Hearts In Atlantis (57 page)

When Skip finished, Dearie glanced uncertainly at Ebersole. Ebersole looked back blandly. Behind them, Dean Garretsen continued to smile his little Buddha smile. The implication was clear. It was Dearie's show. He'd better have a show to put on.

Dearie took a deep breath and looked back at us. “We believe Stokely Jones was responsible for the act of vandalism and public obscenity which was perpetrated on the north end of Chamberlain Hall at a time we don't know when this morning.”

I'm telling you exactly what he said, not making a single word of it up. Other than “It became necessary
to destroy the village in order to save it,” that was perhaps the most sublime example of honchospeak I ever heard in my life.

I believe Dearie expected us to ooh and aah like the extras in a
Perry Mason
courtroom finale, where the revelations start coming thick and fast. Instead we were silent. Skip watched closely, and when he saw Dearie draw in another deep breath for the next pronouncement, he said: “What makes you think it was him, Dearie?”

Although I'm not completely sure—I never asked him—I believe Skip used the nickname purposely, to throw Dearie even further off his stride. In any case it worked. Dearie started to go off, looked at Ebersole, and recalculated his options. A red line was rising out of his collar. I watched it climb, fascinated. It was a little like watching a Disney cartoon where Donald Duck is trying to control his temper. You know he can't possibly do it; the suspense comes from not knowing how long he can maintain even a semblance of reason.

“I think you know the answer to that, Skip,” Dearie finally said. “Stokely Jones wears a coat with a very particular symbol on the back.” He picked up the folder he had carried in, removed a sheet of paper, looked at it, then turned it around so we could look at it, too. None of us was very surprised by what was there. “
This
symbol. It was invented by the Communist Party shortly after the end of the Second World War. It means ‘victory through infiltration' and is commonly called the Broken Cross by subversives. It has also become popular with such inner-city radical groups as the Black Muslims and the Black Panthers. Since this
symbol was visible on Stoke Jones's coat long before it appeared on the side of our dorm, I hardly think it takes a rocket scientist to—”

“David, that is such bullshit!” Nate said, standing up. He was pale and trembling, but with anger rather than fear. Had I ever heard him say the word
bullshit
in public before? I don't think so.

Garretsen smiled his benign smile at my roommate. Ebersole raised his eyebrows, expressing polite interest. Dearie looked stunned. I suppose the last person he expected trouble from was Nate Hoppenstand.

“That symbol is based on British semaphore and stands for nuclear disarmament. It was invented by a famous British philosopher. I think he might even be a knight. To say the Russians made it up! Goodness' sake! Is that what they teach you in ROTC? Bullshit like that?”

Nate was staring at Dearie angrily, his hands planted on his hips. Dearie gaped at him, now completely knocked off his stride. Yes, they had taught him that in ROTC, and he had swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. It made you wonder what else the ROTC kids were swallowing.

“I'm sure these facts about the Broken Cross are very interesting,” Ebersole cut in smoothly, “and it's certainly information worth having—if it's true, of course—”

“It's true,” Skip said. “Bert Russell, not Joe Stalin. British kids were wearing it five years ago when they marched to protest U.S. nuclear subs operating out of ports in the British Isles.”

“Fuckin A!” Ronnie cried, and pumped his fist in the air. A year or so later the Panthers—who never
had much use for Bertrand Russell's peace sign, so far as I know—were doing that same thing at their rallies. And, of course, twenty years or so further on down the line, all us cleaned-up sixties babies were doing it at rock concerts.
Broooo-ooooce! Broooo-ooooce!

“Go, baby!” Hugh Brennan chimed in, laughing. “Go, Skip! Go, big Nate!”

“Watch your language while the Dean's here!” Dearie shouted at Ronnie.

Ebersole ignored the profanity and the cross-talk from the peanut gallery. He kept his interested, skeptical gaze trained on my roommate and on Skip.

“Even if all that's true,” he said, “we still have a problem, don't we? I think so. We have an act of vandalism and public obscenity. This comes at a time when the tax-paying public is looking at University youth with an ever more critical eye. And this institution depends upon the tax-paying public, gentlemen. I think it behooves us all—”

“To think about this!” Dearie suddenly shouted. His cheeks were now almost purple; his forehead swarmed with weird red spots like brands, and right between his eyes a big vein was pulsing rapidly.

Before Dearie could say more—and he clearly had a lot to say—Ebersole put a hand out to his chest, shushing him. Dearie seemed to deflate. He'd had his chance and fluffed it. Later he'd perhaps tell himself it was because he was tired; while we'd spent the day in the nice warm lounge, playing cards and shooting holes in our future, Dearie had been outside shovelling snow and sanding walks so brittle old psychology professors wouldn't fall down and break their hips. He was tired, a little slow on the draw, and in any case, that prick
Ebersole hadn't given him a fair chance to prove himself. All of which probably didn't help much with what was happening right then: he had been set aside. The grownup was back in charge. Poppa would fix.

“I think it behooves us all to identify the fellow who did this and see he's punished with some severity,” Ebersole continued. Mostly it was Nate he was looking at; amazing as it seemed to me at the time, he had identified Nate Hoppenstand as the center of the resistance he felt in the room.

Nate, God bless his molars and wisdom teeth, was more than up to the likes of Ebersole. He remained standing with his hands on his hips and his eyes never wavered, let alone dropped from Ebersole's. “How do you propose doing that?” Nate asked.

“What is your name, young man? Please.”

“Nathan Hoppenstand.”

“Well, Nathan, I think the perpetrator has already been singled out, don't you?” Ebersole spoke in a patient, teacherly way. “Or rather singled himself out. I'm told this unfortunate fellow Stokely Jones has been a walking billboard for the Broken Cross symbol since—”

“Quit calling it that!” Skip said, and I jumped a little at the raw anger in his voice. “It's not a broken anything! It's a damn
peace
sign!”

“What is
your
name, sir?”

“Stanley Kirk. Skip to my friends. You can call me Stanley.” There was a tense little titter at this, which Ebersole seemed not to hear.

“Well, Mr. Kirk, your semantic quibble is noted, but it doesn't change the fact that Stokely Jones—and Stokely Jones
alone
—has been displaying that
particular symbol all over campus since the first day of the semester. Mr. Dearborn tells me—”

Nate said, “ ‘Mr. Dearborn' doesn't even know what the peace sign is or where it came from, so I think you'd be sort of unwise to trust what he tells you very far. It just so happens I've got a peace sign on the back of my own jacket, Mr. Ebersole. So how do you know
I
wasn't the one with the spray-paint?”

Ebersole's mouth dropped open. Not much, but enough to spoil his sympathetic smile and magazine-ad good looks. And Dean Garretsen frowned, as if presented with some concept he couldn't understand. One very rarely sees a good politician or college administrator caught completely by surprise. They are moments to treasure. I treasured that one then, and find I still do today.

“That's a lie!” Dearie said. He sounded more wounded than angry. “Why would you lie that way, Nate? You're the last person on Three I'd expect to—”

“It's
not
a lie,” Nate said. “Go on up to my room and pull the pea coat out of my closet if you don't believe me. Check.”

“Yeah, and check mine while you're at it,” I said, standing up next to Nate. “My old high-school jacket. You can't miss it. It's the one with the peace sign on the back.”

Ebersole studied us through slightly narrowed eyes. Then he asked, “Exactly when did you put this so-called peace sign on the backs of your jackets, young fellows?”

This time Nate did lie. I knew him well enough by then to know it must have hurt . . . but he did it like a champ. “September.”

That was it for Dearie.
He went nuclear
is how my own kids might express it, only that wouldn't be accurate. Dearie went Donald Duck. He didn't quite jump up and down, flapping his arms and going
wak-wak-waugh-wak
like Donald does when he's mad, but he
did
give a howl of outrage and smacked his mottled forehead with the heels of his palms. Ebersole stilled him again, this time by gripping his arm.

“Who are you?” Ebersole asked me. More curt than courteous by now.

“Pete Riley. I put a peace sign on the back of my jacket because I liked the look of Stoke's. Also to show I've got some big questions about what we're doing over there in Vietnam.”

Dearie pulled away from Ebersole. His chin was thrust out, his lips pulled back enough to show a complete set of teeth. “
Helping our allies is what we're doing, you doofus!
” he shouted. “If you're too stupid to see that on your own, I suggest you take Colonel Anderson's Intro Military History Class! Or maybe you're just another chickenguts who won't—”

“Hush, Mr. Dearborn,” Dean Garretsen said. His quiet was somehow louder than Dearie's shouting. “This is not the place for a foreign policy debate, nor is it the time for personal aspersions. Quite the contrary.”

Dearie dropped his burning face, studied the floor, and began to gnaw at his own lips.

“And when, Mr. Riley, did you put the peace sign symbol on
your
jacket?” Ebersole asked. His voice remained courteous, but there was an ugly look in his eyes. He knew by then, I think, that Stoke was going to squiggle away, and Ebersole was
very
unhappy about that. Dearie was small change next to this guy,
who was in 1966 a new type on the college campuses of America. Times call the men, Lao-tzu said, and the late sixties called Charles Ebersole. He wasn't an educator; he was an enforcer minoring in public relations.

Don't lie to me
, his eyes said.
Don't lie to me, Riley. Because if you do and I find out, I'll turn you into salad
.

But what the hell. I'd probably be gone come January 15th, anyway; by Christmas of 1967 I might be in Phu Bai, keeping the place warm for Dearie.

“October,” I said. “Put it on my jacket right around Columbus Day.”

“I've got it on my jacket and some sweatshirts,” Skip said. “All that stuff's in my room. I'll show it to you, if you want.”

Dearie, still looking down at the floor and red to the roots of his hair, was shaking his head monotonously back and forth.

“I've got it on a couple of my sweatshirts, too,” Ronnie said. “I'm no peacenik, but it's a cool sign. I like it.”

Tony DeLucca said he also had one on the back of a sweatshirt.

Lennie Doria told Ebersole and Garretsen he had doodled it on the endpapers of several different textbooks; it was on the front of his general assignments notebook as well. He'd show them, if they wanted to see.

Billy Marchant had it on his jacket.

Brad Witherspoon had inked it on his freshman beanie. The beanie was in the back of his closet somewhere, probably beneath the underwear he'd forgotten to take home for his mom to wash.

Nick Prouty said he'd drawn peace signs on his
favorite record albums:
Meet the Beatles
and
Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders
. “You ain't got any mind to bend, dinkleballs,” Ronnie muttered, and there was laughter from behind cupped hands.

Several others reported having the peace sign on books or items of clothing. All claimed to have done this long before the discovery of the graffiti on the north end of Chamberlain Hall. In a final surreal touch, Hugh stood up, stepped into the aisle, and hiked the legs of his jeans so we could see the yellowing athletic socks climbing his hairy shins. A peace sign had been drawn on both with the laundry-marker Mrs. Brennan had sent to school with her baby boy—it was probably the first time the fuckin thing had been used all semester.

“So you see,” Skip said when show-and-tell was over, “it could have been any of us.”

Dearie slowly raised his head. All that remained of his flush was a single red patch over his left eye. It looked like a blister.

“Why are you lying for him?” he asked. He waited, but no one answered. “Not one of you had a peace sign on a single thing before Thanksgiving break, I'd swear to it, and I bet most of you never had one on anything before tonight. Why are you lying for him?”

No one answered. The silence spun out. In it there grew a sense of power, an unmistakable force we all felt. But who did it belong to? Them or us? There was no way of saying. All these years later there's still no real way of saying.

Then Dean Garretsen stepped to the podium. Dearie moved aside without even seeming to see him. The Dean looked at us with a small and cheerful
smile. “This is foolishness,” he said. “What Mr. Jones wrote on the wall was foolishness, and this lying is more foolishness. Tell the truth, men. 'Fess up.”

No one said anything.

“We'll be speaking to Mr. Jones in the morning,” Ebersole said. “Perhaps after we do, some of you fellows may want to change your stories a bit.”

“Oh man, I wouldn't put too much trust in anything Stoke might tell you,” Skip said.