With five minutes left in study hall, I heard Trip gasp. I looked over and saw, with a start, a face looking at us through the square window in the door. It was a monstrous face, red and yellow and black, the eyes leering, the mouth open in a fierce grin. The face vanished. From the low, astonished cries around me, I knew I hadn’t been alone in seeing it.
Behind us, in a low, gravelly voice, Mr. Downing said, “They’re gonna getcha.”
A whoop from the hall was answered by half a dozen other whoops, as if a troop of crazed Indian braves were waiting outside. I shot a look at Diamond, sitting two aisles over. He turned to look at me, the first acknowledgment he’d made all evening that I existed, and my bowels turned to ice water. Diamond looked scared.
Slowly, from outside the room, came a vibrating sound that grew in intensity. Whoever was in the hallway was stomping their feet, slowly at first and then faster and faster. A rebel yell broke out, followed by whoops and cries. Eyes widened and sought desperately, frantically, for escape. We all cowered in the lecture hall, waiting for the stroke of doom.
The bell rang. Immediately, the door to the room burst open, and three enormous sixth formers, their shirts off, their faces and chests slathered with red and gold war paint, bounded in. “Run, boys!” one of them hollered at us. He waved us on like a paratrooper waving new recruits through the open door of an airplane. “Go! Go!” We bleated like sheep and ran through the doorway, leaving our books and backpacks behind. Older boys lined the hallway, shouting at us and waving us to the exit doors at the far end. We burst out into the night between another double cordon of football players, some with flashlights, all of them waving us down the walkway to the fine arts building. They shouted and screamed at us, and we yelled back incoherently as we stumbled down the path and then up the stairs and into the lobby of the building. I barely registered seeing two teachers in the lobby, standing to the side as if viewing an art gallery. Then we thundered into the auditorium, where upperclassmen in white football jerseys guided us into rows of seats and yelled at us to remain standing. I recognized John Cole as one of them, gleefully haranguing a new boy.
Onstage, the varsity football team was stomping and clapping and hooting at us, the noise threatening to crescendo to an almost painful level. Spotlights from the ceiling washed over them, bathing them in white-hot light. Suddenly one of them shouted, “L!”
“L!” the team shouted back.
“I!”
“I!” they shouted.
“O!”
Enough of us had gathered our wits to shout “O!” along with the team.
“N!”
“N!” we screamed, shaking the rafters.
“S!”
“S!” I screamed, so loud I thought my vocal cords would bleed.
“Go-o-o Lions! Fight team fight!” the team finished in unison. Pandemonium—hollers, fists thrust to the ceiling, veins taut in foreheads and necks. Everywhere I looked, I saw a screaming, exultant football player. We tried to match them, but we were like Girl Scouts trying to drown out the audience at a metal concert. Never in my life had I been subject to such raw, impassioned noise, and it both terrified and thrilled me.
We were led through a few more cheers, which we dutifully screamed as loud as we could. It proved cathartic—I was able to shed some of my earlier fear by yelling my head off. But then I realized that the football players were ushering someone onto the stage, where a lone, empty chair awaited under a spotlight. They brought the boy to the chair and made him sit down. To my dismay, it was Diamond.
“All right!” one of the varsity players onstage said, this one with a shaved head and no neck to speak of. “We’re gonna see how well you boys know your varsity football players. Diamond! Who am I?”
Diamond, surrounded by a semicircle of varsity players, looked up at the boy addressing him and tried to smile, though it looked like a grimace. He licked his lips and cast a glance around. “Uh,” he seemed to say.
“What?” No Neck said, incredulous. “You don’t know?” He plucked his jersey front and shook it. “Number forty-eight! Come on, Diamond! Who am I?”
Someone next to me said, “Don’t worry, they won’t hurt him.”
I turned to see a boy about my height, with brown hair grown a little long in front. He gave me a slight, lopsided smile.
“What?” I asked.
“They won’t hurt him. Your roommate.” He nodded at the stage. “Look.”
I looked. Diamond had gotten No Neck’s name wrong, so they were making him do push-ups, bellowing out the count. At twenty, they made him stop and hustled him offstage while they brought up the next third former.
“It’s just a game,” the boy said. “There’s a teacher at every exit. Plus they don’t want to hurt us, anyway. It’s just a way to get everyone pumped up.”
I checked the exits to confirm what he was saying about the teachers, and there they were, one or two at every exit, watching silently, arms folded. And Diamond was safely back in his seat several rows up, smiling with relief. I let out a breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding in and then glanced at the boy next to me. I felt a bit foolish about having been so scared.
But the boy seemed to read my thoughts and just shook his head. “My father went here. That’s the only reason I know. Otherwise I’d be pissing my pants.”
Relief and gratitude swept over me. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m Matthias.”
He smiled. “I’m Fritz.”
CHAPTER THREE
On the Saturday before students arrived for orientation, we had an all-faculty meeting and subsequent department meetings, where I had met with Sam Hodges and my other English department colleagues. They were all earnest, low-key, pleasant men who seemed to enjoy their work and their place at Blackburne. Despite their kind welcome, I felt a bit like an imposter, especially as more than one of them had taught me as a student.
That afternoon, Sam hosted a faculty party at his house. I walked over from my apartment in Lawson-Parker, the double dormitory for fourth- and fifth formers. The sun flared out of a white sky, and a sultry heat lay on the Hill, broken only by the occasional dry rasp from a field cricket. The trees themselves looked hot and tired as they threw blurred shadows over the grass. One of the ever-present faculty dogs lying on the front porch of Huber Hall raised a shaggy head to sniff at me, and then, uninterested, went back to its nap.
Sam and his wife lived just down the Hill from Saint Matthew’s Chapel, which was a plain, austere building, its spire rising to a modest height on one end of the Lawn opposite the vast, four-story Stilwell Hall with its massive white columns and portico, its two wings sweeping around to each side as if to claim that end of the Lawn as its own. Sam’s house was more in the style of Saint Matthew’s: a brick ranch, white trim and black shutters freshly painted, the hedges clipped and grass mown, the brass door knocker gleaming against the black door. A weeping willow drooped in the front yard, its leafy branches trailing over the ground. It reminded me of my parents’ house, and the thought stirred something in me that rolled over uneasily.
Several people were already gathered on the patio in Sam’s backyard, from which you could see the entire western half of campus, the football field, the nine-hole golf course, and the green wall of trees shimmering in the near distance. Most people seemed relaxed, although Sam, in an apron and chef’s hat, looked hot and flushed from the open heat of a massive gas grill, where he stood skewering hot dogs and flipping hamburgers. I saw a few of my new colleagues, some holding beers. I hesitated at the edge of the patio. It was something of a minor shock to look at this group of mostly middle-aged men talking to one another more freely than they had in that morning’s faculty meeting—a meeting run in a dry, efficient manner by Dr. Simmons, the headmaster of Blackburne. I had known many of these men to wear ties and blazers almost exclusively, unless they were coaching on the athletic field or in the gym. There had always been a thin but impervious membrane between masters and students. And now I was abo
ut to become a master. Yet instead of feeling a sense of accomplishment, I felt reluctance, almost an aversion. Blackburne already had me as an alumnus. Now it was about to claim me as an employee. This was a mistake. I had no business being here, doing this.
“Hey! Matthias!” Porter Deems waved me over from his position by an open cooler. He was a short, dark-haired man with the intent look of someone about to sell you something you didn’t want. Grayden Smith stood next to him, frozen for a moment like a startled deer by Porter’s voice; then he raised his hand and smiled at me. Both were new Blackburne teachers like me. The three of us had met that morning.
“Fellas,” I said, strolling over. “What’s up?”
“Getting Gray here a drink. Man’s uptight, needs to relax.” Porter brought up three dripping bottles of beer from the cooler.
“I’m relaxed,” Gray said, twisting the cap off his bottle and flicking it into a nearby trash can. “Just ready for school to start.”
We drank our beers, measuring one another silently. Gray had gone to Kentucky and Georgia Tech. He wore spectacles and was quiet without being shy, measured and deliberate in his speech. He would teach chemistry. Porter was a UConn grad with a master’s in history from Columbia. He radiated self-assurance and energy, the kind of man who would always be white-water rafting or climbing a rock face.
“Hey, I read your book,” Porter said. “Liked the protagonist, that O’Keefe guy. Badass journalist. Sorta Anderson Cooper meets Indiana Jones. But the whole rebel-freedom-fighter thing? I dunno—it was too Hollywood for me.” Before I could formulate a response, he continued. “So you’re an honest-to-God novelist. What’s that like?”
“Like?”
“You get noticed in the street, laid a lot, what?”
At this, Gray nearly choked on his beer but managed to cough it up. Porter whacked him absently on the back as he waited for my reply.
“Women every night,” I said. “They send me their underwear to autograph. It’s embarrassing.”
Porter smirked. Gray cleared his throat loudly and gave me a weak but approving smile. “So,” I said, swirling my beer a bit in my bottle and intending to ask something generic about why they wanted to become teachers or what they thought of Blackburne, something to get away from the topic of my writing.
Then Porter said, nodding behind me, “There’s that creepy dude in the wheelchair.” I turned and saw the man he was referring to. Wearing a short-sleeved denim work shirt and jeans, he was rolling over to Sam at the grill, his forearms tanned and corded with muscle as he swiftly worked the wheels of his chair. He stopped to exchange a few words with Sam and then gazed out blankly at the crowd. “Snuck up on me outside of Stilwell Hall,” Porter said. “I came around the corner and he was sitting there like he was waiting for me. Fucking jumped out of my skin. Told him I hadn’t heard him, and he said he always comes from downwind.” Porter drained his beer. “What’s up with him?”
Gray shot a glance at Porter. “Besides that he’s a paraplegic, you mean?” he asked, taking a measured sip of his beer.
“He’s not a paraplegic,” I said. They both looked at me. “Double amputee. Lost both his legs in the first Gulf War. He just wears long pants to hide it, tucks the pants into work boots he leaves on the footrests of his wheelchair. Name’s Pelham Greer. He used to work here as a maintenance guy, and then he joined the army. When he was discharged, they gave him his old job back.”
Gray gave a low whistle. Porter looked uncomfortable. “Well, shit,” he said. “Now I feel like a tool.”
I shook my head. “He is a little creepy. Used to scare us when we were students, rolling out from behind buildings, stuff like that. But he’s all right.”
Porter gazed over my shoulder and lowered his voice. “Now there’s a guy who would scare me if I were a student.”
I casually glanced in the direction Porter had indicated. Standing off in the side yard and talking with Dave Heidel, our science department chair, was a tall, heavy man, bald as a cucumber and wearing a white suit and vest with a navy-blue tie. He had a tanned, fleshy face with a wide mouth a bit like a frog’s. “He was at the meeting this morning,” I said. “Associate headmaster. What’s his name, Ron something?”
“Ren Middleton,” Porter said. “School disciplinarian. Travis Simmons’s right-hand guy.”
Ren Middleton looked our way, and although he was too far away to have heard Porter, I felt like he had caught us talking about him. Dave Heidel then turned and gestured toward us, nodding, and Middleton headed in our direction.
“Shit,” Porter muttered.
Ren Middleton walked up. “Porter, Grayden, afternoon,” he said. His voice was Charleston to the bone, deep and heavy over the vowels, falling with a soft thud on the consonants. “Getting along?”
“Yes, sir,” Gray said. Porter nodded politely but said nothing.
“Good,” Middleton said. “I’ve found that nothing gets a man more ready for a hard job than good food and good company.” He rested his gaze on me. “You must be Matthias Glass.”
“Yes, sir.” I offered my hand, which he shook firmly.
“Ren Middleton,” he said. Middleton’s eyes were large and mud colored, and he looked at me the way a jeweler would inspect a diamond. “You were a Jefferson Scholar at Virginia, weren’t you? I also attended the university, though a bit before your time. Travis told me you’d indicated an interest in coaching track and recommended you as my assistant. I coach the varsity team.”
“Sure,” I heard myself say. “Happy to help.”
“And I’d be glad of it,” he said. “Oh,” he added deliberately, “my wife loved your book, sir. Perhaps we could get together sometime to talk about it? I’ve always wondered what it must be like to”—he cast about for a word—“create a novel.” He smiled beneficently.
I could feel my own smile tighten. “I don’t know how much writing I’ll get done this year,” I said. “I suspect I’ll be busy enough with my classes.”
Middleton nodded. “Good man,” he said. “Jumping in with both feet. Exactly what we need here.” Then he turned to Gray and Porter, talking with each of them about their thoughts on the upcoming school year. I stood and watched him. I’ve always been drawn to strong personalities, and Ren Middleton was as regal and charismatic as a Renaissance cardinal. He asked Gray what he thought about the school’s chemistry labs and seemed genuinely curious about whether Gray found them adequate. With Porter he talked UConn basketball and then asked if Porter had read a recent book on Afghanistan. This led to a brief discussion of Western involvement in the Middle and Far East, an obvious source of passion for Porter, who grew animated and gestured with his hands while Ren Middleton nodded soberly and posed an occasional question. Clearly, Middleton knew how to read people and get them to talk about subjects that interested them. I wondered how he had read me.
“I hope you’ll excuse me,” Middleton said, consulting his watch, “but I’m afraid I have to be getting home. My wife is cooking dinner. Good to see you, gentlemen.” Then, in a slightly more confidential register, he said to me, “Matthias, do you have a moment?”
I glanced at Porter and Gray, who were already moving toward the grill, and Porter shot me a look that registered somewhere between sympathy and relief. Following Middleton’s lead, I strolled with him off the patio and across Sam Hodges’s backyard, negotiating a hedge of boxwood to come upon the first tee of the golf course, which lay behind Saint Matthew’s. The boxwood hedge effectively cut us off from the party so that we were alone.
We stopped at the top of the fairway. Wide and straight, it unrolled like a fresh carpet of grass down a gentle slope to the track and the football field. My shirt was beginning to cling to my back again from the oppressive heat. The distant trees hung silently at the edge of the fields.
“I’m sorry to seem mysterious,” Ren Middleton said. “I just wanted a word in private.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You see, it’s been a while s
ince a former student has returned to Blackburne to teach,” he said. “I wanted you to know how much we appreciate it.”
“We?”
“Dr. Simmons and I.” He smiled, his fleshy lips stretched wide across his face. “It’s a singular position. A young man who can truly relate to these students, their troubles, give them guidance.” He bent over and picked up a stained golf ball that had lain to one side of the tee. He rolled it between his thick fingers. “This ball is a perfect example,” he said. “It was neglected, left behind by a careless owner. It was inert, if you want to see it that way.”
He drew back his great arm and, in a smooth, powerful motion, he threw the ball down the length of the fairway. The ball, a white blur, skimmed over the green swath and then bounced twice into the shadows of the receding pine trees at the bottom of the hill.
He turned to me. “That’s what we do here,” he said. “We give boys direction, purpose. We send them into the world as better, stronger men.” He grinned. “We kill their inertness.” The grin dropped from his face, and he peered seriously at me. “I’ll be counting on your help with some of these boys. I’m afraid a few of the fourth formers need a firm hand. And they ought to respond to, well, a younger authority figure, I suppose.” He inclined his head to the left, as if to see whether I followed him.
“I’ll help in any way I can,” I said.
He clapped me once on the shoulder. “Good man,” he said. He turned and walked back toward the party, leaving me alone on the hot hillside.
ON SUNDAY, SUVS CRAMMED full of luggage toiled up the Hill in steady succession to unload their bags along with their boys. Car doors slammed shut, and voices called out in greeting. The Hill seemed to sprout dozens of loud, cheerful teenagers in polos and baseball caps. Most grinned at one another and coolly directed their parents in furnishing their rooms. These were the old boys, the returning students inured to the idea of boarding school, their self-confidence almost palpable in comparison to the new boys, who were almost all third and fourth formers.
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