As much as he would have liked to try it, he knew democracy wouldn't fly here. Although most of its residents were good kids, some of them had been through a child's version of hell and were pretty tough cases. Given free rein, they would turn the home into a little corner of hell. So there were rules that needed to be strictly and evenly enforced. And someone had to do the enforcing. Every boy knew where the lines were drawn, and each one knew that if he stepped over those lines he risked a date with the Bat. And in the rule against fighting was the understanding that no matter who had started it, both combatants would be punished.
"Okay, guys," he said to Freddy and Nicky. "You both know what to do. Drop trow and assume the position."
They both reddened and began loosening their belts. With excruciating slowness, they dropped their dark blue uniform trousers to the floor, turned, bent over, and grabbed their ankles.
A small brown stain became visible on the back of Freddy's jockey shorts as they stretched over his buttocks. Somebody said, "Hey, skid marks!" and the audience laughed.
Bill glared at them. "Did I hear someone say he wanted to join them over against the wall?"
Dead silence.
Bill approached Freddy and Nicky and readied the Bat for a swing, thinking how absurd it was to punish them this way for fighting.
Not exactly Gandhian, is it?
But not totally useless, either. If the rules weren't too restrictive, if the punishments weren't too harsh, Big Bad Bill and the Bat could push the boys closer to each other without crushing their spirit. He could help bond them, make them brothers of sorts, give them a sense of community, a feeling of unity. That was good. St. F.'s was the only family they had.
He started with Freddy. The Bat was hollow, made of lightweight vinyl. He swung it across the backs of the older boy's thighs once. The slap of the plastic against flesh echoed loudly in the hall.
It stung, Bill knew, but not much. In the hands of someone with a sadistic streak, this could be a painful punishment. But physical pain was not the object here. The embarrassment of dropping and bending before their assembled peers would probably be enough, but he had to use the Bat. It was the symbol of authority at St. F.'s and couldn't be allowed to gather dust when rules were broken.
He gave Freddy a total of four shots; the same for Nicky, although he backed off his swing a little on Nicky.
"All right," Bill said as the sound of the last slap echoed away. "Show's over. Everybody back to the dorm."
The kids broke and ran for their quarters with Freddy hurrying after them, buckling up as he ran. Nicky stayed behind.
"You going to fix my glasses, Father?"
"Oh, right." He'd forgotten about that.
Nicky looked stranger than usual without his specs. He had a misshapen head that bulged above his left ear. His records showed that his mother had been unwed and had tried to flush him down the toilet as a newborn, fracturing his tiny skull and nearly drowning him. Nicky had been a ward of the state and the Catholic Church ever since. Besides the misshapen skull, he had bad skin—his face was stippled with blackheads—and poor vision that required Coke-bottle lenses for correction.
But it was his intellect that truly set Nicky apart from the other kids. He tested in the genius range, and Bill had detected an increasingly scornful attitude toward lesser minds. That was what got him into fights and added to the already difficult task of finding him a home—he was far brighter than many of the prospective adoptive parents who applied to St. F.'s.
But despite the fact that Nicky acted like an insufferable, pint-sized intellectual, Bill could not deny his fondness for him. Maybe it was a sense of kinship»—Nicky's intellect set him apart from the other boys just as Bill's calling had set him apart from his own generation. At least once a week they played chess. Bill managed to win most of the games, but he knew that was due only to his greater experience. In another year he'd be lucky to play a draw against Nicky.
Back in his office, Bill took out a small tool kit and set about trying to repair the eyeglasses. Nicky wandered away, poking into the corners of the tiny room. Bill had noticed during his time at St. F's that although Nicky seemed to have an insatiable curiosity about the world and how things worked, he had no interest whatsoever in actually making things work.
"How about a game?" Nicky said from over by the chessboard.
"That's 'How about a game, Father,' and I'm a little busy right now, as you can see."
"Spot me a knight and I'll whip you in twenty minutes!" Bill gave him a look. "… Father," Nicky finally added. It was a game Nicky played, trying to see how far he could push their familiarity. As much as Bill liked the boy, he had to keep a certain amount of distance. St. F.'s was a way station. He couldn't allow the boys to feel that leaving here was leaving home. They had to feel they were going to their home.
"Not a chance, kid. We play on Saturdays. And besides, you need to be spotted a piece like Cassius Clay needs to be spotted a right to the jaw."
"He calls himself Muhammad Ali now."
"Whatever. Just keep quiet while I try to fix this."
Bill concentrated on rethreading the screw that held the earpiece to the front of the frame. He just about had it in place when he heard Nicky say:
"So. I see Loyola turned you down."
Bill looked up and saw Nicky holding a sheet of paper. He recognized it as Loyola College stationery. Anger flared.
"Put that down! That's my personal correspondence!"
"Sorry."
Bill had requests in to the Provincial for transfer to a college campus and had queried Fordham, Georgetown, B.C., and others about positions as instructor. He was qualified in history and philosophy. As soon as something opened up, he would be out of here and on his way to the academic life he had dreamed of through all those years in the seminary.
Serving God through man's intellect—that had been his personal motto since his second year in the seminary.
He had expected to find little at St. Francis for the intellect. Two interminable years here as prefect of discipline had confirmed it.
A mind-numbing job. He could feel his creative juices dripping away, evaporating. He was twenty-six years old and wasting what should have been the most productive years of his life. Momentous changes were taking place out there in the real world, especially on the college campuses. The whole society was in ferment, the very air alive with ideas, with change. He wanted to be part of that process, wanted to fight his way to the heart of it.
Stuck here as he was in this anachronism called St. Francis Home for Boys, he could only grasp the hem of what was going on. Last weekend he had managed to get away for two days. He and some friends from his seminary days had dressed in civvies and driven all night to campaign for Eugene McCarthy up in New Hampshire. The primary was only a few weeks away and it looked as if Senator Gene might give President Johnson a real run for his money.
God, the excitement up there! All the young hippie types shaving their beards and getting their hair cut short—"Get clean for Gene" was the slogan of the day—and canvassing neighborhoods door to door. The air had rippled and vibrated with a sense of purpose, with a feeling that history was being made. He had been depressed on Sunday night when they'd had to leave.
To return to this. This. St. Francis Home for Boys.
Bill firmly believed that there was something to be gained, some wisdom to be gleaned from any experience. Although he wasn't exactly sure what it was, he was certain he had derived whatever wisdom St. F.'s had to offer. From here on it was just more of the same. So now he wanted to get himself out of neutral and start moving forward.