27 August, 1924 3 страница

Del revolved the head of the dim light so that it faced the wall, and darkened the room. Now, with the big tank blocking most of the light from outside, his bedroom was the same tenebrous cloudy gray that the library had been that noon.

'I ought to call my mother, ' Tom said. 'She'll be wondering what happened to me. '

'Do you have to leave right away? ' Del asked.

'I could tell her to come over in an hour or so. '

'If you'd like. I mean, I'd like that. '

'Me too, '

'Great. There's a phone in the next bedroom. You could use that. '

Tom let himself out into the hall and went into the next bedroom. It was obviously the bedroom used by Del's godparents; expensive leather suitcases, laden with loose and tumbled clothes lay open on the unmade bed, labeled boxes were stacked on a chair. The phone was on one of the bedside tables. Ths telephone book sat beside it, its green cover bearing the graffiti of real-estate agents' names and telephone numbers.

Tom dialed his own number, spoke to his mother, and hung up just as he heard a car coming into the driveway. He walked over to the window and saw a boatlike gray Jaguar stopping before the garage doors.

Two people in bad humor got out of the car. Either they had just been quarreling or their bad temper was a moment's paring from a lifelong and steady quarrel. The man was large, blond, and florid; he wore a vibrant madras jacket the gaiety of which was out of key with the petulance and irritation suffused through his neat, puggish features. The woman, also blond, wore a filmy blue dress; as her husband's features had blurred, hers had hardened. Her face, as irritated as his, could never be petulant.

In the hall, their voices rose. Bud Copeland's last name was uttered in a flat Boston accent. In anyone else's house, Morris Fielding's or Howie Stern's, this would be the time for Tom to go to the staircase, announce himself, and speak a couple of sentences about who he was and what he was doing. But Del would never take him down to meet those two irritated people; and the two irritated people would be surprised if he did. Instead Tom went to the door of Del's room — Del's 'universe' — and slipped around it, and doing so, helped to shape the character of his own universe.

When his mother arrived, Tom followed Bud Copeland down the stairs to the front door. Tim and Valerie Hillman were standing with drinks in their hands in the box-filled living room, but they did not even turn their heads to watch him leave. Bud Copeland opened the door and leaned out after him. 'Be a good friend to our Del, now, ' he said softly. Tom nodded, then by reflex held out his hand. Bud Copeland shook it warmly, smiling down. An odd look of recognition, disturbing to Tom, momentarily passed over the butler's face. 'I see the Arizona Flanagans are gentlemen, ' he said, gripping the boy's hand. 'Take care, Red. '

In the car, his mother said, 'I didn't know that the house had been sold to a Negro family. '

Take care, Red.

Tom by Night

In his dream, which was somehow connected to Bud Copeland, he was being looked at by a vulture, not looking himself, but averting his eyes to the scrubby sandy ground — he had seen vultures from time to time, grotesque birds, on the roofs of desert towns on trips with his parents. The vulture was gazing at him with a horrid patient acceptance, knowing all about him. Nothing surprised the vulture, neither heat nor cold, not life or death. The vulture accepted all as it accepted him. It waited for the world to roll its way, and the world always did.

This was a vulture in vulture middle age. Its feathers were greasy, its bill darkened.

First it had eaten his father, and now it would devour him. Nothing could stop it. The world rolled its way, and then it ate what it was given. The vulture was a lesson in economics.

So was his father, for his father was dead — that was real economics. His father was a skeleton hanging from a tree, having been converted into vulture fuel. The loathsome bird hopped forward on its claws and scrutinized him. Yes, it accepted what it saw.

And accepting, spoke to him: as would a snake or a weasel or a bat, in tones too fast and subtle for his understanding. It was crucial that he know what the vulture was saying, but he would have to hear the fast voiceless voice many times before he could begin to decipher its message. He hoped he would never hear it again.

Uncaring, as if Tom were now no more significant than sagebrush or a yucca tree, the vulture craned its neck and turned around and began to walk away into the desert.

Heat shimmered around him.

Then, with the suddenness of dreams, he was no longer in the desert but in a lush green valley. The air was gray and full of moisture, the valley crowded with ferns and rocks and fallen trees. Far below him a man in a long coat continued the vulture's measured indifferent walk. He went away from the boy, indifferent to him. He became vague in the gray air. The man disappeared behind a boulder, emerged again, and vanished.

Where he had been, a large colorless bird flapped noiselessly away into the dark air.

Tom woke up, sure that his father was dead. His father was lying beside his mother in their bedroom, dead.

Tom's heart urged him forward, beat in pain and desolation against his ribs, his throat, made him throw off the sheet and walk across his dark room to the door. He groaned, felt that he was doomed to cry or scream. The darkness was hostile, enveloping. He slipped out of his room and went down the hall to his parents' room.

Trembling, he touched the knob. The scream lodged behind his tongue and tried to escape. Tom closed his eyes and gently pushed the door open. Then he opened his eyes and stepped into his parents' room.

He gasped, loudly enough to wake his mother. She was alone in the big double bed. On his father's side, the sheet lay as smoothly on the bed as upon an amputation.

'Tom? ' she said.

'Dad. '

'Oh, Tommy, he's in the hospital. For tests. Don't you remember? He'll be back tomorrow. Don't worry, Tommy. It'll be all right. '

'Had a nightmare, ' he said thickly, excused himself, and stumbled back to his own bed.

Poetry

Before lunch the next day, while Rachel Flanagan drove to St? Mary's to pick up Hartley, Tom sat at his desk and wrote the first and last poem of his life. He did not know why he suddenly wanted to write poetry — he never read it, barely knew what it looked like, thought of it as the sententious verse he had been made to learn in the Junior School. 'Breathes there the man, with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said, /This is mine own, my native land! ' His own little terrace of lines seemed so unlike real poetry to him that he did not bother to title it. This is what he wrote:

Man in the air, do you fly by your own wings?

Animals and birds speak to you

and you in the air understand them,

Football, magic, dreams trouble

my mind, cards tackle other cards

and scatter in a valley.

Man in the air, were you that bird?

Who magicked himself away in dark?

Man in the air, father me back. Now,

while you and I and he have time.

Two years later, when he struggled to produce an assigned poem for Mr. Fitz-Hallan's junior English class, he found that he was unable, even if he tried to follow Fitz-Hallan's advice. ('You could begin every line with the same word. Or name a color in every line. Or end every line with the name of a different country. ') He pulled the old poem from his desk and in despair handed it in. The poem came back with an A and the comment in Fitz-Hallan's cursive hand that This poem is sensitive and mature, and must have been difficult for you to write. Don't you have a title? I'd like to put it in the school magazine, with your permission.

Under the title 'When We All Lived in the Forest, ' it appeared in the winter issue of the school magazine for that year.

Frosty the Snowman

In the big auditorium down the hall from our homeroom, we filed into the first two rows of seats for our first chapel. Mr. Broome, Mrs. Olinger, and a tall gray-haired man with a long severe face who looked like a bank president were seated on fan-back wooden chairs before us. To the right of them stood a lectern made of champagne-colored wood.

When I looked around I saw Mr. Weatherbee join the rank of teachers leaning against the rear wall. Between the lounging teachers and ourselves the rest of the school was taking its seats: sophomores directly behind us, then the juniors, and the seniors in the last rows. Nearly every boy, I noticed, wore a blue button-down shirt and neatly striped tie under his jacket; many of the boys were wearing suits. Collectively, the juniors and seniors had a raffish look. Privilege encased them, surrounded them like armor. In the cast of their faces was the assumption that they would never have to take anything very seriously. For the first time in my life I saw the truth in the old proposition that the rich were better-looking.

Mr. Broome stood up and went to the lectern. He raked us in the first rows with his eyes, and then his face adjusted to a brisk, dry administrative mask. 'Boys. Let us begin with a prayer. '

A noise of shuffling, of activity, as a hundred boys bent over their knees.

'Give us the wisdom to know what is right, and the understanding to know what is good. Let us partake of knowledge, and use it to become better men. Let us all spend this new school year with hope, with diligence and discipline, and with ever-renewed application. Amen. '

He looked up. 'Now. We begin a new year. What does this mean? It means that you boys will be asked to do some demanding things. You will be asked to work as hard as you ever have, and to stretch your minds. College is a bit closer for all of you, and college is not for loafers. Therefore, we do not permit slackers and loafers here. Pay attention to this especially, seniors — you have many hurdles to get over this year. But our school does not attempt to educate the intellect at the expense of the spirit. And I am certain that spirit is shown first and foremost in school spirit. Some of you will not last out the year, and that will not always be due to stupidity. You can, indeed you must, demonstrate your school spirit in your bearing, in your classroom and athletic work, in your relations with one another. In honesty. In dedication. We will test all of these. I assure you, freshmen and seniors and all in between, that we do not hesitate to weed out our failures. Other schools have plenty of room for them. But we will not tolerate them. For it is the boy who fails, not the school. We give you the world, gentlemen, but you must show yourselves worthy of it. That is all. Seniors first, please, on the way out. '

'Frosty the Snowman, ' Sherman muttered to me as we stood. 'Wait till you hear the one about the dogs. '

The tall gray-haired bankerlike man beside Mr. Broome was Mr. Thorpe, and he was already at his desk when we entered his room. This was one of the tiny paneled rooms in the old part of the school, so laden with atmospherics that it seemed to crowd in all around us. A boy with very thick blond hair and black glasses stood beside the teacher. They had obviously been talking, and fell silent as we took our seats.

Mr. Thorpe said, 'This is Miles Teagarden, a senior. He will take a few minutes of our time to explain freshman initiation. Listen to him. He is a prefect, one of the leaders of this school. Begin, Mr. Teagarden. ' Thorpe leaned back in his chair and gazed benignly out at us.

'Thank you, Mr. Thorpe, ' the senior said. 'Freshman initiation is nothing to be afraid of. If you know your stuff and learn the ropes, you'll do fine. You have your beanies and your lists. Wear your beanies at all times when not in class and between school and home. Wear the beanie at all athletic functions and all social functions. Address all seniors as Mister. Learn our names. That is essential. And so is learning the songs and the other information on the sheets. If a senior drops his books on the floor, pick them up for him. Carry them where he tells you to carry them. If a senior is standing in front of a door, address him by his name and open the door. If a senior tells you to tie his shoelaces, tie his shoelaces and thank him. Do anything a senior tells you to do. On the spot. Even if you think it's ridiculous. Got that? And if a senior asks you a question, address him by name and answer him. Follow the rules and you'll get off to a good start. '

'Is that all? ' asked Mr. Thorpe. 'If so, you may go. '

Teagarden picked up a pile of books from Thorpe's desk and hurriedly left the little classroom. Thorpe continued to gaze at us, but the benignity had left him.

'Why is all of this important? ' He paused, but no one tried to answer. 'What did Mr. Broome particularly stress in chapel this morning? Well? '

A boy I did not know raised his hand and said, 'School spirit, sir. '

'Good. You are. . . Hollingsworth? — Good, Hollingsworth. You listened. Your ears were open. The rest of you must have been asleep. And what is school spirit? It is putting the school first. Putting yourself second to the school. You don't know how to do that yet. Miles Teagarden does know how to do that. That is why he is a prefect. '

He stood up and leaned against the chalk tray behind him. He looked immensely tall. 'But now we come to your own unfortunate case. Just look at you. Just. . . look. . . at. . . you. Most of you look as though you couldn't find your way home at night. Some of you probably can't even see through the filthy hair on your foreheads. You look slack, boys. Slack. That is offensive. It is an insult. If you insult the seniors by looking slack in front of them, I assure you that they will let you know. This is not an easy school. Not! ' He positively shouted the last word, jolting us upright in our seats. 'Not! Not an easy school. We have to reshape you boys, mold you. Turn you into our kind of boy. Or you will be doomed, boys, doomed, an adjective meaning consigned to misfortune or destruction. Destruction, a noun meaning that which pulls down, demolishes, undoes, kills, annihilates. You will be doomed to destruction, doomed to destruction, if you do not learn the moral lessons of this school. '

Thorpe inhaled noisily, ran a palm across his smooth gray hair. He was a furnace of emotions, this Thorpe, and such terrifying performances were standard with him.

Teachers

As the first weeks went by, the personalities of our teachers became as fixed as stars and as dependable in their eccentricities as the postures of marble statues. Mr. Thorpe shouted and bullied; Mr. Fitz-Hallan charmed; Mr. Whipple, incapable of inspiring either terror or love, wavered between trying to inspire both and so was despised. Mr. Weatherbee revealed himself to be a natural teacher, and led us in masterful fashion through the first steps of algebra. (Dave Brick surprisingly turned out to be a mathematical whiz, and took to wearing an ostentatious slide rule in a leather holster clipped to his belt. ) Thorpe could freeze your stomach and your mind; Fitz-Hallan, whose family was wealthy, turned his salary back to the school, and doing so, earned the privilege of teaching 'what he liked — the Grimms' Household Tales, the Odyssey, Great Expectations and Huckleberry Finn, and E. B. White for style; Whipple was so lazy that he took great chunks of class time to read aloud from the textbook. His only real interest was in sports, where he functioned as Ridpath's assistant.

Their lives out of the school were unimaginable to us; at dances, we saw wives, but could never truly believe in them. Their houses likewise were mysterious, as if they, like us, had not spouses but parents, and so much homework that their true homes were the old building, the modern addition, and the field house.

We had just come out of Fitz-Hallan's classroom, and a small number of seniors were leaving a French lesson in the next room. Bobby Hollingsworth had identified most of the older boys to those of us who were new to the school, and I knew most of their names. They began to look purposeful and superior when they noticed us gettmg books from our lockers. They sauntered over as soon as Fitz-Hallan had disappeared into his office. Steve Ridpath positioned himself directly in front of me. I had to look up to see his face. I was dimly aware of a prefect named Terry Peters standing before Del Nightingale, and of another senior named Hollis Wax lifting Dave Brick's beanie off his head. The other three or four seniors glanced at us, smiled at Hollis Wax — he was no taller than Dave Brick — and continued down the hallway.

'What's my name? ' Steve Ridpath said.

I told him.

'And what's yours, insect? ' I told him my name.

'Pick up my books. ' He was carrying four heavy textbooks and a sheaf of papers under one arm, and let it all fall to the floor. 'Hurry up, jerk. I have a class next period. '

'Yes, Mr. Ridpath, ' I said, and bent over. He was so near that I had to back into my locker to get his books. When I straightened up, he had bent down to stare directly into my face. 'You scummy little turd, ' he said. The reason for his nickname was even more apparent than before. Exceptionally skinny, Skeleton Ridpath from a distance looked like a clothed assemblage of sticks; cuffs drowned his wrists, collars swam on his thin neck. Close up, his face was so taut on his skull that the skin shone whitely; a slight flabbiness under the eyes was the only visible loose flesh. Above these gray-white pouches, his eyes were very pale, almost white, like old blue jeans. His eyebrows were only faint tracings of silvery brown. A strong odor of Old Spice hung between us, though his skin appeared too stingy and tight for whiskers: as though it would begrudge them the room. 'You messed up my report, ' he said, and shoved a bent sheet of paper under my nose. 'Five push-ups, right now. ' —

'Oh, hell, Steve, ' said Hollis Wax. I glanced over and saw that he bad 'braced' Dave Brick, who was now stiffly at attention, his forearms stuck out at right angles before him and piled with Wax's books. 'Shut up. Five. Right now. '

I stepped around Ridpath and did five push-ups in the corridor.

'Who was the first headmaster, jerk? ' 'B. Thurman Banter. '

'When did he found the school and what was its name then? '

'He founded the Lodestar Academy in 1894. ' I stood up.

'You zit, ' he hissed at me, his face twisting; then as he turned away, he reached out a simian arm and smacked the back of my head with his fist — just hard enough to hurt. His knuckles felt like needles. The blow did not surprise me: I had seen a witless hatred in his eyes. He swiveled his bony head on his neck and looked at me gleefully. 'Come on. I have to make a class. '

But we stopped after only a few steps. 'Who's this fat creep, Waxy? '

'Brick, ' Wax said. Dave Brick was sweating, and his. beanie had been pulled down over his eyes.

'Brick. Jesus. Look at him. ' Ridpath took the fold of skin beneath Brick's chin and twisted it between two long fingers. 'How many books are there in the library, Brick? What's my name, Brick? ' He jabbed one of his bony fingers into Brick's cheeks and pressed it hard against the teeth. 'You don't know, do you, fatso? '

'No, sir, ' Brick half-sobbed.

'Mr. Ridpath. That's my name, dumbo. Remember it, Brick. Brick the Prick. You'd better cut your disgusting Zulu hair, Brick the Prick. There's more grease in it than most guys have in their cars. '.

Standing beside him with his books, I saw Tom Flanagan and Bobby Hollingsworth coming toward us. They stopped just down the hall.

'And who's this little greaseball? ' Ridpath asked Terry Peters.

'Nightingale. ' Peters smirked.

'Oh! Nightingale, ' Ridpath crooned. 'I should have known. You look like a goddamned little Greek, don't you, Nightingale? Little cardsharp, aren't you, Nightingale? I'll have to take care of you later, Birdy. That's a good name for you. I heard you chirp. ' He seemed very excited. He turned his ghastly face to me again. 'Come on, jerk. Ah, shit. Just give me the books. ' He and Peters and Wax ran down the hall in the direction of the old section.

'I'm afraid it looks like you've got nicknames, ' Tom Flanagan said.

Dave Brick was doomed to carry the obscene name Skeleton Ridpath had given him, but Del Nightingale's was altered for the worse during football practice on the Friday evening of the first week of October. White Del and Morris Fielding and Bob Sherman and I sat on the bench with several others — freshmen and sophomores — our JV team had lost our first game the previous week. Chip Hogan had made our only touchdown. The final score had been 21-7, and Mr. Whipple and Mr. Ridpath had spent the four practices since the game frenziedly pushing us through exercises and play patterns. Sherman and I hated football, and already were looking forward to our junior year, when we could quit it for soccer; Morris Fielding had little aptitude for it, but suffered it gamely and performed as second-string center with a dogged persistence Ridpath admired; Del, who weighed little more than ninety pounds, was entirely hopeless. In the padded uniform which made the rest of us look swollen, Del resembled a mosquito weighted down with sandbags. All of the exercising tired him, and after we had run through tires and done fifty squat-jumps, Del could scarcely make his legs move through the rest of the practice.

After the squat-jumps, Ridpath lined us up before the tackling dummy. This was a heavy metal frame like a sledge on runners, with the front poles padded to the size of punching bags. We were in two long lines, and in pairs rushed at the padding and tried to move the dummy. Chip Hogan and three or four other boys could make it turn in a circle by themselves. Morris Fielding and I jolted it back a foot or two. When Tom Flanagan and Del hit it, Tom's side moved abruptly and Del's not at all. Both boys fell in the dust.

'Straighten it out and do it over, ' shouted Mr. Ridpath. 'Push it back — we need blocking in the line. '

Flanagan and Nightingale pulled the cumbersome dummy back where it had been. They rushed the step and a half forward and grunted into the padding. Again Tom's charge pushed it in a jerky sideswiped movement and Del collapsed.

'What the hell are you, Florence Nightingale? ' Ridpath screamed.

Florence. That absurdly Victorian name: Ridpath laughed at his own invention, and all of us laughed too: Del had been christened. At that moment Whipple appeared, cherubic and red-faced in his satiny coaching jacket, and Mr. Ridpath ran across to the field where the varsity team was just now beginning to do calisthenics; but the change of coaches had come too late for Del.

'Stand on my shoulders, Florence — I'll move it for you, ' shouted a muscular, amiable boy named Pete Bayliss. And that sealed the name for Del.

For the rest of the hour we desultorily ran through plays.

We shared a locker room with the older boys, and after practice, when the pads and sweatshirts had been put away and we had just returned from the showers, the varsity boys came noisily into that sweat-smelling, echoing place. Skeleton Ridpath was among them, covered in dirt and with a bruise on his left cheek — he played only because his father made him, and in the last quarter of the varsity game which had followed ours, he had committed two fouls.

The seniors and juniors began throwing their helmets into their lockers, shouting back and forth. Skeleton Ridpath undressed more slowly than the others, and was just untying his pads when most of the other varsity players were already in the shower across the hall. I saw him looking across the room at us, smiling to himself. When he had stripped down to his jockstrap, he stood up, stepped across the bench, and walked halfway over to us.. 'I guess this is a coed school now, ' he said, his hands on the bones of his hips.

'He looks like a graveyard, ' Sherman whispered in my ear. Ridpath glanced at us, irritated that he had missed Sherman's comment, but too inflamed by his hostility to be distracted.

'We take girls now, I guess, ' he said, staring at Del Nightingale. Del had tucked his chin down and was wriggling into his trousers.

'Hey, Florence. Do you know what happens to girls when they're caught in locker rooms? Huh? '

'Shut up, ' Tom Flanagan said.

Ridpath raised a hand as if to slap Flanagan — he was at least seven feet away. 'You little creep. I'm talking to your date. Is that what you are, Florence? His date? ' He stepped forward: he was almost half again as tall as Del, and he looked like an elongated bony white worm. He also looked crazy, caught up in some spiraling private hatred: it was obvious that his remarks were not just casual school insults, and the dozen of us left in the room froze, really unable to imagine what he might force himself to do. For a second he seemed a demented, furious giant.

His bruised face twisted, and he said, 'Why don't you suck — '

Tom Flanagan catapulted himself off the bench and rushed toward him.

Skeleton put out a startled fist and jabbed Tom in the chest. Then saliva flew from his mouth, his face worked in fury and bafflement, and he knocked Tom backward into our bench.

Bryce Beaver, one of two juniors who would later be expelled for smoking, came in from the shower naked, with a green school towel around his neck. 'Hey, Skeleton, what the shit are you doing? ' he asked, amazed. 'Your old man'll be here in a second. '

'I hate these little farts, ' Skeleton said, his bruised dirty face still a mask of loathing, and turned away. From the back he looked skinned and fragile.

The outside door opened and clanked shut. Mr. Whippie's voice carried to us, saying, '. . . work on all the Y plays, get Hogan to find those receivers. . . ' Bryce Beaver shook his head and began toweling his legs.

Mr. Ridpath and Mr. Whipple came into the locker room, carrying with them a scent of fresh air, which lingered only a moment. I saw Mr. Ridpath struggle to keep his smile as he glanced at his son.

Two weeks later, when the JV team played the varsity scrubs in a practice game, I saw Tom Flanagan repeatedly bringing down Skeleton Ridpath, bowling him off his feet even when the play was on the other side of the field. The third time it happened, Skeleton waited until Whipple looked away and kicked Tom in the face. On the next play, Tom Flanagan tackled and wrenched him to the ground so savagely that I could hear the noise from the bench,

'Great play! Great play! ' shouted Mr. Ridpath. 'That's spirit! '

Midnight, Saturday: Two Bedrooms

In Del's room, the boys lay on their separate beds, talking in the dark. Tim and Valerie Hillman were making too much noise for them to sleep: Tom could hear Tim Hillman shouting Bitch! Bitch! at intervals. Both Hillmans had been drunk at dinner, Tim more so than Valerie. Bud Copeland had served the boys at a table in the kitchen, and clearing up, had said, 'Trouble tonight. You fellas jump into bed early and close up your ears. '

But that was not possible. Tim's shouts and Valerie's abrupt rejoinders winged through the house.

'Uncle Cole says Tim drinks so much to make himself into another person, ' Del said in the darkness. 'If he's drunk, he's another person. One he'd rather be. '