All of us were united by our loathing for Skeleton Ridpath, and by our fear of him. We thought Tom Flanagan a hero for what he had done during the football game when Ridpath kicked him in the face. That more than anything else demonstrated how events could be magically right. Once during these two or three weeks while Skeleton's attention wandered off into other kinds of unpleasantness, Tom and Bobby Hollingsworth saw him standing in the anteroom to the headmaster's office. He jerked back and out of sight behind the arch, and they assumed he was waiting to be flayed by Lake the Snake; two days later, Tom saw him there again while he was bringing Mr. Weatherbee's attendance forms to the office. This time Skeleton did not jerk back behind the arch, but flapped one bony paw urgently, dictatorially — clear off. Tom turned away from lurking Skeleton in the shadowy arch, and nearly bumped into Bambi Whipple, who carried the mimeographed pile of his nine-weeks exams.
Later that day we learned, that Bryce Beaver and Harlan Willow had been expelled for smoking in the field-house turrets, and the enigma of Skeleton Ridpath skulking outside of the offices was swallowed by the shocked excitement the expulsions caused. Laker Broome canceled after-school practices to hold a special school meeting; while Mr. Ridpath fumed in the back row at the loss of an hour and a half s preparation for the game, Broome dryly, meticulously said that he wanted to forestall gossip by explaining that a 'tragedy' had occurred in the life of the school, that two able boys had disgraced themselves. They might well have ruined their prospects. That this was a tragedy, no one would dispute. But he had no choice: they had given him no choice.
In his face was no regret, only a tidy satisfaction. The entire school could hear Chester Ridpath loudly coughing from the back of the auditorium, but perhaps only we in the first two rows could see the long creases in Laker Broome's face deepen in self-congratulation.
21
Ridpath made our practices savage and grinding during the four days before the game, running through the same simple plays ten, then a dozen times; in his mind we had become the X's and O's of his diagrams, capable of unending and painless manipulation. Each session ended with three laps of the field, normally punishment for only the worst duffers. But this too was punishment — for the loss from the varsity team of Beaver and Willow, who had been on his first string. From these practices we limped home, bruised from blocking and tackling, nursing bloody noses, too tired even to do homework or watch Jackie Gleason and Art Carney in The Honeymooners.
On the day of the game the football field had been freshly limed, and the yard lines shone chalky white. Under an utterly cloudless sky, in air only beginning to carry autumn's snap, a crowd of parents in crew-neck sweaters and chino pants, plaid skirts and blazers, streamed from the visitors' parking lot toward the bleachers. It was obvious that most of these casual fathers in their blue sweaters and brown Weejuns had been Carson students; none of them had the weathered, experienced faces I thought of as typically 'Arizona.' They had grown up here, but they could have come from anywhere urban and knowing.
While Sherman and Howie Stern and Morris Fielding and I sat on the bench, our junior-varsity team lost by three touchdowns. We had managed only a single field goal. The varsity team ran out to cheers and school yells — most of the parents had flasks — and cheerleaders from a nearby girls' school flounced and cartwheeled and spelled out the school's name. The Larch School made two touchdowns in the first half, one more in the second. We made none. Ridpath had committed an elementary error and worn us out.
22
I saw something anomalous during the varsity game. Most of our JV team was seated in the last row of the stands, and from there we could look across the field to the grassy rise on its opposite side. When the visitors' lot outside Laker Broome's private entrance had filled, the parents had driven past it over the grass and parked their cars all along the yellow-green length of lawn which we often took as our way down to the Junior School for lunch. The snouts of Buicks and Lincolns and a few MG's pointed across and above the field toward the stands. Toward the end of the first half of the varsity game, I looked up at the row of grilles and bumpers facing us from the rise and saw a man standing between two of the cars.
He did not look like a Carson School parent. No chinos, no lamb's-wool Paul Stuart sweater, no Weejuns. The man was dressed in a long belted raincoat and an old-fashioned brown fedora hat pulled down low on his forehead. His hands were deep in his pockets. At first he reminded me of Sheldon Leonard in the television series Foreign Intrigue — in the fifties, way out there in the dry West, belted trench coats carried a whiff of glamour; they stood for spies, travel, Europe. Nothing about this exotic character suggested an interest in prep-school athletics.
Then I saw Del Nightingale's reaction to the man. Del was sitting beside Tom Flanagan three rows beneath me, and he looked up toward the rise a moment after I did. The effect on Del of the man dressed like Sheldon Leonard was startling: he froze like a bird before a snake, and I was sure that if you touched him you'd feel him quiver. He uttered a wordless noise — almost like an electronic beep. It was purely the sound of astonishment.
Skeleton Ridpath, seated on the bench in uniform, also appeared to be affected by the man's appearance on the rise. I thought he nearly fell off the bench. The man retreated backward between the cars and disappeared. Skeleton turned around and glared back at the stands. His head looked fleshless, the size of a grape above his shoulderpads.
23
'Sometimes I'm Happy'
Streamers hung from the auditorium ceiling, tied up around the dim colored spots; in place of the metal chairs was a vast — empty space for dancing, ringed by tables covered by dark blue cloths. At ten minutes to eight the only people in the room were the freshman waiters and the chaperons, Mr. and Mrs. Robbin. Mr. Robbin taught physics and chemistry, and was slight and gray-haired, with thick inquisitive glasses. His wife was taller than he, and her own hair was screwed up into a bun. The Robbins were seated together along the outside wall and looked dated and 'scientific,' like Dr. and Madame Curie; flecks of brilliant yellow and cadmium blue, then of orange and red, revolved over them, cast by the color wheel hung in the middle distance.
When the Robbins had entered, they had nodded vaguely to us — he taught only upperclassmen. Then Mr. Robbin had turned his radium-seeking gaze on Del and said, 'You're Nightingale, aren't you? New boy? Getting on all right?' Gossip had informed all of the school that Del Nightingale was a fabulously wealthy orphan, one of whose legal guardians was a bank he in fact owned. Robbin sat beside his wife and held up an arm; With the other hand he indicated his wrist watch. 'Satellite tonight. Five to ten. An artificial star. A miracle.'