I do my usual weekend job at the mall — more about that later — and get to school on Monday.
In the lunch hour, I go to Mrs. Pickles’ room for my social studies detention and start catching up on my missed homework while I scarf down one of Aunt Maeve’s damp sandwiches.
The missed homework is so boring that soon I’m drawing pictures of racing bikes and other stuff with my ballpoint that has three different colors — red, blue and black.
Then, just as a splotch of tomato juice from one of Aunt Maeve’s soggy sandwiches parachutes onto my Socials textbook, Mrs. Pickles stalks over and stands over me.
“Do you realize you’re damaging school property?”
I look down at the book.
She’s right. As well as the tomato splotch, which I’m aware of, there’s a whole bunch of doodling all over my textbook, which I’m not so aware of.
I look up at her. “Sorry, ma’am. I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s your problem, Charley Callaghan. You don’t think. You have ruined a perfectly good textbook.” She picks up the book and peers at the doodles and the tomato splotch. “You can just take this along to the vice-principal and show him how you waste my time and your own, and how you waste the taxpayers’ money!”
“Look, I said I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the book, okay?” It’s a big expensive-looking book with a hard cover and a million pages. It weighs several tons.
She hands me the heavy textbook and an envelope with a note inside and sends me to the vice-principal’s office.
I should’ve taken the day off. I feel terrible bad about the textbook, though. I meant it when I said I would pay, even if it takes three weekend pay checks.
I’m destroyed for sure. I’m toast, as we Canadians say.
The vice-principal is an old geezer. Mr. Hundle lost his marbles ages ago, everyone says, and he spends most of the day asleep in his office, which probably isn’t true but you know how kids talk.
His nickname is Attila the Hundle. That’s what most of the kids call him behind his back. He’s brutal. But vice-principals in Canadian schools are supposed to be brutal. Like army drill sergeants, they’re supposed to scare the crap out of you.
Come to think of it, my old headmaster in Dublin came second to none at scaring the crap out of us whenever the situation required it. His name was Mr. Hayes. His first name was Daniel. We called him — you guessed it — Danny Boy.
He dropped in to each and every classroom about once a month to terrorize us with his mental arithmetic questions. The classroom teacher, also terrorized, kept out of the way by hiding behind the blackboard.
Danny Boy stood up front in his sharp suit and black bow tie and fired numbers at us. We were supposed to add them up. There would be about four or five numbers, double digits, many of them, and when he came to the end of the sequence, he barked out your name and you stood and gave the answer.
If you didn’t have the right answer ready it meant going to his office after school and getting a tongue lashing that’d make Superman pee his tights.
I can’t figure it out. Adults are free to be happy and do whatever they want; so how come so many of them have got such lousy jobs and such depressing lives? I mean, take a look at most of the adults around you every day. Would you want to grow up to be like them?
Anyway, back to Attila the Hundle. The door to his office is slightly open, so I walk in and sit in the hot seat. He is standing at the window with his back to me, looking out at the schoolyard.
Without turning, he’s like, “Go back out and knock.”
I’m like, “Sorry, sir, but the door was open. I thought —”
“Go back out and knock.”
I get up, march outside and knock on the door. “Come.”
I shuffle back in, put the textbook and envelope on his desk blotter and stand waiting. He keeps me standing there for ages.
I’m thinking he’s got a heart like a plum stone, small and dry and hard.
Then, finally, “It is always polite to knock, boy!” Cold as ice.
I admit he scares me but I’m not about to let him see it.
“Sit.”
I sit. He doesn’t turn round, just stands looking out the window, arms folded. My legs are jerking, I’m so nervous.
He finally turns from the window, strides over to his desk and sits down. Looks at me coldly through rimless glasses. He’s got those deep-set kind of eyes that make you think you’re looking at them through a dark tunnel.
“What’s this?” Picks up the textbook.
I shrug. It’s the same kind of shrug Lance Armstrong gives when he’s being interviewed after a day of racing in the Tour de France and the TV reporters ask him what he thinks his chances are of keeping his maillot jaune the next day.
Attila the Hundle opens the envelope and reads the note. Then he looks at the damaged pages in the textbook.
“You admit you mutilated this book?”
I nod, though I think “mutilated” is exaggerating the damage a bit.
“Speak up, boy!”
He waits with tight lips. “Yes, sir.”
It’s like we just moved into another ice age it’s so cold in here.
He pushes the open book toward me so I can see again my sinful ways. He says, “Tell me why you vandalized an expensive school textbook with these distasteful markings.”
I look. I don’t see anything distasteful, except maybe the tomato splotch. There’s a couple of crudely drawn bicycles in the empty space between chapters, and around the margins of the two pages there’s about twenty screaming heads, like the one in the famous painting I like so much — The Scream. You know the one — the woman on the bridge screaming, her hands pressed to the sides of her head? Painted by a feller named Eddie Munch? I’ve got a poster of The Scream I brung with me from Dublin. I got it when Ma was sick the first time, about five years ago. It’s on the wall of my room next to my poster of Lance Armstrong.
I’ve been drawing little screaming heads like the one in the painting ever since Da was laid off from the Dublin gasworks and he and Ma told us we were leaving Dublin and going off to join Aunt Maeve and Crazy Uncle Rufus out in Canada where we would all be better off.
Personally, I think we were better off where we were, in Dublin. Maybe the worry of the move and Da trying to find a job helped to make Ma sick again.
Attila the Hundle is glaring at me, waiting for an answer.
There is no answer so I say nothing.
He’s like, “Well?” Dripping cold.
The temperature dips even more. Icicles start to form on the edge of Attila the Hundle’s desk. It’s deadly in here.
I’m like, “Sir, look, I’m sorry —”
“Sorry is hardly good enough. You destroy a perfectly good textbook and all you can come up with is ‘I’m sorry.’”
“I’ll pay for the book.”
“And tell me why you were having detention with Mrs. Pickles.”
“Homework.”
“Speak up, boy!”
I suddenly remember what my da told me to do when someone intimidates me or makes me nervous. Imagine them naked. I’ve got a pretty good imagination so I close my eyes and conjure up a picture of Attila the Hundle sitting there with his skinny white legs and his pot belly hiding his little white johnny wobbler.
But it doesn’t work. I’m still scared.
“Well?” says Attila the Hundle.
The room temperature dips even more. The cold is fierce. Frost covers the Socials textbook on the desk in front of Attila the Hundle.
He stares at me, waiting.
I forget what he asked me.
Then he says, “Defacing textbooks and not doing homework are not acceptable behavior at Lonsdale Junior High.”
“No, sir.”
He glares at me. “And you have two unexplained absences from school.”
“Why?”
“Why what, sir?”
“Why were you absent from school?”
I’m thinking I should maybe tell him that since Ma died I haven’t felt like doing much, including coming to school, but that sounds like an excuse, or like I’m fishing for his sympathy, so I say nothing.
Attila the Hundle stands and walks to the window again, hands pushed into the trouser pockets of his dark blue suit. He wears a jacket and a blue shirt with a red tie. He’s got thin gray hair and a small gray mustache.
He lets the silence fill the office. Then, after a while, he sits down again behind his desk and opens the folder lying there.
“You’re from Ireland, I see. Dublin. Hmmn. Is this the way books are treated in Dublin?” Pause. “You have a sister in third grade at the elementary school.” Long pause. “You don’t like it here at Lonsdale Junior High?”
“Yes, sir, I like it just fine.”
Liar.
I can hear the end-of-lunch bell ringing outside in the hallway.
Attila the Hundle says, “I think perhaps I will have a word with your parents.” He stops, leaving a slice of silence for me to help myself to, but I take nothing. He probably expects me to beg for mercy.
I can’t even gather enough energy together for a shrug.
Silence. I stare at the name plate on the desk: Norman P. Hundle. Vice-Principal.
Norman P. Hundle, Vice-Principal, says, icy-like, “Very well, then. I will contact them right away.”
Silence.
“You may go, boy.”
I get up and move to the door.
“Boy.”
I pause.
“I don’t wish to see you in here ever again. Your behavior from now on must be exemplary. If I hear another complaint it will mean automatic suspension.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, boy!”
He points to the textbook, pulling a face as though the book is made of dog turds. “You can take this with you.”
I return and grab the book off his desk. As I leave I’m thinking a suspension would be just grand — a gift, you might say. I could ride my bike instead of listening to Dill Pickles or my other teachers ranting on about stuff I don’t have the slightest interest in. Life would be a lot more interesting if I could get three or four suspensions a week.
But then what would Da say?
I decide not to go back to class. I will give myself a half-day suspension. I grab my jacket from my locker and I’m out of there. A blast of fresh air and bone-warming sunshine is what I need. I gallop down the hill toward the waterfront, my back to the school, my face to the sun.
I sit on a bench at Lonsdale Pier all afternoon, watching the boats and the seagulls. Then I have to run back up the hill because I’m late picking up Annie.
I can see her standing at the top of the steps as I get closer. I wave to her but she doesn’t wave back even though I’m pretty sure she sees me, which means she’s mad at me. Oh, well.
“You’re so late, Charley. Where were you?”
“Sorry, Annie. But I’m here now, okay? That’s the main thing.”
“No, it’s not! You don’t care about me one bit. You only care about yourself. I’ve been standing here for yonks! I thought —”
“Stop whining, Annie. Come on, let’s go.”
Girls are such a pain.