Shadowland

eyes and gently pushed the door open. Then he opened his eyes and stepped into his parents' room.

    He gasped, loudly enough to wake his mother. She was alone in the big double bed. On his father's side, the sheet lay as smoothly on the bed as upon an amputation.

    'Tom?' she said.

    'Dad.'

    'Oh, Tommy, he's in the hospital. For tests. Don't you remember? He'll be back tomorrow. Don't worry, Tommy. It'll be all right.'

    'Had a nightmare,' he said thickly, excused himself, and stumbled back to his own bed.

10

Poetry

Before lunch the next day, while Rachel Flanagan drove to St? Mary's to pick up Hartley, Tom sat at his desk and wrote the first and last poem of his life. He did not know why he suddenly wanted to write poetry — he never read it, barely knew what it looked like, thought of it as the sententious verse he had been made to learn in the Junior School. 'Breathes there the man, with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said,/This is mine own, my native land!' His own little terrace of lines seemed so unlike real poetry to him that he did not bother to title it. This is what he wrote:

Man in the air, do you fly by your own wings?

Animals and birds speak to you

and you in the air understand them,

Football, magic, dreams trouble

my mind, cards tackle other cards

and scatter in a valley.

Man in the air, were you that bird?

Who magicked himself away in dark?

Man in the air, father me back. Now,

while you and I and he have time.

    Two years later, when he struggled to produce an as­signed poem for Mr. Fitz-Hallan's junior English class, he found that he was unable, even if he tried to follow Fitz-Hallan's advice. ('You could begin every line with the same word. Or name a color in every line. Or end every line with the name of a different country.') He pulled the old poem from his desk and in despair handed it in. The poem came back with an A and the comment in Fitz-Hallan's cursive hand that This poem is sensitive and mature, and must have been difficult for you to write. Don't you have a title? I'd like to put it in the school magazine, with your permission.

Under the title 'When We All Lived in the Forest,' it appeared in the winter issue of the school magazine for that year.

11

Frosty the Snowman

In the big auditorium down the hall from our homeroom, we filed into the first two rows of seats for our first chapel. Mr. Broome, Mrs. Olinger, and a tall gray-haired man with a long severe face who looked like a bank president were seated on fan-back wooden chairs before us. To the right of them stood a lectern made of champagne-colored wood.

    When I looked around I saw Mr. Weatherbee join the rank of teachers leaning against the rear wall. Between the lounging teachers and ourselves the rest of the school was taking its seats: sophomores directly behind us, then the juniors, and the seniors in the last rows. Nearly every boy, I noticed, wore a blue button-down shirt and neatly striped tie under his jacket; many of the boys were wearing suits. Collectively, the juniors and seniors had a raffish look. Privilege encased them, surrounded them like armor. In the cast of their faces was the assumption that they would never have to take anything very se­riously. For the first time in my life I saw the truth in the old proposition that the rich were better-looking.

    Mr. Broome stood up and went to the lectern. He raked us in the first rows with his eyes, and then his face adjusted to a brisk, dry administrative mask. 'Boys. Let us begin with a prayer.'

    A noise of shuffling, of activity, as a hundred boys bent over their knees.

    'Give us the wisdom to know what is right, and the understanding to know what is good. Let us partake of knowledge, and use it to become better men. Let us all spend this new school year with hope, with diligence and discipline, and with ever-renewed application. Amen.'

    He looked up. 'Now. We begin a new year. What does this mean? It means that you boys will be asked to do some demanding things. You will be asked to work as hard as you ever have, and to stretch your minds. College is a bit closer for all of you, and college is not for loafers. Therefore, we do not permit slackers and loafers here. Pay attention to this especially, seniors — you have many hurdles to get over this year. But our school does not attempt to educate the intellect at the expense of the spirit. And I am certain that spirit is shown first and foremost in school spirit. Some of you will not last out the year, and that will not always be due to stupidity. You can, indeed you must, demonstrate your school spirit in your bearing, in your classroom and athletic work, in your relations with one another. In honesty. In dedication. We will test all of these. I assure you, freshmen and seniors and all in between, that we do not hesitate to weed out our failures. Other schools have plenty of room for them. But we will not tolerate them. For it is the boy who fails, not the school. We give you the world, gentlemen, but you must show yourselves worthy of it. That is all. Seniors first, please, on the way out.'

    'Frosty the Snowman,' Sherman muttered to me as we stood. 'Wait till you hear the one about the dogs.'

12

The tall gray-haired bankerlike man beside Mr. Broome was Mr. Thorpe, and he was already at his desk when we entered his room. This was one of the tiny paneled rooms in the old part of the school, so laden with atmospherics that it seemed to crowd in all around us. A boy with very thick blond hair and black glasses stood beside the teacher. They had obviously been talking, and fell silent as we took our seats.

    Mr. Thorpe said, 'This is Miles Teagarden, a senior. He will take a few minutes of our time to explain freshman initiation. Listen to him. He is a prefect, one of the leaders of this school. Begin, Mr. Teagarden.' Thorpe leaned back in his chair and gazed benignly out at us.

    'Thank you, Mr. Thorpe,' the senior said. 'Freshman initiation is nothing to be afraid of. If you know your stuff and learn the ropes, you'll do fine. You have your beanies and your lists. Wear your beanies at all times when not in class and between school and home. Wear the beanie at all athletic functions and all social functions. Address all seniors as Mister. Learn our names. That is essential. And so is learning the songs and the other information on the sheets. If a senior drops his books on the floor, pick them up for him. Carry them where he tells you to carry them. If a senior is standing in front of a door, address him by his name and open the door. If a senior tells you to tie his shoelaces, tie his shoelaces and thank him. Do anything a senior tells you to do. On the spot. Even if you think it's ridiculous. Got that? And if a senior asks you a question, address him by name and answer him. Follow the rules and you'll get off to a good start.'

    'Is that all?' asked Mr. Thorpe. 'If so, you may go.'

    Teagarden picked up a pile of books from Thorpe's desk and hurriedly left the little classroom. Thorpe continued to gaze at us, but the benignity had left him.

    'Why is all of this important?' He paused, but no one tried to answer. 'What did Mr. Broome particularly stress in chapel this morning? Well?'

    A boy I did not know raised his hand and said, 'School spirit, sir.'

    'Good. You are . . . Hollingsworth? — Good, Hollingsworth. You listened. Your ears were open. The rest of you must have been asleep. And what is school spirit? It is putting the school first. Putting yourself second to the school. You don't know how to do that yet. Miles Teagarden does know how to do that. That is why he is a prefect.'

    He stood up and leaned against the chalk tray behind him. He looked immensely tall. 'But now we come to