Chapter 39
The medical center in Bingham tended to Anthony Marshall’s cuts and bruises, and the doctor on duty advised Elgot to make sure the boy got bed rest and stayed warm. Tylenol would help with any pain.
“That was a nasty beating he took,” said the doctor.
“Nothing’s broken, but it was mean. It doesn’t fall under the mandated reporter law because I don’t believe it’s a question of abuse or neglect.
However, if another kid at the school was responsible, you may have issues that need to be addressed. ”
“Did he tell you who did it?” Elgot asked.
“Nope. You?”
Elgot shook his head. He turned to Sadlier, who was seated nearby.
“Tim, are you sure Anthony didn’t say anything while I was absent?”
“No names,” said Sadlier, which, while not a lie, wasn’t the whole truth either.
Anthony hadn’t spoken again to either of them on the ride down to Bingham, and he obviously hadn’t mentioned anything about dead boys to the staff at the center.
Dead boys didn’t deliver beatings, but Sadlier was no longer certain even of that, because those coffee beans on his kitchen table hadn’t arranged themselves into letters unaided.
Sad-lier. Saaad-lier.
A nurse escorted Anthony from the treatment room.
He was wearing the clothes that Elgot had brought for him.
Some of the color was back in his face, but he still looked shaken.
Sadlier returned to the term the medic had used to describe the attack: mean.
That word immediately brought to mind one person at Spero, which was Leonard Levesque, whom Sadlier had once caught killing hummingbirds with a slingshot.
It was just like him to be unsatisfied with delivering a simple beating and add cruelty to the mix.
Elgot might have been a jackass on occasion, but he wasn’t a fool with it, so he must have been thinking along the same lines.
Why, then, had Anthony talked to Sadlier of a dead boy?
Shock might explain it, or perhaps there were two distinct components involved here, only one of them being Leonard Levesque.
The nurse produced the blanket and Sadlier’s coat, both neatly folded. Sadlier took them from her. They smelled faintly of Spero soap. Elgot asked Anthony if he was good to go. Anthony nodded.
“Well,” said Elgot, “let’s head back, then.”
Sadlier noticed that he didn’t touch the boy, not even to pat him on the shoulder.
He might have been worried about hitting a tender spot, even lightly, though Spero also had any number of rules regarding appropriate contact between staff and students.
It might not have occurred to Elgot that what the boy needed most was a reassuring hug, because Spero wasn’t a haven for hugs.
Not for the first time, Sadlier speculated that were he a father, the last place he’d send a kid was a place like Spero, because no child was going to be better off by the end of it.
Sadlier followed Elgot and Anthony out of the medical center.
Once again, the boy got in the back and Elgot took the passenger seat.
Sadlier put the folded blanket and coat beside Anthony in case he got cold again, even with the heater blasting.
Sadlier started the engine and turned on the radio to give them something to listen to on the ride back, but Elgot immediately muted the volume.
“Anthony,” said Elgot, “you have to tell us what happened.”
For Sadlier, there was a performative aspect to how Elgot spoke. Had Elgot and the boy been alone, the teacher might not have raised the issue, and not only because he already had a good idea who the culprit might be.
“I fell,” said the boy.
“You fell, then locked yourself in with a block of wood?”
“I fell,” the boy repeated.
Elgot glanced at Sadlier and shrugged.
I tried. What more can I do?
Elgot restored the volume. They drove on.
At Spero, Elgot and Sadlier watched Anthony return to his dorm. He’d be alone there, because the rest of the kids were already in class. After that, he’d have the weekend to rest. By Monday, he might be okay again.
“Leonard Levesque,” said Sadlier. “That’s who did it. No one else here is that kind of vicious.”
“Unless, or until, Anthony opens up, let’s not go pointing fingers,” said Elgot. “I’d better bring Mr Santopietro up to speed. You ought to have something to eat. You never did get that breakfast.”
Elgot said nothing more. Sadlier watched him go. He looked to the dorm and saw Anthony at the window. Sadlier gave him a small wave, but the boy did not respond, only stepped away from the glass.
Sadlier went to the kitchen, where the women were preparing lunch. They asked him what had happened and he told them what he knew for sure.
“Some of those boys are no better than animals,” said Lizbeth Cyr, the older of the two.
“Lower than animals,” said her colleague, Jeannie Merrill. “No animal would torment one of its own like that.”
She told Sadlier that she’d put a tray of food together for Anthony and take it to the dorm: cold cuts, cookies, soda, and candy too, things he could choose to eat now or save for later.
Sadlier said he thought that would be much appreciated.
He commenced scavenging from the refrigerator, but Lizzie Cyr made him sit down at the small staff table while she fried up bacon and eggs, and Merrill poured him a cup of coffee that she made fresh, not poured from the Mr Coffee stewing since breakfast.
“Which one of them did it, do you think?” Jeannie asked.
“The boy didn’t say.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
She was sharp, Jeannie. They both were, country sharp, and wasted on their menfolk in Sadlier’s view.
“Levesque, maybe,” he conceded.
“Will he own up?”
“No.”
“So what will Mr S do?”
“What can he do?” Lizzie intervened. “He can’t punish someone without proof, not even a little shit like Levesque.”
Sadlier thought Santopietro might have a word with Levesque anyway, and without openly accusing him, let him know a line had been crossed that must not be crossed again.
The women left Sadlier to eat in peace, or what would have to pass for it, and only when he had finished and was putting his silverware and plate in the dishwasher did they talk again.
“They’re planning another search for Mallory Norton,” said Lizzie.
Sadlier looked up.
“Who, the police?”
“No. Bennett Small is organizing it.”
Bennett Small owned The Plains’ sole convenience store, which also functioned as a make-do diner and social hub, thanks to four tables and some mismatched chairs.
At election time, Small’s was also where folks in The Plains went to cast their vote, although elections no longer represented opportunities to be sociable with one’s neighbors, and Sadlier feared they never would again.
“When are they going?”
“Sunday, sometime after nine.”
“I can spare a few hours,” said Sadlier.
“Then we’ll see you there.”
They were looking for a body, of course, and had been for a while.
But if the Norton girl was out there, she deserved to be brought back and given a proper burial.
She was one of their own. As for the parents, Sadlier wasn’t a believer in closure, and only someone who didn’t understand the reality of suffering and loss would ever be foolish enough to use the word.
But a burial would allow them to mourn the girl, and give them somewhere to visit while they kept on mourning her, as they would for the remainder of their days.
Sadlier went to his toolshed and pulled together the equipment to replace the lock on the door of the ablution block.
Afterward, he’d try to catch a minute with Mr Santopietro and hear what he had to say about the morning’s events.
Depending on the outcome of that conversation, Sadlier might have to ruminate further on his future.
He loved The Plains—it was the only home he’d ever known—but he wasn’t confident he could spend many more winters there.
He had a small sum of money saved, and the house was now in his name.
Property in The Plains was hard to dispose of, so he didn’t hold out much hope for a windfall, but he knew of people who’d fit out family homes for use as camps by hunters and folks from away.
So he might not even have to sell up to make money, just settle for a semiregular income depending on the season.
If he found himself a place in Skowhegan, where there were bars, stores, restaurants, and neighbors you could holler to from your front porch—hell, even women who might be lonely enough to settle for one of the scrapings from the bottom of life’s barrel—he’d be close enough to maintain the property.
He could even hold on to his job at Spero, if he wanted to—
But he didn’t want to. He’d reached that conclusion as he watched Anthony Marshall being helped into the examination room by a nurse.
First Stewie Daigle during COVID, then Scott Theriault, and now Anthony Marshall.
Okay, the last of them hadn’t died, but if he’d been trapped in that block in winter instead of fall, he might well have done.
Sadlier wished to have no more part of it.
Spero was a sad, bad place, and if he remained there it would destroy him—not quickly, but slowly, like a cancer, leaving him a husk.
So he’d listen to what Mr Santopietro had to say about Leonard Levesque, and if Sadlier wasn’t happy with what he heard, he might point out that a decent kid like Scott Theriault shouldn’t have ended up drowned in the wilderness and the school should have done better by him, just as it should be doing better by all these kids.
If he wasn’t fired on the spot, he’d lay the groundwork for his exit and hand in his notice come summer, if not before.
With his toolbox in one hand and a new lock in the other, Sadlier returned to the ablution block.
He’d disabled the old lock entirely before leaving for the medical center, and Elgot had left instructions that the boys were to use the toilets in the main school building until it was repaired, so Sadlier knew it was unlikely that anyone had been in the ablution block since.
He placed a padded mat on the ground by the door—his knees were not what they once were—and went to work, so that shortly thereafter the facilities had a new lock that didn’t jam.
To be sure, Sadlier tried the knob a couple of times from both sides.
Once he was satisfied, he filled a bucket with water and bleach to clean the area under the sink where Anthony Marshall was discovered, because the boy had smelled sour when Sadlier picked him up.
Sadlier kept the door open so he had more light to see by and commenced mopping, only to hear what sounded like pebbles scatter across the tiles.
He stopped what he was doing and squatted to take a closer look.
The pebbles were small and dark, not even the size of a fingernail, and all of a similar size.
He gathered a few, held them in the palm of his hand, and stared.
Not pebbles. Beans.
Coffee beans.