Through the Hidden Door

by Rosemary Wells

“Mr. Finney, can’t you talk to Silks?”

  Finney took off his glasses, breathed on them, polished them, and squinted through them. “Silks’d sooner listen to the birds in the trees than to me,” he said. “But I can do one small thing for you, Pennimen.” He reached into a drawer beside him, fumbled through a pile of junk, and came up with a ring of keys.

  “I don’t even have to ask you, Pennimen, if you will call your father, report all this, and ask to be transferred to a school in California?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. You still excused from sports?”

  “No one seems to notice.”

  “All right. How do you get to the stables to meet Snowy?”

  “I just cut across through the trees near the old building.”

  “Try a new way.” Finney took two keys off the ring. “You know where the music room is? Downstairs in the old building?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Just around the corner from the music room is a door. Before they built the new wing in 1951, that door led to the kitchen. The old kitchen hasn’t been used in over thirty years. This key opens the door that leads to it. Go down the stairs into the kitchen. Look to your right. There’s a pantry there, also not used, and opening off of it, a very long passageway. Follow the passageway to the end. Go up a set of stairs, and you’ll find another door. This second key unlocks that. You will find yourself in the middle of some brick cold frames behind the stable. No one can see where you go once you unlock the first door to the kitchen stairs. Now get back to the campus before lights out. Go on!”

  I scuffed over the frosty grass in the quad. Rudy, his eyes full of tears, grew like a fat blister on my mind. I despised Rudy. I hated his guts. But his life would now change for better or for worse because of me, though I wanted no part in Rudy Sader’s life. The west dorm, choked over with leafless ivy vines, towered on one side of the quad. Such comforting lights glowed in its windows.

  Just then a groan—half pain, half anger—cut into the winter night. So like the collie’s cry, but human. Rudy Sader’s voice. I felt for him and his stupid wrecked dreams of being a pro quarterback. I don’t know why, I just did, and I wanted to tell him, man to man, that I was sorry about what had happened and that I had not turned him in. I sprinted up two flights and knocked on Sader’s door.

  Very slowly I opened the door. Rudy and his friends froze. The five boys stared at me as if I were a zebra. I imagined hearing the seconds, loud and angry, tick by in the air. Were they all planning to spike my chipped beef on toast with ground glass? Rudy lay on his bed in his underwear, holding a half-empty bottle of Bacardi rum against the pillow. His hair was wildly matted and his face blotched. The room contained a sick, sweet smell.

  Rudy spat at me from the bed. I ducked. He got to his feet and spat right in my face. “Wait, Rudy,” I said. “I didn’t have anything—”

  “You filthy little Nazi Jewboy scum,” he snarled.

  I heard my own voice at a distance, as if it were on a tape. “I came to thay,” I said, “I didn’t turn you guyth in. I didn’t thay anything to Greevth. It wathn’t my fault. I’m thorry, Rudy. I—”

  Danny grabbed both my arms, kneed me in the small of the back, and doubled me over head first onto Rudy’s bed.

  “I’ll thcream!” I threatened him. “You’ll all be thrown out for good. You can’t drink liquor in thchool!”

  Somebody dumped a dose of rum on my head. “Yeah? And you’ll smell just as drunk as we do, pretty boy.” It was Shawn.

  “What do we do to him?” asked Brett.

  “I wanna kill the bastard,” said Rudy. “I got nothing to lose.”

  “Don’t be a jerk. You wanna wind up in the state pen?” Danny said, and through my legs, upside down, I could see him guiding Rudy to the back of the room, gently, as if Rudy were a bobbing prizefighter. Matt Hines slouched with his back against the door. Brett’s body, about a hundred and thirty pounds, held me on the bed. Pennimen, I asked myself, how in hell are you going to get out of this?

  “Open his mouth,” said Rudy. “Open his mouth and hold it open.”

  “No!” I screamed. “What are you going to do? No!”

  “Can’t leave a mark on him, Sader,” Danny warned.

  “I’m gonna make him eat a stick of deodorant,” said Rudy. “You keep swallowing, Pennimen, or I’ll push it down your throat anyway.”

  I clenched my teeth together against the slick green cylinder as Rudy pressed on my mouth. His rummy breath drifted over the acid perfume of the Old Spice. “Open, Pennimen, or I’ll put it somewhere else.”

  “No!”

  “Take his belt off.”

  Danny reached under my belly for my belt. At that moment I pumped both my legs out like a kangaroo and caught Danny in the nose.

  What Danny would have done next I don’t know, as there was a sudden racketing on the open window. For a second I thought it was a hailstorm. It was gravel. Bits of it landed on the floor and bed. Someone down in the quad was hurling handfuls of it at the window.

  The whole dorm began stirring. Windows were opened. Lights went on. Boys began running out into the quad. The pebbles stopped. A set of footsteps jogged down the hall and stopped at Rudy’s door, and a voice yelled something I couldn’t make out.

  They poured the rum out the window and hid the bottle in a clutch of vines under the outside sill. Brett yelled at the voice in the hallway to run and get some bandages and iodine. “That’ll take him fifteen minutes,” Brett whispered. They let me go. On my way out Danny bent the middle finger of my right hand farther back than it would bend.

  If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

  Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

  Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise ...

  “Go on,” said Silks. He was peering at my swollen hand.

  I began the second verse of “If.” He glanced at his watch and stopped me there. “Better get that finger taped, Pennimen,” he said. “Baseball season starts soon. Since we’ve lost half our team, we need all the boys we can get.”

  “Yes, sir. Do you want me anymore, Mr. Silks?”

  His eyes, round and piercing, like black moons in a white sky, ran over me, up and down. “Want you, Pennimen? I don’t want you at all, boy. Not at all. I never did want you. You have destroyed the senior class here. There is nobody I want less than you.”

  He grasped his blotter by its leather corners. “You systematically taught five of our most promising boys to cheat. You guided innocent boys in your dirty ways. You admitted this last October when you were told that you would not be expelled if you pointed the finger at others. You are no better than a mobster who sings to the police in exchange for immunity. You are no better than an experienced pickpocket who teaches a youngster his skills. You are a communicable disease in this school.”

  I tried to meet his eyes. They were expressionless and still focused on my finger. “But what do you want me to do, Mr. Silks?” I asked.

  “This is what I want you to do, Pennimen,” he said softly, running his tongue over his teeth. “I want you to go away.”

  “Go away?”

  “After that disgraceful incident in the fall when you incited the same boys to torture the headmaster’s dog, your—”

  “But I didn’t, Mr. Silks. I didn’t.”

  “You led them in cheating. There is no doubt in my mind that you perversely led them in everything bad you could dream up. At any rate, Pennimen, your father called the school last November. He wanted to withdraw you and send you to another school in California. You apparently refused. Think about it again.”

  “I don’t understand, Mr. Silks.”

  “Let me put it this way. Since you are no better than a jailbird who makes a deal with the district attorney, I will be the district attorney and you will be the jailbird. All right? This is my deal with you. You want to enter Hotchkiss next fall, am I
right?”

  “Yes, Mr. Silks. I was hoping to if I kept my grades up. Mr. Finney said he’d give me a clean record.”

  “I am headmaster now, not Mr. Finney! Is that clear, boy?”

  It was very clear. I nodded and swallowed and tried to look like an injured bird.

  “I will also give you a completely clean record at Winchester, Pennimen. But you must choose to transfer immediately, right now! You may go to any boarding school that has an eighth grade—a middle school. From there, given your three-point-nine average and your completely clean record, you will easily get into Hotchkiss next year. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Well ... yes.”

  “Good. Now you’re beginning to see the light. Do that, Pennimen. You may call your father now. I will arrange things quickly, and you can be in any prep school in the country by next Monday. Groton, St. Andrew’s, Milford ... If you want, I will personally recommend you to Middlesex. I happen to know the headmaster there well. From any of these schools you can get into Hotchkiss easily. You may even get into Exeter if you like. But only if you do it now, Pennimen.”

  “But I ... I ...

  “If you choose to stay at Winchester, I am afraid it will be my duty as headmaster to write a letter on your Hotchkiss application telling them exactly what I think of you. Then you won’t get in. Think about it, Pennimen.” Silks slipped the blotter neatly back under the corner pieces where he’d pulled it out. Then he handed me my science exam. “You’ll take the rest of your exams sitting in my secretary’s office, away from all the other boys. Believe me, Pennimen, she’ll watch you like a hawk.”

  “Greeves knows they were drinking,” said Snowy.

  “What?”

  Snowy leaned on his shovel handle to rest. “Finney and Dr. Dorothy were talking about it at breakfast,” he said.

  “Well, what happened?” Using my shirt as a sling, I stuffed my left hand inside between two of the buttons and let it rest. That noon the same doctor who’d diagnosed my back spasm had encased my middle finger in a big metal and tape device. The finger throbbed like a toothache. The knuckle had been dislocated.

  “After Danny let you go, some boy went running down to Greeves to get iodine and bandages, of all things.”

  “I know. He knocked on the door. Matt Hines told him to bring iodine. Just to lose him while they got rid of me and the rum.”

  “Yeah. Well, the boy went to Greeves, and Greeves came upstairs. First time he’s climbed the stairs all year. He smelled the rum. Rudy tried to fake Greeves out that he’d cut himself and needed a bandage. Greeves wasn’t fooled. Greeves called Silks, and Silks blew up.” Snowy began to shovel the road again.

  “Why didn’t Silks throw them out? It’s right in the handbook you get expelled if you’re caught drinking.”

  “That’s the thing of it. You see? Silks is already under the gun because he allowed Greeves to proctor an exam where five boys were caught cheating. That looks bad on his record as headmaster in his first year.”

  “I know. Finney told me that.”

  “Well, if it gets out that the boys were drinking on campus, it’ll hit the local papers. It’ll cause a big mess for Silks. The board of trustees will have a clean sweep and get rid of Silks, Greeves, everybody. Winchester’s always had this super image of being a clean school. They want to keep that image. They don’t want stuff in the papers. Next thing they’ll be scared someone will find cocaine or pot in somebody’s gym locker, and the whole thing’ll get into The New York Times. This happened to some other big deal prep school a couple of years ago, and enrollment went down, contributions stopped, parents went nuts, Finney says. Silks will do anything to keep Winchester quiet. He can shut up Greeves. No one’ll listen to Mr. Greeves anyway because he’s deaf and old and can’t remember what year it is. The thing of it is, Silks can’t shut you up.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what Finney says. You give Silks nightmares. He thinks you’ll report the boys for drinking. This time, next time, it doesn’t matter. He thinks you’ll do the boys, his job, and the school in. He wants you out of here.”

  “But how did he know I was even in Rudy’s room? No one saw me.”

  “Barney,” said Snowy, “all he had to do was look at your finger.”

  We dug on. The road wound, curved, but otherwise never changed. Snowy was unusually quiet. Finally, when we took a chocolate-bar break, he hung his head and, emptying sand from his socks, said, “So I guess you’ll be leaving?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I guess you have to, don’t you? I mean your dad’ll make you do it.” Snowy had gotten sand in his chocolate and took a new one out of his pocket, unwrapping the foil slowly. “Besides, if you stay, they’ll get you. Next time it’ll be your neck instead of your finger.”

  “Snowy?”

  “What?”

  “Did you follow me home last night and throw the stones at Rudy’s window?”

  Snowy munched carefully on his chocolate. He didn’t like the nuts in it and bit around them carefully. Then he tossed the nuts over his shoulder.

  “Snowy, you did, didn’t you?”

  “I figured they’d be waiting for you in the bushes,” he said. “I never thought you’d be jerk enough to go up to Rudy’s room.”

  “Thanks, Snowy. You saved me.”

  He brushed his hands on his pants and began to dig again.

  “Did they see you out the window?” I asked him.

  Snowy shrugged, and I knew they had, “Barney,” he said, “look at the sand. Look at the color of the sand.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “IS THIS AN UNTAPPED line?”

  “Dad, I’m calling from Mr. Finney’s house. Of course it’s untapped!”

  “That tinhorn Silks isn’t listening in?”

  “No, Dad.”

  “Well, I’m flying into Boston day after tomorrow. Get your things together. There’s a train from Greenfield at eleven in the morning. I’ll meet it at North Station.”

  “Dad,” I said, voice cracking, “I’m not ... I’m not leaving Winchester.”

  “Barney, don’t even open your mouth to me about—”

  “I’m going to stay on. I will not leave.”

  “Yes, you will, Barney. Oh, yes, you will. I say you’ll leave, and you have no choice. If you think for one minute—”

  “Dad,” I interrupted. I knew exactly where my father was sitting. On the kitchen counter, boots dangling against the lower cupboard where we kept rice and cereal. I could see the veins sticking out in his neck and pumping away in his temples. I could hear his face get hot and red. “Dad, listen—”

  “You listen, Barney. You listen up and listen hard. I have paid good money, over ten thousand bucks a year, to be exact, to give you a decent education. There is no way you can come back here to Lantry and go to high school twenty miles away in Red Arrow. Even if you did, I have to travel all year long. Where are you going to live? With your Uncle Edward? Huh? You want to live with Uncle Edward and worry about his hernia all night long for him? Number three. Your former friend Rudy and his gang are going to take care of you but good. I will not let you spend one more day on a campus with five weasel-brained lumpkins who want to break your neck. Silks said he would not be responsible for any accidents.

  “That brings me to Martin Silks. He is the lowest, most disgusting worm I’ve ever run into. But he’s offered us an out. He says he’ll give you a twenty-four-carat-gold ticket into any school in the country if you’ll leave now. You’re going to St. Andrews, Barney. You have been entered and accepted. Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “Do you know what St. Andrew’s is?”

  “A big deal preppy school in Rhode Island,” I answered.

  “Yes, Barney. One of the best schools in the United States. You can finish out eighth grade there and continue in their upper school if you want. Or you can transfer to Hotchkiss from St. Andrew’s in September. You will under no
circumstances come back here or stay on at Winchester. The decision has been made, Barney.”

  “Dad, I won’t go.”

  “You do not have that option, son.”

  “Dad, it’s my life. And I won’t go.”

  “Barney, why are you acting like a moron? A flea-brain?”

  “If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you, Dad.”

  “I will listen to nothing, son, because I am thirty years older than you are. You are going to listen to me. You are going to meet me at North Station in Boston in forty-eight hours. I am taking you to Rhode Island myself.”

  “I won’t show up, Dad.”

  “Then I will come to Winchester.”

  “You won’t find me, Dad.”

  I heard Dad sigh at the other end of the line. I wished he were in the room. I wanted to hug him tight around his legs, around his rough old jeans, and climb up into his lap as I’d done when I was a little boy. “You give me one good reason, son. And it better be very, very good.”

  “I don’t know if it’s good. But it’s why, anyway.”

  “Get it out of your system.”

  I swallowed my insides, which had bobbed up to mouth level. “Dad, I’ve done some pretty stupid, rotten things my first years here.”

  “Okay. Now you have to pay for it. You’re getting off cheap.”

  “No, Dad. I haven’t done anything wrong to cause all this mess. Mr. Silks is trying to punish me when I’m innocent.”

  “That’s why you’re getting away from that son of a—”

  “No, Dad. That’s why I’m staying.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “Mr. Silks is trying to bribe me with St. Andrew’s, Dad. It’s dirty. I won’t buy it.”

  A long, long silence answered this. Could I actually hear the mountain wind booming two thousand miles away in the telephone wire? After a while my father cleared his throat. He said, “Of all the reasons in heaven and earth, Barney, why did you have to pick that one?”

  “You’re shaking,” said Finney.

  “I guess I am.”

  “You handled that well, Pennimen.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Finney.”

  “You’re going to stay on, then? Here at Winchester?”