“I swear to you he was pounding the floor like there was a snake on it and he wanted to kill it,” Thomas said. “He threw the stick away, and then he turned. I thought I was next.”
“He saw you?” asked Richard.
“I don’t know,” said Thomas. “I didn’t hang around. But I bet you if he had seen me, he’d have killed me.”
“Farnham is Jekyll and Hyde,” said Richard. “He was nice as hell at play rehearsal today. At least for the first part, when I was there.”
“I know why he was mad,” said Ralph. Ralph was from Mississippi and spoke very slowly. His hair was the deep red of an Irish setter, his eyes brown, his face freckled. He wore a T-shirt with Jimmy Buffett’s picture on it. The tee shirt was too small for Ralph’s 6'5" frame.
“Why?” said Thomas and Richard.
“Because Dean Kaufman doesn’t want to let my advisor help out with the play.”
“Dean Kaufman?” said Richard.
“He says Mr. Dickinson is too busy,” said Ralph.
Out of fifty people on the faculty, Peter Dickinson was the only black member. He taught one history class and worked most of the time in the admissions office, where he recruited minority students. He traveled all over the place trying to talk black kids into coming south for a private education. Just recently he had been meeting with a group in Baltimore.
“What was Mr. Dickinson going to do in the play?” Thomas asked.
“Guess,” said Richard. He asked him how many parts for black guys he thought there were in the play.
“Othello?”
“Very good,” said Richard. He tried to imitate Farnham’s tone in English class.
Thomas said he thought Greg, his roommate, was going to be Othello.
“Greg’s been pathetic in rehearsals,” said Richard. “Hasn’t he told you about it?”
“We don’t talk much,” said Thomas. He told them about Greg’s surliness this afternoon. It had not improved when Thomas returned to get ready for dinner. Just thinking about it was irritating.
“Farnham’s been pulling in faculty members all over the place,” said Richard. “He wants Dickinson to play Othello and Mrs. Warden to be Desdemona.”
Ralph said from the desk that he’d shave his legs if he could be in a play with Mrs. Warden.
Thomas would do more than that. Sometimes he thought about Hesta Mccorkindale and how they would probably be intimate someday, but sometimes, without anything ever really triggering the thought, he imagined walking into the Wardens’ apartment to see his advisor and finding Mrs. Warden in the shower, where she would slide back the curtain, her body all wet, and pull him in to join her. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
“Is he going to put any students in the play at all?” Ralph asked. “Besides the usual geeks?”
“He asked me to be in it, don’t forget,” said Thomas.
“I said besides the geeks.”
Richard said that Nathan Somerville was in the play.
That was news. Nathan Somerville was not only the grandson of Mr. Somerville, the legendary history teacher, but Nathan was also the head councilman, which meant that he held the most prestigious position in the student body. He ran the whole honor council himself, and whenever there was a potential honor violation, it was Nathan Somerville who decided whether it was worth convening the council over. He was a great athlete and about the smartest person in the world, taking all AP courses and applying early to Princeton. Plus, even though he was a senior and eighteen years old, he was really friendly and nice to the under-formers. He lived on Upper Stringfellow Hall, one floor up from Thomas.
“How?” said Thomas. “I thought he was playing varsity basketball.”
“Not as of this afternoon,” said Richard. “He said he was tired of getting yelled at by Delaney and wanted to do something different.”
The prospect of participating in the play had now become much more attractive. Being a member of a cast that included Mrs. Warden and Nathan Somerville could turn out to be the most prestigious thing Thomas had ever done in his life.
“Maybe Farnham was just testing some wood for the play or something,” Thomas said.
“Or maybe he’s just crazy,” said Richard.
The door to the room opened and Mr. Heilman, the school minister, stuck in his head. All they could see was a face like Humpty Dumpty’s and wispy brown hair and glasses as thick as paperweights.
“What’re you rascals up to?” he asked. That was so typical of him to call them “rascals.” Mr. Heilman was almost as big a nerd as Dean Kaufman. Heilman was afflicted with what Thomas called School Minister’s Disease, which meant that he went out of his way to convince everybody that he was really a normal person even though he was a minister. So he was always dicking around, telling dirty jokes, and trying to be one of the guys. But he wasn’t. He was thirty-eight years old and married and had only been a minister for about five years; before that he’d been a guidance counselor in some public school in Richmond. He was not exactly fat but was heading that way and his hobby was to go to the movies. He and his wife were always departing for “the cinema” somewhere, which meant that his side of Stratford House had to be supervised half the time by Mr. Warden, who lived on the other side.
All three boys said hi to Mr. Heilman.
“I heard voices,” he said. “And you know what the rules are about visiting during study hours.” He practically sang it, as if he were talking to people maybe six years old.
“Sorry, Mr. Heilman,” said Thomas. “I had something on my mind, and I just couldn’t wait until 9:30.”
“Would you like to come talk to me about it?”
No, no, no, no. “That’s okay,” said Thomas. “I think I’ve got it all straightened out.”
No counseling, no sympathy. “Get on back to your
