the end of an ill fitting chapter
NONE OF IT MADE ANY SENSE. Afterwards it was difficult to connect it to anything else. For a very long time it was hard to say if it happened in the morning or the afternoon. In Matt Mercurio’s mind it was night and the whole sky was black except for a blood red sun.
It happened in the late morning. First lunch period. They were laughing and showing off new clothes, swapping stories after winter break. Hardesty and Chris Powers had broken off into a wrestling match and Dick Rathko was talking to his cousin, Andy.
“Hey Balliol!” Matt Mercurio said for no reason. He never talked to Balliol.
“Mason!” Matt called. He didn’t know the guys with them, the burnouts. Matt had forgotten Sully wasn’t friends with Balliol. Sully was edging away. They were all there.
And then someone bumped into him, hard.
“Hey, what the—” Matt began, his face turning ugly, his famous temper rising.
“I told you,” Dave Riley said, teeth chattering, “I told you I’d shoot you. I told you—” he said, taking out the gun, “I’d shoot you all.”
Some senior screamed. Some people ran out. Hardesty and Chris separated, Chris’s eyes going wide. Someone laughed and then the gun went off. It didn’t explode. It sounded like something thudding, like a fist in a rotten pumpkin, like the end of all noise. Blood and the gun going off and off and Dick Rathko screamed as Andy fell against him, and then Matt Mercurio fell back, an ache in his shoulder, spreading through him. Blackness. Slowness.
“Oh, shit!”
Screams, and they were ducking. Over Balliol’s head glass shattered. Secretaries screamed, the Dean’s office door opened, there was more gun fire. It stopped.
Chris was leaning over Matt’s body, Matt’s mouth was open. His face was white. Blood all over him.
“Stop!”
Mason turned. It was Rick Howard shouting, His whole left arm was soaked in blood. He stood there like it was nothing, blood dribbling on the fake marble floors of Saint Vitus.
But Dave was twitchy, he kept on twirling the gun around. It was in Balliol’s face, and then it was pointed at Chris, over Matt. Then at Sully whose eyes went wide, and then at Mason.
And then something happened.
It took all of a hundred years. The only noise left was Mason’s heartbeat, but even that was gone now. Everything sucked into him, into power for just this one second and he reached forward. He reached toward Dave Riley. He put his hands around the barrel of the gun, and then he took it out of Dave’s hand.
The noise started again. It started with Dave Riley screaming and then Rick Howard and two other teachers tackled him and a part of Mason noted that each one of those teachers had been students at Saint Vitus and champion athletes. Mister Fury had been a wrestling champion. Fine bit of use he was right now. Mason handed the gun to Balliol, and then Chris was saying, “Matt’s hurt bad. He’s hurt bad. But he’s not dead.”
A sobbing and a screaming went up, and they all turned around. Three people were down, but they might still be alive. Dick Rathko was holding Andy’s body on his lap, rocking him like the Pieta. Mason just kept looking. Andy was looking back at him, just staring at him. Sully was on his knees beside Andy. He looked to Mason, and then to Andy and, with two fingers like the sign of peace, he slowly closed the dead boy’s eyes.
The rest of that first day back was surreal. It seemed like the parents and police cars and the whirring ambulances never left, and then the news vans from all over town showed up to join them. Newspaper people, the reporters from the two local NPR stations. And it seemed to Sully that it would make sense for everyone to go home. But more people just kept coming, and the boys walked around looking confused, and then there were girls from Magdalene in their plaid skirts and white blouses and other girls from Saint Genevieve in their navy blue. Parents kept surrounding their boys. There was a yellow caution line around the porch of the senior steps and the whole area of the main lobby was taped off. What for? This wasn’t a murder mystery. Everyone knew what had happened.
It didn’t happen, Sully thought. It couldn’t have happened. No, it was such an odd interruption. It didn’t make sense. The first day back. It didn’t happen, not here in Cartimandua. It must have been all a dream. This, right now, was a dream. If it wasn’t a dream, how could he be wandering back into the school? How could he be walking around this empty school building where all the lights were still on? The cafeteria was open and filled with light, the vending machines were whirring with quiet electricity, but no one was here. It couldn’t be real. Nothing about this place was real.
Not long ago, Mark Powers car had gunned into the parking lot and he’d come running out with Seth McKenna’s father. For some reason Sully ran. He didn’t want to be seen. But it still wasn’t real, if it was real, wouldn’t his mother be here too? Why wasn’t his mother here? How could she not have heard? So it must not be real. Kids got shot in the Carolinas or on Indian reservations. People went postal out in Oregon, out there. They didn’t do it in Ohio. They didn’t kill people.
“No one was killed today. That didn’t happen. It’s all an accident,” Sully decided.
Cool as anything, Lincoln Balliol was at his locker, taking things out. Now see, that proved it wasn’t real, because if there really had been a shootout then how could Lincoln be so cool, so together, taking things out of his locker?
And how could Mason have done what he did?
They were all panicked. They were all crazy with fear and then Mason Darrow had stopped time. He had put his hand out and taken the gun from Dave’s hand. That wasn’t real either. It was all a fantasy. Not even a very good one, and not one that Sully had thought up on his own. No, they had all thought it up, the whole town was thinking it right now. Even Balliol was imagining it. They’d have to wake up soon and then they’d know this hadn’t ever happened. It was a bad, ill fitting chapter in a book. They’d all have to delete it and start over.
And then Balliol closed the locker and looked at him.
Sully sobbed. He felt the sob sucked out of him. He felt the floor drop like an elevator bottom, his legs turned to water. Then he was straight again. It took all of a few seconds. He was terrified, like a deer in the headlights. Not of Balliol who was shutting the locker and looking cool as ever. Who had saved Riley once and reprimanded him today, on the floor beneath the shattered window. He was terrified because in that moment that Lincoln Balliol, the realest person he’d ever known looked at him, he snapped out of it, and realized:
“It was real... Wasn’t it? It was all real?”
“Yes,” Balliol said quietly. “You were there. We were both there.”
“I keep on saying it’s not real. Things like that don’t really happen. They happen to other people, but it was real. Matt Mercurio got shot. Hardesty got shot. We almost got shot... Andy got shot. I don’t know who else. They say Matt will be okay. Eventually.”
“Andy Rathko is dead,” Balliol said. “He died in his cousin’s arms. You closed his eyes. Dick didn’t feel the bullet, but it went into his shoulder too.”
“No, I don’t believe it,” Sully went on. “No. That happens in... ghettoes. In the boondocks. Fuck, at public schools. You... kids don’t get… Well, they do. They get killed in car crashes, or at parties for being rowdy but... not here, not in the lobby. I don’t believe that. It’s not—”
“Sullivan stop,” Balliol said a little sharply touching him on the shoulder. “You’re losing your mind.”
“I want to lose it,” Sully said. “I need to. I can’t—” Sully caught his breath. He looked at Balliol like… like Sully. Then he turned green and turned around and threw up all over the floor. He fell on his knees and just heaved up breakfast and something from the night before. It came from all the way down, thick and acidic, burning, nasty, tasting so bad he wanted to vomit, which he did, noisily, wet and red and yellow. In chunks, and then in water. It wouldn’t stop coming. Until he was dazed. Until he was rocking. Until Balliol lifted him up and put him in front of the water fountain.
“Drink,” Balliol told him.
Because this was a high school where students had been shot and students were dead and the place was empty and the world made no sense, Sully spat the water out on the floor, he kept rinsing his mouth and spitting the dirty water on the floor and then he said, “I can’t drink, Bailey. And I still feel sick I feel... so sick.”
He fell to his ass and pulled his knees to his chest, back against a locker. Balliol stood a while longer and then decided it was rude to stand when his old friend was like this. So he sat too.
“You always know what to do,” Sullivan said. “You’re always so together. Even today, even with Dave, you didn’t lose your cool. You wouldn’t stop creasing your pants and making the tea if Armageddon came. You’d still be cool as anything.”
“Well,” Balliol said, at a loss. “It’s no use in everyone falling apart.”
Sully shook his head. “I can’t—This is what I said. I said it before Christmas with those two stupid fucks that killed themselves. No one thinks anything about life. Shoot it, abort it, whatever. No one cares. Just get whatever’s in your way out.” Sully heaved a sigh. “God, it makes me so mad. That fucker tried to kill us. He did. He killed Andy. Jesus, I can’t believe it. I didn’t even really know him, but I won’t know him now, Will I? He’s… God. He was cool. He was... He was your friend.”
Balliol said, “We were getting to be friends. I liked him.”
It was so simple.
“I don’t know what else to say,” Balliol told him. Everything else just sounds stupid.”
“Balliol, when he took that gun out I was so afraid.”
“Of course you were... The crazy fucker had a gun in our faces. We were all afraid he was going to kill us.”
“I was afraid he was going to kill you,” Sully said looking at him.
Balliol, for once, looked surprised.
“I thought he’d kill you and we’d never be friends again. He’d kill you and you’d never know... That I wanted you to live. That I... It would end with us still not...”
Balliol put his hands over his mouth, looking confused and a little terrified. Both feelings were foreign to him.
“Oh, Sullivan, I’m so stupid! I... In the last few months I’ve come to embrace that. I’m not good at telling you, I’ve thought about how bad I was at everything, how I didn’t make an effort, how I was slighting, how I hide my feelings. I don’t mean to—”
“You’re not the only one to blame,” Sullivan told him
Quickly he hugged him.
“It’s pretty shabby,” Balliol told him, still embracing his friend, “that we have to almost die before we can be on speaking terms again.”
School would be postponed for another week. Some were saying for another week at least. Before he left, before his father came for him, people had already learned what Mason had done, and were either looking at him in a mixture of fear and admiration or coming up to him and saying cheesy things. Finally, he said, “I wanted our vacation to go on a little longer, but this is an awfully pitiful price to pay for it.”
He said it to Tim Mathers, who nodded his head, laughed, said, “Yes, yes it is,” and then broke down and started crying.
Mason had never liked Tim Mathers, and so it was with a great putting aside of himself that Mason hugged him, patted him on the back and told him it would all be okay.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Balliol had been doing the sensible thing, which he was good at, and getting his books, Tommy’s books and Addison’s books. Tommy was planning to drive them home, but then Balliol came up from the mezzanine with Sullivan Reardon and Sidney Darrow came up from the back door near the ground floor.
“Are you all ready?” he said. His voice wasn’t light exactly, but there wasn’t that panic that Joel McKenna and Mark Powers had spoken in. There was no shaking of his son and weeping or crying. Sidney just took Mason by the chin, and looked him over, as if he was searching for something, and then, even though they were the same height now, Sidney cradled Mason’s chin before kissing him.
He looked around. “Is everyone here coming with us? You won’t fit.”
“I was driving everyone back in my truck.” Tommy said.
“Well, that won’t work either. Let’s half it up and get the hell out of here.”
“Mark and Joel are here,” Mason said.
“I’m sure they are, but I’ll see them later.” Sidney looked at Sully.
“You’re the Reardon boy.”
“Yes, sir,” Sullivan said.
“Sir, I’m not dead yet,” Sidney said. “You’ll ride with Balliol, Mason, and me. Let’s go.”
Sully just nodded his head and Addison said, “Mason, that was stupid of you.”
“What?” Mason said.
Sidney looked at Addison, waiting.
Addison turned to Sidney.
“Mason ended it. Mason ended the whole thing. Dave pointed the gun in his face and Mason just reached out and took it from him.”
“Really?” Sidney’s eyes assessed his son. It was always difficult to tell what was passing between the young man and the younger one.
“Yes, sir,” Mason said.
Sidney frowned and shook his head still looking at his son and then he looked at Addison.
“It wasn’t stupid. Darrows know what they can do, and they know what they can’t do. If Mason couldn’t have pulled it off, I’m sure he wouldn’t have tried. But if he couldn’t have pulled it off,” Sidney was still looking at his son, “he might be dead. And so might you all.”
Sidney sighed, dropped his hands and said, “Let’s go home.”
When they all got back to the house, Addison hung around Sidney until Sidney grabbed him by the shoulder and took him into the kitchen.
“You’re taller than me now.”
“Not much,” Addison said.
“What did you want to tell me?”
Addison opened his mouth, and then he turned around to see if anyone was behind him.
He said, “Sidney, I have something to tell you.”
Sidney nodded for him to say it.
“You believe in God, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Addison said. “I thought I didn’t. But I do now. See, I know why everything that happened today... happened. I know.”
Sidney looked at Addison cautiously.
“I did it,” Addison said. “It was my fault.”
“No it isn’t. You’re being—”
“I’m not being silly,” Addison said, and then he whispered to Sidney about Becky, about the abortion.
“Does Mason know?”
“No one knows,” Addison said.
After a moment Sidney said, “Well, Addison, I’m sure that doesn’t have anything to do with what happened today. And neither does God.”
Addison opened his mouth.
“I’m sure of it,” Sidney said. “All right?”
“All right,” Addison said. But he didn’t believe it.
The house was quiet, which was odd. Even when only Sidney and Mason were in the house it wasn’t quiet, but it was today, and Mark sat in the living room with Joel and Sidney. They didn’t even smoke. Just sat. Sidney felt himself chafing. He didn’t have it in him to be this depressed for that long. When so much happened he wanted to get up and do something, not sit around and be sad. And a lot had happened in the last few weeks. Too much. It wasn’t even the same world.
And then suddenly, from the back of the house, burst out Junior Walker and the Allstars.
BUM BUM BUMP!
Shotgun!
Do the herk jerk !
Shot gun!
From down the hall came Balliol with a burning cigarette in his hand. The three grown men looked at them.
Balliol addressed his words to Sidney.
“I’m sick of being sad. We’ve got a whole week to be sad. We’ve got the rest of our lives to be sad.”
He went into the kitchen and then came out of it with a six pack of sodas. He went back to Mason’s room.
“The kid has class,” Sidney remarked.
“You would say that,” Joel said.
Sidney nodded.
“Because it’s true.”
THIS IS THE END OF PART ONE OF WHITE LIFE