The Temptations of St. Frank

by Anthony Bruno

  Frank raised his head a little higher so that his ear would be closer to the opening in the transom. He strained to hear what they were saying, but the heavy scuff of leather soles coming up the stairs drowned out their words. From where he was standing, he could see straight down the staircase to the landing below, and suddenly he saw a bald head rounding the landing and coming toward him. It was fucking Whalley! As usual he was wearing his raincoat, hauling his big fat about-to-have-a-heart-attack ass up the stairs. Frank ducked out of sight. If Whalley caught him in the building before eight again so soon after having been warned, the punishment would be walking jug. Maybe double walking jug. In the hot sun. In the rain. Bataan Death March jug.

  Frank froze where he was, crouched on the chair, listening for the Walrus King to start bellowing. But he didn’t do that. And Frank couldn’t hear his footsteps either. He must have stopped by the Mother of Peace girls. But what did he want with them? They had permission to be in the building before eight.

  Frank listened hard. He was dying to know what Whalley was up to. He slowly raised his head so that he could see out the transom, but all he could see was Whalley’s backside and his big raincoat. He was standing in front of Yolanda and Tina, blocking the view. He seemed to be talking to them.

  One of the girls was sobbing. What the hell did that lard-ass bastard do? Give them jug? Did he tell them they were going to hell for something they’d done?

  Frank got up on his toes so he could get a better look. All the girls were on their feet, clustered together. They were gathered around Yolanda who was the one crying, tears streaking her cheeks. Frank’s heart pounded. What the hell was wrong?

  Whalley put his hand on her shoulder. His sympathetic expression was something Frank had never seen. Whalley was acting nice for a change. Tina picked up Yolanda’s books from the floor and handed them to Whalley. She gave Yolanda a big hug, then Whalley took Yolanda’s arm and led her to the stairway. Together they walked down the steps. He’s taking her to the electric chair, Frank thought.

  Frank watched until they disappeared down the stairs, then he got down off the chair and opened the door a crack. The girls were huddled in a tight pack like spooked chickens.

  “Tina,” he whispered. “Tina. What happened?”

  She turned around. Her cat face wasn’t sly, and her eyes were red with tears.

  “Yolanda’s grandfather. He died. She just found out.”

  “The guy I met? The old guy with the white hair?”

  Tina nodded and stepped toward the door. “They took him to the hospital early this morning, but I guess they couldn’t do anything for him. I saw him the day before yesterday. He was having such a hard time breathing.” Her face crumpled, and she buried it in his shoulder. He hugged her, and she cried. She smelled nice. Her skin on his cheek was soft. He started to get hard and felt like a real shit. This was no time for that.

  The other girls stared at them with sad faces. Did they want hugs? Frank wasn’t ready for that, not with nerd girls, though he did feel bad about Yolanda’s grandfather.

  “Was it the pollution from the landfill?” he asked.

  Tina shrugged. “I don’t know… Probably.” She disintegrated into sobs and started trembling, and that made Frank nervous. Was she okay? Was she gonna faint? What should he do? If she was gonna have a breakdown and he had to rescue her, couldn’t she just wait till the eight o’clock bell rang so he wouldn’t get in trouble for being in the building?

  Not knowing what else to do, he rubbed her back. Her shoulders were thin, the bones delicate. He moved his hand to the middle of her back and, without even trying, felt her bra strap.

  Oh, Christ! he yelled at his penis. Not now!

  She turned her head, and he could feel her tears turning cold on his cheek. It sobered him up, and he genuinely felt sad. His throat tightened, almost as if he could shed a tear himself.

  “Fucking bastards,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “The landfill. That’s what killed him.” A deep shiver went through her body and shook him, too. She hugged him tight and couldn’t stop sobbing.

  He felt that he should do something, that he had to do something. But what?

  Brrrnngggg!

  The eight o’clock bell rang. Instinctively Frank wanted to hustle to lock up the yearbook office and get to his first class, but Tina was still holding onto him, so he held onto her.

  She lifted her head off his shoulder and looked him in the eye. She was kissing distance away. “That fucking smoke is gonna kill everyone,” she said with a sniff. She let go of him and picked up her books from the floor, wiping her nose with a soggy Kleenex. She filed into the physics lab with the other sad-faced girls and didn’t look back at him.

  Had he done something wrong? he wondered. Was there something he was supposed to say that he didn’t? Was she mad? Or just very upset about Yolanda’s grandfather?

  He ran back into the office and grabbed his book bag. As he was about to pull the door closed behind him, his eye went to the scratched gray file cabinet in the corner, and something occurred to him. He reached into his book bag and rooted around the bottom until he found what he was looking for, the newspaper clipping that Yolanda’s grandfather had given him. He had shoved it in there when he got home that night and had intended to read it. EXPERTS CLAIM BURNING LANDFILL IS HEALTH HAZARD, the headline said. The guy who wrote it was named Arthur Brown.

  Maybe there was something he could do, he thought.

  Brrrrnnggg! The second bell rang.

  Shit! He had to get moving. 4H guys from the honors physics class were climbing the stairs. Frank rushed to the file cabinet and yanked open the top drawer.

  Mr. Pomeroy, Frank’s math teacher, stood on one of the radiators, posture as straight as a ruler, surveying the classroom like the statue of St. Anselm on the front lawn. The only difference was, St. Anselm had his hand raised with two fingers extended to give a blessing and Mr. Pomeroy’s arms where crossed, one hand holding his pipe. He managed to climb up on the radiators at some point during every class he taught.

  “All right,” he said, his teeth clenched on the pipe stem. “Which among you would care to astound me with his genius and solve the first problem on the board? What does X equal? Anyone?”

  No one raised his hand. The sound of Mr. Pomeroy’s pipe stem clacking against his yellow teeth filled the silence.

  Mr. Pomeroy was stick thin with long legs, and whenever he stepped up on a chair to get onto a radiator, he reminded Frank of Dick Van Dyck on the rooftops of London in Mary Poppins. Pomeroy’s only major quirk was that he liked to stand on the radiators when he taught, which was kind of difficult for a math teacher. Every math teacher Frank had ever had constantly wrote on the blackboard to show what he was teaching. But Mr. Pomeroy spent the first ten minutes of every class filling the blackboard with what he was going to teach that day so he could climb up on his perch for the rest of the period. If anything needed to be added to the lesson he’d put on the board, he would call on a student and tell him what to write.

  There was no official reason for Mr. Pomeroy’s habit of standing on radiators, but there was a rumor. Mr. Pomeroy, like a lot of the lay teachers at St. A’s, had been a “sem,” a seminary student, when he was college age. The other sem teachers had dropped out before taking their vows, but supposedly Pomeroy made it all the way through the program. He was all set to take his vows and become a priest, but on the big day he went AWOL. Totally disappeared. He was eventually found standing in a tree at the edge of a corn field doing God knows what, and it took some doing to talk him down. Of course, this rumor was unconfirmed—the school didn’t want parents to think they had a nut case teaching math as well as coaching the track team.

  Frank took a look at the first problem on the board. 4 sin3 + 2 sin2 – 2 sin X – 1 = 0. He had no idea where to begin, and he suspected his classmates were
probably in the same boat. That’s why they were all so quiet. Frank didn’t understand trigonometry, and with a little over a month left till graduation, he didn’t care if he ever understood it. There was nothing real about trig. The way Pomeroy taught it, trig was abstract and theoretical and had no real-world application. If you could use trig to do something useful, like putting out the underground fire at the landfill, then Frank would pay attention, make it his business to learn trig. But it couldn’t, so he didn’t.

  “Anyone?” Mr. Pomeroy raked his bottom teeth with the pipe. The sound made Frank cringe. A skeleton playing the xylophone on himself. It was almost as bad as scratching a fingernail on a blackboard. “Mister…. Mister…” Pomeroy shaded his eyes like a sailor looking for land as he scanned the classroom. “Mr…. Vitale! Dazzle us with your acumen.”

  Vitale’s face sagged. Sitting on the other side of the room, farthest from the windows, he heaved a deep sigh and hauled himself out of his desk.

  “Please, Mr. Vitale. Embrace the challenge. I firmly believe that today is your day to shine.” Pomeroy pointed to the section of blackboard he had left blank for student calculations. “Just as the pagan Saul was struck down from his horse and saw the light, facilitating his miraculous conversion to the illustrious St. Paul, I am convinced that you will shake off your cocoon of ignorance and show yourself to be a resplendent chrysalis.”

  Vitale curled his upper lip as he trudged up to the blackboard. He was sick of Pomeroy’s tired, old shtick. So was the rest of the class. Every year in every class he taught, Mr. Pomeroy targeted one student for concentrated harassment. Usually it was the class clown, and that made Vitale the obvious victim in 4A. All year long, a portion of every class was given over to the Pomeroy-Vitale shtick—Pomeroy putting him down and Vitale talking back so that Pomeroy could put him down some more. It was sort of like hearing the Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First” routine every single day. It was funny in September, amusing in October, but now it was mind-numbing.

  Frank opened his ring binder to the last page. The photo of the Unholy Trinity was tucked into the pocket, Mr. Trombetta and half of Monsignor Fitzgerald visible over the top. Frank extended his foot and kicked Molloy’s desk across the aisle to get his attention.

  Molloy was half-asleep, his cheek pressed into his fist. His eyes shot open with a start, and he frowned at Frank for disturbing him. “What?” he mouthed silently.

  Frank flashed the photo at him, then closed the binder before anyone else saw. “What’re we gonna do?” Frank mouthed.

  Molloy shrugged and looked confused. He didn’t understand what Frank was saying, so Frank turned to a fresh page in his binder and tore off a corner. In tiny handwriting he wrote, What do we do w/ pic? He rolled it up into spitball and flicked it onto Molloy’s desktop.

  Molloy trapped it with his palm, unwrapped it and read it, then looked at Frank and shrugged. His expression said, How the fuck do I know what to do with it?

  Pomeroy called out from atop the radiators, his pipe clenched in his teeth as he spoke. “We’re waiting, Mr. Vitale. Time is slipping away. Please proceed.”

  Vitale stood at the board, shoulders slumped, a piece of chalk hanging loose in his fingers, his face a sagging sad-clown mask.

  “Do you know how to proceed, Mr. Vitale?”

  Vitale’s response was sing-song bored. “No, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  “Well, I suggest you at least try. You might surprise yourself. You might surprise me. Though I doubt it.”

  Frank tore off another scrap of paper and wrote, Ledger? 60 Minutes? He crumpled it and flicked it to Molloy.

  Molloy read it and wrote his response on the other side, crumpling it and punting it back to Frank with his middle finger.

  You must be high, it said.

  Frank remembered the joint he and Annette had shared in her room. Molloy said he had gotten high a few times. Knowing Molloy, Frank believed it.

  Frank tore off another scrap of paper. We have to do something, he wrote and sent it flying.

  Molloy frowned as he read it. “Why?” he mouthed.

  “Because people are fucking dying,” Frank whispered back. He could hear Yolanda sobbing in his head. He could still feel the spot on his cheek were Tina’s tears had been.

  “Mr. Vitale, what… is… the problem?” Mr. Pomeroy enunciated. “Could it be that you have no idea how to tackle that problem? Could it be that you have been sitting here all these weeks and months learning ab-so-lutely nothing?”

  Sing-song. “No, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  “Then could it be that you’re just plain stupid, Mr. Vitale? That you’re simply incapable of absorbing the concepts of higher mathematics?”

  “No, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  “Did your mother drop you on your head as an infant perhaps?”

  “No, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  “Then are you congenitally maladapted to learning, Mr. Vitale? Mentally retarded perhaps? The product of inbreeding? Were your parents first cousins, Mr. Vitale? Maybe brother and sister? Father and daughter?”

  Vitale’s eyes were hard black diamonds of hate.

  Frank thought Vitale was generally annoying, but now he felt for him. This was cruel. The class was silent, their attention razor sharp.

  “I didn’t hear your answer, Mr. Vitale,” the pipe clenched in Pomeroy’s bony jaws. It had gone out, and he sucked on it loudly. “Solve for X, Mr. Vitale. Give us the answer. Or are you indeed the product of an incestuous relationship? Share, Mr. Vitale. Let us all know. Your classmates are on the edges of their seats. They want to know why you are such an incompetent goofball. Why you are a cipher, a waste of space, someone who will go down in the annals of St. Anselm’s as the most forgettable boy ever to have attended this institution. Tell us, Mr. Vitale! Make us understand your sorry existence.”

  Vitale glared at him and mumbled, “Fuck you, Pomeroy.”

  Molloy looked at Frank, his eyebrows raised. This was the kind of antagonistic banter Pomeroy provoked with Vitale nearly everyday, but it had never gotten this nasty, and no one ever cursed.

  Pomeroy lowered his chin and looked at Vitale over his horn-rimmed glasses. “Excuse me, Mr. Vitale? I didn’t hear you.” He was smiling around his pipe.

  “I said, fuck you, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  “I’m sorry. Say again?”

  “I said, fuck you, Mr. Pomeroy.” Vitale was so pissed he gave Pomeroy the finger to make his feelings clear.

  Shit, Frank thought. How were they gonna banter their way out of this?

  Pomeroy smiled like the Joker. “Just so I understand you correctly, Mr. Vitale. You said, ‘fuck you.’ Meaning fuck me. Correct?”

  Vitale spat the words out like bullets. “Yeah, fuck you! That’s what I said.”

  Pomeroy nodded. “That’s what I thought you said.” He reached into the inside pocket of his brown tweed suit coat and pulled something out.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  The sharp whip-crack of gunfire. Boys jumped out of their seats and hit the floor. Frank glanced up. Pomeroy’s arm was extended, a gun in his hand aimed right at Vitale.

  “Holy fuck!” Molloy said, sitting crossed-legged on the floor, scrambling to pull the lens cap off his camera.

  Frank shielded his face with his binder.

  At the front of the classroom Vitale was on his knees, white as a blank sheet of paper, feeling his body for bullet holes.

  Frank’s heart pounded like a horse in a burning barn, kicking like crazy to get out. Jesus fucking Christ!

  He peeked around his binder. Pomeroy was laughing, softly at first but getting louder. Soon he almost doubled over he was laughing so hard, his pipe clacking against his teeth, threatening to fall out of his mouth. A laughing skeleton head. The gun was in his hand down by his side. Frank thought they should all charge him and get it away f
rom him before he started shooting again, but he wasn’t about to go first.

  “Fuck!” Molloy disgusted and disappointed. “It’s a starter pistol.”

  “What?” Frank said.

  “It’s only a starter pistol. What they use at track meets. It only shoots blanks. No hole in the barrel.”

  The classroom door flew open and crashed against the blackboard. Whalley burst in, Monsignor Fitzgerald right behind him.

  “What’s going on in here?” the monsignor said. He scanned the room and honed in on Vitale. “What did you do, Vitale?”

  Vitale was on his knees, hyperventilating like crazy, thinking he was about to die. He pointed at Pomeroy but couldn’t get the words out.

  Frank and several other boys pointed at the teacher as well and spoke all at once. “He shot him!” Frank said with the others. “He shot him!”

  Pomeroy calmly lit his pipe with a chrome lighter, sucking and puffing, sucking and puffing as if nothing had happened. The gun was dangling from the pinkie of the hand holding the lighter.

  “He shot him! He shot him!” the whole class demanding justice. They wanted the monsignor and the Walrus King to do something.

  “All right, settle down!” Whalley bellowed, glaring at them as if they had done something wrong.

  Frank’s head bulged with fury. He wanted to shoot Whalley. Automatically the bastard was ready to blame the students when fucking Pomeroy had the smoking gun right in his hand. Same thing with the monsignor. His stern, disapproving expression made it obvious. Students are always guilty before proven innocent. Well, fuck that! Frank thought. Fuck them!

  Monsignor Fitzgerald walked over to Mr. Pomeroy standing on the radiator. “Raymond?” he said, using Pomeroy’s first name. “Come down.” The monsignor held out his hand, and Frank was surprised and angry to hear that Fitzgerald could speak softly—no, compassionately—to a man who had just fired a gun at a student.