The River King

by Alice Hoffman

  The air was surprisingly chilly, at least to someone with thin Florida blood, and although Carlin was wearing a fleecy jacket, on permanent loan from her roommate Pie, she still shivered. In the dark, she couldn’t tell east from west, and once she reached the edge of campus, she thought it best to follow the river. The evening had been leaden, with gray skies and the threat of rain, but now, as Carlin crossed a playing field and found her way into a meadow, the clouds began to clear, allowing a few pale stars to shine in the sky. She passed beneath an old orchard, where deer often congregated at this time of year. Burrs hidden in the tall grass clung to her clothes; field mice, always so bold in the hallways of St. Anne’s after midnight, scurried away at her approach. For more than a hundred years, Haddan students had been following this same route, venturing beyond the riverbanks and the meadows in search of a place where rules could be broken. A passageway leading to the old cemetery had been cut through the brambles and witch hazel. Rabbits had often used this trail as well, and the impression of their tracks—two small paw prints close together, then the larger back feet swung out to land in front—had beaten down a clear path in the grass.

  The first citizens to be buried in the Haddan School cemetery were four boys who gave their lives in the Civil War, and every war since has added to their number. Faculty members who preferred this spot to the churchyard in town could also be interred within these gates, although no one had asked for this privilege for more than twenty years, not since Dr. Howe had passed on at the age of ninety-seven, too stubborn to give in to death until he’d neared the century mark. This cloistered location offered the sort of privacy Carlin had been searching for; if given a choice, she preferred keeping company with the dead rather than having to put up with the girls of St. Anne’s. At least those who’d passed on did not gossip and judge, nor did they wish to exclude anyone from their ranks.

  Carlin unhooked the lock on the wrought-iron gate and slipped inside. She didn’t realize she wasn’t alone until the flare of a match illuminated not only the enormous elm in the center of the cemetery, but the figure beneath it as well. For a moment, Carlin felt her heart heave against her chest, then she saw it was only August Pierce, that silly boy from the train, sprawled out upon a flat, black slab of marble.

  “Well, well. Look who’s here.” Gus was delighted to see her. Although he’d been coming to the cemetery since his first night at Haddan, he was nervous in the dark. There was some dreadful bird in the big elm tree that snickered and called and every time there was a rustling in the bushes Gus felt the urge to run. He had been ever alert, fearing he might have to defend himself against a rabid opossum or a starving raccoon willing to do battle for the Snickers candy bar Gus had stored in his inner coat pocket. With his luck, it was most likely a skunk lying in wait, ready to douse him in a vile cloud of scent. Expecting all of these dreadful things and finding Carlin Leander instead was more than a relief. It was bliss.

  “Automatic suspension if we’re caught smoking,” he informed her as they inhaled on their cigarettes.

  “I don’t get caught.” Carlin had come to perch on the marker of Hosteous Moore, the second headmaster of the Haddan School, who had insisted on swimming in the river every single morning, despite rain, sleet, or snow, only to die of pneumonia in his forty-fourth year. He had been a smoker, too, preferring a pipe, which he took daily, right before his swim.

  Gus grinned, impressed by Carlin’s bravado. He hadn’t the least bit of courage, but it was a trait he greatly admired in others. He stubbed his cigarette out in the dirt beneath a hedge of Celestial roses. Immediately, he lit another. “Chain-smoker,” he confessed. “Bad habit.”

  Carlin pulled her pale hair away from her face as she studied him. In the starlight, she looked silvery and so beautiful, Gus had to force himself to look away.

  “I’ll bet it’s not the only bad habit you’ve got,” Carlin guessed.

  Gus laughed and stretched out on the black marble slab. Eternus Lux was engraved beneath Dr. Howe’s name. Eternal light. “How right you are.” He paused to blow a perfect smoke ring. “But unlike you, I always get caught.”

  Carlin would have suspected as much. He was so vulnerable, with his wide, foolish smile, the sort of boy who would chop off his foot in order to escape from a steel trap, too intent on his own agony to notice that the key had been there beside him all along. He was doing his best to appear casual about their chance meeting, but Carlin could practically see his heart beating beneath his heavy black coat. He was such a nervous wreck it was actually quite sweet. Dear Gus Pierce, ever cursed and denied, would make a true and faithful friend, that much was evident, and Carlin could use an ally. However strange, however unlikely, Gus was the first person she’d truly felt comfortable with since her arrival in Massachusetts. For his part, by the time they walked back along the river, August Pierce would have died for Carlin had he been asked to do so. Indeed, she had read him correctly: in return for a single act of kindness, he would remain forever loyal.

  Carlin’s roommates and the rest of the girls in St. Anne’s could not fathom the friendship, nor understand why Carlin soon spent so much time in Gus’s room at Chalk House, where she lounged on his bed, head resting in the crook of his back, as she read from her Ancient Civilizations text for her class with Mr. Herman or made sketches for Beginning Drawing with Miss Vining. The other girls shook their heads and wondered if Carlin had any sense at all. The boys they wanted were the ones they couldn’t have, the seniors at Chalk, for instance, such as Harry McKenna, who was so good-looking and smooth he could cause someone to grow weak in the knees by bestowing one of his famous smiles on a sweet, unsuspecting girl, or Robbie Shaw, who’d gone through so many coeds during his first year at Haddan he was nicknamed Robo-Robbie, for his inhuman stamina and lack of emotion.

  That the girls at St. Anne’s had no understanding of what should be valued and what was best cast away did not surprise Carlin in the least. She could well imagine what they might do if they ever got hold of the true details of her life before Haddan. Wouldn’t they love to know that her supper often consisted of sandwiches made of white bread and butter? Wouldn’t they be amused to discover she used liquid detergent to wash her hair because it was cheaper than shampoo, and that her lipsticks had all been swiped from the makeup counter at Kmart? The girls at St. Anne’s would have gleefully gossiped for days had they known, so why should Carlin be influenced by their remarks? She chose to ignore Amy’s nasty comments when Gus left notes in their shared locker or sent e-mails; she did not flinch when the house phone rang and Peggy Anthony or Chris Percy shouted up to tell her that her devoted slave was calling, yet again, and could she please tell him not to tie up the phone.

  Carlin particularly looked forward to the messages Gus managed to sneak to her during swim practice. How he got past the matron was simply a mystery, but somehow he achieved what most boys at Haddan only dreamed about: total access to the girls’ gym. He knew any number of worthwhile tricks and had inscribed a nasty message with rubbing alcohol on Amy’s mirror that appeared one day when the air was especially damp. He could unlock the door to the cafeteria after midnight with a skeleton key and, once inside, manage to pry open the freezer and treat himself and Carlin to free Popsicles and ice cream bars. He could pay Teddy Humphrey at the mini-mart for a pack of cigarettes, yet walk out the door with the coins still in the palm of his hand. But the most amazing and astounding feat of all was that Gus Pierce could make Carlin laugh.

  “I don’t get it,” Amy Elliot had said when Gus’s rude remarks surfaced on her mirror. “Does he think this is the way to get people to like him?”

  “My roommates don’t get you,” Carlin told Gus as they walked along the river on their way to the cemetery, wondering if he’d have a reaction and not surprised to find he didn’t care.

  “Few do,” Gus admitted.

  This was especially true in regard to the residents of Chalk House. Chalk was said to be a brotherhood, but as is the case in
some blood families, Gus’s brothers did not appreciate him. After a week they were eager to be rid of him. Ten days more and they downright despised him. As often happens in such close quarters, Gus’s peers did not hold back their distaste; before long, the attic began to stink with their sentiments as they left gifts that announced their disdain: old egg salad sandwiches, decaying fruit, piles of unwashed socks.

  This year there were three freshmen in the attic: David Linden, whose great-grandfather had been governor of the Commonwealth, Nathaniel Gibb from Ohio, the winner of a tristate science fair, and Gus, mistake of mistakes, whose presence testified to the fact that although an individual’s statistics might look fine on paper, in the flesh they could spell disaster. As for Gus, he had come to Haddan with no appreciation for the human race and no expectations of his fellow man. He was fully ready to confront contempt; he’d been beleaguered and insulted often enough to have learned to ignore anything with a heartbeat.

  Still, every once in a while he made an exception, as he did with Carlin Leander. He appreciated everything about Carlin and lived for the hour when they left their books and sneaked off to the graveyard. Not even the crow nesting in the elm tree could dissuade him from his mission, for when he was beside Carlin, Gus acquired a strange optimism; in the light of her radiance the rest of the world began to shine. For a brief time, bad faith and human weakness could be forgotten or, at the very least, temporarily ignored. When it came time to go back to their rooms, Gus followed on the path, holding on to each moment, trying his best to stretch out time. Standing in the shadows of the rose arbor in order to watch Carlin climb back up the fire escape at St. Anne’s, his heart ached. He could tell he was going to be devastated, and yet he was already powerless. Carlin always turned and waved before she stepped through her window and Gus Pierce always waved back, like a common fool, an idiot of a boy who would have done anything to please her.

  From the day he’d arrived in the attic, unpacking at breakneck speed, if that’s what anyone could call tossing belongings haphazardly into a pile in the closet, Gus had known his arrival at Haddan was a mistake. One afternoon, Harry McKenna had knocked on his door to announce there was to be a house meeting that evening, coolly suggesting that Gus had better be there on time. Gus, who didn’t appreciate the superior tone of the older boy any more than he was inspired to take orders, instantly resolved to dodge what was bound to be a boring evening, one he’d just as soon avoid.

  Instead, he had met Carlin in the cemetery and together they watched Orion rise into the eastern sky, high above a line of poplars and maples. It was a beautiful night, and poor Gus sensed something that felt like hope rise within him, not that the euphoria had lasted long. Gus hadn’t understood that what he’d been offered by Harry McKenna was not an invitation, but a mandate. This he realized only upon his return to his room. He’d gotten through the front door of Chalk House unnoticed, nearly two hours past curfew, and had safely made his way up the stairs, but as soon as he reached the attic he knew something was amiss. The door to his room was ajar, and even if he hadn’t remembered closing it when he left, the house was much too quiet, even for such a late hour. Someone wanted to ensure that he learn his lesson son and the lesson was extremely simple: Certain invitations best not be ignored.

  In his room, bedding and clothes had been heaped together, then urinated upon. Lightbulbs had been removed from his lamp to be broken and sprinkled on his window ledge, where the glass glittered prettily, like a handful of diamonds displayed on the peeling wood sash. Gus stretched himself out on his mattress with a bitter taste rising in his throat and lit a cigarette in spite of the no-smoking ordinance, and watched the smoke spiral upward, toward the cracks in the ceiling. In his experience, this was what happened; an individual paid dearly for all that was sweet. Spend the evening with a beautiful girl, walk through the woods on a cool, pleasant night, lie peacefully on another man’s grave to watch the three brilliant stars of Orion, and soon enough a message would arrive to remind you of what you were up against.

  Gus rolled onto his stomach and stubbed his cigarette out on the floor beneath his bed. Red sparks rose up in a stream that made his eyes tear, but he didn’t care; fire was the least of his problems. He was so thin that his bones pressed into the springs of his mattress. Although he was tired, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, not tonight and probably not on any other night. If someone were to weigh the beauty of moonlight against the depth of human cruelty, which would win? Moonlight could not be held in the palm of one’s hand, but cruelty could cut deep. Who could begin to describe the color of moonlight once it had been replaced by the clear light of day? Who could say it had even existed, if it had ever been anything more than a dream?

  After Gus had swept up the broken glass and washed his laundry in the bathtub, he went to check himself into the infirmary. His headache and nausea were real, as was his elevated temperature. Frankly, there weren’t many at Haddan who missed him. His teachers were relieved by his absence; he was a difficult student, disruptive and challenging one moment, bored and withdrawn the next. Carlin was the only one who worried about him, and she looked for him in vain, searching the cemetery and the dining hall. When she finally tracked him down, the school nurse, Dorothy Jackson, informed her there were no visiting hours at the infirmary. And so, Carlin did not see Gus for eight days, not until he was up in his own bed, his coat wrapped around him like a blanket. In the dim light he stared at the ceiling. He had just punched a hole through the old horsehair plaster, the act of someone with no recourse other than shortsighted destruction. There were bits of plaster dusting the floor and the mattress. When she found him, Carlin threw herself down beside him on the bed to examine the results of his anger. It was possible to view the clouds through the hole in the eaves; a square of blue sky peeked at them from between the rotted shingles.

  “You’re insane,” Carlin told Gus.

  But in fact, his actions had just cause. Upon his return, he’d stumbled over the gift his brothers had left for him while he’d been in the infirmary. A bloody rabbit’s foot, so fresh it was warm to the touch, had been deposited on his desk. Gus had picked it up gingerly, wrapped it in tissue, and placed this dreadful talisman into the garbage. And that was how he’d become a desperate individual, a boy who punched holes through plaster, brought low by injustice and shame.

  “Did you think I was normal?” he asked Carlin. During his stay at the infirmary, he hadn’t once changed his clothes. His T-shirt was filthy and his hair was uncombed. He’d often locked himself in the infirmary bathroom, where he smoked so many cigarettes there was still a film of nicotine on his skin and the whites of his eyes had a yellow cast.

  “I didn’t mean insane in a negative way,” Carlin recanted.

  “I see.” Gus’s mouth curled into a smile despite his despair. Carlin could do that to him, cheer him even in the depths of his misery. “You meant insane in a positive way.”

  Carlin propped her feet up against the wall, her long body stretched out against Gus’s even longer one. She held her hand up to the sunshine streaming in through the ceiling, completely unaware that her complexion had turned golden in the light.

  “What will you do when it snows?” she asked.

  Gus turned his head to the wall. Impossible, impossible; he was about to cry.

  Carlin leaned up on one elbow to study him. She gave off the scent of chlorine and jasmine soap. “Did I say something wrong?”

  Gus shook his head; there was a catch in his throat and the sound he emitted resembled the call of that dreadful crow in the cemetery; a wail so dispirited and broken it could barely begin to rise. Carlin lay flat on the bed, the beat of her heart quickening as she waited for him to stop crying.

  “I’ll be gone by the time it snows,” Gus said.

  “No you won’t be. Don’t be ridiculous, you big baby.” Carlin wrapped her arms around him and rocked him back and forth, then tickled him, knowing it would make him laugh. “What would I do without y
ou?”

  This was exactly why Carlin had never wanted to be close to anyone. When she was younger, she’d never even asked for a dog, and was temperamentally unfit to own a pet. It was so easy to be drawn in, to care and to comfort; before you knew it, you’d find yourself responsible for some defenseless creature.

  “Was somebody mean to you?” Carlin threw herself on top of Gus. “Tell me everything and I’ll make them pay I’ll defend you.”

  Gus rolled over to hide his face. There was a limit to how much humiliation even he could take.

  Carlin sat up, her back shoved against the wall, her shoulder blades in the shape of an angel’s wings. “I’m right. Somebody is being mean to you.”

  Down in the cellar, where tadpoles hatched in the trickle of groundwater that always seeped through the concrete no matter how often repairs were made, I larry McKenna and Robbie Shaw had drawn two orange crates close to the air vent. Both boys were good-looking, fair and rawboned, but Harry McKenna possessed a truly extraordinary face. His straw-colored hair had been clipped close to his skull, a style that showed off his outstanding features. Girls swooned when they saw him, and it was said that no one could deny him once he turned on the charm. Sitting in the basement of Chalk House, however, he was not at all pleased, and his irritation showed. His beautiful mouth was twisted into a scowl and he snapped his fingers repeatedly, as if that simple action could erase what he heard through the vent, a flattened piece of metal that ran from the rear of the closets in the attic rooms down to this cellar. Through the vent it was possible to hear nearly every word that was said up above. Even whispers resonated through the tube; a cough or a kiss could be caught and sliced apart for purposes of examination or entertainment. The older Chalk boys always listened in on the new residents, and for this practice they made no apologies. How better to know exactly who was to be relied upon and who needed to be taught a lesson still?