The sophomores nodded in unison, gulping, as if they had rehearsed their response.
Archie nodded toward the black box.
"This is what I have to face after every assignment," Archie said. Then, wryly: "To keep me honest." Looking at Bunting now. "This is what you'll have to put up with, Bunting, if you step into my shoes."
The sophomores regarded the box warily. The box was legendary at Trinity and had been seen in public on only one occasion.
As Carter held the box reverentially aloft now, Archie said: "Whenever an assignment is given out, I have to face the box. There are six marbles in there, five of them white, one black. If I pull out a white marble, no sweat. The assignment stands. But if I pull out the black, I have to take on the assignment myself. Some creep years ago came up with this concept. It's supposed to keep an Assignor from getting too fancy, too dangerous, if he knows there's a chance he'd be carrying out the assignment."
Carter and Obie approached Archie, Carter extending the box, Obie holding the key. The box was an old jewelry container some nameless student years ago had stolen from his mother's bedroom.
"In this particular case" — Archie continued his explanation to the sophomores—"if I draw the black marble, I have to take Bannister's place in the audience. Which isn't bad at all. There have been worse risks."
Archie laughed again, this time with obvious delight Obie wondered, as usual, what kind of blood ran in Archie's veins. Or was it blood at all?
"Look at Obie," Archie said.
Obie almost dropped the key. Uncanny, as if Archie could reach into his mind.
"Obie's hoping the black marble will turn up. He never used to hope that. But now he does." As he spoke he reached up and shoved his hand into the box, swiftly, without hesitation. In almost the same motion, he withdrew his hand and tossed a white marble in the air, the whiteness glinting in the bulb's stark glow, and caught it effortlessly as it came down. In all his time as the Assigner, Archie had never drawn the black marble.
"Sorry, Obie," he said, laughing.
Obie realized that somehow he and Archie had become enemies. He didn't know when it had happened or why. He knew only that something existed between them now that hadn't been there before. As Carter banged the gavel, adjourning the meeting, Obie shivered in the heat of the storage room and realized that he had just gone five minutes without thinking of Laurie Gundarson.
Everything had been going along smoothly, life returning to normal, the horror and the betrayal receding and diminishing — and then the telephone call came.
He had started running again, flying over the streets, up and down the hills, moving with easy, fluid grace, invigorated by the chilly morning air, eyes dazzled by the sun setting fire to eastern windows. A collie that belonged to someone on Spruce Street had taken to running beside him, and he felt a sense of kinship with the animal. Often he and the collie were the only living things on the streets at that hour.
His father was happy to see him running again. "Good, Roland, good," his father said, meeting him at the end of the run as he departed for work.
Drawing up beside his father, breathing deeply, the air sweet in his lungs, his moist body cooling in the morning breeze, the Goober felt great.
"You see, Roland? Time heals all things," his father said, waving the lunch pail as he made off down the street.
His father was a very formal man. He didn't believe in nicknames; he never called his son the Goober or Goob as others did. The Goober watched him walking off to work, erect, head held high, and was overcome with an emotion he could not identify. Love? Affection? He wasn't quite certain. Maybe it's what a son felt for his father when the father had helped the son through a bad time of his life. Time heals all things. .
The Goober lived five miles from Trinity, too far to run, especially with books and other stuff to carry. He ran part of the way, though, passing up the bus stop nearest his home and boarding a bus downtown near the library. This bus didn't carry as many Trinity students as the other, which was fine with Goober. He still planned to transfer to Monument High next fall; his father had frowned at a midyear transfer and had asked him to stick it out until June. But although he felt much better about Trinity these days, the Goober still didn't mix much with the other guys. No problem: He was a freshman and hardly knew anybody. Trinity drew students not only from Monument but from the entire area, and only a few had enrolled from St. Jude's Parochial School, where Goober had gone. Anyway, he had decided to play it cool until June. The fourteen-year-old heart is a marvelous thing, his father had said. It can be ruptured but it does not really break, no matter what the poets say.
The Goober wasn't sure whether his heart had ruptured or broken completely during those terrible chocolate days last fall. All he knew was that a numbness had finally seeped through him, like a novocaine of the spirit. But time and the running had also helped him emerge from the bad days. He still felt like a traitor, however, and he avoided, whenever possible, Archie Costello and Obie and the other Vigils. He also avoided Room Nineteen, even though it sometimes meant a long detour through the halls and stairways. Room Nineteen and Brother Eugene. The chocolate days and Jerry Renault. Under control now, he passed his hours at school without undue panic or depression. He could do nothing about Brother Leon, of course, and had learned to live with his presence. Leon popped into the classrooms now and then, turning up when he was least expected, substituting for teachers on occasion or observing the class and teacher from the rear of the room. The Goober felt he had scored a personal triumph recently: He had met Leon in the corridor and was able to look into those milky moist eyes without feeling nausea gathering in his stomach.
And then the telephone call.
He was alone in the house when the phone rang: his father at work, his mother out shopping. He picked up the receiver.
"Roland?"
For a moment he thought his father was on the line. And panicked slightly. His father never called from work. An accident? No one else but his father called him Roland.
"Yes," he said, warily, tentatively.
"This is Jerry Renault's father."
The words echoed in the Goober's ears as if they'd been shouted, bellowed.
"Oh, yes," Goober heard himself say. He had met Jerry's father only once. The night they had admitted Jerry to Monument Hospital. His memory of the man had been blurred by the incidents of that night, plus the tears that kept welling in his eyes. "How's Jerry?" the Goober asked now. Forced himself to ask. Afraid of the answer. Am I being a traitor again? he wondered.
"Well, he's home," Mr." Renault said, voice quiet and subdued, as if he were speaking from a sickroom where the patient must not be disturbed.
"Oh," the Goober said. Stupid, unable to say anything more. He felt the old November panic again, the novocaine wearing off, the pain coming back.
Jerry Renault had spent several weeks at Monument Hospital before being transferred to a hospital in Boston. A few weeks later Mr. Renault had called to report that the boy had gone to Canada to recuperate with relatives. "I think the change of scene will do him good," Mr. Renault had said. And then had added: "I hope," his voice filled with a tone of impending doom. The Goober had not seen Jerry since those first days at the hospital.
"I think it might do Jerry some good to see old friends," Mr. Renault said now. "He always spoke very warmly of you, Roland." Pause, then: "The Goober, isn't it?" Then hurried on: "At any rate, I'm hoping that seeing some of his friends, people like yourself, will help him."
"You mean he's not okay?" Goober asked. And thought: Don't answer that. He didn't want to hear the answer.
"I think he needs to get adjusted after being away so long. He has to pick up the pieces of his life." Was he choosing his words carefully? "That's why I think a friend like yourself can help."