I turned away and moved to a public phone. I put some coins in the slot and dialed a number at random.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s me. Is that you?”
“Who is this? What do you want?”
“Never mind that,” I said. “How are you?”
“Who is this?”
“I told you. It’s me.”
I could still feel the Towering Inferno’s eyes on me. I knew what to do: I shook my head vehemently and laughed a loud, unnatural laugh before pausing to nod sagely, as though the person on the other end of the phone had made a funny yet offensive comment that on further reflection proved wise. I turned casually to face her, but her back was turned. I felt a tiny thorn prick my ego.
It was getting dark. Everyone wordlessly agreed that loitering on the station platform had gone stale- until tomorrow- and when the next train arrived, we all filed in.
At the other end of the packed carriage there was a commotion, and a small crowd formed a circle- bad news for someone. Circles of people always are. Honestly, sometimes I think human beings should be prohibited from forming groups. I’m no fascist, but I wouldn’t mind at all if we had to live out our lives in single file.
I heard happy cheers and joyous laughter. That meant someone was suffering. My heart felt sick for the poor sucker. Thankfully Charlie was home sick and Brett was dead, so whoever they were humiliating this time had nothing to do with me. Still, I pushed through the crowd to see who it was.
Mr. White.
The students had torn the hat off his head and were waving it in the air, asserting their power over him. Mr. White was trying to get the hat back. Ordinarily even the most rebellious young crackhead can’t physically assault a teacher- emotionally and psychologically, sure; physically, no- but Mr. White was a teacher made evil by gossip, and that made him fair game.
“Hey!” I shouted.
Everyone looked over at me. This was my first stand against the bullies, against the ruthlessness of the human pack animal, and I was determined not to disappoint myself. But then four things happened in quick succession.
The first was that I noticed the person holding the hat was the Towering Inferno.
Second, my shouting “Hey!” was interpreted not as a heroic “Hey” but a “Hey, throw me the hat.”
She threw it to me.
I caught it with my cheek. It rolled on the floor, toward the door. Mr. White trudged through the carriage after it.
The third thing that happened was that the Towering Inferno yelled out, “Get it, Jasper!”
She knew my name. Oh my God. She knew my name. I ran like a maniac for the hat. I grabbed it. Mr. White stopped midcarriage.
Then the fourth thing, the final painful event, was her delicate high-pitched voice commanding me again: “Throw it out!” I was under a spell. I half pushed open the train door, enough for my hand to hang outside the carriage. The brim of the hat danced a waltz with the wind. Mr. White’s face had frozen with a sort of forced nonchalance. I felt sick.
Sick. Sick. Sick. Self-hatred was at an all-time high. Why was I doing this? Don’t do it, Jasper. Don’t do it. Don’t.
I did it.
I let go of the hat. The wind picked it up and threw it out of sight. Mr. White ran toward me. I bolted for the door at the end of the carriage. Rain smacked me in the face. I opened the door of the next carriage, ran in, and closed it behind me. He tried to follow, but I blocked the door with my foot. He stood in the rain on the tiny rattling platform between the two carriages, trying to force it open. I tied the strap from my bag to the door handle, held it down with my other foot, and let physics do the work. In no time he was drenched to the bone. He swore through the glass. Finally he gave up and turned back. The others had blocked the other door. It rained harder. He turned back to me, banged on the glass door again. I knew if I let him in, he’d have me for lunch. He was stuck. It rained even harder, a stiff hard rain. Mr. White stopped screaming and just looked at me with old-dog eyes. I felt something in me sink, but there was nothing I could do. At the next stop we both watched the Towering Inferno step onto the platform. Through the dusty window, she gave me a smile that said, “I’ll never forget what you did for me, Jasper Dean, Destroyer of Hats.”
The following morning I walked through the long, airless hallways and silent stairwells into the quadrangle for a special assembly. The headmaster stepped up to the podium. “Yesterday afternoon, our English teacher, Mr. White, was terrorized by students from this school!” A murmur snaked through the crowd. The headmaster continued his diatribe. “I would like the students involved to please step forward.” Everyone looked around to see if anyone was owning up. I looked around too. “Right. We’ll just have to find you. And we will find you. You are all dismissed. For now.”
I walked away thinking that my time at this school was almost up, and it wasn’t twenty minutes later in the science lab that the bell rang and rang and rang, and I heard that old delighted cry of “Someone’s jumped! Someone’s jumped!” I ran out of the classroom while the bell kept on ringing. It was the suicide bell- I think we were the first school in the country to have one; now they’re all the rage. Like inquisitive sheep, all the students ran to the cliff edge to see, and I had not just a bad feeling but the worst one, that feeling of dread, because I knew who it was and that I had put him there myself.
I peered over the cliff edge and saw Mr. White’s slumped body thrashed by the waves on the rocks.
That afternoon it was as if I were looking at life through a rolled-up newspaper. I had drained the remaining dregs of innocence from my heart. I had put a man in the ground, or at least aided his descent, and I loathed myself into the future and beyond. Well, why shouldn’t I? You shouldn’t forgive all your trespasses. You can’t always go too easy on yourself. In fact, in some circumstances, forgiving yourself is unforgivable.
I was sitting behind the gym with my head in my hands when a school prefect, a sort of benign Hitler youth, came up and told me the principal wanted to see me. Well, that’s that, I thought. I walked to the principal’s office and found that his pliable face had been shaped into a picture of weariness.
“Mr. Silver,” I said.
“I understand you were a friend of Brett’s.”
“That’s right.”
“I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind reading a psalm at Mr. White’s funeral.”
Me? The murderer reading a psalm at the funeral of his victim? As the principal went on telling me about my role in the funeral proceedings, I wondered if this weren’t some sort of clever punishment, because I felt transparent sitting there, maybe even more see-through than that- I felt like the site of an archaeological dig, my old clay pot thoughts revealing all about the civilization that had ruled there in its ignorant and doomed way.
I said that I would be honored to read a psalm at the funeral.
What else was I going to say?
That night I read it over. It had everything you’d expect in a psalm: heavy-handedness, hit-you-over-the-head metaphors, and Old World symbolism. I tore it out of the Bible thinking: I’m not lending my voice to this oppressive nonsense. Instead I chose a passage from one of Dad’s favorite books, one he’d horrified me with a couple of years earlier, one that had seared my brain. It was a passage by James Thomson from his book of poetry, The City of Dreadful Night.
The morning of the funeral, I was called again to the principal’s office. I went thinking he wanted to go over the running order of the event. I was surprised to see the Towering Inferno waiting outside his office, leaning against the wall. So we’d been fingered for the crime after all. It’s just as well, I thought.