by John Smelcer
Several more boys took off their coats and wrapped them around Lucy’s still, unbreathing body and around Elijah, who was shivering uncontrollably, his teeth clicking in a ghostly, wordless chatter. By then, Miss Creger had arrived on the frantic scene. She knelt beside Lucy, listening for a heartbeat and for signs of breathing. Everyone was quiet. All the girls were crying. Elijah stood nearby, shaking beneath a drape of several coats, water dripping from his clothes. The fretful teacher looked up at the students surrounding her.
They knew from her worried expression that Lucy wasn’t breathing.
But Miss Creger was unwilling to give up. She told Noah to bend Lucy’s legs to her stomach while she pinched her nose closed between two fingers and breathed into her mouth. While Noah pumped the lifeless legs up and down, Miss Creger filled Lucy’s lungs with her own warm breath, until Lucy coughed and spat out a lung full of pond water. She coughed several more times. Then she opened her eyes and lay quiet, staring at gray clouds floating across a distant blue-gray sky, smiling, oblivious to the many relieved faces looking down at her. At Miss Creger’s instruction, Simon and Noah helped Lucy to her unsteady feet, and, with their arms around her for support, delivered her to the Nurse’s office.
The next day, Lucy was allowed to have visitors. Her body temperature had returned to normal, and she was feeling stronger. Around her bed, piled high with blankets, stood her three rescuers. A cup of chicken broth sat on a nearby table. The school nurse had told Lucy how her friends had saved her, how Elijah almost drowned in the attempt.
Lucy thanked them for what they had done, receiving a gentle hug from each.
“Boy, we thought you were a goner for sure,” Simon said, holding Lucy’s hand.
“Don’t ever scare us like that again,” Noah said, patting her on the head, the way he often did.
Elijah said nothing when it was his turn to hug her, but his embrace was tighter and lasted longer than the others.
The four talked for a while, telling jokes and laughing, until the nurse told them it was time to go. As the three boys turned to leave, Lucy asked them to stay for a moment.
“It was a strange thing,” she said, looking away from her friends and out the window at steel-gray clouds. “After I blacked out, I saw my mother. She was in the water with me. She swam up from below and grabbed my arm and pushed me to the surface. She saved me. The nurse said I must have been dreaming or imagining, but it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t.”
Elijah hadn’t told anyone about the woman in the pond or the apparition in the showers. And no one asked why Lucy had skated past the signs and onto thin ice, beyond the warning signs, to where the ice turned to a black hole of danger and darkness.
Chapter Eleven
“LISTEN, I’VE SEEN HIM RUN, and I’m telling you, Simon can run faster than all of them.” Elijah spoke proudly to Noah, on his left, and to Lucy, on his right, as the three friends sat on the bottom row of the bleachers overlooking the track field full of boys stretching or jogging back and forth along the near straightaway of the quarter-mile track. Simon stood before them, awkwardly, at the edge of the track, feeling the warming spring sunshine on his skin. He was blowing a plucked dandelion, watching the seeds disperse and gently float away.
“No one can run like Simon,” Elijah concluded with a kind of finality.
“Is that true, Simon? Are you faster than all these guys?” Noah asked.
Simon stood by, fumbling for a proper posture just in front and to the left of his friends, on the edge of the cinder-path track that encircled the football field. He had been watching the older boys warming up. One of his shoes was untied, and his turned-up jeans cuffs exposed his brown socks. Simon looked down at his feet while replying.
“I don’t know ‘bout that,” he replied, shyly.
“Hell, Simon. I know you can beat ‘em,” Elijah boasted. “You can run faster than a horse!”
Mr. Moody, the track coach, was standing a few feet away, his shiny whistle hanging on a string around his neck. He was one of the oldest teachers at Wellington, overweight by fifty or sixty pounds, with a thick, gray mustache that half covered the hole of his mouth like a gabled roof of thatch. From where he stood he could hear the conversation.
Lucy leaned forward to see Simon better. He was still looking down at his feet, a little smile on his lips. “Simon? Are you really that fast?”
“C’mon, Simon, are you?” Noah prodded.
By now the track coach had moved closer to the four friends, his interest piqued.
Simon replied without looking up. “Yeah, I guess it’s true,” he said.
“What’s your name, son?” Coach Moody asked, facing Simon, both hands on his hips.
“Lone Fight,” Simon whispered, thinking he was in some kind of trouble. Usually, when a teacher asked for a student’s name, it was for punishment.
“I hear you’re a runner. How come I didn’t see you at tryouts?”
Simon was visibly uncomfortable.
“I just like to run, that’s all. I never ran on no team.”
“How about showing me what you got, kid?” Mr. Moody asked, though it sounded more like a command. He turned around and blasted his whistle toward the field.
“Varsity Team!” he shouted. “Line up!”
Seven older boys, all taller and more developed than Simon, gathered in front of the coach.
“This here is Lone Fight,” he said, motioning to Simon. “I wanna see what he’s got. Let’s see . . . I want you three to race him.” He pointed to his three fastest runners. One of them had participated in the previous spring’s state four-forty championship.
Moody led Simon over to the starting line. Noah, Elijah, and Lucy climbed off of the bleachers and stood along the track to watch. All the other boys and half a dozen spectators gathered to watch as the three varsity runners took their starting positions.
With one hand on Simon’s shoulder, the fat coach guided the young Indian to his position, in lane four, the outside of the four lanes to be used, each lane marked with old pieces of white-painted wood lined end-to-end around the track and embedded deeply on edge among the cinders.
“One lap around this here track is 440 yards. You stay in this lane,” he said, pointing to the vague white-painted lines separating the lanes, visible beneath the light coating of cinders. “When I blow this whistle, you run as fast as you can around the track, but stay inside your lane.”
Simon had never seen a formal track race before, on an oval track with painted lines. He didn’t know that runners were normally staggered for races longer than one hundred yards, instead of lined up side by side.
The other boys crouched in a near-sprinting position, one arm extended, one arm back. Simon just stood there, upright, in his long pants, as the coach stepped off the track. Simon’s shoe was still untied. He hadn’t even stretched or warmed up. Then again, Simon didn’t know how to stretch or warm up. He just knew how to run.
Mr. Moody raised the whistle close to his lips. In the other hand he held up a stopwatch, his thumb perched at the ready.
“Ready, set . . .” And then he blew the shrill whistle, simultaneously pressing the small button on the stopwatch.
Simon was so startled by the whistle’s piercing screech that he jumped a little and turned to look at Coach Moody. The three track-team members threw themselves down the track, their heads bent down, their teeth clinched, fierce looks of determination in their eyes. They were a dozen steps down the track before Simon understood what was happening.
“Run, Simon!” Lucy and Elijah yelled, motioning toward the other runners.
Confused, Simon finally bolted like a surprised jackrabbit. Just before entering the first turn, his left shoe flew off his foot. He stopped to pick it up, losing time, then carried it the rest of the way like a smelly baton. He ran the course of the oval track wearing only one shoe, smilin
g the whole time, never once changing the easy pace of his breathing. He loved the way his muscles felt pushing him against the wind, the way his heart beat out a drum song, the way his mind cleared the longer he ran.
Midway down the backstretch, Simon pulled up alongside the third of the three boys. He slowed his pace slightly and looked into the taller boy’s face. He liked what he saw, an agony of effort, a desperate breathing.
By the time the state championship competitor, a few yards ahead of the second boy, was in the apex of the far turn, between the goal posts of the football field, Simon was dead even with him, matching him stride for stride, the older boy in the inside-most lane, Simon out in lane four. When they came out of the turn and into the final stretch, Simon was five yards ahead of the older boy, despite his late start, still smiling, still breathing evenly, even when he flashed by Moody, fifteen yards ahead of his fastest runner.
The coach ran out to embrace Simon.
“My God, Son! I’ve never seen anything like that. You just possibly broke the state record!” he exclaimed, holding the stopwatch close to Simon’s face.
Lucy, Noah, and Elijah surrounded Simon, patting him on the back and congratulating him.
“I told you he was fast,” Elijah blurted proudly.
A group of students practicing baseball at an adjacent field came over to see what was going on, intrigued by all the commotion.
“That was something!” someone yelled.
“Who was that?” someone asked.
The last of the three runners finally crossed the finish line, each, in turn, catching his breath, holding a hand against his side, walking off the burning in his thighs.
Mr. Moody grabbed Simon by the shoulders, shaking him enthusiastically.
“Amazing! Do you think you could do that again?” he asked, worried that the race might have been a fluke. Perhaps his stopwatch was broken. Perhaps the other three runners purposefully ran slowly to let Simon win by such a margin. Perhaps he was dreaming.
Simon liked the attention. No one back home thought much of his running.
“I think I could go a little faster this time . . . my shoe coming off and all.”
By now, another couple dozen students had gathered around the field. A few boys were running around telling everyone about the race. Pretty soon, almost a hundred students, teachers, and a groundskeeper were standing around waiting to see Simon run. Even Headmaster Dichter, who had been walking between buildings, came to watch. He was surprised and a little chagrined when he learned it was Simon, that insolent boy who refused to break under his punishment. Moody led the headmaster away from the growing crowd, and although Noah, Lucy, and Elijah couldn’t hear what they were talking about, they knew from the way they kept looking at Simon that they were planning how best to make use of the new star.
When their conference was over, Mr. Moody picked three fresh boys to race against Simon. The original three were still catching their breath. Simon double-tied the strings of his brown street shoes and crouched like the other runners, imitating their starting position. This time, when the whistle signaled, he exploded down the track without a wasted second.
Almost two hundred people chanted his name from along the edge of the track.
“SI-MON! SI-MON! SI-MON!” They chanted faster and faster as he picked up speed, pouring it on like a dragster until it runs out of track.
When Simon crossed the finish line, the boys behind him hadn’t even reached the backstretch. Seeing him so far ahead, they just quit running. It wasn’t even a race. Might as well as pit a man against a thoroughbred.
The overweight, sweat-shirted coach lumbered onto the track again.
“Unbelievable!” he shouted, holding out a hand. “I need you on my team. Just think of what you could do for our school! We could go all the way. You could take us to state . . . the nationals. Hell,” he half-whispered with tears forming at the corner of both eyes, “the Olympics.”
The coach, as best he could, was jumping for joy. “Yessiree! You could take me all the way to the Olympics,” he said, enthusiastically pumping Simon’s hand while thinking about Jim Thorpe and a glass case full of trophies.
Even Headmaster Dichter, his comb-over all awry, congratulated Simon.
“By God, Son, you’ll make our school proud.”
Simon looked away from the field. He saw the school buildings, the dorms, the maintenance shed where he had been held prisoner. From where he stood, he could even see the wrought-iron gates at the entrance, the sign welcoming him and his friends, welcoming the older boys he had just humiliated—whose humiliation had now turned to admiration—to Wellington.
He turned to the coach and pulled his hand free.
“No thank you, Sir,” he said, so quietly that most of the crowd around them could not hear.
Then he walked away, his friends joining him, walking alongside, talking about how fast he was.
The bewildered coach stood at the edge of the track watching his future cross the green toward the cafeteria. Unable to fathom the meaning, he stood for a long time staring at the hands of the stopwatch, frozen in time the way the moment would be forever frozen in his mind.
Chapter Twelve
THE YELLOW SCHOOL BUS was nearly full when Noah Boyscout stepped aboard, and the tall, skinny driver pulled the squeaking lever, closing the folding metal-and-glass door. He smiled and nodded at Miss Creger, who was sitting on the first seat. She was coming along as a chaperone. As the bus lurched forward, Noah walked down the narrow aisle, swaying from side to side, grabbing the seat-backs on both sides to steady himself.
Midway, he saw Arthur Pretty Shield sitting alone by a window. Arthur was in Noah’s carpentry class, one of the classes required for older boys learning how to build things with two-by-fours and plywood. The school had long ago decided that Indian boys needed to know how to build things, so that when they returned to their reservations they could build modern houses with shingled roofs and white picket fences and small square decks for barbecue grills and lawn chairs, houses like all the new houses sprouting up like dandelions in the American suburbs.
Indian boys didn’t need algebra or trigonometry. They needed geometry, the mathematics of angles and squareness and roof pitches. That’s how young Indian men were to join the mainstream, with a hammer in one hand and a measuring tape in the other. Indian girls focused primarily on domestic classes—sewing, cooking, etiquette. They learned how to use electric vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, laundry machines, and ovens; they learned which fork went on which side of the table setting—useful knowledge for housewives . . . or maids.
Noah looked toward the back of the bus and saw that all the seats were taken. He didn’t want to sit with Arthur. No one did. There was nothing physically wrong with Arthur. He didn’t smell or anything. His offense was depression, which was persistent. Clinical. Contagious.
Arthur Pretty Shield was the most homesick Indian at Wellington.
Almost every time Noah had seen Arthur around school—in class, in the dorm, or in the cafeteria, the boy was hunched over a table, staring blankly or crying. More than crying—sobbing. Sometimes he was forced to wear a girl’s dress all day long, one of the many demeaning and humiliating punishments for unruly boys. Reluctantly, Noah sat down beside Arthur, who seemed surprised and delighted that someone would sit with him.
“Want half?” Arthur asked, smiling meekly, pulling a tuna-fish sandwich from a brown paper bag.
Noah could smell it. He looked at it and at the trees and fields and houses flashing past the window. He felt nauseous.
“No thanks,” he said, as kindly as he could.
Arthur ate his lunch. The smell made Noah sick. When Arthur was done eating, he nervously folded and unfolded the crinkling paper bag.
The inside of the bus was noisy with conversations. Miss Creger was leading some students in one of those never-
ending songs. It was twenty miles to town, a half hour drive, more or less. The song would go on for a long time.
Midway, Arthur stopped fidgeting with his empty paper bag and leaned close to Noah.
“Why doesn’t anyone like me?” he asked, his voice low and serious, his eyes hopeful. “I mean, how come no one ever sits with me or talks to me?”
Noah answered without looking at the other boy.
“I don’t know,” he replied, his voice defensive, his shoulders slightly shrugging.
He didn’t want to talk, not about this.
Arthur realized he was treading dark water. He backed off a bit, allowing some distance between them.
“I guess what I’m asking,” he continued, looking straight ahead, wringing his hands, “is, why is it people won’t even talk to me?”
There was genuineness in his words . . . a lonely seriousness, like a wintered field, sad and barren—waiting for the sun.
Noah didn’t respond for almost a mile. Instead, he looked out the window at the houses, which passed by more frequently now that the bus was close to town.
Finally, he turned toward Arthur, who was still wringing his hands.
“It’s like this,” Noah said, sensing the boy’s desperation. “You’re a drag. Nothing personal. But you’re always crying. No one wants to be around that.”
“But isn’t everyone here sad? I mean, doesn’t everyone want to go home?”
“Sure they do,” Noah replied. “But crying doesn’t change anything. You gotta show them that you’re strong.”
Arthur knew who “them” was.
“But I can’t take it here. I miss my family. I miss my parents.” His voice was beginning to break. He was about to cry. “Don’t you miss your family?”
“Of course I do!” Noah’s voice was growing angry. “Don’t you think every kid on this bus would rather be home? Don’t you think they’re all homesick?”
