HEARTS 
IN 
ATLANTIS 

1 
When I came to the University of Maine in 1966, there was still a Goldwater sticker, tattered 
and faded but perfectly readable (AuH2O-4-USA), on the old station wagon I inherited from 
my brother. When I left the University in 1970, I had no car. What I did have was a beard, 
hair down to my shoulders, and a backpack with a sticker on it reading RICHARD NIXON is A 
WAR CRIMINAL. The button on the collar of my denim jacket read I AIN'T NO FORTUNATE SON. 
College is always a time of change, I guess, the last major convulsion of childhood, but I 
doubt there were ever changes of such magnitude as those faced by the students who came to 
their campuses in the late sixties. 
Most of us don't say much about those years now, not because we don't remember them but 
because the language which we spoke back then has been lost. When I try to talk about the 
sixties - when I even try to think about them - I am overcome by horror and hilarity. I see 
bellbottom pants and Earth Shoes. I smell pot and patchouli, incense and peppermints. And I 
hear Donovan Leitch singing his sweet and stupid song about the continent of Atlantis, lyrics 
that still seem profound to me in the watches of the night, when I can't sleep. The older I get, 
the harder it is to let go of that song's stupidity and hold onto its sweetness. I have to remind 
myself that we were smaller then, small enough to live our brightly hued lives under the 
mushrooms, all the time believing them to be trees, shelter from the sheltering sky. I know 
that doesn't make any real sense, but it's the best I can do: hail Atlantis. 
2 
I finished my senior year living off-campus in LSD Acres, the rotting cabins down by the 
Stillwater River, but when I came to U of M in 1966 I lived in Chamberlain Hall, which was 
part of a three-dorm complex: Chamberlain (men), King (men), and Franklin (women). There 
was also a dining hall, Holyoke Commons, which stood a little apart from the dorms - not far, 
perhaps only an eighth of a mile, but it seemed far on winter nights when the wind was strong 
and the temperature dipped below zero. Far enough so that Holyoke was known as the Palace 
on the Plains. 
I learned a lot in college, the very least of it in the classrooms. I learned how to kiss a girl 
and put on a rubber at the same time (a necessary but often overlooked skill), how to chug a 
sixteen-ounce can of beer without throwing up, how to make extra cash in my spare time 
(writing term papers for kids with more money than I, which was most of them), how not to 
be a Republican even though I had sprung from a long line of them, how to go into the streets 
with a sign held up over my head, chanting One two three four we won't fight your fucking 
war and Hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today. I learned that you should try to get 
downwind of teargas and breathe slowly through a handkerchief or a bandanna if you couldn't 
do that. I learned that when the nightsticks come out, you want to fall on your side, draw your 
knees up to your chest, and cover the back of your head with your hands. In Chicago, in 
1968, I learned that cops can beat the shit out of you no matter how well you cover up. 
But before I learned any of those things, I learned about the pleasures and dangers of 
Hearts. There were sixteen rooms holding thirty-two boys on the third floor of Chamberlain 
Hall in the fall of 1966; by January of 1967, nineteen of those boys had either moved or 
flunked out, victims of Hearts. It swept through us that fall like a virulent strain of influenza. 

Only three of the young men on Three were comple tely immune, I think. One was my 
roommate, Nathan Hoppenstand. One was David 'Dearie' Dearborn, the floor-proctor. The 
third was Stokely Jones III, soon to be known to the citizenry of Chamberlain Hall as Rip- 
Rip. Sometimes I think it's Rip-Rip I want to tell you about; sometimes I think it's Skip Kirk 
(later known as Captain Kirk, of course), who was my best friend during those years; 
sometimes I think it's Carol. Often I believe it's the sixties themselves I want to talk about, 
impossible as that has always seemed to me. But before I talk about any of those things, I 
better tell you about Hearts. 
Skip once said that Whist is Bridge for dopes and Hearts is Bridge for real dopes. You'll 
get no argument from me, although that kind of misses the point. Hearts is fun, that's the 
point, and when you play it for money — a nickel a point was the going rate on Chamberlain 
Three — it quickly becomes compulsive. The ideal number of players is four. All the cards 
are dealt out and then played in tricks. Each hand amounts to twenty-six total points: thirteen 
hearts at a point each, and the queen of spades (which we called The Bitch), worth thirteen 
points all by herself. The game ends when one of the four players tops a hundred points. The 
winner is the player with the lowest score. 
In our marathons, each of the other three players would cough up based on the difference 
between his score and the winner's score. If, for example, the difference between my score 
and Skip's was twenty points at the end of the game, I had to pay him a dollar at the going 
rate of a nickel a point. Chump-change, you'd say now, but this was 1966, and a dollar wasn't 
just change to the work-study chumps who lived on Chamberlain Three.# 
3 
I recall quite clearly when the Hearts epidemic started: the first weekend in October. I 
remember because the semester's initial round of prelims had just ended and I had survived. 
Survival was an actual issue for most of the boys on Chamberlain Three; we were at college 
thanks to a variety of scholarships, loans (most, including my own, courtesy of the National 
Education Defense Act), and work-study jobs. It was like riding in a Soapbox Derby car 
which had been put together with paste instead of nails, and while our arrangements varied — 
mostly according to how crafty we were when it came to filling out forms and how diligently 
our high-school guidance counselors had worked for us — there was one hard fact of life. It 
was summed up by a sampler which hung in the third-floor lounge, where our marathon 
Hearts tournaments were played. Tony DeLucca's mother made it, told him to hang it 
someplace where he'd see it every day, and sent him off to college with it. As the fall of 1966 
wore out and winter replaced it, Mrs DeLucca's sampler seemed to glare bigger and brighter 
with each passing hand, each fall of The Bitch, each night I rolled into bed with my textbooks 
unopened, my notes unstudied, my papers unwritten. Once or twice I even dreamed about it: 
2.5. 
That's what the sampler said, in big red crocheted numerals. Mrs DeLucca understood what it 
meant, and so did we. If you lived in one of the ordinary dorms — Jacklin or Dunn or Pease 
or Chadbourne — you could keep your place in the Class of 1970 with a 1.6 average . . . if, 
that was, Daddy and Mummy continued to pay the bills. This was the state land-grant college, 

remember; we are not talking about Harvard or Wellesley. For students trying to stagger 
through on scholarship-and-loan packages, however, 2.5 was the line drawn in the dust. Score 
below a 2.5 — drop from a C average to a C-minus, in other words — and your little soapbox 
racer was almost certain to fall apart. 'Be in touch, baby, seeya,' as Skip Kirk used to say. 
I did okay on that first round of prelims, especially for a boy who was almost ill with 
homesickness (I had never been away from home in my life except for a single week at 
basketball camp, from which I returned with a sprained wrist and an odd fungal growth 
between my toes and under my testes). I was carrying five subjects and got B's in everything 
except Freshman English. On that one I got an A. My instructor, who would later divorce his 
wife and wind up busking in Sproul Plaza on the Berkeley campus, wrote 'Your example of 
onomatopoeia is actually quite brilliant' beside one of my answers. I sent that test back home 
to my mother and father. My mother returned a postcard with one word — 'Bravo!' — 
scrawled fervently across the back. Remembering that causes an unexpected pang, something 
actually close to physical pain. It was, I suppose, the last time I dragged home a school paper 
with a gold star pasted in the corner. 
After that first round of prelims I complacently calculated my GPA-in-progress and came 
out with a 3.3. It never got near that again, and by late December I realized that the choices 
had become very simple: quit playing cards and maybe survive to the next semester with my 
fragile financial-aid package intact, or continue Bitch-hunting beneath Mrs DeLucca's 
sampler in the third-floor lounge until Christmas and then head back to Gates Falls for good. 
I'd be able to get a job at Gates Falls Mills and Weaving; my father had been there for 
twenty years, right up until the accident that cost him his sight, and he'd get me in. My 
mother would hate it, but she wouldn't stand in the way if I told her it was what I wanted. At 
the end of the day she was always the realist of the family. Even when her hopes and 
disappointments ran her half-mad, she was a realist. For awhile she'd be grief-stricken at my 
failure to make a go of it at the University, and for awhile I'd be guilt -ridden, but we'd both 
get over it. I wanted to be a writer, after all, not a damned English teacher, and I had an idea 
that only pompous writers needed college to do what they did. 
Yet I didn't want to flunk out, either. It seemed the wrong way to start my life as a 
grownup. It smelled like failure, and all my Whitmanesque ruminations about how a writer 
should do his work among the people smelled like a rationalization for that failure. And still 
the third-floor lounge called to me — the snap of the cards, someone asking if this hand was 
pass left or pass right, someone else asking who had The Douche (a hand of Hearts begins by 
playing the two of clubs, a card known to us third-floor addicts as The Douche). I had dreams 
in which Ronnie Malenfant, the first true bred-in-the-bone asshole I had met since escaping 
the bullies of junior high, began to play spades one after another, screaming 'Time to go 
Bitch-huntin! We chasin The Cunt!' in his high-pitched, reedy voice. We almost always see 
where our best interest lies, I think, but sometimes what we see means very little compared to 
what we feel. Tough but true. 
4 
My roommate didn't play Hearts. My roommate didn't have any use for the undeclared war in 
Vietnam. My roommate wrote home to his girlfriend, a senior at Wisdom Consolidated High 
School, every day. Put a glass of water next to Nate Hoppenstand and it was the water that 

looked vivacious. 
He and I lived in Room 302, next to the stairwell, across from the Proctor's Suite (lair of 
the hideous Dearie) and all the way down the hall from the lounge with its card-tables, standup 
ashtrays, and its view of the Palace on the Plains. Our pairing suggested — to me, at least 
— that everyone's most macabre musings about the University Housing Office might well be 
true. On the questionnaire which I had returned to Housing in April of '66 (when my biggest 
concern was deciding where I should take Annmarie Soucie to eat after the Senior Prom), I 
had said that I was A. a smoker; B. a Young Republican; C. an aspiring folk guitarist; D. A 
night owl. In its dubious wisdom, the Housing Office paired me with Nate, a non-smoking 
dentist-in-progress whose folks were Aroostook County Democrats (the fact that Lyndon 
Johnson was a Democrat made Nate feel no better about US soldiers running around South 
Vietnam). I had a poster of Humphrey Bogart above my bed; above his, Nate hung photos of 
his dog and his girl. The girl was a sallow creature dressed in a Wisdom High majorette's 
uniform and clutching a baton like a cudgel. She was Cindy. The dog was Rinty. Both the girl 
and the dog were sporting identical grins. It was fucking surreal. 
Nate's worst failing, as far as Skip and I were concerned, was the collection of record 
albums he kept carefully shelved in alphabetical order below Cindy and Rinty and just above 
his nifty little RCA Swingline phonograph. He had three Mitch Miller records (Sing Along 
with Mitch, More Sing Along with Mitch, Mitch and the Gang Sing John Henry and Other 
American Folk Favorites), Meet Trini Lopez, a Dean Martin LP (Dino Swings Vegasl), a 
Gerry and the Pacemakers LP, the first Dave Clark Five album — perhaps the noisiest bad 
rock record ever made — and many others of the same ilk. I can't remember them all. It's 
probably a good thing. 
'Nate, no,' Skip said one evening. 'Oh please, no.' This was shortly before the onset of 
Hearts mania — perhaps only days. 
'Oh please no what?' Nate asked without looking up from what he was doing at his desk. 
He seemed to spend all his waking hours either in class or at that desk. Sometimes I would 
catch him picking his nose and surreptitiously wiping the gleanings (after careful and 
thorough inspections) under the middle drawer. It was his only vice . . . if you excepted his 
horrible taste in music, that was. 
Skip had been inspecting Nate's albums, something he did with absolutely no selfconsciousness 
in every kid's room he visited. Now he was holding one up. He had the look of 
a doctor studying a bad X-ray . . . one that shows a juicy (and almost certainly malignant) 
tumor. He was standing between Nate's bed and mine, wearing his high-school letter jacket 
and a Dexter High School baseball cap. Never in college and rarely since have I met a man I 
thought so American Pie handsome as the Captain. Skip seemed unaware of his good looks, 
but he couldn't have been, not entirely, or he wouldn't have gotten laid as often as he did. It 
was a time when almost anybody could get laid, of course, but even by the standards of the 
time Skip was busy. None of that had started in the fall of '66, though; in the fall of '66 Skip's 
heart, like mine, would belong to Hearts. 
'This is bad, little buddy,' Skip said in a gentle, chiding voice. 'Sorry, but this bites' 
I was sitting at my own desk, smoking a Pall Mall and looking for my meal ticket. I was 
always losing the fucking thing. 
'What bites? Why are you looking at my records?' Nate's botany text was open in front of 
him. He was drawing a leaf on a piece of graph paper. His blue freshman beanie was cocked 
back on his head. Nate Hoppenstand was, I believe, the only member of the freshman class 
who actually wore that stupid blue dishrag until Maine's hapless football team finally scored a 
touchdown . . . a week or so before Thanksgiving, that was. 
Skip went on studying the record album. 'This sucks the rigid cock of Satan. It really does.' 
'I hate it when you talk that way!' Nate exclaimed, but still too stubborn to actually look up. 

Skip knew Nate hated him to talk that way, which was why he did it. 'What are you talking 
about, anyway?' 
'I'm sorry my language offends you, but I don't withdraw the comment. I can't. 'Cause this 
is bad. It hurts me, little buddy. It fuckin hurts me.' 
'What?' Nate finally looked up, irritated away from his leaf, which was marked as carefully 
as a map in a Rand McNally road atlas. 'WHAT?' 
'This.' 
On the album cover Skip was holding, a girl with a perky face and perky little breasts 
poking out the front of a middy blouse appeared to be dancing on the deck of a PT boat. One 
hand was raised, palm out, in a perky little wave. Cocked on her head was a perky little 
sailor's hat. 
'I bet you're the only college student in America that brought Diane Renee Sings Navy Blue 
to school with him,' Skip said. 'It's wrong, Nate. This belongs back in your attic, along with 
the wiener pants I bet you wore to all the high-school pep rallies and church socials.' 
If wiener pants meant polyester Sansabelt slacks with that weird and purposeless little 
buckle in the back, I suspected Nate had brought most of his collection with him . . . was, in 
fact, wearing a pair at that very moment. I said nothing, though. I picked up a framed picture 
of my own girlfriend and spied my meal ticket behind it. I grabbed it and stuffed it in the 
pocket of my Levi's. 
'That's a good record,' Nate said with dignity. 'That's a very good record. It. . . swings' 
'Swings, does it?' Skip asked, tossing it back onto Nate's bed. (He refused to reshelve 
Nate's records because he knew it drove Nate bugfuck.) '"My steady boy said ship ahoy and 
joined the Nay-yay-vee"? If that fits your definition of good, remind me never to let you give 
me a fuckin physical.' 
'I'm going to be a dentist, not a doctor,' Nate said, clipping off each word. Cords were 
beginning to stand out on his neck. So far as I know, Skip Kirk was the only person in 
Chamberlain Hall, maybe on the whole campus, who could get under my roomie's thick 
Yankee skin. 'I'm in pre-dent, do you know what the dent in pre-dent means? It means teeth, 
Skip! It means — ' 
'Remind me to never let you fill one of my fuckin cavities.' 
'Why do you have to say that all the time?' 
'What?' Skip asked, knowing but wanting Nate to say it. Nate eventualy would, and his 
face always turned bright red when he finally did. This fascinated Skip. Everything about 
Nate fascinated Skip; the Captain once told me he was pretty sure Nate was an alien, beamed 
down from the planet Good Boy. 
'Fuck,' Nate Hoppenstand said, and immediately his cheeks became rosy. In a few 
moments he looked like a Dickens character, some earnest young man sketched by Boz. 
'That.' 
'I had bad role models,' Skip said. 'I dread to think about your future, Nate. What if Paul 
Anka makes a fuckin comeback?' 
'You've never heard this record,' Nate said, snatching up Diane Renee Sings Navy Blue 
from the bed and putting it back between Mitch Miller and Stella Stevens Is in Love! 
'Never fuckin want to, either,' Skip said. 'Come on, Pete, let's eat. I'm fuckin starving.' 
I picked up my geology text — there was a quiz coming up the following Tuesday. Skip 
took it out of my hand and slung it back onto the desk, knocking over the picture of my 
girlfriend, who wouldn't fuck but who would give a slow, excruciatingly pleasant handjob 
when she was in the mood. Nobody gives a handjob like a Catholic girl. I've changed my 
mind about a lot of things in the course of my life, but never about that. 
'What did you do that for?' I asked. 
'You don't read at the fuckin table,' he said. 'Not even when you're eating Commons slop. 

What kind of barn were you born in?' 
'Actually, Skip, I was born into a family where people do read at the table. I know it's hard 
for you to believe there could be any way of doing things except for the Kirk way of doing 
them, but there is.' 
He looked unexpectedly grave. He took me by the forearms, looked into my eyes, and said, 
'At least don't study when you eat. Okay?' 
'Okay.' Mentally reserving the right to study whenever I fucking well pleased, or felt I 
needed to. 
'Get into all that ram-drive behavior and you'll get ulcers. Ulcers are what killed my old 
man. He just couldn't stop ramming and driving.' 
'Oh,' I said. 'Sorry.' 
'Don't worry, it was a long time ago. Now come on. Before all the fucking tuna surprise is 
gone. Coming, Natebo?' 
'I have to finish this leaf.' 
'Fuck the leaf 
If anyone else had said this to him, Nate would have looked at him as at something 
uncovered beneath a rotted log, and turned silently back to his work. In this case, Nate 
considered for a moment, then got up and took his jacket carefully off the back of the door, 
where he always hung it. He put it on. He adjusted the beanie on his head. Not even Skip 
dared to talk about Nate's stubborn refusal to stop wearing his freshman beanie. (When I 
asked Skip where his own had disappeared to — this was our third day at UM, and the day 
after I met him — he said, 'Wiped my ass with it and threw the fucker up a tree.' This was 
probably not the truth, but I never completely ruled it out, either.) 
We clattered down the three flights of stairs and went out into the mild October dusk. From 
all three dorms students were headed toward Holyoke Commons, where I worked nine meals 
a week. I was a dishline boy, recently promoted from silverware boy; if I kept my nose clean, 
I'd be a stackboy before the Thanksgiving break. Chamberlain, King, and Franklin Halls were 
on high ground. So was the Palace on the Plains. To reach it, students took asphalt paths that 
dipped into a hollow like a long trough, then joined into one broad brick way and climbed 
again. Holyoke was the biggest of the four buildings, shining in the gloom like a cruise-ship 
on the ocean. 
The dip where the asphalt paths met was known as Bennett's Run — if I ever knew why I 
have long since forgotten. Boys from King and Chamberlain came along two of these paths, 
girls from Franklin along the other. Where the paths joined, boys and girls did likewise, 
talking and laughing and exchanging looks both frank and shy. From there they moved 
together up the wide brick path known as Bennett's Walk to the Commons building. 
Coming the other way, cutting back through the crowd with his head down and the usual 
closed-off expression on his pale, harsh face, was Stokely Jones III. He was tall, but you 
hardly realized it because he was always hunched over his crutches. His hair, a perfect glossy 
black with not so much as a single observable strand of anything lighter, spilled over his 
forehead in spikes, hid his ears, inked a few stray strands diagonally across his pale cheeks. 
This was the heydey of the Beatle haircut, which for most boys consisted of no more than 
combing carefully down instead of carefully up, thus hiding the forehead (and a good crop of 
pimples, more often than not). Stoke Jones was capped off by nothing so prissy. His mediumlength 
hair just went where it wanted to. His back was hunched in a way that would soon be 
permanent, if it wasn't already. His eyes were usually cast down, seeming to trace the arcs of 
his crutches. If those eyes happened to rise and meet your own, you were apt to be startled by 
their wild intelligence. He was a New England Heathcliff, only wasted away to a bare scrawn 
from the hips down. His legs, which were usually encased in huge metal braces when he went 
to class, could move, but only feebly, like the tentacles of a dying squid. His upper body was 

brawny by comparison. The combination was bizarre. Stoke Jones was a Charles Atlas ad in 
which BEFORE and AFTER had somehow been melted into the same body. He ate every meal 
as soon as Holyoke opened, and even three weeks into our first semester we all knew he did it 
not because he was one of the handicaps but because he wanted, like Greta Garbo, to be 
alone. 
'Fuck him,' Ronnie Malenfant said while we were on our way to breakfast one day — he'd 
just said hello to Jones and Jones had simply crutched his way past without even a nod. He'd 
been muttering under his breath, though; we all heard it. 'Crippled-up hopping asshole.' That 
was Ronnie, always sympathetic. I guess it was growing up amid the puke-in-the-corner 
beerjoints on lower Lisbon Street in Lewiston that gave him his grace and charm and joie de 
vivre. 
'Stoke, what's up?' Skip asked on this particular evening as Jones plunged toward us on his 
crutches. Stoke went everywhere at that same controlled plunge, always with his Bluto 
Blutarsky upper half leaning forward so that he looked like a ship's figurehead, Stoke 
continually saying fuck you to whatever it was that had creamed his lower half, Stoke 
continually giving it the finger, Stoke looking at you with his smart wild eyes and saying fuck 
you too, stick it up your ass, sit on it and spin, eat me raw through a Flavr Straw. 
He didn't respond but did raise his head for a moment and locked eyes with Skip. Then he 
dropped his chin and hurried on past us. Sweat was running out of his crazed hair and down 
the sides of his face. Under his breath he was muttering 'Rip-rip, rip-rip, rip-rip,' as if 
keeping time . . .or articulating what he'd like to do to the whole walking bunch of us . . . or 
maybe both. You could smell him: the sour acrid tang of sweat, there was always that 
because he wouldn't go slow, it seemed to offend him to go slow, but there was something 
else, too. The sweat was pungent but not offensive. The undersmell was a lot less pleasant. I 
ran track in high school (forced as a college freshman to choose between Pall Malls and the 
four-forty, I chose the coffin-nails) and had smelled that particular combination before, 
usually when some kid with the flu or the grippe or a strep throat forced himself to run 
anyway. The only smell like it is an electric-train transformer that's been run too hard for too 
long. 
Then he was past us. Stoke Jones, soon to be dubbed Rip-Rip by Ronnie Malenfant, free of 
his huge leg-braces for the evening and on his way back to the dorm. 
'Hey, what's that?' Nate asked. He had stopped and was looking over his shoulder. Skip and 
I also stopped and looked back. I started to ask Nate what he meant, then saw. Jones was 
wearing a jeans jacket. On the back of it, drawn in what looked like black Magic Marker and 
just visible in the declining light of that early autumn evening, was a shape in a circle. 
'Dunno,' Skip said. 'It looks like a sparrow-track.' 
The boy on the crutches merged into the crowds on their way to another Commons dinner 
on another Thursday night in another October. Most of the boys were clean-shaven; most of 
the girls wore skirts and Ship 'n Shore blouses with Peter Pan collars. The moon was rising 
almost full, casting orange light on them. The full-blown Age of Freaks was still two years 
away, and none of the three of us realized we had seen the peace sign for the first time. 
5 
Saturday-morning breakfast was one of my meals to work the dishline in Holyoke. It was a 
good meal to have because the Commons was never busy on Saturday mornings. Carol 
Gerber, the silverware girl, stood at the head of the conveyor belt. I was next; my job was to 

grab the plates as the trays came down the belt, rinse them, and stack them on the trolley 
beside me. If traffic on the conveyor belt was busy, as it was at most weekday evening meals, 
I just stacked the plates up, shit and all, and rinsed them later on when things slowed down. 
Next in line to me was the glassboy or -girl, who grabbed the glasses and cups and popped 
them into special dishwasher grids. Holyoke wasn't a bad place to work. Every now and then 
some wit of the Ronnie Malenfant sensibility would return an uneaten kielbasa or breakfast 
sausage with a Trojan fitted over the end or the oatmeal would come back with I GO TO FUCK 
U written in carefully torn-up strips of napkin (once, pasted on the surface of a soup-bowl 
filled with congealing meatloaf gravy, was the message HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER IN A 
COW COLLEGE), and you wouldn't believe what pigs some kids can be — plates filled with 
ketchup, milk-glasses filled with mashed potatoes, splattered vegetables — but it really 
wasn't such a bad job, especially on Saturday mornings. 
I looked out once past Carol (who was looking extraordinarily pretty for so early in the 
morning) and saw Stoke Jones. His back was to the pass-through window, but you couldn't 
miss the crutches leaning next to his place, or that peculiar shape drawn on the back of his 
jacket. Skip had been right; it looked like a sparrow-track (it was almost a year later when I 
first heard some guy on TV refer to it as 'the track of the great American chicken'). 
'Do you know what that is?' I asked Carol, pointing. 
She looked for a long time, then shook her head. 'Nope. Must be some kind of in-joke.' 
'Stoke doesn't joke.' 
'Oh my, you're a poet and you don't know it.' 
'Quit it, Carol, you're killing me.' 
When our shift was over, I walked her back to her dorm (telling myself I was just being 
nice, that walking Carol Gerber back to Franklin Hall in no way made me unfaithful to 
Annmarie Soucie back in Gates Falls), then ambled toward Chamberlain, wondering who 
might know what that sparrow-track was. It occurs to me only at this late date that I never 
thought of asking Jones himself. And when I reached my floor, I saw something that changed 
the direction of my thoughts entirely. Since I'd gone out at six-thirty A.M. with one eye open 
to take my place behind Carol on the dishline, someone had shaving-creamed David 
Dearborn's door — all around the sides, on the doorknob, and with an extra-thick line along 
the bottom. In this lower deposit was a bare foot-track that made me smile. Dearie opens his 
door, clad only in a towel, on his way to the shower, and pooshf, howaya. 
Still smiling, I went into 302. Nate was writing at his desk. Observing the way he kept one 
arm curled protectively around his notebook, I deduced it was that day's letter to Cindy. 
'Someone shaving-creamed Dearie's door,' I said, crossing to my shelves and grabbing my 
geology book. My plan was to head down to the third-floor lounge and do a little studying for 
the quiz on Tuesday. 
Nate tried to look serious and disapproving, but couldn't help smiling himself. He was 
always trying for self-righteousness in those days and always falling just a little bit short. I 
suppose he's gotten better at it over the years, more's the pity. 
'You should have heard him yell,' Nate said. He snorted laughter, then put one small fist up 
to his mouth to stifle any further impropriety. 'And swear — for a minute there he was in 
Skip's league.' 
'When it comes to swearing, I don't think anyone's in Skip's league.' 
Nate was looking at me with a worried furrow between his eyes. 'You didn't do it, did you? 
Because I know you were up early — ' 
'If I was going to decorate Dearie's door, I would have used toilet paper,' I said. 'All my 
shaving-cream goes on my own face. I'm a low-budget student, just like you. Remember?' 
The worry-furrow smoothed out and Nate once more looked like a choirboy. For the first 
time I realized he was sitting there in nothing but his Jockey shorts and that stupid blue 

beanie. 'That's good,' he said, 'because David was yelling that he'd get whoever did it and see 
that the guy was put on disciplinary pro.' 
'DP for creaming his fucking door? I doubt it, Nate.' 
'It's weird but I think he meant it,' Nate said. 'Sometimes David Dearborn reminds me of 
that movie about the crazy ship-captain. Humphrey Bogart was in it. Do you know the one I 
mean?' 
'Yeah, The Caine Mutiny.' 
'Uh-huh. And David . . . well, let's just say that for him, handing out DP is what being 
floor-proctor is all about.' 
In the University's code of rules and behavior, expulsion was the big gun, reserved for 
offenses like theft, assault, and possession/use of drugs. Disciplinary probation was a step 
below that, punishment for such offenses as having a girl in your room (having one in your 
room after Women's Curfew could tilt the penalty toward explusion, hard as that is to believe 
now), having alcohol in your room, cheating on exams, plagiarism. Any of these latter 
offenses could theoretically result in explusion, and in cheating cases often did (especially if 
the cases involved mid-term or final exams), but mostly it was disciplinary pro, which you 
carried with you for an entire semester. I didn't like to believe a dorm-proctor would try to get 
a DP from Dean of Men Garretsen for a few harmless bursts of shaving cream . . . but this 
was Dearie, a prig who had so far insisted on weekly room inspections and carried a little 
stool with him so he could check the top shelves of the thirty-two closets which he seemed to 
feel were a part of his responsibility. This was probably an idea he got in ROTC, a program 
he loved as fervently as Nate loved Cindy and Rinty. Also he had gigged kids — this practice 
was still an official part of school policy, although it had been largely forgotten outside the 
ROTC program — who didn't keep up with their housework. Enough gigs and you landed on 
DP. You could in theory flunk out of school, lose your deferment, get drafted, and wind up 
dodging bullets in Vietnam because you repeatedly forgot to empty the trash or sweep under 
the bed. 
David Dearborn was a loan-and-scholarship boy himself, and his proctor's job was — also 
in theory — no different from my dishline job. That wasn't Dearie's theory, though. Dearie 
considered himself A Cut Above the Rest, one of the few, the proud, the brave. His family 
came from the coast, you see; from Falmouth, where in 1966 there were still over fifty Blue 
Laws inherited from the Puritans on the books. Something had happened to his family, had 
Brought Them Low like a family in an old stage melodrama, but Dearie still dressed like a 
Falmouth Prep School graduate, wearing a blazer to classes and a suit on Sundays. No one 
could have been more different from Ronnie Malenfant, with his gutter mouth, his prejudices, 
and his brilliance with numbers. When they passed in the hall you could almost see Dearie 
shrinking from Ronnie, whose red hair kinked over a face that seemed to run away from 
itself, bulging brow to almost nonexistent chin. In between were Ronnie's perpetually gumcaked 
eyes and perpetually dripping nose . . . not to mention lips so red he always seemed to 
be wearing something cheap and garish from the five-and-dime. 
Dearie didn't like Ronnie, but Ronnie didn't have to face this disapproval alone; Dearie 
didn't seem to like any of the boys he was proctoring. We didn't like him, either, and Ronnie 
outright hated him. Skip Kirk's dislike was edged with contempt. He was in ROTC with 
Dearie (at least until November, when Skip dropped the course), and he said Dearie was bad 
at everything except kissing ass. Skip, who had narrowly missed being named to the All-State 
baseball team as a high-school senior, had one specific bitch about our floor-proctor — 
Dearie, Skip said, didn't put out. To Skip it was the worst sin. You had to put out. Even if you 
were just slopping the hogs, you had to fuckin put out. 
I disliked Dearie as much as anyone. I can put up with a great many human failings, but I 
loathe a prig. Yet I harbored a bit of sympathy for him, as well. He had no sense of humor, 

for one thing, and I believe that is as much a crippling defect as whatever had gone wrong 
with Stoke Jones's bottom half. For another, I don't think Dearie liked himself much. 
'DP won't be an issue if he never finds the culprit,' I told Nate. 'Even if he does, I doubt like 
hell if Dean Garretsen would agree to slap it on someone for creaming the proctor's door.' 
Still, Dearie could be persuasive. He might have been Brought Low, but he had that 
something which said he was still upper crust. That was, of course, just one more thing the 
rest of us had to dislike about him. 'Trotboy' was what Skip called him, because he wouldn't 
really run laps on the football field during ROTC workouts, but only go at a rapid jog. 
'Just as long as you didn't do it,' Nate said, and I almost laughed. Nate Hoppenstand sitting 
there in his underpants and beanie, his child's chest narrow, hairless, and dusted with freckles. 
Nate looking at me earnestly over his prominent case of slender ribs. Nate playing Dad. 
Lowering his voice, he said: 'Do you think Skip did it?' 
'No. If I had to guess who on this floor would think shave-creaming the proctor's door was 
a real hoot, I'd say — ' 
'Ronnie Malenfant.' 
'Right.' I pointed my finger at Nate like a gun and winked. 
'I saw you walking back to Franklin with the blond girl,' he said. 'Carol. She's pretty.' 
'Just keeping her company,' I said. 
Nate sat there in his underpants and his beanie, smiling as if he knew better. Perhaps he 
did. I liked her, all right, although I didn't know much about her — only that she was from 
Connecticut. Not many work-study kids came from out of state. 
I headed down the hall to the lounge, my geology book under my arm. Ronnie was there, 
wearing his beanie with the front side pinned up so it looked sort of like a newspaper 
reporter's Fedora. Sitting with him were two other guys from our floor, Hugh Brennan and 
Ashley Rice. None of them looked as if they were having the world's most exciting Saturday 
morning, but when Ronnie saw me, his eyes brightened. 
'Pete Riley!' he said. 'Just the man I was looking for! Do you know how to play Hearts?' 
'Yes. Lucky for me, I also know how to study.' I raised my geology book, already thinking 
that I'd probably end up in the second-floor lounge . . . if, that was, I really meant to get 
anything done. Because Ronnie never shut up. Was apparently incapable of shutting up. 
Ronnie Malenfant was the original motor-mouth. 
'Come on, just one game to a hundred,' he wheedled. 'We're playing nickel a point, and 
these two guys play Hearts like old people fuck.' 
Hugh and Ashley grinned foolishly, as if they had just been complimented. Ronnie's insults 
were so raw and out front, so bulging with vitriol, that most guys took them as jokes, perhaps 
even as veiled compliments. They were neither. Ronnie meant every unkind word he ever 
said. 
'Ronnie, I got a quiz Tuesday, and I don't really understand this geosyncline stuff.' 
'Shit on the geosyncline,' Ronnie said, and Ashley Rice tittered. 'You've still got the rest of 
today, all of tomorrow, and all of Monday for the geo-fuckin-syncline.' 
'I have classes Monday and tomorrow Skip and I were going to go up to Oldtown. They're 
having an open hoot at the Methodist church and we — ' 
'Stop it, quit it, spare my achin scrote and don't talk to me about that folkie shit. Michael 
can row his fuckin boat right up my ass, okay? Listen, Pete — ' 
'Ronnie, I really — ' 
'You two dimbulbs stay right the fuck there.' Ronnie gave Ashley and Hugh a baleful look. 
Neither argued with him about it. They were probably eighteen like the rest of us, but anyone 
who's ever been to college will tell you that some very young eighteen-year-olds show up 
each September, especially in the rural states. It was the young ones with whom Ronnie 
succeeded. They were in awe of him. He borrowed their meal tickets, snapped them with 

towels in the shower, accused them of supporting the goals of the Reverend Martin Luther 
Coon (who, Ronnie would tell you, drove to protest rallies in his Jiguar), borrowed their 
money, and would respond to any request for a match with 'My ass and your face, 
monkeymeat.' They loved Ronnie in spite of it all . . . because of it all. They loved him 
because he was just so . . . college. 
Ronnie grabbed me around the neck and tried to yank me out into the hall so he could talk 
to me in private. I, not at all in awe of him and a bit repelled by the jungle aroma drifting out 
of his armpits, clamped down on his fingers, bent them back, and removed his hand. 'Don't do 
that, Ronnie.' 
'Ow, yow, ow, okay, okay, okay! Just come out here a minute, wouldja? And quit that, it 
hurts! Besides, it's the hand I jerk off with! Jesus! Fuck!' 
I let go of his hand (wondering if he'd washed it since the last time he jerked off) but let 
him pull me out into the hall. Here he took hold of me by the arms, speaking to me earnestly, 
his gummy eyes wide. 
'These guys can't play,' he said in a breathless, confidential whisper. 'They're a couple of 
afterbirths, Petesky, but they love the game. Fuckin love the game, you know? I don't love it, 
but unlike them, I can play it. Also I'm broke and there's a couple of Bogart movies tonight at 
Hauck. If I can squeeze em for two bucks — ' 
'Bogart movies? Is one of them The Caine Mutiny?' 
'That's right, The Caine Mutiny and The Maltese Falcon, Bogie at his fuckin finest, here's 
lookin at you, shweetheart. If I can squeeze those two afterbirths for two bucks, I can go. 
Squeeze em for four, I call some scagola from Franklin, take her with me, maybe get a 
blowjob later.' That was Ronnie, always the gosh-darned romantic. I had an image of him as 
Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, telling Mary Astor to drop and gobble. The idea was 
enough to make my sinuses swell shut. 
'But there's a big problem, Pete. Three-handed Hearts is risky. Who dares shoot the moon 
when you got that one fucking leftover card to worry about?' 
'How are you playing? Game over at a hundred, all losers pay the winner?' 
'Yeah. And if you come in, I'll kick back half what I win. Plus I give back what you lose.' 
He sunned me with a saintlike smile. 
'Suppose I beat you?' 
Ronnie looked momentarily startled, then smiled wider than ever. 'Not in this life, 
shweetheart. I'm a scientist at cards.' 
I glanced at my watch, then in at Ashley and Hugh. They really didn't look much like real 
competition, God love them. 'Tell you what,' I said. 'One game straight up to a hundred. 
Nickel a point. Nobody kicks back anything. We play, then I study, and everyone has a nice 
weekend.' 
'You're on.' As we went back into the lounge he added: 'I like you, Pete, but business is 
business — your homo boyfriends back in high school never gave you a fucking like I'm 
going to give you this morning.' 
'I didn't have any homo boyfriends in high school,' I said. 'I spent most of my weekends 
hitching up to Lewiston to ass-bang your sister.' 
Ronnie smiled widely, sat down, picked up the deck of cards, began to shuffle. 'I broke her 
in pretty good, didn't I?' 
You couldn't get lower than Mrs Malenfant's little boy, that was the thing. Many tried, but 
to the best of my knowledge no one ever actually succeeded. 

6 
Ronnie was a bigot with a foul mouth, a cringing personality, and that constant monkeyfungus 
stink, but he could play cards, I give him that. He wasn't the genius he claimed to be, 
at least not in Hearts, where luck is a big part of the game, but he was good. When he was 
concentrating full on he could remember almost every card that had been played . . . which 
was why, I suppose, he didn't like three-handed Hearts, with that extra card. With die kicker 
card gone, Ronnie was tough. 
Still, I did all right that first morning. When Hugh Brennan went over a hundred in the first 
game we played, I had thirty-three points to Ronnie's twenty-eight. It had been two or three 
years since I'd played Hearts, it was the first time in my life I'd played it for money, and I 
thought two bits a small price to pay for such unexpected entertainment. That round cost 
Ashley two dollars and fifty cents; the unfortunate Hugh had to cough up three-sixty. It 
seemed Ronnie had won the price of a date after all, although I thought the girl would have to 
be a real Bogart fan to give him a blowjob. Or even a kiss goodnight, for that matter. 
Ronnie puffed up like a crow guarding a fresh piece of roadkill. 'I got it,' he said. 'I'm sorry 
for guys like you who don't, but I got it, Riley. It's like it says in that Doors song, the men 
don't know but the little girls understand.' 
'You're ill, Ronnie,' I said. 
'I wanna go again,' Hugh said. I think P. T. Barnum was right, there really is one like Hugh 
born every minute. 'I wanna get my money back.' 
'Well,' Ronnie said, revealing his dingy teeth in a big smile, 'I'm willing to at least give you 
a chance.' He looked my way. 'What do you say, sporty?' 
My geology text lay forgotten on the sofa behind me. I wanted my quarter back, and a few 
more to jingle beside it. What I wanted even more was to school Ronnie Malenfant. 'Run em,' 
I said, and then, for the first of at least a thousand times I'd speak the same words in the 
troubled weeks ahead: 'Is this a pass left or pass right?' 
'New game, pass right. What a dorkus.' Ronnie cackled, stretched, and watched happily as 
the cards spun out of the deck. 'God, I love this game!' 
7 
That second game was the one that really hooked me. This time it was Ashley instead of 
Hugh who went skyrocketing toward one hundred points, enthusiastically helped along by 
Ronnie, who dumped The Bitch on Ash's hapless head at every opportunity. I was dealt the 
queen only twice that game. The first time I held it for four consecutive tricks when I could 
have bombed Ashley with it. Finally, just as I was starting to think I'd end up eating it myself, 
Ashley lost the lead to Hugh Brennan, who promptly led a diamond. He should have known I 
was void in that suit, had been since the start of the hand, but the Hughs of the world know 
little. That is, I suppose, why the Ronnies of the world so love to play cards with them. I 
topped the trick with The Bitch, held my nose, and honked at Hugh. That was how we said 
'Booya!' in the quaint old days of the sixties. 
Ronnie scowled. 'Why'd you do that? You could have put that dicksnacker out!' He nodded 
at Ashley, who was looking at us rather vacantly. 
'Yeah, but I'm not quite that stupid.' I tapped the score sheet. Ronnie had taken thirty points 

as of then; I had taken thirty-four. The other two were far beyond that. The question wasn't 
which of Ronnie's marks would lose, but which of the two who knew how to play the game 
would win. 'I wouldn't mind seeing those Bogie movies myself, you know. Shweetheart.' 
Ronnie showed his questionable teeth in a grin. He was playing to a gallery by then; we 
had attracted about half a dozen spectators. Skip and Nate were among them. 'Want to play it 
that way, do you? Okay. Spread your cheeks, moron; you're about to be cornholed.' 
Two hands later, I cornholed him. Ashley, who started that last hand with ninety-eight 
points, went over the top in a hurry. The spectators were dead quiet, waiting to see whether I 
could actually hit Ronnie with six — the number of hearts he'd need to take for me to beat 
him by one. 
Ronnie looked good at first, playing under everything that was led, staying away from the 
lead himself. When you have good low cards in Hearts, you're practically bulletproof. 'Riley's 
cooked!' he informed the audience. 'I mean fucking toastyl' 
I thought so, too, but at least I had the queen of spades in my hand. If I could drop it on 
him, I'd still win. I wouldn't make much from Ronnie, but the other two would be coughing 
up blood: over five bucks between them. And I'd get to see Ronnie's face change. That's what 
I wanted most, to see the gloat go out and the goat come in. I wanted to shut him up. 
It came down to the last three tricks. Ashley played the six of hearts. Hugh played the five. 
I played the three. I saw Ronnie's smile fade as he played the nine and took the trick. It 
dropped his edge to a mere three points. Better still, he finally had the lead. I had the jack of 
clubs and the queen of spades left in my hand. If Ronnie had a low club and played it, I was 
going to eat The Bitch and have to endure his crowing, which would be caustic. If, on the 
other hand . . . 
He played the five of diamonds. Hugh played the two of diamonds, getting under, and 
Ashley, smiling in a puzzled way that suggested he didn't know just what the fuck he was 
doing, played void. 
Dead silence in the room. 
Then, smiling, I completed the trick — Ronnie's trick — by dropping the queen of spades 
on top of the other three cards. There was a soft sigh from around the card-table, and when I 
looked up I saw that the half-dozen spectators had become nearly a full dozen. David 
Dearborn leaned in the doorway, arms folded, frowning at us. Behind him, in the hall, was 
someone else. Someone leaning on a pair of crutches. 
I suppose Dearie had already checked his well-thumbed book of rules — Dormitory 
Regulations at the University of Maine, 1966-1967 Edition — and had been disappointed to 
find there was none against playing cards, even when there was a stake involved. But you 
must believe me when I say his disappointment was nothing compared to Ronnie's. 
There are good losers in this world, there are sore losers, sulky losers, defiant losers, 
weepy losers . . . and then there are your down-and-out fuckhead losers. Ronnie was of the 
down-and-out fuckhead type. His cheeks flushed pink on the skin and almost purple around 
his blemishes. His mouth thinned to a shadow, and I could see his jaws working as he chewed 
his lips. 
'Oh gosh,' Skip said. 'Look who got hit with the shit.' 
'Why'd you do that?' Ronnie burst out, ignoring Skip — ignoring everyone in the room but 
me. 'Why'd you do that, you numb fuck?' 
I was bemused by the question and — let me admit this — absolutely delighted by his 
rage. 'Well,' I said, 'according to Vince Lombardi, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. 
Pay up, Ronnie.' 
'You're queer,' he said. 'You're a fucking homo majordomo. Who dealt that?' 
'Ashley,' I said. 'And if you want to call me a cheater, say it right out loud. Then I'm going 
to come around this table, grab you before you can run, and beat the snot out of you.' 

'No one's beating the snot out of anyone on my floor!' Dearie said sharply from the 
doorway, but everyone ignored him. They were watching Ronnie and me. 
'I didn't call you a cheater, I just asked who dealt,' Ronnie said. I could almost see him 
making the effort to pull himself together, to swallow the lump I'd fed him and smile as he 
did it, but there were tears of rage standing in his eyes (big and bright green, those eyes were 
Ronnie's one redeeming feature), and beneath his earlobes the points of his jaw went on 
bulging and relaxing. It was like watching twin hearts beat in the sides of his face. 'Who gives 
a shit, you beat me by ten points. That's fifty cents, big fucking deal.' 
I wasn't a big jock in high school like Skip Kirk — debate and track had been my only 
extra-curricular activities — and I'd never told anyone in my life that I'd beat the snot out of 
them. Ronnie seemed like a good place to start, though, and God knows I meant it. I think 
everyone else knew it, too. There was a huge wallop of adolescent adrenaline in the room; 
you could smell it, almost taste it. Part of me — a big part — wanted him to give me some 
more grief. Part of me wanted to stick it to him, wanted to stick it right up his ass. 
Money appeared on the table. Dearie took a step closer, frowning more ponderously than 
ever, but he said nothing . . . at least not about that. Instead he asked if anyone in the room 
had shaving-creamed his door, or knew who had. We all turned to look at him, and saw that 
Stoke Jones had moved into the doorway when Dearie stepped into the room. Stoke hung on 
his crutches, watching us all with his bright eyes. 
There was a moment of silence and then Skip said, 'You sure you didn't maybe go walking 
in your sleep and do it yourself, David?' A burst of laughter greeted this, and it was Dearie's 
turn to flush. The color started at his neck and worked its way up his cheeks and forehead to 
the roots of his flattop — no faggy Beatle haircut for Dearie, thank you very much. 
'Pass the word that it better not happen again,' Dearie said. Doing his own little Bogie 
imitation without realizing it. 'I'm not going to have my authority mocked.' 
'Oh blow it out,' Ronnie muttered. He had picked up the cards and was disconsolately 
shuffling them. 
Dearie took three large steps into the room, grabbed Ronnie by the shoulders of his Ivy 
League shirt, and pulled him. Ronnie got up on his own so the shirt would not be torn. He 
didn't have a lot of good shirts; none of us did. 
'What did you say to me, Malenfant?' 
Ronnie looked around and saw what I imagine he'd been seeing for most of his life: no 
help, no sympathy. As usual, he was on his own. And he had no idea why. 
'I didn't say anything. Don't be so fuckin paranoid, Dearborn.' 
'Apologize.' 
Ronnie wriggled in his grasp. 'I didn't say nothing, why should I apologize for nothing?' 
'Apologize anyway. And I want to hear true regret.' 
'Oh quit it,' Stoke Jones said. 'All of you. You should see yourselves. Stupidity to the nth 
power.' 
Dearie looked at him, surprised. We were all surprised, I think. Maybe Stoke was surprised 
himself. 
'David, you're just pissed off that someone creamed your door,' Skip said. 
'You're right. I'm pissed off. And I want an apology from you, Malenfant.' 
'Let it go,' Skip said. 'Ronnie just got a little hot under the collar because he lost a close 
one. He didn't shaving-cream your fucking door.' 
I looked at Ronnie to see how he was taking the rare experience of having someone stand 
up for him and saw a telltale shift in his green eyes — almost a flinch. In that moment I was 
almost positive Ronnie had shaving-creamed Dearie's door. Who among my acquaintances 
was more likely? 
If Dearie had noticed that guilty little blink, I believe he would have reached the same 

conclusion. But he was looking at Skip. Skip looked back at him calmly, and after a few more 
seconds to make it seem (to himself if not to the rest of us) like his own idea, Dearie let go of 
Ronnie's shirt. Ronnie shook himself, brushed at the wrinkles on his shoulders, then began 
digging in his pockets for small change to pay me with. 
'I'm sorry,' Ronnie said. 'Whatever has got your panties in a bunch, I'm sorry. I'm sorry as 
hell, sorry as shit, I'm so sorry my ass hurts. Okay?' 
Dearie took a step back. I had been able to feel the adrenaline; I suspected Dearie could 
feel the waves of dislike rolling in his direction just as clearly. Even Ashley Rice, who looked 
like a roly-poly bear in a kid's cartoon, was looking at Dearie in a flat-eyed, unfriendly way. 
It was a case of what the poet Gary Snyder might have called bad-karma baseball. Dearie was 
the proctor — strike one. He tried to run our floor as though it were an adjunct to his beloved 
ROTC program — strike two. And he was a jerkwad sophomore at a time when sophomores 
still believed that harassing freshmen was part of their bounden duty. Strike three, Dearie, 
you're out. 
'Spread the word that I'm not going to put up with a lot of high-school crap on my floor,' 
Dearie said (his floor, if you could dig it). He stood ramrod-straight in his U of M sweatshirt 
and khaki pants — pressed khaki pants, although it was Saturday. 'This is not high school, 
gentlemen; this is Chamberlain Hall at the University of Maine. Your bra-snapping days are 
over. The time has come for you to behave like college men.' 
I guess there was a reason I was voted Class Clown in the '66 Gates Falls yearbook. I 
clicked my heels together and snapped off a pretty fair British-style salute, the kind with the 
palm turned mostly outward. 'Yes sirl' I cried. There was nervous laughter from the gallery, a 
dirty guffaw from Ronnie, a grin from Skip. Skip gave Dearie a shrug, eyebrows lifted, hands 
up to the sky. See what you get? it said. Act like an asshole and that's how people treat you. 
Perfect eloquence is, I think, almost always mute. 
Dearie looked at Skip, also mute. Then he looked at me. His face was expressionless, 
almost dead, but I wished I had for once forgone the smartass impulse. The trouble is, for the 
born smartass, the impulse has nine times out of ten been acted upon before the brain can 
even engage first gear. I bet that in days of old when knights were bold, more than one court 
jester was hung upside down by his balls. You don't read about it in the Morte D'Arthur, but I 
think it must be true — laugh this one off, ya motley motherfucker. In any case, I knew I had 
just made an enemy. 
Dearie spun in a nearly perfect about-face and went marching out of the lounge. Ronnie's 
mouth drew down in a grimace that made his ugly face even uglier; the leer of the villain in a 
stage melodrama. He made a jacking-off gesture at Dearie's stiff retreating back. Hugh 
Brennan giggled a little, but no one really laughed. Stoke Jones had disappeared, apparently 
disgusted with the lot of us. 
Ronnie looked around, eyes bright. 'So,' he said. 'I'm still up for it. Nickel a point, who 
wants to play?' 
'I will,' Skip said. 
'I will, too,' I said, never once glancing in the direction of my geology book. 
'Hearts?' Kirby McClendon asked. He was the tallest boy on the floor, maybe one of the 
tallest boys at school — six-seven at least, and possessed of a long, mournful bloodhound's 
face. 'Sure. Good choice.' 
'What about us?' Ashley squeaked. 
'Yeah!' Hugh said. Talk about your gluttons for punishment. 
'You're outclassed at this table,' Ronnie said, speaking with what was for him almost 
kindness. 'Why don't you start up your own?' 
Ashley and Hugh did just that. By four o'clock all of the lounge tables were occupied by 
quartets of third-floor freshmen, ragtag scholarship boys who had to buy their texts in the 

Used section of the bookstore playing Hearts at a nickel a point. In our dorm, the mad season 
had begun. 
8 
Saturday night was another of my meals on the Holyoke dishline. In spite of my awakening 
interest in Carol Gerber, I tried to get Brad Witherspoon to switch for me — Brad had 
Sunday breakfast and he hated to get up early almost as badly as Skip did — but Brad 
refused. By then he was playing, too, and two bucks out of pocket. He was crazy to catch up. 
He just shook his head at me and led a spade out of his hand. 'Let's go Bitch-huntin!' he cried, 
sounding eerily like Ronnie Malenfant. The most insidious thing about Ronnie was that weak 
minds found him worth imitating. 
I left my seat at the original table, where I had spent the balance of the day, and my place 
was immediately taken by a young man named Kenny Auster. I was nearly nine dollars ahead 
(mostly because Ronnie had moved to another table so I wouldn't cut into his profits) and 
should have been feeling good, but I didn't. It wasn't the money, it was the game. I wanted to 
keep on playing. 
I walked disconsolately down the hall, checked the room, and asked Nate if he wanted to 
eat early with the kitchen crew. He simply shook his head and waved me on without looking 
up from his history book. When people talk about student activism in the sixties, I have to 
remind myself that the majority of kids went through that mad season the way Nate did. They 
kept their heads down and their eyes on their history books while history happened all around 
them. Not that Nate was completely unaware, or completely dedicated to the study carrels on 
the sidelines, for that matter. You shall hear. 
I walked toward the Palace on the Plains, zipping my jacket against the air, which had 
turned frosty. It was quarter past four. The Commons didn't officially open until five, so the 
paths which met in Bennett's Run were almost deserted. Stoke Jones was there, though, 
hunched over his crutches and brooding down at something on the path. I wasn't surprised to 
see him; if you had some sort of physical disability, you could chow an hour earlier than the 
rest of the students. As far as I remember, that was about the only special treatment the 
handicapped got. If you were physically fucked up, you got to eat with the kitchen help. That 
sparrow-track on the back of his coat was very clear and very black in the late light. 
As I got closer to him I saw what he was looking down at — Introduction to Sociology. He 
had dropped it on the faded red bricks of Bennett's Walk and was trying to figure a way he 
could pick it up again without landing on his face. He kept poking at the book with the tip of 
one crutch. Stoke had two, maybe even three different pairs of crutches; these were the ones 
that fitted over his forearms in a series of ascending steel collars. I could hear him muttering 
'Rip-rip, rip-rip' under his breath as he prodded the book uselessly from place to place. When 
he was plunging along on his crutches, 'Rip-rip' had a determined sound. In this situation it 
sounded frustrated. At the time I knew Stoke (I will not call him Rip-Rip, although many 
Ronnie-imitators had taken to doing so by the end of the semester), I was fascinated by how 
many different nuances there could be to any given 'Rip-rip.' That was before I found out the 
Navajos have forty different ways of saying their word for cloud. That was before I found out 
a lot of things actually. 
He heard me coming and snapped his head around so fast he almost fell over anyway. I 
reached out to steady him. He jerked back, seeming to swim in the old army duffle coat he 
was wearing. 

'Get away from me!' As if he expected me to give him a shove. I raised my hands to show 
him I was harmless and bent over. 'And get your hands off my book!' 
This I didn't dignify, only picked up the text and stuffed it under his arm like a newspaper. 
'I don't need your help!' 
I was about to reply sharply, but I noticed again how white his cheeks were around the 
patches of red in their centers, and how his hair was damp with perspiration. Once again I 
could smell him — that overworked-transformer aroma — and realized I could also hear 
him: his breathing had a raspy, snotty sound. If Stoke Jones hadn't found out where the 
infirmary was yet, I had an idea he would before long. 
'I didn't offer you a piggyback, for God's sake.' I tried to paste a smile on my puss and 
managed something or other. Hell, why shouldn't I smile? Didn't I have nine bucks in my 
pocket that I hadn't started the day with? By the standards of Chamberlain Three, I was rich. 
Jones looked at me with those dark eyes of his. His lips thinned, but after a moment he 
nodded. 'Okay. Point taken. Thanks.' Then he resumed his breakneck pace up the hill. At first 
he was well ahead of me, but then the grade began to work on him and he slowed down. His 
snotty-sounding breathing got louder and quicker. I heard it clearly as I caught up to him. 
'Why don't you take it easy?' I asked. 
He gave me an impatient are-you-still-here glance. 'Why don't you eat me?' 
I pointed to his soash book. 'That's sliding again.' 
He stopped, adjusted it under his arm, then fixed himself on his crutches again, hunched 
like a bad-tempered heron, glaring at me through his black tumbles of hair. 'Go on,' he said. 'I 
don't need a minder.' 
I shrugged. 'I wasn't babysitting you, just wanted some company.' 
'I don't.' 
I started on my way, nettled in spite of my nine bucks. Us class clowns aren't wild about 
making friends — two or three are apt to do us for a lifetime — but we don't react very well 
to the bum's rush, either. Our goal is vast numbers of acquaintances whom we can leave 
laughing. 
'Riley,' he said from behind me. 
I turned. He'd decided to thaw a little after all, I thought. How wrong I was. 
'There are gestures and gestures,' he said. 'Putting shaving cream on the proctor's door is 
about one step above wiping snot on the seat of Little Susie's desk because you can't think of 
another way to say you love her.' 
'I didn't shaving-cream Dearie's door,' I said, more nettled than ever. 
'Yeah, but you're playing cards with the asshole who did. Lending him credibility.' I think 
it was the first time I heard that word, which went on to have an incredibly sleazy career in 
the seventies and coke-soaked eighties. Mostly in politics. I think credibility died of shame 
around 1986, just as all those sixties war protesters and fearless battlers for racial equality 
were discovering junk bonds, Martha Stewart living, and the StairMaster. 'Why do you waste 
your time?' 
That was direct enough to rattle me, and I said what seems to me now, looking back, an 
incredibly stupid thing. 'I've got plenty of time to waste.' 
Jones nodded as if he had expected no more and no better. He got going again and passed 
me at his accustomed plunge, head down, back humped, sweaty hair swinging, soash book 
clamped tight under his arm. I waited, expecting it to squirt free again. This time when it did, 
I'd leave him to poke it with his crutch. 
But it didn't get away from him, and after I'd seen him reach the door of Holyoke, grapple 
with it, and finally lurch inside, I went on my own way. When I'd filled my tray I sat with 
Carol Gerber and the rest of the kids on the dishline crew. That was about as far from Stoke 
Jones as it was possible to get, which suited me fine. He also sat apart from the other 

handicapped kids, I remember. Stoke Jones sat apart from everybody. Glint Eastwood on 
crutches. 
9 
The regular diners began to show up at five o'clock. By quarter past, the dishline crew was in 
full swing and stayed that way for an hour. Lots of dorm kids went home for the weekend, 
but those who stayed all showed up on Saturday night, which was beans and franks and 
cornbread. Dessert was Jell-O. At the Palace on the Plains, dessert was almost always Jell-O. 
If Cook was feeling frisky, you might get Jell-O with little pieces of fruit suspended in it. 
Carol was doing silverware, and just as the rush began to subside, she wheeled away from 
the pass-through, shaking with laughter. Her cheeks were bright crimson. What came rolling 
along the belt was Skip's work. He admitted it later that night, but I knew right away. 
Although he was in the College of Education and probably destined to teach history and 
coach baseball at good old Dexter High until he dropped dead of a booze-fueled heart attack 
at the age of fifty-nine or so, Skip by rights should have been in fine arts . . . probably would 
have been if he hadn't come from five generations of farmers who said ayuh and coss 'twill 
and sh'd smile n kiss a pig. He was only the second or third in his sprawling family (their 
religion, Skip once said, was Irish Alcoholic) to ever go to college. Clan Kirk could visualize 
a teacher in the family — barely — but not a painter or a sculptor. And at eighteen, Skip 
could see no further than they could. He only knew he didn't quite fit the hole he was trying 
to slide into, and it made him restless. It made him wander into rooms other than his own, 
check the LPs, and criticize almost everyone's taste in music. 
By 1969 he had a better idea of who and what he was. That was the year he constructed a 
papier-mache Vietnamese family tableau that was set on fire at the end of a peace rally in 
front of the Fogler Library while The Youngbloods played 'Get Together' from a borrowed 
set of amps and part-time hippies worked out to the beat like tribal warriors after a hunt. You 
see how jumbled it all is in my mind? It was Atlantis, that's all I know for sure, way down 
below the ocean. The paper family burned, the hippie protesters chanted 'Napalm! Napalm! 
Scum from the skies!' as they danced, and after awhile the jocks and the frat boys began to 
throw stuff. Eggs at first. Then stones. 
It was no papier-mache family that sent Carol laughing and reeling away from the dishline 
that night in the fall of 1966; it was a horny hotdog man standing atop a Matterhorn of 
Holyoke Commons baked beans. A pipe-cleaner wiener jutted jauntily from the appropriate 
spot. In his hand was a little University of Maine pennant, on his head a scrap of blue hanky 
folded to look like a freshman beanie. Along the front of the tray, carefully spelled out in 
crumbled cornbread, was the message EAT MORE MAINE BEANS! 
A good deal of edible artwork came along the conveyor belt during my time on the Palace 
dishline, but I think that one was the all-time champ. Stoke Jones would no doubt have called 
it a waste of time, but I think in that case he would have been wrong. Anything with the 
power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn't a waste of time. I think something like 
that is very close to immortality. 
10 

I punched out at six-thirty, walked down the ramp behind the kitchen with one last bag of 
garbage, and dropped it into one of the four Dumpsters lined up behind the Commons like 
snubby steel boxcars. 
When I turned around, I saw Carol Gerber and a couple of other kids standing by the 
corner of the building, smoking and watching the moon rise. The other two started away just 
as I walked over, pulling my Pall Malls out of my jacket pocket. 
'Hey, Pete, eat more Maine beans,' Carol said, and laughed. 
'Yeah.' I lit my cigarette. Then, without thinking about it much one way or the other, I said: 
'There's a couple of Bogart movies playing at Hauck tonight. They start at seven. We've got 
time to walk over. Want to go?' 
She smoked, not answering me for a moment, but she was still smiling and I knew she was 
going to say yes. Earlier, all I'd wanted was to get back to the third-floor lounge and play 
Hearts. Now that I was away from the game, however, the game seemed a lot less important. 
Had I been hot enough to say something about beating the snot out of Ronnie Malenfant? It 
seemed I had — the memory was clear enough — but standing out here in the cool air with 
Carol, it was hard for me to understand why. 
'I've got a boyfriend back home,' she said at last. 
'Is that a no?' 
She shook her head, still with the little smile. The smoke from her cigarette drifted across 
her face. Her hair, free of the net the girls had to wear on the dishline, blew lightly across her 
brow. 'That's information. Remember that show The Prisoner? "Number Six, we want . . . 
information."' 
'I've got a girlfriend back home,' I said. 'More information.' 
'I've got another job, tutoring math. I promised to spend an hour tonight with this girl on 
the second floor. Calculus. Ag. She's hopeless and she whines, but it's six dollars an hour.' 
Carol laughed. 'This is getting good, we're exchanging information like mad.' 
'It doesn't look good for Bogie, though,' I said. I wasn't worried. I knew we were going to 
see Bogie. I think I also knew there was romance in our future. It gave me an oddly light 
feeling, a lifting-off sensation in my midsection. 
'I could call Esther from Hauck and tell her calc at ten o'clock instead of nine,' Carol said. 
'Esther's a sad case. She never goes out. What she does mostly is sit around with her hair in 
curlers and write letters home about how hard college is. We could see the first movie, at 
least.' 
'That sounds good,' I said. 
We started walking toward Hauck. Those were the days, all right; you didn't have to hire a 
babysitter, put out the dog, feed the cat, or set the burglar alarm. You just went. 
'Is this like a date?' she asked after a little bit. 
'Well,' I said, 'I guess it could be.' We were walking past East Annex by then, and other 
kids were filling up the paths, heading toward the auditorium. 
'Good,' she said, 'because I left my purse back in my room. I can't go dutch.' 
'Don't worry, I'm rich. Won big playing cards today.' 
'Poker?' 
'Hearts. Do you know it?' 
'Are you kidding? I spent three weeks at Camp Winiwinaia on Lake George the summer I 
was twelve. YMCA camp — poor kids' camp, my mom called it. It rained practically every 
day and all we did was play Hearts and hunt The Bitch.' Her eyes had gone far away, the way 
people's eyes do when they trip over some memory like a shoe in the dark. 'Find the lady in 
black. Cherchez la femme noire.' 
'That's the game, all right,' I said, knowing that for a moment I wasn't there for her at all. 

Then she came back, gave me a grin, and took her cigarettes out of her jeans pocket. We 
smoked a lot back then. All of us. Back then you could smoke in hospital waiting rooms. I 
told my daughter that and at first she didn't believe me. 
I took out my own cigarettes and lit us both. It was a good moment, the two of us looking 
at each other in the Zippo's flame. Not as sweet as a kiss, but nice. I felt that lightness inside 
me again, that sense of lifting off. Sometimes your view widens and grows hopeful. 
Sometimes you think you can see around corners, and maybe you can. Those are good 
moments. I snapped my lighter shut and we walked on, smoking, the backs of our hands close 
but not quite brushing. 
'How much money are we talking about?' she asked. 'Enough to run away to California on, 
or maybe not quite that much?' 
'Nine dollars.' 
She laughed and took my hand. 'It's a date, all right,' she said. 'You can buy me popcorn, 
too.' 
'All right. Do you care which movie plays first?' 
She shook her head. 'Bogie's Bogie.' 
'That's true,' I said, but I hoped it would be The Maltese Falcon. 
It was. Halfway through it, while Peter Lorre was doing his rather ominous gay turn and 
Bogie was gazing at him with polite, amused incredulity, I looked at Carol. She was looking 
at me. I bent and kissed her popcorn-buttery mouth by the black-and-white moonlight of John 
Huston's inspired first film. Her lips were sweet and responsive. I pulled back a little. She 
was still looking at me. The little smile was back. Then she offered me her bag of popcorn, I 
reciprocated with my box of Dots, and we watched the rest of the movie. 
11 
Walking back to the Chamberlain-King-Franklin complex of dorms, I took her hand almost 
without thinking about it. She curled her fingers through mine naturally enough, but I thought 
I could feel a reserve now. 
'Are you going to go back for The Caine Mutiny?' she asked. 'You could, if you've still got 
your ticket stub. Or I could give you mine.' 
'Nah, I've got geology to study.' 
'Bet you wind up playing cards all night instead.' 
'I can't afford to,' I said. And I meant it; I meant to go back and study. I really did. 
'Lonely Struggles, or A Scholarship Boy's Life,' Carol said. 'A heartbreaking novel by 
Charles Dickens. You'll weep as plucky Peter Riley throws himself into the river after finding 
that the Financial Aid Office has revoked his grant package.' 
I laughed. She was very sharp. 
'I'm in the same boat, you know. If we screw up, maybe we can make it a double suicide. 
Into the Penobscot with us. Goodbye, cruel world.' 
'What's a Connecticut girl doing at the University of Maine, anyway?' I asked. 
'That's a little complicated. And if you ever plan on asking me out again, you should know 
you're robbing the cradle. I won't actually be eighteen until November. I skipped the seventh 
grade. That was the year my parents got divorced, and I was miserable. It was either study all 
the time or turn into one of the Harwich Junior High corner girls. They're the ones who major 
in French-kissing and usually wind up pregnant at sixteen. You know the kind I mean?' 
'Sure.' In Gates you saw them in giggling little groups outside Frank's Fountain or the 

Dairy Delish, waiting for the boys to come by in their dropped Fords and Plymouth hemis, 
fast cars with the fenderskirts and the decals saying FRAM and QUAKER STATE in the back 
windows. You could see those girls as women down at the other end of Main Street, ten years 
older and forty pounds heavier, drinking beers and shots in Chucky's Tavern. 
'I turned into a study-grind. My father was in the Navy. He got out on a disability and 
moved here to Maine . . . Damariscotta, down on the coast?' 
I nodded, thinking of Diane Renee's steady boy, the one who said ship ahoy and joined the 
Nay-yay-vee. 
'I was living in Connecticut with my mother and going to Harwich High. I applied to 
sixteen different schools and got accepted by all but three . . . but . . . ' 
'But they expected you to pay your own way and you couldn't.' 
She nodded. 'I think I missed the plum scholarships by maybe twenty SAT-points. An 
extra-curricular activity or two probably wouldn't have hurt, either, but I was too busy 
grinding away at the books. And by then I was pretty hot and heavy with Sully-John . . . ' 
'The boyfriend, right?' 
She nodded, but not as though this Sully-John interested her. 'The only two schools 
offering realistic financial aid packages were Maine and UConn. I decided on Maine because 
by then I wasn't getting along very well with my mother. Lots of fights.' 
'You get along better with your father?' 
'Hardly ever see him,' she said in a dry, businesslike tone. 'He lives with this woman who . 
. . well, they drink a lot and fight a lot, let's leave it at that. But he's a resident of the state, I'm 
his daughter, and this is a land-grant college. I didn't get everything I needed — UConn 
offered the better deal, frankly — but I'm not afraid of a little work. It's worth it, just to get 
away.' 
She took a deep breath of the night air and let it out, faintly white. We were almost back to 
Franklin. Inside the lobby I could see guys sitting in the hard plastic contour chairs, waiting 
for their girls to come down from upstairs. It looked like quite a rogue's gallery. Worth it just 
to get away, she had said. Did that mean the mother, the town, and the high school, or was the 
boyfriend included? 
When we got to the wide double doors at the front of her dorm, I put my arms around her 
and bent to kiss her again. She put her hands on my chest, stopping me. Not pulling back, just 
stopping me. She looked up into my face, smiling that little smile of hers. I could get to love 
that smile, I thought — it was the kind of smile you might wake up thinking of in the middle 
of the night. The blue eyes and the blond hair too, but mostly the smile. The lips only curved 
a little, but the corners of the mouth deepened to dimples all the same. 
'My boyfriend's real name is John Sullivan,' she said. 'Like the fighter. Now tell me the 
name of your girlfriend.' 
'Annmarie,' I said, not much caring for the sound of it as it came out of my mouth. 
'Annmarie Soucie. She's a senior at Gates Falls High this year.' I let Carol go. When I did, she 
took her hands off my chest and grabbed mine. 
'This is information,' she said. 'Information, that's all. Still want to kiss me?' 
I nodded. I wanted to more than ever. 
'Okay.' She tilted her face up, closed her eyes, opened her lips a little. She looked like a kid 
waiting at the foot of the stairs for her goodnight kiss from Papa. It was so cute I almost 
laughed. Instead I bent and kissed her. She kissed back with pleasure and enthusiasm. There 
were no tongues touching, but it was a thorough, searching kiss just the same. When she drew 
back, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. 'Goodnight. Thanks for the movie.' 
'Want to do it again?' 
'I have to think about that,' she said. She was smiling but her eyes were serious. I suppose 
her boyfriend was on her mind; I know that Annmarie was on mine. 'Maybe you better, too. 

I'll see you on the dishline Monday. What do you have?' 
'Lunch and dinner.' 
'I have breakfast and lunch. So I'll see you at lunch.' 
'Eat more Maine beans,' I said. That made her laugh. She went inside. I watched her go, 
standing outside with my collar turned up and my hands in my pockets and a cigarette 
between my lips, feeling like Bogie. I watched her say something to the girl on the reception 
desk and then hurry upstairs, still laughing. 
I walked back to Chamberlain in the moonlight, determined to get serious about the 
geosyncline. 
12 
I only went into the third-floor lounge to get my geology book; I swear it's true. When I got 
there, every table — plus one or two which must have been hijacked from other floors — was 
occupied by a quartet of Hearts-playing fools. There was even a group in the corner, sitting 
cross-legged on the floor and staring intently at their cards. They looked like half-assed yogis. 
'We chasin The Cunt!' Ronnie Malenfant yelled to the room at large. 'We gonna bust that 
bitch out, boys!' 
I picked up my geology text from the sofa where it had lain all day and night (someone had 
sat on it, pushing it most of the way down between two cushions, but that baby was too big to 
hide entirely), and looked at it the way you might look at some artifact of unknown purpose. 
In Hauck Auditorium, sitting beside Carol Gerber, this crazy card-party had seemed like a 
dream. Now it was Carol who seemed dreamlike — Carol with her dimples and her boyfriend 
with the boxer's name. I still had six bucks in my pocket and it was absurd to feel 
disappointed just because there was no place for me in any of the games currently going on. 
Study, that was what I had to do. Make friends with the geosyncline. I'd camp out in the 
second-floor lounge or maybe find a quiet corner in the basement rec. 
Just as I was leaving with Historical Geology under my arm, Kirby McClendon tossed 
down his cards and cried, Tuck this! I'm tapped! All because I keep getting hit with that 
fucking queen of spades! I'll give you guys IOUs, but I am honest-to-God tapped out.' He 
went out past me without looking back, ducking his head as he went through the door — I've 
always thought that being that tall must be a kind of curse. A month later Kirby would be 
tapped out in a much larger sense, withdrawn from the University by his frightened parents 
after a mental breakdown and a half-assed suicide attempt. Not the first victim of Heartsmania 
that fall, nor the last, but the only one to try and off himself by eating two bottles of 
orange-flavored baby aspirin. 
Lennie Doria didn't even bother looking after him. He looked over at me instead. 'You 
want to sit in, Riley?' 
A brief but perfectly genuine struggle for my soul went on. I needed to study. I had 
planned on studying, and for a financial-aid boy like me, that was a good plan, certainly more 
sensible than sitting here in this smoky room and adding the effluent from my own Pall Malls 
to the general fug. 
So I said 'Yeah, why not?' and sat down and played Hearts until almost one in the morning. 
When I finally shambled back to my room, Nate was lying on his bed reading his Bible. That 
was the last thing he did every night before going to sleep. This was his third trip through 
what he always called The Word of God, he'd told me. He had reached the Book of 
Nehemiah. He looked up at me with an expression of calm enquiry — a look that never 

changed much. Now that I think about it, Nate never changed much. He was in pre-dent, and 
he stayed with it; tucked into his last Christmas card to me was a photo of his new office in 
Houlton. In the photo there are three Magi standing around a straw-filled cradle on the snowy 
office lawn. Behind Mary and Joseph you can read the sign on the door: NATHANIEL 
HOPPENSTAND, DOS. He married Cindy. They are still married, and their three children are 
mostly grown up. I imagine Rinty died and got replaced. 
'Did you win?' Nate asked. He spoke in almost the same tone of voice my wife would use 
some years later, when I came home half-drunk after a Thursday-night poker game. 
'Actually I did.' I had gravitated to a table where Ronnie was playing and had lost three of 
my remaining six dollars, then drifted to another one where I won them back, and a couple of 
more besides. But I had never gotten around to the geosyncline or the mysteries of tectonic 
plates. 
Nate was wearing red-and-white-striped pajamas. He was, I think, the only person I ever 
shared a room with in college, male or female, who wore pajamas. Of course he was also the 
only one who owned Diane Renee Sings Navy Blue. As I began undressing, Nate slipped 
between the covers of his bed and reached behind him to turn off the study lamp on his desk. 
'Get your geology all studied up?' he asked as the shadows swallowed his half of the room. 
'I'm in good shape with it,' I said. Years later, when I came in from those late poker games 
and my wife would ask me how drunk I was, I'd say 'I only had a couple' in that same chipper 
tone of voice. 
I swung into my own bed, turned off my own light, and was asleep almost immediately. I 
dreamed I was playing Hearts. Ronnie Malenfant was dealing; Stoke Jones stood in the 
lounge doorway, hunched over his crutches and eyeing me — eyeing all of us — with the 
dour disapproval of a Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritan. In my dream there was an 
enormous amount of money lying on the table, hundreds of dollars in crumpled fives and 
ones, money orders, even a personal check or two. I looked at this, then back at the doorway. 
Carol Gerber was now standing on one side of Stokely. Nate, dressed in his candy-cane 
pajamas, was on the other side. 
'We want information,' Carol said. 
'You won't get it,' I replied — in the TV show, that was always Patrick McGoohan's reply 
to Number Two. 
Nate said, 'You left your window open, Pete. The room's cold and your papers blew 
everywhere.' 
I couldn't think of an adequate reply to this, so I picked up the hand I'd been dealt and 
fanned it open. Thirteen cards, and every one was the queen of spades. Every one was la 
femme noire. Every one was The Bitch. 
13 
In Vietnam the war was going well — Lyndon Johnson, on a swing through the South 
Pacific, said so. There were a few minor setbacks, however. The Viet Cong shot down three 
American Hueys practically in Saigon's backyard; a little farther out from Big S, an estimated 
one thousand Viet Cong soldiers kicked the shit out of at least twice that number of South 
Vietnamese regulars. In the Mekong Delta, US gunships sank a hundred and twenty Viet 
Cong river patrol boats which turned out to contain — whoops — large numbers of refugee 
children. America lost its four hundredth plane of the war that October, an F-1O5 
Thunderchief. The pilot parachuted to safety. In Manila, South Vietnam's Prime Minister, 

Nguyen Cao Ky, insisted that he was not a crook. Neither were the members of his cabinet, 
he said, and the fact that a dozen or so cabinet members resigned while Ky was in the 
Philippines was just coincidence. 
In San Diego Bob Hope did a show for Army boys headed in-country. 'I wanted to call 
Bing and send him along with you,' Bob said, 'but that pipe-smoking son of a gun has unlisted 
his number.' The Army boys roared with laughter. 
? and the Mysterians ruled the radio. Their song, '96 Tears,' was a monster hit. They never 
had another one. 
In Honolulu hula -hula girls greeted President Johnson. 
At the U.N. Secretary General U Thant was pleading with American representative Arthur 
Goldberg to stop, at least temporarily, the bombing of North Vietnam. Arthur Goldberg got in 
touch with the Great White Father in Hawaii to relay Thant's request. The Great White 
Father, perhaps still wearing his lei, said no way, we'd stop when the Viet Cong stopped, but 
in the meantime they were going to cry 96 tears. At least 96. (Johnson did a brief, clumsy 
shimmy with the hula-hula girls, I remember watching that on The Huntley-Brinkley Report 
and thinking he danced like every other white guy I knew . . . which was, incidentally, all the 
guys I knew.) 
In Greenwich Village a peace march was broken up by the police. The marchers had no 
permit, the police said. In San Francisco war protesters carrying plastic skulls on sticks and 
wearing whiteface like a troupe of mimes were dispersed by teargas. In Denver police tore 
down thousands of posters advertising an antiwar rally at Chautauqua Park in Boulder. The 
police had discovered a statute forbidding the posting of such bills. The statute did not, the 
Denver Chief said, forbid posted bills which advertised movies, old clothes drives, VFW 
dances, or rewards for information leading to the recovery of lost pets. Those posters, the 
chief explained, were not political. 
On our own little patch there was a sit-in at East Annex, where Coleman Chemicals was 
holding job interviews. Coleman, like Dow, made napalm. Coleman also made Agent 
Orange, botulin compound, and anthrax, it turned out, although no one knew that until the 
company went bankrupt in 1980. In the Maine Campus there was a small picture of the 
protesters being led away. A larger photo showed one protester being pulled out of the East 
Annex doorway by a campus cop while another cop stood by, holding the protester's crutches 
— said protester was Stoke Jones, of course, wearing his duffle coat with the sparrow-track 
on the back. The cops were treating him kindly enough, I'm sure — at that point, war 
protesters were still more novelty than nuisance — but the combination of the big cop and the 
staggering boy made the picture creepy, somehow. I thought of it many times between 1968 
and 1971, years when, in the words of Bob Dylan, 'the game got rough.' The largest photo in 
that issue, the only one above the fold, showed ROTC guys in uniform marching on the 
sunny football field while large crowds watched. MANEUVERS DRAW RECORD CROWD, read the 
headline. 
Closer to home still, one Peter Riley got a D on his Geology quiz and a D-plus on a 
Sociology quiz two days later. On Friday I got back a one-page 'essay of opinion' I had 
scribbled just before Intro English (Writing) on Monday morning. The subject was Ties 
(Should/Should Not) Be Required for Men in Restaurants. I had chosen Should Not. This 
little expository exercise had been marked with a big red C, the first G I'd gotten in English 
since arriving at U of M with my straight A's in high-school English and my 740 score on the 
SAT Verbals. That red hook shocked me in a way the quiz D's hadn't, and angered me as 
well. Across the top Mr Babcock had written, 'Your usual clarity is present, but in this case 
serves only to show what a meatless meal this is. Your humor, although facile, falls far short 
of wit. The C is actually something of a gift. Sloppy work.' 
I thought of approaching him after class, then rejected the idea. Mr Babcock, who wore 

bowties and big hornrimmed glasses, had made it clear in just four weeks that he considered 
grade-grubbers the lowest form of academic life. Also, it was noon. If I grabbed a quick bite 
at the Palace on the Plains, I could be back on Chamberlain Three by one. All the tables in 
the lounge (and all four corners of the room) would be filled by three o'clock that afternoon, 
but at one I'd still be able to find a seat. I was almost twenty dollars to the good by then, and 
planned to spend a profitable late-October weekend lining my pockets. I was also planning on 
the Saturday-night dance in Lengyll Gym. Carol had agreed to go with me. The 
Cumberlands, a popular campus group, were playing. At some point (more likely at several 
points) they would do their version of'96 Tears.' 
The voice of conscience, already speaking in the tones of Nate Hoppenstand, suggested I'd 
do well to spend at least part of the weekend hitting the books. I had two chapters of geology 
to read, two chapters of sociology, forty pages of history (the Middle Ages at a gulp), plus a 
set of questions to answer concerning trade routes. 
I'll get to it, don't worry, I'll get to it, I told that voice. Sunday's my day to study. You can 
count on it, you can take it to the bank. And for awhile on Sunday I actually did read about 
in-groups, out-groups, and group sanctions. Between hands of cards I read about them. Then 
things got interesting and my soash book ended up on the floor under the couch. Going to bed 
on Sunday night — late Sunday night — it occurred to me that not only had my winnings 
shrunk instead of grown (Ronnie now seemed actually to be seeking me out), but I hadn't 
really gotten very far with my studying. Also, I hadn't made a certain phone-call. 
If you really want to put your hand there, Carol said, and she had been smiling that funny 
little smile when she said it, that smile which was mostly dimples and a look in the eyes. If 
you really want to put your hand there. 
About halfway through the Saturday-night dance, she and I had gone out for a smoke. It 
was a mild night, and along Lengyll's brick north side maybe twenty couples were hugging 
and kissing by the light of the moon rising over Chadbourne Hall. Carol and I joined them. 
Before long I had my hand inside her sweater. I rubbed my thumb over the smooth cotton of 
her bra-cup, feeling the stiff little rise of her nipple. My temperature was also rising. I could 
feel hers rising, as well. She looked into my face with her arms still locked around my neck 
and said, 'If you really want to put your hand there, I think you owe somebody a phone-call, 
don't you?' 
There's time, I told myself as I drifted toward sleep. There's plenty of time for studying, 
plenty of time for phone-calls. Plenty of time. 
14 
Skip Kirk blew an Anthropology quiz — ended up guessing at half of the answers and getting 
a fifty-eight. He got a C-minus on an Advanced Calc quiz, and only did that well because his 
last math course in high school had covered some of the same concepts. We were in the same 
Sociology course and he got a D-minus on the quiz, scoring a bare seventy. 
We weren't the only ones with problems. Ronnie was a winner at Hearts, better than fifty 
bucks up in ten days of play, if you believed him (no one completely did, although we knew 
he was winning), but a loser in his classes. He flunked a French quiz, blew off the little 
English paper in the class we shared ('Who gives a fuck about ties, I eat at McDonald's' he 
said), and scraped through a quiz in some other history division by scanning an admirer's 
notes just before class. 
Kirby McClendon had quit shaving and began gnawing his fingernails between deals. He 

also began cutting significant numbers of classes. Jack Frady convinced his advisor to let him 
drop Statistics I even though add-drop was officially over. 'I cried a little,' he told me matterof-
factly one night in the lounge as we Bitch-hunted our way toward the wee hours. 'It's 
something I learned to do in Dramatics Club.' Lennie Doria tapped on my door a couple of 
nights later while I was cramming (Nate had been in the rack for an hour or more, sleeping 
the sleep of the just and the caught-up) and asked me if I had any interest in writing a paper 
about Crispus Atticus. He had heard I could do such things. He'd pay a fair price, Lennie said; 
he was currently ten bucks up in the game. I said I was sorry but I couldn't help him. I was 
behind a couple of papers myself. Lennie nodded and slipped out. 
Ashley Rice broke out in horrible oozing acne all over his face, Mark St Pierre had a 
sleepwalking interlude after losing almost twenty bucks in one catastrophic night, and Brad 
Witherspoon got into a fight with a guy on the first floor. The guy made some innocuous little 
crack — later on Brad himself admitted it had been innocuous — but Brad, who'd just been 
hit with The Bitch three times in four hands and only wanted a Coke out of the first-floor 
machine to soothe his butt-parched throat, wasn't in an innocuous mood. He turned, dropped 
his unopened soda into the sandwell of a nearby cigarette urn, and started punching. Broke 
the kid's glasses, loosened one of his teeth. So Brad Witherspoon, ordinarily about as 
dangerous as a library mimeograph, was the first of us to go on disciplinary pro. 
I thought about calling Annmarie and telling her I had met someone and was dating, but it 
seemed like a lot of work — a lot of psychic effort — on top of everything else. I settled for 
hoping that she'd write me a letter saying she thought it was time we started seeing other 
people. Instead I got one saying how much she missed me and that she was making me 
'something special' for Christmas. Which probably meant a sweater, one with reindeer on it. 
Reindeer sweaters were an Annmarie specialty (those slow, stroking handjobs were another). 
She enclosed a picture of herself in a short skirt. Looking at it made me feel not horny but 
tired and guilty and put-upon. Carol also made me feel put-upon. I had wanted to cop a feel, 
that was all, not change my whole fucking life. Or hers, for that matter. But I liked her, that 
was true. A lot. That smile of hers, and her sharp wit. This is getting good, she had said, we're 
exchanging information like mad. 
A week or so later I, returned from Holyoke, where I'd worked lunch with her on the 
dishline, and saw Frank Stuart walking slowly down the third-floor hallway with his trunk 
hung from his hands. Frank was from western Maine, one of those little unincorporated 
townships that are practically all trees, and had a Yankee accent so thick you could slice it. 
He was just a so-so Hearts player, usually ducking in second or a close third when someone 
else went over the hundred-point mark, but a hell of a nice guy. He always had a smile on his 
face . . . at least until the afternoon I came upon him headed for the stairwell with his trunk. 
'You moving rooms, Frank?' I asked, but even then I thought I knew better — it was in the 
look on his face, serious and pale and downcast. 
He shook his head. 'Goin back home. Got a letter from my ma. She says they need a 
caretaker at one of the big lake resorts we got over our way. I said sure. I'm just wastin my 
time here.' 
'You are not!' I said, a little shocked. 'Christ, Frankie, you're getting a college education!' 
'I ain't, though, that's the thing.' The hall was gloomy and choked with shadows; it was 
raining outside. Still, I think I saw color come flushing into Frank's cheeks. I think he was 
ashamed. I think that was why he'd arranged to leave in the middle of a weekday, when the 
dorm was at its emptiest. 'I ain't doin nothin but playin cards. Not very well, either. Also, I'm 
behind in all my classes.' 
'You can't be that far behind! It's only October twenty-fifth!' 
Frank nodded. 'I know. But I ain't quick like some. Wasn't quick in high school, either. I 
got to set my feet and bore in, like with an ice-auger. I ain't been doin it, and if you ain't got a 

hole in the ice you can't catch any perch. I'm goin, Pete. Gonna quit before they fire me in 
January.' 
He went on, plodding down the first of the three flights with his trunk held in front of him 
by the handles. His white tee-shirt floated in the gloom; when he passed a window running 
with rain his crewcut glimmered like gold. 
As he reached the second-floor landing and his footfalls began to take on an echoey beat, I 
rushed to the stairwell and looked down. 'Frankie! Hey, Frank!' 
The footfalls stopped. In the shadows I could see his round face looking up at me and the 
dim held shape of his trunk. 
'Frank, what about the draft? If you drop out of school die draft'll get you!' 
A long pause, as if he was thinking how to answer. He never did, not with his mouth. He 
answered with his feet. Their echoey sound resumed. I never saw Frank again. 
I remember standing by the stairwell, scared, thinking That could happen to me . . . maybe 
is happening to me, then pushing the thought away. 
Seeing Frank with his trunk was a warning, I decided, and I would heed it. I would do 
better. I had been coasting, and it was time to turn on the jets again. But from down the hall I 
could hear Ronnie yelling gleefully that he was Bitch-hunting, that he meant to have that 
whore out of hiding, and I decided I would do better starting tonight. Tonight would be time 
enough to re-light those fabled jets. This afternoon I'd play my farewell game of Hearts. Or 
two. Or forty. 
15 
It was years before I isolated the key part of my final conversation with Frank Stuart. I had 
told him he couldn't be so far behind so soon, and he had replied that it happened because he 
wasn't a quick study. We were both wrong. It was possible to fall catastrophically behind in a 
short period of time, and it happened to the quick studies like me and Skip and Mark St Pierre 
as well as to the plodders. In the backs of our minds we must have been holding onto the idea 
that we'd be able to loaf and then spurt, loaf and then spurt, which was the way most of us 
had gone through our dozy hometown high schools. But as Dearie Dearborn had pointed out, 
this wasn't high school. 
I told you that of the thirty-two students who began the fall semester on our floor of 
Chamberlain (thirty-three, if you also count Dearie . . . but he was immune to the charms of 
Hearts), only fifteen remained to start the spring semester. That doesn't mean the nineteen 
who left were all dopes, though; not by any means. In fact, the smartest fellows on 
Chamberlain Three in the fall of 1966 were probably the ones who transferred before 
flunking out became a real possibility. Steve Ogg and Jack Frady, who had the room just up 
the hall from Nate and me, went to Chadbourne the first week in November, citing 
'distractions' on their joint application. When the Housing Officer asked what sort of 
distractions, they said it was the usual — all-night bull sessions, toothpaste ambushes in the 
head, abrasive relations with a couple of the guys. As an afterthought, both added they were 
probably playing cards in the lounge a little too much. They'd heard Chad was a quieter 
environment, one of the campus's two or three 'brain dorms.' 
The Housing Officer's question had been anticipated, the answer as carefully rehearsed as 
an oral presentation in a speech class. Neither Steve nor Jack wanted the nearly endless 
Hearts game shut down; that might cause them all sorts of grief from people who believed 
folks should mind their own business. All they wanted was to get the fuck off Chamberlain 

Three while there was still time to salvage their scholarships. 
16 
The bad quizzes and unsuccessful little papers were nothing but unpleasant skirmishes. For 
Skip and me and too many of our cardplaying buddies, our second round of prelims was a 
full-fledged disaster. I got an A-minus on my in-class English theme and a D in European 
History, but flunked the Sociology multiple-choicer and the Geology multiple-choicer — 
soash by a little and geo by a lot. Skip flunked his Anthropology prelim, his Colonial History 
prelim, and the soash prelim. He got a C on the Calculus test (but the ice was getting pretty 
thin there, too, he told me) and a B on his in-class essay. We agreed that life would be much 
simpler if it were all a matter of in-class essays, writing assignments which necessarily took 
place far from the third-floor lounge. We were wishing for high school, in other words, 
without even knowing it. 
'Okay, that's enough,' Skip said to me that Friday night. 'I'm buckling down, Peter. I don't 
give a shit about being a college man or having a diploma to hang over the mantel in my 
rumpus room, but I'll be fucked if I want to go back to Dexter and hang around fuckin 
Bowlorama with the rest of the retards until Uncle Sam calls me.' 
He was sitting on Nate's bed. Nate was across the way at the Palace on the Plains, chowing 
down on Friday-night fish. It was nice to know somebody on Chamberlain Three had an 
appetite. This was a conversation we couldn't have around Nate in any case; my countrymouse 
roommate thought he'd done pretty well on the latest round of prelims, all C's and B's. 
He wouldn't have said anything if he'd heard us talking, but would have looked at us in a way 
that said we lacked gumption. That, although it might not be our fault, we were morally 
weak. 
'I'm with you,' I said, and then, from down the hall, came an agonized cry (' Ohhhhhh . . . 
FUCK ME! ') that we recognized instantly: someone had just taken The Bitch. Our eyes met. I 
can't say about Skip, not for sure (even though he was my best friend in college), but I was 
still thinking that there was time . . . and why wouldn't I think that? For me there always had 
been. 
Skip began to grin. I began to grin. Skip began to giggle. I began to giggle right along with 
him. 
'What the fuck,' he said. 
'Just tonight,' I said. 'We'll go over to the library together tomorrow.' 
'Hit the books.' 
'All day. But right now . . . ' 
He stood up. 'Let's go Bitch-hunting.' 
We did. And we weren't the only ones. That's no explanation, I know; it's only what 
happened. 
At breakfast the next morning, as we worked side by side on the dishline, Carol said: 'I'm 
hearing there's some kind of big card-game going on in your dorm. Is that true?' 
'I guess it is,' I said. 
She looked at me over her shoulder, giving me that smile — the one I always thought 
about when I thought about Carol. The one I think about still. 'Hearts? Hunting The Bitch?' 
'Hearts,' I agreed. 'Hunting The Bitch.' 
'I heard that some of the guys are getting in over their heads. Getting in grades trouble.' 
'I guess that might be,' I said. Nothing was coming down the conveyor belt, not so much as 

a single tray. There's never a rush when you need one, I've noticed. 
'How are your grades?' she asked. 'I know it's none of my business, but I want — ' 
'Information, yeah, I know. I'm doing okay. Besides, I'm getting out of the game.' 
She just gave me the smile, and sure I still think about it sometimes; you would, too. The 
dimples, the slightly curved lower lip that knew so many nice things about kissing, the 
dancing blue eyes. Those were days when no girl saw further into a boys' dorm than the lobby 
. . . and vice-versa, of course. Still, I have an idea that for a little while in October and 
November of 1966 Carol saw plenty, more than I did. But of course, she wasn't insane — at 
least not then. The war in Vietnam became her insanity. Mine as well. And Skip's. And 
Nate's. Hearts were nothing, really, only a few tremors in the earth, the kind that flap the 
screen door on its hinges and rattle the glasses on the shelves. The killer earthquake, the 
apocalyptic continent-drowner, was still on its way. 
17 
Barry Margeaux and Brad Witherspoon both got the Deny News delivered to their rooms, and 
the two copies had usually made the rounds of the third floor by the end of the day — we'd 
find the remnants in the lounge when we took our seats for the evening session of Hearts, the 
pages torn and out of order, the crossword filled in by three or four different hands. There 
would be mustaches inked on the photodot faces of Lyndon Johnson and Ramsey Clark and 
Martin Luther King (someone, I never found out who, would invariably put large smoking 
horns on Vice President Humphrey and print HUBERT THE DEVIL underneath in tiny anal 
capital letters). The News was hawkish on the war, putting the most positive spin on each 
day's military events and relegating any protest news to the depths . . . usually beneath the 
Community Calendar. 
Yet more and more we found ourselves discussing not movies or dates or classes as the 
cards were shuffled and dealt; more and more it was Vietnam. No matter how good the news 
or how high the Gong body count, there always seemed to be at least one picture of agonized 
US soldiers after an ambush or crying Vietnamese children watching their village go up in 
smoke. There was always some unsettling detail tucked away near the bottom of what Skip 
called 'the daily kill-column,' like the thing about the kids who got wasted when we hit the 
Cong PT boats in the Delta. 
Nate, of course, didn't play cards. He wouldn't debate the pros and cons of the war, either 
— I doubt if he knew, any more than I did, than Vietnam had once been under the French, or 
what had happened to the monsieurs unlucky enough to have been in the fortress city of Dien 
Bien Phu in 1954, let alone who might've decided it was time for President Diem to go to that 
big rice-paddy in the sky so Nguyen Cao Ky and the generals could take over. Nate only 
knew that he had no quarrel with those Gongs, that they weren't going to be in Mars Hill or 
Presque Isle in the immediate future. 
'Haven't you ever heard about the domino theory, shitbird?' a banty little freshman named 
Nicholas Prouty asked Nate one afternoon. My roommate rarely came down to the third-floor 
lounge now, preferring the quieter one on Two, but that day he had dropped in for a few 
moments. 
Nate looked at Nick Prouty, a lobsterman's son who had become a devout disciple of 
Ronnie Malenfant, and sighed. 'When the dominoes come out, I leave the room. I think it's a 
boring game. That's my domino theory.' He shot me a glance. I got my eyes away as fast as I 
could, but not quite in time to avoid the message: what in hell's wrong with you? Then he left, 

scuffing back down to room 302 in his fuzzy slippers to do some more studying — to resume 
his charted course from pre-dent to dent, in other words. 
'Riley, your roommate's fucked, you know that?' Ronnie said. He had a cigarette tucked in 
the corner of his mouth. Now he scratched a match one-handed, a specialty of his — college 
guys too ugly and abrasive to get girls have all sorts of specialties — and lit up. 
No, man, I thought, Mate's doing fine. We're the ones who are fucked up. For a second I 
felt real despair. In that second I realized I was in a terrible jam and had no idea at all of how 
to extricate myself. I was aware of Skip looking at me, and it occurred to me that if I snatched 
up the cards, sprayed them in Ronnie's face, and walked out of the room, Skip would join me. 
Likely with relief. Then the feeling passed. It passed as rapidly as it had come. 
'Nate's okay,' I said. 'He's got some funny ideas, that's all.' 
'Some funny communist ideas is what he's got,' Hugh Brennan said. His older brother was 
in the Navy and most recently heard from in the South China Sea. Hugh had no use for 
peaceniks. As a Goldwater Republican I should have felt the same, but Nate had started 
getting to me. I had all sorts of canned knowledge, but no real arguments in favor of the war . 
. . nor time to work any up. I was too busy to study my sociology, let alone to bone up on US 
foreign policy. 
I'm pretty sure that was the night I almost called Annmarie Soucie. The phone-booth across 
from the lounge was empty, I had a pocketful of change from my latest victory in the Hearts 
wars, and I suddenly decided The Time Had Come. I dialed her number from memory 
(although I had to think for a moment about the last four digits — were they 8146 or 8164?) 
and plugged in three quarters when the operator asked for them. I let the phone ring a single 
time, then racked the receiver with a bang and retrieved my quarters when I heard them rattle 
into the return. 
18 
A day or two later — shortly before Halloween — Nate got an alburn by a guy I'd only 
vaguely heard of: Phil Ochs. A folkie, but not the blunk-blunk banjo kind who used to show 
up on Hootenanny. The album cover, which showed a rumpled troubadour sitting on a curb in 
New York City, went oddly with the covers of Nate's other records — Dean Martin looking 
tipsy in a tux, Mitch Miller with his sing-along smile, Diane Renee in her middy blouse and 
perky sailor cap. The Ochs record was called I Ain't Marchin' Anymore, and Nate played it a 
lot as the days shortened and turned chilly. I took to playing it myself, and Nate didn't seem 
to mind. 
There was a kind of baffled anger in Ochs's voice. I suppose I liked it because most of the 
time I felt pretty baffled myself. He was like Dylan, but less complicated in his expression 
and clearer in his rage. The best song on the album — also the most troubling — was the title 
song.' In that song Ochs didn't just suggest but came right out and said that war wasn't worth 
it, war was never worth it. Even when it was worth it, it wasn't worth it. This idea, coupled 
with the image of young men just walking away from Lyndon and his Vietnam obsession by 
the thousands and tens of thousands, excited my imagination in a way that had nothing to do 
with history or policy or rational thought. I must have killed a million men and now they 
want me back again but I ain't marchin anymore, Phil Ochs sang through the speaker of 
Nate's nifty little Swingline phono. Just quit it, in other words. Quit doing what they say, quit 
doing what they want, quit playing their game. It's an old game, and in this one The Bitch is 
hunting you. 

And maybe to show you mean it, you start wearing a symbol of your resistance — 
something others will first wonder about and then perhaps rally to. It was a couple of days 
after Halloween that Nate Hoppenstand showed us what the symbol was going to be. Finding 
out started with one of those crumpled leftover newspapers in the third-floor lounge. 
19 
'Son of a bitch, look at this,' Billy Marchant said. 
Harvey Twiller was shuffling the cards at Billy's table, Lennie Doria was adding up the 
current score, and Billy was taking the opportunity to do a quick scan-through of the News'?, 
Local section. Kirby McClendon — unshaven, tall n twitchy, well on his way to his date with 
all those baby aspirins — leaned in to take a look. 
Billy drew back from him, fluttering a hand in front of his face. 'Jesus, Kirb, when did you 
take your last shower? Columbus Day? Fourth of July?' 
'Let me see,' Kirby said, ignoring him. He snatched the paper away. 'Fuck, that's Rip-Rip!' 
Ronnie Malenfant got up so fast his chair fell over, entranced by the idea that Stoke had 
made the paper. When college kids showed up in the Derry News (except on the sports page, 
of course) it was always because they were in trouble. Others gathered around Kirby, Skip 
and me among them. It was Stokely Jones III, all right, and not just him. Standing in the 
background, their faces almost but not quite lost in the clusters of dots . . . 
'Christ,' Skip said, 'I think that's Nate.' He sounded amused and astonished. 
'And that's Carol Gerber just up ahead of him,' I said in a funny, shocked voice. I knew the 
jacket with HARWICH HIGH SCHOOL on the back; knew the blond hair hanging over the jacket's 
collar in a ponytail; knew the faded jeans. And I knew the face. Even half-turned away and 
shadowed by a sign reading us OUT OF VIETNAM NOW!, I knew the face. 'That's my girlfriend.' 
It was the first time the word girlfriend had come out of my mouth tied to Carol's name, 
although I had been thinking of her that way for a couple of weeks at least. 
POLICE BREAK UP DRAFT PROTEST, the photo caption read. No names were given. According 
to the accompanying story, a dozen or so protesters from the University of Maine had 
gathered in front of the Federal Building in downtown Derry. They had carried signs and 
marched around the entrance to the Selective Service office for about an hour, singing songs 
and 'chanting slogans, some obscene.' Police had been called and had at first only stood by, 
intending to allow the demonstration to run its course, but then an opposing group of 
demonstrators had turned up — mostly construction workers on their lunch break. They had 
begun chanting their own slogans, and although the News didn't mention if they were obscene 
or not, I could guess there had been invitations to go back to Russia, suggestions as to where 
the demonstrators could store their signs while not in use, and directions to the nearest barber 
shop. 
When the protesters began to shout back at the construction workers and the construction 
workers began firing pieces of fruit from their dinner-buckets at the protesters, the police had 
stepped in. Citing the protesters' lack of a permit (the Deny cops had apparently never heard 
about the right of Americans to assemble peaceably), they rounded up the kids and took them 
to the police substation on Witcham Street. There they were simply released. 'We only 
wanted to get them out of a bad atmosphere,' one cop was quoted as saying. 'If they go back 
down there, they're even dumber than they look.' 
The photo really wasn't much different from the one taken at East Annex during the 
Coleman Chemicals protest. It showed the cops leading the protesters away while 

construction workers (a year or so later they would all be sporting small American flags on 
their hardhats) jeered and grinned and shook their fists. One cop was frozen in the act of 
reaching out toward Carol's arm; Nate, standing behind her, had not attracted their attention, 
it seemed. Two more cops were escorting Stoke Jones, who was back to the camera but 
unmistakable on his crutches. If any further aid to identification was needed, there was that 
hand-drawn sparrow-track on his jacket. 
'Look at that dumb fuck!' Ronnie crowed. (Ronnie, who had flunked two of four on the last 
round of prelims, had a nerve calling anyone a dumb fuck.) 'Like he didn't have anything 
better to do!' 
Skip ignored him. So did I. For us Ronnie's bluster was already fading into insignificance 
no matter what the subject. We were fascinated by the sight of Carol . . . and of Nate 
Hoppenstand behind her, watching as the demonstrators were led away. Nate as neat as ever 
in an Ivy League shirt and jeans with cuffs and creases, Nate standing near the jeering, fistshaking 
construction workers but totally ignored by them. Ignored by the cops, too. Neither 
group knew my roommate had lately become a fan of the subversive Mr Phil Ochs. 
I slipped out to the telephone booth and called Franklin Hall, second floor. Someone from 
the lounge answered and when I asked for Carol, the girl said Carol wasn't there, she'd gone 
over to the library to study with Libby Sexton. 'Is this Pete?' 
'Yeah,' I said. 
'There's a note here for you. She left it on the glass.' This was common practice in the 
dorms at that time. 'It says she'll call you later.' 
'Okay. Thanks.' 
Skip was outside the telephone booth, motioning impatiently for me to come. We walked 
down the hall to see Nate, even though we knew we'd both lose our places at the tables where 
we'd been playing. In this case, curiosity outweighed obsession. 
Nate's face didn't change much when we showed him the paper and asked him about the 
demonstration the day before, but his face never changed much. All the same, I sensed that he 
was unhappy, perhaps even miserable. I couldn't understand why that would be — everything 
had ended well, after all; no one had gone to jail or even been named in the paper. 
I'd just about decided I was reading too much into his usual quietness when Skip said, 
'What's eating you?' 
There was a kind of rough concern in his voice. Nate's lower lip trembled and then firmed 
at the sound of it. He leaned over the neat surface of his desk (my own was already covered 
in about nineteen layers of junk) and snagged a Kleenex from the box he kept by his recordplayer. 
He blew his nose long and hard. When he was finished he was under control again, 
but I could see the baffled unhappiness in his eyes. Part of me — a mean part — was glad to 
see it. Glad to know that you didn't have to turn into a Hearts junkie to have problems. 
Human nature can be so shitty sometimes. 
'I rode up with Stoke and Harry Swidrowski and a few other guys,' Nate said. 
'Was Carol with you?' I asked. 
Nate shook his head. 'I think she was with George Gilman's bunch. There were five 
carloads of us in all.' I didn't know George Gilman from Adam, but that did not prevent me 
from directing a dart of fairly sick jealousy at him. 'Harry and Stoke are on the Committee of 
Resistance. Oilman, too. Anyway, we — ' 
'Committee of Resistance?' Skip asked. 'What's that?' 
'A club,' Nate said, and sighed. 'They think it's something more — especially Harry and 
George, they're real firebrands — but it's just another club, really, like the Maine Masque or 
the pep squad.' 
Nate said he himself had gone along because it was a Tuesday and he didn't have any 
classes on Tuesday afternoons. No one gave orders; no one passed around loyalty oaths or 

even sign-up sheets; there was no real pressure to march and none of the paramilitary beretwearing 
fervor that crept into the antiwar movement later on. Carol and the kids with her had 
been laughing and bopping each other with their signs when they left the gym parking lot, 
according to Nate. (Laughing. Laughing with George Gilman. I threw another one of those 
germ-laden jealousy-darts.) 
When they got to the Federal Building, some people demonstrated, marching around in 
circles in front of the Selective Service office door, and some people didn't. Nate was one of 
those who didn't. As he told us that, his usually smooth face tightened in another brief cramp 
of something that might have been real misery in a less settled boy. 
'I meant to march with them,' he said. 'All the way up I expected to march with them. It 
was exciting, six of us crammed into Harry Swidrowski's Saab. A real trip. Hunter McPhail . . 
. do you guys know him?' 
Skip and I shook our heads. I think both of us were a little awestruck to discover the owner 
of Meet Trini Lopez and Diane Renee Sings Navy Blue had what amounted to a secret life, 
including connections to the sort of people who attracted both cops and newspaper coverage. 
'He and George Gilman started the Committee. Anyway, Hunter was holding Stoke's 
crutches out the window of the Saab because we couldn't fit them inside and we sang "I Ain't 
Marchin' Anymore" and talked about how maybe we could really stop the war if enough of us 
got together — that is, all of us talked about stuff like that except Stoke. He keeps pretty 
quiet.' 
So, I thought. Even with them he keeps quiet . . . except, presumably, when he decides a 
little credibility lecture is in order. But Nate wasn't thinking about Stoke; Nate was thinking 
about Nate. Brooding over his feet's inexplicable refusal to carry his heart where it had 
clearly wanted to go. 
'All the way up I'm thinking, "I'll march with them, I'll march with them because it's right . 
. . at least I think it's right . . . and if someone takes a swing at me I'll be nonviolent, just like 
the guys in the lunchroom sit-ins. Those guys won, maybe we can win, too."' He looked at us. 
'I mean, it was never a question in my mind. You know?' 
'Yeah,' Skip said. 'I know.' 
'But when we got there, I couldn't do it. I helped hand out signs saying STOP THE WAR and 
us OUT OF VIETNAM NOW and BRING THE BOYS HOME . . . Carol and I helped Stoke fix his so he 
could march with it and still use his crutches . . . but I couldn't take one myself. I stood on the 
sidewalk with Bill Shadwick and Kerry Morin and a girl named Lorlie McGinnis . . . she's my 
partner in Botany Lab . . . ' He took the sheet of newspaper out of Skip's hand and studied it, 
as if to confirm again that yes, it had all really happened; the master of Rinty and the 
boyfriend of Cindy had actually gone to an antiwar demonstration. He sighed and then let the 
piece of newspaper drift to the floor. This was so unlike him it kind of hurt my head. 
'I thought I would march with them. I mean, why else did I come? All the way down from 
Orono it was never, you know, a question in my mind.' 
He looked at me, kind of pleading. I nodded as if I understood. 
'But then I didn't. I don't know why.' 
Skip sat down next to him on his bed. I found the Phil Ochs album and put it on the 
turntable. Nate looked at Skip, then looked away. Nate's hands were as small and neat as the 
rest of him, except for the nails. The nails were ragged, bitten right down to the quick. 
'Okay,' he said as if Skip had asked out loud. 'I do know why. I was afraid they'd get 
arrested and I'd get arrested with them. That my picture would be in the paper getting arrested 
and my folks would see it.' There was a long pause. Poor old Nate was trying to say the rest. I 
held the needle over the first groove of the spinning record, waiting to see if he could. At last 
he did. 'That my mother would see it.' 
'It's okay, Nate,' Skip said. 

'I don't think so,' Nate replied in a trembling voice. 'I really don't.' He wouldn't meet Skip's 
eyes, only sat there on his bed with his prominent chicken-ribs and bare white Yankee skin 
between his pajama bottoms and his freshman beanie, looking down at his gnawed cuticles. 'I 
don't like to argue about the war. Harry does . . . and Lorlie . . . George Gilman, gosh, you 
can't get George to shut up about it, and most of the others on the Committee are the same. 
But when it comes to talking, I'm more like Stoke than them.' 
'No one's like Stoke,' I said. I remembered the day I met him on Bennett's Walk. Why don't 
you take it easy? I'd asked. Why don't you eat me? Mr Credibility had replied. 
Nate was still studying his cuticles. 'What I think is that Johnson is sending American boys 
over there to die for no reason. It isn't imperialism or colonialism, like Harry Swidrowski 
believes, it's not any ism at all. Johnson's got it all mixed up in his mind with Davy Crockett 
and Daniel Boone and the New York Yankees, that's all. And if I think that, I ought to say 
that. I ought to try to stop it. That's what I learned in church, in school, even in the darned 
Boy Scouts of America. You're supposed to stand up. If you see something happening that's 
wrong, like a big guy beating up a little guy, you're supposed to stand up and at least try to 
stop it. But I was afraid my mother'd see a picture of me getting arrested and cry.' 
Nate raised his head and we saw he was crying himself. Just a little; wet lids and lashes, no 
more than that. For him that was a big deal, though. 
'I found out one thing,' he said. 'What that is on the back of Stoke Jones's jacket.' 
'What?' Skip asked. 
'A combination of two British Navy semaphore letters. Look.' Nate stood up with his bare 
heels together. He lifted his left arm straight up toward the ceiling and dropped his right 
down to the floor, making a straight line. 'That's N.' Next he held his arms out at forty-fivedegree 
angles to his body. I could see how the two shapes, when superimposed, would make 
the shape Stoke had inked on the back of his old duffle coat. 'This one's D.' 
'N-D,' Skip said. 'So?' 
'The letters stand for nuclear disarmament. Bertrand Russell invented the symbol in the 
fifties.' He drew it on the back of his notebook: 'He called it a peace sign.' 
'Cool,' Skip said. 
Nate smiled and wiped under his eyes with his fingers. 'That's what I thought,' he agreed. 
'It's a groove thing.' 
I dropped the needle on the record and we listened to Phil Ochs sing. Grooved to it, as we 
Atlanteans used to say. 
20 
The lounge in the middle of Chamberlain Three had become my Jupiter — a scary planet 
with a huge gravitational pull. Still, I resisted it that night, slipping back into the phone-booth 
instead and calling Franklin again. This time I got Carol. 
'I'm all right,' she said, laughing a little. 'I'm fine. One of the cops even called me little 
lady. Sheesh, Pete, such concern.' 
How much concern did this guy Oilman show you? I felt like asking, but even at eighteen I 
knew that wasn't the way to go. 
'You should have given me a call,' I said. 'Maybe I would have gone with you. We could 
have taken my car.' 
Carol began to giggle, a sweet sound but puzzling. 
'What?' 

'I was thinking about riding to an antiwar demonstration in a station wagon with a 
Goldwater sticker on the bumper.' 
I guessed that was sort of funny. 
'Besides,' she said, 'I imagine you had other things to do.' 
'What's that supposed to mean?' As if I didn't know. Through the glass of the phone-booth 
and that of the lounge, I could see most of my floor-mates playing cards in a fume of 
cigarette smoke. And even in here with the door closed I could hear Ronnie Malenfant's highpitched 
cackle. We're chasing The Bitch, boys, we are cherchez-ing la cunt noire, and we're 
going to have her out of the bushes. 
'Studying or Hearts,' she said. 'Studying, I hope. One of the girls on my floor goes out with 
Lennie Doria — or did, when he still had the time to go out. She calls it the card-game from 
hell. Am I being a nag yet?' 
'No,' I said, not knowing if she was or not. Maybe I needed to be nagged. 'Carol, are you 
okay?' 
There was a long pause. 'Yeah,' she said at last. 'Sure I am.' 
'The construction workers who showed up — ' 
'Mostly mouth,' she said. 'Don't worry. Really.' 
But she didn't sound right to me, not quite right . . . and there was George Oilman to worry 
about. I worried about him in a way I didn't about Sully, the boyfriend back home. 
'Are you on this Committee Nate told me about?' I asked her. 'This Committee of 
Resistance whatsit?' 
'No,' she said. 'Not yet, at least. George has asked me to join. He's this guy from my 
Polysci course. George Gilman. Do you know him?' 
'Heard of him,' I said. I was clutching the phone too tightly and couldn't seem to loosen up. 
'He was the one who told me about the demonstration. I rode up with him and some others. 
I . . . ' She broke off for a moment, then said with honest curiosity: 'You're not jealous of him, 
are you?' 
'Well,' I said carefully, 'he got to spend an afternoon with you. I'm jealous of that, I guess.' 
'Don't be. He's got brains, plenty of them, but he's also got a wiffle haircut and great big 
shifty eyes. He shaves, but it seems like he always misses a big patch. He's not the attraction, 
believe me.' 
'Then what is?' 
'Can I see you? I want to show you something. It won't take long. But it might help if I 
could just explain . . . ' Her voice wavered on the word and I realized she was close to tears. 
'What's wrong?' 
'You mean other than that my father probably won't let me back into his house once he's 
seen me in the News? He'll have the locks changed by this weekend, I bet. That's if he hasn't 
changed them already.' 
I thought of Nate saying he was afraid his mother would see a picture of him getting 
arrested. Mommy's good little pre-dent pinched down in Deny for parading in front of the 
Federal Building without a permit. Ah, the shame, the shame. And Carol's dad? Not quite the 
same deal, but close. Carol's dad was a steady boy who said ship ahoy and joined the Nayyay-
vee, after all. 
'He may not see the story,' I said. 'Even if he does, the paper didn't use any names.' 
'The picture? She spoke patiently, as if to someone who can't help being dense. 'Didn't you 
see the picture?' 
I started to say that her face was mostly turned away from the camera and what you could 
see was in shadow. Then I remembered her high-school jacket with HARWICH HIGH SCHOOL 
blaring across the back. Also, he was her father, for Christ's sake. Even half-turned away 
from the camera, her father would know her. 

'He may not see the picture, either,' I said lamely. 'Damari-scotta's at the far edge of the 
News's area.' 
'Is that how you want to live your life, Pete?' She still sounded patient, but now it was 
patience with an edge. 'Doing stuff and then hoping people won't find out?' 
'No,' I said. And could I get mad at her for saying that, considering that Annmarie Soucie 
still didn't have the slightest idea that Carol Gerber was alive? I didn't think so. Carol and I 
weren't married or anything, but marriage wasn't the issue. 'No, I don't. But Carol . . . you 
don't have to shove the damned newspaper under his nose for him, do you?' 
She laughed. The sound had none of the brightness I had heard in her earlier giggle, but I 
thought even a rueful laugh was better than none at all. 'I won't have to. He'll find it. That's 
just the way he is. But I had to go, Pete. And I'll probably join the Committee of Resistance 
even though George Gilman always looks like a little kid who just got caught eating boogers 
and Harry Swidrowski has the world's worst breath. Because it's . . . the thing of it is . . . you 
see . . . ' She blew a frustrated I-can't-explain sigh into my ear. 'Listen, you know where we 
go out for smoke-breaks?' 
'At Holyoke? By the Dumpsters, sure.' 
'Meet me there,' Carol said. 'In fifteen minutes. Can you?' 
'Yes.' 
'I have a lot more studying to do so I can't stay long, but I . . . I just . . . ' 
'I'll be there.' 
I hung up the phone and stepped out of the booth. Ashley Rice was standing in the 
doorway of the lounge, smoking and doing a little shuffle -step. I deduced that he was 
between games. His face was too pale, the black stubble on his cheeks standing out like 
pencil-marks, and his shirt had gone beyond simply soiled; it looked lived-in. He had a wideeyed 
Danger High Voltage look that I later came to associate with heavy cocaine users. And 
that's what the game really was; a kind of drug. Not the kind that mellowed you out, either. 
'What do you say, Pete?' he asked. 'Want to play a few hands?' 
'Maybe later,' I said, and started down the hall. Stoke Jones was thumping back from the 
bathroom in a frayed old robe. His crutches left round wet tracks on the dark red linoleum. 
His long, crazy hair was wet. I wondered how he did in the shower; certainly there were none 
of the railings and grab-handles that later became standard in public washing facilities. He 
didn't look as though he would much enjoy discussing the subject, however. That or any other 
subject. 
'How you doing, Stoke?' I asked. 
He went by without answering, head down, dripping hair plastered to his cheeks, soap and 
towel clamped under one arm, muttering 'Rip-rip, rip-rip' under his breath. He never even 
looked up at me. Say whatever you wanted about Stoke Jones, you could depend on him to 
put a little fuck-you into your day. 
21 
Carol was already at Holyoke when I got there. She had brought a couple of milk-boxes from 
the area where the Dumpsters were lined up and was sitting on one of them, legs crossed, 
smoking a cigarette. I sat down on the other one, put my arm around her, and kissed her. She 
put her head on my shoulder for a moment, not saying anything. This wasn't much like her, 
but it was nice. I kept my arm around her and looked up at the stars. The night was mild for 
so late in the season, and lots of people — couples, mostly - were out walking, taking 

advantage of the weather. I could hear their murmured conversations. From above us, in the 
Commons dining room, a radio was playing 'Hang On, Sloopy.' One of the janitors, I 
suppose. 
Carol raised her head at last and moved away from me a little — just enough to let me 
know I could take my arm back. That was more like her, actually. 'Thanks,' she said. 'I 
needed a hug.' 
'My pleasure.' 
'I'm a little scared about facing my dad. Not real scared, but a little.' 
'It'll be all right.' Not saying it because I really thought it would be I couldn't know a thing 
like that — but because it's what you say, isn't it? Just what you say. 
'My dad's not the reason I went with Harry and George and the rest. It's no big Freudian 
rebellion, or anything like that.' 
She flicked her cigarette away and we watched it fountain sparks when it struck the bricks 
of Bennett's Walk. Then she took her little clutch purse out of her lap, opened it, found her 
wallet, opened that, and thumbed through a selection of snapshots stuck in those small 
celluloid windows. She stopped, slipped one out, and handed it to me. I leaned forward so I 
could see it by the light falling through the dining-hall windows, where the janitors were 
probably doing the floors. 
The picture showed three kids of eleven or twelve, a girl and two boys. They were all 
wearing blue tee-shirts with the words STERLING HOUSE on them in red block letters. They 
were standing in a parking lot somewhere and had their arms around each other — an easy 
pals-forever pose that was sort of beautiful. The girl was in the middle. The girl was Carol, of 
course. 
'Which one is Sully-John?' I asked. She looked at me, a little surprised . . . but with the 
smile. In any case, I thought I already knew. Sully-John would be the one with the broad 
shoulders, the wide grin, and the tumbled black hair. It reminded me of Stake's hair, although 
the boy had obviously run a comb through his thatch. I tapped him. 'This one, right?' 
'That's Sully,' she agreed, then touched the face of the other boy with her fingernail. He had 
a sunburn rather than a tan. His face was narrower, the eyes a little closer together, the hair a 
carroty red and mowed in a crewcut that made him look like a kid on a Norman Rockwell 
Saturday Evening Post cover. There was a faint frown-line on his brow. Sully's arms were 
already muscular for a kid's; this other boy had thin arms, thin stick arms. They were 
probably still thin stick arms. On the hand not slung around Carol's shoulders he was wearing 
a big brown baseball glove. 
'This one's Bobby,' she said. Her voice had changed, somehow. There was something in it 
I'd never heard before. Sorrow? But she was still smiling. If it was sorrow she felt, why was 
she smiling? 'Bobby Garfield. He was my first boyfriend. My first love, I guess you could 
say. He and Sully and I were best friends back then. Not so long ago, 1960, but it seems long 
ago.' 
'What happened to him?' I was somehow sure she was going to tell me he had died, this 
boy with the narrow face and the crewcut carrot-top. 
'He and his mom moved away. We wrote back and forth for awhile, and then we lost touch. 
You know how kids are.' 
'Nice baseball glove.' 
Carol still with the smile. I could see the tears that had come into her eyes as we sat 
looking down at the snapshot, but still with the smile. In the white light of the fluorescents 
from the dining hall, her tears looked silver — the tears of a princess in a fairy-tale. 
'That was Bobby's favorite thing. There's a baseball player named Alvin Dark, right?' 
'There was.' 
'That's what kind of a glove Bobby had. An Alvin Dark model.' 

'Mine was a Ted Williams. I think my mom rummage-saled it a couple of years ago.' 
'Bobby's got stolen,' Carol said. I'm not sure she knew I was there anymore. She kept 
touching that narrow, slightly frowning face with her fingertip. It was as if she had regressed 
into her own past. I've heard that hypnotists can do that with good subjects. 'Willie took it.' 
'Willie?' 
'Willie Shearman. I saw him playing ball with it a year later, down at Sterling House. I was 
so mad. My mom and dad were always fighting then, working up to the divorce, I guess, and 
I was mad all the time. Mad at them, mad at my math teacher, mad at the whole world. I was 
still scared of Willie, but mostly I was mad at him . . . and besides, I wasn't by myself, not 
that day. So I marched right up to him and said I knew that was Bobby's glove and he ought 
to give it to me. I said I had Bobby's address in Massachusetts and I'd send it to him. Willie 
said I was crazy, it was his glove, and he showed me his name on the side. He'd erased 
Bobby's — best as he could, anyway — and printed his own over where it had been. But I 
could still see the bby, from Bobby.' 
A creepy sort of indignation had crept into her voice. It made her sound younger. And look 
younger. I suppose my memory could be wrong about that, but I don't think it is. Sitting there 
on the edge of the white light from the dining hall, I think she looked about twelve. Thirteen 
at the most. 
'He couldn't erase the Alvin Dark signature in the pocket, though, or write over it . . . and 
he blushed. Dark red. Red as roses. Then — do you know what? — he apologized for what 
he and his two friends did to me. He was the only one who ever did, and I think he meant it. 
But he lied about the glove. I don't think he wanted it; it was old and the webbing was al 
broken out and it looked all wrong on his hand, but he lied so he could keep it. I don't 
understand why. I never have.' 
'I'm not following this,' I said. 
'Why should you? It's all jumbled up in my mind and I was there. My mother told me once 
that happens to people who are in accidents or fights. I remember some of it pretty well — 
mostly the parts with Bobby in them — but almost everything else conies from what people 
told me later on. 
'I was in the park down the street from my house, and these three boys came along — 
Harry Doolin, Willie Shearman, and another one. I can't remember the other one's name. It 
doesn't matter, anyway. They beat me up. I was only eleven but that didn't stop them. Harry 
Doolin hit me with a baseball bat. Willie and the other one held me so I couldn't run away.' 
'A baseball bat? Are you shitting me?' 
She shook her head. 'At first they were joking, I think, and then . . . they weren't. My arm 
got dislocated. I screamed and I guess they ran away. I sat there, holding my arm, too hurt 
and too . . . too shocked I guess . . . to know what to do. Or maybe I tried to get up and get 
help for myself and couldn't. Then Bobby came along. He walked me out of the park and then 
he picked me up and carried me back to his apartment. All the way up Broad Street Hill on 
one of the hottest days of the year. He carried me in his arms.' 
I took the snapshot from her, held it in the light, and bent over it, looking at the boy with 
the crewcut. Looking at his thin stick arms, then looking at the girl. She was an inch or two 
taller than he was, and broader in the shoulders. I looked at the other boy, Sully. He of the 
tumbled black hair and the All-American grin. Stoke Jones's hair; Skip Kirk's grin. I could 
see Sully carrying her in his arms, yeah, but the other kid — 
'I know,' she said. 'He doesn't look big enough, does he? But he carried me. I started to 
faint and he carried me.' She took the picture back. 
'And while he was doing that, this kid Willie who helped beat you up came back and stole 
his glove?' 
She nodded. 'Bobby took me to his apartment. There was this old guy who lived in a room 

upstairs, Ted, who seemed to know a little bit about everything. He popped my arm back into 
its socket. I remember he gave me his belt to bite on when he did it. Or maybe it was Bobby's 
belt. He said I could catch the pain, and I did. After that . . . after that, something bad 
happened.' 
'Worse than getting lumped up with a baseball bat?' 
'In a way. I don't want to talk about it.' She wiped her tears away with one hand, first one 
side and then the other, still looking at the snapshot. 'Later on, before he and his mother left 
Harwich, Bobby beat up the boy who actually used the bat. Harry Doolin.' 
Carol put her photograph back in its little compartment. 
'What I remember best about that day — the only thing about it worth remembering — is 
that Bobby Garfield stood up for me. Sully was bigger, and Sully might have stood up for me 
if he'd been there, but he wasn't. Bobby was there, and he carried me all the way up the hill. 
He did what was right. It's the best thing, the most important thing, anyone has ever done for 
me in my life. Do you see that, Pete?' 
'Yeah. I do.' 
I saw something else, too: she was saying almost exactly what Nate had said not an hour 
before . . . only she had marched. Had taken one of the signs and marched with it. Of course 
Nate Hoppenstand had never been beaten up by three boys who started out joking and then 
decided they were serious after all. And maybe that was the difference. 
'He carried me up that hill,' she said. 'I always wanted to tell him how much I loved him for 
that, and how much I loved him for showing Harry Doolin that there's a price to pay for 
hurting people, especially people who are smaller than you and don't mean you any harm.' 
'So you marched.' 
'I marched. I wanted to tell someone why. I wanted to tell someone who'd understand. My 
father won't and my mother can't. Her friend Rionda called me and said . . . ' She didn't finish, 
only sat there on the milk-box, fidgeting with her little bag. 
'Said what?' 
'Nothing.' She sounded exhausted, forlorn. I wanted to kiss her, at least put my arm around 
her, but I was afraid doing either would spoil what had just happened. Because something 
had happened. There was magic in her story. Not in the middle, but somewhere out around 
the edges. I felt it. 
'I marched, and I guess I'll join the Committee of Resistance. My roommate says I'm crazy. 
I'll never get a job if a commie student group's part of my college records, but I think I'm 
going to do it.' 
'And your father? What about him?' 
'Fuck him.' 
There was a semi-shocked moment when we considered what she had just said, and then 
Carol giggled. 'Now that's Freudian.' She stood up. 'I have to go back and study. Thanks for 
coming out, Pete. I haven't ever shown that picture to anyone. I haven't looked at it myself in 
who knows how long. I feel better. Lots.' 
'Good.' I got up myself. 'Before you go in, will you help me do something?' 
'Sure, what?' 
'I'll show you. I won't take long.' 
I walked her down the side of Holyoke and then we started up the hill behind it. About two 
hundred yards away was the Steam Plant parking lot, where undergrads ineligible for parking 
stickers (freshmen, sophomores, and most juniors) had to keep their cars. It was the prime 
makeout spot on campus once it got cold, but making out in my car wasn't on my mind that 
night. 
'Did you ever tell Bobby about who got his baseball glove?' I asked. 'You said you wrote to 
him.' 

'I didn't see the point.' 
We walked in silence for a little while. Then I said: 'I'm going to call it off with Annmarie 
over Thanksgiving. I started to phone her, then didn't. If I'm going to do it, I guess I better 
find the guts to do it face to face.' I hadn't been aware of coming to any such decision, not 
consciously, but it seemed I had. Certainly it wasn't something I was saying just to please 
Carol. 
She nodded, scuffing through the leaves in her sneakers, holding her little bag in one hand, 
not looking at me. 'I had to use the phone. Called S-J and told him I was seeing a guy.' 
I stopped. 'When?' 
'Last week.' Now she looked up at me. Dimples; slightly curved lower lip; the smile. 
'Last week? And you didn't tell me?' 
'It was my business,' she said, 'Mine and Sully's. I mean, it isn't like he's going to come 
after you with a . . . ' She paused long enough for both of us to think with a baseball bat and 
then went on, 'That he's going to come after you, or anything. Come on, Pete. If we're going 
to do something, let's do it. I'm not going riding with you, though. I really have to study.' 
'No rides.' 
We got walking again. The Steam Plant lot seemed huge to me in those days — hundreds 
of cars parked in dozens of moonlit rows. I could hardly ever remember where I left my 
brother's old Ford wagon. The last time I was back at UM, the lot was three, maybe even four 
times as big, with space for a thousand cars or more. Time passes and everything gets bigger 
except us. 
'Hey Pete?' Walking. Looking down at her sneakers again even though we were on the 
asphalt now and there were no more leaves to scuff. 
'Uh-huh.' 
'I don't want you to go breaking up with Annmarie because of me. Because I have an idea 
we're . . . temporary. All right?' 
'Yeah.' What she said made me unhappy — it was what the citizens of Atlantis referred to 
as a bummer — but it didn't really surprise me. 'I guess it'll have to be.' 
'I like you, and I like being with you now, but it's just liking you, that's all it is, and it's best 
to be honest. So if you want to keep your mouth shut when you go home for the holiday — ' 
'Kind of keep her around at home? Sort of like a spare tire in case we get a flat here at 
school?' 
She looked startled, then laughed. 'Touche,' she said. 
'Touche for what?' 
'I don't even know, Pete . . . but I do like you.' 
She stopped, turned to me, slipped her arms around my neck. We kissed for a little while 
between two rows of cars, kissed until I got a pretty decent bone on, one I'm sure she could 
feel. Then she gave me a final peck on the lips and we started walking again. 
'What did Sully say when you told him? I don't know if I'm supposed to ask, but — ' 
' — but you want information,' she said in a brusque Number Two voice. Then she 
laughed. It was the rueful one. 'I was expecting he'd be angry, or that he might even cry. 
Sully's big and he scares the devil out of the football players he matches up against, but his 
feelings are always close to the skin. What I didn't expect was relief.' 
'Relief?' 
'Relief. He's been seeing this girl in Bridgeport for a month or more . . . except my mom's 
friend Rionda told me she's actually a woman, maybe twenty-four or -five.' 
'Sounds like a recipe for disaster,' I said, hoping I sounded measured and thoughtful. I was 
actually delighted. Of course I was. And if pore ole gosh-darned tender-hearted John Sullivan 
stumbled into the plot of a country-western Merle Haggard song, well, four hundred million 
Red Chinese wouldn't give a shit, and that went double for me. 

We had almost arrived at my car. It was just one more old heap among all the others, but, 
courtesy of my brother, it was mine. 'He's got more on his mind than his new love interest,' 
Carol said. 'He's going into the Army when he finishes high school next June. He's already 
talked to the recruiter and got it arranged. He can't wait to get over there in Vietnam and start 
making the world safe for democracy.' 
'Did you have a fight with him about the war?' 
'Nope. What would be the use? For that matter, what would I tell him? That for me it's all 
about Bobby Garfield? That all the stuff Harry Swidrowski and George Gilman and Hunter 
McPhail say seems like smoke and mirrors compared to Bobby carrying me up Broad Street 
Hill? Sully would think I was crazy. Or say it's because I'm too smart. Sully feels sorry for 
people who are too smart. He says being too smart is a disease. And maybe he's right. I kind 
of love him, you know. He's sweet. He's also the kind of guy who needs someone to take care 
of him.' 
And I hope he finds someone, I thought. Just as long as it's not you. 
She looked judiciously at my car. 'Okay,' she said. 'It's ugly, it desperately needs a wash, 
but it's transportation. The question is, what're we doing here when I should be reading a 
Flannery O'Connor story?' 
I took out my pocket-knife and opened it. 'Got a nail-file in your bag?' 
'As a matter of fact, I do. Are we going to fight? Number Two and Number Six go at it in 
the Steam Plant parking lot?' 
'Don't be a smartass. Just get it out and follow me.' 
By the time we got around to the back of the station wagon, she was laughing — not the 
rueful laugh but the full-out guffaw I'd first heard when Skip's horny hotdog man came down 
the dishline conveyor belt. She finally understood why we were here. 
Carol took one side of the bumper sticker; I took the other; we met in the middle. Then we 
watched the shreds blow away across the macadam. Au revoir, AuH2O-4-USA. Bye-bye, 
Barry. And we laughed. Man, we just couldn't stop laughing. 
22 
A couple of days later my friend Skip, who'd come to college with the political awareness of 
a mollusk, put up a poster on his side of the room he shared with Brad Witherspoon. It 
showed a smiling businessman in a three-piece suit. One hand was extended to shake. The 
other was hidden behind his back, but something clutched in it was dripping blood between 
his shoes. WAR is GOOD BUSINESS, the poster said. INVEST YOUR SON. 
Dearie was horrified. 
'So you're against Vietnam now?' he asked when he saw it. Below his chin-out truculence I 
think our beloved floor-proctor was badly shocked by that poster. Skip, after all, had been a 
first-class high-school baseball player. Was expected to play college ball, too. Had been 
courted by both Delta Tau Delta and Phi Gam, the jock frats. Skip was no frog-eyed weirdo 
like George Oilman, no sickly cripple like Stoke Jones (Dearie Dearborn had also taken to 
calling Stoke Rip-Rip). 
'Hey, all this poster means is that a lot of people are making money out of a big bloody 
mess,' Skip said. 'McDonnell-Douglas. Boeing. GE. Dow Chemical and Coleman Chemicals. 
Pepsi Fuckin Cola. Lots more.' 
Dearie's gimlet gaze conveyed (or tried to) the idea that he had thought about such issues 
more deeply than Skip Kirk ever could. 'Let me ask you something — do you think we 

should just stand back and let Uncle Ho take over down there?' 
'I don't know what I think,' Skip said, 'not yet. I only started getting interested in the subject 
a couple of weeks ago. I'm still playing catch-up.' 
This was at seven-thirty in the morning, and a little group outbound for eight o'clock 
classes had gathered around Skip's door. I saw Ronnie (plus Nick Prouty; by this point the 
two of them had become inseparable), Ashley Rice, Lennie Doria, Billy Marchant, maybe 
four or five others. Nate was leaning in the doorway of 302, wearing a tee-shirt and his pj 
bottoms. In the stairwell, Stoke Jones leaned on his crutches. He had apparently been on his 
way out and had turned back to monitor the discussion. 
Dearie said, 'When the Viet Cong come into a South Viet 'ville, the first thing they look for 
are people wearing crucifixes, St Christopher medals, Mary medals, anything of that nature. 
Catholics are killed. People who believe in God are killed. Do you think we should stand 
back while the commies kill people who believe in God?' 
'Why not?' Stoke said from the stairwell. 'We stood back and let the Nazis kill the Jews for 
six years. Jews believe in God, or so I'm told.' 
'Fucking Rip-Rip!' Ronnie shouted. 'Who the fuck asked you to play the piano?' 
But by then Stoke Jones, aka Rip-Rip, was making his way down the stairs. The echoey 
sound of his crutches made me think of the recently departed Frank Stuart. 
Dearie turned back to Skip. His hands were fisted on his hips. Lying against the front of his 
white tee-shirt was a set of dogtags. His father had worn them in France and Germany, he 
told us; had been wearing them as he lay behind a tree, hiding from the machine-gun fire that 
had killed two men in his company and wounded four more. What this had to do with the 
Vietnam conflict none of us quite knew, but it was clearly a big deal to Dearie, so none of us 
asked. Even Ronnie had sense enough to keep his trap shut. 
'If we let them take South Vietnam, they'll take Cambodia.' Dearie's eyes moved from Skip 
to me to Ronnie . . . to all of us. 'Then Laos. Then the Philippines. One after the other.' 
'If they can do that, maybe they deserve to win,' I said. 
Dearie looked at me, shocked. I was sort of shocked myself, but I didn't take it back. 
23 
There was one more round of prelims before the Thanksgiving break, and for the young 
scholars of Chamberlain Three, it was a disaster. By then most of us understood that we were 
a disaster, that we were committing a kind of group suicide. Kirby McClendon did his freakout 
thing and disappeared like a rabbit in a magic trick. Kenny Auster, who usually sat in the 
corner during the marathon games and picked his nose when he couldn't decide what card to 
play next, simply bugged out one day. He left a queen of spades with the words 'I quit' 
written across it on his pillow. George Lessard joined Steve Ogg and Jack Frady in Chad, the 
brain dorm. 
Six down, thirteen to go. 
It should have been enough. Hell, just what happened to poor old Kirby should have been 
enough; in the last three or four days before he freaked, his hands were trembling so badly he 
had trouble picking up his cards and he jumped in his seat if someone slammed a door in the 
hall. Kirby should have been enough but he wasn't. Nor was my time with Carol the answer. 
When I was actually with her, yes, I was fine. When I was with her all I wanted was 
information (and maybe to ball her socks oil). When I was in the dorm, though, especially in 
that goddamned third-floor lounge, I became another version of Peter Riley. In the third-floor 

lounge I was a stranger to myself. 
As Thanksgiving approached, a kind of blind fatalism set in. None of us talked about it, 
though. We talked about the movies, or sex ('I get more ass than a merry-go-round pony!' 
Ronnie used to crow, usually with no warning or conversational lead-in of any kind), but 
mostly we talked about Vietnam . . . and Hearts. Our Hearts discussions were about who was 
ahead, who was behind, and who couldn't seem to master the few simple strategic ploys of 
the game: void yourself in at least one suit; pass mid-range hearts to someone who likes to 
shoot the moon; if you have to take a trick, always take it high. 
Our only real response to the looming third round of prelims was to organize the game into 
a kind of endless, revolving tournament. We were still playing nickel a point, but we were 
now also playing for 'match points.' The system for awarding match points was quite 
complex, but Randy Echolls and Hugh Brennan worked out a good formula in two feverish 
late-night sessions. Both of them, incidentally, were flunking their introductory math courses; 
neither was invited back at the conclusion of the fall semester. 
Thirty-three years have passed since that pre-Thanksgiving round of exams, and the man 
that boy became still winces at the memory of them. I flunked everything but Sociology and 
Intro English. I didn't have to see the grades to know it, either. Skip said he'd flagged the 
board except for Calc, and there he barely squeaked by. I was taking Carol out to a movie that 
night, our one pre-break date (and our last, although I didn't know that then), and saw Ronnie 
Malenfant on my way to get my car. I asked him how he thought he'd done on his tests; 
Ronnie smiled and winked and said, 'Aced everything, champ. Just like on fuckin College 
Bowl. I'm not worried.' But in the light of the parking lot I could see his smile wavering 
minutely at the corners. His skin was too pale, and his acne, bad when we started school in 
September, was worse than ever. 'How 'bout you?' 
'They're going to make me Dean of Arts and Sciences,' I said. 'That tell you anything?' 
Ronnie burst out laughing. 'You fuckin pisspot!' He clapped me on the shoulder. The cocky 
look in his eyes had been replaced by fright that made him look younger. 'Goin out?' 
'Yeah.' 
'Carol?' 
'Yeah.' 
'Good for you. She's a great-lookin chick.' For Ronnie, this was nearly heartrending 
sincerity. 'And if I don't see you in the lounge later on, have a great turkey-day.' 
'You too, Ronnie.' 
'Yeah. Sure.' Looking at me from the corners of his eyes rather than straight on. Trying to 
hold the smile. 'One way or another, I guess we're both gonna eat the bird, wouldn't you say?' 
'Yeah. I guess that pretty well sums it up.' 
24 
It was hot, even with the engine off and the heater off it was hot, we had warmed up the 
whole inside of the car with our bodies, the windows steamed so that the light from the 
parking lot came in all diffused, like light through a pebbled-glass bathroom window, and the 
radio was on, Mighty John Marshall making with the oldies, The Humble Yet Nonetheless 
Mighty playing The Four Seasons and The Dovells and Jack Scott and Little Richard and 
Freddie 'Boom Boom' Cannon, all those oldies, and her sweater was open and her bra was 
draped over the seat with one strap hanging down, a thick white strap, bra-technology in 
those days hadn't yet taken that next great leap forward, and oh man her skin was warm, her 

nipple rough in my mouth, and she still had her panties on but only sort of, they were all 
pushed and bunched to one side and I had first one finger in her and hen two fingers, Chuck 
Berry singing 'Johnny B. Goode' and The Royal Teens singing 'Short Shorts,' and her hand 
was inside my fly, fingers pulling at the elastic of my own short-shorts, and I could smell her, 
the perfume on her neck and the sweat on her temples just below where her hair started, and I 
could hear her, hear the live pulse of her breath, wordless whispers in my mouth as we kissed, 
all of this with the front seat of my car pushed back as far as it would go, me not thinking of 
flunked prelims or the war in Vietnam or LBJ wearing a lei or Hearts or anything, only 
wanting her, wanting her right here and right now, and then suddenly she was straightening 
up and straightening me up, both hands planted on my chest, splayed fingers pushing me back 
toward the steering wheel. I moved toward her again, slipping one of my own hands up her 
thigh, and she said 'Pete, no\' in a sharp voice and closed her legs, the knees coming together 
loud enough so I could hear the sound they made, that locking sound that means you're done 
making out, like it or not. I didn't like it but I stopped. 
I leaned my head back against the fogged-up window on the driver's side, breathing hard. 
My cock was an iron bar stuffed down the front of my underwear, so hard it hurt. That would 
go away soon enough — no harden lasts forever, I think Benjamin Disraeli said that — but 
even after the erection's gone, the blue balls linger on. It's just a fact of guy life. 
We had left the movie — some really terrible good-ole-boy thang with Burt Reynolds in it 
— early and had come back to the Steam Plant parking lot with the same thing on our minds . 
. . or so I'd hoped. I guess it was the same thing, except I had been hoping for a little more of 
it than I'd gotten. 
Carol had pulled the sides of her sweater together but her bra still hung over the back of the 
seat and she looked madly desirable with her breasts trying to tumble out through the gap and 
half an areola visible in the dim light. She had her purse open and was fumbling her cigarettes 
out with shaky hands. 
'Whooo,' she said. Her voice was as shaky as her hands. 'I mean holy cow.' 
'You look like Brigitte Bardot with your sweater open like that,' I told her. 
She looked up, surprised and — I thought — pleased. 'Do you really think so? Or is it just 
the blond hair?' 
'The hair? Shit, no. Mostly it's . . . ' I gestured toward her front. She looked down at herself 
and laughed. She didn't do the buttons, though, or try to pull the sides any more closely 
together. I'm not sure she could have, anyway — as I remember, that sweater was a 
wonderfully tight fit. 
'There was a theater up the street from us when I was a kid, the Asher Empire. It's torn 
down now, but when we were kids — Bobby and Sully-John and me — it seemed they were 
always showing her pictures. I think that one of them, And God Created Woman, must have 
played there for about a thousand years.' 
I burst out laughing and took my own cigarettes off the dashboard. 'That was always the 
third feature at the Gates Falls Drive-in on Friday and Saturday nights.' 
'Did you ever see it?' 
'Are you kidding? I wasn't even allowed to go to the drive-in unless it was a Disney double 
feature. I think I must have seen Tonka with Sal Mineo at least seven times. But I remember 
the previews. Brigitte in her towel.' 
'I'm not coming back to school,' she said, and lit her cigarette. She spoke so calmly that at 
first I thought we were still talking about old movies, or midnight in Calcutta, or whatever it 
took to persuade our bodies that it was time to go back to sleep, the action was over. Then it 
clicked in my head. 
'You . . . did you say . . . ?' 
'I said I'm not coming back after break. And it's not going to be much of a Thanksgiving at 

home, as far as that goes, but what the hell.' 
'Your father?' 
She shook her head, drawing on her cigarette. In the light of its coal her face was all orange 
highlights and crescents of gray shadow. She looked older. Still beautiful, but older. On the 
radio Paul Anka was singing 'Diana.' I snapped it off. 
'My father's got nothing to do with it. I'm going back to Harwich. Do you remember me 
mentioning my mother's friend Rionda?' 
I sort of did, so I nodded. 
'Rionda took the picture I showed you, the one of me with Bobby and S-J. She says . . . ' 
Carol looked down at her skirt, which was still hiked most of the way to her waist, and began 
plucking at it. You can never tell what's going to embarrass people; sometimes it's toilet 
functions, sometimes it's the sexual hijinks of relatives, sometimes it's show-off behavior. 
And sometimes, of course, it's drink. 
'Let's put it this way, my dad's not the only one in the Gerber family with a booze problem. 
He taught my mother how to tip her elbow, and she was a good student. For a long time she 
laid off — she went to AA meetings, I think — but Rionda says she's started again. So I'm 
going home. I don't know if I can take care of her or not, but I'm going to try. For my brother 
as much as my mother. Rionda says Ian doesn't know if he's coming or going. Of course he 
never did.' She smiled. 
'Carol, that's maybe not such a good idea. To shoot your education that way — ' 
She looked up angrily. 'You want to talk about shooting my education? You know what I'm 
hearing about that fucking Hearts game on Chamberlain Three these days? That everyone on 
the floor is going to flunk out by Christmas, including you. Penny Lang says that by the start 
of spring semester there won't be anyone left up there but that shithead proctor of yours.' 
'Nah,' I said, 'that's an exaggeration. Nate'll be left. Stokely Jones, too, if he doesn't break 
his neck going downstairs some night.' 
'You act as though it's funny,' she said. 
'It's not funny,' I said. No, it wasn't funny. 
'Then why don't you quit it?' 
Now / was the one starting to feel angry. She had pushed me away and clapped her knees 
shut, had told me she was going away just when I was starting to not only want her around 
but need her around, she had left me with what was soon going to be a world-class case of 
blue balls . . . and now it was all about me. Now it was all about cards. 
'I don't know why I don't quit it,' I said. 'Why don't you find someone else to take care of 
your mother? Why doesn't this friend of hers, Rawanda — ' 
'Ri-ow-da.' 
' — take care of her? I mean, is it your fault your mother's a lush?' 
'My mother is not a lush! Don't you call her that!' 
'Well, she's sure something, if you're going to drop out of college on her account. If it's that 
serious, Carol, it's sure something.' 
'Rionda has a job and a mother of her own to worry about,' Carol said. The anger had gone 
out of her. She sounded deflated, dispirited. I could remember the laughing girl who had 
stood beside me, watching the shreds of Goldwater bumper sticker blow away across the 
macadam, but this didn't seem like the same one. 'My mother is my mother. There's only Ian 
and me to take care of her, and Ian's barely making it in high school. Besides, there's always 
UConn.' 
'You want some information?' I asked her. My voice was trembling, thickening. 'I'll give 
you some whether you want it or not. Okay? You're breaking my heart here. That's the 
information. You're breaking my goddam heart.' 
'I'm not, though,' she said. 'Hearts are tough, Pete. Most times they don't break. Most times 

they only bend.' 
Yeah, yeah, and Confucius say woman who fly upside down have crackup. I began to cry. 
Not a lot, but they were tears, all right. Mostly I think it was being caught so utterly 
unprepared. And okay, maybe I was crying for myself, as well. Because I was scared. I was 
now flunking or in danger of flunking all but a single subject, one of my friends was planning 
to push the EJECT button, and I couldn't seem to stop playing cards. Nothing was going the 
way I had expected it would once I got to college, and I was terrified. 
'I don't want you to go,' I said. 'I love you.' Then I tried to smile. 'Just a little more 
information, okay?' 
She looked at me with an expression I couldn't read, then cranked down her window and 
tossed out her cigarette. She rolled the window back up and held out her arms to me. 'Come 
here.' 
I put out my own cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and slipped across to her side of the 
seat. Into her arms. She kissed me, then looked into my eyes. 'Maybe you love me and maybe 
you don't. I'd never try to talk anyone out of loving me, I can tell you that much, because 
there's never enough loving to go around. But you're confused, Pete. About school, about 
Hearts, about Annmarie, and about me, too.' 
I started to say I wasn't, but of course I was. 
'I can go to UConn,' she said. 'If my mother shapes up, I will go to UConn. If that doesn't 
work out, I can take courses part-time at Pennington in Bridgeport, or even CED courses at 
night in Stratford or Harwich. I can do those things, I have the luxury of doing those things, 
because I'm a girl. This is a good time to be a girl, believe me. Lyndon Johnson has seen to 
that.' 
'Carol — ' 
She put her hand gently against my mouth. 'If you flunk out this December, you're apt to be 
in the jungle next December. You need to think about that, Pete. It's one thing for Sully. He 
thinks it's right and he wants to go. You don't know what you want or what you think, and 
you won't as long as you keep running those cards.' 
'Hey, I took the Goldwater sticker off my car, didn't I?' It sounded foolish to my own ears. 
She said nothing. 
'When are you going?' 
'Tomorrow afternoon. I have a ticket on the four o'clock Trailways bus to New York. The 
Harwich stop isn't more than three blocks from my front door.' 
'Are you leaving from Derry?' 
'Yes.' 
'Can I drive you to the depot? I could pick you up at your dorm around three.' 
She considered it, then nodded . . . but I saw a shaded look in her eyes. It was hard to miss, 
because those eyes were usually so wide and guileless. 'That would be good,' she said. 'Thank 
you. And I didn't lie to you, did I? I told you we might be temporary.' 
I sighed. 'Yeah.' Only this was a lot more temporary than I had been expecting. 
'Now, Number Six: We want . . . information.'' 
'You won't get it.' It was hard to sound as tough as Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner 
when you still felt like crying, but I did my best. 
'Even if I ask pretty please?' She took my hand, slipped it inside her sweater, placed it on 
her left breast. The part of me which had begun to swoon snapped immediately back to attention. 
'Well . . . ' 
'Have you ever done it before? I mean, all the way? That's the information I want.' 
I hesitated. It's a question most boys find difficult, I imagine, and one most lie about. I 
didn't want to lie to Carol. 'No,' I said. 

She slipped daintily out of her panties, tossed them over into the back seat, and laced her 
fingers together behind my neck. 'I have. Twice. With Sully. I don't think he was very good at 
it . . . but he'd never been to college. You have.' 
My mouth felt very dry, but that must have been an illusion, because when I kissed her our 
mouths were wet; they slipped all around, tongues and lips and nipping teeth. When I could 
talk I said, 'I'll do my best to share my college education.' 
'Put on the radio,' she said, unbuckling my belt and unsnapping my jeans. 'Put on the radio, 
Pete, I like the oldies.' 
So I put on the radio and I kissed her and there was a spot, a certain spot, her fingers 
guided me to it and there was a moment when I was the same old same old and then there 
was a new place to be. She was very warm in there. Very warm and very tight. She whispered 
in my ear, her lips tickling against the skin: 'Slow. Eat every one of your vegetables and 
maybe you'll get dessert.' 
Jackie Wilson sang 'Lonely Teardrops' and I went slow. Roy Orbison sang 'Only the 
Lonely' and I went slow. Wanda Jackson sang 'Let's Have a Party' and I went slow. Mighty 
John did an ad for Brannigan's, Derry's hottest bottle club, and I went slow. Then she began 
to moan and it wasn't her fingers on my neck but her nails digging into it, and when she 
began to move her hips up against me in short hard thrusts I couldn't go slow and then The 
Platters were on the radio, The Platters were singing 'Twilight Time' and she began to moan 
that she hadn't known, hadn't had a clue, oh gee, oh Pete, oh gee, oh Jesus, Jesus Christ, Pete, 
and her lips were all over my mouth and my chin and my jaw, she was frantic with kisses. I 
could hear the seat creaking, I could smell cigarette smoke and the pine air-freshener hanging 
from the rearview mirror, and by then / was moaning, too, I don't know what, The Platters 
were singing 'Each day I pray for evening just to be with you,' and then it started to happen. 
The pump turns on in ecstasy. I closed my eyes, I held her with my eyes closed and went into 
her that way, that way you do, shaking all over, hearing the heel of my shoe drumming 
against the driver's-side door in a spastic tattoo, thinking that I could do this even if I was 
dying, even if I was dying, even if I was dying; thinking also that it was information. The 
pump turns on in ecstasy, the cards fall where they fall, the world never misses a beat, the 
queen hides, the queen is found, and it was all information. 
25 
The next morning I had a brief meeting with my Geology instructor, who told me I was 
'edging into a grave situation.' That is not exactly new information, Number Six, I thought of 
telling him, but didn't. The world looked different this morning — both better and worse. 
When I got back to Chamberlain I found Nate getting ready to leave for home. He had his 
suitcase in one hand. There was a sticker on it that said i CLIMBED MT WASHINGTON. Slung 
over his shoulder was a duffel full of dirty clothes. Like everything else, Nate looked 
different now. 
'Have a good Thanksgiving, Nate,' I said, opening my closet and starting to yank out pants 
and shirts at random. 'Eat lots of stuffing. You're too fuckin skinny.' 
'I will. Cranberry dressing, too. When I was at my most homesick that first week, my 
mom's dressing was practically all I could think about.' 
I filled my own suitcase, thinking that I could take Carol to the bus depot in Deny and then 
just keep on going. If the traffic on Route 136 wasn't too heavy, I could be home before dark. 
Maybe even stop in Frank's Fountain for a mug of rootbeer before heading up Sabbatus Road 

to the house. Suddenly being out of this place — away from Chamberlain Hall and Holyoke 
Commons, away from the whole damned University — was my number-one priority. You're 
confused, Pete, Carol had said in the car last night. You don't know what you want or what 
you think, and you won't as long as you keep running those cards. 
Well, this was my chance to get away from the cards. It hurt to know Carol was leaving, 
but I'd be lying if I said that was foremost in my mind right then. At that moment, getting 
away from the third-floor lounge was. Getting away from The Bitch. If you flunk out this 
December, you're apt to be in the jungle next December. Be in touch, baby, seeya, as Skip 
Kirk usually put it. 
When I latched the suitcase shut and looked around, Nate was still standing in the 
doorway. I jumped and let out a little squeak of surprise. It was like being visited by Banquo's 
fucking ghost. 
'Hey, go on, bug out,' I said. 'Time and tide wait for no man, not even one in pre-dent.' 
Nate only stood there, looking at me. 'You're going to flunk out,' he said. 
Again I thought of how weirdly alike Nate and Carol were, almost male and female sides 
of the same coin. I tried to smile, but Nate didn't smile back. His face was small and white 
and pinched. The perfect Yankee face. You see a skinny guy who always burns instead of 
tanning, whose idea of dressing up includes a string tie and a liberal application of Vitalis, a 
guy who looks like he hasn't had a decent shit in three years, and that guy was most likely 
born and raised north of White River, New Hampshire. And on his deathbed his last words 
are apt to be 'Cranberry dressing.' 
'Nah,' I said. 'Don't sweat it, Natie. All's cool.' 
'You're going to flunk out,' he repeated. Dull, bricky color was rising in his cheeks. 'You 
and Skip are the best guys I know, there wasn't anybody in high school like you guys, not in 
my high school at least, and you're going to flunk out and it's so stupid.' 
'I'm not going to flunk out,' I said . . . but since last night I had found myself accepting the 
idea diat I could. I wasn't just edging into a grave situation; man, I was there. 'Skip, either. It's 
under control.' 
'The world's falling down and you two are flunking out of school over Hearts! Over a 
stupid fuckin card-game!' 
Before I could say anything else he was gone, headed back up the county for turkey and his 
mom's stuffing. Maybe even a through-the-pants handjob from Cindy. Hey, why not? It was 
Thanksgiving. 
26 
I don't read my horoscope, have rarely watched The X-Files, have never called the Psychic 
Friends Hotline, but I nevertheless believe that we all get glimpses of the future from time to 
time. I got one that afternoon, when I pulled up in front of Franklin Hall in my brother's old 
station wagon: she was already gone. 
I went inside. The lobby, where there were usually eight or nine gentlemen callers sitting 
in the plastic chairs, looked oddly empty. A housekeeper in a blue uniform was vacuuming 
the industrial-strength rug. The girl behind the counter was reading a copy of McCall's and 
listening to the radio. ? and the Mysterians, as a matter of fact. Cry cry cry, baby, 96 tears. 
'Pete Riley for Carol Gerber,' I said. 'Can you buzz her?' 
She looked up, put her magazine aside, and gave me a sweet, sympathetic look. It was the 
look of a doctor who has to tell you gee, sorry, the tumor's inoperable. Bad luck, man, better 

make friends with Jesus. 'Carol said she had to leave early. She took the Black Bear Shuttle to 
Deny. But she told me you'd be by and asked me to give you this.' 
She handed me an envelope with my name written across the front. I thanked her and left 
Franklin with it in my hand. I went down the walk and stood for a moment by my car, 
looking across toward Holyoke Commons, fabled Palace on the Plains and home of the horny 
hotdog man. Below it, in Bennett's Run, leaves flew before the wind in rattling drifts. The 
bright colors had gone out of them; only November's dark brown was left. It was the day 
before Thanksgiving, the doorstep of winter in New England. The world was all wind and 
cold sunshine. I had started crying again. I could tell by the warmth on my cheeks. 96 tears, 
baby; cry cry cry. 
I got into the car where I had lost my virginity the night before and opened the envelope. 
There was a single sheet of paper inside. Brevity is the soul of wit, according to Shakespeare. 
If it's true, then Carol's letter was witty as hell. 
Dear Pete, 
I think we ought to let last night be our goodbye — how could we do any 
better? I may write to you at school or I may not, right now I'm so confused 
I just don't know (hey, I may even change my mind and come back!). But 
please let me be the one to get in touch, okay? You said you loved me. If you 
do, let me be the one to get in touch. I will, I promise. 
P.S. Last night was the sweetest thing that's ever happened to me. If it gets 
any better than that, I don't see how people can live thru it. 
P.P.S. Get out of that stupid card-game. 
She said it was the sweetest thing that had ever happened to her, but she hadn't put 'love' at 
the bottom of the note, only her signature. Still . . . if it gets any better than that, I don't see 
how people can live thru it. I knew what she meant. I reached over and touched the side of 
the seat where she had lain. Where we had lain together. 
Put on the radio, Pete, I like the oldies. 
I looked at my watch. I had gotten to the dorm early (that half-conscious premonition at 
work, maybe), and it had just gone three now. I could easily get to the Trailways depot before 
she left for Connecticut . . . but I wasn't going to do it. She was right, we had said a brilliant 
goodbye in my old station wagon; anything more would be a step down. At best we would 
find ourselves going over the same ground; at worst, we'd splash mud over last night with an 
argument. 
We want information. 
Yes. And we had gotten it. God knew we had. 
I folded her letter, stuck it into the back pocket of my jeans, and drove home to Gates Falls. 
At first my eyes kept blurring and I had to keep wiping at them. Then I turned on the radio 
and the music made things a little better. The music always does. I'm past fifty now, and the 
music still makes things better; it's the fabled automatic. 
27 

I got back to Gates around five-thirty, slowed as I drove past Frank's, then kept on going. By 
then I wanted to get home a lot more than I wanted a draft Hires and a gossip with Frank 
Parmeleau. Mom's way of saying welcome home was to tell me I was too skinny, my hair 
was too long, and I hadn't been 'standing close enough to the razor.' Then she sat in her 
rocking chair and had a little weep over the return of the prodigal son. My dad put a kiss on 
my cheek, hugged me with one arm, and then shuffled to the fridge for a glass of Mom's red 
tea, his head poking forward out of the neck of his old brown sweater like the head of a 
curious turtle. 
We — my mom and me, that is — thought he had twenty per cent of his eyesight left, 
maybe a bit more. It was hard to tell, because he so rarely talked. It was a bagging-room 
accident that did for him, a terrible two-story fall. He had scars on the left side of his face and 
his neck; there was a dented-in patch of skull where the hair never grew back. The accident 
pretty much blacked out his vision, and it did something to his mind, as well. But he was not 
a 'total ijit,' as I once heard some asshole down at Gendron's Barber Shop say, nor was he 
mute, as some people seemed to think. He was in a coma for nineteen days. After he woke up 
he became mostly silent, that much is true, and he was often terribly confused in his mind, 
but sometimes he was still there, all present and accounted for. He was there enough when I 
came home to give me a kiss and that strong one-armed hug, his way of hugging for as long 
as I could remember. I loved my old man a lot ... and after a semester of playing cards with 
Ronnie Malenfant, I had learned that talking is a wildly overrated skill. 
I sat with them for awhile, telling them some of my college stories (not about chasing The 
Bitch, though), then went outside. I raked fallen leaves in the twilight — the frosty air on my 
cheeks felt like a blessing — waved at the passing neighbors, and ate three of my mom's 
hamburgers for supper. After, she told me she was going down to the church, where the 
Ladies' Aid was preparing Thanksgiving meals for shut-ins. She didn't think I'd want to spend 
my first evening home with a bunch of old hens, but I was welcome to attend the cluckfest if 
I wanted. I thanked her and said I thought I'd give Annmarie a call instead. 
'Now why doesn't that surprise me?' she said, and went out. I heard the car start and then, 
with no great joy, I dragged myself to the telephone and called Annmarie Soucie. An hour 
later she drove over in her father's pickup, smiling, her hair down on her shoulders, mouth 
radiant with lipstick. The smile didn't last long, as I guess you can probably figure out for 
yourself, and fifteen minutes after she came in, Annmarie was out of the house and out of my 
life. Be in touch, baby, seeya. Right around the time of Woodstock, she married an insurance 
agent from Lewiston and became Annmarie Jalbert. They had three kids, and they're still 
married. I guess that's good, isn't it? Even if it isn't, you have to admit it's pretty goddam 
American. 
I stood at the window over the kitchen sink, watching the taillights of Mr Soucie's truck 
disappear down the road. I felt ashamed of myself — Christ, the way her eyes had widened, 
the way her smile had faded and begun to tremble — but I also felt shiftily happy, 
disgustingly relieved; light enough to dance up the walls and across the ceiling like Fred 
Astaire. 
There were shuffling steps from behind me. I turned to see my dad, doing his slow turtlewalk 
across the linoleum in his slippers. He went with one hand held out before him. The 
skin on it was beginning to look like a big loose glove. 
'Did I just hear a young lady call a young gentleman a fucking jerk?' he asked in a mild 
just-passing-the-time voice. 
'Well . . . yeah.' I shuffled my feet. 'I guess maybe you did.' 
He opened the fridge, groped, and brought out the jug of red tea. He drank it without sugar. 
I have taken it that same way on occasion, and can tell you it tastes like almost nothing at all. 

My theory is that my dad always went for the red tea because it was the brightest thing in the 
icebox, and he always knew what it was. 
'Soucie girl, wasn't it?' 
'Yeah, Dad. Annmarie.' 
'All them Soucies have the distemper, Pete. Slammed the door, didn't she?' 
I was smiling. I couldn't help it. It was a wonder the glass was still in that poor old door. 'I 
guess she did.' 
'You trade her in for a newer model up there t'the college, did you?' 
That was a fairly complicated question. The simple answer — and maybe the truest, in the 
end — was no I hadn't. That was the answer I gave. 
He nodded, set out the biggest glass in the cabinet next to the fridge, and then looked like 
he was getting ready to pour the tea all over the counter and his own feet, anyway. 
'Let me do that for you,' I said. 'Okay?' 
He made no reply but stood back and let me pour the tea. I put the three-quarters-full glass 
into his hands and the jug back in the fridge. 
'Is it good, Dad?' 
Nothing. He only stood there with the glass in both hands — the way a child holds a glass 
— drinking in little sips. I waited, decided he wasn't going to reply, and fetched my suitcase 
out of the corner. I'd thrown my textbooks in on top of my clothes and now took them out. 
'Studying on the first night of break,' Dad said, startling me — I'd almost forgotten he was 
there. 'Gorry.' 
'Well, I'm a little behind in a couple of classes. The teachers move a lot faster than the ones 
in high school.' 
'College,' he said. A long pause. 'You're in college.' 
It seemed almost to be a question, so I said, 'That's right, Dad.' 
He stood there awhile longer, seeming to watch me as I stacked my books and notebooks. 
Maybe he was watching. Or maybe he was just standing there. You couldn't tell, not for sure. 
At last he began to shuffle toward the door, neck stretched out, that defensive hand slightly 
raised, his other hand — the one with the glass of red tea in it — now, curled against his 
chest. At the door he stopped. Without looking around, he said: 'You're well shut of that 
Soucie girl. All Soucies has got bad tempers. You can dress em up but you can't take em out. 
You can do better.' 
He went out, holding his glass of tea curled to his chest. 
28 
Until my brother and his wife showed up from New Gloucester, I actually did study — half 
caught up on my sociology, and slogged through forty pages of geology, all in three brainbusting 
hours. By the time I stopped to make coffee, I'd begun to feel faint stirrings of hope. I 
was behind, disastrously behind, but maybe not quite fatally behind. I felt like an outfielder 
who has tracked a ball back and back to the left-field wall; he stands there looking up but not 
giving up, knowing that the ball's going to carry over but also knowing that if he times his 
leap just right, he can catch it as it does. I could do that. 
If, that was, I could stay out of the third-floor lounge in the future. . 
At quarter of ten my brother, who arrives nowhere while the sun is still up if he can help it, 
drove in. His wife of eight months, glamorous in a coat with a real mink collar, was carrying 
a bread pudding; Dave had a bowl of butter-beans. Only my brother of all people on earth 

would think of transporting butter-beans across county lines for Thanksgiving purposes. He's 
a good guy, Dave, my elder by six years and in 1966 an accountant for a small hamburger 
chain with half a dozen 'shoppes' in Maine and New Hampshire. By 1996 there were eighty 
'shoppes' and my brother, along with three partners, owned the company. He's worth three 
million dollars — on paper, at least — and has had a triple bypass. One bypass for each 
million, I guess you could say. 
Hard on Dave and Katie's heels came Mom from the Ladies' Aid, dusted with flour, 
exhilarated from good works, and overjoyed to have both of her sons in the house. There was 
a lot of cheerful babble. Our dad sat in the corner listening to it without adding anything . . . 
but he was smiling, his odd, big-pupiled eyes going from Dave's face to mine and then back 
to Dave's. It was actually our voices his eyes were responding to, I suppose. Dave wanted to 
know where Annmarie was. I said Annmarie and I had decided to cool it for awhile. Dave 
started to ask if that meant we were— 
Before he could finish the question, both his mother and his wife gave him those sharp 
little female pokes that mean not now, buddy, not now. Looking at Mom's wide eyes, I 
guessed she would have her own questions for me later on. Probably quite a few of them. 
Mom wanted information. Moms always do. 
Other than being called a fucking jerk by Annmarie and wondering from time to time how 
Carol Gerber was doing (mostly if she had changed her mind about coming back to school 
and if she was sharing her Thanksgiving with old Army-bound Sully-John), that was a pretty 
great holiday. The whole family showed up at one time or another on Thursday or Friday, it 
seemed, wandering through the house and gnawing on turkey-legs, watching football games 
on TV and roaring at the big plays, chopping wood for the kitchen stove (by Sunday night 
Mom had enough stovelengths to heat the house all winter with just the Franklin, if she'd 
wanted). After supper we ate pie and played Scrabble. Most entertaining of all, Dave and 
Katie had a huge fight over the house they were planning to buy, and Katie hucked a 
Tupperware dish of leftovers at my brother. I had taken a few lumps at Dave's hands over the 
years, and I liked watching that plastic container of squash bounce off the side of his head. 
Man, that was fun. 
But underneath all the good stuff, the ordinary joy you feel when your whole family's 
there, was my fear of what was going to happen when I went back to school. I found an hour 
to study late Thursday night, after the fridge had been stuffed full of leftovers and everyone 
else had gone to bed, and two more hours on Friday afternoon, when there was a lull in the 
flow of relatives and Dave and Katie, their differences temporarily resolved, retired for what I 
thought was an extremely noisy 'nap.' 
I still felt I could catch up — knew it, actually — but I also knew I couldn't do it alone, or 
with Nate. I had to buddy up with someone who understood the suicidal pull of that thirdfloor 
lounge, and how the blood surged when someone started playing spades in an effort to 
force The Bitch. Someone who understood the primitive joy of managing to sock Ronnie 
with la femme noire. 
It would have to be Skip, I thought. Even if Carol were to come back, she would never be 
able to understand in the same way. It had to be Skip and me, swimming out of deep water 
and in toward the shore. I thought if we stuck together, we could both pull through. Not that I 
cared so much about him. Admitting that feels scuzzy, but it's the truth. By Saturday of 
Thanksgiving break I'd done lots of soul-searching and understood I was mostly concerned 
about myself, mostly looking out for Number Six. If Skip wanted to use me, that was fine. 
Because I sure wanted to use him. 
By noon Saturday I'd read enough geology to know I needed help on some of the concepts, 
and fast. There were only two more big test-periods in the semester: a set of prelims and then 
final exams. I would have to do really well on both to keep my scholarships. 

Dave and Katie left at around seven on Saturday night, still bickering (but more goodnaturedly) 
about the house they planned to buy in Pownal. I settled down at the kitchen table 
and started reading about out-group sanctions in my soash book. What it seemed to amount to 
was that even nerds have to have someone to shit on. A depressing concept. 
At some point I became aware I wasn't alone. I looked up and saw my mother standing 
there in her old pink housecoat, her face ghostly with Pond's Gold Cream. I wasn't surprised 
that I hadn't heard her; after twenty-five years in the same little house, she knew where all the 
creaks and groans were. I thought she had finally gotten around to her questions about 
Annmarie, but it turned out that my love-life was the last thing on her mind. 
'How much trouble are you in, Peter?' she asked. 
I thought of about a hundred different answers, then settled for the truth. 'I don't really 
know.' 
'Is it any one thing in particular?' 
This time I didn't tell the truth, and looking back on it I realize how telling that lie was: 
some part of me, alien to my best interests but very powerful, still reserved the right to frogmarch 
me to the cliff . . . and over the edge. 
Yeah, Mom, the third-floor lounge is the problem, cards are the problem — just a few 
hands is what I tell myself every time, and when I look up at the clock it's quarter of midnight 
and I'm too tired to study. Hell, too wired to study. Other than play Hearts, all I've really 
managed to do this fall is lose my virginity. 
If I could have said at least the first part of that, I think it would have been like guessing 
Rumpelstiltskin's name and then speaking it out loud. But I didn't say any of it. I told her it 
was just the pace of college; I had to redefine what studying meant, learn some new habits. 
But I could do it. I was sure I could. 
She stood there a moment longer, her arms crossed and her hands deep in her housecoat 
sleeves — she looked sort of like a Chinese Mandarin when she stood that way — and then 
she said, 'I'll always love you, Pete. Your father, too. He doesn't say it, but he feels it. We 
both do. You know that.' 
'Yeah,' I said. 'I know that.' I got up and hugged her. Pancreatic cancer was what got her. 
That one's quick, at least, but it wasn't quick enough. I guess none of them are when it's 
someone you love. 
'But you have to work hard at your studies. Boys who don't work hard at them have been 
dying.' She smiled. There wasn't much humor in it. 'Probably you knew that.' 
'I heard a rumor.' 
'You're still growing,' she said, tilting her head up. 
'I don't think so.' 
'Yes. At least an inch since summer. And your hair! Why don't you cut your hair?' 
'I like it the way it is.' 
'It's as long as a girl's. Take my advice, Pete, cut your hair. Look decent. You're not one of 
those Rolling Stones or a Herman's Hermit, after all.' 
I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it. 'I'll think about it, Mom, okay?' 
'You do that.' She gave me another hard hug, then let me go. She looked tired, but I 
thought she also looked rather beautiful. 'They're killing boys across the sea,' she said. 'At 
first I thought there was a good reason for it, but your father says it's crazy and I'm not so sure 
he isn't right. You study hard. If you need a little extra for books or a tutor — we'll scrape it 
up.' 
'Thanks, Mom. You're a peach.' 
'Nope,' she said. 'Just an old mare with tired feet. I'm going to bed.' 
I studied another hour, then all the words started to double and triple in front of my eyes. I 
went to bed myself but couldn't sleep. Every time I started to drift I saw myself picking up a 

Hearts hand and beginning to arrange it in suits. Finally I let my eyes roll open and just stared 
up at the ceiling. Boys who don't work hard at their studies have been dying, my mother had 
said. And Carol telling me that this was a good time to be a girl, Lyndon Johnson had seen to 
that. 
We chasin The Bitch! 
Pass left or right? 
Jesus Christ, fuckin Riley's shootin the moon! 
Voices in my head. Voices seeming to seep out of the very air. 
Quitting the game was the only sane solution to my problems, but even with the third-floor 
lounge a hundred and thirty miles north of where I was lying, it had a hold on me, one which 
had little to do with sanity or rationality. I'd amassed twelve points in the uber tourney; only 
Ronnie, with fifteen, was now ahead of me. I didn't see how I could give those twelve points 
up, just walk away, and leave that windbag Malenfant with a clear field. Carol had helped me 
keep Ronnie in some sort of perspective, allowed me to see him for the creepy, small-minded, 
bad-complexioned gnome that he was. Now that she was gone — 
Ronnie's also going to be gone before long, the voice of reason interposed. If he lasts to the 
end of the semester it'll be a blue-eyed miracle. You know that. 
True. And in the meantime, Ronnie had nothing else but Hearts, did he? He was clumsy, 
potbellied, and thin-armed, an old man waiting to happen. He wore a chip on his shoulder to 
at least partially hide his massive feelings of inferiority. His boasting about girls was 
ludicrous. Also, he wasn't really smart, like some of the kids currently in danger of flunking 
out (Skip Kirk, for instance). Hearts and empty brag were the only things Ronnie was good 
at, so far as I'd been able to tell, so why not just stand back and let him run the cards and run 
his mouth while he still could? 
Because I didn't want to, that was why. Because I wanted to wipe the smirk off his hollow, 
pimply face and silence his grating blare of a laugh. It was mean but it was true. I liked 
Ronnie best when he was sulking, when he was glowering at me with his greasy hair tumbled 
down over his forehead and his lower lip pushed out. 
Also, there was the game itself. I loved playing. I couldn't even stop thinking about it here, 
in my childhood bed, so how was I supposed to stay away from the lounge when I got back? 
How was I supposed to ignore Mark St Pierre yelling at me to hurry up, there was a seat 
empty, everyone stood at zero on the scorepad and the game was about to commence? Christ! 
I was still awake when the cuckoo clock in the parlor below me sang two o'clock. I got up, 
threw on my old tartan robe over my skivvies, and went downstairs. I got myself a glass of 
milk and sat at the kitchen table to drink it. There were no lights on except for the fluorescent 
bar over the stove, no sounds except for the sough of the furnace through the floor-grates and 
my father's soft snores from the back bedroom. I felt a little nutso, as if the combination of 
turkey and cramming had set off a minor earthquake in my head. And as if I might next fall 
asleep around, oh, say St Patrick's Day. 
I happened to glance into the entry. There, hung on one of the hooks above the woodbox, 
was my high-school jacket, the one with the big white GF entwined on the breast. Nothing 
else but the initials; I hadn't been much of a jock. When Skip asked me, shordy after we met 
at the University, if I'd lettered in anything, I'd told him I had the big M for masturbation — 
first team, the short overhand stroke my specialty. Skip had laughed until he cried, and maybe 
that was when we'd started being friends. Actually, I guess I could have gotten a D for debate 
or dramatics, but they don't give letters in those things, do they? Not then and not now. 
High school seemed far in the past to me on that night, almost in another planetary system . 
. . but there was the jacket, a birthday present from my folks the year I turned sixteen. I 
crossed to the entry and took it off the hook. I put it up to my face and smelled it and tiiought 
of Period 5 study-hall with Mr Mezensik — the bitter aroma of pencil-shavings, the girls 

whispering and giggling under their breath, faint shouts from outside as the phys ed kids 
played what the jocks called Remedial Volleyball. I saw that the place where the jacket had 
hung on the hook continued to stick up in a kind of dimple; the damned thing probably hadn't 
been worn, even by my mother to go out to grab the mail in her nightgown, since the previous 
April or May. 
I thought of seeing Carol frozen in newsprint dots, her face shadowed by a sign reading us 
OUT OF VIETNAM NOW!, her ponytail lying against the collar of her own high-school jacket . . . 
and I had an idea. 
Our telephone, a Bakelite dinosaur with a rotary dial, was on a table in the front hall. In the 
drawer beneath it was the Gates Falls phonebook, my mom's address book, and a litter of 
writing implements. One was a black laundry-marker. I took it back to the kitchen table and 
sat down again. I spread my high-school jacket over my knees, then used the marker to make 
a large sparrow-track on the back. As I worked I felt the nervous tension draining out of my 
muscles. It occurred to me that I could award myself my own letter if I wanted, and that was 
sort of what I was doing. 
When I was done I held the jacket up and took a look. In the faint white light of the 
fluorescent bar, what I'd drawn looked harsh and declamatory and somehow childish: 
But I liked it. I liked that motherfucker. I wasn't sure what I thought about the war even 
then, but I liked that sparrow-track quite a lot. And I felt as if I could finally go to sleep; 
drawing it had done that much for me, anyway. I rinsed out my milk-glass and went upstairs 
with my jacket under my arm. I stuck it in the closet and then lay down. I thought of Carol 
putting my hand inside her sweater and the taste of her breath in my mouth. I thought of how 
we had been only ourselves behind the fogged-up windows of my old station wagon, maybe 
our best selves. And I thought of how we had laughed as we stood watching the tatters of my 
Goldwater sticker blow away across the Steam Plant parking lot. I was thinking about that 
when I fell asleep. 
I took my modified high-school jacket back to school on Sunday packed into my suitcase 
— despite her freshly voiced doubts about Mr Johnson's and Mr McNamara's war, my mom 
would have had lots of questions about the sparrow-track, and I didn't have answers to give, 
not yet. 
I felt equipped to wear the jacket, though, and I did. I spilled beer and cigarette ashes on it, 
puked on it, bled on it, got teargassed in Chicago while wearing it and screaming 'The whole 
world is watching!' at the top of my lungs. Girls cried on the entwined GF on the left breast 
(by my senior year those letters were dingy gray instead of white), and one girl lay on it while 
we made love. We did it with no protection, so probably there's a trace of semen on the 
quilted lining, too. By the time I packed up and left LSD Acres in 1970, the peace sign I drew 
on the back in my mother's kitchen was only a shadow. But the shadow remained. Others 
might not see it, but I always knew what it was. 

29 
We came back to school on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in this order: Skip at five (he lived 
in Dexter, the closest of the three of us), me at seven, Nate at around nine. 
I called Franklin Hall even before I unpacked my suitcase. No, the girl on the desk said, 
Carol Gerber wasn't back. She was plainly reluctant to say more, but I badgered her. There 
were two pink LEFT SCHOOL cards on the desk, she said. One of them had Carol's name and 
room number on it. 
I thanked her and hung up. I stood there a minute, fogging up the booth with my cigarette 
smoke, then turned around. Across the hall I could see Skip sitting at one of the card-tables, 
just picking up a spilled trick. 
I sometimes wonder if things might have been different if Carol had come back, or even if 
I'd beaten Skip back, had a chance to get to him before the third-floor lounge got to him. I 
didn't, though. 
I stood there in the phone-booth, smoking a Pall Mall and feeling sorry for myself. Then, 
from across the way, someone screamed: ' Oh shit no! I don't fuckin BELIEVE IT!' 
To which Ronnie Malenfant (from where I stood in the phone-booth he was out of my 
view, but his voice was as unmistakable as the sound of a saw ripping through a knot in a 
pine-branch) hollered gleefully back: 'Whoa, look at this — Randy Echolls takes the fast 
Bitch of the post-Thanksgiving era!' 
Don't go in there, I told myself. You are absolutely fucked if you do, fucked once and for 
all. 
But of course I did. The tables were all taken, but there were three other guys — Billy 
Marchant, Tony DeLucca, and Hugh Brennan — standing around. We could snag a corner, if 
we so chose. 
Skip looked up from his hand and shot me a high five in the smoky air. 'Welcome back to 
the loonybin, Pete.' 
'Hey!' Ronnie said, looking around. 'Look who's here! The only asshole in the place who 
can almost play the game! Where you been, Chuckles?' 
'Lewiston,' I said, 'fucking your grandmother.' 
Ronnie cackled, his pimply cheeks turning red. 
Skip was looking at me seriously, and maybe there was something in his eyes. I can't say 
for sure. Time goes by, Atlantis sinks deeper and deeper into the ocean, and you have a 
tendency to romanticize. To mythologize. Maybe I saw that he had given up, that he intended 
to stay here and play cards and then go on to whatever was next; maybe he was giving me 
permission to go in my own direction. But I was eighteen, and more like Nate in many ways 
than I liked to admit. I had also never had a friend like Skip. Skip was fearless, Skip said fuck 
every other word, when Skip was eating at the Palace the girls couldn't keep their eyes off 
him. He was the kind of babe magnet Ronnie could be only in his dampest dreams. But Skip 
also had something adrift inside of him, something like a bit of bone which may, after years 
of harmless wandering, pierce the heart or clog the brain. He knew it, too. Even then, with 
high school still sticking all over him like afterbirth, even then when he still thought he'd 
somehow wind up teaching school and coaching baseball, he knew it. And I loved him. The 
look of him, the smile of him, the walk and talk of him. I loved him and I would not leave 
him. 
'So,' I said to Billy, Tony, and Hugh. 'You guys want a lesson?' 
'Nickel a point!' Hugh said, laughing like a loon. Shit, he was a loon. 'Let's go! Wheel em 
and deal em!' 

Pretty soon we were in the corner, all four of us smoking furiously and the cards flying. I 
remembered the desperate cramming I'd done over the holiday weekend; remembered my 
mother saying that boys who didn't work hard in school were dying these days. I remembered 
those things, but they seemed as distant as making love to Carol in my car while The Platters 
sang 'Twilight Time.' 
I looked up once and saw Stoke Jones in the doorway, leaning on his crutches and looking 
at us with his usual distant contempt. His black hair was thicker than ever, the corkscrews 
crazier over his ears and heavier against the collar of his sweatshirt. He sniffed steadily, his 
nose dripped and his eyes were running, but otherwise he didn't seem any sicker than before 
the break. 
'Stoke!' I said. 'How are you doing?' 
'Oh well, who knows,' he said. 'Better than you, maybe.' 
'Come on in, Rip-Rip, drag up a milking-stool,' Ronnie said. 'We'll teach you the game.' 
'You know nothing I want to learn,' Stoke said, and went thumping away. We listened to 
his receding crutches and a brief coughing fit. 
'That crippled-up queer loves me,' Ronnie said. 'He just can't show it.' 
'I'll show you something if you don't deal some fuckin cards,' Skip said. 
'I'm bewwy, bewwy scared,' Ronnie said in an Elmer Fudd voice which only he found 
amusing. He laid his head on Mark St Pierre's arm to show how terrified he was. 
Mark lifted the arm, hard. 'The fuck off me. This is a new shirt, Malenfant, I don't want 
your pimple-pus all over it.' 
Before Ronnie's face lit with amusement and he cawed laughter, I saw a moment of 
desperate hurt there. It left me unmoved. Ronnie's problems might be genuine, but they didn't 
make him any easier to like. To me he was just a blowhard who could play cards. 
'Come on,' I said to Billy Marchant. 'Hurry up and deal. I want to get some studying done 
later.' But of course there was no studying done by any of us that night. Instead of burning out 
over the holiday, the fever was stronger and hotter than ever. 
I went down the hall around quarter of ten to get a fresh pack of smokes and knew Nate 
was back while I was still six doors away. 'Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)' was 
coming from the room Nick Prouty shared with Barry Margeaux, but from farther down I 
could hear Phil Ochs singing 'The Draft Dodger Rag.' 
Nate was deep in his closet, hanging up his clothes. Not only was he the only person I ever 
knew in college who wore pajamas, he was the only one who ever used the hangers. The only 
thing I myself had hung up was my high-school jacket. Now I took it out and began to 
rummage in the pockets for my cigarettes. 
'Hey, Nate, how you doing? Get enough of that cranberry dressing to hold you?' 
'I'm — ' he began, then saw what was on the back of my jacket 
and burst out laughing. 
'What?' I asked. 'Is it that funny?' 
'In a way,' he said, and leaned deeper into his closet. 'Look.' He reappeared with an old 
Navy pea coat in his hands. He turned it around so I could see the back. On it, much neater 
than my freehand work, was the sparrow-track. Nate had rendered his in bright silver duct 
tape. This time we both laughed. 
'Ike and Mike, they think alike,' I said. 
'Nonsense. Great minds run in the same channel.' 
'Is that what it is?' 
'Well . . . what I like to think, anyway. Does this mean you've changed your mind about the 
war, Pete?' 
'What mind?' I asked. 

30 
Andy White and Ashley Rice never came back to college at all — eight down, now. For the 
rest of us there was an obvious change for the worse in the three days before that winter's first 
storm. Obvious, that was, to anyone else. If you were inside the thing, burning with the fever, 
it all seemed just a step or two north of normal. 
Before Thanksgiving break, the card quartets in the lounge had a tendency to break up and 
re-form during the school-week; sometimes they died out altogether for awhile as kids went 
off to classes. Now the groups became almost static, the only changes occurring when 
someone staggered off to bed or table-hopped to escape Ronnie's skills and constant abrasive 
chatter. This settling occurred because most of the third-floor players hadn't returned to 
continue furthering their educations; Barry, Nick, Mark, Harvey, and I don't know how many 
others had pretty much given up on the education part. They had returned in order to resume 
the quest for totally valueless 'match points.' Many of the boys on Chamberlain Three were in 
fact now majoring in Hearts. Skip Kirk and I, sad to say, were among them. I made a couple 
of classes on Monday, then said fuck it and cut the rest. I cut everything on Tuesday, played 
Hearts in my dreams on Tuesday night (in one fragment I remember dropping The Bitch and 
seeing that her face was Carol's), then spent all day Wednesday playing it for real. Geology, 
sociology, history . . . all concepts without meaning. 
In Vietnam, a fleet of B-52s hit a Viet Gong staging area outside Dong Ha. They also 
managed to hit a company of US Marines, killing twelve and wounding forty — whoops, 
shit. And the forecast for Thursday was heavy snow turning to rain and freezing rain in the 
afternoon. Very few of us took note of this; certainly I had no reason to think that storm 
would change the course of my life. 
I went to bed at midnight on Wednesday and slept heavily. If I had dreams of Hearts or 
Carol Gerber, I don't remember them. When I woke up at eight o'clock on Thursday morning, 
it was snowing so heavily I could barely see the lights of Franklin Hall across the way. I 
showered, then padded down the hall to see if the game had started yet. There was one table 
going — Lennie Doria, Randy Echolls, Billy Marchant, and Skip. They looked pale and 
stubbly and tired, as if they had been there all night. Probably had been. I leaned in the 
doorway, watching the game. Outside in the snow, something quite a bit more interesting 
than cards was going on, but none of us knew it until later. 
31 
Tom Huckabee lived in King, the other boys' dorm in our complex. Becka Aubert lived in 
Franklin. They had become quite cozy in the last three or four weeks, and that included 
taking their meals together. They were coming back from breakfast on that snowy late- 
November morning when they saw something printed on the north side of Chamberlain Hall. 
That was the side which faced the rest of the campus . . . which faced East Annex in 
particular, where the big corporations held their job interviews. 
They walked closer, stepping off the path and into the new snow — by then about four 
inches had fallen. 
'Look,' Becka said, pointing down at the snow. There were queer tracks there — not 

footprints but drag-marks, almost, and deep punched holes running in lines outside them. 
Tom Huckabee said they reminded him of tracks made by a person wearing skis and wielding 
ski-poles. Neither of them thought that someone using crutches might have made such tracks. 
Not then. 
They drew closer to the side of the dorm. The letters there were big and black, but by then 
the snow was so heavy that they had to get within ten feet of the wall before they could read 
the words, which had been posted by someone with a can of spray-paint . . . and in a state of 
total piss-off, from the jagged look of the message. (Again, neither of them considered that 
someone trying to spray-paint a message while at the same time maintaining his balance on a 
set of crutches might not be able to manage much in the way of neatness.) 
The message read: 
32 
I've read that some criminals — perhaps a great many criminals — actually want to be 
caught. I think that was the case with Stoke Jones. Whatever he had come to the University of 
Maine looking for, he wasn't finding it. I believe he'd decided it was time to leave . . . and if 
he was going, he would make the grandest gesture a guy on crutches could manage before he 
did. 
Tom Huckabee told dozens of kids about what was spray-painted on our dorm; so did 
Becka Aubert. One of the people she told was Franklin's second-floor proctor, a skinny selfrighteous 
girl named Marjorie Stuttenheimer. Marjorie became quite a figure on campus by 
1969, as founder and president of Christians for College America. The CCA supported the 
war in Vietnam and at their booth in the Memorial Union sold the little lapel flag-pins which 
Richard Nixon made so popular. 
I was scheduled to work Thursday lunch at the Palace on the Plains, and while I might cut 
classes, it never crossed my mind to cut my job — I wasn't made that way. I gave my seat in 
the lounge to Tony DeLucca and started over to Holyoke at about eleven o'clock to do my 
dishly duty. I saw a fairly large group of students gathered in the snow, looking at something 
on the north side of my dorm. I walked over, read the message, and knew at once who'd put it 
there. 
On Bennett Road, a blue University of Maine sedan and one of the University's two police 
cars were drawn up by the path leading to Chamberlain's side door. Margie Stuttenheimer 
was there, part of a little group that consisted of four campus cops, the Dean of Men, and 
Charles Ebersole, the University's Disciplinary Officer. 
There were perhaps fifty people in the crowd when I joined it at the rear; in the five 
minutes I stood there rubbernecking, it swelled to seventy-five. By the time I finished 
wipedown-shutdown at one-fifteen and headed back to Chamberlain, there were probably two 
hundred people gawping in little clusters. I suppose it's hard to believe now that any graffiti 
could have such a draw, especially on a shitty day like that one, but we are talking about a far 
different world, one where no magazine in America (except, very occasionally, Popular 

Photography) would show a nude so nude that the subject's pubic hair was on view, where no 
newspaper would dare so much as a whisper about any political figure's sex-life. This was 
before Atlantis sank; this was long ago and far away in a world where at least one comedian 
was jailed for uttering fuck in public and another observed that on The Ed Sullivan Show you 
could prick your finger but not finger your prick. It was a world where some words were still 
shocking. 
Yes, we knew fuck. Of course we did. We said fuck all the time: fuck you, fuck your dog, 
go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut, fuck a duck, hey, go fuck your sister, the rest of us 
did. But there, written in black letters five feet high, were the words FUCK JOHNSON. Fuck the 
President of the United States! And KILLER PRESIDENT! Someone had called the President of 
the United States of America a murderer! We couldn't believe it. 
When I came back from Holyoke, the other campus police car had arrived, and there were 
six campus cops — almost the whole damned force, I calculated — trying to put up a big 
rectangle of yellow canvas over the message. The crowd muttered, then started booing. The 
cops looked at them, annoyed. One shouted for them to break it up, go on, they all had places 
to go. That might have been true, but apparently most of them liked it right there, because the 
crowd didn't thin out much. 
The cop holding the far left end of the canvas dropcloth slipped in the snow and nearly fell. 
A few onlookers applauded. The cop who had slipped looked toward the sound with an 
expression of blackest hate momentarily congesting his face, and for me that's when things 
really started to change, when the generations really started to gap. 
The cop who'd slipped turned away and began to struggle with the piece of canvas again. 
In the end they settled for covering the first peace sign and the FUCK of FUCK JOHNSON! And 
once the Really Bad Word was hidden, the crowd did begin to break up. The snow was 
changing to sleet and standing around had become uncomfortable. 
'Better not let the cops see the back of your jacket,' Skip said, and I looked around. He was 
standing beside me in a hooded sweatshirt, his hands plunged deep into the pouch in front. 
His breath came out of his mouth in frozen plumes; his eyes never left the campus cops and 
the part of the message which still remained: JOHNSON! KILLER PRESIDENT! OUT OF VIETNAM 
NOW! 'They'll think you did it. Or me.' 
Smiling a little, Skip turned around. On the back of his sweatshirt, drawn in bright red ink, 
was another of those sparrow-tracks. 
'Jesus,' I said. 'When did you do that?' 
'This morning,' he said. 'I saw Nate's.' He shrugged. 'It was too cool not to copy.' 
'They won't think it was us. Not for a minute.' 
'No, I suppose not.' 
The only question was why they weren't questioning Stoke already . . . not that they'd have 
to ask many questions to get the truth out of him. But if Ebersole, the Disciplinary Officer, 
and Garretsen, the Dean of Men, weren't talking to him, it was only because they hadn't yet 
talked to— 
'Where's Dearie?' I asked. 'Do you know?' The sleet was falling hard now, rattling through 
the trees and pinging every inch of exposed skin. 
'The young and heroic Mr Dearborn is out sanding sidewalks and paths with a dozen or so 
of his ROTC buddies,' Skip said. 'We saw them from the lounge. They're driving around in a 
real army truck. Malenfant said their pricks are probably so hard they won't be able to sleep 
on their stomachs for a week. I thought that was pretty good, for Ronnie.' 
'When Dearie comes back — ' 
'Yeah, when he comes back.' Skip shrugged, as if to say all that was beyond our control. 
'Meantime, let's get out of this slop and play some cards, what do you say?' 
I wanted to say a lot of stuff about a lot of things . . . but then again I didn't. We went back 

inside, and by mid-afternoon the game was in full swing once more. There were five fourhanded 
'sub-games' going on, the room was blue with smoke, and someone had dragged in a 
phonograph so we could listen to the Beatles and the Stones. Someone else produced a 
scratched-up Cameo forty-five of '96 Tears' and that spun for at least an hour non-stop: cry 
cry cry. The windows gave a good view on Bennett's Run and Bennett's Walk, and I kept 
looking out there, expecting to see David Dearborn and some of his khaki buddies staring at 
the north side of the dorm, perhaps discussing if they should go after Stoke Jones with their 
carbines or just chase him with their bayonets. Of course they wouldn't do anything of the 
sort. They might chant 'Kill Cong! Go US!' while drilling on the football field, but Stoke was 
a cripple. They would happily settle for seeing his commie-loving ass busted out of the 
University of Maine. 
I didn't want that to happen, but I didn't see any way it wouldn't. Stoke had had a sparrowtrack 
on the back of his coat since the beginning of school, long before the rest of us were hip 
to what it meant, and Dearie knew it. Plus, Stoke would admit it. He'd deal with the Dean and 
the Disciplinary Officer's questions the same way he dealt with his crutches — at a full-out 
plunge. 
And anyway, the whole thing began to seem distant, okay? The way classes did. The way 
Carol did, now that I understood she was really gone. The way the concept of being drafted 
and sent away to die in the jungle did. What seemed real and immediate was hunting out that 
bad Bitch, or shooting the moon and hitting everyone else at your table with twenty-six points 
at a whack. What seemed real was Hearts. 
But then something happened. 
33 
Around four o'clock the sleet changed to rain, and by four-thirty, when it began to get dark, 
we could see that Bennett's Run was under three or four inches of water. Most of the Walk 
looked like a canal. Below the water was an icy, melting slush Jell-O. 
The pace of the games slowed as we watched those unfortunates who were working the 
dishline cross from the dorms to the Palace on the Plains. Some of them — the wiser ones — 
cut across the slope of the hillside, making their way through the rapidly melting snow. The 
others came down the paths, slipping and sliding on their treacherous, icy surfaces. A thick 
mist had begun to rise from the wet ground, making it even harder for people to see where 
they were going. One guy from King met a girl from Franklin at the place where the paths 
converged. When they started up Bennett's Walk together the guy slipped and grabbed the 
girl. They almost went down together, but managed to keep their combined balance. We all 
applauded. 
At my table we began a hold hand. Ronnie's weaselly little friend Nick dealt me an 
incredible thirteen cards, maybe the best pat hand I'd ever gotten. It was a shoot-the-moon 
opportunity if ever I had one: six high hearts and no really low ones, the king and queen of 
spades, plus court-cards in the other two suits, as well. I had the seven of hearts, a borderline 
card, but you can catch people napping in a hold hand; no one expects you to shoot the moon 
in a situation where you can't improve your original draw. 
Lennie Doria played The Douche to start us off. Ronnie immediately played void, ridding 
himself of the ace of spades. He thought that was great. So did I; my two court spades were 
now both winners. The queen was thirteen points, but if I got all the hearts, I wouldn't eat 
those points; Ronnie, Nick, and Lennie would. 

I let Nick take the trick. We spilled three more tricks uneventfully — first Nick and then 
Lennie mined for diamonds — and then I took the ten of hearts mixed into a club trick. 
'Hearts have been broken and Riley eats the first one!' Ronnie bugled gleefully. 'You're 
goin down, country boy!' 
'Maybe,' I said. And maybe, I thought, Ronnie Malenfant would soon be smiling on the 
other side of his face. With a successful shoot, I could put the idiotic Nick Prouty over a 
hundred and cost Ronnie a game he'd been on his way to winning. 
Three tricks later what I was doing became almost obvious. As I'd hoped, Ronnie's smirk 
became the expression I most enjoyed seeing on his face — the disgruntled pout. 
'You can't,' he said. 'I don't believe it. Not in a hold hand. You ain't got the fuckin horses.' 
Yet he knew it was possible. It was in his voice. 
'Well, let's see,' I said, and played the ace of hearts. I was running in the open now, but 
why not? If the hearts were spread evenly, I could win the game right here. 'Let's just see 
what we — ' 
'Look!' Skip called from the table nearest the window. His voice held disbelief and a kind 
of awe. 'Jesus Christ, it's fuckin Stokely!' 
Play stopped. We all swivelled in our chairs to look out the window at the darkening, 
dripping world below us. The quartet of boys in the corner stood up to see. The old wroughtiron 
lamps on Bennett's Walk cast weak electric beams through the groundmist, making me 
think of London and Tyne Street and Jack the Ripper. From its place on the hill, Holyoke 
Commons looked more like an ocean liner than ever. Its shape wavered as rain streamed 
down the lounge windows. 
'Fuckin Rip-Rip, out in this crap — I don't believe it,' Ronnie breathed. 
Stoke came rapidly down the path which led from the north entrance of Chamberlain to the 
place where all the asphalt paths joined in the lowest part of Bennett's Run. He was wearing 
his old duffle coat, and it was clear he hadn't just come from the dorm; the coat was soaked 
through. Even through the streaming glass we could see the peace sign on his back, as black 
as the words which were now partly covered by a square of yellow canvas (if it was still up). 
His wild hair was soaked into submission. 
Stoke never looked toward his KILLER PRESIDENT graffiti, just thumped on toward Bennett's 
Walk. He was going faster than I'd ever seen him move, paying no heed to the driving rain, 
the rising mist, or the slop under his crutches. Did he want to fall? Was he daring the slushy 
crap to take him down? I don't know. Maybe he was just too deep in his own thoughts to have 
any idea of how fast he was moving or how bad the conditions were. Either way, he wasn't 
going to get far if he didn't cool it. 
Ronnie began to giggle, and the sound spread the way a little flame spreads through dry 
tinder. I didn't want to join in but was helpless to stop. So, I saw, was Skip. Partly because 
giggling is contagious, but also because it really was funny. I know how unkind that sounds, 
of course I do, but I've come too far not to tell the truth about that day . . . and this day, 
almost half a lifetime later. Because it still seems funny to me, I still smile when I think back 
to how he looked, a frantic clockwork toy in a duffle coat thudding along through the pouring 
rain, his crutches splashing up water as he went. You knew what was going to happen, you 
just knew it, and that was the funniest part of all — the question of just how far he could 
make it before the inevitable wipeout. 
Lennie was roaring with one hand clutched to his face, staring out between his splayed 
fingers, his eyes streaming. Hugh Brennan was holding his not inconsiderable gut and 
braying like a donkey went down together, but managed to keep their combined balance. We 
all applauded. 
At my table we began a hold hand. Ronnie's weaselly little friend Nick dealt me an 
incredible thirteen cards, maybe the best pat hand I'd ever gotten. It was a shoot-the-moon 

opportunity if ever I had one: six high hearts and no really low ones, the king and queen of 
spades, plus court-cards in the other two suits, as well. I had the seven of hearts, a borderline 
card, but you can catch people napping in a hold hand; no one expects you to shoot the moon 
in a situation where you can't improve your original draw. 
Lennie Doria played The Douche to start us off. Ronnie immediately played void, ridding 
himself of the ace of spades. He thought that was great. So did I; my two court spades were 
now both winners. The queen was thirteen points, but if I got all the hearts, I wouldn't eat 
those points; Ronnie, Nick, and Lennie would. 
I let Nick take the trick. We spilled three more tricks uneventfully — first Nick and then 
Lennie mined for diamonds — and then I took the ten of hearts mixed into a club trick. 
'Hearts have been broken and Riley eats the first one!' Ronnie bugled gleefully. 'You're 
goin down, country boy!' 
'Maybe,' I said. And maybe, I thought, Ronnie Malenfant would soon be smiling on the 
other side of his face. With a successful shoot, I could put the idiotic Nick Prouty over a 
hundred and cost Ronnie a game he'd been on his way to winning. 
Three tricks later what I was doing became almost obvious. As I'd hoped, Ronnie's smirk 
became the expression I most enjoyed seeing on his face — the disgruntled pout. 
'You can't,' he said. 'I don't believe it. Not in a hold hand. You ain't got the fuckin horses.' 
Yet he knew it was possible. It was in his voice. 
'Well, let's see,' I said, and played the ace of hearts. I was running in the open now, but 
why not? If the hearts were spread evenly, I could win the game right here. 'Let's just see 
what we — ' 
'Look!' Skip called from the table nearest the window. His voice held disbelief and a kind 
of awe. 'Jesus Christ, it's fuckin Stokely!' 
Play stopped. We all swivelled in our chairs to look out the window at the darkening, 
dripping world below us. The quartet of boys in the corner stood up to see. The old wroughtiron 
lamps on stuck in a mudhole. Mark St Pierre was howling uncontrollably and saying he 
was gonna piss himself, he'd drunk too many Cokes and he was gonna spray his fuckin jeans. 
I was laughing so hard I couldn't hold my cards; the nerves in my right hand went dead, my 
fingers relaxed, and those last few winning tricks fluttered into my lap. My head was 
pounding and my sinuses were full. 
Stoke made the bottom of the dip, where the Walk started. There he paused and for some 
reason did a crazed three-sixty spin, seeming to balance on one crutch. The other crutch he 
held out like a machine-gun, as if in his mind he was spraying the whole campus — Kill 
Cong! Slaughter proctors! Bayonet those upperclassmen! 
'Annnd. . . the Olympic judges give him . . . ALL TENS!' Tony DeLucca called in a perfect 
sports announcer's voice. It was the final touch; the place turned into bedlam on the spot. 
Cards flew everywhere. Ashtrays spilled, and one of the glass ones (most were just those 
little aluminum Table Talk pie -dishes) broke. Someone fell out of his chair and began to roll 
around, bellowing and kicking his legs. Man, we just couldn't stop laughing. 
'That's it!' Mark was howling. 'I just drowned my Jockeys! I couldn't help it!' Behind him 
Nick Prouty was crawling toward the window on his knees with tears coursing down his 
burning face and his hands held out, the wordless begging gesture of a man who wants to say 
make it stop, make it stop before I burst a fuckin blood-vessel in the middle of my brain and 
die right here. 
Skip got up, overturning his chair. I got up. Laughing our brains out, we groped for one 
another and staggered toward the window with our arms slung around each other's back. 
Below, unaware that he was being watched and laughed at by two dozen or so freaked-out 
cardplayers, Stoke Jones was still, amazingly, on his feet. 
'Go Rip-Rip!' Ronnie began to chant. 'Go Rip-Rip!' Nick joined in. He had reached the 

window and was leaning his forehead against it, still laughing. 
'Go, Rip-Rip!' 
'Go, baby!' 
'Go!' 
'On, Rip-Rip! Mush those huskies!' 
'Work those crutches, big boy!' 
'Go you fuckin Rip-Rip!' 
It was like the last play of a close football game, except everyone was chanting Go Rip-Rip 
instead of Hold that line or Block that kick. Almost everyone; I wasn't chanting, and I don't 
think Skip was, either, but we were laughing. We were laughing just as hard as the rest. 
Suddenly I thought of the night Carol and I had sat on the milk-boxes beside Holyoke, the 
night she had shown me the snapshot of herself and her childhood friends . . . and then told 
me the story of what those other boys had done to her. What they had done with a baseball 
bat. At fast they were joking, I think, Carol had said. And had they been laughing? Probably, 
yeah. Because that's what you did when you were joking around, having a good time, you 
laughed. 
Stoke stood where he was for a moment, hanging from his crutches with his head down . . . 
and then he attacked the hill like the Marines going ashore at Tarawa. He went tearing up 
Bennett's Walk, spraying water everywhere with his flying crutches; it was like watching a 
duck with rabies. 
The chant became deafening: 'GO RIP-RIP! GO RIP-RIP! GO RIP-RIP!' 
At first they were joking, she had said as we sat there on the milk-boxes, smoking our 
cigarettes. By then she was crying, her tears silver in the white light from the dining hall 
above us. At fast they were joking and then . . . they weren't. 
That thought ended the joke of Stoke for me — I swear to you that it did. And still I 
couldn't stop laughing. 
Stokely made it about a third of the way up the hill toward Holyoke, almost back to the 
visible bricks, before the slippery-slop finally got him. He planted his crutches far in advance 
of his body — too far for even dry conditions — and when he swung forward, both sticks 
flew out from under him. His legs flipped up like the legs of a gymnast doing some fabulous 
trick on the balance beam, and he went down on his back with a tremendous splash. We 
could hear it even from the third floor lounge. It was the final perfect touch. 
The lounge looked like a lunatic asylum where the inmates had all come down with foodpoisoning 
at the same time. We staggered aimlessly about, laughing and clutching at our 
throats, our eyes spouting tears. I was hanging onto Skip because my legs would no longer 
support me; my knees felt like noodles. I was laughing harder than I ever had in my life, 
harder than I ever have since, I think, and still I kept thinking about Carol sitting there on the 
milk-box beside me, legs crossed, cigarette in one hand, snapshot in the other, Carol saying 
Harry Doolin hit me . . . Willie and the other one held me so I couldn't run away . . . at fast 
they were joking, I think, and then . . . they weren't. 
Out on Bennett's Walk, Stoke tried to sit up. He got his upper body partway out of the 
water . . . and then lay back, full length, as if that icy, slushy water were a bed. He lifted both 
arms skyward in a gesture which was almost invocatory, then let them fall again. It was every 
surrender ever given summed up in three motions: the lying back, the lifting of the arms, the 
double splash as they fell back wide to either side. It was the ultimate fuck it, do what you 
want, I quit. 
'Come on,' Skip said. He was still laughing but he was also completely serious. I could hear 
the seriousness in his laughing voice and see it in his hysterically contorted face. I was glad it 
was there, God I was glad. 'Come on, before the stupid motherfuck drowns.' 
Skip and I crammed through the doorway of the lounge shoulder to shoulder and sprinted 

down the third-floor hall, bouncing off each other like pinballs, reeling, almost as out of 
control as Stoke had been on the path. Most of the others followed us. The only one I know 
for sure who didn't was Mark; he went down to his room to change out of his soaked jeans. 
We met Nate on the second-floor landing — damned near ran him down. He was standing 
there with an armload of books in a plastic sack, looking at us with some alarm. 
'Good grief,' he said. That was Nate at his strongest, good grief. 'What's wrong with you?' 
'Come on,' Skip said. His throat was so choked the words came out in a growl. If I hadn't 
been with him earlier, I'd have thought he'd just finished a fit of weeping. 'It's not us, it's 
fuckin Jones. He fell down. He needs — ' Skip broke off as laughter — great big belly-gusts 
of it — overtook him and shook him once again. He fell back against the wall, rolling his 
eyes in a kind of hilarious exhaustion. He shook his head as if to deny it, but of course you 
can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it 
wants. Above us, the stairs began to thunder with descending third-floor cardplayers. 'He 
needs help,' Skip finished, wiping his eyes. 
Nate looked at me in growing bewilderment. 'If he needs help, why are you guys 
laughing?' 
I couldn't explain it to him. Hell, I couldn't explain it to myself. I grabbed Skip by the arm 
and yanked. We started down the steps to the first floor. Nate followed us. So did the rest. 
34 
The first thing I saw when we banged out through the north door was that rectangle of yellow 
canvas. It was lying on the ground, full of water and floating lumps of slush. Then the water 
on the path started pouring in through my sneakers and I forgot all about sightseeing. It was 
freezing. The rain drove down on my exposed skin in needles that were not quite ice. 
In Bennett's Run the water was ankle-deep, and my feet went from cold to numb. Skip 
slipped and I grabbed his arm. Nate steadied us both from behind and kept us from tumbling 
over backward. Ahead of us I could hear a nasty sound that was half coughing and half 
choking. Stoke lay in the water like a sodden log, his duffle coat floating around his body and 
those masses of black hair floating around his face. The cough was deep and bronchial. Fine 
droplets sprayed from his lips with each gagging, choking outburst. One of his crutches lay 
next to him, caught between his arm and his side. The other was floating away in the 
direction of Bennett Hall. 
Water slopped over Stoke's pale face. His coughing took on a strangled, gargling quality. 
His eyes stared straight up into the rain and fog. He gave no sign that he heard us coming, but 
when I knelt on one side of him and Skip on the other, he tried to beat us away with his 
hands. Water ran into his mouth and he began to thrash. He was drowning in front of us. I no 
longer felt like laughing, but I might still have been doing it. At first they were joking, Carol 
said. At first they were joking. Put on the radio, Pete, I like the oldies. 
'Pick him up,' Skip said, and grabbed one of Stoke's shoulders. Stoke slapped at him 
weakly with one wax-dummy hand. Skip ignored this, might not even have felt it. 'Hurry, for 
Christ's sake.' 
I grabbed Stoke's other shoulder. He splashed water in my face as though we were fucking 
around in someone's backyard pool. I had thought he'd be as cold as I was, but there was a 
sickish heat coming off his skin. I looked across his waterlogged body to Skip. Skip nodded 
back at me. 'Ready ... set ... now.'' We heaved. Stoke came partly out of the water — from the 
waist up — but that was all. I was astounded by the weight of him. His shirt had come 

untucked from his pants and floated around his middle like a ballerina's tutu. Below it I could 
see his white skin and the black bullethole of his navel. There were scars there, too, healed 
scars wavering every whichway like snarls of knotted string. 
'Help out, Natie!' Skip grunted. 'Prop him up, for fuck's sake!' Nate dropped to his knees, 
splashing all three of us, and grabbed Stoke in a kind of backwards hug. We struggled to get 
him all the way up and out of the soup, but the slush on the bricks kept us off-balance, made 
it impossible for us to work together. And Stoke, although still coughing and half-drowned, 
was also working against us, struggling as best he could to be free of us. Stoke wanted to go 
back in the water. 
The others arrived, Ronnie in the lead. 'Fucking Rip-Rip,' he breathed. He was still 
giggling, but he looked slightly awestruck. 'You screwed up big this time, Rip. No doubt.' 
'Don't just stand there, you numb tool!' Skip cried. 'Help us!' Ronnie paused a moment 
longer, not angry, just assessing how this might best be done, then turned to see who else was 
there. He slipped on the slush and Tony DeLucca — also still giggling - grabbed him and 
steadied him. They were crowded together on the drowned Walk, all my cardplaying buddies 
from the third-floor lounge, and most of them still couldn't stop laughing. They looked like 
something, but I didn't know what. I might never have known, if not for Carol's Christmas 
present . . . but of course that came later. 
'You, Tony,' Ronnie said. 'Brad, Lennie, Barry. Let's get his legs.' 
'What about me, Ronnie?' Nick asked. 'What about me?' 'You're too small to help lift him,' 
Ronnie said, 'but it might cheer him up to get his dick sucked.' 
Nick stood back. 
Ronnie, Tony, Brad, Lennie, and Barry Margeaux slipped past us on either side. Ronnie 
and Tony got Stoke by the calves. 
'Christ Jesus!' Tony cried, disgusted and still half-laughing. 'Nothing to him! Legs like on a 
scarecrow!' 
' "Legs like on a scarecrow, legs like on a scarecrow!"' Ronnie cried, viciously mimicking. 
'Pick him the fuck up, you wop nimrod, this isn't art appreciation! Lennie and Barry, get 
under his deprived ass when they do. Then you come up — ' 
' — when the rest of you guys lift him,' Lennie finished. 'Got it. And don't call my paisan a 
wop.' 
'Leave me alone,' Stoke coughed. 'Stop it, get away from me . . . fucking losers . . . ' The 
coughing overtook him again. He began to make gruesome retching sounds. In the lamplight 
his lips looked gray and slick. 
'Look who's talkin about being a loser,' Ronnie said. 'Fuckin half-drowned crippled-up 
Jerry's Kid homo.' He looked at Skip, water running out of his wavy hair and over his pimply 
face. 'Count us off, Kirk.' 
'One . . . two . . . three . . . now\' 
We lifted. Stoke Jones came out of the water like a salvaged ship. We staggered back and 
forth with him. One of his arms flopped in front of me; it hung there for a moment and then 
the hand attached to the end of it arced up and slapped me hard across the face. Whacko! I 
started laughing again. 
'Put me down! Motherfuckers, put me DOWN!' 
We staggered, dancing on the slush, water pouring off him, water pouring off us. 'Echolls!' 
Ronnie bawled. 'Marchant! Brennan! Jesus Christ, little help here you fuckin brain-dead 
ringmeats, what do you say?' 
Randy and Billy splashed forward. Others — three or four drawn by the shouts and 
splashing, most still from the third-floor Hearts group — took hold of Stoke as well. We 
turned him awkwardly, probably looking like the world's most spastic cheerleading squad, for 
some reason out practicing in the downpour. Stoke had quit struggling. He lay in our grip, 

arms hanging out to either side, palms up and filling with little cups of rain. Diminishing 
waterfalls ran out of his sodden jacket and from the seat of his pants. He picked me up and 
carried me, Carol had said. Talking about the boy with the crewcut, the boy who had been 
her first love. All the way up Broad Street on one of the hottest days of the year. He carried 
me in his arms. I couldn't get her voice out of my head. In a way I never have. 
'The dorm?' Ronnie asked Skip. 'We takin him into the dorm?' 
'Jeepers, no,' Nate said. 'The infirmary.' 
Since we'd managed to get him out of the water — that was the hardest part and it was 
behind us — the infirmary made sense. It was a small brick building just beyond Bennett 
Hall, no more than three or four hundred yards away. Once we got off the path and onto the 
road, the footing would be good. 
So we carried him to the infirmary — bore him up at shoulder height like a slain hero 
being ceremonially removed from the field of battle. Some of us were still laughing in little 
snorts and giggles. I was one of them. Once I saw Nate looking at me as if I was a thing 
almost below contempt, and I tried to stop the sounds that were coming out of me. I'd do okay 
for a little while, then I'd think of him spinning on the pivot of his crutch ('The Olympic 
judges give him . . . ALL TENS!'} and I'd start in again. 
Stoke only spoke once as we carried him up the walk to the infirmary door. 'Let me die,' he 
said. 'For once in your stupid greedy-me-me lives do something worthwhile. Put me down 
and let me die.' 
35 
The waiting room was empty, the television in the corner showing an old episode of Bonanza 
to no one at all. In those days they hadn't really found the handle on color TV yet, and Pa 
Cartwright's face was the color of a fresh avocado. We must have sounded like a herd of 
hippopotami just out of the watering-hole, and the duty-nurse came on the run. Following her 
was a candystriper (probably a work-study kid like me) and a little guy in a white coat. He 
had a stethoscope hung around his neck and a cigarette poked in the corner of his mouth. In 
Atlantis even the doctors smoked. 
'What's the trouble with him?' The doc asked Ronnie, either because Ronnie had an incharge 
look or because he was the closest at hand. 
'Took a header in Bennett's Run while he was on his way to Holyoke,' Ronnie said. 
'Damned near drowned himself.' He paused, then added: 'He's a cripple.' 
As if to underline this point, Billy Marchant waved one of Stoke's crutches. Apparently no 
one had bothered to salvage the other one. 
'Put that thing down, you want to fuckin bonk my brains out?' Nick Prouty asked 
waspishly, ducking. 
'What brains?' Brad responded, and we all laughed so hard we nearly dropped Stoke. 
'Suck me sideways, ass-breath,' Nick said, but he was laughing, too. 
The doctor was frowning. 'Bring him in here, and save that language for your bull 
sessions.' Stoke began coughing again, a deep, ratcheting sound. You expected to see blood 
and filaments of tissue come popping out of his mouth, that cough was so heavy. 
We carried Stoke down the infirmary hallway in a conga-line, but we couldn't get him 
through the door that way. 'Let me,' Skip said. 
'You'll drop him,' Nate said. 
'No,' Skip said. 'I won't. Just let me get a good hold.' 

He stepped up beside Stoke, then nodded first to me on his right, then to Ronnie on his left. 
'Lower him down,' Ronnie said. We did. Skip grunted once as he took Stoke's weight, and I 
saw the veins pop out in his neck. Then we stood back and Skip carried Stoke into the room 
and laid him on the exam table. The thin sheet of paper covering the leather was immediately 
soaked. Skip stepped back. Stoke was staring up at him, his face dead pale except for two red 
patches high on his cheekbones — red as rouge, those patches were. Water ran out of his hair 
in rivulets. 
'Sorry, man,' Skip said. 
Stoke turned his head away and closed his eyes. 
'Out,' the doctor told Skip. He had ditched the cigarette somewhere. He looked around at 
us, a gaggle of perhaps a dozen boys, most still grinning, all dripping on the hall's tile floor. 
'Does anyone know the nature of his disability? It can make a difference in how we treat him.' 
I thought of the scars I'd seen, those tangles of knotted string, but said nothing. I didn't 
really know anything. And now that the uncontrollable urge to laugh had passed, I felt too 
ashamed of myself to speak up. 
'It's just one of those cripple things, isn't it?' Ronnie asked. Actually faced with an adult, he 
had lost his shrill cockiness. He sounded unsure, perhaps even uneasy. 'Muscular palsy or 
cerebral dystrophy?' 
'You clown,' Lennie said. 'It's muscular dystrophy and cerebral — ' 
'He was in a car accident,' Nate said. We all looked around at him. Nate still looked neat 
and totally put together in spite of the soaking he'd taken. This afternoon he was wearing a 
Fort Kent High School ski-hat. The Maine football team had finally scored a touchdown and 
freed Nate from his beanie; go you Black Bears. Tour years ago. His father, mother, and older 
sister were killed. He was the only family survivor.' 
There was silence. I looked between Skip and Tony's shoulders and into the examination 
room. Stoke still lay streaming on the table, his head turned to the side, his eyes shut. The 
nurse was taking his blood pressure. His pants clung to his legs and I thought of the Fourth of 
July parade they used to have back home in Gates Falls when I was just a little kid. Uncle 
Sam would come striding along between the school band and the Anah Temple Shrine guys 
on their midget motorcycles, looking at least ten feet tall in his starry blue hat, but when the 
wind blew his pants against his legs you could see the trick. That's what Stoke Jones's legs 
looked like inside his wet pants: a trick, a bad joke, sawed-off stilts with sneakers poked onto 
the ends of them. 
'How do you know that?' Skip asked. 'Did he tell you, Natie?' 
'No.' Nate looked ashamed. 'He told Harry Swidrowski, after a Committee of Resistance 
meeting. They — we — were in the Bear's Den. Harry asked him right out what happened to 
his legs and Stoke told him.' 
I thought I understood the look on Nate's face. After the meeting, he had said. After. Nate 
didn't know what had been said at the meeting, because Nate hadn't been there. Nate wasn't a 
member of the Committee of Resistance; Nate was strictly a sidelines boy. He might agree 
with the C.R.'s goals and tactics . . . but he had his mother to think about. And his future as a 
dentist. 
'Spinal injury?' the doctor asked. Brisker than ever. 
'I think so, yeah,' Nate said. 
'All right.' Doc began to make shooing gestures with his hands as if we were a flock of 
geese. 'Go on back to your dorms. We'll take good care of him.' 
We began to back up toward the reception area. 
'Why were you boys laughing when you brought him in?' the nurse asked suddenly. She 
stood by the doctor with the blood-pressure cuff in her hands. 'Why are you grinning now?' 
She sounded angry. Hell, she sounded furious. 'What was so funny about this boy's 

misfortune that it made you laugh?' 
I didn't think anyone would answer. We'd just stand there and look down at our shuffling 
feet, realizing that we were still a lot closer to the fourth grade than we had perhaps thought. 
But someone did answer. Skip answered. He even managed to look at her as he did. 
'His misfortune, ma'am,' he said. 'That was what it was, you're right. It was his misfortune 
that was funny.' 
'How terrible,' she said. There were tears of rage standing in the corners of her eyes. 'How 
terrible you are.' 
'Yes, ma'am,' Skip said. 'I guess you're right about that, too.' He turned away from her. 
We followed him back to the reception area in a wet and beaten little group. I can't say that 
being called terrible was the low point of my college career ('If you can remember much of 
the sixties, you weren't there,' the hippie known as Wavy Gravy once said), but it may have 
been. The waiting room was still empty. Little Joe Cartwright was on the tube now, and just 
as green as his dad. Pancreatic cancer was what got Michael Landon, too — he and my 
mother had that in common. 
Skip stopped. Ronnie, head down, pushed past him toward the door, followed by Nick, 
Billy, Lennie, and the rest. 
'Hold it,' Skip said, and they turned. 'I want to talk to you guys about something.' 
We gathered around him. Skip glanced once toward the door leading back to the exam 
area, verified that we were alone, then began to talk. 
36 
Ten minutes later Skip and I walked back to the dorm by ourselves. The others had gone 
ahead. Nate hung with us for a little bit, then must have picked up a vibe that I wanted to talk 
privately to Skip. Nate was always good at picking up the vibe. I bet he's a good dentist, that 
the children in particular like him. 
'I'm done playing Hearts,' I said. 
Skip said nothing. 
'I don't know if it's too late to pull up my grades enough to keep my scholarship or not, but 
I'm going to try. And I don't care much, one way or the other. The fucking scholarship's not 
the point.' 
'No. They're the point, right? Ronnie and the rest of them.' 
'I think they're only part of it.' It was so cold out there as that day turned to dark — cold 
and damp and evil. It seemed that it would never be summer again. 'Man, I miss Carol. Why'd 
she have to go?' 
'I don't know.' 
'When he fell over it sounded like a nuthouse up there,' I said. 'Not a college dorm, a 
fucking nuthouse.' 
'You laughed too, Pete. So did I.' 
'I know,' I said. I might not have if I'd been alone, and Skip and I might not have if it had 
just been the two of us, but how could you tell? You were stuck with the way things played 
out. I kept thinking of Carol and those boys with their baseball bat. And I thought of the way 
Nate had looked at me, as if I were a thing below contempt. 'I know.' 
We walked in silence for awhile. 
'I can live with laughing at him, I guess,' I said, 'but I don't want to wake up forty with my 
kids asking me what college was like and not be able to remember anything but Ronnie 

Malenfant telling Polish jokes and that poor fucked-up asshole McClendon trying to kill 
himself with baby aspirin.' I thought about Stoke Jones twirling on his crutch and felt like 
laughing; thought of him lying beached on the exam table in the infirmary and felt like 
crying. And you know what? It was, as far as I could tell, exactly the same feeling. 'I just feel 
bad about it. I feel like shit.' 
'So do I,' Skip said. The rain poured down around us, soaking and cold. The lights of 
Chamberlain Hall were bright but not particularly comforting. I could see the yellow canvas 
the cops had put up lying on the grass, and above it the dim shapes of the spray-painted 
letters. They were running in the rain; by the following day they would be all but unreadable. 
'When I was a little kid, I always pretended I was the hero,' Skip said. 
'Fuck yeah, me too. What little kid ever pretended to be part of the lynch-mob?' 
Skip looked down at his soaked shoes, then up at me. 'Could I study with you for the next 
couple of weeks?' 
'Any time you want.' 
'You really don't mind?' 
'Why would I fuckin mind?' I made myself sound irritated because I didn't want him to 
hear how relieved I was, how almost thrilled I was. Because it might work. I paused, then 
said, 'This other ... do you think we can pull it off?' 
'I don't know. Maybe.' 
We had almost reached the north entrance, and I pointed to the running letters just before 
we went in. 'Maybe Dean Garretsen and that guy Ebersole will let the whole thing drop. The 
paint Stoke used didn't get a chance to set. It'll be gone by morning.' 
Skip shook his head. 'They won't let it drop.' 
'Why not? How can you be so sure?' 
'Because Dearie won't let them.' 
And of course he was right. 
37 
For the first time in weeks the third-floor lounge was empty for awhile as drenched 
cardplayers dried themselves off and put on fresh clothes. Many of them also took care of 
some stuff Skip Kirk had suggested in the infirmary waiting room. When Nate and Skip and I 
came back from dinner, however, it was business as usual in the lounge — three tables were 
up and going. 
'Hey, Riley,' Ronnie said. 'Twiller here says he's got a study date. If you want his seat, I'll 
teach you how to play the game.' 
'Not tonight,' I said. 'Got studying to do myself.' 
'Yeah,' Randy Echolls said. 'The Art of Self-Abuse.' 
'That's right, honey, a couple more weeks of hard work and I'll be able to switch hands 
without missing a stroke, just like you.' 
As I started away, Ronnie said, 'I had you stopped, Riley.' 
I turned around. Ronnie was leaning back in his chair, smiling that unpleasant smile of his. 
For a short period of time, out there in the rain, I had glimpsed a different Ronnie, but that 
young man had gone back into hiding. 
'No,' I said, 'you didn't. It was a done deal.' 
'No one shoots the moon on a hold hand,' Ronnie said, leaning back farther than ever. He 
scratched one cheek, busting the heads off a couple of pimples. They oozed tendrils of 

yellow-white cream. 'Not at my table they don't. I had you stopped in clubs.' 
'You were void in clubs, unless you reneged on the first trick. You played the ace of spades 
when Lennie played The Douche. And in hearts I had the whole court.' 
Ronnie's smile faltered for just a moment, then came back strong. He waved a hand at the 
floor, from which all the spilled cards had been picked up (the butty remains of the 
overturned ashtrays still remained; most of us had been raised in homes where moms cleaned 
up such messes). 'All the high hearts, huh? Too bad we can't check and see.' 
'Yeah. Too bad.' I started away again. 
'You're going to fall behind on match points!' he called after me. 'You know that, don't 
you?' 
'You can have mine, Ronnie. I don't want them anymore.' I never played another hand of 
Hearts in college. Many years later I taught my kids the game, and they took to it like ducks 
to water. We have a tournament at the summer cottage every August. There are no match 
points, but there's a trophy from Atlantic Awards — a loving cup. I won it one year, and kept 
it on my desk where I could see it. I shot the moon twice in the championship round, but 
neither was a hold hand. Like my old school buddy Ronnie Malenfant once said, no one 
shoots the moon on a hold hand. You might as well expect Atlantis to rise from the ocean, 
palm trees waving. 
38 
At eight o'clock that night, Skip Kirk was at my desk and deep in his anthro text. His hands 
were plunged into his hair, as if he had a bad headache. Nate was at his desk, doing a botany 
paper. I was sprawled on my bed, struggling with my old friend geology. On the stereo Bob 
Dylan sang: 'She was the funniest woman I ever seen, the great-grandmother of Mr Clean.' 
There was a hard double rap on the door: pow-pow. So must the Gestapo have rapped on 
the doors of Jews in 1938 and 1939. 'Floor meeting!' Dearie called. 'Floor meeting in the rec 
at nine o'clock! Attendance mandatory!' 
'Oh Christ,' I said. 'Burn the secret papers and eat the radio.' 
Nate turned down Dylan, and we heard Dearie going on up the hall, rapping that pow-pow 
on every door and yelling about the floor meeting in the rec. Most of the rooms he was 
hailing were probably empty, but no problem; he'd find the occupants down in the lounge, 
chasing The Bitch. 
Skip was looking at me. 'Told you,' he said. 
39 
Each dorm in our complex had been built at the same time, and each had a big common area 
in the basement as well as the lounges in the center of each floor. There was a TV alcove 
which filled up mostly for weekend sports events and a vampire soap opera called Dark 
Shadows during the week; a canteen corner with half a dozen vending machines; a Ping-Pong 
table and a number of chess and checkerboards. There was also a meeting area with a podium 
standing before several rows of folding wooden chairs. We'd had a floor-meeting there at the 
beginning of the year, at which Dearie had explained the dorm rules and the dire 

consequences of unsatisfactory room inspections. I'd have to say that room inspections were 
Dearie's big thing. That and ROTC, of course. 
He stood behind the little wooden podium, upon which he had laid a thin file -folder. I 
supposed it contained his notes. He was still dressed in his damp and muddy ROTC fatigues. 
He looked exhausted from his day of shovelling and sanding, but he also looked excited . . . 
'turned on' is how we'd put it a year or two later. 
Dearie had been on his own at the first floor-meeting; this time he had backup. Sitting 
against the green cinderblock wall, hands folded in his lap and knees primly together, was 
Sven Garretsen, the Dean of Men. He said almost nothing during that meeting, and looked 
benign even when the air grew stormy. Standing beside Dearie, wearing a black topcoat over 
a charcoal-gray suit and looking very can-do, was Ebersole, the Disciplinary Officer. 
After we had settled in the chairs and those of us who smoked had lit up, Dearie looked 
first over his shoulder at Garretsen, then at Ebersole. Ebersole gave him a little smile. 'Go 
ahead, David. Please. They're your boys.' 
I felt a rankle of irritation. I might be a lot of things, including a creep who laughed at 
cripples when they fell down in the pouring rain, but I was not Dearie Dearborn's boy. 
Dearie gripped the podium and looked at us solemnly, perhaps thinking (far back in the 
part of his mind reserved expressly for dreamy dreams), that a day would come when he 
would address his staff officers this way, setting some great tide of Hanoi-bound troops into 
motion. 
'Jones is missing,' he said finally. It came out sounding portentous and corny, like a line in 
a Charles Bronson movie. 
'He's in the infirmary,' I said, and enjoyed the surprise on Dearie's face. Ebersole looked 
surprised, too. Garretsen just went on gazing benignly into the middle distance, like a man on 
a three-pipe high. 
'What happened to him?' Dearie asked. This wasn't in the script — either the one he had 
worked out or the one he and Ebersole had prepared together — and Dearie began to frown. 
He was also gripping the podium more tightly, as if afraid it might fly away. 
'Faw down go boom,' Ronnie said, and puffed up when the people around him laughed. 
'Also, I think he's got pneumonia or double bronchitis or something like that.' He caught 
Skip's eye and I thought Skip nodded slightly. This was Skip's show, not Dearie's, but if we 
were lucky — if Stoke was lucky — the three at the front of the room would never know it. 
'Tell me this from the beginning,' Dearie said. The frown was becoming a glower. It was 
the way he'd looked after discovering his door had been shaving-creamed. 
Skip told Dearie and Dearie's new friends how we'd seen Stoke heading toward the Palace 
on the Plains from the third-floor lounge windows, how he'd fallen into the water, how we'd 
rescued him and taken him to the infirmary, how the doctor had said Stoke was one sick 
puppy. The doc hadn't said any such thing, but he didn't need to. Those of us who had 
touched Stake's skin knew that he was running a fever, and all of us had heard that horrible 
deep cough. Skip said nothing about how fast Stoke had been moving, as if he wanted to kill 
the whole world and then die himself, and he said nothing about how we'd laughed, Mark St 
Pierre so hard he'd wet his pants. 
When Skip finished, Dearie glanced uncertainly at Ebersole. Ebersole looked back blandly. 
Behind them, Dean Garretsen continued to smile his little Buddha smile. The implication was 
clear. It was Dearie's show. He'd better have a show to put on. 
Dearie took a deep breath and looked back at us. 'We believe Stokely Jones was 
responsible for the act of vandalism and public obscenity which was perpetrated on the north 
end of Chamberlain Hall at a time we don't know when this morning.' 
I'm telling you exactly what he said, not making a single word of it up. Other than 'It 
became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it,' that was perhaps the most sublime 

example of honchospeak I ever heard in my life. 
I believe Dearie expected us to ooh and aah like the extras in a Perry Mason courtroom 
finale, where the revelations start coming thick and fast. Instead we were silent. Skip watched 
closely, and when he saw Dearie draw in another deep breath for the next pronouncement, he 
said: 'What makes you think it was him, Dearie?' 
Although I'm not completely sure — I never asked him — I believe Skip used the 
nickname purposely, to throw Dearie even further off his stride. In any case it worked. Dearie 
started to go off, looked at Ebersole, and recalculated his options. A red line was rising out of 
his collar. I watched it climb, fascinated. It was a little like watching a Disney cartoon where 
Donald Duck is trying to control his temper. You know he can't possibly do it; the suspense 
comes from not knowing how long he can maintain even a semblance of reason. 
'I think you know the answer to that, Skip,' Dearie finally said. 'Stokely Jones wears a coat 
with a very particular symbol on the back.' He picked up the folder he had carried in, 
removed a sheet of paper, looked at it, then turned it around so we could look at it, too. None 
of us was very surprised by what was there. ' This symbol. It was invented by the Communist 
Party shortly after the end of the Second World War. It means 'victory through infiltration' 
and is commonly called the Broken Cross by subversives. It has also become popular with 
such inner-city radical groups as the Black Muslims and the Black Panthers. Since this 
symbol was visible on Stoke Jones's coat long before it appeared on the side of our dorm, I 
hardly think it takes a rocket scientist to — ' 
'David, that is such bullshit!' Nate said, standing up. He was pale and trembling, but with 
anger rather than fear. Had I ever heard him say the word bullshit in public before? I don't 
think so. 
Garretsen smiled his benign smile at my roommate. Ebersole raised his eyebrows, 
expressing polite interest. Dearie looked stunned. I suppose the last person he expected 
trouble from was Nate Hoppenstand. 
'That symbol is based on British semaphore and stands for nuclear disarmament. It was 
invented by a famous British philosopher. I think he might even be a knight. To say the 
Russians made it up! Goodness' sake! Is that what they teach you in ROTC? Bullshit like 
that?' 
Nate was staring at Dearie angrily, his hands planted on his hips. Dearie gaped at him, now 
completely knocked off his stride. Yes, they had taught him that in ROTC, and he had 
swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. It made you wonder what else the ROTC kids were 
swallowing. 
'I'm sure these facts about the Broken Cross are very interesting,' Ebersole cut in smoothly, 
'and it's certainly information worth having — if it's true, of course — ' 
'It's true,' Skip said. 'Bert Russell, not Joe Stalin. British kids were wearing it five years ago 
when they marched to protest US nuclear subs operating out of ports in the British Isles.' 
Tuckin A!' Ronnie cried, and pumped his fist in the air. A year or so later the Panthers — 
who never had much use for Bertrand Russell's peace sign, so far as I know — were doing 
that same thing at their rallies. And, of course, twenty years or so further on down the line, all 
us cleaned-up sixties babies were doing it at rock concerts. Broooo-ooooce! Broooo-ooooce! 
'Go, baby!' Hugh Brennan chimed in, laughing. 'Go, Skip! Go, big Nate!' 
'Watch your language while the Dean's here!' Dearie shouted at Ronnie. 
Ebersole ignored the profanity and the cross-talk from the peanut gallery. He kept his 
interested, skeptical gaze trained on my roommate and on Skip. 
'Even if all that's true,' he said, 'we still have a problem, don't we? I think so. We have an 
act of vandalism and public obscenity. This comes at a time when the tax-paying public is 
looking at University youth with an ever more critical eye. And this institution depends upon 
the tax-paying public, gentlemen. I think it behooves us all — ' 

'To think about this!' Dearie suddenly shouted. His cheeks were now almost purple; his 
forehead swarmed with weird red spots like brands, and right between his eyes a big vein was 
pulsing rapidly. 
Before Dearie could say more — and he clearly had a lot to say — Ebersole put a hand out 
to his chest, shushing him. Dearie seemed to deflate. He'd had his chance and fluffed it. Later 
he'd perhaps tell himself it was because he was tired; while we'd spent the day in the nice 
warm lounge, playing cards and shooting holes in our future, Dearie had been outside 
shovelling snow and sanding walks so brittle old psychology professors wouldn't fall down 
and break their hips. He was tired, a little slow on the draw, and in any case, that prick 
Ebersole hadn't given him a fair chance to prove himself. All of which probably didn't help 
much with what was happening right then: he had been set aside. The grownup was back in 
charge. Poppa would fix. 
'I think it behooves us all to identify the fellow who did this and see he's punished with 
some severity,' Ebersole continued. Mostly it was Nate he was looking at; amazing as it 
seemed to me at the time, he had identified Nate Hoppenstand as the center of the resistance 
he felt in the room. 
Nate, God bless his molars and wisdom teeth, was more than up to the likes of Ebersole. 
He remained standing with his hands on his hips and his eyes never wavered, let alone 
dropped from Ebersole's. 'How do you propose doing that?' Nate asked. 
'What is your name, young man? Please.' 
'Nathan Hoppenstand.' 
'Well, Nathan, I think the perpetrator has already been singled out, don't you?' Ebersole 
spoke in a patient, teacherly way. 'Or rather singled himself out. I'm told this unfortunate 
fellow Stokely Jones has been a walking billboard for the Broken Cross symbol since — ' 
'Quit calling it that!' Skip said, and I jumped a little at the raw anger in his voice 'It's not a 
broken anything! It's a damn peace sign!' 
'What is your name, sir?' 
'Stanley Kirk. Skip to my friends. You can call me Stanley.' There was a tense little titter at 
this, which Ebersole seemed not to hear. 
'Well, Mr Kirk, your semantic quibble is noted, but it doesn't change the fact that Stokely 
Jones — and Stokely Jones alone — has been displaying that particular symbol all over 
campus since the first day of the semester. Mr Dearborn tells me — ' 
Nate said, '"Mr Dearborn" doesn't even know what the peace sign is or where it came from, 
so I think you'd be sort of unwise to trust what he tells you very far. It just so happens I've got 
a peace sign on the back of my own jacket, Mr Ebersole. So how do you know I wasn't the 
one with the spray-paint?' 
Ebersole's mouth dropped open. Not much, but enough to spoil his sympathetic smile and 
magazine-ad good looks. And Dean Garretsen frowned, as if presented with some concept he 
couldn't understand. One very rarely sees a good politician or college administrator caught 
completely by surprise. They are moments to treasure. I treasured that one then, and find I 
still do today. 
'That's a lie!' Dearie said. He sounded more wounded than angry. 'Why would you lie that 
way, Nate? You're the last person on Three I'd expect to — ' 
'It's not a lie,' Nate said. 'Go on up to my room and pull the pea coat out of my closet if you 
don't believe me. Check.' 
'Yeah, and check mine while you're at it,' I said, standing up next to Nate. 'My old highschool 
jacket. You can't miss it. It's the one with the peace sign on the back.' 
Ebersole studied us through slightly narrowed eyes. Then he asked, 'Exactly when did you 
put this so-called peace sign on the backs of your jackets, young fellows?' 
This time Nate did lie. I knew him well enough by then to know it must have hurt . . . but 

he did it like a champ. 'September.' 
That was it for Dearie. He went nuclear is how my own kids might express it, only that 
wouldn't be accurate. Dearie went Donald Duck. He didn't quite jump up and down, flapping 
his arms and going wak-wak-waugh-wak like Donald does when he's mad, but he did give a 
howl of outrage and smacked his mottled forehead with the heels of his palms. Ebersole 
stilled him again, this time by gripping his arm. 
'Who are you?' Ebersole asked me. More curt than courteous by now. 
'Pete Riley. I put a peace sign on the back of my jacket because I liked the look of Stoke's. 
Also to show I've got some big questions about what we're doing over there in Vietnam.' 
Dearie pulled away from Ebersole. His chin was thrust out, his lips pulled back enough to 
show a complete set of teeth. 'Helping our allies is what we're doing, you doofus!' he shouted. 
'If you're too stupid to see that on your own, I suggest you take Colonel Andersen's Intro 
Military History Class! Or maybe you're just another chickenguts who won't — ' 
'Hush, Mr Dearborn,' Dean Garretsen said. His quiet was somehow louder than Dearie's 
shouting. 'This is not the place for a foreign policy debate, nor is it the time for personal 
aspersions. Quite the contrary.' 
Dearie dropped his burning face, studied the floor, and began to gnaw at his own lips. 
'And when, Mr Riley, did you put the peace sign symbol on your jacket?' Ebersole asked. 
His voice remained courteous, but there was an ugly look in his eyes. He knew by then, I 
think, that Stoke was going to squiggle away, and Ebersole was very unhappy about that. 
Dearie was small change next to this guy, who in 1966 was a new type on the college 
campuses of America. Times call the men, Lao-tzu said, and the late sixties called Charles 
Ebersole. He wasn't an educator; he was an enforcer minoring in public relations. 
Don't lie to me, his eyes said. Don't lie to me, Riley. Because if you do and I find out, I'll 
turn you into salad. 
But what the hell. I'd probably be gone come January 15th, anyway; by Christmas of 1967 
I might be in Phu Bai, keeping the place warm for Dearie. 
'October,' I said. 'Put it on my jacket right around Columbus Day.' 
'I've got it on my jacket and some sweatshirts,' Skip said. 'All that stufFs in my room. I'll 
show it to you, if you want.' 
Dearie, still looking down at the floor and red to the roots of his hair, was shaking his head 
monotonously back and forth. 
'I've got it on a couple of my sweatshirts, too,' Ronnie said. 'I'm no peacenik, but it's a cool 
sign. I like it.' 
Tony DeLucca said he also had one on the back of a sweatshirt. 
Lennie Doria told Ebersole and Garretsen he had doodled it on the endpapers of several 
different textbooks; it was on the front of his general assignments notebook as well. He'd 
show them, if they wanted to see. 
Billy Marchant had it on his jacket. 
Brad Witherspoon had inked it on his freshman beanie. The beanie was in the back of his 
closet somewhere, probably beneath the underwear he'd forgotten to take home for his mom 
to wash. 
Nick Prouty said he'd drawn peace signs on his favorite record albums: Meet the Beatles 
and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. 'You ain't got any mind to bend, dinkleballs,' 
Ronnie muttered, and there was laughter from behind cupped hands. 
Several others reported having the peace sign on books or items of clothing. All claimed to 
have done this long before the discovery of the graffiti on the north end of Chamberlain Hall. 
In a final surreal touch, Hugh stood up, stepped into the aisle, and hiked the legs of his jeans 
so we could see the yellowing athletic socks climbing his hairy shins. A peace sign had been 
drawn on both with the laundry-marker Mrs Brennan had sent to school with her baby boy — 

it was probably the first time the fuckin thing had been used all semester. 
'So you see,' Skip said when show-and-tell was over, 'it could have been any of us.' 
Dearie slowly raised his head. All that remained of his flush was a single red patch over his 
left eye. It looked like a blister. 
'Why are you lying for him?' he asked. He waited, but no one answered. 'Not one of you 
had a peace sign on a single thing before Thanksgiving break, I'd swear to it, and I bet most 
of you never had one on anything before tonight. Why are you lying for him?' 
No one answered. The silence spun out. In it there grew a sense of power, an unmistakable 
force we all felt. But who did it belong to? Them or us? There was no way of saying. All 
these years later there's still no real way of saying. 
Then Dean Garretsen stepped to the podium. Dearie moved aside without even seeming to 
see him. The Dean looked at us with a small and cheerful smile. 'This is foolishness,' he said. 
'What Mr Jones wrote on the wall was foolishness, and this lying is more foolishness. Tell the 
truth, men. 'Fess up.' 
No one said anything. 
'We'll be speaking to Mr Jones in the morning,' Ebersole said. 'Perhaps after we do, some 
of you fellows may want to change your stories a bit.' 
'Oh man, I wouldn't put too much trust in anything Stoke might tell you,' Skip said. 
'Right, old Rip-Rip's crazy as a shithouse rat,' Ronnie said. 
There was strangely affectionate laughter at this. 'Shithouse rat!' Nick cried, eyes shining. 
He was as joyful as a poet who has finally found le mot juste. 'Shithouse rat, yeah, that's Old 
Rip!' And, in what was probably that day's final triumph of lunacy over rational discourse, 
Nick Prouty fell into an eerily perfect Foghorn Leghorn imitation: 'Ah say, Ah say the boy's 
craizy! Missin a wheel off his baiby-carriage! Lost two-three cahds out'n his deck! Fella's a 
beer shote of a six-pack\ He's . . . ' 
Nick gradually realized that Ebersole and Garretsen were looking at him, Ebersole with 
contempt, Garretsen almost with interest, as at a new bacterium glimpsed through the lens of 
a microscope. 
' . . . you know, a little sick in the head,' Nick finished, losing the imitation as selfconsciousness, 
that bane of all great artists, set in. He quickly sat down. 
'That's not the kind of sick I meant, exactly,' Skip said. 'I'm not talking about him being a 
cripple, either. He's been sneezing, coughing, and running at the nose ever since he got here. 
Even you must have noticed that, Dearie.' 
Dearie didn't reply, didn't even react to the use of the nickname this time. He must have 
been pretty tired, all right. 
'All I'm saying is that he might claim a whole lot of stuff,' Skip said. 'He might even 
believe some of it. But he's out of it.' 
Ebersole's smile had resurfaced, no humor in it now. 'I believe I grasp the thrust of your 
argument, Mr Kirk. You want us to believe that Mr Jones was not responsible for the writing 
on the wall, but if he does confess to having done it, we should not credit his statement.' 
Skip also smiled — the thousand-watt smile that made the girls' hearts go giddyup. 'That's 
it,' he said, 'that's the thrust of my argument, all right.' 
There was a moment's silence, and then Dean Garretsen spoke what could have been the 
epitaph of our brief age. 'You fellows have disappointed me,' he said. 'Come on, Charles, we 
have no further business here.' Garretsen hoisted his briefcase, turned on his heel, and headed 
for the door. 
Ebersole looked surprised but hurried after him. Which left Dearie and his third-floor 
charges to stare at each other with mingled expressions of distrust and reproach. 
'Thanks, guys.' David was almost crying. 'Thanks a fucking pantload.' He stalked out with 
his head down and his folder clutched in one hand. The following semester he left 

Chamberlain and joined a frat. All things considered, that was probably for the best. As Stoke 
might have said, Dearie had lost his credibility. 
40 
'So you stole that, too,' Stoke Jones said from his bed in the infirmary when he could finally 
talk. I had just told him that almost everyone in Chamberlain Hall was now wearing the 
sparrow-track on at least one article of clothing, thinking this news would cheer him up. I had 
been wrong. 
'Settle down, man,' Skip said, patting his shoulder. 'Don't have a hemorrhage.' 
Stoke never so much as glanced at him. His black, accusing eyes remained on me. 'You 
took the credit, then you took the peace sign. Did any of you check my wallet? I think there 
were nine or ten dollars in there. You could have had that, too. Made it a clean sweep.' He 
turned his head aside and began to cough weakly. On that cold day in early December of '66 
he looked one fuck of a lot older than eighteen. 
This was four days after Stoke went swimming in Bennett's Run. The doctor — Carbury, 
his name was — seemed by the second of those days to accept that most of us were Stoke's 
friends no matter how oddly we'd acted when we brought him in, because we kept stopping 
by to ask after him. Carbury had been at the college infirmary, prescribing for strep throats 
and splinting wrists dislocated in softball games, for donkey's years and probably knew there 
was no accounting for the behavior of young men and women homing in on their majority; 
they might look like adults, but most retained plenty of their childhood weirdnesses, as well. 
Nick Prouty auditioning Foghorn Leghorn for the Dean of Men, for instance — I rest my 
case. 
Carbury never told us how bad things had been with Stoke. One of the candystripers (half 
in love with Skip by the second time she saw him, I believe) gave us a clearer picture, not 
that we really needed one. The fact that Carbury stuck him in a private room instead of on 
Men's Side told us something; the fact that we weren't allowed to so much as peek in on him 
for the first forty-eight hours of his stay told us more; the fact that he hadn't been moved to 
Eastern Maine, which was only ten miles up the road, told us most of all. Carbury hadn't 
dared move him, not even in the University ambulance. Stoke Jones had been in bad straits 
indeed. According to the candystriper, he had pneumonia, incipient hypothermia from his 
dunk, and a temperature which crested at a hundred and five degrees. She'd overheard 
Carbury talking with someone on the phone and saying that if Jones's lung capacity had been 
any further reduced by his disability — or if he'd been in his thirties or forties instead of his 
late teens — he almost certainly would have died. 
Skip and I were the first visitors he was allowed. Any other kid in the dorm probably 
would have been visited by at least one parent, but that wasn't going to happen in Stoke's 
case, we knew that now. And if there were other relatives, they hadn't bothered to put in an 
appearance. 
We told him everything that had happened that night, with one exception: the laugh-in 
which had begun in the lounge when we saw him spraying his way through Bennett's Run 
and continued until we delivered him, semi-conscious, to the infirmary. He listened silently 
as I told him about Skip's idea to put peace signs on our books and clothes so Stoke couldn't 
be hung out all by himself. Even Ronnie Malenfant had gone along, I said, and without a 
single quibble. We told him so he could jibe his story with ours; we also told him so he'd 
understand that by trying to take the blame/credit for the graffiti now, he'd get us in trouble as 

well as himself. And we told him without ever coming right out and telling him. We didn't 
need to. His legs didn't work, but the stuff between his ears was just fine. 
'Get your hand off me, Kirk.' Stoke hunched as far away from us as his narrow bed would 
allow, then began to cough again. I remember thinking he looked like he had about four 
months to live, but I was wrong about that; Atlantis sank but Stoke Jones is still in the swim, 
practicing law in San Francisco. His black hair has gone silver and is prettier than ever. He's 
got a red wheelchair. It looks great on CNN. 
Skip sat back and folded his arms. 'I didn't expect wild gratitude, but this is too much,' he 
said. 'You've outdone yourself this time, Rip-Rip.' 
His eyes flashed. 'Don't call me that!' 
'Then don't call us thieves just because we tried to save your scrawny ass. Hell, we did save 
your scrawny ass!' 
'No one asked you to.' 
'No,' I said. 'You don't ask anyone for anything, do you? I think you're going to need bigger 
crutches to haul around the chip on your shoulder before long.' 
'That chip's what I've got, shithead. What have you got?' 
A lot of catching-up to do, that's what I had. But I didn't tell Stoke that. Somehow I didn't 
think he'd exactly melt with sympathy. 'How much of that day do you remember?' I asked 
him. 
'I remember putting, the FUCK JOHNSON thing on the dorm — I'd been planning that for a 
couple of weeks — and I remember going to my one o'clock class. I spent most of it thinking 
about what I was going to say in the Dean's office when he called me in. What kind of a 
statement I was going to make. After that, everything fades into little fragments.' He uttered a 
sardonic laugh and rolled his eyes in their bruised-looking sockets. He'd been in bed for the 
best part of a week and still looked unutterably tired. 'I think I remember telling you guys I 
wanted to die. Did I say that?' 
I didn't answer. He gave me all the time in the world, but I stood on my right to remain 
silent. 
At last Stoke shrugged, the kind of shrug that says okay, let's drop it. It pulled the johnny 
he was wearing off one bony shoulder. He tugged it back into place, using his hand carefully 
— there was an I.V. drip in it. 'So you guys discovered the peace sign, huh? Great. You can 
wear it when you go to see Neil Diamond or fucking Petula Clark at Winter Carnival. Me, I'm 
out of here. This is over for me.' 
'If you go to school on the other side of the country, do you think you'll be able to throw 
the crutches away?' Skip asked. 'Maybe run track?' 
I was a little shocked, but Stoke smiled. It was a real smile, too, sunny and unaffected. 'The 
crutches aren't relevant,' he said. 'Time's too short to waste, that's relevant. People around 
here don't know what's happening, and they don't care. They're gray people. Just-getting-by 
people. In Orono, Maine, buying a Rolling Stones record passes for a revolutionary act.' 
'Some people know more than they did,' I said . . . but I was troubled by thoughts of Nate, 
who had been worried his mother might see a picture of him getting arrested and had stayed 
on the curb in consequence. A face in the background, the face of a gray boy on the road to 
dentistry in the twentieth century. 
Dr Carbury stuck his head in the door. 'Time you were on your way, men. Mr Jones has a 
lot of rest to catch up on.' 
We stood. 'When Dean Garretsen comes to talk to you,' I said, 'or that guy Ebersole . . . ' 
'As far as they'll ever know, that whole day is a blank,' Stoke said. 'Carbury can tell them I 
had bronchitis since October and pneumonia since Thanksgiving, so they'll have to accept it. 
I'll say I could have done anything that day. Except, you know, drop the old crutches and run 
the four-forty.' 

'We really didn't steal your sign, you know,' Skip said. 'We just borrowed it.' 
Stoke appeared to think this over, then sighed. 'It's not my sign,' he said. 
'No,' I agreed. 'Not anymore. So long, Stoke. We'll come back and see you.' 
'Don't make it a priority,' he said, and I guess we took him at his word, because we never 
did. I saw him back at the dorm a few times, but only a few, and I was in class when he 
moved out without bothering to finish the semester. The next time I saw him was on the TV 
news almost twenty years later, speaking at a Greenpeace rally just after the French blew up 
the Rainbow Warrior. 1984 or '85, that would've been. Since then I've seen him on the tube 
quite a lot. He raises money for environmental causes, speaks on college campuses from that 
snazzy red wheelchair, defends the eco-activists in court when they need defending. I've 
heard him called a tree-hugger, and I bet he sort of enjoys that. He's still carrying the chip. 
I'm glad. Like he said, it's what he's got. 
As we reached the door he called, 'Hey?' 
We looked back at a narrow white face on a white pillow above a white sheet, the only real 
color about him those masses of black hair. The shapes of his legs under the sheet again made 
me think of Uncle Sam in the Fourth of July parade back home. And again I thought that he 
looked like a kid with about four months to live. But add some white teeth to the picture, as 
well, because Stoke was smiling. 
'Hey what?' Skip said. 
'You two were so concerned with what I was going to say to Garretsen and Ebersole . . . 
maybe I've got an inferiority complex or something, but I have trouble believing all that 
concern is for me. Have you two decided to actually try going to school for a change?' 
'If we did, do you think we'd make it?' Skip asked. 
'You might,' Stoke said. 'There is one thing I remember about that night. Pretty clearly, 
too.' 
I thought he'd say he remembered us laughing at him — Skip thought so, too, he told me 
later — but that wasn't it. 
'You carried me through the doorway of the exam room by yourself,' he said to Skip. 
'Didn't drop me, either.' 
'No chance of that. You don't weigh much.' 
'Still . . . dying's one thing, but no one likes the idea of being dropped on the floor. It's 
undignified. Because you didn't, I'll give you some good advice. Get out of the sports 
programs, Kirk. Unless, that is, you've got some kind of athletic scholarship you can't do 
without.' 
'Why?' 
'Because they'll turn you into someone else. It may take a little longer than it took ROTC to 
turn David Dearborn into Dearie, but they'll get there in the end.' 
'What do you know about sports?' Skip asked gently. 'What do you know about being on a 
team?' 
'I know it's a bad time for boys in uniforms,' Stoke said, then lay back on his pillow and 
closed his eyes. But a good time to be a girl, Carol had said. 1966 was a good time to be a 
girl. 
We returned to the dorm and went to my room to study. Down the hall Ronnie and Nick 
and Lennie and most of the others were chasing The Bitch. After awhile Skip shut the door to 
block the sound of them out, and when that didn't entirely work I turned on Nate's little RCA 
Swingline and we listened to Phil Ochs. Ochs is dead now — as dead as my mother and 
Michael Landon, and Ronnie Malenfant. He hanged himself with his belt. The suicide rate 
among surviving Atlanteans has been pretty high. No surprise there, I guess; when your 
continent sinks right out from under your feet, it does a number on your head. 

41 
A day or two after that visit to Stoke in the infirmary, I called my mother and said that if she 
could really afford to send a little extra cash my way, I'd like to take her up on her idea about 
getting a tutor. She didn't ask many questions and didn't scold — you knew you were in 
serious trouble with my mom when she didn't scold — but three days later I had a money 
order for three hundred dollars. To this I added my Hearts winnings — I was astonished to 
find they came to almost eighty bucks. That's a lot of nickels. 
I never told my mom, but I actually hired two tutors with her three hundred, one a grad 
student who helped me with the mysteries of tectonic plates and continental drift, the other a 
pot-smoking senior from King Hall who helped Skip with his anthropology (and might have 
written a paper or two for him, although I don't know that for sure). This second fellow's 
name was Harvey Brundage, and he was the first person to ever say 'Wow, man, bummer!' in 
my presence. 
Together Skip and I went to the Dean of Arts and Sciences — there was no way we were 
going to go to Garretsen, not after that November meeting in the Chamberlain rec — and laid 
out the problems we were facing. Technically neither of us belonged to A and S; as freshmen 
we weren't yet eligible to declare majors, but Dean Randle listened to us. He recommended 
that we go around to each of our instructors and explain the problem . . . more or less throw 
ourselves on their mercy. 
We did it, loathing every minute of the process; one of the factors that made us powerful 
friends in those years was being raised with the same Yankee ideas, one of which was that 
you didn't ask for help unless you absolutely had to, and maybe not even then. The only thing 
that got us through that embarrassing round of calls was the buddy system. When Skip was in 
with his teachers I waited for him out in the hall, smoking one cigarette after another. When it 
was my turn, he waited for me. 
As a group, the instructors were a lot more sympathetic than I ever would have guessed; 
most bent over backwards to help us not only pass, but pass high enough to hold onto our 
scholarships. Only Skip's calculus teacher was completely unreceptive, and Skip was doing 
well enough there to skate by without any special help. Years later I realized that for many of 
the instructors it was a moral issue rather than an academic one: they didn't want to read their 
ex-students' names in a casualty list and have to wonder if they had been partially 
responsible; that the difference between a D and a C-minus had also been the difference 
between a kid who could see and hear and one sitting senseless in a VA hospital somewhere. 
42 
After one of these meetings, and with the end-of-semester exams looming, Skip went to the 
Bear's Den to meet his Anthro tutor for a coffee-fueled cram session. I had dishline at 
Holyoke. When the conveyor finally shut down for the afternoon, I went back to the dorm to 
resume my own studies. I stopped in the lobby to check my mailbox, and there was a pink 
package-slip in it. 
The package was brown paper and string, but livened up with some stick-on Christmas 
bells and holly. The return address hit me in the stomach like an unexpected sucker-punch: 

Carol Gerber, 172 Broad Street, Harwich, Connecticut. 
I hadn't tried to call her, and not just because I was busy trying to save my ass. I don't think 
I realized the real reason until I saw her name on that package. I'd been convinced she'd gone 
back to Sully-John. That the night we'd made love in my car while the oldies played was 
ancient history to her now. That I was ancient history. 
Phil Ochs was playing on Nate's record-player, but Nate himself was snoozing on his bed 
with a copy of Newsweek lying open on his face. General William Westmoreland was on the 
cover. I sat down at my desk, put the package in front of me, reached for the string, then 
paused. My fingers were trembling. Hearts are tough, she had said. Most times they don't 
break. Most times they only bend. She was right, of course . . . but mine hurt as I sat there 
looking at the Christmas package she had sent me; it hurt plenty. Phil Ochs was on the 
record-player, but in my mind I was hearing older, sweeter music. In my mind I was hearing 
The Platters. 
I snapped the string, tore the tape, removed the brown paper, and eventually liberated a 
small white department-store box. Inside was a gift wrapped in shiny red paper and white 
satin ribbon. There was also a square envelope with my name written on it in her familiar 
hand. I opened the envelope and pulled out a Hallmark card — when you care enough to send 
the very best, and all that. There were foil snowflakes and foil angels blowing foil trumpets. 
When I opened the card, a newspaper clipping fell out onto the present she'd sent me. It was 
from a newspaper called the Harwich Journal. In the top margin, above the headline, Carol 
had written: This time I made it — Purple Heart! Don't worry, 5 stitches at the Emerg. Room 
& I was home for supper. 
The story's headline read: 6 INJURED, 14 ARRESTED AS DRAFT OFFICE PROTEST TURNS INTO 
MELEE. The photo was in stark contrast to the one in the Deny News where everyone, even 
the cops and the construction workers who had started their own impromptu counter-protest, 
looked sort of relaxed. In the Harwich Journal photo, folks looked raw-nerved, confused, and 
about two thousand light-years from relaxed. There were hardhat types with tattoos on their 
bulging arms and hateful grimaces on their faces; there were long-haired kids staring back at 
them with angry defiance. One of the latter was holding his arms out to a jeering trio of men 
as if to say Come on, you want a piece of me? There were cops between the two groups, 
looking strained and tense. 
To the left (Carol had drawn an arrow to this part of the photo, as if I might have missed it 
otherwise) was a familiar jacket with HARWICH HIGH SCHOOL printed on the back. Once more 
her head was turned, but this time toward the camera instead of away from it. I could see the 
blood running down her cheek much more clearly than I wanted to. She could draw joke 
arrows and write all the breezy comments she wanted to in the margin; I was not amused. 
That was not chocolate syrup on her face. A cop had her by one arm. The girl in the news 
photo didn't seem to mind either that or the fact that her head was bleeding (if she even knew 
her head was bleeding at that point). The girl in the news photo was smiling. In one of her 
hands was a sign reading STOP THE MURDER. The other was held out toward the camera, the 
first two fingers making a V. V-for-victory, I thought then, but of course it wasn't. By 1969, 
that V went with the sparrow-track the way ham went with eggs. 
I scanned the text of the clipping, but there was nothing there of any particular interest. 
Protest . . . counter-protest . . . epithets . . . thrown rocks ... a few fistfights . . . police arrive 
on the scene. The story's tone was lofty and disgusted and patronizing all at the same time; it 
reminded me of how Ebersole and Garretsen had looked that night in the rec. You fellows 
have disappointed me. All but three of the protesters who had been arrested were released 
later that day and none was named, so presumably they were all under twenty-one. 
Blood on her face. And yet she was smiling . . . triumphant, in fact. I became aware Phil 
Ochs was still singing — I must have killed a million men and now they want me back again 

— and a shake of goos eflesh went up my back. 
I turned to the card. It bore the typical rhymed sentiments; they always come to about the 
same, don't they? Merry Christmas, sure hope you don't die in the New Year. I barely read 
them. On the blank side facing the verse, she had written me a note. It was long enough to use 
up most of the white space. 
Dear Number Six, 
I just "wanted to "wish you the merriest of merry Christmases, and 
to tell you I'm okay. I'm not back in school, although I have been 
associating with certain school types (see enclosed clipping) and expect 
I will return eventually, probably fall semester next year. My mom is not 
doing too well, but she is trying, and my brother is getting his act back 
together. Rionda helps, too. I've seen Sully a couple of times, but it's not 
the same. He came over to watch TV one night and we are like strangers 
... or maybe what I really mean is that 
we're like old acquaintances on trains going in different directions. 
I miss you, Pete. I think our trains are going in different directions, 
too, but I'll never forget the time we spent together. It was the sweetest 
and the best (especially the last night). You can write me if you want, 
but I sort of 'wish you 'wouldn't. It might not be good for either of us. 
This doesn't mean I don't care or remember but that I do. 
Remember the night I showed you that picture and told you about 
how I got beaten up? How my friend Bobby took care of me? He had a 
book that summer. The man upstairs gave it to him. Bobby said it was 
the best book he ever read. Not saying much when you're just eleven, I 
know, but I saw it again in the high-school library when I was a senior 
and read it, just to see what it was like. And I thought it was pretty great. 
Not the best book I ever read, but pretty great. I thought you might like 
a copy. Although it was written twelve years ago, I sort of think it's 
about Vietnam. Even if it's not, it's full of information. 
I love you, Pete. Merry Christmas. 
PS. Get out of that stupid card-game. 
I read it twice, then folded the clipping carefully and put it back in the card, my hands still 
shaking. Somewhere I think I still have that card ... as I'm sure that somewhere 'Red Carol' 
Gerber has still got her little snapshot of her childhood friends. If she's still alive, that is. Not 
exactly a sure thing: a lot of her last-known bunch of friends are not. 
I opened the package. Inside it — and in jarring contrast to the cheery Christmas paper and 
white satin ribbon — was a paperback copy of Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. I had 
somehow missed it in high school, opting for A Separate Peace in Senior Lit instead because 
Peace looked a little shorter. 
I opened it, thinking there might be an inscription. There was, but not the sort I had 
expected, not at all. This was what I found in the white space on the title page: 

My eyes filled with sudden unexpected tears. I put my hands over my mouth to hold in the 
sob that wanted to come out. I didn't want to wake Nate up, didn't want him to see me crying. 
But I cried, all right. I sat there at my desk and cried for her, for me, for both of us, for all of 
us. I can't remember hurting any more ever in my life than I did then. Hearts are tough, she 
said, most times hearts don't break, and I'm sure that's right . . . but what about then? What 
about who we were then? What about hearts in Atlantis? 
43 
In any case, Skip and I survived. We did the makeup work, squeaked through the finals, and 
returned to Chamberlain Hall in mid-January. Skip told me he'd written a letter to John 
Winkin, the baseball coach, over the holiday, saying he'd changed his mind about coming out 
for the team. 
Nate was back on Chamberlain Three. So, amazingly, was Lennie Doria — on academic 
pro but there. His paisan Tony DeLucca was gone, though. So were Mark St Pierre, Barry 
Margeaux, Nick Prouty, Brad Witherspoon, Harvey Twiller, Randy Echolls . . . and Ronnie, 
of course. We got a card from him in March. It was postmarked Lewiston and simply 
addressed to The Yo-Yo's Of Chamberlain Three. We taped it up in the lounge, over the chair 
where Ronnie had most often sat during the games. On the front was Alfred E. Neuman, the 
Mad magazine cover-boy. On the back Ronnie had written: 'Uncle Sam calls and I gotta go. 
Palm trees in my future and who gives a f—k. What me worry. I finished with 21 match 
points. That makes me the winner.' It was signed 'RON.' Skip and I had a laugh at that. As far 
as we were concerned, Mrs Malenfant's foul-mouthed little boy was going to be a Ronnie 
until the day he died. 
Stoke Jones, aka Rip-Rip, was also gone. I didn't think of him much for awhile, but his 
face and memory came back to me with startling (if brief) vividness a year and a half later. I 
was in jail at the time, in Chicago. I don't know how many of us the cops swept up outside the 
convention center on the night Hubert Humphrey was nominated, but there were a lot, and a 
lot of us were hurt — a blue-ribbon commission would a year later designate the event a 
'police riot' in its report. 
I ended up in a holding cell meant for fifteen prisoners — twenty, max — with about sixty 
gassed-out, punched-out, drugged-out, beat-up, messed-up, worked-over, fucked-over, bloodall-
over hippies, some smoking joints, some crying, some puking, some singing protest songs 
(from far over in the corner, issuing from some guy I never even saw, came a stoned-out 
version of 'I'm Not Marchin' Anymore'). It was like some weird penal version of telephonebooth 
cramming. 
I was jammed up against the bars, trying to protect my shirt pocket (Pall Malls), and my 
hip pocket (the copy of Lord of the Flies Carol had given me, now very battered, missing half 
its front cover, and falling out of its binding), when all at once Stake's face flashed into my 
mind as bright and complete as a high-resolution photograph. It came from nowhere, it 
seemed, perhaps the product of a dormant memory circuit which had gone momentarily hot, 
joggled by either a nightstick to the head or a revivifying whiff of teargas. And a question 

came with it. 
'What the fuck was a cripple doing on the third floor?' I asked out loud. 
A little guy with a huge mass of golden hair — a kind of Peter Frampton dwarf, if you 
could dig that — looked around. His face was pale and pimply. Blood was drying beneath his 
nose and on one cheek. 'What, man?' he asked. 
'What the fuck was a cripple doing on the third floor of a college dorm? One with no 
elevator? Wouldn't they have put him on the first floor?' Then I remembered Stoke plunging 
toward Holyoke with his head down and his hair hanging in his eyes, Stoke muttering 'Riprip, 
rip-rip, rip-rip' under his breath. Stoke going everywhere as if everything was his enemy; 
give him a quarter and he'd try to shoot down the whole world. 
'Man, I'm not following you. What — ' 
'Unless he asked them to,' I said. 'Unless he maybe right out demanded it.' 
'Bingo,' said the little guy with the Peter Frampton hair. 'Got a joint, man? I want to get 
high. This place sucks. I want to go to Hobbiton.' 
44 
Skip became an artist, and he's famous in his own way. Not like Norman Rockwell, and you'll 
never see a reproduction of one of Skip's sculptures on a plate offered by the Franklin Mint, 
but he's had plenty of shows — London, Rome, New York, last year in Paris — and he's 
reviewed regularly. There are plenty of critics who call him jejune, the flavor of the month 
(some have been calling him the flavor of the month for twenty-five years), a trite mind 
communicating via low imagery with other trite minds. Other critics have praised him for his 
honesty and energy. I tend in this direction, but I suppose I would; I knew him back in the 
days we escaped the great sinking continent together, and he has remained my friend; in a 
distant way he has remained my paisan. 
There are also critics who have commented on the rage his work so often expresses, the 
rage I first saw clearly in the papier-mache Vietnamese family tableau he set afire in front of 
the school library to the amplified pulse of The Youngbloods back in 1969. And yeah. Yeah, 
there's something to that. Some of Skip's stuff is funny and some of it's sad and some of it's 
bizarre, but most of it looks angry, most of his stiff-shouldered plaster and paper and clay 
people seem to whisper Light me, oh light me and listen to me scream, it's really still i()6g, 
it's still the Mekong and always will be. 'It is Stanley Kirk's anger which makes his work 
worthy,' a critic wrote during an exhibition in Boston, and I suppose it was that same anger 
which contributed to his heart attack two months ago. 
His wife called and said Skip wanted to see me. The doctors believed it hadn't been a 
serious cardiac event, but the Captain begged to disagree. My old paisan Captain Kirk 
thought he was dying. 
I flew down to Palm Beach, and when I saw him — white face below mostly white hair on 
a white pillow — it called up a memory I could not at first pin down. 
'You're thinking of Jones,' he said in a husky voice, and of course he was right. I grinned, 
and at the same moment a cold chill traced a finger down the middle of my back. Sometimes 
things come back to you, that's all. Sometimes they come back. 
I came in and sat down beside him. 'Not bad, O swami.' 
'Not hard, either,' he said. 'It's that day at the infirmary all over again, except that Carbury's 
probably dead and this time I'm the one with a tube in the back of my hand.' He raised one of 
his talented hands, showed me the tube, then lowered it again. 'I don't think I'm going to die 

anymore. At least not yet.' 
'Good.' 
'You still smoking?' 
'I've retired. As of last year.' 
He nodded. 'My wife says she'll divorce me if I don't do the same ... so I guess I better try.' 
'It's the worst habit.' 
'Actually, I think living's the worst habit.' 
'Save the phrase-making shit for the Reader's Digest, Cap.' 
He laughed, then asked if I'd heard from Natie. 
'A Christmas card, like always. With a photo.' 
'Fuckin Nate!' Skip was delighted. 'Was it his office?' 
'Yeah. He's got a Nativity scene out front this year. The Magi all look like they need dental 
work.' 
We looked at each other and began to giggle. Before Skip could really get going, he began 
to cough. It was eerily like Stoke — for a moment he even looked like Stoke — and I felt that 
shiver slide down my back again. If Stoke had been dead I'd have thought he was haunting 
us, but he wasn't. And in his own way Stoke Jones was as much of a sellout as every retired 
hippie who progressed from selling cocaine to selling junk bonds over the phone. He loves 
his TV coverage, does Stoke; when O. J. Simpson was on trial you could catch Stoke 
somewhere on the dial every night, just another vulture circling the carrion. 
Carol was the one who didn't sell out, I guess. Carol and her friends, and what about the 
chem students they killed with their bomb? It was a mistake, I believe that with all my heart 
— the Carol Gerber I knew would have no patience with the idea that all power comes out of 
the barrel of a gun. The Carol I knew would have understood that was just another fucked-up 
way of saying we had to destroy the village in order to save it. But do you think the relatives 
of those kids care that it was a mistake, the bomb didn't go off when it was supposed to, 
sorry? Do you think questions of who sold out and who didn't matter to the mothers, fathers, 
brothers, sisters, lovers, friends? Do you think it matters to the people who have to pick up 
the pieces and somehow go on? Hearts can break. Yes. Hearts can break. Sometimes I think it 
would be better if we died when they did, but we don't. 
Skip worked on getting his breath back. The monitor beside his bed was beeping in a 
worried way. A nurse looked in and Skip waved her off. The beeps were settling back to their 
previous rhythm, so she went. When she was gone, Skip said: 'Why did we laugh so hard 
when he fell down that day? That question has never entirely left me.' 
'No,' I said. 'Me either.' 
'So what's the answer? Why did we laugh?' 
'Because we're human. For awhile, I think it was between Woodstock and Kent State, we 
thought we were something else, but we weren't.' 
'We thought we were stardust,' Skip said. Almost with a straight face. 
'We thought we were golden,' I agreed, laughing. 'And we've got to get ourselves back to 
the garden.' 
'Lean over, hippie-boy,' Skip said, and I did. I saw that my old friend, who had outfoxed 
Dearie and Ebersole and the Dean of Men, who had gone around and begged his teachers to 
help him, who had taught me to drink beer by the pitcher and say fuck in a dozen different 
intonations, was crying a little bit. He reached up his arms to me. They had gotten thin over 
the years, and now the muscles hung rather than bunched. I bent down and hugged him. 
'We tried,' he said in my ear. 'Don't you ever forget that, Pete. We tried.' 
I suppose we did. In her way, Carol tried harder than any of us and paid the highest price . . 
. except, that is, for the ones who died. And although we've forgotten the language we spoke 
in those years — it is as lost as the bell-bottom jeans, home-tie-dyed shirts, Nehru jackets, 

and signs that said KILLING FOR PEACE is LIKE FUCKING FOR CHASTITY — sometimes a word or 
two comes back. Information, you know. Information. And sometimes, in my dreams and 
memories (the older I get the more they seem to be the same), I smell the place where I spoke 
that language with such easy authority: a whiff of earth, a scent of oranges, and the fading 
smell of flowers.