“Yes,” said the boy. “Yes sir.”
“Get out of here, Wallace, before I tie you up and horsewhip you.”
“Yes sir.” The boy skidded down the stairs. Likeable little kid, Somerville had to admit, despite the vacuity of his cranium.
He turned his attention to Warden, who indeed had stood many a day in that same doorway. He knew why Warden was there; this morning Kathleen, Somerville’s wife, had driven Cynthia Warden—with what sounded like a potentially dangerous neural disorder—to see a doctor in Charlottesville. Warden was a model of disorder himself, looking as unraveled as the threads on his old corduroy trousers and as ragged as the collar on his shirt. Somerville had always admired Warden’s well-preserved youth, down to the carelessness of his attire. Despite fourteen years of boarding school life, Warden had retained his trim undergraduate figure and his thick black hair; it was as though the birthmark on his face had absorbed all the other ravages that time might inflict on a human body. But this morning he looked as tired of life as Somerville was of adolescent lassitude.
Warden sat in the chair recently vacated by Wallace. Somerville sat beside him and waited. They had shared this routine many times over the years. One of them would seek counsel, and the other would provide it.
“They’re on to you,” said Warden. “Everybody knows you’re all bark.”
“I’ve got a few teeth left,” said Somerville. He had liked Warden from the moment he’d met him all those history lessons ago.
Warden asked if Kathleen had called.
Somerville shook his head. He said he would not expect them to call, but simply to drive back to the campus when the examination concluded.
“Unless they send her to the hospital,” said Warden.
Somerville sat with a hand on each of his knees. His gray flannel trousers were perfectly pressed. He reminded Warden that waiting rooms were notoriously slow. All of them on the faculty had taken turns over the years at driving injured boys to doctors’ offices and emergency rooms in Charlottesville, forty miles away. With 360 boys enrolled, and all of them required to participate in athletics, one was always requiring X-rays or stitches or plaster.
“I should be with her,” said Warden.
“My wife is acceptable company.”
“I’m scared she has cancer,” said Warden.
It was a word Somerville hated to hear. His son Alfred had died of intestinal cancer twenty-nine months ago, just before Ben’s wedding to Cynthia. Alfred had been thirty-one years old. But Somerville accepted Warden’s amateur diagnosis. He and Kathleen had discussed Cynthia’s symptoms and had speculated the same conclusion. “She might,” he said. “I pray not.”
“What should I do?” asked Warden.
“Wait. Hope. She’s a young woman,” he said. “Don’t bury her yet.”
Warden said that was exactly what he had been doing—acting as though her death were already decreed. “What are the five stages you’re supposed to go through? Depression, anger?”
Oh, Lord, he’s been reading those pop psychology books. Somerville had tried that route himself a few years ago, but he had found that the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer was sufficient psychology for him. (And then they changed the prayer book!) He forced himself to concentrate on Warden. “Denial is the first stage,” said Somerville. “Anger, depression, bargaining.” How many times he had searched those books for some source of comfort. “Finally you get to acceptance. It took me a while to reach that last stage.”
Warden asked him the difference between denial and optimism.
Somerville did not answer. He stared at the three-year-old calendar on the white wall of his classroom and sought a fresh way of articulating the peace that accompanied religious faith. It was one of their favorite topics of argument. Warden must have misunderstood his silence. “I’m afraid I’ve dredged up some sad memories, Horace,” he said.” I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be foolish,” said Somerville. “Alfred had a good life, no matter how short.” He wanted to stress the positive. “He went out with dignity and knowing we loved him.”
“At least he died quickly,” said Warden.
“Yes,” said Somerville, “it would have been much worse to watch him . . .”
“Linger,” Warden finished the sentence for him.
Damn it to hell, that was careless. Somerville knew Warden had watched both of his parents die very slowly over the past five years. “It’s my turn to apologize, Ben,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.” But he was silently annoyed with Warden for trapping him into a faux pas.
Warden waved his apology away.
“I came in here to be distracted,” he said. “You’re doing your best.”
Somerville asked him about his trip to New York.
“Absolutely uneventful,” said Warden. “Nothing newsworthy happened at all.” But as he sat with his friend, Warden recalled uneasily that something indeed had happened. Something he could not mention to anybody.
Not yet.
SCENE 5
As a JV basketball player, Thomas Boatwright practiced in the old gym. The varsity teams—basketball, wrestling, swimming, and indoor track—got all the locker rooms and the facilities in the huge new sports complex called the Fieldhouse, which was built out the back of the old gym, but Thomas did not especially mind. There was something nice about the traditions attached to the older building. He stepped into the vestibule of the gym and immediately turned down the stairs to his right. All the locker rooms were on the same basement level. He supposed they’d have to change that if the place ever went coed.
Angus Farrier was pushing a dust mop down the smooth concrete halls as Thomas approached the door to the JV basketball locker room.
“Use the handle,” said Angus, which was his way of telling Thomas that he had just cleaned the glass of the door and that he didn’t want fingerprints on the surface.
“Window open?” asked Thomas.
“Them’s already in there,” said Angus. “Had some help.”
Thomas had never seen Angus dressed in anything other than what he had on now: a white tee shirt and clean olive trousers. Angus was thin and tall and very strong, with white hair in a crew cut and wrinkles all over his face. His
