None of those stories you hear about rulers on the knuckles and other severe forms of corporal punishment pertain to the Villa — the nuns were charming and gracious, and wonderful teachers (“It’s in a nutshell,” Sister Aloysius would say, meaning we were supposed to get all the aspects of a subject tied together).
The Villa went from second grade all the way through high school, so it became a little world a child would live in. Not everyone was from the Tri Cities — the girl students, who outnumbered us boys, were from almost everywhere, though mostly from Chicago. Dorms were strictly for the girls — even most of the local girls stayed there — and only they could eat in the beautiful dining room. Peter and I always packed a lunch, and ate it out in the courtyard, around which the complex of buildings was built, where we played games and sports and generally horsed around, under the nuns’ wary supervision.
I do remember some of the other kids whispered about Peter and me, because our father worked for John Looney. I remember my confusion that the gentle man who was my godfather was also the stuff of grisly local legend. Most kids would never cross 20th Street, not wanting to go near the looming Looney house. You see, older children told the younger ones that Looney was hiding in his mansion, waiting to capture little children and take them inside and grind them up into sausages.
Peter and I used to laugh about that, but sometimes the laughter would catch in our throats. Even then I think I knew that we had led a sheltered existence, to which the Villa had only added; and the inklings that our life was somehow a lie had begun to take shape in my youthful consciousness.
On the Monday morning after the Danny McGovern wake, the O’Sullivan family sat in their kitchen, having breakfast — or at least, the men in the family sat: Annie O’Sullivan was at the counter, preparing sack lunches for the boys. Sun, made brighter reflecting off snow, lanced through the windows, dust motes floating like pixie dust.
Peter was chomping at his last piece of crisp bacon, and Michael was slathering honey from a honeycomb on a piece of almost-burnt toast (the way he liked it), when their father put down his empty coffee cup, saying, “Peter, I’m afraid I have to let you down.”
The younger boy frowned. “What do you mean, Papa?”
Papa’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Can’t come to hear your choir tonight, at the Villa. I have to work.”
A meaningful glance flicked between the two boys, and Peter asked innocently, “Work at what?”
From behind them, at the counter where she was wrapping sandwiches in wax paper, their mother snapped, “Work at putting food on your plate, young man.”
She always sounded more Irish when she scolded.
Their father had a somber look, but with a twinkle in his eyes, he asked the younger boy, “Am I forgiven?”
Peter thought about it, took another bite of bacon, chewed, said, “Well, okay. Just see it doesn’t happen again.”
And Papa laughed, and so did Peter. Michael smiled, but he had a funny pang — it made him sort of... jealous, or envious or something, to see how Papa and Peter got along, so free and easy. Almost like they were friends.
“Michael,” Papa said, turning his attention to his older son, the laughter over, “you and Peter help your mother... There’s time enough, before you have to head to school. Clear off those plates.”
Then the man of the house was on his feet, heading out, pausing only to pat Peter’s head, saying, “Good boy,” and then was gone.
Michael’s feelings weren’t hurt. He knew younger brothers always got more attention — they were the babies. But when the boy returned to the honeycomb for more sweetness, he made a nasty little discovery in one of the tiny holes: a dead bee.
Peter was already up and using his fork to clean the remnants of his breakfast off his plate and into the waste basket; but Michael sat there frozen, hypnotized by the dead insect. Something about it... something about it...
“Michael?” his mother prompted. “Your plate?”
“Huh? Oh... yes. Sorry.”
And he got up and cleared his plate into the trash — and threw his toast away, too.
At the Villa, in history class, Michael sat at his desk toward the back, gazing out the window at the gray trees clumped with snow, a few brown leaves clinging desperately to skeletal branches. He was thinking about the dead man with the pennies on his eyes, and the dead bee, and the dead leaves... and it seemed to him suddenly that death was everywhere.
Being a child, he wasn’t depressed by this realization; more, disappointed...
After school, after his paper route, Michael glided into the driveway on his bike, surprised not to be greeted by his brother’s usual snowball assault; he looked at the garage and thought about his father and how Papa’d said he had to work, tonight. Would he take his gun? Was this another mission? The boy went into the house, looking for his brother, but didn’t find him.
“He’s out in back,” his mother told him.
Michael found Peter sitting in one of the swing-set swings, gently swaying, lost in thought. The older boy sat next to his brother, the chains screaking, snow getting shaken off just from the gentle motion.
“You know what I wish?” Peter said.
“No. What do you wish?”
“I wish we could go on one of Papa’s missions with him. That would be keen, really keen.”
Michael didn’t admit he’d been having the same thought; instead he just said, “He’d never let us.”
Peter gave his older brother a sharp look. “He’s going on one tonight.”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s just, you know, ‘work’ work.”
“You said he did missions for Mr. Looney... ”
“It’s not always missions. Some of it’s just... work like a job.”
Peter summoned up a taunting little smile. “Are you chicken?”
“No! And don’t you puck-puck at me! I’ll hold your face down in the snow if you puck-puck at me.”
“I’m not puck-puckin’... puck-puckin’.”
“Watch it! Watch it... Anyway, you know he wouldn’t take us.”
“We don’t ask! We just... tag after.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I dare you to do it!”
Despite the hurling down of that ultimate kid gauntlet, Michael shook his head. “You got a screw loose, sonny boy! Anyway, you have your choir concert tonight, at the Villa.”
Peter thought about that. “You don’t have a concert.”
“No... but I have to go. Mom said.”
Peter thought about that, too. Then, excited by his own ingenuity, the boy suggested, “Tell her you have to study for the big math test.”
“What big math test?”
“The big math test you’re gonna pretend you got! Gee whiz, Michael, sometimes you’re so stupid... ”
The older boy bristled. “I’m not stupid. And I’m not chicken, either... Will you cover for me?”
“You bet!”
“Like Tonto for the Lone Ranger?”
Peter was nodding. “Like Tonto.”
And the two boys shook hands — like men.
Night had fallen — and a light rain had begun to fall, as well — by the time O’Sullivan left the dry warmth of his home for the wet chill outside. The Clemens family — who had a girl Peter’s age, also in the choir — had already picked up Annie and Peter to take them to the Villa for the concert. Michael was staying behind, up in his room, getting ready for some test or other.
In his dark topcoat and fedora, O’Sullivan strode through the drizzle to the garage, stepped inside, and moved to the rear of the building, to the cupboard, which he kept locked. Using a small key on his chain, he opened the doors and revealed boxes of ammunition, several handguns, and a black hard-shell case that might have, but did not, house a musical instrument. With the weapon within the case in mind, he also selected, from back on the upper shelf, two circular magazines — each drum containing one-hundred .45 caliber cartridges, the same as he used in his handgun of choice, the Colt he’d brought back from the Great War.