The Refectory Manager

The refectory . . . A place to nourish the soul. A place to share the savory comestibles, the sweet confections, the salty condiments of the things that matter. A place to ruminate the cud of politics. A place to rant on the railings of religion. A place to arrange the flowers of sanguine beauty. A place to pause in the repose of shelter. Welcome, my friend. The Refectory Manager

My Photo
Name:
Location: College Place, Washington, United States

Friday, February 24, 2012

Howard

There was the sound of silence in that classroom. Except for the noise of the pounding of thirty or so fear-driven hearts.

The minister, with his Brylcreem coiffed hair, his rimless glasses fogged over from condensation resulting from frigid glass hitting that blast of heated air, his taking off his black great-coat thus revealing the garb of his only dull black suit and that yellowed-white shirt providing background to his shiny black tie, entered. But there was an expectation that was different this time. He had come before, often. But now, there was an electrified tension that something was dreadfully wrong. Mrs. Burgess*, the teacher of the upper-grade room of the two- room parochial school was now hovering near the back of the room. The minister singled out one of the Hitchbothom boys and ushered him into the little office off to the side of the classroom.

Silence. What seemed to be forever.

Crack!  

The shriek of pain!

Crack!

A cry that sounded nothing like what an 8th grader boy should ever emit.

Howard was a good looking kid. No facial pimples. His blond hair combed over from the part on the right side of his head, originally originating from his left-handed mother. Typical of him, he was wearing his rough dark-green work pants, a variations-on-the-theme-of-red plaid work shirt and heavy leather boots. He was usually adorned with a shy, sly grin, and for the most part, congenial. His father was a long-distance trucker. Recently his dad had taken his two boys on a trip across Canada, from Calgary to Montreal and back. This was in 1959, still a time of two-lane inter-provincial highway travel. Howard provided an oral report of their adventure to the class. He saw that having to get-up-in-front-of-the-class thing as his punishment for skipping so much school. My recollection from his oral report, was his excitement in describing the restaurant cuisine that they had discovered somewhere back east, the novel presentation of “half-chicken in a basket.” A serviette lined basket holding a battered and deep-fried half-chicken accompanied with a mound of chips [what Canuks call French Fries], and a buttered dinner roll. This before the onslaught of ubiquitous COL McFish’n Chips. Howard, and his younger brother Frank, were already saddled with the reputation of being juvenile delinquents. There had been run-ins with the law, usually involved with petty thievery and shop lifting. A police officer, on more than one occasion, had visited the school. Even I got sucked in, unwittingly once, as the recipient of a mechanical coin-changer device that Frank had snitched from a Calgary Transit bus driver. Frank wanted the coins. I was enthralled with the device. Then there was the time, years before, when Frank snitched a Dinky-Toy truck from a display in Chesney’s Hardware on the corner of Center Street north and 16th Ave., tucked it against his belly under his shirt, feigned a stomach ache, and bolted out the door. 

I had admired Howard. He had a magnetism about himself. Frank was my friend. My father and Henry Wells, a young-adult from the church, took a bunch of us boys on an over-night camping trip out at Priddis one Saturday night. It was cold. We were so ill-equipped. We camped on a gravel bar at the side of Fish Creek. The water was low, cold, but inviting enough that two or three boys wanted to go swimming. Howard stripped naked. I had never seen a boy like that before.

Crack! Again! That curdling scream of pain!

Followed quickly. By seven more.

The minister came out of the side room. Marched to the back of the classroom, grabbed his coat and abruptly left.

Howard emerged.

His face contorted in pain. Flushed. Tears streaming down his cheeks. Wet stains on his plaid shirt. His eyes were red and swollen. Snot dripping from his nostrils. 

His right hand was purple, swollen and blistered. He gently cradled it in his other hand.

Somehow, through the horror of his public shame and humiliation, he found his desk, and slipped mercifully into his seat. 

I had turned around in my seat to look. His head was held high. He was now just quietly sobbing, shaking, whimpering, gasping for air. He cradled his swollen hand in his other hand, resting them both on the surface of his desk. He made no attempt to wipe tears or snot from his face. Fear gripped me. That portrait of acute distress is an image that haunts me to this day.

We had all seen the strap. A near inflexible band of leather about 2 inches wide, 18 inches long and a quarter of an inch thick. We had all been told that it could and would be used if necessary. My father, at the end of my 5th summer and my getting ready to start first grade, in his assumed role as a supper-table jester, told me “Every kid gets the strap the first day of school!” For the record, I did get the strap from my father on that first day of school, but that was another story. Now, nine years later, Mrs. Burgess, being the mealy frump that she was, had called the minister to execute the corporal punishment. That strap was the implementation of discipline.

What Howard had done, I have no idea. I had heard my father say more than once, that those Hitchbothom boys belonged in a reform school, not the Seventh-day Adventist church school. But I liked them. Howard was intriguing. An aura of the risqué enveloped both he and Frank. The subtle admonitions to the rest of us that we would become tainted with sin if we associated with them. Even so, Frank was my friend. In a previous year, while we were both still in the lower-grade classroom, I ached for him as the teacher in that room snapped three yardsticks, in her fit of uncontrolled rage, over Frank's head while we all watched spellbound in horror.

But on this winter day, ten cracks of a leather strap on the palm of a firmly-held outstretched hand. Ten curdling screams of agony. Thirty some terrorized kids in the classroom of a church school. A cowering teacher providing no comfort, solace, or explanation. 

Howard, undoubtedly had been guilty of something, now a publicly inflicted and humiliated young teen boy. 

The Old Testament lesson of mercy and justice inflicted on us all. 

Howard, the image you embedded in my memory that day is that you were still holding your head high.

The Refectory Manager 


*All names have been changed.

Labels: , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home