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More details about us. Passwod Reset New account. Log in. Find A book. The Chocolate War. At first, Jerry's refusal to cooperate with the corrupt school culture and fundraiser is seen by many classmates as heroic, but the gesture threatens Brother Leon and The Vigils' ability to coerce the student population. Leon presses Archie to put The Vigils' full force behind the chocolate sales and so they set up Jerry as an enemy for the rest of the student body to harass through bullying, prank calls, and vandalism.
Only The Goober remains Jerry's friend but does little to protect him. Ultimately, Archie enlists the school bully Emile Janza to beat up Jerry just outside the school, but, even in the aftermath, Jerry maintains his defiant nonconformity. Finally, Archie concocts a showdown: a boxing match at night between Jerry and Emile. On the football field, the match is watched by all students, who can select which blows will be laid during the fight through a randomized lottery system; however, the fight ends when a teacher shuts down the electrical power on the field, and Jerry is brutally injured in the ensuing darkness.
The walls spoke their own creaky language, the floors crackled, motors hummed somewhere, the humming almost human. Enough to scare a guy to death. He hadn't been this scared since he was just a kid and woke up'in the middle of the night calling for his mother.
There another noise. He looked with dread toward the doorway, not wanting to look but unable to resist the temptation, remembering his old nightmare. Relief swept him. He wasn't alone anymore, someone else was here. The aspect of the beast nightmare, after all. He shrank back, his skin hot and prickly, like the onset of hives. He was aware of other figures crawling into the room, knees scraping across the floor. The first figure was now in front of him. The kid was masked. The masked figure grabbed the front of Goober's shirt and twisted hard, pulling him forward.
He could smell pizza on the kid's breath. The mask was black, the kind Zorro wore in the movies. The assignment is more important than anything else, understand?
More important than you, me or the school. That's why we're going to give you some help. To get the thing done right. Got that? His throat was dry.
He was happy beyond belief. Help had arrived. The impossible had become possible. The masked figure raised his head. He also let go of Goober's shirt and pulled out his own screwdriver. It took them three hours.
They had been staying up with her 26 nights his father and some of his uncles and aunts and Jerry himself since her return from the hospital. They came and went in shifts that final week, everyone exhausted and mute with sadness. Nothing more could be done for her at the hospital and she was taken home to die. She'd loved her home so much, always had some project underway wallpapering, painting, refinishing furniture.
And then she got sick. And died. Watching her ebb away, seeing her beauty diminish, witnessing the awful alteration of her face and body was too much for Jerry to bear and he sometimes fled her bedroom, ashamed of his weakness, avoiding his father.
Jerry wished he could be as strong as his father, always in control, masking his sorrow and grief. When his mother finally died, suddenly, at three-thirty in the afternoon, slipping off quietly without a murmur, Jerry was overcome with rage, a fiery anger that found him standing at her coffin in silent fury. He was angry at the way the disease had ravaged her. He was angry at his inability to do anything about saving her.
His anger was so deep and sharp in him that it drove out sorrow. He wanted to bellow at the world, cry out against her death, topple buildings, split the earth open, tear down trees. And he did nothing except lie awake in the dark, thinking of her body there in the funeral home, not her anymore, but a thing suddenly, cold and pale. His father was a stranger during those terrible days, like a sleepwalker going through the motions, like a puppet being maneuvered by invisible strings.
Jerry felt hopeless and abandoned, all tight inside. Even at the cemetery, they stood apart from each other, a huge distance between them even though they were side by side. But not touching. And then, at the end of the service, as they turned to leave, Jerry found himself in his father's arms, his face pressed close to his father's body, smelling the cigarette tobacco, the faint odor of peppermint mouthwash, that familiar smell that was his father.
There in the cemetey, clinging to each other in mutual sorrow and loss, the tears came for both of them. Jerry didn't know where his own tears began and his father's left off. They wept without shame, out of a nameless need, and walked together afterward, arm in arm, toward the waiting car.
The fiery knot of anger had come undone, unraveled, and Jerry realized as they drove back from the cemetery that something worse had taken its place emptiness, a yawning cavity like a hole in his chest.
That was the last moment of intimacy he and his father had shared. The routine of school for himself, and work for his father, had been taken up and they both threw themselves into it. His father sold the house and they moved to a garden apartment where no memories lurked around corners.
Jerry spent most of the summer in Canada, on the farm of a distant cousin. He had fallen into the routine of the farm willingly, hoping to build up his body for Trinity and football in the fall.
His mother had been born in that small Canadian town. There was a kind of comfort walking the narrow streets where she herself had walked as a girl. When he returned to New England in 27 late August, he and his father fell into a simple routine. Work and school. And football. On the field, bruised and battered or grimy and dirty, Jerry felt as if he was part of something.
And he sometimes wondered, what was his father part of? He thought of that now as he looked at his father. He'd come from school to find his father napping on a sofa in the den, arms folded across his chest. Jerry moved soundlessly through the apartment, not wanting to awaken the sleeping figure. His father was a pharmacist and worked all kinds of staggered hours for a chain of drugstores in the area. His work often included night shifts which meant broken sleep.
As a result, he'd developed the habit of falling off into naps whenever he found a moment to relax. Jerry's stomach was weak from hunger but he sat quietly down across from his father now, waiting for him to waken.
He was weary from practice, the constant punishment his body took, the frustration of never getting a play off, never completing a pass, the coach's sarcasm, the lingering September heat. Watching his father sleep, the face relaxed in slumber, all the harsh lines of age less defined, he remembered hearing that people who had been married a long time began to resemble each other. He squinted his eyes, the way one inspects a fine painting, searching for his mother there in the face of his father.
And, without warning, the anguish of her loss returned, like a blow to his stomach, and he was afraid that he would faint. Through some nightmarish miracle, he was able to superimpose the image of his mother's face on his father's and for a moment the echo of all her sweetness was there and he had to go through all the horror of visualizing her in the coffin again.
His father awakened, as if slapped from sleep by an invisible hand. The vision vanished and Jerry leaped to his feet. His hair wasn't even mussed. But then how could a stiff crew cut get mussed up?
Another practice. One of these days, I'll get a pass off. Hunter left us a casserole. Tuna fish. She said you liked it fine last time. Hunter was the housekeeper. She spent every afternoon cleaning up the place and preparing some kind of evening meal for them.
She was a gray-haired woman who constantly embarrassed Jerry because she insisted on tousling his hair and murmuring, "Child, child I can get it ready in five or ten minutes.
Heat the oven and there it is That was his father's favorite word fine. Don't you have some great days? Or rotten days? The prescriptions come in and we fill them and that's about it. You fill them carefully, taking all precautions, double-checking. It's true what they say about doctors' handwriting, but I've told you that before. Was that the most exciting thing that had ever happened to his father?
That pathetic holdup try by a scared young kid brandishing a toy pistol? Was life that dull, that boring and humdrum for people? He hated to think of his own life stretching ahead of him that way, a long succession of days and nights that were fine, fine not good, not bad, not great, not lousy, not exciting, not anything. He followed his father into the kitchen. The casserole slid into the oven like a letter into a mailbox.
Jerry wasn't hungry suddenly, all appetite gone. Was this all there was to life, after all? You finished school, found an occupation, got married, became a father, watched your wife die, and then lived through days and nights that seemed to have no sunrises, no dawns and no dusks, nothing but a gray drabness.
Or was he being fair to his father? To himself? Wasn't each man different? Didn't a man have a choice? How much did he know about his father, really?
And he doubted whether his father would level with him, anyway. Jerry recalled an incident that had taken place years ago when his father worked in a neighborhood pharmacy, the kind of place where customers came to consult the druggist as if he possessed a doctor's certificate. Jerry had been hanging around the store one afternoon when an old man entered, bent and gnarled with age. He had a pain in his right side. What should I do, Mister 29 Druggist?
What do you think it is? Look, press here, Mister Druggist, do you feel the swelling there? Is there a medicine to cure me? His father had been patient with the old man, listening sympathetically, nodding, stroking his cheek as if he were preparing a diagnosis. He finally convinced the old man to go see a doctor.
But for a moment there, Jerry had seen his father acting the part of a physician wise and professional and compassionate. A regular bedside manner, even there in a drugstore. After the old man's departure, Jerry had asked, "Hey, Dad, did you ever want to be a doctor? But Jerry had caught something in his manner, in his tone of voice, that ran counter to his answer.
When Jerry tried to pursue the subject, his father suddenly became very busy with prescriptions and stuff. And he never brought up the subject again.
Now, seeing his father presiding in the kitchen, getting supper, for crying out loud such a far cry from being a doctor and his wife dead and his only son full of doubts about him, his life so pale and gray, Jerry was plunged into sadness. The stove signaled casserole ready. Later, preparing for bed and sleep, Jerry looked at himself in the mirror, saw himself as that guy on the Common must have seen him the other day: Square Boy.
Just as he had superimposed his mother's image on his father's face, now he could see his father's face reflected in his own features.
He turned away. He didn't want to be a mirror of his father. The thought made him cringe. I want to do something, be somebody. But what? He'd make the team.
That was something. Or was it, really? For no reason at all, he thought of Gregory Bailey. To begin with, he called a special assembly at chapel. Following prayers and a lot of other religious hoopla, he started talking about all that school spirit crap.
But with a difference this time. Standing at the pulpit, he gave the signal to a few of his stooges to bring in ten big cardboard posters which listed in alphabetical order every student in school.
A series of blank rectangles had been drawn beside each name which, Leon explained, would be filled in as each student sold his quota of chocolates. The student body watched with glee as Leon's stooges tried to scotch-tape the posters to the wall at the rear of the stage. The posters kept slipping to the floor, resisting the tape. The walls were made of concrete blocks, and tacks couldn't be used, 30 of course. Hoots filled the air. Brother Leon looked annoyed, which increased the hoots and catcalls.
There was nothing more beautiful in the world than the sight of a teacher getting upset. Finally, the posters were secured and Brother Leon took charge. Archie had to admit that the Brother turned in one of his great performances.
Academy Award caliber. He poured it on like Niagara school spirit, the traditional sale that had never failed, the Headmaster lying sick in the hospital, the brotherhood of Trinity, the need for funds to keep this magnificent edifice of education operating on all gears. He recalled past triumphs, the trophies in the display case in the main corridor, the do-or-die determination that made Trinity a place of triumph through the years.
Crap, of course, but effective when a master like Leon was at work, casting a spell with words and gestures. More than his share. Talk, talk, talk that's all anybody ever heard in school. Archie , squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, thinking of the Vigil meeting at which he had announced that Brother Leon had asked support for the sale and how he'd pledged the backing of The Vigils.
Archie had been surprised at the ripple of doubt and skepticism from the members of The Vigils. And it was only a crappy chocolate sale. But now, listening to Leon sounding as if the school was embarking on the Crusades, for crying out loud, Archie was doubtful.
Looking at the posters and seeing his own name there, Archie plotted how his own fifty boxes would be sold. He wouldn't dream of selling the chocolates himself. He hadn't touched a box since his freshman days. Usually he found some willing kid who'd gladly sell Archie's quota along with his own, figuring it was something special to be singled out by the assigner of The Vigils. This year, he'd probably spread the burden around, picking out five guys, say, and have them sell only ten boxes each.
It was better than sticking one kid with the entire quota, wasn't it? Sitting back in comfort, Archie sighed now, contented, gratified by the heights his sense of fairness and compassion could reach. Brian Kelly started it all when he touched his chair. It collapsed. Then, everything happened at once. Albert LeBlanc brushed against a desk as he made his way down the aisle and it fell apart after trembling crazily for a moment.
The impact sent out vibrations which shot down two other chairs and a desk. John Lowe was about to sit down when he heard the noise of collapsing furniture.
He turned and in doing so touched his own desk. The desk disintegrated before his astonished eyes. Leaping backward, he hit his chair.
Nothing happened to his chair. But Henry Couture's desk behind it shivered violently and tumbled to the floor. The racket was deafening. Desks and chairs were falling apart as if being demolished by mysterious unheard dynamite explosions. Brother Eugene rushed to his desk, that haven of security behind which a teacher always found protection. At his touch, the desk swayed drunkenly, shifted gears into a lopsided position and miracle of miracles remained upright at that strange tipsy angle.
But his chair collapsed. Boys scrambled madly and merrily around the room. Once they realized what was happening they dashed around Room Nineteen testing all the desks and chairs, watching with glee as they fell apart, and toppling the stubborn pieces of furniture that refused to go down without help. The destruction of Room Nineteen took exactly thirty-seven seconds.
Archie timed it. A sweetness gathered in his breast as he saw the room being turned into a shambles, a sweet moment of triumph that compensated for all the other lousy things, his terrible marks, the black box. Witnessing the pandemonium, he knew that this was one of his major triumphs, one of those long-shot assignments that paid off beautifully, certain to become legend.
He could picture Trinity students of the future discussing in wonder the day Room Nineteen exploded. He found it hard to suppress a howl of delight as he surveyed the havoc I made this happen and saw Brother Eugene's trembling chin and horror-stricken expression.
Behind the brother, the huge blackboard suddenly tore loose from its moorings and slid majestically to the floor, like a final curtain dropping on the chaos. He swiveled to encounter Brother Leon. Leon wasn't pale at this moment. Scarlet splotches glistened on his cheeks as if he had been made up for some 32 grotesque stage show. A horror show maybe, because there was nothing funny about him at this moment. Curious students from other classes had now gathered around the two entrances to the room, drawn by the crash and clatter.
Some of them regarded the rubble with awe. Others glanced curiously at Brother Leon and Archie. No matter where they looked, it was great an interruption of school routine, a diversion in the deadly order of the day. No incidents? No funny business? At the same time his grip on Archie's shoulder got tighter and Archie winced with pain.
I didn't promise anything," Archie said automatically. Always deny everything, never apologize, never admit anything. Leon pushed Archie up against a wall as the boys began to fill the corridor, pouring into Room Nineteen to view the destruction, and milling around outside, talking and gesturing, shaking their heads in wonder the legend had already begun. This entire school is now my responsibility. The chocolate sale is ready to start and you pull something like this. He turned and saw some guys staring at Leon and him.
Staring at him! Archie Costello humiliated by this snivelling bastard of a teacher. His sweet moment of triumph spoiled by this nut and his ridiculous chocolate sale! He watched Leon storming away; pushing his way through the tumultuous corridor, disappearing into the swarming stream of boys. Archie massaged his shoulder, gingerly feeling the spot where Leon's fingernails had bitten deep. Then he thrust himself into the crowd, pushing aside the guys gathered near the doorway. He stood at the entrance, drinking in the beautiful debris of Room Nineteen his masterpiece.
He saw Brother Eugene still standing there in the midst of the shambles, tears actually running down his cheeks. Beautiful, beautiful. Screw Brother Leon. The danger point his voice always got hoarse when he lost his patience, when he was in danger of blowing his top. Jerry picked himself up. His mouth was dry and he tried to suck spit into it. His ribs hurt, his entire left side was on fire. He stalked back to his position behind Adamo who played center. The other guys were already lined up, tense, waiting, aware that the coach wasn't happy with them.
Not happy? Hell, he was furious, disgusted. He had arranged this special practice giving his freshmen a chance to scrimmage against a few members of the varsity, to show off all he had taught them and they were doing lousy, rotten, terrible. There was no huddle. The Coach barked the number of the next play, a play designed to suck in Carter, the big beefy varsity guard who looked as if he could chew freshmen up and spit them out.
But the Coach had said, "We'll have some surprises for Carter. This was the only reward the Freshman team reaped because most of them were too young or too small to play varsity. Jerry crouched behind Adamo. He was determined to make this play work. He knew that the previous play hadn't worked because his timing was off and because he hadn't seen Carter come crashing out of nowhere.
He had expected Carter to blitz and instead the big guard had pulled back and skirted the line, annihilating Jerry from behind. What infuriated Jerry was that Carter toppled him gently, lowering him to the ground almost tenderly as if to prove his superiority.
I don't have to murder you, kid, it's easy enough this way, Carter seemed to be saying. But this was the seventh consecutive play and the damage of being tackled play after play was taking its toll. Make or break. Jerry called the signals, hoping his voice sounded confident.
He didn't feel confident. And yet he hadn't given up hope. Every play wag a new beginning and even though something always seemed to go wrong he felt that they were on the verge of clicking. He had confidence in guys like Goober and Adamo and Croteau. Sooner or later, they had to click, all the work had to pay off.
That is, if the coach didn't cut them all off the squad first. Jerry's hands were joined like a duck's bill waiting to swallow the ball. At his signal, Adamo slapped the ball into his palms and Jerry began to fade at the same instant, to the right, slanted, swift, his arm already coming up, ready to be cocked, ready for the pass. He saw Carter snaking through the line again, like some monstrous reptile in his helmet, but suddenly Carter became all arms and legs tossing and turning in the air, hit devastatingly low by Croteau.
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