The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [88]
“I can’t see that boy’s tally stick!” exclaimed Brother Moody, pointing at one of the smaller boys through the space between Pollock and Cox.
“Indeed and you can’t!” concurred Brother Cox, sensing that here might be a whole new tack. “Where’s your tally stick, boy?”
The poor boy who found himself on the wrong end of Brother Moody’s accusing finger searched around inside the back of his sweater where the exertions of kicking football had sent his tally stick.
“Come on, boy, we don’t have all day!” snapped Pollock. “It’s supposed to be visible at all times,” sneered the Iago-Within of Brother Moody.
“True for you. Sure that’s probably a sin in itself, hiding your tally stick like that,” observed Cox hopefully.
Finally the boy retrieved his stick and brought it out of his pullover.
“Let me see that!” demanded Brother Cox, grabbing it and almost toppling the unfortunate boy.
“Look at that! Not a mark on it!” cried Brother Cox, now formulating something resembling a plan in his head. “Explain yourself, boy!”
“I, I, I didn’t do any sins, Brother.”
“Didn’t sin? Do you mean to tell us that you are without sin? Do you mean to imply that you are Christlike? Is that what you mean? Who made you?” barked Brother Moody.
“God made me. But I didn’t do any sins. That’s why there’s no marks on me stick.”
“I didn’t COMMIT any sins. There ARE no marks on MY stick.” Mr. Pollock wondered momentarily if bad grammar and diction could be interpreted as bearing false witness. “Out with your sticks the rest of you!”
One by one the shed climbers held up their unmarked tally sticks.
“So you’re all as pure as the driven snow then?” Pollock raised himself up on his toes and back down as he spoke.
Gradually the very unmarkedness of the sticks began to worry the boys. The sands were shifting under their feet. They could feel the quagmire of adult logic ripple and swell under them.
“Not a sin among ye, eh?” sneered Brother Moody.
“Comparing yerselves to Our Lord then, are ye?” spluttered Brother Cox.
The boys nodded uncertainly, then shook their heads slowly. Yes and no had turned into equally wrong answers no matter what the question was.
“Think ye’re perfect then, do ye?” added Brother Moody.
Again the boys shook their heads, then nodded, then shook their heads again. They were lost.
“I’d say we have some prideful sinners on our hands here, wouldn’t you, Brothers?” said Mr. Pollock.
“One of the Seven Deadly Sins, that,” chimed Brother Cox.
Moments later Spud Murphy and Mr. Laverty, and a few yards behind them Scully and the others on their way back from their dispiriting trip to Mary’s, turned into the yard to witness Pollock, Cox, and Moody thrashing the group of second years.
“Such bastards! They turn my stomach,” Scully and the others heard Spud mutter to Laverty as they passed the ugly scene.
The two teachers walked despondently to the staff room while Larry Skelly half-heartedly searched the boys for instruments of destruction and checked they were wearing their tally sticks.
Once past Skelly the boys skirted the beating scene lest they get sucked into it.
“I’ll be back in a sec,” said Scully suddenly. He handed his chips to Finbar and darted into the school.
Sucking at the pieces of stewed apple stuck between his teeth, Brother Boland bustled along the corridor from his cell.
At the main entrance he reached into the cubbyhole behind the door. His hand grasped at unexpected emptiness and he pulled the door back to let some light in. What touch had told him, the paltry light in the hallway now confirmed: the handbell was not there.
His handbell stolen! The nerve of it! Was nothing sacred? Not a second too late had