'None whatsoever. How do you account for that?'
I shook my head. Those welts could not have disappeared so soon.
'I can explain it to you, then. None took place. I believe Steven Ridpath when he says that he made young Nightingale do several push-ups and slapped his back, which was covered by shirt and jacket, when the push-ups were performed sloppily. Initiation is officially over, but in unusual circumstances the school has turned a blind eye to its continuance. When we felt that it was done to preserve order.'
'Order,' I said.
'Something it seems you know little about. To proceed. Of course we found no traces of the Ventnor owl backstage. Because it was never there. We did find written — out examinations in young Ridpath's handwriting, to be used by him as a study aid after the examinations took place.'
'That doesn't make sense. He used the exams as study aids when he'd already taken them?'
'Precisely. To keep his grasp of the older material. A very wise thing to do, I might add.'
'So he's going to get away with it,' I said, unable to keep from blurting it out.
'Quiet!' Mr. Thorpe banged the metal desk and made the pencils jump crazily. 'Consider, boy. We are going to be lenient with you. Because young Fielding's family has attended the Carson School for fifty years, and he thinks he saw what you also think you saw, Mr. Fitz-Hallan and I agree that perhaps you are not consciously trying to mislead us. But you leaped to conclusions and substituted your imagination for what you actually saw — a typical example of the irrationality which has been sweeping through this school, and which Mr. Broome has worked so hard to combat.' The thought of this seemed to deepen his rage. 'Such fantastification as we have had here in the past month is beyond my experience. Perhaps some of our English people should stick to factual texts in the future.' A burning sideways glance at Fitz-Hallan. 'A school is no place for fantasy. The world is no place for fantasy. I have already said this to Morris Fielding. Mr. Weatherbee . . . '
The adviser straightened up beside me. 'Perhaps you can keep a closer eye on incipient hysteria in the freshmen. Teachers must do more than teach, here at Carson.'
When our class went to the locker room to undress for an intramural basketball game, I looked at Del Nightingale's back as he pulled off his shirt. It was unmarked. Morris Fielding noticed that at the same time I did. I remembered the glass owl flying or seeming to fly out of the bench, making a whirring beetlelike noise, and knew from Morris' expression that he remembered it too. And though I had planned to use the minutes before the intermural game to talk to Del, I backed away, as if from the uncanny.
Tom's father died at the end of March.
14
I Hear You
Chester Ridpath switched off Ernie Kovacs on the old twelve-inch Sears television in the living room and covertly looked at his son, who had eaten only half of his Swanson TV Chicken Dinner. The kid was starving himself — half of the time he forgot the food was there in front of him, and stared off into space like a zombie. Or like something from those movies he liked, something that only pretended to be normal and okay. . . . Chester immediately banished these thoughts and sent them into the limbo where he had consigned everything he had thought or imagined about the 'hazing' incident two weeks earlier. Old Billy Thorpe had stuck up for Stevie, but Ridpath could see that despite his loyalty to a colleague, Billy wasn't quite sure in his own mind that he had done the right thing — every now and then he looked like a quarterback fourteen points down. Of course they had all felt like that lately, with Laker Broome cracking up in chapel the way he had and nobody knowing from one minute to the next if the head would keep his job. What a terrible year it had turned out to be. . . . He picked up the TV dinner's aluminum pan from the footstool in front of him and on his way out of the room took Steve's half-eaten dinner too. The kid smiled faintly, as if half-thanking, half-mocking him.
Thank God Billy Thorpe had never seen Steve's room.
Because that was the problem. Any kid who wanted to surround himself with garbage like that was the kind who could use a belt on a freshman or cheat on his exams.
Hell, Steve didn't cheat.
Did he?
Ridpath balled up the two crinkly pans and dumped them into the bin. Waste. His own father would have belted him from here to kingdom come for throwing away food. Just look at him now. If a fly landed on his nose, he wouldn't brush it off.
So talk to him. You talk to kids all day long.
Talk at them.
Better than nothing.
No, nothing was better. He'd seen Steve's face sometimes when he was in the middle of a story. Indifference. Blank as the face of a corpse. Even when he was just a short-pants kid, sometimes he'd crack him one and see that same expression on the little shit's mug . . . Jesus, he was glad Billy Thorpe had never seen that awful crap up in Steve's room. If that was the kind of stuff the kid had on his mind . . .
'Hey, Steve,' he said, and went back to the kitchen door. 'Isn't that Kovacs kind of strange? Bet those cigars cost . . . ' He stopped the sad attempt at conversation. Steve's chair was empty. He had gone back up to do whatever the hell it was he did in that room.
Should go in there and rip out all that evil junk — just rip it out. Then tell him why — tell him why it's for his own good. Should have done it long ago.
No: first tell him why, then rip it out.
But of course it was too late for that. How long had it been since he and Steve had really talked? Four years? More?
Chester finished wiping the silverware dry and crossed the untidy living room and stood at the bottom of the stairs. At least that savage music wasn't on; like his good grades, it could be a sign that Steve was growing up, and getting old enough to know that all you had to do was burn the damn ball back, just forget the pain and return the fire. Wasn't that what a father had to teach his son? If you don't land the first punch, be goddamned sure you land the second.
'You busy, Steve?' he called up the stairs. There was no answer. 'How about a talk?' And surprised himself — his heart beat a little faster.
Steve was not listening: he was pacing around the bedroom, his feet going bang bang on the linoleum. Praying to the pictures, or whatever he did when he wasn't varnishing.
'Steve?' Bang, bang, went the footsteps, echoed by his heart. Ridpath went halfway up the stairs and reached the step from which he could see his son's door, which was closed. Through the crack at the bottom of the door, with his eyes right at the level of the floor and looking through the posts of the railing, Ridpath could see the bottoms of Steve's loafers, pacing past. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Steve was patrolling from one end of the room to the other, metronomically, wheeling around when he reached a wall and marching back in a straight line. Marching, he was mumbling something to himself: it sounded like I hear you, I hear you to Chester. I bang hear bang you bang I bang hear . . .
'Okay, you hear me,' he said. 'How about coming out and having a beer with the old man?' His throat was dry — hell, you'd almost think he was afraid of Steve. 'A beer sound good?' he asked, and was pathetic even to himself.
I bang hear bang you bang I bang hear bang you bang I bang . . . The black bottoms of the shoes appeared in the crack at the bottom of the door, one, two, hayfoot, strawfoot, came back in five or six seconds, vanished. 'Beer?' Chester muttered, realizing that whatever Steve was hearing, it was not his father.