Paul Doiron: Bad Little Falls

For my birthday I’m going to ask Ma for a hatchet.

A sign loomed ahead: WHITNEY HIGH SCHOOL. HOME OF THE WARRIORS.

It was a boxy two-story brick structure indistinguishable from a hundred school buildings around the state, except that the cars and trucks in the parking lot looked harder used than the vehicles kids drove in southern Maine. There were also a dozen or so snowmobiles parked in a line on the banked wall of ice. No teenagers had ever ridden Arctic Cats to my alma mater. It was yet another sign of the cultural rift between the suburban and rural parts of the state.

Schools always reminded me of Sarah, who’d been a teacher before she moved to D.C. If she had carried our baby to term, he or she would be two months old now, I realized. After Sarah miscarried, the doctor offered to tell us the sex of the fetus, but Sarah said she didn’t want to know. She’d said it would make her too sad.

I’d wanted to know.

Rivard turned off the engine and hopped out of the truck without waiting for me. I followed him inside, down the greenly lit hall to the vice principal’s office. From my best guess, Whitney High School must have received its last renovation during the Eisenhower administration. The tan lockers and scuffed linoleum floors would have looked at home on the set of the movie Grease.

The vice principal was a wiry young guy with a ponytail and round little glasses. His outfit-tweed jacket, blue jeans, open-throated hemp shirt-reminded me of a hippie teacher I’d had in elementary school in the backwoods of western Maine. Rivard introduced him to me as a Mr. Mandelbaum.

“I have to tell you I am very uncomfortable with this situation,” he said. His forehead was furrowed, his eyes wary.

Rivard had turned his sunglasses around so they faced the back of his head, the way baseball players do. “We just want to ask him a few questions.”

“If this is some sort of interrogation, I need to call Barney’s parents. I won’t allow you to question him without their consent. The children here have rights.”

“You’re blowing this way out of proportion,” said Rivard. “We just think Beal can help us out with some information about a case we’re investigating. It’s a routine inquiry. All we want is five minutes.”

I was fairly certain that my sergeant was misleading the vice principal. He’d told me he suspected Barney Beal of theft and drug dealing. The earlier discomfort I’d felt about this school visit returned as an itchy sensation along my torso.

Mandelbaum readjusted his glasses on his nose. “If any of your questions seem at all accusatory, I will cancel the interview. Understood?”

Rivard curled his lips like someone attempting a smile for a portrait photographer. “So where’s Mr. Beal at the moment?”

“In America Two.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Social studies,” Mandelbaum explained. “If you wait right here, I’ll go get him.”

The vice principal carefully closed the door behind him as he left the office.

“You told Mandelbaum you weren’t going to interrogate the kid,” I said.

“Just let me handle this, will you?”

A moment later, the vice principal returned, followed by the Incredible Hulk’s twin brother. “These wardens have a few questions for you, Barney,” Mandelbaum said. “You don’t have to answer anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

Barney Beal had a brown flattop and painful-looking acne. He wore a sleeveless black T-shirt bearing the Teutonic logo of a heavy-metal band that had been popular in the rest of the country three decades ago. His eyes remained blank as he shambled into the room. Without waiting for directions, he took a seat in one of the three chairs arranged before the vice principal’s desk, extended his legs, and folded his thick, pimpled arms across his chest. He had some sort of biblical verse tattooed on his forearm: Ezek. 23:30. How old did you have to be to get inked these days? I wondered.

Rivard stepped forward, so that he practically loomed over the boy. “I’m Sergeant Rivard and this is Warden Bowditch.”

The invocation of my name caused the boy to turn in his chair and look me flat in the eyes. His pupils were tiny black dots.

“I’d appreciate your looking at me when I talk to you,” Rivard said.

The kid paused just long enough to make the point that he was doing so because it suited him and not because it was a command.

The itching I was feeling started to burn. The Scared Straight approach had its uses, I supposed, but as a rule, I didn’t believe in humiliating children, even gargantuan ones.

Standing beside me, Mandelbaum shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then back again. He could sense that, despite my sergeant’s earlier assurances, something here wasn’t on the up-and-up. He lowered his head, trying to catch the kid’s almost catatonic gaze. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call your folks, Barney?”

“No, suh.”

“We’ve had some break-ins over at Bog Pond,” Rivard said. “You know where that is?”

It was a lake in Township Nineteen, not far from Doc Larrabee’s house, I realized.

“Yes, suh,” said Barney Beal.

“You ever go snowmobiling over that way with your friends?” Rivard asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“We have witnesses who said they saw you riding your sled on the pond last Friday night. You and your friends.”

“That sounds like an accusation,” said Mandelbaum.

“It ain’t illegal to go sleddin’,” Beal said.

“But it is illegal to break into someone’s cabin to steal the satellite TV chips,” Rivard said. “We know it was you who broke into those camps, Beal.”

Mandelbaum held up both of his narrow hands. “That’s enough! Don’t answer any more questions, Barney.”

“We’re talking about a Class D felony, Mr. Mandelbaum. That’s punishable by a year in jail.”

“In which case, Barney should have an attorney present, as well as his parents.” The vice principal turned to the boy. “I apologize for bringing you in here. I never should have agreed to this conversation.”

Beal raised his chin. “Can I go now?”

“Yes,” I said, scratching the itchy place over my heart. “You can go back to class.”

Beal lurched to his feet so abruptly, he kicked the chair over.

The boy reached down with his long arm and lifted it as it were made of balsa wood. He set the chair delicately into place. I made a note to myself, in case I ever encountered him again, that this teenager was as strong as the Hulk.

“We’ll be watching you, Beal,” Rivard said. “You won’t know it, but we will.”

For the first time, the faintest trace of a smile appeared on the boy’s pimply face.

“Yes, suh,” he said on his way out the door.

Mandelbaum waited until the boy was out of earshot before laying into us. “You lied to me,” he said. “You came in here and you lied. You told me Barney wasn’t a suspect in any crimes.”

“Those weren’t the exact words we used,” Rivard said. “What I said was, we wanted him to help us out with some information.”

“That’s-sophistry! You have no right to bully my students. These are good kids here. Yes, some of them have some problems. There’s poverty and addiction. But just because Barney Beal comes from a broken family-just because he has a tattoo-doesn’t mean you can treat him like a thug. Not without evidence.”

“How long have you worked here, Mr. Mandelbaum?” Rivard asked.

“This is my second year. Why?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“So because I’m not a Maine native, I’m a second-class citizen who will never understand this place?”

“Basically, yes.”