Hearts in Atlantis(92)

I looked out once past Carol (who was looking extraordinarily pretty for so early in the morning) and saw Stoke Jones. His back was to the pass-through window, but you couldn't miss the crutches leaning next to his place, or that peculiar shape drawn on the back of his jacket. Skip had been right; it looked like a sparrow-track (it was almost a year later when I first heard some guy on TV refer to it as 'the track of the great American chicken').

'Do you know what that is?' I asked Carol, pointing.

She looked for a long time, then shook her head. 'Nope. Must be some kind of in-joke.'

'Stoke doesn't joke.'

'Oh my, you're a poet and you don't know it.'

'Quit it, Carol, you're killing me.'

When our shift was over, I walked her back to her dorm (telling myself I was just being nice, that walking Carol Gerber back to Franklin Hall in no way made me unfaithful to Annmarie Soucie back in Gates Falls), then ambled toward Chamberlain, wondering who might know what that sparrow-track was. It occurs to me only at this late date that I never thought of asking Jones himself. And when I reached my floor, I saw something that changed the direction of my thoughts entirely. Since I'd gone out at six-thirty A.M. with one eye open to take my place behind Carol on the dishline, someone had shaving-creamed David Dearborn's door - all around the sides, on the doorknob, and with an extra-thick line along the bottom. In this lower deposit was a bare foot-track that made me smile. Dearie opens his door, clad only in a towel, on his way to the shower, and pooshf, howaya.

Still smiling, I went into 302. Nate was writing at his desk. Observing the way he kept one arm curled protectively around his notebook, I deduced it was that day's letter to Cindy.

'Someone shaving-creamed Dearie's door,' I said, crossing to my shelves and grabbing my geology book. My plan was to head down to the third-floor lounge and do a little studying for the quiz on Tuesday.

Nate tried to look serious and disapproving, but couldn't help smiling himself. He was always trying for self-righteousness in those days and always falling just a little bit short. I suppose he's gotten better at it over the years, more's the pity.

'You should have heard him yell,' Nate said. He snorted laughter, then put one small fist up to his mouth to stifle any further impropriety. 'And swear - for a minute there he was in Skip's league.'

'When it comes to swearing, I don't think anyone's in Skip's league.'

Nate was looking at me with a worried furrow between his eyes. 'You didn't do it, did you? Because I know you were up early - '

'If I was going to decorate Dearie's door, I would have used toilet paper,' I said. 'All my shaving-cream goes on my own face. I'm a low-budget student, just like you. Remember?'

The worry-furrow smoothed out and Nate once more looked like a choirboy. For the first time I realized he was sitting there in nothing but his Jockey shorts and that stupid blue beanie. 'That's good,' he said, 'because David was yelling that he'd get whoever did it and see that the guy was put on disciplinary pro.'

'DP for creaming his f**king door? I doubt it, Nate.'

'It's weird but I think he meant it,' Nate said. 'Sometimes David Dearborn reminds me of that movie about the crazy ship-captain. Humphrey Bogart was in it. Do you know the one I mean?'

'Yeah, The Caine Mutiny.'

'Uh-huh. And David . . . well, let's just say that for him, handing out DP is what being floor-proctor is all about.'

In the University's code of rules and behavior, expulsion was the big gun, reserved for offenses like theft, assault, and possession/use of drugs. Disciplinary probation was a step below that, punishment for such offenses as having a girl in your room (having one in your room after Women's Curfew could tilt the penalty toward explusion, hard as that is to believe now), having alcohol in your room, cheating on exams, plagiarism. Any of these latter offenses could theoretically result in explusion, and in cheating cases often did (especially if the cases involved mid-term or final exams), but mostly it was disciplinary pro, which you carried with you for an entire semester. I didn't like to believe a dorm-proctor would try to get a DP from Dean of Men Garretsen for a few harmless bursts of shaving cream . . . but this was Dearie, a prig who had so far insisted on weekly room inspections and carried a little stool with him so he could check the top shelves of the thirty-two closets which he seemed to feel were a part of his responsibility. This was probably an idea he got in ROTC, a program he loved as fervently as Nate loved Cindy and Rinty. Also he had gigged kids - this practice was still an official part of school policy, although it had been largely forgotten outside the ROTC program - who didn't keep up with their housework. Enough gigs and you landed on DP. You could in theory flunk out of school, lose your deferment, get drafted, and wind up dodging bullets in Vietnam because you repeatedly forgot to empty the trash or sweep under the bed.

David Dearborn was a loan-and-scholarship boy himself, and his proctor's job was - also in theory - no different from my dishline job. That wasn't Dearie's theory, though. Dearie considered himself A Cut Above the Rest, one of the few, the proud, the brave. His family came from the coast, you see; from Falmouth, where in 1966 there were still over fifty Blue Laws inherited from the Puritans on the books. Something had happened to his family, had Brought Them Low like a family in an old stage melodrama, but Dearie still dressed like a Falmouth Prep School graduate, wearing a blazer to classes and a suit on Sundays. No one could have been more different from Ronnie Malenfant, with his gutter mouth, his prejudices, and his brilliance with numbers. When they passed in the hall you could almost see Dearie shrinking from Ronnie, whose red hair kinked over a face that seemed to run away from itself, bulging brow to almost nonexistent chin. In between were Ronnie's perpetually gum-caked eyes and perpetually dripping nose . . . not to mention lips so red he always seemed to be wearing something cheap and garish from the five-and-dime.