Hearts in Atlantis(128)

34

The first thing I saw when we banged out through the north door was that rectangle of yellow canvas. It was lying on the ground, full of water and floating lumps of slush. Then the water on the path started pouring in through my sneakers and I forgot all about sightseeing. It was freezing. The rain drove down on my exposed skin in needles that were not quite ice.

In Bennett's Run the water was ankle-deep, and my feet went from cold to numb. Skip slipped and I grabbed his arm. Nate steadied us both from behind and kept us from tumbling over backward. Ahead of us I could hear a nasty sound that was half coughing and half choking. Stoke lay in the water like a sodden log, his duffle coat floating around his body and those masses of black hair floating around his face. The cough was deep and bronchial. Fine droplets sprayed from his lips with each gagging, choking outburst. One of his crutches lay next to him, caught between his arm and his side. The other was floating away in the direction of Bennett Hall.

Water slopped over Stoke's pale face. His coughing took on a strangled, gargling quality. His eyes stared straight up into the rain and fog. He gave no sign that he heard us coming, but when I knelt on one side of him and Skip on the other, he tried to beat us away with his hands. Water ran into his mouth and he began to thrash. He was drowning in front of us. I no longer felt like laughing, but I might still have been doing it. At first they were joking, Carol said. At first they were joking. Put on the radio, Pete, I like the oldies.

'Pick him up,' Skip said, and grabbed one of Stoke's shoulders. Stoke slapped at him weakly with one wax-dummy hand. Skip ignored this, might not even have felt it. 'Hurry, for Christ's sake.'

I grabbed Stoke's other shoulder. He splashed water in my face as though we were f**king around in someone's backyard pool. I had thought he'd be as cold as I was, but there was a sickish heat coming off his skin. I looked across his waterlogged body to Skip. Skip nodded back at me. 'Ready ... set ... now.'' We heaved. Stoke came partly out of the water - from the waist up - but that was all. I was astounded by the weight of him. His shirt had come untucked from his pants and floated around his middle like a ballerina's tutu. Below it I could see his white skin and the black bullethole of his navel. There were scars there, too, healed scars wavering every whichway like snarls of knotted string.

'Help out, Natie!' Skip grunted. 'Prop him up, for f**k's sake!' Nate dropped to his knees, splashing all three of us, and grabbed Stoke in a kind of backwards hug. We struggled to get him all the way up and out of the soup, but the slush on the bricks kept us off-balance, made it impossible for us to work together. And Stoke, although still coughing and half-drowned, was also working against us, struggling as best he could to be free of us. Stoke wanted to go back in the water.

The others arrived, Ronnie in the lead. 'Fucking Rip-Rip,' he breathed. He was still giggling, but he looked slightly awestruck. 'You screwed up big this time, Rip. No doubt.'

'Don't just stand there, you numb tool!' Skip cried. 'Help us!' Ronnie paused a moment longer, not angry, just assessing how this might best be done, then turned to see who else was there. He slipped on the slush and Tony DeLucca - also still giggling - grabbed him and steadied him. They were crowded together on the drowned Walk, all my cardplaying buddies from the third-floor lounge, and most of them still couldn't stop laughing. They looked like something, but I didn't know what. I might never have known, if not for Carol's Christmas present . . . but of course that came later.

'You, Tony,' Ronnie said. 'Brad, Lennie, Barry. Let's get his legs.'

'What about me, Ronnie?' Nick asked. 'What about me?' 'You're too small to help lift him,' Ronnie said, 'but it might cheer him up to get his dick sucked.'

Nick stood back.

Ronnie, Tony, Brad, Lennie, and Barry Margeaux slipped past us on either side. Ronnie and Tony got Stoke by the calves.

'Christ Jesus!' Tony cried, disgusted and still half-laughing. 'Nothing to him! Legs like on a scarecrow!'

' "Legs like on a scarecrow, legs like on a scarecrow!"' Ronnie cried, viciously mimicking. 'Pick him the f**k up, you wop nimrod, this isn't art appreciation! Lennie and Barry, get under his deprived ass when they do. Then you come up - '

' - when the rest of you guys lift him,' Lennie finished. 'Got it. And don't call my paisan a wop.'

'Leave me alone,' Stoke coughed. 'Stop it, get away from me . . . f**king losers . . . ' The coughing overtook him again. He began to make gruesome retching sounds. In the lamplight his lips looked gray and slick.

'Look who's talkin about being a loser,' Ronnie said. 'Fuckin half-drowned crippled-up Jerry's Kid homo.' He looked at Skip, water running out of his wavy hair and over his pimply face. 'Count us off, Kirk.'

CHAPTER 23

'One . . . two . . . three . . . now\'

We lifted. Stoke Jones came out of the water like a salvaged ship. We staggered back and forth with him. One of his arms flopped in front of me; it hung there for a moment and then the hand attached to the end of it arced up and slapped me hard across the face. Whacko! I started laughing again.

'Put me down! Motherf*ckers, put me DOWN!'

We staggered, dancing on the slush, water pouring off him, water pouring off us. 'Echolls!' Ronnie bawled. 'Marchant! Brennan! Jesus Christ, little help here you f**kin brain-dead ringmeats, what do you say?'