Hearts In Atlantis

I slipped out to the telephone booth and called Franklin Hall, sec-ond floor. Someone from the lounge answered and when I asked for Carol, the girl said Carol wasn’t there, she’d gone over to the library to study with Libby Sexton. “Is this Pete?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“There’s a note here for you. She left it on the glass.” This was com-mon practice in the dorms at that time. “It says she’ll call you later.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Skip was outside the telephone booth, motioning impatiently for me to come. We walked down the hall to see Nate, even though we knew we’d both lose our places at the tables where we’d been play-ing. In this case, curiosity outweighed obsession.

Nate’s face didn’t change much when we showed him the paper and asked him about the demonstration the day before, but his face never changed much. All the same, I sensed that he was unhappy, perhaps even miserable. I couldn’t understand why that would be— everything had ended well, after all; no one had gone to jail or even been named in the paper.

I’d just about decided I was reading too much into his usual quiet-ness when Skip said, “What’s eating you?”

There was a kind of rough concern in his voice. Nate’s lower lip trembled and then firmed at the sound of it. He leaned over the neat surface of his desk (my own was already covered in about nineteen layers of junk) and snagged a Kleenex from the box he kept by his record-player. He blew his nose long and hard. When he was finished he was under control again, but I could see the baffled unhappiness in his eyes. Part of me—a mean part —was glad to see it. Glad to know that you didn’t have to turn into a Hearts junkie to have prob-lems. Human nature can be so shitty sometimes.

“I rode up with Stoke and Harry Swidrowski and a few other guys,” Nate said.

“Was Carol with you?” I asked.

Nate shook his head. “I think she was with George Gilman’s bunch. There were five carloads of us in all.” I didn’t know George Gilman from Adam, but that did not prevent me from directing a dart of fairly sick jealousy at him. “Harry and Stoke are on the Com-mittee of Resistance. Gilman, too. Anyway, we—”

“Committee of Resistance?” Skip asked. “What’s that?”

“A club,” Nate said, and sighed. “They think it’s something more— especially Harry and George, they’re real firebrands—but it’s just another club, really, like the Maine Masque or the pep squad.”

Nate said he himself had gone along because it was a Tuesday and he didn’t have any classes on Tuesday afternoons. No one gave orders; no one passed around loyalty oaths or even sign-up sheets; there was no real pressure to march and none of the paramilitary beret-wearing fervor that crept into the antiwar movement later on. Carol and the kids with her had been laughing and bopping each other with their signs when they left the gym parking lot, according to Nate. (Laughing. Laughing with George Gilman. I threw another one of those germ-laden jealousy-darts.)

When they got to the Federal Building, some people demon-strated, marching around in circles in front of the Selective Service office door, and some people didn’t. Nate was one of those who didn’t. As he told us that, his usually smooth face tightened in another brief cramp of something that might have been real misery in a less settled boy.

“I meant to march with them,” he said. “All the way up I expected to march with them. It was exciting, six of us crammed into Harry Swidrowski’s Saab. A real trip. Hunter McPhail . . . do you guys know him?”

Skip and I shook our heads. I think both of us were a little awestruck to discover the owner of Meet Trini Lopez and Diane Renay Sings Navy Blue had what amounted to a secret life, includ-ing connections to the sort of people who attracted both cops and newspaper coverage.

“He and George Gilman started the Committee. Anyway, Hunter was holding Stoke’s crutches out the window of the Saab because we couldn’t fit them inside and we sang ‘I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore’ and talked about how maybe we could really stop the war if enough of us got together—that is, all of us talked about stuff like that except Stoke. He keeps pretty quiet.”

So, I thought. Even with them he keeps quite . . . except, presum-ably, when he decides a little credibility lecture is in order. But Nate wasn’t thinking about Stoke; Nate was thinking about Nate. Brood-ing over his feet’s inexplicable refusal to carry his heart where it had clearly wanted to go.

“All the way up I’m thinking, ‘I’ll march with them, I’ll march with them because it’s right . . . at least I think it’s right . . . and if someone takes a swing at me I’ll be nonviolent, just like the guys in the lunch-room sit-ins. Those guys won, maybe we can win, too.’ ” He looked at us. “I mean, it was never a question in my mind. You know?”

“Yeah,” Skip said. “I know.”

“But when we got there, I couldn’t do it. I helped hand out signs saying STOP THE WAR and U.S. OUTOF VIETNAM NOW and BRING THE BOYS HOME . . . Carol and I helped Stoke fix his so he could march with it and still use his crutches . . . but I couldn’t take one myself. I stood on the sidewalk with Bill Shadwick and Kerry Morin and a girl named Lorlie McGinnis . . . she’s my partner in Botany Lab . . .” He took the sheet of newspaper out of Skip’s hand and studied it, as if to confirm again that yes, it had all really happened; the master of Rinty and the boyfriend of Cindy had actually gone to an antiwar demon-stration. He sighed and then let the piece of newspaper drift to the floor. This was so unlike him it kind of hurt my head.

“I thought I would march with them. I mean, why else did I come? All the way down from Orono it was never, you know, a ques-tion in my mind.”

He looked at me, kind of pleading. I nodded as if I understood.

“But then I didn’t. I don’t know why.”

Skip sat down next to him on his bed. I found the Phil Ochs album and put it on the turntable. Nate looked at Skip, then looked away. Nate’s hands were as small and neat as the rest of him, except for the nails. The nails were ragged, bitten right down to the quick.