Island Boyz

by Graham Salisbury

  Jeese, Rossman. You should have ignored us from day one. Beat it, buttheads, you should have said, and maybe we would have left you alone.

  Anyway, the school was new, only about seven years old. But the buildings they all lived in were dusty old military barracks. It was started by some bishop, but people called the students cadets, thinking it was a military school. Altogether there were about a hundred and twenty boys, all sent away to boarding school, to prep school. To another planet is what it was. At least that’s what it felt like to Smythe.

  The campus—Smythe half-laughed when he thought of that place as a campus—was a square yard, maybe four or five acres, way up in the mountains on the big island of Hawaii. A row of barracks edged the yard in a U shape. In the middle was a chapel surrounded by a grassy lawn. An American flag flapped high on a silver flagpole, with metal halyard clips that clanged in the breeze. Tall swaying trees crowded in and leaned over everything on three sides. And then there was the thick jungle behind the trees, where Rossman was now, hiding like a rat.

  Anyway, the ninth- and tenth-grade dorm, which was in a bottom corner of the U, right by the flagpole, had two open rooms, each filled with bunks and long lockers that nobody locked except McCarty, who always had cookies from home that he hoarded for himself. Ninth graders were in one room, tenth in the other. The shower and bathroom were in between. The floor was wood planked and old and dusty. Steam radiators stood in back, like exposed plumbing, under windows that looked out into the jungle.

  Right next to their dorm a square, green building called the Mess Hall squatted under the towering trees, looking like an old toad. Smythe thought that was pretty cool—Mess Hall, like in the army. It was there, on the day Rossman had arrived, that Smythe had gotten his first close look at him.

  Smythe remembered being called to dinner by the bell. The bunch of them filed out of their dorm and into the Mess Hall. They’d all been assigned positions at long tables, each headed by a faculty member. Smythe and all the boys in school had been told they would take turns waiting on tables and cleaning up. And they’d sit when they were told they could sit, and they’d eat when they were told they could eat. They would say grace, say please pass this and please pass that, and most important, they would learn to tip their soup bowls away from themselves and eat like civilized human beings.

  Smythe had been assigned to a table in back near the kitchen, and there Rossman stood crookedly across from him, waiting along with everyone else for permission to sit. Smythe figured Rossman must have been kind of nervous coming into school late like that, a thought that now made Smythe’s guilt grow even greater as he lay under the moon remembering all this. He sure would have been nervous if it had been him.

  Anyway, Rossman’s hair was blond and cut in a close buzz, and his clothes were new. Smythe remembered the way Rossman had gaped across the table at him with his lopsided mouth slightly open. Not smiling, not glaring, just looking in this tilted way, as if he were sinking on one side. Smythe had watched him a minute, then looked down at his hands, fingers laced together in front of him. Rossman looked goofy. Smythe didn’t know what to do, how to act. He peeked around at the other guys at the table and wondered if he was the only one who felt that way.

  The headmaster came in and told the boys they could sit. Chairs scraped over the floor, and silverware rattled as all hundred and twenty of them settled down. Dinner began, large stainless-steel bowls of food passing silently from one hand to the next.

  Smythe noticed that Rossman drooled as he ate and kept wiping his chin on the back of his wrist. No one spoke to him or even asked him to pass anything. But by the end of the first week of school, he was the great oddity of the ninth grade if not the entire school. Everyone talked about him.

  “The guy walks funny.”

  “Can you understand him when he talks?”

  “Man, has he got B.O.”

  “God, how can you even sit next to him? He drools. Sick.”

  “How come he’s here, anyway? He shouldn’t be here.”

  Rossman often just stood in one spot and stared at things, at people, at clouds, at spiders in sticky white webs. He held himself up by his own strange kind of balance, leaning at an unlikely angle with his arms hanging down like an ape. And at night in the dorm he snored louder than a flushing toilet.

  It would have been easy to ignore him, or at least avoid him. That would have been the easy thing to do. He was different. He wasn’t at all like everyone else. We could’ve just left him alone, Smythe thought. And maybe we would have.

  Except that Rossman wouldn’t allow it.

  Because, they soon discovered, Rossman had a personality. He was a person. There was a boy inside that crooked body. A boy who wanted to be just like everyone else. He wanted to make friends, he wanted to talk to you, and if you listened and tried to understand him, you could even have a conversation with him. It took some work, but it could be done. The thing with Rossman was that he tried harder than anyone in school to get to know the other guys.

  A wispy cloud crossed over the moon, and Smythe humphed, thinking that Rossman tried too hard, actually. Anyway, how do you really get to know somebody you can barely understand?

  Smythe worked hard at trying to convince himself they had tried. They’d let him listen to their jokes, hadn’t they? And Rossman laughed at them just like they did. And they’d let him hang around, right? Wasn’t that trying?

  Right.

  Smythe tore up another hank of grass and tossed it, remembering back to that Saturday afternoon after their first full week of school. He and Riggins and a bunch of guys were standing around talking and joking and spitting off the porch at certain targets, like spiders in webs or leaves, or long-distance targets out in the quad. After a while Rossman came out of the dorm and lurched over to see what they were up to. They stopped spitting, a little uncertain if they should go on, since . . . well, since Rossman drooled and spat all the time . . . because he couldn’t help it. So anyway, they all decided in some unspoken way that they’d continue spitting. So what if it made Rossman feel bad.

  After a while they got tired of those targets and started spitting at each other, laughing their heads off when somebody actually got hit. Pang got splattered first. Riggins lobbed a lugie that hit his neck and headed down his shirt collar. Pang wiped it away as if it were death itself, putting on a great show of disgust, which was easy to do if you got spit on you. Everyone, including Rossman, thought it was hilarious.

  “You’re gonna pay for that,” Pang said, and went after Riggins, and since Riggins was laughing so hard, Pang caught him easily, and the two of them wrestled in the dirt. It was pretty funny, you had to admit. Even now, lying in the dark grass by a creepy jungle, Smythe smiled at the memory.

  So anyway, soon Rossman wanted to get in on the action.

  That was great news because Rossman was the king of spit.

  Immediately everybody ran for it, not wanting to be washed by any of Rossman’s abundant slobber. Rossman, being Rossman, thought that was great. Such power. Such friends. Such good guys. He stumbled after Riggins, then Pang, then Smythe and McCarty, lobbing lugie after lugie at whoever was closest. They all wailed with delight, dancing around him like puppies, moving in, moving out, giving him a clear target, then racing back before he could react, all of which were no great acts of courage because Rossman was slower than mud and his spit flew harmlessly to the ground. Still, he laughed and wiped his chin with the back of his arm after each shot.

  Poor slob, Smythe thought. Wasn’t even a contest.

  Then Riggins spat back—and hit Rossman.

  Rossman stopped a moment, as if to consider it. For a second all the guys fell silent. Then with even greater determination Rossman grinned and stumbled off after Riggins, who ran for his life.

  Then McCarty spat, hitting Rossman on the shoulder of his shirt.

  This time Rossman scowled. He was clearly at a loss in this game, clearly outclassed. He was a joke, not a contender. He
tried to get McCarty but ended up getting more spit on himself, again and again.

  Finally Rossman snapped. Sudden anger roared out of him in one long, slurred warning to get the hell away from him. Everyone gaped at him a moment, then walked off in a pack, calling him a spazmo and mumbling what a dork he was and why did he even come to this school and why wasn’t he in some other kind of school, like a hospital for weirdos or something.

  Smythe scowled in the dark as he remembered glancing back at Rossman and getting a full-on view of Rossman’s middle finger.

  That first Sunday Smythe discovered that they would all be going to church. Every Sunday. He’d never gone to church in his life and didn’t have a clue about what went on there. He was told he’d have to wear a tie and a white shirt and a coat with brass buttons. So that’s why his mother had packed those things. He found that he had one white shirt and a clip-on bow tie and a clip-on regular tie. So at least he was ready for it. Whatever it was.

  Along with everyone else in the dorm, Smythe filed over to Saint James Chapel with his neck squeezed into a choking starched collar. But he was okay with that. It felt kind of cool to puff around in the brass-buttoned coat. Like he was important or something. Rossman scowled along behind them. He looked like a drunk, Smythe thought, the way he walked. And his ill-fitting coat and wrinkled tie made him look like he’d just been tossed out of a bar.

  In the chapel Smythe settled into a long wooden pew with Pang, Riggins, and McCarty flanking him. They were pretty far back in the chapel, back behind the upperclassmen. In the pew just behind him, Smythe could hear Rossman blowing his nose. Riggins leaned forward to put more distance between himself and the gross nose honking going on behind him.

  A tenth grader named Cunningham who was an ace keyboard player blew hymns out of a pint-size organ while everyone else sat there waiting for something to happen.

  After a while a priestlike guy entered the room wearing a long black robe. Everyone rose when he walked in, and watched him float to the pulpit. When he got there, he stood looking out over his congregation. “Let us sing,” he finally said, as if what he’d seen before him was so discouraging he needed a song to wash the sight from his brain. A black felt signboard hanging on the wall behind him told the page numbers and order of the songs for the service. Smythe flipped the pages and didn’t find “Rock of Ages” until after everyone had already started singing. Rossman, singing in the pew behind him, slurred the words off-key.

  When the song ended, the service started.

  Smythe followed the crowd, kneeling on a padded bench when everyone else did, then standing, and listening, and reading out loud from a prayer book, and kneeling again, and sitting, and staring out the windows, dreaming of the beach and the hot sun and cool, wet ocean that waited for them that afternoon. Time passed. Clouds flew across the blue sky. The cows on the distant hillside paddock didn’t seem to move at all, frozen reddish dots. Smythe sang, and prayed, and dreamed, and sat waiting for the unfathomable sermon to end, his knee bouncing up and down with pent-up energy.

  “Boys, boys, boys,” the reverend was saying. “If I can only impress upon you one simple truth, it would be this: The smallest act of kindness is worth more than a thousand good intentions. Think about that awhile.”

  At that moment Rossman sneezed, and Smythe felt a light spray of moisture hit the back of his neck. He flicked up the collar on his brass-buttoned coat and leaned forward, as Riggins had. Riggins started laughing, not out loud but silently giggling at Smythe’s show of absolute disgust. His head was in his hands as he hunkered down below the back of the pew in front of him. And his shoulders shook, it was so funny to him. Smythe elbowed him, which only set Riggins off more.

  “Let us read from the Bible,” the reverend said. “Psalm nineteen, verse fourteen.”

  Smythe flicked his collar back down and fumbled for one of the blue hardcover Bibles in the book rack in front of him.

  Honk. Honnnnk. Rossman blew again. “Sick,” Riggins whispered, but Smythe ignored him, not wanting to get in trouble and miss going to the beach.

  Pages ruffled and swished, and in a dull, murmuring rumble the mass of boys read: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.”

  After the service ended, the reverend walked down the aisle to the back of the chapel and waited to greet the boys as they filed out slowly, in order, from the front of the chapel to the back. Somebody cut one, and Smythe covered his nose with his coat. Riggins started laughing, so it was easy to see who’d caused the problem. But Riggins covered his own nose and whispered, “Jeese, Rossman, couldn’t you wait until we got outside?”

  Rossman ignored him.

  The reverend was shaking every boy’s hand as they passed on out the door, taking his time with each of them, smiling and wishing them well.

  Which drove Riggins nuts.

  After lunch Smythe left his coat and tie and white shirt crumpled on the floor of his locker and tore out to climb aboard the school’s brand-new bus. He sat with Riggins, Pang, McCarty, and some other guys about halfway back. Rossman, white as a peeled banana in his swim shorts, sat up front behind the driver, who was Mr. Marshall, who Smythe thought was a pretty decent guy. From somewhere on the mainland, like all their instructors. East Coast mostly.

  The bus pulled out onto the road and lumbered away, grinding down to sea level, an elevation drop of almost three thousand feet. Down near Kawaihae they turned left onto a crushed-coral road that raised so much dust they had to close the windows and sweat it out until they reached the beach. Just about every kid on the bus made a big show of gasping and choking and generally dying in the heat. But Rossman, Smythe noticed, just sat bouncing in his seat down the bumpy road.

  Why did he keep thinking about Rossman anyway?

  What happened at the beach wasn’t important. But afterward was. Because that’s when they discovered the monkey.

  They’d all dragged themselves back into the bus and headed back down the dusty road to Kawaihae, a scorchingly hot, dry, and desolate deepwater port that Smythe had never seen before. The place looked so dusty and foreign that he felt as if he were in some movie like Lawrence of Arabia. He actually looked around for camels as the bus pulled over and sat in its own dust.

  He followed everyone off the bus.

  Smythe kind of liked the place. Thick, monster heat. Light green harbor, still as a tidal pool. And quiet. Except for the sound of an occasional truck that rumbled past to the giant harbor storage sheds, the place was dead silent.

  There was a store there. Just one.

  It sat on a rise right off the road. Doi Store, the sign read. Smythe and the guys followed the rest of the boys up the steep driveway to go get Cokes and crackseed and Popsicles and whatever else they could find to satisfy their raging hunger before heading back up the mountain to school.

  Smythe had just enough money for two ice-cold Cokes and a bag of peanuts. He bought them and went back outside. It was almost eerie how there wasn’t a breath of breeze to ease the stifling heat. Not even the faintest whisper. Weird. The place was like science fiction.

  He stood with Riggins and McCarty in a sliver of shade, munching and drinking and checking the place out. Smythe spotted Rossman making his way back down to the bus, moving pretty slowly so he wouldn’t trip.

  Rossman stayed in the sun too long, Smythe thought. His face was as red as an apple. Smythe shook his head as he watched Rossman inch down the hill kind of sideways, a strawberry soda in one hand and his towel in the other. Jeese. Dorkman didn’t even have the brains to leave his stupid towel on the bus.

  “Hey, look what I found,” someone said, and Smythe turned to see Pang standing over by something that looked like a cage. “There’s a monkey in here.”

  The bunch of them slouched over to the large chicken-wire cage. Inside was a water bowl and a naked, well-worn tree branch. But no monkey, not that Smythe could see anyway. “Where is it?”<
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  Pang spat out a peanut shell and pointed to the back of the cage.

  The monkey was back in the far corner in a shadowy spot, still as an old shoe. “What kind of monkey is that?” Smythe said. “Just sits there.”

  It was one of those skinny ones, and it had a bare, red butt. The branch was worn so smooth Smythe figured the monkey must have been in that cage a long time.

  “Rhesus, or something,” Pang said.

  Riggins said, “Somebody make it do some tricks.”

  Pang threw a peanut into the cage. It landed on the concrete floor, but the monkey didn’t move.

  The four of them hooked their fingers onto the wire mesh. “Stupid monkey looks half-dead,” McCarty said.

  In that second—wham! bam!—that half-dead monkey leaped at them, slamming into the mesh, screeching like it had just been shot with a BB gun. Scared the spit out of Smythe, who flew back. The monkey shook the wire mesh, shook it and rattled it, trying to get at them. Smythe’s heart pumped like a piston.

  The owner of the store came running out. “Whatchoo kids doing? Get away from there! Whatchoo doing?”

  “Nothing,” Riggins said. “The monkey’s crazy.”

  “Get out of here. Go somewheres else.”

  So they left, mumbling on the bus on the way back up to school about the god-awful lulu weirdo psycho monkey. After they got tired of complaining and reliving the experience, Riggins called toward the front of the bus. “Hey, Rossman, we met your brother today.”

  Rossman didn’t move, but half the guys in the bus laughed. The other half, the upper-class guys in back, ignored the remark.

  “I could tell he was your brother because his butt looks like your face.”

  Rossman raised his hand, still facing the front of the bus, and flipped Riggins off, which made everyone roar.

  One week later Smythe, Riggins, McCarty, and Pang were back at Doi Store, checking out the monkey.