The Books of Fell

by M. E. Kerr

  “My name is Creery! Leave your luggage on the ground! It will be in your room when you get there! We will now walk back to Gardner Woods for the tree-planting ceremony! Think of a name for your tree on the way. Whatever you wish to call it. After you have planted your tree, you will line up to receive your room assignments in The Tower!”

  “Who’s the punk rocker?” I asked Dib. “I thought Sevens was this exclusive club?”

  “He just told you. His name is Cyril Creery.”

  “And he’s a Sevens?”

  “There’s no predicting who’ll make Sevens. But he’s easy. It’s a guy named Lasher you don’t want on your case … unless you make Sevens. Then he can’t touch you. Creery and Lasher hate each other. When Creery first got here, Lasher hated the sight of him. Creery had hair then. Purple hair. Lasher was out to get him. You know, Creery’s the kind that named his tree Up Yours! Lasher would have made his life hell here, but Creery made Sevens.”

  “Don’t the other members have a say in who makes Sevens?”

  “I don’t know how it works. No one does.”

  “Maybe you need three blackballs, like in a fraternity.”

  “Nobody knows,” Dib said.

  Besides the ten of us who’d gotten off the train in Trenton, there were ten other new boys already at The Hill. Now there were twenty of us walking to Gardner Woods.

  There we found twenty holes in two rows, with twenty shovels beside them, and twenty mounds of dirt.

  There was a line forming to receive the evergreens.

  “You tell Creery the name of your tree, then stick it in the ground and throw the dirt over it,” Dib said, “I’m going to name mine after my dog, Thor.”

  “Are all those trees in the background from classes ahead of us?”

  “You’ve got it. What are you naming yours?” “I’m not sure yet.”

  “You better have a name ready when we get up there.”

  I thought of naming mine Delia. But that wouldn’t have been the way we’d agreed to be. Nothing permanent. A tree was pretty permanent. I thought of all the names people called their houses down on Dune Road in Seaville. I thought of Adieu. I thought of Keats’s saying on Labor Day, “Daddy says you can come here as long as you’ve come to say good-bye.” I told her she could tell Daddy to shove it! Keats said, “Oh, my, my, my. Aren’t we arrogant now that we’re going abroad to school. Do you kiss arrogantly now, too?” I didn’t kiss her good-bye arrogantly, but I did try to get something simulating emotion into it. Nothing. Delia’d have laughed. She’d have said, “What did you think, Fell, that you could forget me?” She was already gone by the time Keats came back from Four Winds. But Delia was never going to be gone.

  I said to Dib, “I may name mine Adieu.”

  “Oh, oui?” He laughed.

  I thought of how I’d razzed Keats because Adieu had sounded pretentious. Why not just good-bye? I’d said. Why the French?

  “No, not Adieu,” I said. “Good-bye.”

  “Your tree’s going to be called Good-bye?”

  “It’s as good as Thor, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. Call it anything. You know this guy Lasher I told you about? My brother says he puts on this big act. He wants to be a playwright. He writes these plays with characters in them named Death and Destruction, like he thinks he’s profound, but it’s all a lot of bullticky crap! I mean, he’s a vegetarian, and he works out, and he’s this big hypochondriac, but he’s always playing with nooses and pretending he’s being called to the grave. Well, he named his tree Suicide.”

  “I’m going to call mine Good-bye.”

  Good-bye to John Fell and his life, but not good-bye to Delia Tremble. We were going to write. “Promise,” she’d said, “and if you don’t like to write letters, or if you think you probably won’t write me once you get there, tell me right now. I don’t want false expectations.”

  I said I’d write. I promised.

  Keats’d said,

  “Are we going to write ever?”

  “I don’t know,” I’d said.

  “Do you know you’ve changed since June? I’m going to think you’ve met someone else.”

  I couldn’t tell her about it.

  I was afraid I’d jinx it if I told anyone about Delia. “Jinx what?” my mother’d said. “She’s going away for a year and all July and August you never knew when you were going to see her.”

  “Men! Plant your trees!” Creery shouted after we’d all been given an evergreen.

  Men? The last time I’d ever been in on a tree planting was back in grade school in Brooklyn one Arbor Day. We’d all sung “This Land Is Your Land!” and walked around this little cherry tree holding hands.

  Something about being one of ten boys in line with silver shovels and our holes already dug for us, with ten of the same behind us, reminded me of third grade.

  But later, what happened in The Tower, didn’t.

  • • •

  He said Sevens were always called by their last names, so I would call him Lasher. Everyone else on The Hill, except for faculty, was called by their first name. Good, I thought! No Pingree.

  He said I’d been assigned to him. I was in his group. If I ever needed anything, I’d ask him if I could have it.

  He had very thick glasses, like Ping’s. He had thick, coal-black hair like Delia’s, but his was cut very short. He had one of those almost beards — stubble, really — and a stubble mustache. A smile that tipped to one side.

  How much older than me? A year maybe. Maybe my age. Seventeen. But I was sixteen at Gardner School. I wasn’t a Gemini anymore, either. I was a horny Scorpio. Don’t ask me how Ping could be a Scorpio with all the sex appeal of a can opener, but he was. So was I, now.

  Lasher said, “What’d you name your tree?”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye’s its name or are you a smartass?” “That’s its name.”

  We were way up in The Tower. We had to go up one at a time, alphabetically. One hundred and twenty steps. The stairs were stone ones on the outside. Even if you didn’t have a fear of heights it wasn’t a climb that set your heart to singing.

  In the top of The Tower was this one stone-walled room, lit by a single candle on the table. Lasher sat at the table. There was nowhere for me to sit. I stood. Lasher had on a white tank top under his blazer.

  “Thompson, I want to tell you something. Don’t screw up! You’ve been assigned to me. I hate having scumbags who come here and can’t take it or can’t make it! I happen to hate legacies, too — types like Creery, whose father and grandfather went here, and miraculously all got to be Sevens! I happen to love this place … and Sevens! It’s a privilege to be here, not a right! Act like you wanted to come here more than you wanted to get laid the first time, and we’ll get along.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “You have gotten yourself laid by now, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Good. I won’t have to cart you out to Willing Wanda’s to get laid. I don’t like virgins under my charge. Virgins are vulnerable. I don’t like vulnerable scumbags under my charge! Latet anguis in herba, Thompson! Do you know your Latin?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It’s from Virgil. It means the snake hides in the grass. It’s my motto.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I could see that the gold buttons on his blazer had little 7’s on them.

  Then he said, “Seven Seas: the Arctic and the Antarctic. North and South Pacific. North and South Atlantic. The Indian Ocean.”

  I didn’t know what that meant. I stood there.

  “If a Sevens meets you he might ask you to name seven things that go together. If you can’t think of seven things that go together, he might ask you to clean all the toilets in Hull House, where you’ll be living. He might ask you to do anything, if you can’t come up with seven things, and you’ll have to do it!”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll find seven thing
s for an answer.”

  “Find a lot of seven things. You can’t repeat.” “All right.”

  “Your roommate is sixteen. He’s from New Hope, Pennsylvania. He’s a legacy, too.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Lasher took off his thick glasses while he continued and talked with his eyes shut, as though he was bored out of his gourd but he had to get through this.

  “Your roommate is a virgin. Your roommate called me sir all through his interview. Your roommate named his tree after his puppy dog. He lets people call him Dib, a boy’s nickname. He’s obviously still on Pablum, so grow him up, Thompson, because your roommate’s a vulnerable scumbag who doesn’t realize latet anguis — finish it, Thompson!” He opened his eyes and looked up at me.

  “In the grass … in herba.”

  So I was rooming with Sidney Dibble.

  Lasher gave me this smile that was as beautiful as he was, without those thick glasses.

  “Welcome to The Hill!” Lasher said.

  chapter 15

  John Fell

  L’Ecole la Coeur

  C H-1092 Rolle Lake

  Geneva Switzerland

  Dear

  F

  E

  L

  L [I liked the way she wrote my name falling down],

  I’ll never forget our last dinner at The Frog Pond, remember? You were so sunburned you couldn’t lean back in your chair. I liked it because you had to lean toward me.

  I know we said we wouldn’t write about ordinary happenings — my idea, because I want our memories to be of what we shared together, but I want to know certain things about you … if you like where you are … if you are glad you made the choice to go to Switzerland…. You must tell me those things…. Tell me a thought you haven’t told anyone. I won’t tell you about life on this ship, except to say one port is like the next, and I think of you. I remember once you combed your hair after we were down on the beach. You put the comb in your back pocket, looked over at me and said, “Do I look all right?” I love it that you gave me that unguarded moment. “Do I look all right?” you asked me…. I don’t write long letters,

  F

  E

  L

  L

  but I think long thoughts. Love, Delia.

  The envelope Ping had sent it in was addressed to W. Thompson Pingree, Gardner School, Cottersville, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

  There were two letters from my mother inside. Even she had to write to me in Switzerland, where Ping would forward her mail. Pingree had insisted.

  There was also a note from Ping.

  Your French is improving, but you are avoiding all courses in computer science.

  How am I doing?

  Have I been up in The Tower yet?

  I was rereading my mail in Hull House on a Sunday morning in October, anxious to get a letter off to Delia before “my father” arrived. It was Pingree’s first visit. He was going to chapel with me.

  “Just think,” Dib said behind me, “right now, in that luxurious clubhouse in the bottom of The Tower, there’s the aroma of rib roast cooking for the Sevens to enjoy after chapel! They’ll have rib roast, mashed potatoes. We’ll be lucky to have chicken again. They’ve got it made, haven’t they?”

  “One thing I’m sick of,” I said, “is everyone’s obsession with the Sevens! God, who are they that everyone runs around in awe of them?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to be one?”

  “Only because of all their privileges.”

  “And their meals.”

  “That’s part of their privileges.”

  “They’re like another race,” Dib said. “The Master Race.”

  Dib was munching on some Black Crows. He was always eating. Eating stuff like Hostess Ding Dongs, M&M’s, Fruit Bars, and Sno-Caps. Dib was like most kids who’d rather eat Whoppers at Burger King than duckling à l’orange at the best French restaurant. He thought frozen Lean Cuisine was gourmet food, and a box of Sara Lee double chocolate layer cake was a better dessert than fresh-made key lime pie. It wasn’t just the food Sevens were privileged to have, that we weren’t that got to Dib. It was the whole aura of Sevens, and it got to everyone. Everyone at Gardner envied them, watched them, gossiped about them, and wished they were part of them.

  The night before, Lasher had taken Dib out to Willing Wanda’s for Dib’s sexual initiation.

  When he came back, Dib said, “Did you ever hear an old song called ‘Is That All There Is?’“

  “Yes. Some woman named Peggy Lee made a record of it. My mom loved it.”

  “In it, this kid sees a fire and says is that all there is to a fire?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s how I felt about what went on at Willing Wanda’s.”

  “You’ll feel more when you’re in love.”

  “I hope so. I’d rather eat a box of Mallomars or dig into a plate of Chicken McNuggets.”

  “Chicken McNuggets,” I said, and I put two fingers down my throat and retched.

  Dib was working on his paper for the New Boys Competition. There were always rumors about how one got tapped for Sevens, and one of them was that the N.B.C. had something to do with it. All new students were required to write a paper by the last day of October. The theme that year was “They All Chose America.” You could choose any group that’d immigrated. Dib was doing the Irish. I got the bright idea to do Japanese-Americans, and to call mine “Arizona Darkness.”

  I had only the title and some books from the library about President Roosevelt’s executive order 9066, which sent 150,000 Japanese Americans to concentration camps back in World War Two. They were given less than forty-eight hours to gather their possessions together for evacuation. Although there were three times as many Americans of Italian descent living on the West Coast, they weren’t affected. Neither were German Americans. Only Japanese.

  I wanted to answer Delia’s letter before I worked on that.

  Dib said, “Name some famous Irish-Americans.”

  “How about the Kennedys?”

  “I’ve got them.”

  “I want to write a letter before my father gets here,” I said, “so don’t talk to me, okay?”

  “Dear Delia,” Dib said, “how are things in Switzerland?”

  He thought that’s where she was, and that was why I got mail from Switzerland. I let him think it.

  Dear Delia [I wrote],

  Last week in Classics we read Aeschylus’s account of Clytemnestra’s welcoming Agamemnon home from the Trojan War. She asked him to walk the last few yards on a purple carpet of great value. He didn’t want to do it. He said it was too valuable to walk on. But she insisted. Then he went inside the palace and she murdered him in his bath…. I thought of when a girl I loved gave me a purple bow tie, then stood me up for the

  Senior Prom. … I got an A+ for the paper I wrote about it.

  I thought, I’m glad she’s in my past. I’m glad there’s Delia.

  A secret thought. Oscar Wilde once wrote he who expects nothing will never be disappointed. I don’t expect anything from you, Delia. Will you ever disappoint me?

  I’m not sorry about choosing to come to L’Ecole la Coeur. So far, so good. That night at the Frog Pond? My back wasn’t that sunburned. I wanted to lean into you.

  Love,

  F

  E

  L

  L

  I addressed the letter c/o The Worldwide Tours Group, Goodship Cruise, San Francisco, California, for forwarding. Then I put that letter into an envelope addressed to John Fell at L’Ecole la Coeur. Ping would mail it for me.

  Just as I was finishing, the buzzer rang three short, one long, my signal.

  “Your dad’s here,” said Dib.

  I hadn’t seen or talked to Pingree since early September. I never called him, though I’d memorized his phone number in case of emergency. He didn’t even want me to write it in my address book. That was just one of his rules, along with others like no photographs of myself at Gardne
r ever. He said to take sick the day they scheduled class pictures for the yearbook. Avoid all cameras!

  I wore the new tan gabardine suit he’d bought me. He had on a dark, vested, pin-striped one.

  “What a day!” he said. It was warm and the sun was out. “I’m glad to see you, my boy! I’m glad you’re doing so well!”

  I walked along beside him, down the path toward chapel.

  “I haven’t gone below A since I’ve been here, so it must agree with me. I’m not repeating that much, either. It’s harder here than it was in public school.”

  “Your monthly report was excellent, Fell! That paper you did for classics, what did you call it? The one you got an A+ on?”

  “‘The Purple Carpet.’ Did they mention that?”

  “Dr. Skinner reported that you have a flair for composition. I even showed it to Fern, because of the carpet business. That would be like Ping, you know. He was always intrigued by magic carpets. The Arabian Nights. It sounded like Ping.”

  “It didn’t have anything to do with The Arabian Nights,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter. Fern thought it did. She said, ‘You see, I was right. He got past all that Tower business.’” Pingree chuckled. He clapped his arm around my shoulder, an inch of ash dropping off his cigarette. “It’s working out. You’re doing fine!”

  “And Ping?”

  “He loves it over there! When I spoke to him last night on the telephone, I said, ‘Complain a little more. You don’t sound like yourself.’“

  In chapel, the Gardner choir sang:

  And youth will still be in our faces

  When we cheer for a Gardner crew.

  Yes, youth will still be in our faces

  We’ll remain to Gardner true!

  Pingree wiped tears from his eyes.

  • • •

  After, Pingree said, “I can’t stay for Sunday dinner. I don’t want to get involved up here, anyway. But good Lord, it takes me back to walk around this place!”

  “How are things in Seaville?”

  “The same. Is your mother happy in Brooklyn?”