Sticks and Stones - Lynn Hall (smarten punctuation)

by Lynn Hall

  At length, aware that people were glancing at him, he raised his head from the fascination of the see-through floor and focused his eyes on the books in front of him. He was in the sociology section. With a sudden hunger he began pulling books from the shelf and scanning their indexes for chapters on homosexuality.

  Five hours later he started home. Most of that time he had been immersed in the sociology books. He knew a little more about the subject now, but none of the books had told him what he so desperately needed to know. They were filled with generalities, with possible causes and sociological explanations, but none said “This is how you can tell whether or not you are one.”

  Only in the last hour or so, after he had devoured all he could find on the only subject that mattered, did Tom work on his theme. Then, in desperation, he had moved to the next aisle, put out his hand, and taken a book from the shelf. It happened to be a biography of Julien Dubuque. As fast as he could, Tom went through the book, writing down facts, incidents, dates, anything that caught his eye.

  The drive home took even longer than the trip down because a freezing rain had begun to fall and many of the hills were difficult to climb. Tom caught himself thinking how glad he was to have the tire chains on, about the afternoon he and Ward had put them on, about Ward …

  It was dark by the time he got to Buck Creek, although it was only five o’clock. He parked in front of The Cottage and was gathering his notebook and gloves when he saw Ward’s Jeep parked by the hotel. The lights were on in the hotel dining room, and Tom could see with an unreal clarity the shape of Ward’s head in the window. Ward was watching him.

  Feeling suddenly awkward, as though he were walking across a stage to a piano, Tom crossed the street and went into the hotel. Ward’s eyes met his and drew him to the corner table by the windows. Tom sat down.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  Beulah came with her order pad and stood smiling down at them. If there was anything unpleasant in her smile, Tom didn’t see it. He was absorbed with Ward’s face.

  Ward said, “Bring him a cup of coffee and fill me up again, will you, please?”

  Nothing more was said until Beulah had finished and gone.

  “How have you been?” Ward said. He spoke quietly although the room was nearly empty.

  “Okay. How about you?”

  “All right. You don’t look so good, though. You’ve been worrying. I’ll bet you haven’t been playing the piano lately, have you?”

  Tom was startled. “How did you know?”

  “You look all tensed up. Start playing again. You need it.”

  Tom was suddenly flushed with a delicious sense of being cared about and worried about. His throat tightened.

  When he was able to talk, he said, “Have you been in here long?”

  “Most of the afternoon.”

  “Waiting for me?”

  “Yes. But listen, don’t worry; I understand how you feel about me, I mean after that last little talk we had …”

  Tom made a motion with his hand, but his eyes couldn’t meet Ward’s. He looked out at the river.

  Ward went on, “… so I don’t want you to think I’m going to be—bothering you, or anything like that. That’s the last thing I want, believe me. But I just had to show you this.”

  Tom took the manilla envelope from Ward and pulled out a legal-looking form and an attached letter that began, “Dear Mr. Alexander: We are very pleased to accept for publication your manuscript Spaces Between. We think that this is one of the finest first novels we have seen, and we feel confident that it will be accepted enthusiastically by critics and readers alike. Enclosed is our standard contract…”

  Tom looked across the table, his eyes, his whole face, shining. For a long moment they grinned foolishly at each other. Finally Tom sighed as though he had been holding his breath for months.

  “You did it.” He spoke quietly, but his voice rang with pride. Their eyes met, and emotions flickered between them—joy, excitement, and something deeper, a question from Ward, an evasion from Tom.

  They sat for several moments while Ward talked about the contract, the publication date, the advance check, the possibility of a motion picture sale, every fascinating paragraph of the contract.

  “What are you going to do with the advance check when it comes?” Tom asked. He was fighting a growing need.

  “Part of it will go for getting Sweet Ridge wired for electricity. I already talked to the REC office, and they said they can run lines down from my folks’ place and it won’t cost too much. Then I’ll be able to install an electric pump on the well, and get some plumbing in there.”

  “All the comforts of home.” Tom wanted to ask what was new out at the place, how the heater was standing up to the sub-zero weather, if Ward was having trouble with mice getting inside where it was warm. He almost asked what Ward was going to do to celebrate becoming a published author, but he couldn’t. That had been one of their favorite daydreams, the big celebration. They’d planned to get dressed up in their very best and drive to Dubuque or LaCrosse and have dinner at the fanciest place they could find, complete with the most expensive wines and liqueurs, then maybe stay overnight so they wouldn’t have to worry about being sober enough to drive home. Or, if it happened in the summertime, they’d thought maybe they’d have a gigantic barbeque at Sweet Ridge, invite everyone they could think of and dig a barbeque pit and be cohosts to the social event of the year in Buck County.

  Now, Tom had the feeling that this cup of coffee, shared in the hotel dining room on a January evening, was going to be the extent of Ward’s celebration. More than he had ever longed for anything in his life, Tom longed to throw himself back into the waiting warmth of the old friendship. He knew it wouldn’t be the same; it couldn’t be the same now that the knowledge of what Ward was, was there between them. Even so, Ward was a haven and Tom was battered and exhausted from all that the winter had done to him.

  The room was beginning to fill up with Saturday night diners. Robert Short and his parents came in and sat down across the room. They looked at Tom, smiled, nodded, then glanced with controlled expressions at one another.

  Tom had a burning, exposed feeling. Suddenly the room was too bright, too open. He was too aware of the picture of himself and Ward sitting together at the isolated corner table. Forces he couldn’t handle were splitting him down the middle. Ward was studying him with a veiled but penetrating sadness; Robert Short, who was bright and normal and had no problems and should have been his friend to begin with, was studying him from across the room, out of the corners of his eyes, thinking…

  “I’ve got to get home,” Tom said suddenly. “Mom will be wondering. It was nice to see you again, and congratulations about the book.” He was aware that his voice was a shade too loud, that he was hoping it would reach Robert and his family. He couldn’t help himself. Looking away from Ward’s eyes, he left the hotel and walked swiftly home.

  20

  Most of Sunday Tom spent working on the theme about Julien Dubuque. By the end of the day it had been stretched to the proper length, padded with repetition and pointlessly expanded detail, and typed, but he didn’t feel good about it. He felt as though he had written five-thousand words and hadn’t said anything. It worried him to know that this theme was going to account for half of his semester grade in English, but he didn’t know what more he could do to make it better. And there were still the college algebra and journalism and English and government and chemistry tests to study for. The tests would be scattered throughout the coming week so there would be a little time for preparation between them, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

  By Sunday evening he knew he was going to be in trouble with the tests, and yet somehow it didn’t seem to matter very much. When he opened a textbook, he saw Ward’s sad eyes; he saw the blue-orange flame of the oil stove giving light and warmth to Sweet Ridge, Ward’s legs and his own extended toward the fire, ugly ceramic mugs of tomato soup …


  He closed the book and went downstairs to the living room. Charlotte and Harv were in the kitchen with their cribbage board set up at the table by the windows. Tom heard their voices only faintly as he opened the piano and began to play “None But the Lonely Heart.”

  By noon on Friday all the tests were over, and the school was filled with the giddiness of relief. The afternoon classes were so casual as to be a farce, with both students and teachers so glad to have the tests over with that it was pointless to try to get any work done.

  At two o’clock a message was circulated from Mr. McNamar’s office. “There will be an informal assembly in fifteen minutes, to cheer our state music contestants on their way. They will be departing immediately afterward for Des Moines, so let’s give them a big send-off. After the assembly, you’re free to leave. Have a good weekend, and come back ready to start the new semester.”

  An assembly to cheer the departing music contestants. Tom slid deeper into his seat and wondered if he could get away with skipping the assembly. He could go down the hall to the rest room and hang around in there till the rest of them were in the auditorium, then duck around to the side door.

  I can’t sit in there and watch Karen and them up on that stage, he thought grimly. Soaking it all in and smirking and being excited about their stupid trip to finals. Not when I know darn well

  I’m twice the musician they are, all combined. Funny, I thought I didn’t care anymore about not going to finals. With all this other mess, I guess I just forgot about it for a while. I could have won this year. I…

  The bell jarred him up from his seat and sent him out into the hall with the rest of the class. He headed for the rest room, but before he got there, Mr. McNamar was blocking his way.

  “Tom, could I see you for a minute?”

  They went into Mr. McNamar’s office, and the principal closed the door behind them. He turned to look at Tom with eyes that were concerned, gentle.

  “I didn’t think you’d mind missing out on a few minutes of this assembly. Do you?”

  “Heck no.” Tom met the man’s gaze, but he couldn’t stand the compassion he saw there. He looked away.

  “Tom, I’d like to—sit down, why don’t you? I’d like to talk to you for a minute. Have you been having a rough time lately? I mean, outside of school?”

  “No.” Tom looked down at the floor.

  “I think you have. I’m not going to pry into your private problems, Tom, but I do have to talk to you about the way these problems are affecting your work. I’m sure you realize you’ve been slipping lately.”

  Tom nodded. He couldn’t have forced a single word up through his throat.

  Mr. McNamar, perched on the corner of his

  desk with one foot dangling nervously, sighed and went on with it. “I’ve been talking with your teachers. The final scores aren’t in yet on all of your semester tests, but it doesn’t look good.”

  Tom stared up, suddenly afraid. “You mean I didn’t even get passing grades?”

  McNamar shook his head slowly, sadly. “It looks as though you’re not going to have enough credits to graduate with your class. You started out all right, but you’ve evidently allowed your personal problems to get in the way of your studies. I’m afraid this whole semester is going to have to go down the drain. What I hate about this whole thing is that you’re a bright person. You’re intelligent, Tom. You belong in probably the top five percent of the whole school, but you’re just not using what you’ve got. Your teachers tell me—”

  “I thought I’d get low C’s or maybe a couple of D’s,” Tom interrupted in a faraway voice. “I never thought about—flunking.”

  “And there’s no reason in the world why a boy like you should flunk, but that’s exactly what you’ve managed to do. I must admit this is nearly as big a disappointment to me as it is to you, Tom. When your records were transferred from your other school, I thought we were getting ourselves an outstanding student.”

  “I skipped third grade,” Tom said in the same faraway voice. “Did you know that? They thought I was so advanced it would be a waste of time for me to take third grade, so they skipped me.

  That’s why I’ll be only seventeen when I grad—no …”

  “Now listen, Tom, it’s not the end of the world. If you can pull yourself together, get your personal problems in their proper perspective so you can dig in and study, you can probably salvage this next semester. You can graduate at midterm a year from now. You probably won’t be able to get into college right away then, and, frankly, failing this term is going to go against you when you’re being considered by college admissions boards, but if you’ve got what it takes, you can still overcome it. Worse things than this—”

  “May I go now?”

  Mr. McNamar studied him for a moment, then sighed and stood up. “Sure. Go ahead. And, Tom, I’m sorry about this.”

  “Yeah. So am I.”

  As he opened the door to the outer office, Tom stared, for a frozen instant, into the face of Floyd Schleffe. Floyd looked back with an expression that was too blank, too bland.

  Outside, the Des Moines-bound school bus was taking on its load of musicians, luggage, instrument cases, and chaperones. Those already inside the bus had opened the windows and were calling down to the crowd outside. Jeers, jokes, hilarious advice, and good-luck wishes blew around Tom as he moved past the bus.

  A hand on his arm stopped him. It was Mr. Knapp, his nose red with the cold, his earmuffs somehow ridiculous on his bare bald head. His face was sober.

  “Tom, you don’t know how much I wish you were going.”

  Tom’s head was so filled with Mr. McNamar’s words, “failing … flunking,” that suddenly there were no controls between thought and speech. He said, “Then why didn’t you stick up for me, Mr. Knapp? Did you think it was true, about me being…”

  Mr. Knapp’s eyes moved away from Tom’s and focused somewhere behind him. “Of course not, Tom. That’s just vicious talk. You mustn’t let it get to you. Ah, excuse me, they’re waiting for me on the bus.”

  Tom looked after him and said softly, “You could at least be honest about it.”

  Futility filled him and held him heavily in place while the bus pulled away. It came to him suddenly that there was very little point in fighting the phantom rumor any longer. If not even Mr. Knapp was giving him the benefit of a doubt, no one at Great River High School was likely to.

  Slowly he moved toward the Volkswagen. At that moment he would have given nearly anything to have had access to Sweet Ridge and Ward’s compassion.

  He opened the car door. Floyd was sitting in the passenger’s seat, waiting, smiling.

  “What in hell are you doing in my car?” Floyd was like a dirty finger probing at Tom’s fresh wound.

  “I need a ride home,” Floyd said blandly. “I had to go to McNamar’s office after school, you know, and I missed the bus.”

  Tom wanted nothing less than Floyd’s company, but it seemed easier to get in and start the car than to exert the effort to get rid of Floyd. In ungracious silence he started the car and sat hunched around the wheel, waiting for the windshield to melt clear.

  “Looks like we might end up in the same class someday after all,” Floyd said with heavy humor.

  Tom glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean, Schleffe?”

  Floyd’s eyebrows arched. His shoulders moved in a shrug beneath his stained jacket.

  Although only a small crescent of windshield was clear, Tom jammed the gearshift into first. He wanted only to get home, to get rid of Floyd’s mocking presence. “You were listening in McNamar’s office, weren’t you?” he said as he turned onto the highway.

  Again Floyd shrugged, but now he was smiling. The smile was a contortion of his mouth; it left his eyes untouched. “Flunking ain’t so bad, once you get used to it. I failed fifth, so this last time it didn’t bother me so much. That first time, though…”

  Floyd’s voice went on, growing warmer, more confident
ial. He was speaking to an equal. Within Tom a heavy bubble of panic began to rise. He hunched tighter around the steering wheel.

  I’ve got to get away from him, Tom thought

  frantically. I can’t take this.

  Floyd’s voice changed pitch as he said, “Hey, you better slow down.”

  Suddenly there was a small click within the dashboard, and a small following silence. The cleared part of the windshield became filmed with silver. The road ahead, the broken yellow highway line, the trees and utility poles, all disappeared in the thickening silver.

  “Damn!” Tom reached forward to swipe at the glass with his glove. At the same time, his foot left the gas and came down hard on the brake. The bus swerved to one side. Tom fought the wheel. The rear end of the bus straightened itself, then swung to the other side. A line of trees appeared suddenly in front of Tom as the highway curved and deserted him.

  His mind was dreadfully clear. Oh no. This is really happening.

  The bus was floating. Ground and sky pivoted before Tom’s staring eyes. A scream came from somewhere. A utility pole swung diagonally across Tom’s vision, and he had a brief clear impression of spike marks in the wood from repairmen’s boots.

  Then impact, and endless shattering.

  21

  Tom lay listening. After three days of off-and-on consciousness the sounds around him were becoming reassuringly familiar.

  It was night, he knew. During the night there were long uninterrupted stretches of time when he could think. In the daytime there was always someone poking at him, changing his dressings, replacing the hanging bottles that dripped nourishment into his veins, asking him how he felt. Night was better. There was time to think, and he had so much to think about.

  Some things he knew. He knew the bandages over his eyes were just temporary and he was not blind; he knew he would mend, that it was just a matter of broken ribs, collarbone, and ankle, and some bad scalp wounds. Nothing that would not heal.