Baal

Baal Page 7

THE BOYS, CHATTERING and rough-housing like young jungle-fresh monkeys, filed into the lunchroom with a burst of noise, taking their usual seats around a long table scarred with the initials of those who had come before them.

Sister Miriam watched them from behind her severe black-rimmed eye glasses, waiting patiently until all thirty were seated. Even sitting around the table, waiting for grace to be said before lunch, the children still poked each other with the rough curious hands of ten-year-olds. She said above their noise, "All right. Can I have quiet, please?"

They settled like food bubbling in a pot and watched her as she stood before them, a dark grandmother in her black habit. She held up her clipboard. It was her responsibility to make certain they'd all returned from their recreation period. She knew their names and faces well, but still there was the possibility that one of them, perhaps one of the less bright ones, had managed to straggle into the forest around the orphanage. It had happened once before, many years ago when she had first begun her work here, before the fence was put up, and there had almost been serious consequences for the child. Now she took no chances.

"We'll have roll call before our lunch," she told them, as she always told them. "James Patterson Antonelli?"

"Here."

"Thomas Keene Billings?"

"Here."

"Edward Andrew Bayless?"

"Present."

"Jerome Darkowski?"

"President." Giggles and howls from the children. Sister Miriam looked up sharply.

"You have half an hour for lunch before the next group comes in, children. If you choose to be silly you simply waste your time. Now I asked for silence, didn't I?" She turned back to her clipboard. "Gregory Holt Frazier?"

"Here."

"She went through the alphabet, nearing his name. Sometimes she wished that he would leave, that he would turn his back on the home and disappear like a wraith into the thicket, leaving perhaps only a shred of torn clothing on the fence to indicate that he had ever been there at all. No, no, she said inwardly. Forgive me. I don't mean to think such things. She glanced up, her eyes nervous behind the glasses, and saw him sitting there, at the head of the table where he always sat, waiting for her to get on to his name. He was smiling faintly, as if he knew what unprofessional disorder lay behind her mask-like features.

"Jeffrey Harper Raines."

He didn't answer.

The children had stopped moving.

They waited.

He waited.

She cleared her throat and kept her head down, away from them. She caught the odor of hamburgers cooking back in the kitchen. "Jeffrey Harper Raines," she repeated.

He sat in silence, his hands folded before him on the table. His black eyes, narrow slits in a pale face, challenged her to challenge him.

Sister Miriam dropped the clipboard down by her side. Really! This nonsense had gone on quite long enough! "Jeffrey, I called your name out twice. You failed to answer. You will write your name two hundred times during your study hour and present that paper to me." She looked to the next name on the list. "Edgar Oliver Tortorelli."

But it was not that child who answered. This was the voice of another child. Him.

"I didn't hear my name called, Sister," he said, hissing the word Sister so she thought at first he was going to utter a profanity.

She blinked. She felt suddenly hot. Trays and plates clattered in the kitchen. She said, "I called your name. Children, didn't I call Jeffrey's name?" She winced. No, no. Don't bring the other children into this. This is something between him and me, not them.

They squirmed in their chairs, their eyes moving like little dark marbles between the boy and the woman.

"My name is Baal," the boy said. "I do not answer to any other name."

"Now don't start that nonsense again, young - "

The crack of his voice stopped her short. "I will not write a paper. I will not answer to any name but my own."

She stood helpless under his steady gaze. And she saw the grin slowly spread over his mouth, lifting the lips into a cruel smile, yet those eyes... those eyes remained as cold and deadly as upraised rifle barrels. Sister Miriam slammed the clipboard down on the table. The other children jumped and giggled nervously, but not him. He sat motionless with his hands folded before him.

Sister Miriam looked through a doorway and called to the sisters in the kitchen, "They're ready for their lunches now." Without another glance at the children, she pushed through the heavy doors that led out of the dining hall. Down dim corridors lined with classrooms, through the main corridor, past the reception area, out stained-glass doors onto the great wide porch and past a gray-metal sign near the steps that read THE VALIANT SAINTS HOME FOR BOYS. Out in the far playground, rimmed by the forest that was beginning to lose its late-autumn colors of red and yellow, another group of boys ran round and in circles like bees about a hive.

She traversed the courtyard and started across the concrete drive for a small brick building, so dissimilar in its construction to the rambling gable-eyed hulk of the orphanage, that housed the administrative offices. Beside that building, ringed by trees that glowed bright yellow in the sunlight, was the orphanage chapel.

Sister Miriam entered the brick building and continued through quiet wine-carpeted hallways to a small office with the name Emory T. Dunn in gold script on the door. His receptionist, a frail woman with a bitter face, looked up at her. "Sister Miriam? Can I help you?"

"Yes. I'd like to see Father Dunn, please."

"I'm sorry. He has an appointment in ten minutes. I believe we have a nice family for the Latta child."

"I have to see him," Sister Miriam said, and the receptionist watched, astonished, as the other woman knocked on the door without listening to what she, an orphanage legend as Father Dunn's receptionist for twenty-one years, had said.

"Come in," said a voice from behind the door.

"Really, Sister Miriam," the receptionist said indignantly. "I don't see why..."

Sister Miriam closed the door behind her.

Father Dunn, seated behind a wide blotter-topped desk, looked at her with his quizzical gray eyes. He was a middle-aged man with gray hair that still held, here and there, traces of a glossy black. Behind him, on an oak-paneled wall, were a score of citations for his theological and humanitarian work; he was an intelligent man who had brought his degree in sociology from Harvard into the priesthood with him. Sister Miriam had wondered about him at times. He was certainly a well-kept and dignified man, though there was often a brief flash of ill temper in his eyes.

He said, "Isn't this rather irregular? I have an appointment shortly. Could you come back later this afternoon?"

"Please, Father. I do need to talk with you for a moment."

"Perhaps Father Cary can help you? Or Sister Rosamond?"

"No, sir," she replied, unwilling to give any ground. She had talked to all the others before. They had listened politely and made their suggestions, some liberal and some harsh. But none of them had worked. Now it was time for Father Dunn's opinion and she was not going to be cut short before she'd spoken her piece. "I need to speak with you about the Raines child."

Dunn's eyes narrowed fractionally; she thought they even became icy as he stared up at her. He said, "Very well, then. Please sit down." He motioned toward a black leather chair and with the other hand switched on his intercom. "Mrs. Beamon, ask Mr. and Mrs. Scheer to wait a few moments, please."

"Yes, sir."

He sat back in his chair, fingers tapping steadily on the blotter. "I believe I'm familiar with this problem, Sister Miriam," he said. "Any new developments?"

"Sir... this child. This child is so... different. I cannot control him. He hates me with such an intensity that - well, I can almost physically feel the hate."

Father Dunn reached again for the intercom. "Mrs. Beamon, will you find the records for me on Jeffrey Harper Raines? Ten years old."

"Yes, sir."

"I believe you've seen his records?" Father Dunn asked.

"Yes, I have," Sister Miriam said.

"Then you're familiar with his history?"

"His history, yes; not his motivations."

"Well," Father Dunn said, "you might be familiar also with my theories on infant stress. Are you?"

"Not directly. I believe I overheard you and Father Robson discussing the subject."

"Well then," he said, "consider the fact that the infant is the most superbly sensitive of all God's creations. From the moment of birth the infant is reaching out, touching, exploring a new environment. And he reacts to that environment; the environment molds him to a certain degree. Infants, or children of any age for that matter, are remarkably perceptive of emotions, passions." He held up a finger. "And hatred in particular. An infant can carry those disruptive passions, those emotions that seethe on the edge of violence, with him for the rest of his life. The child we're speaking of, as you're aware, has had a history of... unpleasantness. The rape of his mother ignited in her a small spark of hatred that, growing unchecked, finally culminated in the murder of her husband with the child present. I believe this is the seed of hatred, of agony perhaps, that Jeffrey carries within him. He's been affected by a scene of brutal violence that repeats itself just on the fringe of his memory..."

Mrs. Beamon came through the door and put a yellow folder marked RAINES, JEFFREY HARPER, on Father Dunn's desk. He thanked her and then silently turned pages for a moment. "Jeffrey probably doesn't even remember that night, at least not in his conscious memory. But in his subconscious mind he can recall every angry word, every brutal blow." He glanced up for a second to see if she were paying attention. "And then, Sister Miriam, there's the psychology of the orphan to consider, and what we have here are those who are continual orphans, children no one wants, children who cause problems, children who are problems. They didn't ask to be brought into the world. They think it was some kind of a mistake, someone forgot to take their birth control pills, and so here they are. We're managing - very slowly and with minimum return on maximum effort - to break through to some of them. But this Raines child... has not yet let us in."

"He unnerves me," she said.

Father Dunn grunted and looked back to the yellow folder. "He's been here four months, transferred to us from the St. Francis School for Boys in Trenton. Before that he was transferred from the Home of the Holy Mother in New York City, before that the St. Vincent Boys' Center, also in New York City. He's been in several foster homes, all of which in one way or another have not seemed to work out. The parents have repeatedly cited his unwillingness to cooperate, his - " he glanced up at Sister Miriam " - foul language and habits, his defiance of parental authority. And then this thing... this recurring insistence on denying his Christian name." He raised his brow and looked at the woman. "What do you make of that?"

"He refuses now to even answer to his real name. He calls himself Baal and I've heard several of the others address him also by that name."

"Yes," said Father Dunn, swinging his chair around to stare out an open-curtained window at the children playing in the recreation yard. "Yes. And I understand he refuses to attend chapel. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir. That's correct. He refuses to even set foot in the chapel. We've taken away his playground privileges, his movie privileges, everything, but nothing works. Father Robson told us to reinstate his privileges and go about our business as usual."

"I think that's best," Father Dunn said. "Very strange, very strange. I wonder if his father was a religious man?"

Sister Miriam shook her head and Father Dunn said, "Well, I don't know either. I only know what's written here in his file. He doesn't socialize very much with the others, does he?"

"There are a few I believe he's taken into his confidence, but they're all like him, silent and suspicious. Still, for all his misbehavior, he's a very good student. He reads a great deal, especially history and geography texts, and biography. I might add that he has a rather morbid interest in Hitler. Once in the library I heard him grinding his teeth. He was reading an old Life magazine article on the Dachau ovens. He shut the magazine when he saw me looking."

Father Dunn grunted. "Well, I suspect he's more intelligent than he pretends to be."

"Sir?"

He tapped a finger on a page of the file. "His standard test results give him a phenomenal IQ score and still Father Robson, after examining the answer forms, feels Jeffrey was hedging. Some of the answers, he feels, were deliberate mistakes. Can you give me an answer to that?"

"No, sir."

"I don't understand it myself," he said, then muttered something under his breath.

"Sir?" she asked, leaning forward. She hadn't heard him.

"Baal... Baal," he repeated softly. Then, as if he'd made up his mind about something, he turned toward her once again. "He's playing a game with us, Sister Miriam. It's a game he subconsciously wants to lose; I'll grant you that. Father Robson has an aptitude with these... difficult cases. I'll have him speak with Jeffrey. But, Sister Miriam, we must not give up. It's for the child's own welfare that we're as strong," he paused, searching for the correct phrasing, "as we have to be. All right?" He looked questioningly at Sister Miriam.

"Yes, sir," she said. "I hope Father Robson can understand him much better than I."

"Agreed then. I'll ask him to talk with the child at the first opportunity. Good day, then, Sister Miriam."

"Good day, Father," she said, nodding her head respectfully and rising from her chair.

When Sister Miriam had closed the door behind her, Father Dunn sat perfectly still for a moment more, looking through the window at the yard where children flew in the autumn sunlight like aimless tattered bats. He started to reach for a cigar from the humidor in his desk drawer but stopped himself; no, not another one until late afternoon. Doctor's orders. He reached instead for a book on mental disorders in preteenagers from a shelf behind his desk. But as his eyes scanned the cold logical information his mind sparred with the name Baal.

The prince of demons.

Father Dunn closed the book and peered out the window. Such enigmas children are, he told himself. Leading their secret lives and shutting the door on those who try to come in; children are jealous of their mysterious identities, they become different people after nightfall. So different even their own parents wouldn't know them.