The Grounding of Group 6

by Julian F. Thompson

  But other kids were not so quickly drawn to Sully. Though he was strong and agile, he wasn’t big enough to be an early choice at games. And his mother was pretty weird and he didn’t have a father and teachers seemed to treat him better than you’d think they would, considering his grades. Especially Mr. McCorker, of course. And on top of that, Sully wasn’t cool. He said a lot of jerky things and didn’t seem to know some stuff concerning girls and you-know-what he should’ve. Kids told their mothers he was—like—well—“awful immature.”

  Sully was very much aware of all the reasons people had for thinking him a little nerd, or worse. He didn’t like the way he looked or acted, either; his mother drove him up the wall, and his teachers made him feel like crawling in a hole somewhere. Except for Mr. McCorker, whom he felt like killing, any time in any way, no kidding. He considered himself the most uncool person in his class beyond a doubt, except for Fabian Fremont, who still had pajamas with feet on them, everybody said.

  All this self-awareness meant that Sully had a lot of days on which he’d wake up in the morning, think of something in the past or future, and feel a miserable “Oh, no …” Even if he didn’t have a test or paper due, or coming back, even if he didn’t say or do some idiotic thing that he’d get mocked for—there was still McCorker. Always with a smile, a punch, a “Hey, there, Artie-boy.” And then that little wink. As if they had some secret, just the two of them. Which, in a way, they did.

  Sully really never knew exactly what went on between his mother and McCorker. (“He wouldn’t …, “ people in his class would say.) Since his father’d split for Portugal, the day right after Sully’s birthday party—he’d turned four—there’d been a lot of different men around his fourteenth floor apartment, just off Third. That was all for his sake, so his mother said: a boy should have a lot of men around. All his babysitters had been male, for instance, most of them in grad school at Columbia. Often they lived “out of town,” and often by the time his mother came back home, the trains to where they lived had all stopped running. And so they’d stay the night, and still be “sitting” when he had his breakfast, wearing mid-sleeve robes with monograms, and thin gold chains around their necks, and calling Sully’s mother “Ronni.” Mr. McCorker got on board the year that Sully went into the Middle School, at twelve. Ronni came to Mother’s Day and met McCorker, Sully’s social studies teacher. The social study of that year was European history; McCorker told them lots of facts that weren’t in the book (“Would you believe it? Louis-Philippe had the longest penis in France, in his time!”), though not the day the mothers were in class. He and Sully’s mother hit it off at once; he was six foot three and wore a double-breasted blazer with a Royal Norwegian Yacht Club emblem on it. Soon he was a semi-regular; squiring Sully’s mother to the theater and the opera and often staying over, too, even though he lived six blocks away. When Sully’s mother “had to see the sun” in Italy, three winters later, Mr. McCorker volunteered to move right in for those two weeks “and batch it with the lad.” Sully’s mother said that that would be just wonderful.

  Sully hated having him around. He drank a lot and smelled as if he took his bath in after-shave, or something. Most of what he talked about would have to do with sex—stories meant to be the truth about some movie stars, or other famous people, and the things they liked to do, supposedly. A lot of times he’d use some words that sounded really stupid (Sully thought) coming from a face the age of his, that smelled and looked the way that his did, and had that sort of almost-English accent. The first night he was there, he’d asked Sully to call him “Ian”—not in school, of course—“at home, when we’re the two of us,” but Sully told him that he wouldn’t feel right doing that. He also didn’t feel right having McCorker wander into his part of the apartment whenever he felt like it. Once he’d gotten out of the shower and walked into his room and found McCorker stretched out on his bed, looking at a magazine. So he started locking doors behind him, which he never used to do.

  Things got worse between him and his mother after she got back. She said that he was “all closed off” and “secretive” with her, that she never knew what he was thinking anymore. When he came home, he went right to his room and locked the door; his grades got worse. “It’s obvious he isn’t studying in there,” Sully’s mother said, and rolled her eyes; she said she thought a little tutoring was called for. McCorker said he’d take the project on, and the two of them agreed on days and times. When Sully got the word, he just said no, he wasn’t going to do it. She asked him what he meant by that, of course, and he said surely she must understand such plain and simple English. He added that McCorker was the biggest fag he’d ever met, and that he hated him. When she protested, he went on to say he hated all her friends, and school, and everything, in fact, about “this shitty city.” He told her that her life was nothing but a fake and stupid (he was crying, then) and that he couldn’t see how she could stand it, either. She said he couldn’t speak to her that way, and he said if she didn’t want to hear the truth, then he’d just cut out talking altogether. Slam. And so he did.

  Weeks later, he found a fat envelope on his pillow. In it was an application to the Coldbrook Country School, as well as lots of literature about it. And a letter from his mother, handwritten on her heavy brown stationery, with a wide red felt-tipped pen.

  The letter wasn’t like his mother, really, but Sully was much too immature to know that kind of thing. It said that she’d been foolish and mistaken, too wrapped up in her own “problems” to see what she’d been doing to her son. She didn’t blame him in the least, she said, for all the feelings that he had: about her friends, his school, New York, his life. She was the one who needed “tutoring,” and she was going to seek it, soon, by joining in a Mother’s Therapy Encounter Group. She knew she couldn’t cancel out the past, she said, but maybe she could offer him a different kind of future. A service that she’d got in touch with had told her that the Coldbrook Country School would be “the perfect place” for someone with her son’s potential. She could only hope that he’d forgive her just enough to take a look at what the school was “all about” and, if he liked it, take a year there as a present from his “always loving Mom.”

  When she wrote the letter, she’d decided that calling Ian Mc-Corker “a service” wasn’t even a little white lie. As a matter of fact, she’d giggled when she wrote it.

  Sully was so disarmed by her contrition and her offer that he not only agreed to go to Coldbrook, but also even spoke to her on Thursdays (when the cook did not come in) and did a little better in his schoolwork.

  But still he woke up with a groan on lots of days, and thought, “Oh, no …” His mother’s letter, and the fact that he would go to Coldbrook Country School, didn’t mean the end of daily dread. Even when he got to Coldbrook, he was not exactly overconfident. In fact, it wasn’t till the second morning, up at Spring Lake Lodge, that Sully, waking up, just felt plain good about the day ahead of him. It seemed as if his life was working out, at last; he felt he didn’t have a thing to be afraid of.

  The first thing Sully noticed, when he woke up Monday morning, was that Nat had gotten up already. His sleeping bag lay zipped a small ways down, as if he’d just snaked out of it. That Nat—he was a real outdoorsman, Sully thought: always getting up with the birds, rustling up some breakfast, starting on the chores.

  Thinking simple thoughts like that made Sully feel just great. He looked around and saw that Coke was still asleep, and so he moved real carefully—you could say stealthily, almost—and carried clothes and boots so he could dress outside.

  He put his stuff down by the outdoor fireplace. It was a great September day—sunshine with a little chill, a tiny taste of autumn in the air. Sully thought about a morning dip; maybe better not, the girls might wake up any time, and you could never tell what Marigold might say. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her—shoot, he really did, a lot, in fact. It was just that she was so…kind of uninhibited about everything. You could never tell
what she might say, like, if she saw him naked. He’d never met a girl like Marigold. She was terrific. Sara, too. And Ludi. He’d never realized girls could be so easy.

  Sully looked around for Nat and didn’t see him. Maybe at the outhouse—with that neato rubber seat. Sully got his shorts on, sat down on a log to tie his boots. He’d wait for Nat to come on back before he hit the outhouse. He still could not get over Nat. It was hard to think he was a teacher, the same as “Ian” McCorker was a teacher. Sully couldn’t imagine calling Nat “Mr. Rittenhouse,” but he really respected him a lot; he didn’t respect Mr. McCorker at all, but he’d never call him “Ian” in a million years. That seemed like a pretty fascinating and perceptive thought, to Sully.

  Ten minutes later there was still no Nat. Sully got impatient and strolled down toward the outhouse. When he got quite close, he started to whistle, and then, when he was almost there, he called “Yo, Nat!” Mr. O’Connell, a phys. ed. teacher at his former school—he’d say “Yo” before a person’s name a lot, and he’d been a Marine.

  He got no answer, though. Nat wasn’t there. Sully took his time and used the outhouse; yessir, it had quite the view. When he got back, Nat still had not returned. He sat down on a log and hoped that someone else would wake up soon.

  Sully had that “Oh, no …” feeling once again.

  When Nat got into bed the night before, he knew what he would have to do. He’d have to find out what was going on for sure, once and for all, if possible.

  As soon as he thought that, he knew it wasn’t possible. Things were much too bollixed up, unreal. It was the longest, widest, deepest mess he’d ever heard of, or imagined. He couldn’t think what he was doing in a mess like this, although he also had to say he’d sort of seen it coming. Brought it on himself? Well, yes, you might say that. Parts of it, at least. But still. He still did not belong in stuff like this. He was simply not at all the type. He wasn’t ready for this kind of thing, and probably he never would be. Face it: money, contracts, coming down on kids, weirdo little boarding schools—none of those would ever be his bag. And as far as being targeted himself… unthinkable! Right? Right. And to make sure of that (at least) all he had to do was be there at a certain place and keep his wits about him. Six o’clock should do it, which meant he’d have to wake up (no alarm) by one A.M. He set his mind for that and went to sleep.

  He woke up more or less on schedule—a shade before, as it turned out. With his flashlight in his fist, he found his clothes and boots, some food, and his binoculars. He padded to the door, listening to Coke and Sully breathe, and quickly opened it and went outside. Of course there was no moon; there never is, except when you don’t need it. When he’d tiptoed past the Lake and through the spruces for a little ways, he stopped to put his boots on.

  This is kind of fun, Nat thought. After that, he used his flashlight and made time. He was halfway there before he thought he should have left a note.

  When Nat arrived at North Egg Mountain, it was close to six and daylight; the sun would soon be rising on a clear and lovely day. He found himself a spot below the knobby summit, looking down toward the boulders by the brook where Doctor thought he’d be attending to Group 6. At just about that time, in fact. From where he sat and munched some fruit and nuts, with pocket lint, he could see both up and down the brook for quite a ways. It was a good fast trout brook; not wide, but it had some pockets that would hold good fish. He nodded to himself. A lovely brook, a lovely day. A guy felt lucky to be alive on a day like this, Nat thought.

  Jesus Christ! Nat thought. No fucking kidding, Nat thought. He took out his binoculars.

  Nat didn’t know what he was looking for, but he was sure he hadn’t seen it yet. Maybe he never would, which might be good. It was, well, remotely possible that all of this was an extraordinarily complicated and shamelessly expensive joke of… of his father’s, say. A bit unlikely, since his father had never told him so much as an amusing limerick in twenty-two full years. More likely it was people he had known at college, that bunch that majored in…Experimental Living Theater, it was called. They could get, like, twenty credits, if they worked out something grand like this—“creating alternate realities,” they called it. Avant-avant-avant stuff. Maybe what he had inside the bottle in his jacket pocket—not the pocket he had trail-mix in—was Southern Comfort, say, or NyQuil. Doctor’d said to put it in the breakfast drink, which was some tropi-flavored fruit punch stuff that Doctor said would mask the taste of anything. “Even Kool-Aid,” Doctor said, and chuckled.

  About an hour later, Nat saw something that looked very much like It. A good ways down the rocky slope, and to the left of where he was, three figures slithered, waddled, stumbled into view (respectively). They’d come around the shoulder of the mountain below a fairly steep rock face, and settled in amongst some scrubby little spruces there. The first of them was camouflaged from head to foot: jacket, pants, and hat; the second one was female, and familiar; the third one was a second man, who wore a tweedy checkered driving cap atop a big round head.

  All of them had deer rifles. The deer season didn’t start for seventy-three more days, but they didn’t have the look of people shooting out-of-season meat. And they didn’t look like actors, either.

  Nat sat and listened to his heart beat. There it was: the way that Coldbrook School took care of its loose ends. How they “fired” the “advisor” of Group 6.

  He decided that he wouldn’t call attention to himself.

  If Nat had looked at things the way that Coke did, he might have come to think the reason he was sitting where he was was that he’d had lots of colds when he was little. You could really make a case for it.

  Here’s the way it went. When Nat was little, he had lots of colds, which meant he had to stay in bed a lot, which meant he learned to play a lot of different quiet games quite well, at quite an early age. Checkers, for example (English and Chinese), cribbage, and gin rummy; also backgammon, Parcheesi, and Go Fish. He got better at throwing cards in a hat than anyone his age in the entire Western world, possibly. On the days he went to school, and got to go to other children’s houses, he’d play these games with them. And win and win and win.

  He got to think that he was great at games. Games of so-called chance, and any game that you could play with cards. Nowadays, when someone gets a fixed idea like that, planted deep inside his head at quite an early age, it’s known (among psychologists) as “imprinting.” Once upon a time, it used to be “an awful dumb mistake.”

  For Nat was never all that good a gambler. So he beat his mother, who played scatterbrained-maternal. The children in his grammar school were really pretty healthy, by and large, and never got to practice; by junior high, he had a reputation, and other children’s interests turned to other adult games.

  But when he got to boarding school, things became a great deal tougher. There were other kids around who must have had as many colds as he, or even more, and they played lots of other games—like bridge and many kinds of poker—that Nat had never learned before. He lost as well as won (money all the time, not jelly beans or gum), diversified still further, and pretty soon he noticed that he seldom went a day without some action of some sort. If there wasn’t time to play a sit-down game, there always was a coin to flip, a deck of cards to cut, a next car to come by that had to be some kind or color you could bet on.

  By the time that he enrolled at UVM, he’d become a bettor, rather than a player: football games and baseball games and basketball and hockey—mostly pro, but sometimes college. Nat did worse than ever, always struggled to get even. The problem was that he was really not a natural at gambling. No way, no how, and no sirree. What he was was what he looked like: a normal, friendly sort of guy, who liked the out-of-doors and hideouts, thought that happiness was possible for people, and felt the values of his father’s world were pretty well messed up. But he also had this habit that he thought of as a part of him: “just the way I am.” Some folks snored or skied or went to Ben and Jerry’s every n
ight or got the clap; he bet. And so he mostly owed a lot of twenty dollars here and fifty there.

  Every year at college, till his last, his luck held out and somehow he’d escape before his creditors got ugly. Early on, his father used to help.

  Twice a year, his father liked to give him one big monstro check. Nat was meant to use those bucks to pay for everything in that semester: room and board, tuition, books, and all the other things a college person needed. His father thought that Nat would learn to “manage money” in this way, although, in fact, it never did work out. Nat always came to Dear Old Dad in pressing need of funds: unexpected car repairs, a little horror of a root canal, an overwhelming laundry and dry-cleaning crisis—even, once, the old lost-wallet-at-the-concert number. Mr. Rittenhouse was not amused or sympathetic; boys would not be boys, if he could help it. Finally, junior year, he said “the end.”

  “Your credit rating’s down the tubes now, Junior,” he explained. “And you are on your own. One check, twice a year, is absolutely it.” The boy had bankers in his blood on both sides of the family; it couldn’t be genetic.

  So, spring of junior year, owing more or less a ton, he had to find a way out by himself. He didn’t, as it happened; it found him.

  No one, other than the players and their girlfriends, ever went to college baseball games, including Nat. People who played baseball really well did not head north to college. Mostly, it was much too cold to play the game in any sort of comfort, not to mention watch it—and even if the day was warm, the watching could be painful. But on this Saturday in May, the sun was downright hot and the sky was absolutely cloudless, so a lot of people got the same idea at once: to go and get a tan out at the ball game. Nat, by merest chance, had parked himself beside one Stefan “Stuffy” Kinderhof, the grandson of a man who bought up most of Stowe in 1932, thinking he would raise some goats and maybe teach a little yodeling. The game dragged through eight boring innings. In the ninth, the Colgates scored six runs without a hit, to take a lead of seventeen to twelve. Vermont at bat, one out; the Colgate pitcher bounced a curve ball in the dirt.