This Boy's Life (24 page)

The truth was, I hadn’t made nearly enough use of it. During the first round I followed my intention and fought like a crazy man. Arthur was all over me, his craziness proving more radical than my own. Twice his windmilling gloves came straight down on my head and knocked me to my knees. He knocked me to my knees again during the second round. After I got up he rushed me, and without calculation I sidestepped and threw him an uppercut. It stopped him cold. He just stood there, shaking his head. I hit him again and the bell rang.

I caught him with that uppercut twice more during the final round, but neither of them rocked him like that first one. That first one was a beaut. I launched it from my toes and put everything I had into it, and it shivered his timbers. I could feel it travel through him in one pure line. I could feel it hurt him. And when it landed, and my old friend’s head snapped back so terribly, I felt a surge of pride and connection; connection not to him but to Dwight. I was distinctly aware of Dwight in that bellowing mass all around me. I could feel his exultation at the blow I’d struck, feel his own pride in it, see him smiling down at me with recognition, and pleasure, and something like love.

I
had done well on the tests I’d taken in Seattle. But not long after my scores came in I got a rejection letter from Andover. Then St. Paul’s turned me down. Then Exeter. The letters were polite, professed regret for the news they bore, and wished me well. I never heard back from Choate at all.

The rejections disappointed me, but I hadn’t really counted on these schools anyway. I was counting on Deerfield. When I got their letter I went off by myself. I sat by the river and read it. I read it many times, first because I was too numb to take it all in, then to find some word or tone that would cancel out everything else the letter said, or at least give me hope for an appeal. But they knew what they were doing, the people who wrote these letters. They knew how to close the door so that no seam showed, no light glimmered at the edges. I understood that the game was over.

A week or so later the school secretary summoned me out of class to take a telephone call in the office. She said it sounded long distance. I thought it might be my brother, or even my father, but the caller turned out to be a Hill School alumnus who lived in Seattle. His name was Mr. Howard. He told me the school was “interested” in my application, and had asked him to meet with me and have a talk. Just an informal chat, he said. He said he’d always wanted to see our part of the state, and this would give him a good excuse. We arranged to meet outside Concrete High after classes let out the next day. Mr. Howard said he’d be driving a blue Thunderbird. He didn’t say anything about wanting to meet my teachers, thank God.

“Whatever you do, just don’t try to impress him,” my mother said when I told her about the call. “Just be yourself.”

 

WHEN MR. HOWARD asked me where we might go to talk, I suggested the Concrete drugstore. I knew there would be kids from school there. I wanted them to see me pull up in the Thunderbird and get out with this man, who was just old enough to be my father, and different from other men you might see in the Concrete drugstore. Without affecting boyishness, Mr. Howard still had the boy in him. He bounced a little as he walked. His narrow face was lively, foxlike. He looked around with a certain expectancy, as if he were ready to be interested in what he saw, and when he was interested he allowed himself to show it. He wore a suit and tie. The men who taught at the high school also wore suits and ties, but less easily. They were always pulling at their cuffs and running their fingers between their collars and their necks. To watch them was to suffocate. Mr. Howard wore his suit and tie as if he didn’t know he had them on.

We sat at a booth in the back. Mr. Howard bought us milkshakes, and while we drank them he asked me about Concrete High. I told him I enjoyed my classes, especially the more demanding ones, but that I was feeling a little restless lately. It was hard to explain.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “It’s easy to explain. You’re bored.”

I shrugged. I wasn’t going to speak badly of the teachers who had written so well of me.

“You wouldn’t be bored at Hill,” Mr. Howard said. “I can promise you that. But you might find it difficult in other ways.” He told me about his own time there in the years just before World War II. He had grown up in Seattle, where he’d done well in school. He expected that he would fall easily into life at Hill, but he hadn’t. The academic work was much harder. He missed his family and hated the snowy Pennsylvania winters. And the boys at Hill were different from his friends back home, more reserved, more concerned with money and social position. He had found the school a cold place. Then, in his last year, something changed. The members of his class grew close in ways that he had never thought possible, until they were more like brothers than friends. It came, he said, from the simple fact of sharing the same life for a period of years. It made them a family. That was how he thought of the school now—as his second family.

But he’d had a rough time getting to that point, and some of the boys never got to it at all. They lived unhappily at the edge of things. These same boys might have done well if they’d stayed at home. A prep school was a world unto itself, and not the right world for everyone.

If any of this was supposed to put me off, it didn’t. Of course the boys were concerned with money and social position. Of course a prep school wasn’t for everyone—otherwise, what would be the point?

But I put on a thoughtful expression and said that I was aware of these problems. My father and my brother had given me similar warnings, I explained, and I was willing to endure whatever was necessary to get a good education.

Mr. Howard seemed amused by this answer, and asked me on what experience my father and brother had based their warnings. I told him that they had both gone to prep schools.

“Is that right? Where?”

“Deerfield and Choate.”

“I see.” He looked at me with a different quality of interest than before, as I had hoped he would. Though Mr. Howard was not a snob, I could see he was worried that I might not fit in at his school.

“My brother’s at Princeton now,” I added.

He asked me about my father. When I told him that my father was an aeronautical engineer, Mr. Howard perked up. It turned out he had been a pilot during the war, and was familiar with a plane my father had helped design—the P-51 Mustang. He hadn’t flown it himself but he knew men who had. This led him to memories of his time in uniform, the pilots he had served with and the nutty things they used to do. “We were just a bunch of kids,” he said. He spoke to me as if I were not a kid myself but someone who could understand him, someone of his world, family even. His hands were folded on the tabletop, his head bent slightly. I leaned forward to hear him better. We were really getting along. And then Huff showed up.

Huff had a peculiar voice, high and nasal. I had my back to the door but I heard him come in and settle into the booth behind ours with another boy, whose voice I did not recognize. The two of them were discussing a fight they’d seen the previous weekend. A guy from Concrete had broken a guy from Sedro Woolley’s nose.

Mr. Howard stopped talking. He leaned back, blinking a little as if he had dozed off. He did not speak, nor did I. I didn’t want Huff to know I was there. Huff had certain rituals of greeting that I was anxious to avoid, and if he sensed he was embarrassing me he would never let me get away. He would sink my ship but good. So I kept my head down and my mouth shut while Huff and the other boy talked about the fight, and about the girl the two boys had been fighting over. They talked about another girl. Then they talked about eating pussy. Huff took the floor on this subject, and showed no sign of giving it up. He went on at length. I heard boys hold forth like this all the time, and I did it myself, but now I thought I’d better show some horror. I frowned and shook my head, and stared down at the tabletop.

“Shall we go?” Mr. Howard asked.

I did not want to break cover but I had no choice. I got up and walked past Huff’s booth, Mr. Howard behind me. Though I kept my face averted I was sure that Huff would see me, and as I moved toward the door I was waiting to hear him shout, “Hey! Dicklick!” The shout never came.

Mr. Howard drove around Concrete for a while before taking me back to school. He was curious about the cement plant, and disappointed that I could tell him nothing about what went on inside it. He was quiet for a time. Then he said, “You should know that a boys’ school can be a pretty rough-and-tumble place.”

I said that I could take care of myself.

“I don’t mean physically rough,” Mr. Howard said. “Boys talk about all kinds of things. Even at a school like Hill you don’t hear a whole lot of boys sitting around at night talking about Shakespeare. They’re going to talk about other things. Sex, whatever. And they’re going to take the gloves off.”

I said nothing.

“You can’t expect everyone to be, you know, an Eagle Scout.”

“I don’t,” I said.

“I’m just saying that life in a boys’ school can come as a bit of a shock to someone who’s led a sheltered life.” I began to make an answer, but Mr. Howard said, “Let me just say one more thing. You’re obviously doing a great job here. With your grades and so on you should be able to get into an excellent college later on. I’m not sure that a prep school is exactly the right move for you. You might end up doing yourself more harm than good. It’s something to consider.”

I told Mr. Howard that I had not led a sheltered life, and that I was determined to get myself a better education than the one I was getting now. In trying to keep my voice from breaking I ended up sounding angry.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Mr. Howard said. “You’re a fine boy and I’ll be happy to give you a good report.” He said these words quickly, as if reciting them. Then he added, “You have a strong case. But you should know what you’re getting into.” He said he would write to the school the next day, then we’d just have to wait and see. From what he understood, I was one of many boys being considered for the few remaining places.

“I assume you’ve got applications in at other schools,” he said.

“Just Choate. But I’d rather go to Hill. Hill is my first choice.”

We were parked in front of the school. Mr. Howard took a business card from his wallet and told me to call him if I had any questions. He advised me not to worry, said whatever happened would surely be for the best. Then he said good-bye and drove away. I watched the Thunderbird all the way down the hill to the main road, watched it as a man might watch a woman he’d just met leave his life, taking with her some hope of change that she had made him feel. The Thunderbird turned south at the main road and disappeared behind some trees.

I
was running a board through the table saw at school and joking around with the boy next in line. Then I felt a sharp pinch and looked down. The ring finger on my left hand was spouting blood. I had cut off the last joint. It lay beside the whirling blade, fingernail and all. The boy I’d been talking to looked at it with me, his mouth working strangely, then turned and walked away. “Hey,” I said. The shop was loud; no one heard. I sank to my knees. Somebody saw me and started yelling.

Horseface Greeley took me to the doctor. He brought along another teacher, who drove the car while Horseface asked me leading questions whose answers would protect him if we should ever go to court. I understood his purpose and gave him the answers he wanted. I thought that the accident had been my fault, and that it would be unfair of me to get him in trouble. I’d been a fool. I’d cut off part of my own finger. Now I wanted above all, as the only redemption left to me, to be a good sport.

The finger was a mess. My mother gave the doctor permission to take me to the hospital in Mount Vernon for surgery. I went under the knife that afternoon, and awoke the next morning with a bandage from my wrist to my remaining fingertips. I was supposed to stay in the hospital for three days, but the doctor was worried about infection and it was almost a week before I got home. By then I was addicted to morphine, which the nurses had given me freely because when I didn’t get it I disturbed the ward with my screams. At first I wanted it for the pain; the pain was terrible. Then I wanted it for the peace it gave me. On morphine I didn’t worry. I didn’t even think. I rose out of myself and dreamed benevolent dreams, soaring like a gull in the balmy updraft.

The doctor gave me some tablets when I left the hospital, but they had no effect. I was hurting in two ways now, from my finger and from narcotic withdrawal. Though it must have been a mild episode of withdrawal it did not seem mild to me, especially since I didn’t know what it was, or that it would come to an end. Knowing that everything comes to an end is a gift of experience, a consolation gift for knowing that we ourselves are coming to an end. Before we get it we live in a continuous present, and imagine the future as more of that present. Happiness is endless happiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.

If I had lived in a place where drugs were bought and sold, I would have bought them. I would have done anything to get them. But nobody I knew used drugs. The possibility didn’t even occur to us. The marijuana scare films that might have sparked our interest never made it to Concrete, and heroin use was understood to be unique to the residents of New York City.

I was all through being a good sport. Everything was a grievance to me. I complained about school, I complained about the uselessness of my medicine, I complained about how hard it was to eat and dress myself. I begged for comfort and then despised it. I talked back and found fault, especially with Dwight. From behind my wound I said things to Dwight I never would have said to him before.

It occurred to me that alcohol might make me feel better. I stole some of Dwight’s Old Crow but the first drink made me choke, so I replenished the bottle with water and put it back. A few nights later Dwight asked me if I had been into his whiskey. It was watery, he said. He seemed more curious than anything else. He probably would have let me off with a warning if I’d admitted it, but I said, “I’m not the drinker in this house.”