Hearts in Atlantis(136)

We told him everything that had happened that night, with one exception: the laugh-in which had begun in the lounge when we saw him spraying his way through Bennett's Run and continued until we delivered him, semi-conscious, to the infirmary. He listened silently as I told him about Skip's idea to put peace signs on our books and clothes so Stoke couldn't be hung out all by himself. Even Ronnie Malenfant had gone along, I said, and without a single quibble. We told him so he could jibe his story with ours; we also told him so he'd understand that by trying to take the blame/credit for the graffiti now, he'd get us in trouble as well as himself. And we told him without ever coming right out and telling him. We didn't need to. His legs didn't work, but the stuff between his ears was just fine.

'Get your hand off me, Kirk.' Stoke hunched as far away from us as his narrow bed would allow, then began to cough again. I remember thinking he looked like he had about four months to live, but I was wrong about that; Atlantis sank but Stoke Jones is still in the swim, practicing law in San Francisco. His black hair has gone silver and is prettier than ever. He's got a red wheelchair. It looks great on CNN.

Skip sat back and folded his arms. 'I didn't expect wild gratitude, but this is too much,' he said. 'You've outdone yourself this time, Rip-Rip.'

His eyes flashed. 'Don't call me that!'

'Then don't call us thieves just because we tried to save your scrawny ass. Hell, we did save your scrawny ass!'

'No one asked you to.'

'No,' I said. 'You don't ask anyone for anything, do you? I think you're going to need bigger crutches to haul around the chip on your shoulder before long.'

'That chip's what I've got, shithead. What have you got?'

A lot of catching-up to do, that's what I had. But I didn't tell Stoke that. Somehow I didn't think he'd exactly melt with sympathy. 'How much of that day do you remember?' I asked him.

'I remember putting, the FUCK JOHNSON thing on the dorm - I'd been planning that for a couple of weeks - and I remember going to my one o'clock class. I spent most of it thinking about what I was going to say in the Dean's office when he called me in. What kind of a statement I was going to make. After that, everything fades into little fragments.' He uttered a sardonic laugh and rolled his eyes in their bruised-looking sockets. He'd been in bed for the best part of a week and still looked unutterably tired. 'I think I remember telling you guys I wanted to die. Did I say that?'

I didn't answer. He gave me all the time in the world, but I stood on my right to remain silent.

At last Stoke shrugged, the kind of shrug that says okay, let's drop it. It pulled the johnny he was wearing off one bony shoulder. He tugged it back into place, using his hand carefully - there was an I.V. drip in it. 'So you guys discovered the peace sign, huh? Great. You can wear it when you go to see Neil Diamond or f**king Petula Clark at Winter Carnival. Me, I'm out of here. This is over for me.'

'If you go to school on the other side of the country, do you think you'll be able to throw the crutches away?' Skip asked. 'Maybe run track?'

I was a little shocked, but Stoke smiled. It was a real smile, too, sunny and unaffected. 'The crutches aren't relevant,' he said. 'Time's too short to waste, that's relevant. People around here don't know what's happening, and they don't care. They're gray people. Just-getting-by people. In Orono, Maine, buying a Rolling Stones record passes for a revolutionary act.'

'Some people know more than they did,' I said . . . but I was troubled by thoughts of Nate, who had been worried his mother might see a picture of him getting arrested and had stayed on the curb in consequence. A face in the background, the face of a gray boy on the road to dentistry in the twentieth century.

Dr Carbury stuck his head in the door. 'Time you were on your way, men. Mr Jones has a lot of rest to catch up on.'

We stood. 'When Dean Garretsen comes to talk to you,' I said, 'or that guy Ebersole . . . '

'As far as they'll ever know, that whole day is a blank,' Stoke said. 'Carbury can tell them I had bronchitis since October and pneumonia since Thanksgiving, so they'll have to accept it. I'll say I could have done anything that day. Except, you know, drop the old crutches and run the four-forty.'

'We really didn't steal your sign, you know,' Skip said. 'We just borrowed it.'

Stoke appeared to think this over, then sighed. 'It's not my sign,' he said.

'No,' I agreed. 'Not anymore. So long, Stoke. We'll come back and see you.'

'Don't make it a priority,' he said, and I guess we took him at his word, because we never did. I saw him back at the dorm a few times, but only a few, and I was in class when he moved out without bothering to finish the semester. The next time I saw him was on the TV news almost twenty years later, speaking at a Greenpeace rally just after the French blew up the Rainbow Warrior. 1984 or '85, that would've been. Since then I've seen him on the tube quite a lot. He raises money for environmental causes, speaks on college campuses from that snazzy red wheelchair, defends the eco-activists in court when they need defending. I've heard him called a tree-hugger, and I bet he sort of enjoys that. He's still carrying the chip. I'm glad. Like he said, it's what he's got.

As we reached the door he called, 'Hey?'