The Wanton Troopers

by Alden Nowlan

  “Are you people deaf? I said that school was dismissed!”

  The children hastened back into the school house and wriggled into their caps and mackinaws. Tomorrow, she’ ll find out and she’ ll beat me to death. She’ ll kill me, and that’s what I deserve. I’m a coward, and a fool and I could have been a murderer and —

  Then suddenly Riff Wingate was slapping his back. Kevin swung around to face him. The taller boy grinned, showing the stumps of a dozen moist, decaying teeth.

  “Stacey jist told me! Never saw anythin’ so funny in my life! Why, Kev, old Cock Roache damn near jumped outta her drawers!”

  Harold Winthrop pumped Kevin’s hand.

  “God-a-mighty, Kev! I never saw anythin’ like it in my whole life! I gotta hand it tuh yuh and Stacey, feller!”

  Alton swaggered in the background, his choirboy face lighted by an angelic smile. “Don’t you fellers fergit it was my idea!” he said.

  “It don’t make no difference whose idea it was. It was the goddamn funniest thing I ever saw in my life!” Riff chuckled. “Didja see old Cock Roache? Lord, she’da like tuh a-snapped the elastic in her pants!” He laughed and the others joined him with guffaw and leer.

  “Yer a good man, Kev!” Harold interjected. “Yer a good man!” These words, although uttered always in a faintly derisive tone, were the highest compliment that could be bestowed by Riff and Harold. This was the Victoria Cross of the Lockhartville schoolyard. “Yeah, yer a damn good man, Kev,” Riff agreed.

  For the first time in Kevin’s school life, he had been accepted into the fraternity. For a moment, pride throbbed in his temples like fever. Yes — he was a tough hombre, a gamecock, a good man. Bathed in their approval, he strutted a little, conceived other diabolical schemes for disrupting the school. He thought of striding across to Dink Anthony. “What the hell are you laughin’ at?” he would bark into Dink’s peaked face. Who had given that lip-licking, giggling scarecrow the right to stand in this company of men?

  Then this edifice of braggadocio collapsed like a pricked balloon. He could not deceive himself. He knew that what he and Alton had done was not an act of heroism, but a foolhardy and ignoble trick. Shamefaced, he pushed Riff Wingate’s arm aside and shuffled toward the door . . .

  Next day, Miss Roache thrashed Kevin and Alton with her hardwood pointer, and Kevin rose higher in the respect of Riff and Harold by standing erect and tight-lipped while his hands were beaten until his fingers were unable to close on a pencil. But, to his own mild amazement, he found he took no pleasure from their plaudits. “Yer a good man, Kev,” they said again. And he was more bitterly ashamed than he had been during the times when they had abused and scorned him . . .

  Later that same day, Alton Stacey, who had slobbered like a baby during the whipping, dragged a pleading Dink Anthony into the woodshed and beat him until blood trickled from his mouth.

  And he showed Kevin Dink’s blood on his yellowish-blue, hideously swollen hands.

  “He’s the sonovabitch that squealed on us,” Alton explained. And he made a strange sound: half sob, half shout of exultation.

  His mind dark with the strangeness of the world, Kevin turned away . . .

  Twenty-One

  As he walked home from school, the sky was radiant, rich, and soft. Early December sunlight sparkled on the patches of gravelly snow that lay like little islands of salt in the fields. Sparrows, the colour of frozen mud and dead grass and sluggish with cold, wobbled groggily across the road in front of him or stood still enough to be mistaken for rocks. When he stepped onto the prowed shadow of the house, he pretended that he was going aboard a raft.

  He opened the storm door and closed it behind him. There was barely room enough for him to stand between the storm door and the door of the kitchen. It was like being enclosed in a long, narrow, vertical box. The knob of the inner door had broken and his father had made a latch from an old table knife, fencewire rivets, and a strand of rabbit wire. He lifted the latch and entered the kitchen —

  The sudden uprush of heat was faintly nauseating. The room reeked of boiling turnips. He threw his books on the table, hung up his cap and mackinaw, and laid his wet mittens on the oven door. “Anybody home?” he called. He knew that his grandmother was visiting her daughter in Larchmont and that his father had gone to the woods to chop firewood. “Anybody home?” he called again.

  “I’m in here, Scampi.”

  At the door to the living room, he stopped abruptly. A ruddy, moustached man in a blue serge suit sat on the old burlap-covered cot. Mary rose from her chair by the stove.

  “Scampi, this is Mr. Masters — Mr. Ernie Masters.”

  She planted a kiss on his forehead. He hated the gesture. It sickened him to have strangers see her kiss him.

  “Hello,” he said coldly.

  Ernie tapped the end of an unlighted cigarette against the back of his wrist and grinned.

  “Your mother’s told me a lot about you, Scampi,” he said.

  Here was a townsman. Neither a mill hand nor a farmer could have worn a serge suit as casually as this. On the rare occasions on which Judd could be induced to take his shiny old suit out of the newspapers in which he kept it wrapped, he behaved with the self-mocking embarrassment of a man forced to assume the garb of a woman. And when forced to wear a necktie, he clawed at his throat continually . . .

  Mary ran her fingers through her red-brown hair. Kevin noted that she had put on her best frock and that she had painted a little red bow on her lips.

  All during this conversation, she kept bobbing in and out of her chair.

  “Yes, your mother has told me all kinds of things about you, Scampi. All nice things of course” — here Ernie chuckled indulgently. There was a long moment of silence in which the man continued to tap the cigarette against his wrist. Finally, Ernie spoke again. “How are you doing anyway, Scampi?” he asked irrelevantly.

  My name is Kevin! Don’t you know enough to call people by their right name? “All right, I guess.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.” Ernie paused, appeared to search for further comments.

  “Mr. Masters works in Larchmont, Scampi — in the bank in Larchmont. He’s an old, old friend of Mummy’s.”

  For no apparent reason, Ernie looked relieved. “Yep,” he said eagerly. “I knew your mummy when you were just a glint in her eye, Scampi.”

  The man and the woman laughed uneasily.

  Kevin wished he dared turn on his heel and go. But he was too shy for that. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his breeches and clenched his fists.

  “Mr. Masters just dropped in for a little talk, Scampi.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ernie lit his cigarette with a little silvery lighter and ran a finger across his moustache. “Let’s see now, how old are you, Scampi?” He inhaled and pretended to ponder the question seriously.

  “He’ll be twelve next month,” Mary said.

  “Twelve!” Ernie raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips as though Mary had announced that Kevin was one hundred years old. “Gee whillikers! The time sure does fly, doesn’t it?”

  Kevin said nothing.

  “I told you I was getting to be an old woman, Ernie.”

  “You — old? Naw, you’ll never be old, Mary,” Ernie smiled gallantly.

  “Your mother will never be old, will she, Scampi?”

  Kevin half-shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess she will be.”

  “Naw! Twenty years from now she won’t be a day older than she is now. I’d bet my life on that, Scampi.”

  For a long time, no one said anything. Kevin knew instinctively that Judd would hate this man. Ernie was the type of person whom Judd dismissed as “big-feelin’ bastards.” Kevin watched him contemptuously as he ran his thumb and forefinger up and down the razor-sharp crease in his trousers.

  “What you planning to be when you grow up, Scampi?”

  I am going to be an Axeman and I will go all over the world cutting off the h
eads of persons who ask stupid questions. “I don’t know,” he muttered aloud.

  “Oh, Scampi’s going to do wonderful things when he grows up, aren’t you, Scampi?”

  “I don’t know. I guess mebbe I’ll work in the mill like my father.” He said this rather defiantly. At the moment he was willing to pledge all the rest of his life to the mill as a gesture of spite against Ernie Masters.

  “Oh, no! Scampi isn’t ever going to work in the mill! Never! Never! Never! When he grows up, he’s going to keep his hands all nice and pink and soft. He’s going to work in an office, that’s what he’s going to do.”

  “Maybe you’ll work in the bank someday, hey, Scamp?”

  Ernie laughed, and Kevin detected a hint of mockery.

  “No, I ain’t never gonna work in any old bank,” he declared sulkily.

  Ernie guffawed. “Well, I can’t say I blame you, fella! I can’t say I blame you!”

  Ernie got to his feet and crossed the room. He smelled of hair tonic, tobacco, and cologne. Cupping Kevin’s chin in his hands, he made him look up, and the boy turned hard and cold under his touch.

  Their eyes met and Kevin saw many things in Ernie’s face. In his eyes there was a dark gleam of derisive tolerance; Kevin had observed this look in the faces of many men when they talked with boys. And he was familiar also with the mingling of playfulness and brutality in the grin and in the hands gripping his shoulders. Without saying a word, the man was telling him that he was doing him a great honour in treating him as an equal when, after all, he could break him like a dry twig any time he wished.

  “Tell you what, Scamp,” Ernie chuckled. “How about me giving you a bright, new, shiny silver dollar. Would you like that, boy?”

  The boy read embarrassment and a hint of impatience in the man’s voice.

  Then Ernie released him and Kevin relaxed slightly. With almost morbid curiosity he followed the man’s hands as he reached into his coat and drew out a wallet.

  “There you are, Scamp — don’t that look purty, hey?”

  Taking Kevin’s wrist, Ernie lifted his hand and pressed the coin into his hand. Dubiously, Kevin closed his fingers and felt its cold, rough surface. Never before had he possessed a dollar.

  “Well now,” Ernie drawled with the air of a man who had performed a difficult act creditably. “Well, now, I guess when a guy gets a dollar he just naturally wants to go somewhere and spend it.”

  Kevin looked at him without understanding. Ernie returned to the cot, tugging up the legs of his trousers so that he revealed red, yellow, and blue socks. Blinking, Kevin glanced at his mother. She smiled rather coyly. “I think what Mr. Masters means, Scamper, is that you probably want to take your money to the store so’s you can buy something.”

  He knew that they wanted him to leave. Still holding the coin, he put his hands back in his pockets.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said.

  He strove to sound sarcastic but succeeded only in sounding rather silly and sulky.

  Rising quickly, she embraced him and kissed his cheek. Like Judas kissing Christ, he thought bitterly. As she drew away, he fingered the spot touched by her lips.

  “Oh, my! You’ve got lipstick on your face, Scampi!” Her voice was eager and silly. She brushed at his face with a lilac-and-wintergreen-scented handkerchief. He stared at the floor, observing that she had donned the little blue slippers that she wore to dances.

  “I guess I better go,” he mumbled, wanting them to know that they had not deceived him. Perhaps, if Ernie knew that his trick had been detected, he would go away.

  Gently, she steered him toward the door to the kitchen. “Supper will be ready by the time you get back, sweetikins.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She turned her head and spoke to Ernie: “I’ll be back in half a second.”

  “Yeah, sure, no hurry a-tall, Mar.”

  Kevin prayed fervently that God would send a thunderbolt from heaven and strike this man dead. He prayed that God would empower him to strike off his head as David had struck off the head of the giant Goliath. He prayed that —

  She started to help him into his mackinaw. “I can do it myself,” he muttered. “I don’t need nobody tuh help me.”

  “Oh, sugar-baby, Mummy just loves to help you!” Quickly, she pressed her lips against his. Then, for only an instant, her giddy playfulness died and she looked at him sadly, almost pleadingly. “Oh, Scampi!” she cried.

  For the first time today, she looked vulnerable. Grinning ghoulishly, he wiped his lips with the back of his hands.

  “I’m goin’ now,” he said harshly.

  She winced as though he had slapped her. Then she shrugged. “All right, Scampi.”

  He did not look at her again until his hand touched the latch. She stood by the door to the living room, slumping a little, her eyes plaintive and imploring.

  But, less than a minute later, he stood on the doorstep and heard her and Ernie laughing together . . .

  Though he plodded in the direction of Biff Mason’s store, he was not really going anywhere in particular. The sun was a dying coal on the brick-coloured horizon, and the temperature had fallen until he seemed to walk on the floor of an ocean of icy water. The cold closed on his temples like an iron hand crushing his skull.

  He thought of wandering into the fields, of becoming lost and freezing to death. Gloating, he imagined how his mother would wail and tear her hair when his rigid corpse was found and carried back to the house. Perhaps she would be driven to madness or suicide by her grief. Perhaps she would turn on Ernie Masters and kill him with a knife. He could almost see Ernie’s look of anguish and astonishment as he looked down at the blade protruding from the blood-stained white of his shirt . . .

  He had heard Judd say that in the last minutes before death a freezing man was bathed in an unnatural warmth. No, freezing would not be an unpleasant death. His corpse would be white and beautiful, and his mother would kneel by his coffin and moisten his face with her tears . . .

  Passing under the overhanging limbs of silver-green cedars and golden-green hemlocks, he thought of running away. He would hitchhike to Bennington and hop a freight to Halifax or to Moncton or to Truro. In his mind’s eye each of these towns was a metropolis like Rome or Jerusalem. And he had read the books of Horatio Alger. For a little while, like Phil the Fiddler or Paul the Matchboy, he would wander cold and famished through the streets.

  Then a millionaire in a great, glittering automobile would stop . . . and pick him up . . . and take him home . . . and treat him as his own son. He would be enrolled in one of those schools where the boys wore uniforms and played football, and . . . someday, years hence . . . he would come back to Lockhartville as Sir Kevin O’Brien, the head of some great railroad or bank, and he would find his mother, a ragged, snag-toothed crone, living on bread and water in a tarpapered shack . . .

  He stopped at a turn in the road, thinking of the silver dollar in his pocket and wondering what it would buy —

  No, he could not spend this money! It was a bribe, like the thirty pieces of silver which had been paid to Judas for his betrayal of Christ. He would stalk back to the house and throw the vile coin in Ernie Masters’s moustached face! Or, rather, he concluded lamely, that is what he would have done had he not been a coward . . . As it was, he would throw it away! The idea of such a sacrifice intoxicated him.

  Jerking the silver dollar from his breeches pocket, Kevin sent it flying over a fence and into a field. For an instant, it cut a bright arc through the air. Then it was gone. Sighing and shaken, he congratulated himself. He had performed an act comparable to those recorded in the Word of God. He compared himself to Abraham who had been willing to give his son, Isaac, as a burnt offering unto the Lord. Then, remembering how God had sent a lamb as a substitute for Isaac, Kevin half-expected a million silver dollars to fall from the sky and lie like mounds of clean snow around his feet . . .

  On a sudden impulse, he reached down and dug a stone out of the frozen earth
. As his target, he chose a grey, skeleton-naked alder on the other side of the fence.

  “This is for you, Ernie Masters!”

  Leaping into the air, he threw — The stone struck the trunk of the alder and dead-grey limbs danced crazily.

  “And this is for you, Ernie Masters!”

  Pulling off his mittens, he clawed at the pebbles embedded in frozen mud. He heaved rocks at the tree until his nails were broken and bloody and his arms were numb.

  “And this is for you, Ernie Masters!”

  Exhausted at last, with the dusk closing around him, he sank to his knees.

  “O God,” he prayed aloud. “O God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, make me one of Thy mighty ones! Make me one of Thy kings and prophets, O God of Israel. Give me the faith to move mountains and the power to call down fire from heaven on the enemies of the Most High! Give me the staff of Moses and the sword of David! Oh God, make me like unto David and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Solomon! Thy servant, Kevin, asks this, O God. Amen.”

  Then, still kneeling in the road, he covered his face with his hands and wept.

  Twenty-Two

  In mid-winter, the house was a match cupped in a man’s hands in the perpetual night and storm. To Kevin, the weather seemed to possess will and sinister intelligence. Shivering under the weight of nightmare, he thought of the wind as a pack of howling wild dogs who threw their ice-encrusted bodies against doors, windows, and walls. From the kitchen window, he had seen such dogs drive a deer out of the woods and onto the heath. There, the fear-maddened, spindle-shanked beast had floundered in deep snow and the dogs had torn her flanks and belly and sunk their teeth into her throat . . .

  Sometimes, in the evenings, a draught struck the lamp by the window and caused the flame to bend until it lay horizontal, then shrink back into the wick, so that it almost went out. And on several nights, Kevin awoke with the little moan of fear as a sheet of glass was knocked from its sash in an upstairs window and went crashing to the floor.

  The wind slithered under doors, though Judd stuffed the cracks with rags and gunny sacks. In living room and kitchen, cold fastened on Kevin’s ankles like invisible jaws. In the grip of the wind, the roof shingles rattled like his grandmother’s laughter. And when he ventured outdoors, the wind seized and lifted him as though to tear him from the earth. He half-expected that someday he would be caught up like a kite, his coat-tails flying, and sent hurtling into the endless cold of the sky.