The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [103]
“You said lick it up, Brother.”
“That’s what I said. Are you about to defy me?” Moody clenched his thin pale fingers into a fist and then unfurled them into their individual crab-leg glory again. “Come on now, Mr. Mullen. It’s not like it’s anything new to you. Every time I turn around I see you with half your fist up your snotty little nose excavating some morsel out of there. Lick it up!”
Smalley stayed immobile on his hands and knees vainly hoping that this moment would just go away. He stared up at Brother Moody’s pinched, bitter face and then glanced down at the glob of snot on the parquet. Before he could look up again, Brother Moody had grabbed his hair and pushed his face against the floor. “Lick it up!”
In the cupola of the bell tower two resting pigeons raised their heads off their breasts and looked up suddenly. There was a disturbance somewhere within the air. They roused themselves and flew out of the tower into the light southwest wind that would take them to the canal.
As Brother Moody rubbed Smalley Mullen’s face in his own snot, an accelerated shudder ran through the whole school. In one tremulous instant the sense memory of a hundred years relieved itself in every brick and lintel, vibrated through every cracked course of mortar, hummed through every pipe, tap, and cistern, fizzled simultaneously along every copper wire and into every clunky Bakelite switch and socket, tiptoed along every beam and rafter, and finally sighed itself out through every plughole, urinal, toilet bowl, and drain into the sewers below the school and out to sea. In that bewildering instant the school reverberated to the lofty words of Thomas Breen as he laid the foundation stone one hundred years before:
We are gathered together on this auspicious day to lay not just the foundation stone of one school but the cornerstone of a network of schools throughout this land. This State, with the able help of the men of the cloth, will cherish each and every child and provide them with an education that will be the envy of the world. We are embarking on a noble endeavor. We have set our sights high and we will not fail. We will not fail those who toiled and sacrificed to make this endeavor possible, nor will we fail those to come whose future formation has been entrusted to us. We will be tireless in our work to produce good citizens, good scholars, and good servants of the Lord Our God.
With a lurch of tired despair the school settled heavily on its foundations, and the foundation stone bearing Breen’s words cracked right down the middle and scowled at the world with its shattered visage.
The inner tremors of the school were replaced by a silence new and absolute. The institution had given up its central governing spirit. The will to endure had left it. It stood like a house of cards, held up only by bad workmanship, the haphazard arrangement of substandard building materials, and a kind of rigor mortis. Every weakness, every crack and fissure, every stress point and loose shingle had only to will itself and it could put an end to its sorry lot of bearing witness to the daily enactment of a vision twisted and thwarted that now blighted everyone and everything in its ambit.
There was an imperceptible shift within the tower and the ornamental rosette that adorned the top of the four-sided cupola let go of its hold and dropped. It hit the beam supporting the bell, and broke into two pieces, each of which crashed against the bell, bringing forth two jagged staccato peals before falling on down to smash into powder at the bottom of the spiral stairs.
The humming of the bell died down and was replaced by a gentle but constant pitter-patter as first tiny then slightly more substantial flakes of paint and plaster drifted onto the bell. The tower was softly filled with each of these sounds blending and swirling like so much glass being smashed in the distance.
“That stupid Boland, ringing the bell like that for no reason,” muttered Moody under his breath. “Should have had him committed years ago.” He turned his attention