“Nothing major, I’m sure.” Why did adults always think they needed to protect you from bad news?
Thomas said he’d decided to try out for a part, but that he wasn’t interested in Brabantio. “I don’t want to be an old man.”
“You could read for Roderigo,” said Farnham. “He’s young. You and Nathan Somerville could rehearse on your dorm, couldn’t you? Nathan’s playing Iago. And Roderigo’s a good part.”
“What’s so good about it?” said Thomas. “He’s pretty stupid, isn’t he? Isn’t he the one that doesn’t know what’s going on?”
“It’s fun to play stupid people,” said Farnham. “Besides, you get to die.”
Thomas thought about the conversation on the way to practice. They’d decided that Thomas would come by the auditorium if he got out of practice before 6:00. “You get to die.” That was supposed to be the big drawing card, getting to gasp for breath, choke, stare in shock off into the middle distance, then slump to the stage. Thomas had seen a lot of stage deaths in his life. Three years ago his father had taken his family to England, where they’d gone to see Hamlet in Stratford. Thomas had been disappointed to see both Hamlet and Laertes breathing heavily at the end of their sword fight even after both were supposed to be dead. He had pointed it out to his dad.
“Being dead is hard,” his father had said, “though I don’t think those actors were giving it their best.”
At the end of a Shakespearean play, nearly everybody important ended up dead. He figured it was the same way in Othello. But who could tell? The only one he was really sure would die would be Desdemona, since he’d seen posters of Othello strangling her ever since he was a little kid. Maybe after what Farnham was saying today about reversing your expectations, it would turn out that Othello would get to live. What if the bad guy turned out to live at the end? That was the neat thing about Shakespeare; even when you anticipated exactly what was going to happen, he twisted the formula just enough to keep you surprised.
As usual, Robert Staines was running his mouth in the basketball locker room.
“Hey,” said Staines, “you hear about the cops being out here? They say there’s something weird about Russell Phillips’s death.”
Ralph Musgrove asked him what he was talking about. “They said his neck got twisted completely around, like in The Exorcist. I say it was one of the niggers on campus practicing voodoo spells.”
Coach McPhee’s voice came from the other side of the room, from behind the island of lockers hiding him.
“That’s the stupidest comment I’ve ever heard,” he said. He walked out from where he’d been sitting and rolling towels to help Angus. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Staines.” He said Staines was lucky there weren’t any black kids on the team to overhear him. He was angry, and the whistle he wore around his neck bounced against his white coach’s shirt. “You weren’t there. I was. His neck twisted because he hit his head on the side of the building when he jumped, and because he landed on a guy wire supporting a telephone pole down below. You are not going to turn this tragedy into some stinking racist propaganda. You understand me?”
Staines was staring at the carpet. He said he understood.
“You better have a hell of a good practice today, Staines,” said McPhee. “And that means I don’t hear your voice.” And Staines did have a good practice. They all did. Somehow every time Thomas touched the ball, Staines or Musgrove had broken free under the basket where Thomas could hit him. He was handling the ball well, dribbling with either hand automatically, working the ball around the perimeter and then zipping it inside or even shooting once in a while when he was open. Everything went well until the end, when they got to the free throws. They paired up at the six different baskets in the gym, Thomas with Ralph Musgrove. Thomas hit only five of ten shots.
“Concentrate,” said Coach McPhee, who seemed able to watch everybody at the same time. “Do your routine, Boatwright. Two dribbles only, look at the basket, bend your knees, and follow through.”
At 5:30 Coach McPhee called them all together. “It’s getting dark outside,” he said. “You remember what Dr. Lane told you today. Nobody walks around the campus alone after dark. Pair up when you leave the building.”
“We’re not depressed, Coach,” said Staines.
“Yeah, Mr. McPhee,” said Ralph Musgrove. Everybody on the team reacted with him.
“We can look after ourselves.”
“I’m not afraid of the dark.”
“If some guy wants to be alone, he’ll find a way.”
“It’s stupid.”
“We’re not babies.”
“That’s enough,” said Mr. McPhee.
Everybody got still. “Not babies,” said Mr. McPhee. “No, you’re not. Babies like to have somebody look after them. Adolescents want to get on with their own independent lives.” Thomas had never heard him sound so bitter. “Let me tell you something about babies, gentlemen. I had a baby brother who drowned in a bathtub because his sitter was careless. His teenaged adolescent sitter was given a responsibility, but he didn’t take it seriously, and my baby brother drowned.” He paused. “And gentlemen, I was that babysitter. I was your age, and I thought I had better things to do than to look after a two-year-old kid in a bathtub.”
He seemed to be staring at each one of them at the same time. Nobody said a word. Thomas looked away, down at his shoes.
“Think unselfishly,” said Coach McPhee. “Try a little self-discipline. Your duty is to look out for each other. If I catch you breaking that rule, I’ll see to it that you get plenty of demerits and plenty of time to sit on the bench for Saturday’s game. Dr. Lane is serious about this policy, and so am I.”
So Thomas ended up walking back to the dorm with
