Hearts in Atlantis(129)

Randy and Billy splashed forward. Others - three or four drawn by the shouts and splashing, most still from the third-floor Hearts group - took hold of Stoke as well. We turned him awkwardly, probably looking like the world's most spastic cheerleading squad, for some reason out practicing in the downpour. Stoke had quit struggling. He lay in our grip, arms hanging out to either side, palms up and filling with little cups of rain. Diminishing waterfalls ran out of his sodden jacket and from the seat of his pants. He picked me up and carried me, Carol had said. Talking about the boy with the crewcut, the boy who had been her first love. All the way up Broad Street on one of the hottest days of the year. He carried me in his arms. I couldn't get her voice out of my head. In a way I never have.

'The dorm?' Ronnie asked Skip. 'We takin him into the dorm?'

'Jeepers, no,' Nate said. 'The infirmary.'

Since we'd managed to get him out of the water - that was the hardest part and it was behind us - the infirmary made sense. It was a small brick building just beyond Bennett Hall, no more than three or four hundred yards away. Once we got off the path and onto the road, the footing would be good.

So we carried him to the infirmary - bore him up at shoulder height like a slain hero being ceremonially removed from the field of battle. Some of us were still laughing in little snorts and giggles. I was one of them. Once I saw Nate looking at me as if I was a thing almost below contempt, and I tried to stop the sounds that were coming out of me. I'd do okay for a little while, then I'd think of him spinning on the pivot of his crutch ('The Olympic judges give him . . . ALL TENS!'} and I'd start in again.

Stoke only spoke once as we carried him up the walk to the infirmary door. 'Let me die,' he said. 'For once in your stupid greedy-me-me lives do something worthwhile. Put me down and let me die.'

35

The waiting room was empty, the television in the corner showing an old episode of Bonanza to no one at all. In those days they hadn't really found the handle on color TV yet, and Pa Cartwright's face was the color of a fresh avocado. We must have sounded like a herd of hippopotami just out of the watering-hole, and the duty-nurse came on the run. Following her was a candystriper (probably a work-study kid like me) and a little guy in a white coat. He had a stethoscope hung around his neck and a cigarette poked in the corner of his mouth. In Atlantis even the doctors smoked.

'What's the trouble with him?' The doc asked Ronnie, either because Ronnie had an in-charge look or because he was the closest at hand.

'Took a header in Bennett's Run while he was on his way to Holyoke,' Ronnie said. 'Damned near drowned himself.' He paused, then added: 'He's a cripple.'

As if to underline this point, Billy Marchant waved one of Stoke's crutches. Apparently no one had bothered to salvage the other one.

'Put that thing down, you want to f**kin bonk my brains out?' Nick Prouty asked waspishly, ducking.

'What brains?' Brad responded, and we all laughed so hard we nearly dropped Stoke.

'Suck me sideways, ass-breath,' Nick said, but he was laughing, too.

The doctor was frowning. 'Bring him in here, and save that language for your bull sessions.' Stoke began coughing again, a deep, ratcheting sound. You expected to see blood and filaments of tissue come popping out of his mouth, that cough was so heavy.

We carried Stoke down the infirmary hallway in a conga-line, but we couldn't get him through the door that way. 'Let me,' Skip said.

'You'll drop him,' Nate said.

'No,' Skip said. 'I won't. Just let me get a good hold.'

He stepped up beside Stoke, then nodded first to me on his right, then to Ronnie on his left.

'Lower him down,' Ronnie said. We did. Skip grunted once as he took Stoke's weight, and I saw the veins pop out in his neck. Then we stood back and Skip carried Stoke into the room and laid him on the exam table. The thin sheet of paper covering the leather was immediately soaked. Skip stepped back. Stoke was staring up at him, his face dead pale except for two red patches high on his cheekbones - red as rouge, those patches were. Water ran out of his hair in rivulets.

'Sorry, man,' Skip said.

Stoke turned his head away and closed his eyes.

'Out,' the doctor told Skip. He had ditched the cigarette somewhere. He looked around at us, a gaggle of perhaps a dozen boys, most still grinning, all dripping on the hall's tile floor. 'Does anyone know the nature of his disability? It can make a difference in how we treat him.'

I thought of the scars I'd seen, those tangles of knotted string, but said nothing. I didn't really know anything. And now that the uncontrollable urge to laugh had passed, I felt too ashamed of myself to speak up.

'It's just one of those cripple things, isn't it?' Ronnie asked. Actually faced with an adult, he had lost his shrill cockiness. He sounded unsure, perhaps even uneasy. 'Muscular palsy or cerebral dystrophy?'

'You clown,' Lennie said. 'It's muscular dystrophy and cerebral - '

'He was in a car accident,' Nate said. We all looked around at him. Nate still looked neat and totally put together in spite of the soaking he'd taken. This afternoon he was wearing a Fort Kent High School ski-hat. The Maine football team had finally scored a touchdown and freed Nate from his beanie; go you Black Bears. Tour years ago. His father, mother, and older sister were killed. He was the only family survivor.'