Night Shift(61)

The next page was a disciplinary history, the yellow sheet. The Milford sheet was white with a black border, and it was depressingly well filled. Lawson had been in a hundred kinds of trouble.

He turned the next page, glanced down at a school photo of Robert Lawson, then looked again. Terror suddenly crept into the pit of his belly and coiled there, warm and hissing.

Lawson was staring antagonistically into the camera, as if posing for a police mug shot rather than a school photographer. There was a small strawberry birthmark on his chin.

By period seven, he had brought all the civilized rationalizations into play. He told himself there must be thousands of kids with red birthmarks on their chins. He told himself that the hood who had stabbed his brother that day sixteen long dead years ago would now be at least thirty-two.

But, climbing to the third floor, the apprehension remained. And another fear to go with it: This is how you felt when you were cracking up. He tasted the bright steel of panic in his mouth.

The usual group of kids was horsing around the door of Room 33, and some of them went in when they saw Jim coming. A few hung around, talking in undertones and grinning. He saw the new boy standing beside Chip Osway. Robert Lawson was wearing blue jeans and heavy yellow tractor boots - all the rage this year.

'Chip, go on in.

'That an order?' He smiled vacuously over Jim's head.

'Sure.'

'You flunk me on that test?'

'Sure.'

'Yeah, that's . . .' The rest was an under-the-breath mumble.

Jim turned to Robert Lawson. 'You're new,' he said. 'I just wanted to tell you how we run things around here.'

'Sure, Mr Norman.' His right eyebrow was split with a small scar, a scar Jim knew. There could be no mistake. It was crazy, it was lunacy, but it was also a fact. Sixteen years ago, this kid had driven a knife into his brother.

Numbly, as if from a great distance, he heard himself beginning to outline the class rules and regulations. Robert Lawson hooked his thumbs into his garrison belt, listened, smiled, and began to nod, as if they were old friends.

'Jim?'

'Hmmm?'

'Is something wrong?'

'No.'

'Those Living with Lit boys still giving you a hard time?'

No answer.

'Jim?'

'No.'

'Why don't you go to bed early tonight?' But he didn't.

The dream was very bad that night. When the kid with the strawberry birthmark stabbed his brother with his knife, he called after Jim: 'You next, kid. Right through the bag.'

He woke up screaming.

He was teaching Lord of the Flies that week, and talking about symbolism when Lawson raised his hand.

'Robert?' he said evenly.

'Why do you keep starin' at me?' Jim blinked and felt his mouth go dry.

'You see somethin' green? Or is my fly unzipped?' A nervous titter from the class.

Jim replied evenly: 'I wasn't staring at you, Mr Lawson. Can you tell us why Ralph and Jack disagreed over -'You were starin' at me.'

'Do you want to talk about it with Mr Fenton?' Lawson appeared to think it over. 'Naw.' 'Good. Now can you tell us why Ralph and Jack -' 'I didn't read it. I think it's a dumb book.' Jim smiled tightly. 'Do you, now? You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you. Now can anyone else tell me why they disagreed over the existence of the beast?'

Kathy Slavin raised her hand timidly, and Lawson gave her a cynical once-over and said something to Chip Osway. The words leaving his lips looked like 'nice tits'. Chip nodded.

'Kathy?'

'Isn't it because Jack wanted to hunt the beast?'

'Good.' He turned and began to write on the board. At the instant his back was turned, a grapefruit smashed against the board beside his head.

He jerked backward and wheeled around. Some class members laughed, but Osway and Lawson only looked at Jim innocently.

Jim stooped and picked up the grapefruit. 'Someone,' he said, looking towards the back of the room, 'ought to have this jammed 'down his goddamn throat.'

Kathy Slavin gasped.

He tossed the grapefruit in the wastebasket and turned back to the blackboard.

He opened the morning paper, sipping his coffee, and saw the headline about halfway down. 'God!' he said, splitting his wife's easy flow of morning chatter. His belly felt suddenly filled with splinters -'Teen-Age Girl Falls to Her Death: Katherine Slavin, a seventeen-year-old junior at Harold Davis High School, either fell or was pushed from the roof of her downtown apartment house early yesterday evening. The girl, who kept a pigeon coop on the roof, had gone up with a sack of feed, according to her mother.

'Police said an unidentified woman in a neighbouring development had seen three boys running across the roof at 6.45 p.m., just minutes after the girl's body (continued page 3)-'

'Jim, was she one of yours?' But he could only look at her mutely.

Two weeks later, Simmons met him in the hall after the lunch bell with a folder in his hand, and Jim felt a terrible sinking in his belly.

'New student,' he said flatly to Simmons. 'Living with Lit.'

Sim's eyebrows went up. 'How did you know that?'

Jim shrugged and held his hand out for the folder.