The Reverend Dr. Canidy did not press the point when his son declined the opportunity to go to morning prayer. Canidy was almost immediately sorry, but by then his father had gone, and the s1nart thing to do was take a nap. His old room smelled musty.
He woke at lunchtime, nervous and hungry. He didn’t want to go to the dining room and have the boys gape at him, so he drove the Ford into Cedar Rapids an d had lunch in a restaurant, then drove around town until it was time to go to the airport and wait for Bitter and the Devastator to appear.
Eddie Bitter was very respectful of the Reverend Dr. Canidy when they met, and perfectly willing to put on his white uniform k about the Naval Academy and naval aviation to and give a little tal the boys of St. Paul’s at the evening meal. a dozen boys came to his father s apartafter the evening meal ment to hear more about the life of a midshipman at Annapolis and ed the boys, Canidy and his faof a naval aviator. While Ed entertain e library. ther retired to the comfortable leather chairs of th “Eric Fulmar sent me a lovely New Testament in Aramaic the other day,” Dr. Canidy said.
“Eric Fulmar? My God! Where-and how-is he these days?”
“He’s in Morocco,” Dr. Canidy said.
“Morocco? What’s he doing in Morocco?”
“Staying out of the war, or so he says. He tells me he’s living with friends there. And his father’s German, you know. They consider Eric a German, too. So he could be drafted.”
-If I know Eric, he’s up to more than hanging around with friends,” Canidy said, laughing softly.
Eric Fulmar was always up to something. Fulmar had gotten the two of them into trouble more times than he’d care to remember. When Canidy had moved into the lower school at St. Paul’s after his mother’s death, he and Eric had become fast friends. Like gasoline and a match, his father said-obviously useful, but explosive when put together without adequate supervision.
Eric’s mother was Monica Carlisle, the movie star who–happily for her career and income-looked considerably younger than her actual years. Her studio didn’t want it known that Monica, instead of the virginal coed she regularly portrayed on the screen, was the mother of a son to whom (if her studio biography was to be believed) she had given birth at age seven.
The only time Monica Carlisle had made her presence felt in her son’s life was to get him out of trouble. Canidy grinned to himself, remembering, while his father expounded on the finer points of the Aramaic Bible. One incident in particular stood out among all the scrapes he and Eric had gotten into.
Toy pistols were forbidden on campus, but they were readily available from Woolworth’s five-and-ten for twenty-nine cents. And wooden matches were easily obtained from the school’s kitchen. The matches, when shot from the pistols, ignited upon contact.
This was a great discovery, but what was more exciting was the potential of the white powder on the head of the match-removed from the wooden stick and piled in quantities, this stuff did great things. And later, even under the most severe of interrogations, Canidy and Fulmar steadfastly denied any knowledge of the rash of small, foul-smelling explosions that ruined the locks of the dormitory doors and terrorized the school for a week.
Then they were caught, literally with smoking guns, for a number of crimes all at once.
The day of the annual fall nature walk for the lower school, led by the biology instructor, seemed like the perfect time to test out some hypotheses concerning their tin guns and match heads. There were lots of tempting leaf piles along the street that led to the woods. First Canidy spoke earnestly with the teacher about chlorophyll while Eric, at the rear of the procession, gleefully let fly both guns. Canidy grinned as he remembered the small tussle they’d had when Eric hadn’t shown up at the appointed time to take his turn discussing things with the teacher. So Eric got all the leaf piles on the street, and Canidy didn’t get his turn until they reached the woods.