Beyond the Chocolate War by Robert Cormier Page B

apartment building. He searched the facade, the rows and rows of windows, fastening finally on the fourth floor. Wondering if Jerry was standing behind the curtain at one of the windows, staring out.
    Aw, Jerry, he thought. Why did things have to turn so rotten? Life at Trinity could have been so beautiful. He and Jerry on the football team, the quarterback and the long end, linked by the beautiful passes Jerry threw, linked even more by a budding friendship. All of it gone now. Brother Eugene dead and Jerry Renault maimed. And him, Roland Goubert, the Goober, dogged with guilt, almost afraid to look at his hands, afraid he'd see bloodstains.

S tupid, he told himself. You were stupid. Acting that way when the Goober came. Stupid. The word was a theme weaving its way through his thoughts, and he got up from the chair, threw down the magazine he'd been holding for ten minutes without reading a word of it, and went to the window. Pulled the curtain and looked out at the street. Everything gray outside: the street, the cars, the buildings, the trees. Glancing back at the room, the drabness of the beige walls and the nondescript furniture, he wondered whether he was the one at fault, had gone colorblind, would forever see the world in muted tones.
    All of which was evading the question, of course.
    What question?
    The question of the Goober and why he'd acted so stupidly when the Goober visited him.
    I should have stayed in Canada, he thought, turning from the window. I shouldn't have come back.
    After those bruised weeks of pain and desolation in the Boston hospital, he had accepted without protest or any emotion at all his father's decision to send him to Canada, to spend a few months with his uncle Octave and aunt Olivine. They lived in the small parish of St. Antoine on the banks of the Riviere Richelieu, where his mother had lived as a child. His small Canadian world had three focal points: the modest farm operated by his uncle and aunt; the village, which consisted of a few stores, a post office, and a Sunoco service station; and the ancient church, a small white frame building overlooking the aimless river. He spent a lot of time in the church, although he found it spooky at first, creaky, buffeted by stiff river winds. The winds breathed life into the old building, made the floors squeak, the walls buckle, the windows rattle. He didn't pray; not at first, anyway. Merely sat there. The winter had been mild by Canadian standards but the wind was relentless, blowing away the snow that fell almost every day. The church was a good resting place after his daily walk from the farm to the village. He picked up a few groceries, checked the post office for mail (his father wrote at least once a week, brief, keep-in-touch letters that said nothing, really), and began to look forward to the church visits.
    The wind made the church talk. The Talking Church. The small hum of the boiler addressing the hiss of the steam pipes. The walls and windows chattering to each other, and the creaking floor contributing to the conversation. He smiled as he listened to the small whispering, chatting sounds. His first smile in ages. As if the church had induced his smile. After a while he knelt and prayed, the old French prayers his mother had taught him long ago—" Notre Père "; " Je Vous Salue, Marie "—the words meaningless but comforting somehow, as if he and the church had joined each other in a kind of companionship.
    His aunt and uncle treated him with gruff tenderness and affection. A childless couple, farmers, at the constant mercy of the elements, they were patient, quiet people. His uncle's only vice was television, and he watched it continuously when he wasn't out in the fields or the barn, marveling at the succession of programs on the glowing tube, uncritical, amused, whether watching a soap opera in French or a hockey game with his beloved Canadiens from Montreal. His aunt was a small peppy woman whose hands were never empty and