Chapter 14
It’s funny how much my nerves had changed since I had first arrived at St. Rupert’s. Then I was worried about meeting new people. Now I was nervous about breaking into the headmaster’s study. I was just about to play for the first time with the full St. Rupert’s Pipe Band at the very first football game of the season. I had every right to be in a total panic. But instead, part of me was looking forward to it all. Being around Brookie must have rubbed off on me or deadened my nerves or something. Or maybe it was the hot spiced cider that our housemaster had sent to the common room as a pregame warm-up drink for the bagpipers.
“You getting dressed, MacDonough?” said Brookie, poking his head around the door. I ignored him.
I took a good whiff of the crisp air as I stood by the open window, sipping my steamy cider. In came the flood of smells that always reminded me of fall: earth, leaves, and wood smoke. The day had dawned bright, clear, perfect for football. Every tree was an eye-popping burst of red, orange, or yellow color. It all added to my high spirits, really, and I was ready for battle, er, I mean performing, er, I mean breaking and entering.
“MacDonough, get with it, will you? Ya gonna play in nothing but your shirtsleeves?” shouted Ian from across the room.
“What? Bike shorts not good enough for you?” I shouted back, grinning to myself.
I put down my cider and started my struggle to tie my tie, right over left, through the loop, left over right. And the tie was not cooperating. I gave it up with a sigh and turned to contemplate the rest of my uniform, which I had laid out in front of me on the common room sofa. There it was in all its glory. St. Rupert’s band uniform.
I remembered the first time I’d ever played in competition. It had taken me forty-five minutes to get into the uniform. I’d been so exhausted from that experience that playing in front of people had seemed simple in comparison. The shirt and tie were the easy part.
I picked up the kilt and wrapped it around me and cinched up the two leather buckles that held it in place. We had a very sharp-looking red, blue, and green plaid kilt with knife-edge pleats. I adjusted the front so it fell smoothly to my knees. There is always a certain element in every crowd that asks, “What do you have on under your kilt?” We don’t want any of that nonsense, thank you, so we wear bike shorts under it.
I twisted my back and looked behind me in the mirror to watch as I threaded the belt through my belt loops and fastened the huge buckle in front of me. The next part was the sporran. A sporran is a badger-skin bag that hangs down from your belt, in front of your privates, and holds the cell phone and the keys, in these modern times. In olden times, perhaps your lunch. All this stuff had a practical use way back when it was invented, but now it just makes us look like proper military Scots.
I eased my socks, called kilt hose, over my feet and pulled them up to my knees, fastening them in place with the little elastic garters decorated with blue ribbons called flashes. Each item and what color it was had significance. Take the feather on the side of my Glengarry hat. If it was red, it meant I had been in cahoots with King George; if it was white, it meant that I was a rebel, way back in . . . I can’t remember. But it all added a historical flourish—and it also could add frustration to the person who had to figure out where it all went.
However, I still had to tie my tie. I stared at it in the mirror. My mom had always tied it before competitions when I lived at home. Here I was, ready to play, and I couldn’t tie my own tie. Nobody was noticing me or my sorry self. They were all preoccupied with their own dressing.
“Somebody show me how to tie this tie, will you?” I whined, starting to panic, as the others were finishing dressing. So the seven best guys I had ever met put on their uniform hats, with their white uniform shirts hanging over their bike shorts, lined up in bare feet in a row, and, with solemn faces, tied their ties in front of me.
“Is this some kind of joke?” I yelled. “Because it’s not funny. Just show me how to tie the dang thing.”
“Yeah, chill, Mac. We always do this for the newbies.”
“That’s because they always ask that same stupid question.”
“What did you wear to compete in before you met us, Mac, bunny slippers?”
I relaxed under their crazy ragging.
“Show him, Prakash, will you? I gotta get dressed,” said Ian, swiping off his hat and climbing into his kilt. So Prakash kindly showed me how to get into my tie, a Windsor knot that was rather complicated. I had to watch carefully and repeat it twice to get it right. It was pretty nifty when it was finished. Pleased with myself, I admired my tie in the mirror.
“Okay, we good?” Ian stepped forward and did a crisp about-face, pipe sergeant to the front and center as smooth as silk. In fact, we all stood up straighter in uniform. Nobody would have recognized us from our usual appearance.
“You do the honors, Ian.” Brookie tenderly handed Ian the statuette to pack for the trip to the Head’s office. They weren’t going to let it near me.
“Tuck him up with lots of bubble wrap there, son,” said Prakash, wiping the corner of his eye. “I kinda hate to see ‘The Candidate’ go.” They eased the statue into the spare bagpipe case and shut the lid.
“Right, guys. Now let’s get geared up and get it out on the athletic field,” said Ian, giving Brookie a high five.
“Wait. While we’re clean and sharp, let’s hang here just a little minute.” Brookie pulled out his new camera. “We’ve got to get a picture of this moment for our descendants. The great statuette substitution caper is officially under way.” We jostled a bit and lined up for Brookie, with the tall guys like me and Ian in the back, Pete and Eric in front.
Blond or dark, tall and thin or short and husky, we were a team now. I looked around at all our faces full of good humor, some serious, some laughing. I was so proud, I could have cried. Brookie set his camera on delay and ran around to get back into the line, fixing a maniacal grin on his face as he faced the lens, waiting until the flash went off. Snatching up his camera and pocketing it in his sporran, he headed out the door with the rest of us, lugging the extra-heavy bagpipe case containing “The Candidate.”
Ms. Kent met us on the concrete walk by the frost-blackened flower beds just outside the back door of the dorm. It was chilly in the shade of the buildings, but our uniforms were good cold-weather wear, so we hardly felt it.
“You guys look great, every one of you,” she said, throwing out her hands as if she wanted to hug us all. Getting compliments like that made me want to blush.
Ms. Kent didn’t look too bad herself. In fact, she looked kind of proto-military chic, her Glengarry tilted on the side of her head, giving her a jaunty air. This was one great lady. Any one of us would do anything to help her. She didn’t deserve being hassled. This caper was worth it, even if the worrying did take ten years off my short life.
“Form a circle, and we’ll warm up and tune up out here, away from the athletic field.”
“Not that we’re going to be a huge surprise, when we get out on the field,” said Prakash wryly. “They can still hear us from here to kingdom come when we’re just tuning. They just have more time to escape before we get there.”
Ms. Kent threw him a look.
“Can you bring the tuner around here to this side, Ian?” Ms. Kent and Ian went around the circle with an electronic tuner and helped each of us tune our bagpipes. Tuning a bagpipe is not for wimps. But I’ll bet you’d rather be deaf than listen to an out-of-tune pipe band squealing away.
“Everybody got their spare reeds?” said Ian. The bagpipe is a reed instrument, and that little piece of carved river reed breaks easily, which is disaster in the middle of playing. The reeds also change quickly with temperature and moisture, so we keep spares in case a reed gets soggy. Bagpipes are from a cool, damp climate, so hot and dry—or cold and dry—can make the bagpipe sound like the yowling of a cat while it’s being skinned alive. Our weather was extra-good today, not too dry and
not too wet, so we were good to go.
Ms. Kent threw a critical look over the group and nodded approvingly, with a beaming smile. “Ready? Let’s go.”
Prakash contemplated Brookie for a moment and said, “Cool doesn’t describe you, Brookie.”
In a fever of excitement, Brookie was close to incandescent. But he was weighted down to prevent takeoff, big-time. He had ditched his real pipe case and was lugging the heavy spare case with the art in it. The rest of us were carrying our bagpipes in one hand and our empty cases in the other as we walked across the lawn to the athletic field. We had to play as soon as we got there, so there was no point in putting our instruments away just to walk across the lawn.
“You guys could, you know, take this case for a while,” Brookie said, gasping from the effort of lugging the heavy case.
“No we couldn’t. We want to know where you are, Brookie, not have to pick you off the ceiling somewhere.”
Ms. Kent had it timed exactly right. The football team was just ready to go on the field when we showed up. We quickly stowed our cases under the stands, right near where we were supposed to sit throughout the game. Once we were joined by two school drummers, we all formed lines of two with Ms. Kent as our leader and marched ahead of the football team onto the field, playing our school anthem. Then, while we caught our breath, we had to stand quietly at attention during the National Anthem. That is not a tune we can play on the bagpipes. It doesn’t work. We have nine different notes, and the “Star Spangled Banner” has a much larger range than nine notes. Then, after some other announcements, we played the “St. Rupert’s Fight Song.”
We finished up our set and marched off the field back to our seats on the bleachers. I high-fived the band as we retreated under the bleachers to stow our bagpipes until halftime. Then we tried to watch the game. Our football team needed help, is all I can say.
When the second quarter ended Ms. Kent had us stand for our halftime show. She gave us a big smile as she marked time with her foot. “Band. On the left, mark. One, two.” We all struck our bags, coming in together, drones sounding and the melody wailing. We were matching our pipe master’s playing in perfect unison. Marching briskly, we paraded out to the center of the field and began our show.
Our formation was a tricky one that took concentration. I took the time to cast Ian a look as I passed him on a corner. Intense focus was written all over his face. I could see why he wanted this band to win the Area Championships. We had every reason to be proud of ourselves and the work we had put into this performance. Brookie and I would not screw up, not get the band into trouble. I knew we could get Harley out of Ms. Kent’s hair and keep his greedy hands off the artwork. I felt it deep in my being.
We finished with a flourish and sat back down again.
“Now,” said Brookie, elbowing past the other band members. They parted for us and gave us a thumbs-up as we hurried past, with “The Candidate” in Brookie’s pipe case. Ms. Kent had gone to sit with some other teachers to watch the game. With the distractions of the game and all the other guys to cover for us, she would probably never notice we were gone.
Back at the monastery, we found the huge front door conveniently open, catching the cool breezes, and no one around. Talk about trusting God. We hurried to the administration offices and went inside the anteroom to Father Dell’s door.
“Wait a minute while I get out my lock pick,” whispered Brookie, bending over the scratched brass keyhole. “I practiced at the dorm, and this is the same lock.”
I ran tiptoe back down the echoing hall. Listening carefully to the silence, I kept watch, peering alertly between the front door and the office door. Soon as I saw Brookie was in, I hurried back down the hall and stationed myself nearer to him while he worked.
“Mac, you’ve got to come in here,” I heard Brookie whisper in a strangled voice. I went through the reception area into the office proper, and there I beheld the original statuette on the Head’s desk.
A ten-inch-high statuette of a squatting, fat little man glared back at me. I sighed. I was risking my sanity for this thug?
“We’ve got to swipe this for safekeeping, Mac.”
Brookie quickly unfurled the bubble wrap from “The Candidate” and plopped him down on the desk, next to the original.
“Candidate, meet your father, Mordred. Mordred, meet your long-lost ceramic son,” muttered Brookie to the statuettes as he worked.
Not happy campers, either one. I swaddled the ugly little Mordred carefully in the bubble wrap and was about to put it in the bagpipe case “The Candidate” had just vacated when I stopped in dismay. We hadn’t thought at all about what to do with the original!
“No, wait. Let’s put it in the museum, under lock and key,” I said, thinking how unhappy Ian and Ms. Kent would be if they got in trouble as accessories to our theft. “It won’t be theft then, will it, Brookie?” I asked, pleading.
“Good thinking, Mac,” he said, all business. He tweaked the position of “The Candidate” on the scarred oak desk and rounded on me with that maniacal grin. He was loving this, every minute of it.
“Let’s go, go, go. Time’s short before the show, and I’ve got to pick the museum door lock.”
I tucked the bubble-wrapped Mordred under my arm to follow.
As we turned the corner out of the Head’s office, there was Brother Matthew, crouched in a nook next to a large stone plinth with a statue on it. I almost maxed my life insurance right then and there, but I survived it because he had a look of dread on his face that was twin to my own. His pointer finger to his lips, he was shaking his head like mad and gesturing frantically around the corner with his other hand.
Brookie got it right away and interpreted it for me. “Harley coming. Brother Matthew is one of us. No time for the museum.”
Brother Matthew waved even more frantically, and we found cover in the alcove behind the door across from his hiding place. I wrapped the statuette further in my band uniform coat, hoping the extra padding would protect it. Then I shoved it behind me. Just in time, too.
Harley Bevison looked around stealthily as he walked with quiet assurance across the polished stone floor. The wide-open doors seemed to be causing him some confusion. Then he shrugged as he went over to the desk. He picked up “The Candidate” with a satisfied smile and rotated it gently as he looked at it, then slowly lowered it back to the desk. The dawning look of fury on his face was frightening to witness.
“A goddamned fake!” he shouted, taking a step back from the desk.
He looked down at the floor as he stumbled. There was Brookie’s bagpipe case, wide open on the floor. Harley kicked it in rage and then looked up, right at our miserable selves, in our miserable hiding place, right into our miserable, horrified faces. We were worked.
Fear shot through me when I saw that look in his eyes. He meant business. Harley lunged toward us like he belonged in a boardroom full of Wall Street speculators who hadn’t had their lunch yet. I didn’t want to be his first course. I had time only for a brief glance at Brother Matthew, who shrank farther into his shadowy hiding place. I was relieved to see he was frantically dialing a cell phone.
“Hand it over, boys. Now. Or you’ll be sorry,” Harley growled, focusing in on us, daring us to defy him. But we didn’t stop to consider “sorry.” Harley seemed to have forgotten that he was not between us and the door. Brookie gave him a shove in order to give me a chance, and I ran for it, clutching the coat-wrapped statuette to my chest.
Harley was after us at full speed, wingtip shoes and all. There we were, our feet clattering down the hall of the monastery, bursting out the door into the sunlight as we headed toward the athletic field. Brookie turned his head as he ran.
“Back to the game, Mac,” he gasped.
“But . . .”
I didn’t need Brookie to tell me that if Harley caught us now, he was desperate enough to do us damage.
“Safety in numbers, Mac.” He took the time to
see what he could do to distract Harley, who had almost caught up to us. Brookie pulled out his slingshot and let one fly. You could tell it stung by the way he grunted when it hit, but this guy had lost his mind over that statuette. A little pain wasn’t going to stop him. He gave Brookie a really dirty look.
“You’ll regret that,” he shouted, rubbing his cheek. Then he was lunging at us like a crazy man.
I felt myself stumbling and started to see my life flashing before me, but Brookie was fast, very fast. He steadied me, grabbed at the bundled statuette, and shoved my uniform coat back in my hand, all quicker than the time it takes me to tell it.
“Quick,” Brookie panted, “use your coat as a decoy.” I wadded up my coat as though I were still carrying the statuette. Brookie took off across the smooth lawn toward the game. I went toward the pine trees, but Harley paused only a second. He caught on to our ploy easily and began chasing Brookie instead of me.
My feet plowed into the soft earth as I abruptly changed direction, all of us heading for the ball field. Maybe I could tackle Harley if he caught up with Brookie. I could hear the wail of police sirens in the distance. God bless Brother Matthew for calling in the cavalry.
As Brookie plunged onto the field in a last burst of speed, Harley lunged to tackle him. I lunged to tackle Harley. But Brookie was way prepared. He tossed the Mordred statuette as far away as he could, just before he hit the ground.
Everything stopped—the ball game, Harley, me, and Brookie—as we watched this incredibly valuable piece of art curving through the air. Our football team captain stepped forward, hands ready, as everybody held their breath, and . . . he caught it, the best catch he would make all season, for sure. We all exhaled.
Ms. Kent, a frantic look of worry in her green eyes, was already running across the field. Sputtering words were starting to erupt from her mouth by the time we met up with her. Behind us we heard the breathless voice of Brother Matthew, who came panting onto the field behind us.
“Well done, boys,” he said, interrupting her. He turned to face us, making meaningful eye contact and giving us a brief “don’t say anything to screw this up, boys” nod. Our mouths must have fallen open, but we shut them quickly. Brother Matthew grimaced and turned to face the approaching police. At the front of the pack was a grim-faced Officer Landers, our old friend.
“Officers, thank you for responding so quickly. I called you when these boys caught this man breaking into the headmaster’s office, obviously trying to steal this.” Here he stopped to carefully accept the statue from the football player’s extended hands. “It was on the headmaster’s desk when these boys caught him in the act of trying to steal it. They grabbed it from him to prevent his escape with it.”
Ms. Kent was looking at us like she didn’t quite believe the story—and with good reason, since she knew Brookie’s dicey reputation.
“Let’s go back to the office and we can check it out,” said Officer Landers, keeping a complete poker face and definitely not looking at Ms. Kent. I was feeling pretty pumped to see how ratty-looking Harley was since he’d chased us. He didn’t look nearly as imposing now, but he had recovered a little of his cool. You could tell from the dazed look on his face that he knew he’d shot himself in his own foot by losing his temper and chasing us. He made a half-hearted attempt to run away, but another officer quickly caught him by the arm and marched him off with the rest of us.
The football team was just standing around, staring at us, until the coach shouted. It looked like they were going to try to start up the game again. It was not forever ruined, but the interest and focus of the teams just weren’t there anymore.
Here’s the real shocker. On returning to the offices, there was the headmaster, Father Dell himself, standing calmly behind his desk, his hands neatly folded in front of his robes.
“Well done, boys. You arrived . . . just in the nick of time, if you’ll . . . excuse the old adage.” This might have been overkill, because Officer Landers and his buddies were starting to look decidedly weary of hearing us Rupert pipers getting praised.
So we went into the office. The Head stuttered, “I think these boys won’t . . . be necessary for a few minutes. We need . . . to chat, officers.” Father Dell took control of the situation with the practiced skill of someone used to organizing boys. He smiled and nodded to us. “These boys are . . . needed back at the game for the finale.”
So we headed back to the game, confused, to say the least.
“What the heck was that all about?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Yeah, I can’t believe this is happening to us. Brother Matthew was having the police on, big-time. And in our favor. Whoa!” said Brookie, his face one big picture of awe.
Deceiving Mr. Bevison Page 20