slippery-slop finally got him. He planted his crutches far in advance of his body— too far for even dry conditions— and when he swung forward, both sticks flew out from under him. His legs flipped up like the legs of a gymnast doing some fabulous trick on the balance beam, and he went down on his back with a tremendous splash. We could hear it even from the third-floor lounge. It was the final perfect touch.
The lounge looked like a lunatic asylum where the inmates had all come down with food-poisoning at the same time. We staggered aimlessly about, laughing and clutching at our throats, our eyes spouting tears. I was hanging onto Skip because my legs would no longer support me; my knees felt like noodles. I was laughing harder than I ever had in my life, harder than I ever have since, I think, and still I kept thinking about Carol sitting there on the milk-box beside me, legs crossed, cigarette in one hand, snapshot in the other, Carol say-ing
Out on Bennett’s Walk, Stoke tried to sit up. He got his upper body partway out of the water . . . and then lay back, full length, as if that icy, slushy water were a bed. He lifted both arms skyward in a gesture which was almost invocatory, then let them fall again. It was every surrender ever given summed up in three motions: the lying back, the lifting of the arms, the double splash as they fell back wide to either side. It was the ultimate fuck it, do what you want, I quit.
“Come on,” Skip said. He was still laughing but he was also com-pletely serious. I could hear the seriousness in his laughing voice and see it in his hysterically contorted face. I was glad it was there, God I was glad. “Come on, before the stupid motherfuck drowns.”
Skip and I crammed through the doorway of the lounge shoulder to shoulder and sprinted down the third-floor hall, bouncing off each other like pinballs, reeling, almost as out of control as Stoke had been on the path. Most of the others followed us. The only one I know for sure who didn’t was Mark; he went down to his room to change out of his soaked jeans.
We met Nate on the second-floor landing—damned near ran him down. He was standing there with an armload of books in a plastic sack, looking at us with some alarm.
“Good grief,” he said. That was Nate at his strongest,
“Come on,” Skip said. His throat was so choked the words came out in a growl. If I hadn’t been with him earlier, I’d have thought he’d just finished a fit of weeping. “It’s not us, it’s fuckin Jones. He fell down. He needs—” Skip broke off as laughter—great big belly-gusts of it—overtook him and shook him once again. He fell back against the wall, rolling his eyes in a kind of hilarious exhaustion. He shook his head as if to deny it, but of course you can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants. Above us, the stairs began to thunder with descending third-floor cardplayers. “He needs help,” Skip finished, wiping his eyes.
Nate looked at me in growing bewilderment. “If he needs help, why are you guys laughing?”
I couldn’t explain it to him. Hell, I couldn’t explain it to myself. I grabbed Skip by the arm and yanked. We started down the steps to the first floor. Nate followed us. So did the rest.
34
The first thing I saw when we banged out through the north door was that rectangle of yellow canvas. It was lying on the ground, full of water and floating lumps of slush. Then the water on the path started pouring in through my sneakers and I forgot all about sight-seeing. It was freezing. The rain drove down on my exposed skin in needles that were not quite ice.
In Bennett’s Run the water was ankle-deep, and my feet went from cold to numb. Skip slipped and I grabbed his arm. Nate stead-ied us both from behind and kept us from tumbling over backward. Ahead of us I could hear a nasty sound that was half coughing and half choking. Stoke lay in the water like a sodden log, his duffle coat floating around his body and those masses of black hair floating around his face. The cough was deep and bronchial. Fine droplets sprayed from his lips with each gagging, choking outburst. One of his crutches lay next to him, caught between his arm and his side. The other was floating away in the direction of Bennett Hall.
Water slopped over Stoke’s pale face. His coughing took on a strangled, gargling quality. His eyes stared straight up into the rain and fog. He gave no sign that he heard us coming, but when I knelt on one side of him and Skip on the other, he tried to beat us away with his hands. Water ran into his mouth and he began to thrash. He was drowning in front of us. I no longer felt like laughing, but I might still have been doing it. At first they were joking, Carol said. At first they were joking. Put on the radio, Pete, I like the oldies.
“Pick him up,” Skip said, and grabbed one of Stoke’s shoulders. Stoke slapped at him weakly with one wax- dummy hand. Skip ignored this, might not even have felt it. “Hurry, for Christ’s sake.”
I grabbed Stoke’s other shoulder. He splashed water in my face as though we were fucking around in someone’s backyard pool. I had thought he’d be as cold as I was, but there was a sickish heat coming off his skin. I looked across his waterlogged body to Skip.
Skip nodded back at me. “Ready . . . set . . .
We heaved. Stoke came partly out of the water—from the waist up—but that was all. I was astounded by the weight of him. His shirt had come untucked from his pants and floated around his mid-dle like a ballerina’s tutu. Below it I could see his white skin and the black bullethole of his navel. There were scars there, too, healed scars wavering every whichway like snarls of knotted string.
“Help out, Natie!” Skip grunted. “Prop him up, for fuck’s sake!”
Nate dropped to his knees, splashing all three of us, and grabbed Stoke in a kind of backwards hug. We struggled to get him all the way up and out of the soup, but the slush on the bricks kept us off-balance, made it impossible for us to work together. And Stoke, although still coughing and half-drowned, was also working against us, struggling as best he could to be free of us. Stoke wanted to go back in the water.
The others arrived, Ronnie in the lead. “Fucking Rip-Rip,” he breathed. He was still giggling, but he looked slightly awestruck. “You screwed up big this time, Rip. No doubt.”
“Don’t just stand there, you numb tool!” Skip cried. “Help us!”
Ronnie paused a moment longer, not angry, just assessing how this might best be done, then turned to see who else was there. He slipped on the slush and Tony DeLucca—also still giggling— grabbed him and steadied him. They were crowded together on the drowned Walk, all my cardplaying buddies from the third-floor lounge, and most of them still couldn’t stop laughing. They looked like something, but I didn’t know what. I might never have known, if not for Carol’s Christmas present . . . but of course that came later.
“You, Tony,” Ronnie said. “Brad, Lennie, Barry. Let’s get his legs.”
“What about me, Ronnie?” Nick asked. “What about me?”
