father had ever shown. With a sharp whack to the back of Jimmyâs head the reply came quickly and firmly, âDo that and youâll wish you hadnât!â Jimmy passed.
Disappointment proved severe that first day when he entered the aged confines of the school. To the unaware the name Kendall Academy might have summoned pictures of ivy-covered buildings in a tree-lined campus. Reality was precisely the opposite. The school was housed in a single, unattractive three-story building with turrets forming allfour corners. The turrets were a reminder that the forbidding nineteenth century block-long edifice originally served as the city jail. On one side was a drab factory, spewing smoke and cinders from tall stacks that jutted into the skyline. At the rear, beyond a short parking area, was a long, high brick wall that secured the old jailâs perimeter from the Boston & Maine railroad tracks on the other side. Worst of all for Jimmy, was the schoolâs lone playing field to the left of the building. It was nothing more than a vacant lot with patches of weeds growing like islands in the midst of dusty, brown dirt. Rusting goal posts stood at either end.
Inside was more depressing with dim corridors and dark stairs leading to classrooms on the upper floors. The dreary main hall was arrayed with yellowed class pictures dating as far back as 1910. It opened into a bandbox gymnasium that served as lunchroom, assembly hall and basketball court. On the second floor was the headmasterâs office and at the ends of each corridor were small circular rooms housed in the four corner turrets that once contained the sharpshooters who watched over the jailâs grounds. Jimmy felt like a prisoner that first day and for all the remaining days he spent at the school.
Kendall Academy was a down on its luck Catholic school run by a religious order that had not seen a novitiate in ten years. The order was fast running out of manpower and money. The Aponius Brothers were a tiny teaching order that specialized in educating young men in need of discipline. Unlike prestigious private and military schools that catered to wealthy families, Kendall drew its young men from Listonâs five middle class neighborhoods and a few surrounding towns. At one time, early in the schoolâs history, boarding students were accepted, but that practice had long since ended. Rumors circulated among the students that a scandal involving a group of later to be defrocked Brothers, had been the cause, something hushed and unspeakable. The truth of these rumors would never be confirmed, but new students soon learned that there were some Brothers to be avoided. Exiting at Kendall Street and slowly driving by the school, one name, Bucinski, entered Jimmyâs thoughts, as he knew it must the moment he made the decision to return to Liston.
The building was no longer a school and had been turned into apartments for the elderly. Now, it was called Kendall Manor. As he wound the car around to the back he was surprised to find the driveway freshly paved. He parked, turned off the motor and got out to look at the old field. It was landscaped with pathways winding among shrubs and small trees. Jimmy smiled, remembering that it was hard to believe he had practiced football on that field, often bruising and scraping his limbs on the hard ground festooned with hidden rocks. No sense walking into the gardens, he would not recognize anything from his school days. He looked over to where the locker room once stood, just off the field in a bunker-like building dug halfway below ground level. Like the main building, it was refurbished, almost attractive, but it was still a bunker. Not much can be done with a building originally designed to house prison armament.
The bunker was also Georgeâs home. His mindâs eye summoned a picture of Kendallâs lone custodian, short of stature and hunched from decades of manual labor. He lived alone in the
Disappointment proved severe that first day when he entered the aged confines of the school. To the unaware the name Kendall Academy might have summoned pictures of ivy-covered buildings in a tree-lined campus. Reality was precisely the opposite. The school was housed in a single, unattractive three-story building with turrets forming allfour corners. The turrets were a reminder that the forbidding nineteenth century block-long edifice originally served as the city jail. On one side was a drab factory, spewing smoke and cinders from tall stacks that jutted into the skyline. At the rear, beyond a short parking area, was a long, high brick wall that secured the old jailâs perimeter from the Boston & Maine railroad tracks on the other side. Worst of all for Jimmy, was the schoolâs lone playing field to the left of the building. It was nothing more than a vacant lot with patches of weeds growing like islands in the midst of dusty, brown dirt. Rusting goal posts stood at either end.
Inside was more depressing with dim corridors and dark stairs leading to classrooms on the upper floors. The dreary main hall was arrayed with yellowed class pictures dating as far back as 1910. It opened into a bandbox gymnasium that served as lunchroom, assembly hall and basketball court. On the second floor was the headmasterâs office and at the ends of each corridor were small circular rooms housed in the four corner turrets that once contained the sharpshooters who watched over the jailâs grounds. Jimmy felt like a prisoner that first day and for all the remaining days he spent at the school.
Kendall Academy was a down on its luck Catholic school run by a religious order that had not seen a novitiate in ten years. The order was fast running out of manpower and money. The Aponius Brothers were a tiny teaching order that specialized in educating young men in need of discipline. Unlike prestigious private and military schools that catered to wealthy families, Kendall drew its young men from Listonâs five middle class neighborhoods and a few surrounding towns. At one time, early in the schoolâs history, boarding students were accepted, but that practice had long since ended. Rumors circulated among the students that a scandal involving a group of later to be defrocked Brothers, had been the cause, something hushed and unspeakable. The truth of these rumors would never be confirmed, but new students soon learned that there were some Brothers to be avoided. Exiting at Kendall Street and slowly driving by the school, one name, Bucinski, entered Jimmyâs thoughts, as he knew it must the moment he made the decision to return to Liston.
The building was no longer a school and had been turned into apartments for the elderly. Now, it was called Kendall Manor. As he wound the car around to the back he was surprised to find the driveway freshly paved. He parked, turned off the motor and got out to look at the old field. It was landscaped with pathways winding among shrubs and small trees. Jimmy smiled, remembering that it was hard to believe he had practiced football on that field, often bruising and scraping his limbs on the hard ground festooned with hidden rocks. No sense walking into the gardens, he would not recognize anything from his school days. He looked over to where the locker room once stood, just off the field in a bunker-like building dug halfway below ground level. Like the main building, it was refurbished, almost attractive, but it was still a bunker. Not much can be done with a building originally designed to house prison armament.
The bunker was also Georgeâs home. His mindâs eye summoned a picture of Kendallâs lone custodian, short of stature and hunched from decades of manual labor. He lived alone in the
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