But when he opened his mouth he could only scream, and taste the sting of falling snow.
The Key to English
It was a May-and-mountain rain, falling less like drops than ribbons into grass and new leaves with a steady, unnerving hiss wavered sporadically before a desultory wind. An all-day rain neither stormy nor shower, not hard enough to obscure the campus nor driving enough to keep the students penned within their grey brick dorms. It fell, and dripped incessantly from gutters still clogged with autumn debris and disappeared into the several streams that patchworked the playing fields.
At a window on the third and topmost floor of Hamilton Hall a boy watched the day drag, and he frowned nervously. With classes ended and lacrosse practice postponed by the weather, he could only stare, uncaringly tracing the landscaped delta with the six-story Burr Memorial Class/Administration Building at its apex. He stared, saw and ignored the looming presence of the glass-and-blue- steel structure and the split tongues of walk that joined it with its sisters at the triangle's base. Four o'clock sessions had just ended, and windbreakered students hurried toward him, huddled like driven sheep, with not one stepping on the grass.
With his hands burrowed in his pockets he blinked at the rain and turned around, propping himself against the damp sill. He had just awakened from a restless nap and for a panic-dark moment believed he'd been caught. His underclothes had been drenched, his hands fisted, and tendrils of a dream trailed behind him to the shower.
There were Chandler and Murray and Simpson, smiling...
He thought about visiting the girls' dorm to see Barb or Irene; he thought about sitting, decided to stand. He knew the signs, smiling at himself, but cautioned his breathing that he would have to wait as he'd planned. Evening would be soon enough; it would have to be whether he liked it or not. In his pocket, fingers curled around the stolen key. The metal was cold, despite his grip, and only disquietingly comforting in its promise. He was beginning to wish his father had never heard of DelMer.
"Listen, son," the seldom-seen man had said this past August. "Public schools and you just aren't getting along. Now this DelMer doesn't seem to be a place for geniuses. It's where normal guys go to get a step ahead of the college game. I've been there, and the instructors seem as tireless and enthusiastic as any I've ever seen. I think you should try it. Maybe it can give you something I can't. What do you say?" Later, the boy had learned that he'd been already enrolled, and his answer had been a mere formality, as always.
But Dad, he wanted to say now that the fear had come, it's no fun here. Everything is too damned perfect, you know what I mean? Those instructors of yours know all the answers all the time, and you can't really kid with them. At least if I needed help in the city, I could stay after for a while. Here, if I don't grab somebody by last class, I'm out of luck. They disappear. Sometimes they hang around the lounges—remember those crummy pictures in the brochure?—but God Almighty, all they do is talk about the school and how great it is and how we're the look of the future and we should tell all our friends what a great education we're getting. They sound like public relations people, not teachers. I tell you, Dad, it scares me sometimes. It really does.
"And I think I know why," he said aloud. "And that scares me even more."
...Becketton, Ainstrom, and Tander, grasping; and faces that froze in smiles and frowns, and faded at sunset to rise at dawn...
A distant thud of thunder turned him back to watch the rain, then turn again after pulling down the red-grey shade against a chill that ignored the thick smoke-glass window. At the same moment the door slammed open, and a boy fully a head taller than he stalked angrily in, shaking water from his poncho.
"Randy!" he shouted, "that Becketton is a bald-headed evil-minded bastard." He yanked the slick green plastic over his red hair and threw it into a corner. "Do you know what he did? Do you have any idea?" Randy only smiled. "He waits until we're all there dripping and sneezing, and then tells us we deserve a break and we should all go back to our rooms and take a nice long nap! I don't think I'll be able to eat dinner I'm so mad. That guy just isn't human. He is just not for real."
Randy's smile broadened to a grin and he shook his head, saying nothing. Kartre's intolerance of the faculty's penchant for being human once in a while was legendary and fanatical, and no one took him seriously when he threatened to revive the long-dead school paper and expose them all.
"Life is hard, Kart," he said while his roommate disappeared into his bedroom and returned in dry jeans and a too-large sweater. "You should learn to take the good with the bad, the evil with the innocent. Remember what Shelley said about blithe spirits and birds."
"Assuming he said anything at all worth remembering, I could care less. It sounds like you had an English Lit session this morning. What did dear old 42C Chandler bull on about that's filled you with such epigrammatical wisdom?"
"I really couldn't tell you," Randy said. "I was thinking most of the time. About tonight." He glanced up at Kartre, but there was no reaction, and he frowned. "All I remember was that she wore a high-necked dress."
"Aha!" Kartre said from within the depths of a refrigerator they'd hidden in the room's only closet.
"Aha what?"
Kartre returned to the room empty-handed and immediately staked out his favorite chair, a rocker that never seemed able to tilt back far enough to suit him; as a result, he always appeared to be talking to the ceiling. "Aha, someone's been pinching our beer. But to return to our favorite girl: it sounds like Headmaster Ainstrom had a long talk with her about the birds and the bees after that nofront thing she wore last week. Shame on her! It certainly wouldn't do to have us wee boys see too much ripe sex. The chicks here are bad enough the way they flaunt themselves.”
Thinking of the comparatively drab Philadelphia girls he'd been used to, Randy said, "You should have done three years in a public school, you wouldn't be complaining so much. I—" A pause then as a heavy knock interrupted him. He started to his feet, his hand automatically covering the key in his pocket. "Come on," he called. "Only God and Ainstrom need passes here."
Barbara Black and Irene Rosen were the only girls not intimidated or repulsed by the boys' rough manners and rougher play, and for that reason the four of them found themselves oddly united against the world, faculty, and freshmen until graduation blew them apart. This night, however, Randy noticed immediately a perceptible split in their front. Barb, with rounded face and hair as dark as her name, headed straight for the refrigerator without acknowledging either boy's greeting. Irene, who seemed to Randy to be the incarnation of Walter Scott's Rebecca, roughly shoved his legs aside and joined him on the sofa, her hair gleaming wet. She fluffed at it a minute, then pulled a comb from her purse and began pushing it back from her face. Silently. Her eyes nervous, her mouth tightly shut. Kartre began an atonal whistling, and Randy felt the room closing darkly around him.
"All right," he said resignedly. "What's up?"
"You know Evan Johnston?" Irene said. "He's the—"
"Junior, yeah," Kartre interrupted. "We know him, don't we, Randy? Soccer center, shortstop; he's in our chem class."
"Was," Irene corrected. "He's gone. Clothes, books, furniture, everything."
"Uh," Kartre grunted, almost as if he'd been punched. He paled suddenly, and one hand worked at his chin. "Oh, brother. He saw Ainstrom, I guess, huh?"
"He had an appointment first thing this morning," Barb said, gulping her words to keep from crying. "Karen was in the office when that night proctor of yours, Owens, brought him in. Old lady Tander chased her out when she tried to hang around, and she didn't hear a thing. After English she went up to his room, and the door was wide open, the place cleaned out. Like he'd never been there." She stared at the can of beer in her hand, then drained it and popped open another. “I don't think we should go on with it. I'd just as soon not get shipped out that way. It's happened—what, three times? I get the creeps, I don't mind telling you. The least Ainstrom could have do
ne was let him say good-bye. I mean, he was a nice kid, really. Not like a jock at all."
"For crying out loud, Barb!" Randy snapped. "You sound like he was dead. You'll get to see him when his mother comes to fetch him. For crying out loud!" He stood abruptly and went to the window, staring at the shade a moment until he snapped it up into the glare of lightning. He was frustrated, becoming frantic because, despite his rising anger, he sympathized with his friends. Though DelMer had few regulations, their violation brought radical response, and none of the four had any doubts about the reaction to what Randy had planned for that evening: it was the same investigation that had just cost Evan his junior year, or more.
"We won't even get a letter," Irene said quietly.
And then there were the stories whispered from senior to senior that terrified and tempted. But tales they were, and he was only interested in what was so damned important about the storeroom on Burr Memorial's sixth floor. Closet skeletons intrigued him; school secrets mesmerized him.
"All right, come on," he said loudly, turning suddenly and clapping his hands so that Barb jumped and Irene scowled. "I ain't going to steal anything, so what's the worry? If I get caught and hustled out, my dad'll raise hell and I'll be back in a week. If not, damnit, I'll write."
"No one else has," Kartre said sullenly.
"Okay, okay," Randy said, sitting cross-legged on the floor. "I can take the hint. You want out, right? You're still scared, and you don't think one lousy room that cost a pal his education—and God °nly knows how many more there are—you don't think that's worth the risk of getting expelled."
Barb nodded quickly. "It's just too silly, Ran. Just because you've got a... a thing about this stupid room doesn't mean I have to risk my Vassar acceptance. It would kill me to lose it."
"She's right,” said Irene. “You and your damned imagination have made a lovely little mystery about this, and it's really quite good. But adventures belong back in your precious Philadelphia, not out here in the middle of nowhere."
Randy began rocking on his buttocks to the tune of the urgency he felt growing with their retreat. "Do you really think this place is so hot? I mean, with teachers you can't talk to, computers that whistle and do tricks with books, TV screens all over the place like a damned spy movie? You call this education? My God, I thought this place was supposed to be experimental with the big sweet government pouring in the money to make us special. Well, where does it go? What's the goddamned experiment? DelMer, shit! Hell, we had computers and TV in Philadelphia too."
"Damnit,” Kartre said, ceasing his nervous rocking and leaning forward on his forearms and knees. "I wish you guys would quit your fighting. I want to get this thing settled."
"What's to settle? We're not going," Barb said, looking to Irene for her nod of support. "We're scared. We don't want to get caught."
"But we won't get caught," Randy said, much louder than he'd intended. "All you guys have to do is stand and watch. I'm the one who's doing the breaking in. What's the big deal?"
"Risk," Kartre said levelly, and Randy twisted around to glare at his betrayal. "Irene's right. Barb's right. Maybe your dad doesn't care about you like you always say, but ours do. We're not going to blow this chance for college. We re not that smart, Randy, but this place gives us an in. I'm sorry, pal, but I'm not going either."
"Well, thanks a hell of a lot. You sure picked a great time to tell me."
Irene, her eyes deer-scared, slid from the couch to sit in front of him. "Randy, you've been on your own for so long, you just can't understand. We have to be safe. We can't afford the risk."
Randy brushed his hair back from his forehead and rubbed his eyes. He was tired, and he wanted to sleep, wanted to drown. "Listen... there are risks and there are risks. Ever since I was nailed for going up those stairs, I've wanted to see what it was they're hiding in that storeroom."
"They're not hiding anything!" Kartre interrupted. "It's only a goddamned place for supplies. What's so damned important about supplies?"
"We are not communicating," Randy said slowly. "It's just that... well, look, remember the day Chandler ran out of comp paper and I offered to go get it? Don't you remember how she looked? Like I'd asked permission to rape her! That's the only time she's ever lost her cool in front of the class. In fact, that's the first time I've seen any of them be anything else but reasonable, calm, and god-awful smiling. Now, doesn't something like that get on your nerves?"
"What?" Barb said. "Their smiling?"
"Oh, hell," Randy said in quiet desperation. "How dense can you get? Why would she get so excited about a lousy supply room? Why did I get in trouble for trying to get up there? Why was Johnston expelled? Have you ever seen the parking lot? It's practically empty all the time, every day, even when there're classes going on. Why? Why the hell is that proctor, Owens, so concerned about our room checks? I mean, where would we go?" He stopped, stared, seeking answers in their sympathetic expressions and finding only more sympathy. He scrambled to his feet and headed for the door. "If I'm not back by eleven-thirty, cover with Owens for me, will you, Kartre?"
"Hey, wait a minute! You're not going to try this by yourself!"
"Why not? It's the story of my life." And he slammed the door before they could respond, before he started crying. He hesitated on the landing, then took the stairs two at a time, the hand gliding on the bannister for balance burning by the time he skidded to the bottom. The lobby, green and gold, was empty; the proctor, he thought, was probably out hunting a cup of coffee. He leaned back to look up the stairwell, but he heard no pursuit, no calling him back. He trembled, then clenched his fists and ran across the polished floor and out into the wind.
The campus was still. The walks, dotted with light from dark- Hooded globes, were deserted and gleaming wetly. The spotlights that flooded the front of Hamilton Hall blinded him until he sidestepped, hunching against the wall away from a rising wind. He wiped a sleeve under his nose, shoved a hand through his hair in a vain attempt to keep it from his eyes. A moment, then, as he watched juniper and holly twist away from him in the path of the wind. Indecision. A radio's blare.
...caught in a fog web while expert fingers, wristless, molded womb-warm plastic to his face, whispering equations in his ear, laughing...
A girl's laugh, a boy's reply.
...while his featureless father shrugged and shredded his picture his dead mother, formless, took when he was two...
Slowly he pushed himself away from the building and walked with eyes down until he found himself beyond the triangle on the edge of the soccer field. The clouds, regrouping, blackened the stars, and the vast treeless field ahead seemed less in shadow than drowned in black water.
"There be demons," he whispered, and turned away, keeping the triangle on his left as he headed toward Burr Memorial. A night watchman, preceded by a wavering pool of grey light, suddenly rounded a corner of the Student Union, and Randy ducked behind a tree, pressing his back to its winter roughness, the spring dampness. The watchman hurried by, muttering to himself, and Randy could not help but grin. Wiping a splatter of rain from his cheek, he waited until the man's footsteps were taken by the wind before he resumed his walking.
He moved slower now, reluctantly allowing his friends' timidity to clutter his thinking. They were as bad as the instructors, promising warmth and withholding it when it was needed. He had had enough of so-called experimental education, of seminars with a TV screen and discussions with soulless men who brooked no humanity outside the norm. He had thought his father had rescued him from cousins and aunts in the city, but realized now that the man could care less. In Philadelphia, at least, he had come to treasure a sense of being alive among living people. At DelMer he had begun to feel like a graveyard caretaker.
The key to English, Miss Chandler had said, is precision of language to facilitate communication. *
"Damn, Miss Chandler," he said to the tips of his shoes. "Why don't you practice what you preach?"
And when
he looked up, he had reached the rear of the Memorial, as dark as the front was lighted. Cautiously he stepped along the side of the walk, using the grass there to muffle his footsteps. There was a door on the side that the watchmen used to exit for their rounds. On four previous nights, he'd noticed they'd kept it from locking so they could return without trouble. He smiled at their innocent sense of security. DelMer students apparently did not have the nerve to explore. He broadened his smile. Having only been there since September, he had not been conditioned to think that way; and he waited a long and windy minute before dashing to the door, pulling it open, and sliding inside.
He immediately flattened against the wall, panting as if he'd just run a wind sprint. The rear stairwell was dimly lighted, and he moved upward without hesitation, on his toes, avoiding the stairs' metal edges. His right hand slid along the outside wall as he climbed in a half crouch, his ears trying to encompass the silence of the building and isolate potential danger. A noise; he froze: the sighing of the wind. On each of the first five landings he hurried past the glowing red fire-exit signs; on the sixth floor, no light, no sign. Only a door without a window.
Cupping one hand into a fist, Randy blew into it to dry his palm. His legs, strained from the awkward ascent, trembled slightly, but not enough to worry him should he have to run. It was like old times, then, creeping around school after basketball games, looking for open lockers or doors and the mischief they promised. Gingerly, he took the door's bar handle in his hand. The sudden thought that it might be wired jerked the hand away, but there was nothing but his counterpoint breathing to the keening wind. He regrasped the handle and pulled slowly until the door slid toward him. Closing his eyes momentarily, he expelled a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding and quickly eased through the opening.
The darkness was unrelieved, and he felt a surge of panic when the door shut silently behind him. Hastily he tested it to be positive he could leave, then shuffled down the hall. He knew the English Department storeroom was just around the far corner, and, in spite of himself, he hurried, gliding his hands along the tiled wall until a doorknob cracked against a knuckle. He took a lighter from his pocket and checked the tiny hand-printed card tacked to the frame.
Tales from the Nightside Page 21