Bridge of Sighs

two others materialized, then two more.
    One was Jerzy Quinn, who grinned and said, “Hey there, Lucy-Lucy.”

    W E FOLLOWED the stream. Though it happened long ago, that afternoon’s journey is still vivid in my recollection. I was flanked on both sides to prevent escape. With one exception they made it clear that I would remain their prisoner until they chose to let me go. When I lagged or showed any reluctance to get too far from home, they shoved me forward, hard, and took turns cuffing me on the back of the head and asking if I was a girl, since I had a girl’s name. All except for Jerzy Quinn, who remained aloof from the fun. Each time I was pushed or tripped, he helped me to my feet, talking to me the whole time, explaining how I had public school kids all wrong, that they weren’t such a bad lot. How I was being treated in the meantime didn’t seem to Jerzy to undermine his case in the least.
    No, I was informed that he and his friends had started a charitable club, the purpose of which was to assist the unfortunate, cripples and widows and the like. The dues collected went to pay for their crutches and groceries and medical operations, and their club had already performed many good deeds. Did I know Janice Collier, the fourth grader in the wheelchair? Well, who did I imagine
got
her that chair? There was a good deal of smirking and snorting behind my back as all this was explained, then somebody tripped me again and I went sprawling in the stream, skinning the palms of both hands on the rocks, much to the delight of my captors. But again Jerzy Quinn helped me up and assured me that I was fine, after which he continued to recruit me for their club, as if he saw no reason I wouldn’t want to join. In the event I needed further inducement, I should know that my old friend Bobby Marconi was also a member. “We’re his best pals,” Jerzy gave me to understand. “Those East End kids are all fags, so he comes down here to hang out with us.”
    “Are you a fag, Lucy?” one of the other boys asked.
    “He doesn’t even know what it is,” said another, which was true.
    What a strange downstream journey it was. The juxtaposition of the other boys’ jostling ridicule with Jerzy Quinn’s feigned friendship was what scared me most, that their behavior and his soothing words were at cross-purposes—the boys making it clear that they’d hurt me, even as their leader assured me that I’d come to no harm. Stranger still, while I knew his kindness was part of the cruel joke being played on me, some part of me believed him, or desperately wanted to. His pretend kindness, his urgent hope that I would admit I’d been wrong about him and his friends, were at some bizarre level almost convincing, as if just beneath the game he was playing lurked another boy who wished he
was
the boy he was pretending to be. Maybe that good boy was real. Maybe he wouldn’t let the others harm me. I also wanted to believe he was telling the truth about Bobby, that when we got wherever we were going Bobby would be there, and then they’d find out who his best friend really was.
    Eventually we came to a blighted place where the bank on both sides was very steep, spanned overhead by a rickety railroad trestle and a dark, tilting structure that opened onto a rock quarry. This, it turned out, functioned as their clubhouse. At the far end several sheets of plywood had been arranged across the beams, and in the center of one of these sat an old steamer trunk. There we paused, the other boys forming a circle, with Jerzy Quinn and me in the center. Jerzy regarded the trunk, then me for a long beat, as if expecting me to draw from its mere existence some weighty inference. When he grinned, I saw in his yellow teeth that I’d been wrong, that there was no good boy.
    “So, you want to join our club?” he said, putting his hand on the back of my neck and squeezing hard.
    Balanced as I was on my railroad tie, even a gentle nudge would have sent me over the edge of the plywood and down onto the dark, jagged rocks below. Fearing that either a yes or a no might have equally disastrous consequences, I said maybe. I’d ask my parents. See if it was okay.
    Well, you see, that’s the thing, I was told. Theirs was a secret society whose first rule was that no parents must ever learn about all the good deeds they performed. So I’d have to decide myself and if I joined I’d be made to swear a solemn oath never to tell anyone. It may have been