by Packer, Vin
Burroughs said, “I didn’t enlighten you. You still think the way you did; you’re just hoping for the worst…. It’s off, Peter.”
“Bud, you made a promise.”
“I can’t keep it.”
“Thanks, Bud. I’ll remember this. I’ll remember this for a long time.”
“You’d have worse memories if something went wrong tomorrow.”
“You said nothing could go wrong! You SAID that!” “I meant if I take it, Peter.”
“You SAID we could do it if we had a controlled SITUATION!”
“It isn’t controlled if they don’t know what they’re taking before they take it.”
“What the HELL am I supposed to DO with them tomorrow?”
“You talk about control. Look at you. Jesus!”
“I CARE about The Divine Comedy!”
“If you do, think it through. What do you think Blouter will say when they tell him that we gave them LSD?”
“They wouldn’t tell Blouter. They wouldn’t go running to Blouter like little tattletales.”
“You’re not thinking, Peter. If their trip didn’t turn out well, they’d sure as hell high-tail it to Blouter. Peter, I can’t get it across to you, can I? A lot of things could go wrong. For instance, Peter,” Burroughs stood up and waved his Py-Co-Pay to make his point, “we don’t know if a hundred and fifty micrograms is too much or too little. There’s a hundred and fifty micrograms of the stuff in each one of those sugar cubes. I say that’s about right for me, but I’m only guessing. If I were going to give LSD to you, I’d give you less — about a hundred micrograms — because you’re smaller than I am. Don’t you see? It’s not a simple matter.”
“Shepley and Thorpe are your size.”
“Their tolerance could still be different; their dispositions are different. Shepley’s the quiet type; we don’t know what the hell goes on inside Shepley. Thorpe’s got a thing about his body — did you ever see him put sun lotion on himself, up on the roof? He’s a narcissist or. something. Peter, don’t you get it? The stuff does strange things to people, particularly people who don’t know beans about it! Thorpe could think something was happening to his body — he’d go ape, Peter! He’d go ape if that happened. He hasn’t got anything to go by that’ll help him understand what would happen to him; neither has Shepley. I wasn’t thinking, Peter. Can’t you accept that? I just wasn’t thinking when I agreed to this.”
“You really think they’d tell Blouter?”
“If you were a pledge and someone give you LSD without telling you what you were taking, wouldn’t you kick up a hailstorm?”
“The HELL I WOULD!”
“Okay, Peter. You wouldn’t. You’d let somebody bury you in a shithouse for old Pi D Pi, but not many other guys would.”
Hagerman went across and sat down at his desk. Burroughs knew what strings to work. Blouter was something else. How Blouter had ever come to be the president of Pi Delta Pi, Hagerman had never appreciated, because it was common knowledge that Blouter was a cynical bastard who had not even invested in a jeweled pin, but there were few real Greeks left — Hagerman did appreciate that; Hagerman was one of them, maybe the only ardent one in Pi Pi, and now Burroughs had touched on something Hagerman could not pass over lightly. It was one thing for Shepley and Thorpe to go ape for eight hours; it was another for them to go to Blouter afterward. The president of a fraternity had the authority to recommend deactivation; it was almost never done, yet Blouter had come close to doing it to Hagerman last semester when Hagerman had disciplined a pledge named Osmond.
Osmond was one of those pledges like Shepley, one of those above-it-all characters who thought the words to the frat songs were silly and who always had a real put-upon expression whenever he participated in fraternity rituals. Hagerman had caught him making fun of the Candlelight Ceremony which Pi Pi held the third Sunday of every month; this was Hagerman’s favorite Pi Pi rite, during which the brothers sang “Pi Pi, My Love for You is Why I Strive,” standing in a circle, hands joined in the secret Pi D Pi grip. Hagerman had come upon Osmond doing a lisping burlesque of it before a roomful of pledges, mincing around and carrying the gold Pi Pi loving cup upside down on his head. So Hagerman had suspended his weekend privileges, despite the fact Osmond’s mother was in critical condition in a New York hospital. When Osmond had tried to bolt out the back door of the house, Hagerman had gotten another pledge’s help, and locked Osmond down in the pub, with a gag across his mouth and his arms and legs tied.
Most of the house was at Rutter Field watching F.P.C. play Fairleigh Dickinson that afternoon; Osmond had worked himself free in a few hours and hollered and banged on the pub door until a houseboy let him out. But his mother had been dead for an hour by then.
Osmond went to pieces; that night Blouter had him up on Three in the president’s suite, and Pi Pis and their dates heard Osmond’s wailing and cussing all the way to the front porch. A day later Osmond depledged and left Far Point; Blouter began proceedings against Hagerman.
Blouter had said, “Hagerman, didn’t it ever dawn on you that one of the reasons Osmond couldn’t take it all very seriously was that something really serious was affecting his life?”
That was Blouter in a nutshell; that was the way Blouter thought. First, wet-nurse the pledges. First, let anyone join whose old man could cough up a set of silverware. First, pick out the cheapest Pi Pi pin Balfour sold. First, fly all the way to St. Louis, Missouri, on the eve of The Divine Comedy…. Second, think of Pi Delta Pi.
Bud Burroughs took his towel off the rack on the back of his closet door and pushed his feet into slippers. “I just wasn’t thinking, Peter,” he said. “I’ll help you come up with something else to do to Shepley and Thorpe.”
“Nobody helps me come up with ideas for The Divine Comedy, Burroughs. I’ve been coming up with ideas for The Divine Comedy for three years running, by myself!”
“I didn’t mean it that way; I just meant that maybe together we could kick it around, and you’d come up with something.”
“You know what that son-of-a-bitch was doing the other night at song fest, Burroughs?” “Who?”
“Shepley! He dropped something, see? And we were right in the middle of ‘I’ll Feel Blessed.’ And that son-of-a-mother-lover bent right over and picked it up.”
“Yeah,” said Burroughs. “Well …” and he carried his toothpaste and toothbrush toward the door, pausing before he left the room to say, “Put the stuff in the refrigerator, Peter. I’ll take it back to the lab tomorrow.”
Hagerman said, “He couldn’t wait for the end of the song. That’s how much the song meant to him.”
• • •
It was eleven thirty; in fifteen more minutes all females except Mother Varner were to be out of the Pi D Pi house. Because it was a rainy night, there were more there than usual. Hagerman could hear the hi-fi blasting in the first-floor date room, and he knew that the kitchen was probably filled with men fetching last cups of coffee for their dates before seeing them home.
Hagerman decided to wait until the house was cleared of women before putting away the sugar cubes. He was not shy with women; he had a very easy manner around women and they liked him, but he did not date and he felt conspicuous when he went down to the pub and everyone else was there with a date, or when he came up the front sidewalk late in the evening and the front porch was filled with couples. At Pi Pi dances, at exchange dinners, at holiday parties, Hagerman always volunteered to act as Mother Varner’s escort.
The story on Hagerman was common knowledge; he was pinned to a Gamma Phi who attended Ohio State. Her father would not allow her to fly, so Hagerman always had to go to her, which he managed four or five times a school year. The rest of the time Hagerman was busy writing her; long, long letters, composed at his desk, which contained a large gold-framed photograph of her with the inscription, “For Peter, my man, in every sense of the word, with deepest love, Janice.”
It had gotten so that even Hagerman be
lieved the story, though not enough to actually mail those long, long letters or hop a plane to Columbus. He mailed very short notes to his cousin, and while he was supposed to be rendezvousing with her some thousand miles away from Far Point, he was actually only thirty minutes away, in his room at Len Lovely’s and Peg Beauty’s, sacked out or reading or watching TV.
But he did believe enough in the story to write very authentic letters, which were always lying around on his desk for anyone to read, and he believed enough to enjoy writing the letters, to collect himself writing them, so that was what he did in that fifteen-minute interval, while he waited for the girls to leave the house.
My dearest Janice,
Thank you for your very loving letter.
It was Hagerman’s luck that his cousin was one of those silly girls who wrote an answer to a letter the same day she received it; she dotted her i’s with little stars and enclosed Ohio State stickers and rattled on about nothing at all, never finding anything odd in the fact that it was Cousin Peter she was writing at the rate of six or seven letters a month, although the few times she and Cousin Peter had ever been in each other’s company were as colorful as a sack of flour.
I don’t think I could continue without your loyal support.
Shades of Len Lovely; an apple never falls far from the tree.
I wish you would not worry so about me, my darling. Believe me, I am wearing my rubbers when it rains and my scarf when it snows and my heart, always, on my sleeve.
Yyikh!
Janice, I am happy to know that you feel about Gamma Phi, as I do about Pi Delta Pi. We are old-fashioned, I suppose, anachronisms in a world that no longer cherishes tradition, honor, integrity. Only today I learned that our president decided to skip off to St. Louis, at the very start of The Divine Comedy. He may be popular (he is), he may be admired (he appears to be), but he will never have my respect, for he does not respect the high office of Pi Delta Pi honored him with. When he ordered his pin, he not only chose the cheapest, he also did not bother to order the little gold gavel, which the president of a fraternity may attach to his pin. Every other president of a fraternity on this campus wears a gavel on his pin (I checked this out) but our president apparently does not think highly enough of his position to invest in one.
Then too, there is the matter of Easter Sunday, a day of absolutely no importance to me, yet our young pledges from out of state have had to wheedle their ways into the homes of brothers who live nearby, for Pi Pi is not even serving Sunday dinner on that day. It seems to me —
Hagerman stopped writing at the sound of the 11:45 bell. He was definitely more nervous than usual; he was eager to get a Compazine inside of him. The letter-writing had not calmed him down at all, and he felt the beginnings of a vast depression rolling in, first in nagging ripples of anxiety, and then in great swells of something akin to terror.
It had not done Hagerman any good to remember the way Blouter had humiliated him by forcing him to beg for another chance after the Osmond episode. This was the crux of Hagerman’s fright, but this mushroomed into puffs of tension that had to do now with Burroughs’ lack of respect for Hagerman, because Hagerman was the victim of an ugly illness which might well be cancer; and then it had to do with Len Lovely, who always walked down a street a little ahead of Peter, as though he were not with him; now Blouter en route to St. Louis, without even asking Hagerman what he had planned for The Divine Comedy (“Just go easy on them, Peter; they’re our pledges, not our enemies.”); then Shepley bending down to pick up something during “I’ll Feel Blessed"; Thorpe then, on his bed in his drawers, listening to some smart-ass song that laughed at men who were dedicated; then Osmond with the gold loving cup upside down on his head, making a mockery of a ceremony which often left Hagerman teary-eyed; now Inferno itineraries for Shepley and Thorpe that were useless unless Hagerman could think of something fantastic, something as horrible as he had threatened.
“What’s eating you, Peter?”
Brushed Teeth was back from the john.
“There’s nothing eating me, Burroughs.”
“No? You look like somebody just took a chunk out of your middle.”
“Burroughs, I’m holding my stomach because I have a pain there. I suppose that’s amusing, is it? I suppose that gives you a big yak!”
“How was I supposed to know?”
“Because I explained MY CONDITION TO YOU!”
“Okay. Okay. Jesus! Get a hold of yourself.”
“I don’t need your respect. You don’t have mine and I don’t need yours.”
“What’d you do, take one of those sugar cubes? You sound like you’re off your stick, Peter.” Then Burroughs grinned at Hagerman. “Oh, look, Peter, you just miss Janice. That’s all that’s eating you.”
Sometimes Hagerman was truly grateful for Burroughs’ simple-mindedness. Or did the credit really belong to Peter Hagerman for having the wits to survive somehow, in a jungle of animals where fraternity meant little more than a place to sleep and eat and use the toilet?
“I’ll lock up the explosives,” said Hagerman. He smiled back at Burroughs, and put the sugar cubes in the pocket of his official blue and white wool Pi Delta Pi robe, with the gold crest stitched above his heart.
• • •
The Pi Delta Pi phone room was on the first floor of the house; Hagerman had to pass it to reach the kitchen. It was a room built especially for long distance calls; it was the size of a bathroom, with a glass door, a comfortable leather chair, phone books from all over the country, and a sign on the wall which read:
THIS ROOM FOR LONG DISTANCE CALLS ONLY.
DO NOT USE FOR ANY OTHER CALLS WITHOUT PERMISSION.
There were two extensions to the phone, one on the second floor and another on the third, but they were open phones which afforded no privacy; when a Pi Pi called his family, he used this room.
As Hagerman passed by, he looked in and saw Charles Shepley. Shepley was standing there in a wet raincoat with his back to Hagerman. Hagerman could just imagine a conversation of Shepley’s with his family; he could just imagine the carrying-on: Did you wear your rubbers today, Charles? It was raining. Did you get the check Daddy sent you, Charles? Do you need more? Charles, are you being treated like the little fuckface prince you are, Charles? … But, of course, Hagerman could not imagine it, so he bounded up the flight of stairs to the third floor, where there was only Blouter’s suite and the study hall. Out of breath, perspiring, gently Hagerman lifted the phone’s arm from its hook, and covered the receiver with his hand.
“… ever pull anything like that again, we’re finished!”
“Oh, Charles, where is the game in you?”
“The game in me? Is that your idea of a game?”
“You don’t have any game in you. You don’t have any game in you at all. Not any!”
“Don’t reverse things, now! I’m the one who’s mad! Remember me? I had to take a taxi home!”
“Why do you have to shout so?”
“I feel like shouting! What was the big idea? Did you think it was funny?”
“I paid for the room, and if I didn’t want to stay in the room, I didn’t have to!”
“Who asked you to pay?”
“You said you didn’t have any money.”
“It’s hopeless; talking to you about anything is hopeless.”
“You’re angry because I paid for the room.”
“I am not angry because of that, and you know it!”
“Yes, you are. I know you are.”
“Forget it! It’s hopeless … I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” “If you’re going to be a grouch, don’t.” “I might not!”
“You’re heavy, Charles. Heavy, heavy, heavy!” There was a click; then the sound of Shepley’s voice: “Lois? Lois?”
Another click.
Hagerman hung up. Beside the telephone was a list of the Pi Pi members and pledges, with their code rings after their names. Hagerman rang his finger down the list until he came
to
SHEPLEY … — …
Hagerman punched the house bell: three short rings, one long, three short.
Shepley’s voice came over the intercom. “Charles Shepley here.”
“Hagerman here, Shepley. Report to the third-floor study hall.”
It was after eleven; there were no lights in the study hall. Hagerman turned them on and sat down at the proctor’s desk. He was not sure what he was going to say to Shepley or how he was going to manage to say it, for Hagerman was choking with rage.
On top of everything else, Shepley had used the phone room for a local call, for a call to his girl friend. Shepley, and this was the real creamer, had managed to find a girl who would pay for things.
Beautiful!
Wasn’t it?
Seven
Above his head in the sky-blue room at Manhattan Holy Child Nursing Home, there hung a huge gold cross, with black enamel letters attached to it, which spelled:
LO, I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS
MATTHEW 28:20
The bed was an electric one, and while his mother pressed the button that raised it to a sitting position, she said, “No one can say I don’t keep you up on things, Billy. I brought Playboy and Esquire with me this morning.”
The sun shone in his eyes as the bed came into position, but he did not turn his head or blink. He stayed immobile, staring straight ahead at a green and white Michigan State banner tacked to the opposite wall. He was dressed in one of the new Mod “Carnaby St.” Sleepshirts, cotton, with a blue and white pattern. The nuns had shaved him at six that morning before bringing in his breakfast tray, and yesterday his hair had been shampooed with a bar of By George! shower soap.
His mother said, “I don’t know what the sisters would say to my reading you such magazines,” crossing to fix the blinds, so the sun would not bother his eyes, “but I’ve promised myself I’ll see to it that you don’t feel like Rip Van Winkle when you’re well again.”