New Boy (27 page)

"You do the same, Rob," said Russell. "I'll see you this summer." Dad pulled the car away from the curb, and a few minutes later we were home. Mom had a meat loaf with gravy and mashed potatoes waiting for us. We sat around the dinner table devouring every bit of the food and washing it down with iced tea as I told my mother everything about the day.

"And don't you know, Clarissa," said Dad, "we didn't see a single police officer the whole time this was going on."

"Did anybody think to call them?" she asked.

"Mom, yesterday they had a patrol car outside the store all day," I said. "Today there was nobody. That was more than a coincidence."

After dinner I stood at the sink helping Mom with the dishes. "Too bad you're going back tomorrow," she said. She was washing and I was drying, and again I felt as though I had never left.

"I'll be home before you know it, Mom," I said, and then the doorbell rang.

"Who could that be?" said my mother. It was almost eight o'clock.

I said I would get it and opened the door to find Paulette and her parents standing on our front porch. Paulette looked a little embarrassed, but she gave me a big smile.

"We thought we'd come over to say goodbye before you go back to school," said Dr. Gentry. "Are your parents at home?" I was so surprised to see them that I was speechless. "Mind if we come inside?" added Dr. Gentry, so I opened the screen door to let them in. My mother appeared, drying her hands on her apron,
and Dad was right behind her with a toothpick in his hand. Everyone stood in the living room for a moment as though they were getting used to each other, and it was fine in the silence.

"Won't you have a seat?" said my mother at last, and we all sat down. I wanted to sit next to Paulette, but she was stuck between her parents on the sofa, so I sat across from her on the hassock that Dad often stretched his legs on, while he sat next to me. "I just made a lemon meringue pie," said Mom. "Would you care to have a slice?"

The Gentrys looked from one to the other and nodded. "Why, certainly," said Dr. Gentry. "Thank you." Mom started into the kitchen and Mrs. Gentry stood up.

"Clarissa, let me give you a hand with that," she said, and followed Mom out of the living room.

"Garrett," said Dr. Gentry, as if he were going to make a speech, "I want to thank you for asking me to participate in that endeavor today. I was proud to be a part of it." I looked at Paulette and she looked at me, rolling her eyes at her father's choice of words. "And I want to thank
you,
Rob, for your work in helping to organize the protest. I'm sure it wasn't easy to interrupt your studies to come down here. Paulette tells us that you're quite a student." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Paulette's eyes rolling again as she looked, all the while, out the window. "Have you considered a career in medicine?" said Dr. Gentry. "We could certainly use a fellow like you." Paulette's mother appeared carrying two silver pitchers, which she set down on the coffee table.

I shook my head no to make it clear I didn't want to be a doctor.

"Tell me, Rob," said Dr. Gentry, "have you started to think about college?"

"Not really," I said. "A lot of the fellows at Draper go on to Yale, but I don't know if that's the best place for me."

"Yale's a fine school," he said, with a smile that seemed a little forced.

"Where did you go to college, sir?" I asked.

"Dartmouth," he said. "Then medical school at Howard. I applied to the Ivy League medical schools, but, even with an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth, I couldn't get one to accept me. And when I finished medical school, I couldn't get a residency either, but the United States Army saved me. Six years of my life I gave them, but I got the training I needed to become a surgeon." He was having iced tea with his pie, and he took a swallow. "It's given me a good life too, a comfortable life for my family, but I've often wondered what would have happened if I'd chosen a different path."

"What do you mean?" asked Dad. His eyebrows were raised at the comment.

"When I was at Dartmouth, I wanted to become an English teacher. In my senior year, I won the English literature prize for a paper I wrote on Milton. The faculty made a big fuss about it and told me I could have a brilliant future as a professor, but when I came home—my people are from South Carolina—everybody in my family was out of work and hungry, and my mother told me she couldn't wait until I finished "that school,"
as she called it, so I could get a job and help out. I worked my way through medical school and I've been able to help the family and take care of my mother, but I've often wondered what would have happened if I'd listened to my heart instead of my head. I still read Milton, when I get a chance."

"'How soon hath Time,'" said my father, "'the subtle thief of youth, stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year.'" Everyone except Mom looked wide-eyed at Dad. With a little smile, Mom was looking at her hands in her lap. "Milton," said Dad, with a smile of his own. "I was an English major, too." He leaned over and put his hand on my shoulder. "You have to listen to both your heart
and
your head, son."

"Rob, why don't you and Paulette clear the dishes and take them into the kitchen," said Mom, after everyone had finished their pie. We put the plates and silverware on the tray and collected the napkins, and Paulette started to pick up the crystal glasses.

"Handle those carefully, honey," said her mother. "They're very delicate." We carried everything into the kitchen, and we took our time cleaning up. I was washing and Paulette was drying, and we were laughing and sneaking kisses every so often. I told her about the sit-in, and how the men had arrived with lunch and how her father had served lemonade. She laughed, but when I told her what Russell and I saw when we ran inside to the lunch counter, her eyes filled with tears.

"Daddy said Joseph was knocked out," said Paulette. "I hope he's going to be all right."

I told her what Joseph said to the reporter.

"Well, then, he can't be hurt too bad," she said, and we both laughed.

"Joseph will be there on Monday morning," I said, "even if W.K. has to bring him in the hearse!" When Mrs. Gentry appeared at the kitchen doorway, we were leaning against each other giggling.

"Paulette, we're getting ready to go," she said.

"I'll be right there, Mama. We're almost done." Her mother smiled and went back to the living room. Paulette put her arms around my neck and we kissed, and I could hear our parents chuckling in the front of the house.

"I'll be home in six weeks," I said, "and we'll have the whole summer together."

"Does that mean you've definitely decided to go back to Draper next September?"

"I think so. I'll see how I feel about the place when I get back."

It was raining the next morning when I climbed aboard the train to return to Draper. As the train pulled out, my parents stood on the platform under a big black umbrella that my Dad was holding. I gave them one last wave from my seat inside the coach before they vanished. The rain came down in sheets. When we passed through little towns, streets were flooding and people were standing in the windows of row houses looking up at the sky.

In New York, it was still raining when I switched trains and boarded the coach that would carry me the rest of the way. It was empty and there were scattered pieces of the Sunday paper discarded on the seats and on the floor. I picked up a front section and took it with me to my seat. As the train pulled away from the station, I leaned back and opened the paper. It was the
New York Times.
Under the headline "Student Sit-ins Spread, Violence in Virginia," there was a photograph, printed in crisp tones of black and white, of the Woolworth's lunch counter at home, the row of vacant stools, the closed signs, the empty pastry case—
objects I had seen just the day before with my very own eyes. It was thrilling to see them on the front page of the Sunday paper, but when I studied the photograph more closely, I could see the bloodstains on the floor, the spattered drops on the counter, and the flour that had been spilled on the vinyl seats of the stools, and my eyes filled with tears.

The cab driver was waiting for me when the train arrived at the stop for Draper. He was wearing a yellow slicker and holding an umbrella as I stepped down from the coach with my suitcase, and he ushered me to his station wagon.

"Helluva mess out there today," he said when we were both inside the cab. He started it up and headed for Draper. We rode together for a while without speaking. "How much longer you got at the school?" he said, breaking the silence.

"Two years," I said, "if I decide to stay." It was still light out, and a small herd of dairy cows was standing in a pasture.

"Them cows have been gettin' wet all day, happy as can be," said the driver with a laugh, and he drove on. "Whatsamatter?" he said lightheartedly. "Don't ya like it up there?" I took a long time to reply because I had been thinking that I would never like Draper, even if I decided to stay, but that maybe I could manage to put up with it and graduate, if it meant I could do whatever I wanted with my life when I left. And at that moment, it dawned on me that I was free, as free, it seemed, as it was possible to be.

"It'll do," I said, as the cab pulled into the school driveway. It was dark, but all the campus lights were on. He stopped in front
of my dormitory, and I got my suitcase and paid him, including a small tip for his company. He offered to escort me to the door with his umbrella, but I turned him down and walked up the footpath alone.

It was quiet inside the dormitory, and I was exhausted from the trip. I decided to prepare for bed, even though I hadn't studied at all for my classes the next morning. I climbed into my pajamas and was about to turn off the lights when I heard a knock at the door. "Come in," I said, having no idea who it could be at that hour. It was Gordie.

"How'd it go?" he said. He was wide awake and curious. "I heard something about it on the radio. WQXR. And there was a front-page article in the
Times
today. Did you see it? I guess some people got hurt, huh?" He wanted a blow-by-blow account, but I was bushed and in no position to give him one.

"It was amazing," I said, sitting down on my bed. "Incredible. But I'm too tired to talk about it right now. Let's get together at breakfast and I'll tell you everything."

"Okay," he said. "Get some rest." He turned to leave and then stopped and turned around to face me. "Oh, yeah," he said, "I guess Mazzerelli is gonna pack it in. There's a rumor going around that he's withdrawing. He's supposed to leave tomorrow morning. I thought you'd want to know."

I was stunned. The school year was almost over. Since January, I had been so preoccupied with organizing protests and keeping my grades up and attending to my relationship with
Paulette that I had almost forgotten about Vinnie. Occasionally I would see him by himself in the hall and we would exchange greetings and talk a bit, but since he had moved out of the dormitory, we never really got together like we used to. He was in the infirmary and I was in the dorm. I guess he decided that he'd had enough, though.

"I'll go over and see him tomorrow morning," I said, getting into bed and pulling the covers up. "Switch the light off when you leave, will you, Gordie?" I said, and he did.

Garlands of mist wreathed the gray-green hills in the distance when I awakened the following morning. The sky was overcast, as though it had not quite recovered from the rain the day before. I dressed quickly and bolted down the dormitory steps, peeling off from the other students, who were going to breakfast in the dining hall, and heading across the campus to the infirmary. I walked inside and the nurse was at a desk by the door. "You're here to see Vincent, aren't you?" she said with a maternal smile. I nodded, and she pointed to a door down the hall. I walked down and found his room. Vinnie was seated on the side of his bed. His back was curved over the edge of the bed and his head was hanging down, as though he was looking for something on the floor. The room lights were off, but the sun had broken through the clouds for the moment and the room was filled with sunlight. There was a large window that looked out onto the campus, and in the distance students could be seen rushing across the lawn to get breakfast. For a moment, I thought about
my plans to meet Gordie, but I knew it was more important for me to be with Vinnie.

"Vinnie?" I said, and he looked up at me slowly. He looked completely defeated. His eyes were filled with tears.

"You were right, Rob. You were right," he said. "I never should have let Spencer put me in here. It
is
like segregation. I was here all alone. I have no friends. No one came to see me. Not even you, and you're the only friend I have." I felt awful. I thought of all the times I had told myself to stop by the infirmary to see him, and then put it off to write a letter to Paulette or to my folks or to dream about the protest, or to do my schoolwork to try to stay on the honor roll. Vinnie was right. In my struggle to keep my own head above water in the sea in which we were all immersed, I had gradually let him go.

"But why are you leaving now?" I said. "School is almost over."

Still seated on the side of the bed, he clasped his hands before him, squeezing his eyes shut so the tears fell to the floor in a tiny pool. "Because I can't stand it anymore!" he screamed. "It's worse than hell!" I flinched. The nurse appeared at the door looking worried. She was holding a glass of water in one hand and a small paper cup with a pill in the other.

"Vincent," she said in a soothing voice, "your father should be here any minute. Would you like a piU? It'll make you feel better." Vinnie nodded and she walked over to him and gave him the pill, which he took, and then he took a swallow of the water and handed the glass back to her. He was already packed. His suitcase was next to the door, along with boxes of the stuff I had
helped him carry over from the dormitory when he moved in. It was a standard hospital room with a bed, a metal night table, an easy chair, and not much else except the view from the window of the campus lawn, which was beginning to turn green with the arrival of spring; the trees, which had begun to bud; and the well-worn footpaths that everyone used to get about, everyone except Vinnie, of course. I realized that he must have died a slow and painful death in this room, and I shuddered to think I had had a hand in it.