WHEN THE BOYS FILED OUT OF BULFINCH AFTER DINNER THE NEXT day, Aidan slapped Charles on the back and with a wordless smile headed off to the flower gardens. As Charles settled himself against the tree in the yard to brood a bit about being left alone, he noticed Bill, Sumner, Tink, and Salt in a huddle not far away. After a minute, the huddle broke, and Bill headed over with the two others close behind.
“Looks like your brother left you for a rose bush,” said Bill with a grin. “Not a gardener, I take it?”
“Cow shit ain’t my cuppa tea,” Charles grumbled.
Bill stuck his hands in his pocket and looked over toward the gardens. “Well, if you can grab your brother on the way, we got somethin’ to show the two of you.”
Once Aidan joined them, they walked single file between the garden plots, and at the end, Charles saw what he had not noticed yesterday—that there was a tall privet hedge that ran along the back of the garden area, and in the middle of the hedge was an arch-shaped passageway to the other side. Charles was the last of the boys to pass through, and when he emerged, he felt odd and off-center. He recalled a time, years ago, when he’d had a high fever and everything in the tenement—windows, door, table, stove—had taken on strange proportions and dimensions. Now, looking out over this vista, things also didn’t seem the right size. At the end of a grassy slope he could see a row of a dozen evenly spaced houses, but they looked too small—the nearby flagpole towered above them, many times higher than the tiny structures. Each house was different in some way—different door, or windows, or trim—and most had plants or little bushes carefully tended around their foundations. At this distance, it was hard to tell how big the houses were. Could a boy fit in one? An adult? Were they for animals? If this island were for girls, he would have thought they were dollhouses.
Aidan looked equally puzzled. “What are all them little buildings?”
“That,” Bill answered proudly, “is Cottage Row.”
They trotted down the incline and arrived in front of one of the cottages, this one yellow with white trim. “This here’s ours—Laurel.” Bill slapped the side of the building. “She ain’t the biggest or the fanciest, but she ain’t the humblest either.” Charles could see that the door was just tall enough to admit most of the older boys here, but that any adult would have to stoop to enter, a thought that pleased him.
“Yeah,” Tink added, “the humblest would likely be Deer Horn over yonder,” and he gestured to the second to last cottage on the left. Two boys were prying boards from the side of the house. “That’s the second time this summer they’re tearin’ off a chunk of that place, tryin’ to make it bigger. Why they built it so damn small in the first place is anybody’s guess. You stuff even four boys in there, they’re smellin’ their own farts it’s so close.”
“And thank you, as always, Mr. Tinkham, for that cunning description. Sometimes I do not remember why we let you buy any Laurel shares in the first place,” said Bill, trying not to smile.
“Musta been my good manners, but it’s clear you ain’t got any. You gonna invite these Westons inside, or do they have to cool their heels in the side garden?”
“Right this way,” said Bill as he entered the cottage first.
Inside there was a table and chairs and a small warped bookcase with an oil lamp on top. Pinned on one wall was an array of battleship pictures that looked like they’d come from a magazine. Salt opened windows in the front and back to let the breeze air out the stuffy room. They sat down around the table.
“It’s grand,” said Aidan. “So . . . whaddya do here?”
“Well,” said Bill as he sat and tipped his chair back so that it rested on the wall, “when you have shares in a cottage, that’s where you can always go. The others that have shares is gonna treat you fair, and vice-a versa. Any bad blood between you, we settle here at this table. Some mug outside of Laurel does you wrong, this ain’t a bad place to plot your revenge. Plus we play the other cottages in sports on the weekend.”
“Here’s also ’bout the only decent place to study,” added Tink. “Rule is, if one of us is studyin’, anybody else in here’s gotta shut their trap. You ain’t gonna get that kinda cooperation in the dormitory. And some of them in other cottages come to practice their instrument.”
Charles frowned. “What kinda instrument?”
“The school band?” prompted Bill. “Christ, Bradley didn’t tell you much, huh? This place had the first school band in the country, Bradley told us.”
“You’re awful proud for someone with a tin ear. They wouldn’t let you into the band if you paid ’em,” teased Salt.
“Anyway,” said Bill, glaring at Salt in mock annoyance, “the point is, the cottages is a place you can go when you don’t want to be with all them other mugs.” Bill gestured with his hand toward the window, indicating all the others on the island. “Plus, we have been known to scare up the odd game of poker from time to time.”
“Oh, Mr. Dutton!” Tink called out in falsetto. “You young men aren’t wagerin’ in there with coins or tokens standin’ in for any money, are you? That would be strictly against school rules!” He cooled himself with an invisible fan.
Salt laughed and threw his cap at Tink. “You’re off your nut, Tinkham.”
“I ain’t speakin’ to you, ya traitor,” said Tink as he threw the cap back. “Starlight my arse.”
“Ladies, ladies, let’s keep it civil,” intoned Bill. He turned to Charles. “You see, Salt here owns two shares of Laurel, but he’s puttin’ them back up so he can buy two in Starlight, so he can be with Dec.”
“And I hope you will be happily married for a long time,” said Tink to Salt.
“Shut it, Tinkham. We been over this about twenty times.”
“Can you two pantywaists pipe down for a minute so I can explain this?” Bill tilted his chair back down to the floor.
Aidan interjected, “Ain’t Dec part of Laurel?”
“He’s been on the island the least outta all of us,” Bill explained. “He only got here a little more than a year ago, and by the time we figured out we wanted him, Starlight had already hooked him. They’re all right over there, not a bad cottage if you can’t be in Laurel. Your dormitory mate Poole is over there. But they got shares up for grabs ’cause Will Thayer’s leaving end of this week, and Thayer agreed to sell his shares to Salt.”
Charles thought about this. “So you’re offering the shares to us?”
“Shares is bought, not given. Two dollars a share.”
“Who says we got four dollars?”
“Who says you don’t?”
Tink frowned at Charles. “Ya know, if you’re gonna be—”
Bill cut him off. “Tink, we talked about this. We decided.”
A silence intervened while Charles and Aidan contemplated the situation. They could hear the sounds of the other cottages—laughter in one nearby, nails shrieking as weathered boards were pulled off of Deer Horn, a door opening and slamming shut and boys racing each other back to Bulfinch.
Bill addressed Charles. “Listen, we’re makin’ an exception here for the two of you mugs. Laurel’s always had four members: me, Tink, Sumner, and Salt. But the two of you is blood, and we don’t wanna split ya.”
“Well, I’m in,” declared Aidan.
Charles looked at him with surprise. “We ain’t talked about this, brother.”
“What’s to talk about? It sounds grand.”
“We’ll take him without ya,” said Bill, “if you’re really not interested.”
“No,” said Charles quickly. “I’m in too.”
“Thought so,” said Bill, and then a smile widened his face. “Welcome to Laurel.”
Swim that evening had come early to accommodate chapel services. A damp-headed procession of boys shuffled into the chapel from the hallway, single file, and filled the pews in their pre-established height sequence so that the shortest boys were up front. Mr. Bradley was already there, elevated by a platform and obscured from the chest down by a podium. He arranged papers fussily, smoothing his mustache as he reviewed something from the top page, turning up the wick on the podium’s lamp to see the words more clearly. He looked out over the boys filing in, scanning the crowd until he found the boy he was looking for.
Charles had managed to fall back after count off so that he was next to Aidan, walking on tiptoes to evade detection by the matron. Salt had also swapped with the boy between him and Aidan so the three of them could shuffle along together. Just as Aidan was about to sit down, Dec entered the pew in front of him, bent his right knee, and crossed himself. Before he was even finished, Bradley’s voice boomed out above the din of the boys.
“Master Moore, may I remind you, again, that we do not genuflect in chapel.” Bradley’s hands gripped the side of the podium and he stared down at Dec peevishly.
“’Tis a habit hard to break, sir. Dreadful sorry.” Dec ducked his head in a gesture of respect, but Aidan noticed that his brogue was thicker than he’d heard it so far, right-off-the-boat thick, like Maeve when she was in her cups. He looked up at Bradley, who did not appear satisfied with Dec’s apology.
“One demerit, Master Moore,” said Bradley as he made a note on one of his papers.
Salt leaned in and whispered to Aidan, “Pretty much every week they go through this. Bradley’s bent on squashing the Irish Catholic outta Dec, and Dec is just as bent on stayin’ a Pope-lovin’ Mick. But he does it all meek and respectful-like, so Bradley can’t do nothin’ but slap a demerit on him. Which Dec don’t care about.” The boys sat down and tried to get comfortable on the hard wooden pew. “And Dec goes out of his way to get the best grades in Third Class. Always in the top three. Anytime you can’t find him in his garden, he’s usually over in Starlight hittin’ the books. It’s just another way he’s stickin’ it to Bradley, like showin’ him that he can be as Irish as the Blarney Stone and still be as smart as a whip.” Salt stated this proudly, as if besting Bradley was something he himself had done.
“Don’t he get put down in Purgatory after a while with all them demerits?” asked Aidan. Yesterday, Aidan and Charles had noticed the large chart in the dining hall with a row for every boy and a column for every day of the month, newly updated with their names and the demerits Charles had received for his profanity in front of the matron. Aidan had noticed that Dec had a fair number of marks.
“Most every month he’s almost at the maximum, but he ain’t never gone over. He keeps track. He ain’t gonna give Bradley the pleasure.”
Just then, Bradley cleared his throat several times, and the chatter of the boys died away.
“Good evening. Through the grace of God we gather here tonight . . .” Almost immediately, Bradley’s voice faded into a background murmur for Aidan. Salt had told him as they marched up the hill from evening swim that although on Sunday morning there was a visiting minister from the mainland, it was just the superintendent on Wednesday and Sunday nights, and that Bradley’s nights were generally a mix of biblical lessons on good character and a few school announcements. The trick, Salt had advised sagely, was to perk up for the announcements, which could be something important like a baseball game organized for the weekend or a special dessert for Sunday dinner.
With Aidan’s mind free to wander, it gravitated to Dec’s defiance. Here Aidan sat, raised as Irish as Dec and sitting one pew away, but while Dec would stick his thumb in the eye of anyone trying to tell him that he should cover up his heritage or his religion, Aidan was striving to do just that—deny his upbringing and his church. He thought of Maeve, how she would have liked Dec, would have approved of his resistance, would have been proud of him on behalf of Ireland. What did that make Aidan? Would Maeve be ashamed of what Aidan was doing? He had been so busy since he and Charles had landed on the island two days ago—had it really only been two days?—that he had not had a chance to think much about Maeve. But now he missed her sharply, and he missed their small tenement, where he could be who he was, not have to worry about whether his voice had a hint of brogue or whether he would remember to answer to a name that wasn’t his. Suddenly the burden of being Arthur Weston doubled in weight, the yoke heavy on his shoulders, and he wanted to crawl onto his old straw mattress in the West End and fall asleep, never again to see these ninety-nine boys for whom he had to pretend that he had a brother, didn’t have a mother, and had never put a communion wafer on his tongue.
Aidan sat, trapped in his misery, as Bradley droned on. Eventually the superintendent wrapped up his discussion of Proverbs 22 and paused, clearing his throat as he looked through his papers on the podium. Salt nudged Aidan, and all the boys shifted in their seats. “My trip to the stationers’ in Boston, which was postponed last week due to inclement weather, transpired yesterday, and I have procured the sorely needed new composition books for the Second School and other various school supplies. While there, I also purchased new stationery with which you may write to your families. As usual, you may purchase these items, as well as stamps, at the School Store.”
And then, Aidan started to feel a little better as a plan formed in his head—a plan of which he was pretty sure Charles would not approve.
It wasn’t until right before supper the next day that Charles and Aidan had a chance to meet with the boys down in the Laurel Cottage. Both boys dug in their pockets and tossed crumpled bills on the scarred table. Charles had offered to lend the money to him, but Aidan’s mother had secretly slipped some dollar bills into his baseball mitt before he left, now enabling him to pay his own way.
“All right, then. Tink, as our treasurer, will see that these here funds get to the Laurel account in the School Bank.”
“Or,” said Tink as he pocketed the bills, “I could give it to Webber and ask him for a bottle of somethin’ refreshin’ and some of them girlie postcards.”
“Use your own funds, you deviant,” said Bill.
“Who’s Webber?” asked Aidan.
“Webber,” said Tink dreamily with a goofy smile on his face. “He’s the mug you wish was your best friend.”
“Webber’s the mail carrier,” Salt explained. “First Class, straight as an arrow, which is why he got the job in the first place. He goes over to Boston every day, finds his way over to the big old post office there, and gets our mail, maybe does some other errands for Bradley or the principal.”
“He’s the only boy who gets to leave the island on his own,” Bill added.
“And nobody’s watchin’ him!” Tink leaned forward in his chair and slapped the table. “He could be goin’ anywhere, buyin’ all manner of interestin’ items! Except it’s damn near impossible to convince him to stray from the path. That mug don’t have an adventurous bone in his body. I’ll tell you,” and here Tink tipped his chair back and knitted his arms behind his head, “if I was the mail carrier, I’d show a bit more flexibility toward all us boys trapped on the island.”
“Tink,” said Bill with a smile, “the one job you ain’t never gonna get is mail carrier. Bradley picks someone with a conscience, and as of yet, you ain’t grown one.”
“What Tink and Bill have failed to mention,” Salt interrupted, “is that Webber did indeed bring back some mighty interestin’ picture postcards at the beginning of the summer.”
“Which nobody outside of First Class has been able to see,” Bill shot back. “I don’t believe it. Webber’s got too much pole up his arse to do it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Tink, “Webber don’t have the balls required for such a maneuver.”
“Lester Adams says he’s getting them when Thayer leaves this week and that he’s gonna let Second Class boys see ’em for a fee,” said Salt, sticking to his convictions. “And in one of ’em, the lady forgot to put nothin’ on under her chemise.”
“One of them thin summer chemises? Jesus!” Tink exclaimed, suddenly a believer. “Lester’s startin’ this next week?”
“How much is he gonna charge?” asked Aidan.
Charles scowled and hit Aidan on the arm. “It’s horseshit. Them First Classers is just blowin’ smoke. Don’t believe it.”
“Now I find that downright interesting,” Bill mused. “Presented with the same palaver, we got us two brothers that are drawin’ the opposite conclusion. I think I’m gonna like havin’ the two of you in Laurel.”
“But they ain’t really in yet, of course,” said Tink, nudging Bill.
“Right you are, Tinkham, which brings me to why we are here. There’s a little something that everyone in Laurel has to do in order to be accepted into the fold, as it were.”
Charles frowned and looked at Aidan, who suggested, “Let’s just hear what it is.”
“Wise counsel,” noted Bill. “Okay, here it is: You gotta borrow something from one of the teachers.”
“That don’t sound so hard,” said Charles cautiously.
“And when I say borrow, I mean the kind where the teacher don’t know you’re doin’ the borrowing.”
“Ah.” Charles smiled.
“What are we takin’?” asked Aidan, less pleased than Charles about this turn of events.
“It’s your choice. And don’t worry, you’ll return it after a couple of days. The only thing is, it’s gotta be a personal item, and you gotta steal it at night when they’re sleeping.”
“Sneak into a teacher’s room at night and steal somethin’?” said Aidan. “How many demerits do you get for that?”
“None,” said Tink. “If you don’t get caught.”
“We’ll do it,” said Charles.
“Wait a minute,” began Aidan.
“May I speak with my brother outside for a moment?” Charles stood and grabbed Aidan’s arm.
When they were far enough away from the cottage, Aidan asked, “Ain’t we in enough trouble already? What happened to keeping our noses clean, to being the Weston brothers who ain’t ones to get into a scrape?”
“Yeah, well,” said Charles, kicking a stone out of his path, “that’s pretty dull.”
“Dull? Ain’t that why we came here?”
Charles was silent for a moment as they continued to walk aimlessly in the field. “Sully, this place, there’s things about it that are just capital. My stomach ain’t been so full since I don’t know when, and even sharing a bed with the likes of you, it’s damned comfortable. Plus I ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. Everything is all planned out for you here. But that’s sort of the problem too. There ain’t no choice. Everything is ‘line up’ and ‘count off,’ and the bell rings and you gotta hop to it. March from here to there. No talkin’. You cussed? Demerit. You late to breakfast? Demerit. Last week nobody but nobody told me what to do.”
“Last week you ate somethin’ outta the trash barrel that made you puke.”
“I know, I know—I said this place has got its good points! What I’m sayin’ is, there’s only so much I can walk in a straight line without goin’ off my nut.” Charles thought for a moment. “So back in the cottage, you were plenty interested in payin’ to see that girlie postcard. You think that ain’t in Bradley’s big book of rules? You think there ain’t a demerit waitin’ for you if Matron finds you doin’ that? You ain’t so saintly yourself,” Charles concluded somewhat triumphantly.
Aidan started to defend himself, but then he stopped. Was it really that different? If tomorrow Lester Adams asked for his last dollar to see the girl wearing just her gauzy underclothes, wouldn’t he do it, even if it meant a demerit? Or ten demerits? He knew he would, without a doubt.
“But it’s stealin’,” Aidan said, but with weakening conviction. “That’s what we came here to stop doin’.”
“It ain’t stealin’. We’re gonna give it back. And all the boys here done it.”
They had walked in a circle and were now approaching Laurel again. Charles stopped and made one last appeal. “Back in Boston, you begged me to cut you in on the waterfront work, where we was skulkin’ around in the dark with drunks and whores, stealin’ cash, and every night we coulda ended up in the paddy wagon. Here, Bill’s askin’ you to tiptoe down the hallway and lift a comb off of a chest of drawers, and the worst that could happen is someone makes a little mark with a little fountain pen in a little book.”
“It’s not a little book, it’s a big chart in the dining hall.” But even to Aidan, this sounded ridiculous. “Okay, fine, you win,” he conceded as they reached the cottage door. “And one thing’s for sure: Weren’t never a Farm School boy who was better suited to the task than you.”
They worked it out quickly before the supper bell, picking from scraps of paper in Bill’s hat.
Aidan picked first. “Ya got The Coffin!” proclaimed Tink merrily. Aidan and Charles had already discovered that their teacher Miss Cuffing was known by this name among all the Second Classers.
Charles was next. “Miss Turner!” breathed Tink weakly as he pretended to faint dead away.
“I’ll trade ya,” said Aidan quickly.
“Wouldn’t you like that,” responded Charles with his crooked grin.
Aidan had pointed out Miss Turner to Charles when they were filing in for chapel last night. “Lookit that,” he whispered, possibly to Charles or possibly as an involuntary utterance, as he saw her for the first time. Dressed in the same drab fashion as the other female staff, she nevertheless stood out to Aidan like a glowing coal in a pile of ash. The dim kerosene light that made unflattering shadows on the other faces only served to highlight Lydia Turner’s high cheekbones and flawless skin. Walking behind The Coffin, who stood nearly six feet, Miss Turner was diminutive and graceful, gliding while the others shuffled, arranging her hands prettily in her lap when she sat, in contrast to the others who shifted and scratched.
“She’s a mite better lookin’ than The Coffin, huh?” mused Charles before he was distracted by the matron, who was admonishing two young boys in the front pew.
“A mite?” Aidan was once again baffled by Charles’s lackluster response to the fairer sex. After several weeks working with Charles down by the waterfront, he could understand the lack of attraction to the women there. All the cleavage there that had so mesmerized Aidan had lost much of its appeal when he began to appreciate the tired faces under too much paint. But here, how could Charles, almost a year older than Aidan, fail to appreciate Miss Turner?
“It’s settled, then,” said Bill, donning his cap. “Tonight you both do the deed. Right after breakfast tomorrow, we all meet at Laurel, and you show us what you got.”
“What about the night watchman?” asked Aidan.
“You gotta wait him out,” said Tink. “He leaves sometime after eleven to do the rounds outside.”
“Good luck on ya, Brothers Weston,” said Tink. He slapped them both on the back and made for the door with Salt behind him.
“Hold up, one more thing,” said Bill. “After dinner tomorrow, we’re all here studying for the test.”
Charles frowned. “Ain’t that more like an individual choice?”
“Not at Laurel. You’re representin’ our cottage now, and Laurel don’t have no eedjits in the ranks.”
Aidan grinned and put a hand on Charles’s shoulder. “Laurel’s gonna be good for you, brother.”