Mr. Chase called a meeting in his study with the scholarship students that Friday. He told us Briarwood was an egalitarian society, and could well afford its scholarship program, but could not afford to distract any of its students from their academic duties. Therefore no one would be required to work in the kitchen. He delivered his brief address in his usual quivering tones, beaming with beneficence as though he, at that moment, embodied the school’s traditions of charity and grace. “Any questions?” he asked, smiling and quavering in his chair. Keith asked if Mr. Chase had discussed the issue with the trustees. “It’s not a decision for the trustees,” answered Mr. Chase.
“What about Downer’s father?” asked Keith.
“I’ve spoken with Mr. Downer. As I said, this is my decision. Any other questions?”
When no one answered, Mr. Chase thanked us and then left the room. The twelve of us filed out of the study slowly.
“It’s a good thing. I would have never stood for that,” said Keith.
“It wouldn’t have been that big a deal. A few nights in the kitchen,” I said.
“It would have set us all apart. Waiting on them hand and foot. How could you face them in class as their servants?”
“It’s over, Keith. We won.”
“We’ll never win from this side, brother. It’s like my brother told me. ‘They may let you in, but they will never let you win.
That night in chapel, Keith and I sat together in the choir pews at the front of the hall. There were two sets of pews that faced each other, reserved for the Second and Third Forms. After each service, the lower classes filed out of the choir pews in pairs and walked down the center aisle, leading out the congregation. Of all the people for me to walk out with tonight, there was Ashley Downer. I grimaced and hesitated. Keith gave me a shove, and I turned around to see him smirking. Ashley’s face was afire. We walked stiffly down the aisle together. Behind me, barely audibly, I could hear Keith laughing in his exaggerated baritone, “Heh, heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh.”
The next Saturday we were all back in the Common Room again. Ashley was stewing in a moody funk. He wouldn’t just accept Mr. Chase’s decision. He told me that his father would bring up the matter at the next trustees’ meeting, along with a general review of the scholarship program. His eyes were beady and he looked pale, almost ill, as he spoke, shivering with hostility. “If I have my way, the whole scholarship program will be dumped.”
“Fuck you, Downer,” I said, having had enough.
“Fuck you, Givens.”
“No, fuck you, Frog,” T.J. jumped in.
“Fuck you, T.J. I’m sick of you butting into my business. Leave me alone, dammit!”
Just then Mr. Bennett came into the Common Room. “Cut out the swearing! My wife is right across the hall.” T.J. apologized, and Ashley rushed out of the room.
One day the following week, T.J. caught up to me while I was crossing the quad going to class.
“I know how to nail Downer,” he said.
“How?”
“That nasty little fuck. We should waste his ass.”
“He’s just doing it ’cause you turned him into the school clown.”
“I’m no worse to him than anybody else.”
“How are you going to nail him?”
“His roommate is going away this weekend.”
“Acheson?”
“Make sure Acheson’s going away, and let me know if he changes his plans.”
Gary Acheson flew to Vail for the weekend, which meant that Ashley Downer would be alone in his room on Friday night. I made sure of this, and reported back to T. J. as he’d asked. “Fine,” he said. I wondered what he had planned. T.J.’s room was strategically located right next door to Ashley’s. Perhaps he was planting some kind of booby trap. Or blackmail? I would have gone along with anything to get Ashley off my back.
On Saturday afternoon, T. J. came into my room carrying a microcassette recorder.
“Listen to this.”
“Oooh, Daddy. Ooooh, Daddy, I’m sorry.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Just listen, Givens.”
“Ooooh, Daddy. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“Are those bedsprings in the background?”
“Yep.”
“Is that Downer?”
“No, it’s Mae West, genius,” T.J. said. “Of course, it’s Downer.”
“Adams, I swear you are psychotic.”
“I told you I’d nail that amphibian fuckface.”
“What do we do now?”
“If you can’t figure that out, you really are retarded.” T.J. removed the cassette from the recorder and handed it to me. “Happy anniversary, darling,” he said, and went out the room.
A day later Ashley Downer received a note in his mailbox. The note read, “I’m sorry, Daddy. (Ribbit) I’m sorry for sending you that letter. I’m sorry you found out my little secret. I’m sorry, Daddy (Ribbit).” We didn’t hear any more of Ashley’s vaunted influence with his father the school trustee.
Part of me felt sorry for Ashley, even though he was a snob and a bigot. I mentioned this to Keith, and he looked at me in amazement. “People like Downer are our enemy,” he exclaimed. I knew he was right, but I just couldn’t find an emotion of anger or hatred inside of me.
I ran into Ashley one afternoon in downtown Green River. He was walking alone along the road headed back towards school. I was headed in the opposite direction. He was staring at the ground, absorbed in his thoughts. I don’t think he even saw me. His glasses were sitting lopsided on his face. He had on a jacket and tie, and one of his shirttails was hanging out. As he walked by me, across the road, I felt oddly connected with him, as though somehow in our souls we were alike, except that I was the more fortunate.
I think that was the reason I couldn’t passionately hate Ashley. We really were alike. We were both kind of weird, quiet, bookish kids. The only difference between us was race. It would have been hard for a black kid to be labelled a nerd in a mostly white school. But if I had been white, I was sure T. J. would have tortured me just as he had the Frog; or if I’d gone to an all-black school, I would have been the unpopular outcast — especially since I didn’t date girls. At Briarwood I was free to hide behind the indifference of my white schoolmates. No one was looking very hard at me. And so I didn’t have to look very hard at myself.
Ashley must have suspected T.J. or me of sending the note, but he never showed any interest in revenge. He started behaving out of sorts — bewildered and lost. He didn’t speak much to anyone. Gary Acheson told us Ashley had become depressed. Even T. J. stopped teasing him and calling him Frog.
Later I asked T. J. how he had bugged Ashley.
“Walkie-talkies,” he said. He pulled out his set of army surplus hand radios from under his bed. “I set one to send and planted it under Gary’s pillow. Then I just recorded from my radio.”
“But how did you know?”
His eyes flickered suspiciously. “Safe guess,” he said in a near whisper.
T.J. and I became friends after he helped me nail Ashley Downer. I couldn’t very well stay rude to him after that. And I was starting to feel like a hypocrite for shunning him but playing Peeping Tom every chance I got. After all, T.J. wasn’t wrong. He was just too obvious. And not just to me. His roommate Kent Mason was spreading rumors that T.J. was queer. Of course, I had my doubts about Kent Mason, too. When Billy Green was sitting naked on the training table in the gymnasium, taping his ankles for hockey practice, Kent walked by the doorway and looked in. I swore his eyes almost popped out of his head.
One night T.J. came running out of the bathroom into my room, completely naked and dripping wet. He’d been having a water fight with Gary Acheson. My roommate Barrett laughed nervously and asked T.J. what he and Acheson were doing in the bathroom.
“Having sex!” T.J. exclaimed. Barrett just shook his head and muttered, “Jesus, Adams.” I started laughing, and T.J. smiled at me, his man
ic black-brown eye dots twinkling under his mop of soaked hair. “What are you laughing at, Givens?” he said. He ran his fingers through his hair and spattered drops of water in my face. Then he turned and ran back into the bathroom.
“What a nut,” I said to Barrett, and for the only time in the year we roomed together, we smiled.
I don’t think T.J. realized what he was doing, any more than I realized how conspicuous I was when I stared at his dick by the urinals. He was just a very horny kid, his sex exploding out of him. T.J. didn’t believe in self-control and he didn’t believe in inhibitions. Being his friend meant I had to deal with his strange personal view of life and of the world.
Privacy meant nothing to T.J. The idea of personal barriers was as useless to him as clothing. Just by talking to him, I opened myself to a barrage of intrusions across my personal space. My appearance was now within his jurisdiction: he repeatedly suggested I grow my hair like his favorite rock star, Jimi Hendrix. “I thought you were going to grow a big afro?” he kept asking me, and I winced at the thought of myself in Jimi’s frazzled, byzantine hairstyle. He could be stunningly blunt about my personal habits: “Givens, quit beating off in the shower,” he hollered at me one morning. “You’re wasting all the hot water.”
I never saw T.J. ignore anyone, or leave anyone alone when they asked. His own nerves were radically exposed, and he couldn’t abide docility in anyone else; we all had to join him in his hyperactive universe. Being quiet, eggheaded, and black, I especially piqued his curiosity, rivalling the Frog as a target of his exploratory attentions. T.J. was Dr. Frankenstein, and I and my responses were the subject of his experiments. All he wanted was to prod and test me, to piss me off or to make me laugh; to hear my jokes (few, far between, and usually not worth the wait), my problems (multitudinous), my sexual exploits (imaginary). To T.J. I was just another soul stranded on the earth, a kindred human, and therefore an opportunity for something interesting to happen.
We started to walk together to class almost every day. Since T.J. and I were both on honors, we could take morning study hall in our rooms instead of the library. Most mornings we were alone in the dormitory.
“Who’s your favorite master?” he asked me one morning.
“I guess Mr. Craig,” I said.
“I think Mr. Press is cool.” Sanford Press was the varsity football coach, as well as our ancient history teacher and school dean. He was a big man, two hundred pounds and six feet tall, with a broad, heavy jaw and a grayish brown crew cut. It was rumored that Mr. Press had once gone through tryouts in a real pro football training camp.
“Mr. Press?” I said doubtfully. “You would pick Press.”
“What’s wrong with Press?”
“The Dean of Students? What if he has to kick you out?”
T.J. paused and thought. “Press would never kick me out.”
“Why not?”
“He just wouldn’t.”
I thought of the time I’d seen Dean Press walking behind the chapel with T.J., his arm around T.J.’s shoulder. I frowned and sat up on my bed.
“You suck up to him in ancient history class,” I said with a bitterness that surprised me.
“I’d like to suck up to his daughter,” T.J. said. Lisa Press was a student at Trinity and spent her weekends at home with her parents. She was thin and hipless, with crystalline features and eyes that shone like blue frost in contrast to her short, black hair. More than once I had mistaken her, at a distance, for a boy.
“Let’s head back to class,” I said.
“Wait a minute. I have to take a piss.”
“I’ll come with you.”
In the bathroom I sat on the sink while T.J. urinated. I looked, and his penis swelled. He turned and smiled at me casually, as if nothing were strange. “You could come home with me sometime,” he said. “We could spend a weekend at my house.” In the late spring of our Third Form year T.J. meant business, while I was still just a silly voyeur.
In the spring T.J. offered to give me tennis lessons. Though he wasn’t any good at sports like soccer or basketball, tennis was T.J.’s thing. “I’m a jock in racquet sports,” he preened, twirling his racquet and flashing a rare macho pride. I figured I was destined for the country club circuit after prep school, so I agreed. I borrowed Randy Davis’s racquet, and T.J. and I headed out to the tennis courts.
“Let me show you how to hold the racquet,” T.J. said when we got there. He tucked his racquet between his legs and took hold of my wrist, squeezing my hand around my racquet handle. “First you have to master the swing. Don’t bend the elbow. Swing with your whole arm.” He stood behind me, held my elbow in his hand, and guided my arm through a swing.
“How does that feel?” he said.
“Okay.”
“Try it by yourself.”
I went through the motion slowly.
“No, Pete. You’re—” He put his hand to his head for a moment and thought. “You’re turning your whole body. Just turn your arm.”
I tried again.
“You did it again. Here, let’s try this.” T.J. came up close behind me and tucked his finger through a loop of my belt. “Stay straight, okay, and just swing your arm.” As I swung, I could feel my belt loop tugging against T.J.’s finger.
“You have to learn to feel your upper body.” T.J. came up very close behind me. He placed his hands lightly on my torso just beneath my armpits. The zipper of his shorts was barely brushing against my rump. He took a deep breath and exhaled on my neck. Then he pulled me towards him lightly and goosed my behind.
“Stop it!” I said.
“What? I’m trying to show you something.”
I turned towards him and tried to frown, but my scowl evaporated in seconds. I turned my back to him again. “Okay. Just not so close. I’m not a girl, you know.”
“Christ, you’re so touchy.” He put his hands beneath my armpits again. “Really try to feel what your body is doing, Pete.” I swung the racquet again slowly, and I could feel my torso turn and press into T.J.’s palms. “Better, better. You see what I mean.”
“Yeah, I can feel my chest turning.”
“It takes time. You have to become aware of all the details of your body.” T.J. held his racquet out flat and started bouncing the ball rapidly, six inches in the air. Showing off for me, I assumed.
“Let’s play,” I snorted. “Just let me get the feel of it.”
“Okay.” T.J. walked to the other side of the net. “I’m going to hit it to you. Just hit it gently back to me.” He bounced the ball twice on the ground, and then tapped it over the net towards me. I swung my racquet. The ball soared over T.J.’s head and high up against the back fence of the court.
“Excellent, Pete.”
“I guess I hit it too hard.”
“Just a little.” T.J. ran back to the fence and got the ball, then ran back to the net. He bounced the ball twice again and tapped it towards me. This time I swung with great care, missing completely and falling forward on my knees. T.J. started laughing.
“Okay. Time-out. Human Anatomy 101.” T.J. put two fingers up to his face. “These are called eyes. We use them for seeing. It’s called the miracle of sight.”
I was lying on the ground, rubbing my skinned knee. “I’d like to get you on the football field some time. I’ll show you the miracle of pain.”
“Don’t get mad, Pete. I was worse than you when I started.” I stood up, straightened my shorts, and T.J. hit the ball to me again. This time I lightly tapped it across the net. T. J. caught the ball in his hand and starting Jumping up and down. “Hurray. He hit it! He hit it!”
“Shut up and hit the ball!” I said. T.J. hit the ball again. I swung and hit it. It flew over T.J.’s head, over the fence, and out of the court. T.J. fell to his knees laughing.
“Go get the ball, wise guy.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said. He ran out of the court, searched around in a patch of tall weeds for the ball, and found it. When he ca
me back onto the court, he was walking slowly and holding his side with his hand. He stopped and bowed his head to his chest. He started to cough. The next moment he was on his knees, coughing and choking badly. His face had turned dark red. I jumped over the net and kneeled next to him.
“What’s wrong?”
He got up off his knees, tried to stand up, and then sat back down. He looked at me and shook his head. “I’m okay,” he wheezed.
“No you’re not. I’ll go get someone.”
“Give me — a minute,” he said, swallowing his words. I stood up and looked to see if anyone was around I could call to. I saw no one and turned back to T.J. He was still sitting, resting on one hand. His eyes were tearing and he had turned chalk white, but his breathing was more regular. He looked at me quietly for a moment, sitting very still. “It’s asthma,” he said, still coughing a little. His eyes were red with tears. “I get an attack sometimes if I don’t take my medication. I’m okay.”
“You should take it, then,” I said. T.J. got up slowly.
“It must have been those weeds. Could you walk over to the nurse with me?”
“Wait here. I’m going to get a teacher.” I left T.J. and ran about a hundred yards until I came to Mr. Hays’s house. I knocked on the door and his wife answered.
“T.J. is sick. He’s out on the tennis courts.”
Mr. Hays brought his car around and we drove out to the tennis courts. T.J. was standing there with his fingers hooked over the links of the court fence.
“How are you feeling, T.J.?” asked Mr. Hays.
“I’m okay.” He wasn’t coughing but still looked pale. “I need to go to the infirmary.”
Mr. Hays helped T.J. into the backseat of his Volkswagen. I got into the front and we drove off. It was over a half mile to Chase Hall. I kept looking at T.J. while we rode, but he wouldn’t look back. He looked all right, more annoyed now than ill. “Thanks for the lesson,” I said. He winced and said nothing. He didn’t speak all the way to the infirmary.
The Color of Trees Page 5
