert J. Vanderbilt Library when I wasn’t in class, on kitchen duty, or washing walls. No one in school talked to me by then. Rudy and the gang spread it far and wide that I had squealed on them. The whole school now called me traitor.

  Vanderbilt Library was the pride of the school. It had more Corinthian columns, books, and microfilm, I reckoned, than the whole state of Colorado. I wondered if, at some distant time in the past, Herbert J. Vanderbilt’s son or grandson had been kicked out of Winchester and miraculously brought back in by means of this wonderful library.

  Different boys came and went, researching papers and looking things up, but one boy was always there. It was Snowy Cobb, elflike, his skin bronze and his hair white blond. School rumor said that his mother was a famous Greek opera singer and his father a Norwegian fisherman. Or maybe his father was a Greek fisherman and his mother a Swedish opera singer. The name Cobb was a mystery. At any rate, he sat off in a corner. He consulted only a set of ancient blue reference books and used a magnifier to see what was on the pages. He took no notes. On his desk, at all times, he kept a small grayish object.