Hearts in Atlantis(111)

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 all 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.'