Hearts in Atlantis(134)

'Yeah, and check mine while you're at it,' I said, standing up next to Nate. 'My old high-school jacket. You can't miss it. It's the one with the peace sign on the back.'

Ebersole studied us through slightly narrowed eyes. Then he asked, 'Exactly when did you put this so-called peace sign on the backs of your jackets, young fellows?'

This time Nate did lie. I knew him well enough by then to know it must have hurt . . . but he did it like a champ. 'September.'

That was it for Dearie. He went nuclear is how my own kids might express it, only that wouldn't be accurate. Dearie went Donald Duck. He didn't quite jump up and down, flapping his arms and going wak-wak-waugh-wak like Donald does when he's mad, but he did give a howl of outrage and smacked his mottled forehead with the heels of his palms. Ebersole stilled him again, this time by gripping his arm.

'Who are you?' Ebersole asked me. More curt than courteous by now.

'Pete Riley. I put a peace sign on the back of my jacket because I liked the look of Stoke's. Also to show I've got some big questions about what we're doing over there in Vietnam.'

Dearie pulled away from Ebersole. His chin was thrust out, his lips pulled back enough to show a complete set of teeth. 'Helping our allies is what we're doing, you doofus!' he shouted. 'If you're too stupid to see that on your own, I suggest you take Colonel Andersen's Intro Military History Class! Or maybe you're just another chickenguts who won't - '

'Hush, Mr Dearborn,' Dean Garretsen said. His quiet was somehow louder than Dearie's shouting. 'This is not the place for a foreign policy debate, nor is it the time for personal aspersions. Quite the contrary.'

Dearie dropped his burning face, studied the floor, and began to gnaw at his own lips.

'And when, Mr Riley, did you put the peace sign symbol on your jacket?' Ebersole asked. His voice remained courteous, but there was an ugly look in his eyes. He knew by then, I think, that Stoke was going to squiggle away, and Ebersole was very unhappy about that. Dearie was small change next to this guy, who in 1966 was a new type on the college campuses of America. Times call the men, Lao-tzu said, and the late sixties called Charles Ebersole. He wasn't an educator; he was an enforcer minoring in public relations.

Don't lie to me, his eyes said. Don't lie to me, Riley. Because if you do and I find out, I'll turn you into salad.

CHAPTER 24

But what the hell. I'd probably be gone come January 15th, anyway; by Christmas of 1967 I might be in Phu Bai, keeping the place warm for Dearie.

'October,' I said. 'Put it on my jacket right around Columbus Day.'

'I've got it on my jacket and some sweatshirts,' Skip said. 'All that stufFs in my room. I'll show it to you, if you want.'

Dearie, still looking down at the floor and red to the roots of his hair, was shaking his head monotonously back and forth.

'I've got it on a couple of my sweatshirts, too,' Ronnie said. 'I'm no peacenik, but it's a cool sign. I like it.'

Tony DeLucca said he also had one on the back of a sweatshirt.

Lennie Doria told Ebersole and Garretsen he had doodled it on the endpapers of several different textbooks; it was on the front of his general assignments notebook as well. He'd show them, if they wanted to see.

Billy Marchant had it on his jacket.

Brad Witherspoon had inked it on his freshman beanie. The beanie was in the back of his closet somewhere, probably beneath the underwear he'd forgotten to take home for his mom to wash.

Nick Prouty said he'd drawn peace signs on his favorite record albums: Meet the Beatles and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. 'You ain't got any mind to bend, dinkleballs,' Ronnie muttered, and there was laughter from behind cupped hands.

Several others reported having the peace sign on books or items of clothing. All claimed to have done this long before the discovery of the graffiti on the north end of Chamberlain Hall. In a final surreal touch, Hugh stood up, stepped into the aisle, and hiked the legs of his jeans so we could see the yellowing athletic socks climbing his hairy shins. A peace sign had been drawn on both with the laundry-marker Mrs Brennan had sent to school with her baby boy - it was probably the first time the f**kin thing had been used all semester.

'So you see,' Skip said when show-and-tell was over, 'it could have been any of us.'

Dearie slowly raised his head. All that remained of his flush was a single red patch over his left eye. It looked like a blister.

'Why are you lying for him?' he asked. He waited, but no one answered. 'Not one of you had a peace sign on a single thing before Thanksgiving break, I'd swear to it, and I bet most of you never had one on anything before tonight. Why are you lying for him?'

No one answered. The silence spun out. In it there grew a sense of power, an unmistakable force we all felt. But who did it belong to? Them or us? There was no way of saying. All these years later there's still no real way of saying.

Then Dean Garretsen stepped to the podium. Dearie moved aside without even seeming to see him. The Dean looked at us with a small and cheerful smile. 'This is foolishness,' he said. 'What Mr Jones wrote on the wall was foolishness, and this lying is more foolishness. Tell the truth, men. 'Fess up.'

No one said anything.

'We'll be speaking to Mr Jones in the morning,' Ebersole said. 'Perhaps after we do, some of you fellows may want to change your stories a bit.'