The Chocolate War Read Online Free PDF

looked at the kid Goober who stood there in bewilderment, looking as if he were going to cry. Archie almost felt sorry for the kid. Almost. But not quite.

CHAPTER
  SIX  
    BROTHER LEON WAS GETTING READY to put on his show. Jerry knew the symptoms—all the guys knew them. Most of them were freshmen and had been in Leon’s class only a month or so but the teacher’s pattern had already emerged. First, Leon gave them a reading assignment. Then he’d pace up and down, up and down, restless, sighing, wandering through the aisles, the blackboard pointer poised in his hand, the pointer he used either like a conductor’s baton or a musketeer’s sword. He’d use the tip to push around a book on a desk or to flick a kid’s necktie, scratching gently down some guy’s back, poking the pointer as if he were a rubbish collector picking his way through the debris of the classroom. One day, the pointer had rested on Jerry’s head for a moment, and then passed on. Unaccountably, Jerry had shivered, as if he had just escaped some terrible fate.
    Now, aware of Leon prowling ceaselessly around the classroom, Jerry kept his eyes onpaper although he didn’t feel like reading. Two more periods. He looked forward to football practice. After days of calisthenics, the coach had said that probably he’d let them use the ball this afternoon.
    “Enough of this crap.”
    That was Brother Leon—always trying to shock. Using words like crap and bull and slipping in a few damns and hells once in a while. Actually, he did shock. Maybe because the words were so startling as they issued from this pale and inoffensive looking little man. Later on, you found out that he wasn’t inoffensive, of course. Now, everyone looked up at Leon as that word crap echoed in the room. Ten minutes left—time enough for Leon to perform, to play one of his games. The class looked at him in a kind of horrible fascination.
    The brother’s glance went slowly around the room, like the ray of a lighthouse sweeping a familiar coast, searching for hidden defects. Jerry felt a sense of dread and anticipation, both at the same time.
    “Bailey,” Leon said.
    “Yes, Brother Leon.” Leon
would
pick Bailey: one of the weak kids, high honor student, but shy, introverted, always reading, his eyes red-rimmed behind the glasses.
    “Up here,” Leon said, finger beckoning.
    Bailey went quietly to the front of the room.Jerry could see a vein throbbing in the boy’s temple.
    “As you know, gentlemen,” Brother Leon began, addressing the class directly and ignoring Bailey completely although the boy was standing beside him, “as you know, a certain discipline must be maintained in a school. A line must be drawn between teachers and students. We teachers would love to be one of the boys, of course. But that line of separation must remain. An invisible line, perhaps, but still there.” His moist eyes gleamed. “After all, you can’t see the wind but it’s there. You see its handiwork, bending the trees, stirring the leaves …”
    As he spoke he gestured, his arm becoming the wind, the pointer in his hand following the direction of the wind and suddenly, without warning, striking Bailey on the cheek. The boy leaped backward in pain and surprise.
    “Bailey, I’m sorry,” Leon said, but his voice lacked apology. Had it been an accident? Or another of Leon’s little cruelties?
    Now all eyes were on the stricken Bailey. Brother Leon studied him, looking at him as if he were a specimen under a microscope, as if the specimen contained the germ of some deadly disease. You had to hand it to Leon—he was a superb actor. He loved to read short stories aloud, taking all the parts, providing all the sound effects. Nobody yawned or fell asleep in Leon’sclass. You had to be alert every minute, just as everyone was alert now, looking at Bailey, wondering what Leon’s next move would be. Under Leon’s steady gaze, Bailey had stopped stroking his cheek, even though a pink welt