In the scene shop Thomas could see Mr. Farnham standing with his back toward him. Farnham was wearing an old sweater and paint-speckled blue jeans and Adidas running shoes. He was holding a two-by-four about three feet long—holding it with both hands, raising it over his head, and bringing it down hard onto the concrete floor, as if it were an axe and the floor were a tough log. As he swung, he grunted wildly, almost as if he were the one being hit. Thomas watched him swing it three times. He grunted louder and louder and swung harder and harder with the board until it splintered and broke off at the end.
There was an energy in the air that made Thomas shudder. Anger was radiating out of Mr. Farnham like light from a torch, and Thomas could feel it, sense it. Mr. Farnham took the broken board and threw it hard against the cinder-block wall. Then he turned toward the door. Thomas himself spun away out of the light of the door and ran back down the hall to the exit. He did not want Mr. Farnham to know that he’d been there, that he had seen the teacher acting like King Kong on speed.
No winter play for me, he thought, thank you just the same.
It was time to go home.
SCENE 7
Thomas Boatwright and Greg Lipscomb lived in a typical dormitory room: nearly a perfect square, symmetric, with a single bed on each side of the room, two desks between the beds, two dressers at the foot of the beds, two closets facing the dressers, the entrance to the room between the two closets. There was one big window over the desks. They had an oval hooked rug in the middle of the floor and posters of everybody you’ve ever seen all over the walls. Greg had a stereo next to his dresser with tapes and albums, but half of them—Thomas couldn’t believe this—were sound tracks to Broadway musicals or, even worse, classical music.
Greg was lying on his bed and reading a paperback when Thomas entered the room. The stereo was playing something by Bach or Schubert or somebody. Thomas turned it down.
“Hey,” said Greg. He looked at Thomas over the top edge of his book.
“I got to ask you about Farnham,” said Thomas. He took off his hat and coat, sat on his own bed, and faced Greg. “What kind of mood was he in at play practice this afternoon?”
Greg had on white socks, jeans, and a thick yellow wool sweater. His skin was the color of black coffee, and his fuzzy hair was cut to within an inch of his head—a small Afro.
“Just fine,” said Greg. He did not look up from his book.
“Something weird happened just now,” said Thomas, “when I went over to talk about the play.”
“You’re going to be in the play?” Now Greg looked up at him. The whites of his eyes looked faintly yellow in the light of the study lamp.
The way he said it pissed Thomas off a little. “Maybe,” he said. “If I want to be in the play, I’ll be in the play. What’s the matter with it?”
“It’s fine.” Greg turned back to his book.
“You know,” said Thomas, “maybe I’d talk to you more if you gave me some kind of reason to start a conversation.”
Greg kept his eyes on the page. “You told me Staines got on your nerves last year for talking. Now, you say I don’t talk enough. Staines is right next door if you want somebody to talk. I don’t.”
Screw this. Thomas walked out of the room. On his way, he turned up the stereo to louder than it had been before.
“Hey,” Greg yelled. Thomas kept walking. Maybe it did stink a little in their room. Maybe Staines wasn’t so bigoted after all.
Next door, Staines had his own stereo cranked, playing brassy pep songs from the University of North Carolina. Somehow he was tying his necktie for dinner at the same time that he pretended to play the drums. He lived in a single, which meant that his room was the size of a good walk-in closet. Nevertheless, he was so wound up in his own performance and so deafened by the music that he did not notice Thomas’s entry at first.
Staines was from Morganton, North Carolina, and if he wasn’t discussing sex, then he was likely to be talking some kind of trash about the University of North Carolina’s basketball team. Dean Smith, the four corners, Carolina Blue, Blue Heaven, Tar Heel born and Tar Heel bred-Thomas had gotten tired of the spiel by October, before the basketball season had even started.
This is what you wanted to get away from, Thomas thought. He had made a mistake to come here. Staines was no guy to confide in about anything. But before he could leave, Staines saw him in the mirror, boogied a little, then turned down the stereo one notch.
“Are you trying to drown out my music over there?” Staines yelled.
“It’s not me,” Thomas yelled back.
“What?” yelled Staines.
They might have gone hoarse if Mr. Carella hadn’t burst into the room on them. He didn’t say anything. He just turned off the power switch on the stereo. The record croaked to a stop.
Mr. Carella was the dorm master on their floor and lived in the faculty apartment at the end of the hall. He was in the same age bracket chronologically as Farnham, but he seemed about fifty years younger. Not only was he the perfect dorm master—young, funny, and hardly ever around—but he was also the first good science teacher Thomas had ever had in his life.
“Sounds of silence,” said Carella. “Lipscomb’s Mozart is better than your Tar Heel crap, but my first choice is to hear nothing but my own stomach
