Bridge of Sighs

believed him. “Let
him
pay for camp, then,” her husband said when he found out how much it cost. Wasn’t it just like a priest to come up with a penance that put money into the church’s coffers? “What do you wanna bet he gets a cut?”
    To their surprise—again, according to Lucy—Perry actually liked the camp and learned from the Brothers who ran it the seriousness of his offense and how lucky he was not to have committed it against a white boy, which would not have been a summer camp matter. After six short weeks he returned to Thomaston sunburned and rehabilitated, actually thinking he might have a religious vocation. The Brothers were big, robust men with florid faces and a fondness for brutal full-court basketball, played outdoors in the noonday sun. They employed sports metaphors to explain faith and morality to teenage boys who hadn’t much interest in either one. They also liked to drink and intimated they’d have been ladies’ men, too, had women been allowed. The Brothers were, in short, the antithesis of every wimpy, pansy-ass priest he’d ever encountered. Brother Jacob was his favorite, perhaps because he was built powerfully and low to the ground, like Perry himself, and his rugged fifty-year-old face bore the pockmarked ravages of Perry’s own affliction. But what he’d liked most was the man’s attitude, his willingness to admit that some things could neither be helped nor changed. His favorite expression was “That’s the way it goes. First your money, then your clothes.” Returning from camp that August, the whole Three Mock incident a distant memory, all Perry Kozlowski could talk about was Brother Jake, and even now, years later, he never missed an opportunity to remind people of how things went: money first, clothing afterward.
    In the long run, though, he’d decided against the priesthood. In high school he discovered that football offered many of the same advantages as religion—structure, unlimited zeal, a uniform. Much as he’d enjoyed the Brothers’ hard-hitting brand of basketball, football was even better. Here, within clearly defined parameters, you could stick people as hard as you wanted and get praised for so doing. Instead of people looking at you like you were some sort of criminal, they applauded your better efforts and shouted gratifying things like “Hell of a shot, Koz!” If the boy you stuck gave you attitude, you kept sticking him until he got tired of it, then the two of you were friends and teammates. Some different from the situation with Three Mock, to whom he’d apologized—“No hard feelings” were his exact words—and been given a blank stare in return, as if the kid imagined it was easy to humble yourself to a Negro who’d brought everything on himself to begin with.
    Perry Kozlowski
in honors?
    Then there was Noonan himself, whose history was only slightly less violent, his claim to fame being sent away to a military reform school. With a mother who tried to flee her family every time she got knocked up, and a father who made no secret of the woman he kept on lower Division Street. What must his classmates think of
his
inclusion? He could imagine Nan Beverly telling her parents over dinner, “You’ll never guess who they let into honors English. Robert Marconi. I’m not kidding.” Maybe that in itself was reason enough to tough this out.
             
     
    L UCY HAD TALKED about Mr. Berg all summer long, but even if Noonan hadn’t heard a word, he’d have known at a glance that the man was batshit. He arrived in class cave dweller pale, looking like he’d sworn off both sunlight and solid food for the entire summer. His belt had additional holes punched in it, inexpertly, with an awl, but even so his trousers rode dangerously low on his nonexistent hips. He held his scuffed, boxy briefcase to his chest, and when he set it down on the desk Noonan saw why: its handle had apparently snapped off. What sort of man didn’t buy himself a new briefcase or just fix the old one?
    Three Mock, whom he had heard was Mr. Berg’s constant companion, slipped in behind him, silent and vacant as always. The teacher’s interest in the Mock boy was a matter of considerable speculation. Having reluctantly come to terms with him as a tragedy, most people were taken aback when he abruptly awoke from his six-month coma, much of it spent in a facility in Schenectady. Peacefully asleep in another town, he was someone they could feel bad about,