Pride. William Wharton

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      The police came and asked me a lot of questions. They wanted to know what exact time I found him but I didn’t know; I don’t have a watch. They made me guess and I said about seven o’clock. They wanted to know why I went into the garage and I told them about seeing Mr Harding sitting in there alone and about thinking he might be drunk.

      They even wanted to know what I was doing walking around the alley that early in the morning. I didn’t want to tell them I was taking things from trashcans because that might be stealing so I said I was looking at some of the porches my dad and I had built. That wasn’t a lie because I was doing that, too. I like looking at those porches; it makes me think I’m doing something like a grown person, even though Dad does most of the work.

      Then they left us alone.

      There was just a tiny bit in the Bulletin and the Ledger. The Inquirer didn’t even mention it. But the little paper, our Upper Darby paper, had a whole column on the first page, with a picture of Mr Harding dressed up in a suit, looking younger. They even mentioned my name as finding him. I was a kind of hero for several weeks there. Then Elizabeth Zane from down the street got run over by an automobile at the corner of Clover Lane and Copely. She was almost killed so she spent more than a month in the hospital. After that, everybody pretty much forgot about Mr Harding; but I didn’t.

      It was then I really started thinking about being dead and what it was to die. It didn’t look as if Mr Harding had gone to hell even though he had committed suicide and was condemned. He just looked as if he’d swollen up and turned blue.

      When school started this year I was still thinking about Mr Harding a lot. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I even dreamed about him and I hardly even knew Mr Harding. I cut his lawn a couple times for a dime but that’s all.

      Sister Anastasia is our fifth-grade teacher. As I said, I hate school and one of the ways I get through some days is day-dreaming. I don’t do it on purpose. My mind just goes off on its own, dreaming, thinking about things. One morning, I’m thinking about Mr Harding during religion class. We have religion first thing and it’s the most boring of all because all we do is memorize parts of the Catechism. We don’t really talk about religion at all, like, What’s being alive all about? What’s it like to be dead? We’re only memorizing and I hate that.

      We’re studying the seven capital sins, Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy and Sloth. I’m still not sure what covetousness and sloth are. Coveting is also part of two of the Ten Commandments. It has something to do with wanting something you can’t have, but how’s that different from Envy?

      We’re all taking turns standing up and saying the answer to the Catechism question Sister Anastasia asks each of us. She asks each person the same question each time, although we all know what the question’s going to be. We have to stand up and wait while she asks that same dumb question. I sit in the first row and I’ve already answered, so I know I have time for myself; that’s when my mind takes off.

      The desks we sit in have slanted tops and the seats are hooked to them with curved metal tubes. The slanted part opens and there’s a place inside where you can put your books. At the very top of the desk is a narrow, flat part with a little dent for holding a pencil or a pen and there’s a hole with a bottle of ink sunk in it with a black Bakelite top and a black Bakelite cover that slides back and forth to open a hole into the bottle part where the ink is.

      These inkwells are for when we write with ink. We’re never allowed to use fountain pens; we have to use these awful pens they sold us. There’s a pen holder and little pen points which fit into them. Mostly we only do Palmer Method. Once in a while we have to write a composition with those pens, but mostly it’s Palmer Method.

      I can never write a composition without making big spraying blots. The points of these pens are very pointy and are split into two thin parts tight together with a hole for holding ink between them. My pen always gets stuck in the paper and then sprays over everything; or sometimes all the ink just rolls out of the pen and makes a big solid blot.

      The Palmer Method is where you go across the page making up and down lines between the lines on the paper, or round and round things, where if you do it right it looks like a tunnel you could see through. But I can never do it. You’re supposed to roll on the ball of your palm, holding the pen lightly in your fingers, gliding your little finger on the paper, and that way you get a nice smooth movement.

      But it’s not the way I write. I hold a pen hard in my fingers, then move my fingers to write with. The way I do Palmer Method when nobody’s watching is turn the paper sideways and make those up and down lines and circles from top to bottom. That way I can do it, almost. But it isn’t Palmer Method; I don’t even use my palm.

      The worst part is dipping that pointy pen in the glass inkwell. It scrapes against the bottom; hairs rise on the back of my neck, and my ears feel empty. Everybody in the class jams those pens in the inkwells hard, on purpose, but they can all do Palmer Method.

      We aren’t allowed to open our slanted desks unless we’re told to. Usually the nun will say, ‘Now let’s open our desks and take out our reading books’ or our civics books, or something. That’s one of the most interesting things that happens all day. At least there’s something new to see: the inside of the desk. One of the ways my mind wanders is trying to remember everything inside the desk and where it is. I want just one time to put this picture in my mind and then look in the desk and find everything the way it is in my head.

      This morning, during religion class, the first thing I know an eraser has hit me smack on the forehead. It’s a blackboard eraser and isn’t hard. It doesn’t hurt but it’s filled with chalk dust; so, chalk dust, like smoke, flies around my head. The whole class is giggling and laughing. Sister Anastasia, who’s a fat nun, is standing up behind her desk in her dark blue habit with the white bib. She has some other stiff white stuff wrapped close around her face holding in the fat sides. There’s a dark blue veil over that too. She’s wearing the most shiny glasses I’ve ever seen, no metal around them, just thick glass. You can hardly see her eyes.

      ‘All right, Kettleson. Are you deaf?’

      ‘No, Sister.’

      ‘Then answer the question.’

      Of course I figure she’s asking about those seven capital sins again. I start out.

      ‘The seven capital sins are Pride …’

      I stop. The whole class is giggling. Sister Anastasia comes out from behind the desk. She has her ‘signal’ in her hand. I’ve already been hit on the hands with that thing for not paying attention, and it’s only the second week of school. It’s wooden and has a hard knob at the end. There’s a rubber band or something in the handle, and Sister can make a clicking noise with it when she wants things quiet; but mostly I think it’s for hitting kids with, at least that’s the way Sister Anastasia uses it. I’m ready for another knock on the knuckles.

      ‘Pick up that eraser and put it on the chalk rail here, young man.’

      She points at the chalk rail behind her. I lean down and find the eraser under Mary Jane Donahue’s desk. It bounced against her, too, and there’s a white mark on the side of her uniform, but she’s keeping her hands crossed on the desk with her thumbs overlapped the way we’re supposed to do when we’re not writing. The thumbs crossed over each other like that СКАЧАТЬ