Hearts in Atlantis(127)

Skip got up, overturning his chair. I got up. Laughing our brains out, we groped for one another and staggered toward the window with our arms slung around each other's back. Below, unaware that he was being watched and laughed at by two dozen or so freaked-out cardplayers, Stoke Jones was still, amazingly, on his feet.

'Go Rip-Rip!' Ronnie began to chant. 'Go Rip-Rip!' Nick joined in. He had reached the window and was leaning his forehead against it, still laughing.

'Go, Rip-Rip!'

'Go, baby!'

'Go!'

'On, Rip-Rip! Mush those huskies!'

'Work those crutches, big boy!'

'Go you f**kin Rip-Rip!'

It was like the last play of a close football game, except everyone was chanting Go Rip-Rip instead of Hold that line or Block that kick. Almost everyone; I wasn't chanting, and I don't think Skip was, either, but we were laughing. We were laughing just as hard as the rest.

Suddenly I thought of the night Carol and I had sat on the milk-boxes beside Holyoke, the night she had shown me the snapshot of herself and her childhood friends . . . and then told me the story of what those other boys had done to her. What they had done with a baseball bat. At fast they were joking, I think, Carol had said. And had they been laughing? Probably, yeah. Because that's what you did when you were joking around, having a good time, you laughed.

Stoke stood where he was for a moment, hanging from his crutches with his head down . . . and then he attacked the hill like the Marines going ashore at Tarawa. He went tearing up Bennett's Walk, spraying water everywhere with his flying crutches; it was like watching a duck with rabies.

The chant became deafening: 'GO RIP-RIP! GO RIP-RIP! GO RIP-RIP!'

At first they were joking, she had said as we sat there on the milk-boxes, smoking our cigarettes. By then she was crying, her tears silver in the white light from the dining hall above us. At fast they were joking and then . . . they weren't.

That thought ended the joke of Stoke for me - I swear to you that it did. And still I couldn't stop laughing.

Stokely made it about a third of the way up the hill toward Holyoke, almost back to the visible bricks, before the slippery-slop finally got him. He planted his crutches far in advance of his body - too far for even dry conditions - and when he swung forward, both sticks flew out from under him. His legs flipped up like the legs of a gymnast doing some fabulous trick on the balance beam, and he went down on his back with a tremendous splash. We could hear it even from the third floor lounge. It was the final perfect touch.

The lounge looked like a lunatic asylum where the inmates had all come down with food-poisoning at the same time. We staggered aimlessly about, laughing and clutching at our throats, our eyes spouting tears. I was hanging onto Skip because my legs would no longer support me; my knees felt like noodles. I was laughing harder than I ever had in my life, harder than I ever have since, I think, and still I kept thinking about Carol sitting there on the milk-box beside me, legs crossed, cigarette in one hand, snapshot in the other, Carol saying Harry Doolin hit me . . . Willie and the other one held me so I couldn't run away . . . at fast they were joking, I think, and then . . . they weren't.

Out on Bennett's Walk, Stoke tried to sit up. He got his upper body partway out of the water . . . and then lay back, full length, as if that icy, slushy water were a bed. He lifted both arms skyward in a gesture which was almost invocatory, then let them fall again. It was every surrender ever given summed up in three motions: the lying back, the lifting of the arms, the double splash as they fell back wide to either side. It was the ultimate f**k it, do what you want, I quit.

'Come on,' Skip said. He was still laughing but he was also completely serious. I could hear the seriousness in his laughing voice and see it in his hysterically contorted face. I was glad it was there, God I was glad. 'Come on, before the stupid motherf*ck drowns.'

Skip and I crammed through the doorway of the lounge shoulder to shoulder and sprinted down the third-floor hall, bouncing off each other like pinballs, reeling, almost as out of control as Stoke had been on the path. Most of the others followed us. The only one I know for sure who didn't was Mark; he went down to his room to change out of his soaked jeans.

We met Nate on the second-floor landing - damned near ran him down. He was standing there with an armload of books in a plastic sack, looking at us with some alarm.

'Good grief,' he said. That was Nate at his strongest, good grief. 'What's wrong with you?'

'Come on,' Skip said. His throat was so choked the words came out in a growl. If I hadn't been with him earlier, I'd have thought he'd just finished a fit of weeping. 'It's not us, it's f**kin Jones. He fell down. He needs - ' Skip broke off as laughter - great big belly-gusts of it - overtook him and shook him once again. He fell back against the wall, rolling his eyes in a kind of hilarious exhaustion. He shook his head as if to deny it, but of course you can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants. Above us, the stairs began to thunder with descending third-floor cardplayers. 'He needs help,' Skip finished, wiping his eyes.

Nate looked at me in growing bewilderment. 'If he needs help, why are you guys laughing?'

I couldn't explain it to him. Hell, I couldn't explain it to myself. I grabbed Skip by the arm and yanked. We started down the steps to the first floor. Nate followed us. So did the rest.