Paper Covers Rock (13 page)

I am feeling good until I set foot on campus again, and the gray haze descends. Glenn is walking to the gym when I get off the bus. We wave to each other across the dark. On my way back to dorm, I stop by the library for a visit with
Moby-Dick
. All of these words keeping me afloat.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 8:05 P.M
.

The Archives Room

Down, down, down. This is where we go this morning for English class, into the basement of the main building, to the school archives. Air-raid drills, gas rations, and no away games, a historic touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter by a guy who went off to fight with his older brother and never came home. A beloved teacher who once organized all his history students to write weekly letters to Birch alums in uniform overseas. The Birch School archives are about war.

Miss Dovecott asks us to poke around, to find one point of reflection and write a poem that illustrates that journey of reflection. I am still half-asleep. I look at Glenn, who has taken a yearbook from the shelf and is curled into one of the reading chairs. He looks peaceful.

I pick up an old school newspaper from April of 1956. My stomach drops to the floor when I see the lead article about a drowning at the river. A boy went swimming
alone, a sad-looking boy named Clark Keever. Surely Thomas Broughton, Senior, reader of Hemingway, knew him, at least passed by him on the brick sidewalks. Did he think of Clark Keever this past month, remembering? I close the newspaper with its distant smell and put it back on the shelf where it belongs.

I study Miss Dovecott, who is helping Joe Bonnin. In one corner of the Archives Room is a tribute to all of the Birch boys who fought for their country. This one guy in the class of ’39 who died at Guadalcanal, during his short life, discovered a species of butterfly that now bears his name. That is what I choose to reflect on, not the drowned boy. The title of my reflection is not very original—“Butterfly”—but maybe there’s something to the poem.

Before dinner, I knock on Glenn’s door. For the first time, we talk about something other than Thomas, other than Miss Dovecott. We talk about the Archives Room. He has chosen to write about his father, a graduate of the class of 1950. The yearbook was dedicated to him, Glenn Albright Everson II. He saved the life of a faculty child who had fallen on a nest of yellow jackets and would have surely died, given the number of stings. When Glenn is telling me that his father never told him this, I hear tears in his voice. It is a damp and drizzly November in my soul, and I want to cry, too, for this man who built a fire in the fireplace for a boy one Thanksgiving, for this man who is more golden than his son, but there isn’t time to cry. The six o’clock bell is ringing.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 9:02 A.M
.

Insomnia on the High Seas

Maybe Is Male was born too late. Like Glenn’s sister said, he is an old soul. He could have been friends with Glenn’s father rather than with Glenn. For the first time in his life, Is Male prays. He is so tired of not sleeping. His bunk mate, who was thrown overboard by the captain, left his Bible behind. Is Male picks it up, turns to the index, reads all the verses pertaining to guilt. This is how he finds Psalm 32, the dyslexic’s Psalm 23. In Is Male’s heathen opinion, Psalm 32 blows Psalm 23 out of the water, especially verse 3: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.” That’s it, Is Male says out loud to no one. Then,
verse 4—“For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” It is true, Is Male thinks: the weight of his deed has shriveled up every good thing. “Compass me about with songs of deliverance,” says the permanent ink of Psalm 32. It is a big job, Is Male tells God; if You exist, I hope You’re up to the task.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 8:36 P.M
.

The Day Before Thomas Died

It was a Friday, exactly one month ago. I had a huge history test on colonial America first thing that morning, and I studied for it right through breakfast.

Clay didn’t make his bed or empty his trash, so his name got posted on the demerit sheet.

I ate lunch with a table full of guys.

It had rained Thursday night, and the cross-country team had to run through mud.

The dining hall served fried flounder for dinner.

I studied for a Latin quiz and wrote up my chemistry lab report. I’m sure I did my English homework, too.

Glenn and Thomas came to our room after the Lights-Out bell (which is allowed on the weekends, visiting until midnight). We set the time for the next day, and where we would meet. Thomas told a stupid (but funny) joke about a
mouse f
cking a giraffe. We laughed about what had happened the night before, when Andy had dared Joe to try the new hot sauce in the dining hall, and Joe did, putting a drop on his index finger, licking it, and then forgetting to wash his hands. When he went to relieve himself during study hall that night, he rushed out of the dorm bathroom screaming that his penis was on fire. It was hilarious, and even now, it makes me smile.

That night before I fell asleep, I remember thinking how the outside world was so far away. Only the teachers kept up with the news; if they were to ask me, for example, what was happening in the Soviet Union, I wouldn’t have been able to answer. Sad to say, but true: most of us only care about ourselves, as you can tell by the self-absorbed pages you now hold in your hands.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 7:50 A.M
.

Scissors Cut Paper

Thomas died a month ago today.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 9:01 P.M
.

The Days of Burnout

With exams coming the week after Thanksgiving, teachers are loading us up with final papers and tests. Every other morning, I call my dad. Every Wednesday morning during my free period, I have my obligatory counseling session with Reverend Black and write poems in my head while he drones. Every day, I check my mailbox with no letter from Thomas’s parents in it, but of course my letter to them is probably one
of many requiring a response, and they can only handle so much. I imagine the Broughtons gathered around their dining-room table at Thanksgiving with no Thomas, his little brother Trenton trying too hard to keep things lively, trying too hard to keep his mother from crying in the cranberry sauce.

At night after study hall in the dorm common room, we gather at the TV, trying to find out, along with the rest of the American male population, when the NFL players’ strike, which began in September, might end. On this Tuesday night, Glenn comes and sits on the arm of the sofa beside me. He pats me on the back like we’re as normal as everyone else throwing popcorn and taking swigs from one another’s Cokes. No one looks at us like we’re criminals, and Auggie van Dorn asks if I know when the next Rolling Stones album is being released. (I don’t.) When a Budweiser commercial with girls in bikinis comes on, Joe tells everybody to shut up and pay attention. “Like we need ears to understand
that,
” Glenn says, pointing, and Auggie tells Joe that his sister hooked up with the Little Dipper at the St. Brigid mixer. “Gross,” Andy says. “She looks just like Joe with long hair.” It’s true—she does—and we all have a big time with that one, except that I am thinking of her in the bushes with a kid who had to kiss the Buddha’s stomach. Somehow, that makes me sad. And then Glenn whispers to me, “We need to talk.” And that makes me nervous, so I stand and walk away, sad and nervous, when I should be walking away clearheaded and sleepy.

I go to my room, turn on the desk lamp, and wait. As usual, he enters without knocking. “We’re doing the right thing. You know that, don’t you?”

I say nothing.

“She knows, Stromm, but I need proof. If you’ll steal her sweatshirt, then you won’t mind sneaking into her apartment for a peek at her diary.”

“I didn’t steal her sweatshirt. And how do you know she keeps a diary?”

“All girls do.”

“She’s not a girl.”

“Well, she’s pretty darn close. She’s only five years older than we are, if that. Plus, she’s an English teacher, and English teachers love to write. It’s in their blood.” He looks at me hard. “You go in, and I’ll stand guard.”

“No. End of discussion.”

“Aren’t you dying to enter the inner sanctum?” He laughs. “Or have you entered it already?”

“Shut up.”

“Mr. Mansfield believed me about her putting her hand on my knee. Because apparently someone told him that Miss Dovecott had been spotted sneaking into Wimberley Hall.”

“Why would she sneak in? She’s a teacher. She can walk in whenever she wants.”

“At one o’clock in the morning?”

“Oh, come on.”

“I told him she gave you her sweatshirt.”

“At the river when I was soaking wet! She was just being nice!”

“She was being seductive.”

“Is that your word, or Dean Mansfield’s?”

“Mine. Dean Mansfield just took notes.”

“He took notes? Jesus, Glenn, what else did you tell him?”

“I told him she shouldn’t be here.”

“She’s a good teacher.”

“She’s an okay teacher. She’s not better than Mr. Parkes.”

“What does he have to do with anything?”

“I’m just saying.”

“You are so paranoid, Glenn. Mr. Mansfield’s not stupid. The whole Thomas thing, and Clay taking the fall. He knows better than anybody that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You’re going to get yourself in big trouble.”

“Not if we win.”

“Win what? What kind of game are you playing?”

“We,”
he says. “You are on
my
team. Remember?” He puts his hand on my shoulder.

“I’m not on anyone’s team,” I say, shaking him off. “You are out of control. Leave Miss Dovecott alone. If she really thought we were guilty of something, she would have turned us in a long time ago.”

“Do you honestly believe that?”

“I do.”

“Then you don’t believe
me
. You have to believe me. You’re my friend.”

“I know I’m your friend.”

“You’re the smartest friend I have.”

“I’m not that smart,” I say. “I’m not as smart as you. I’ve never been on the Headmaster’s List. You’ve been on it every single trimester.”

“That’s only because I know how to study. I wasn’t stuck at some redneck junior high like you were.” Glenn sighs. “I’m tired.” And he sinks onto my bed.

“I’m tired, too,” I say. “Maybe we should both just sleep until the end of the year.”

“That’s not what I mean. What if I—What if Clay—?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“No, Glenn. Tell me.”

He shakes his head. “What if Clay reneges on the deal?”

“He won’t. Clay’s back in Macon drinking beer every weekend and loving life. And even if he does, it will look like sour grapes. The investigation on the accident is closed. They’re done with us.”

“You and I have to look out for each other. My dad will literally die if I don’t graduate from here.”

“If you’re so scared of your dad, then why don’t you leave Miss Dovecott alone?”

All of a sudden, Glenn looks five years old. “I’m not scared of him. It’s just that there are things he doesn’t need to know. He thinks of Birch as some kind of Eden, and he wants it to be that way for me, too, and it isn’t. It never will be.”

The last thing I want to give Glenn is more ammunition, so I don’t tell him what Miss Dovecott said at the mixer. She hasn’t mentioned it since then, and I sure as hell don’t want to bring it up, so this is what I say instead: “Even if you’re right, that she knows more than she’s telling, she’s probably not going to write about it in some stupid diary. And she’s not going to crawl into a hole just because some teenagers are harassing her.”

He turns back into his pale-eyed self. “We are not dropping this, Stromm. You are going to sneak into her apartment and find out what she wrote in her diary about that day.
Don’t give me any bullshit—you know you want to. You don’t even have to steal it. Just open it up, read it, and get the heck out. We’ll find out what her schedule is, and go from there. It’s foolproof, easy as pie. In and out. Bang. Done.”