Exley (29 page)

I look over and see H. looking lost and forlorn and without a partner. Everyone else is paired up. I do a quick count and find that there is one
more boy than girl. M. has told me that he and H. are in the same gym class, and so I assume he would be H.'s partner if he were here. So I take M.'s place. I walk over to where H. is standing. H.'s eyes get large and “freaked out” when he sees me walking toward him, and no wonder—his lip is still engorged and scabbed from where “Exley” struck him, and since I first introduced myself immediately afterward, he must associate me with that day, that blow, that wound—and so to put him at ease, I bow. To my surprise, H. bows back. His is a formal bow. He puts his left hand across his stomach and his right hand across his lower back as he completes his move. I look at all the other students: all they do is lower their heads a little. But Harold is very serious and proper about it. I laugh at him because I am certain that's what M. would do.

“What?” he says. “That's how you're supposed to do it.”

“Bow to your corner,” the voice on the tape player says.

I turn to my corner. My corner is J. She does not bow but instead glares at me. Perhaps this is just a manifestation of her hatred for square dancing. In any case, I bow at her like H. bowed at me. I hope this might cheer her up and she might laugh at me like I laughed at Harold. But she doesn't laugh at me; on the contrary, her glare only intensifies, so deep is her dislike for this particular dance.

“Swing your partner,” the voice on the tape player says. I turn away from J. and back to H. I can feel a crazy grin washing over my face. Because I, too, was often stuck with other boys for partners when I square-danced in gym, and the one good thing about having a boy for a partner is that you could swing him as hard as you could and not worry about hurting him or having him think you were a “goon.” I hook my arm in H.'s, and as I do I notice a look of absolute terror on his face, but I do not have sufficient time to consider it before we commence swinging. Of course, I am bigger than H. and so end up doing most of the swinging. In order to keep up, H. is forced to sprint. At one point, I swing H. harder than I mean to, and his feet leave the ground for a second and I hear him shriek. Then I hear the female coach's whistle. I look over and see Coach B. press a button on the tape player. The square-dance music and calling stops, and Coach B. starts to yell at a girl and a boy who, evidently, weren't
swinging properly. “You're not supposed to be doing the Lindy,” Coach B. tells them.

“So I didn't think we were,” the boy says, and I know from that “so” that he is M.'s classmate L.

“We weren't doing the Lindy,” the girl confirms. “I don't even know what the Lindy
is
.” I can't help noticing that the girl is pretty: when it's the day when there's just one gym class and you have to hold their hands, all the girls are pretty. But this girl is especially pretty, freckled, with long white legs coming out of her gym shorts. Coach B. wipes his palms on the sides of his shorts, then smiles eagerly at the girl. The girl glances at the female coach, but she is still too consumed by her whistle, her gum, to notice. Coach B. puts out his hands—presumably to show her what Lindy swinging is, and then to show her how square-dance swinging is different—and the girl places her hands in his because she has to. It is hard to watch, and so I don't. Instead, I turn back to H. He seems even more terrified than before and even puts one hand in front of his face before saying loudly, “Please don't hit me again!”

“Pardon me?” I say. Just then, the music begins again, but none of us can remember what we were doing before the coach pushed Pause. “Swing your partner,” Coach B. says. But before we can start doing that again, the voice on the tape player tells us, “Swing your corner.” I turn to J. I offer her my arm, but she does not take it. Instead she says angrily, “I thought you said you were a
doctor
.”

“I did,” I say. “I am.”

“You're not a doctor,” she says, louder now, loud enough to be heard over the fiddles and the calls of the tape recording. “You're a drunk asshole who hit H. in the
face
”.

“H. told you that?” I ask.

“Allemande left,” says the voice on the tape player. Everyone stops what they're doing and just stands there. Because no one can ever remember what it means to “allemande.” Coach B. stops the tape. “Allemande left,” he repeats, as though that will help clear things up for everyone. The left part I understand, at least. I turn to my left, away from J. and to H. His Adam's apple is way out and quivering.

“Why do you think I'm going to hit you?” I say. “Again?”

“Because you hit me in the face once already!” he yells, certainly loud enough for others in the gymnasium to hear. I can sense the coaches looking in our direction, can sense waves of athletic male and female aggression in the air between them and us.

“Whisper
,” I whisper. “I did not hit you. Where did I hit you?”

“I told you,” H. whispers. “In the face.”

“No, no,” I say. “When did this happen? In what context?”

“In front of the Crystal,” H. says. “I was there with my friend M.”

“What?” I say. “You're referring to Exley. Or someone who M. mistakenly thought was Exley. He's the one who hit you.”

“Are you kidding me?” H. says. He squints at me now, like he knows I'm lying to him but can't tell yet for what reason, to what end.

I assure him I am not. “You and I met that day, but later, as you were fleeing the Public Square. I gave you twenty dollars. Remember?”

H. nods now like he does remember. “You wanted me to keep an eye on M.”

“Yes, yes,” I say. “I still do. In fact, one of the things I'd like you to do is to make M. realize he should give up on his quest to find this Exley.”

“You want him to stop trying to find the guy who hit me?”

“No, no,” I say, and begin to understand something of M.'s frustration with H. “The guy who hit you is not Exley. For Christ's sake, I already told you that.” And then I hear what I've said to H., hear that name—
Exley
—and those words—
Christ's sake
—ringing in my ears, and I think but do not say,
Oh no, oh no
. “Why did you think I was the man who hit you in the face?” I ask.

“Because you look just like him,” H. says.

“Is there a problem here?” Coach B. asks. He is standing right in front of H. and me with his hands on his hips. His biceps are quivering like Harold's Adam's apple was a minute earlier. No one in the gym is dancing. The tape player is off. Everyone is looking at us. J. is to my right, and I can sense her staring at me. My right ear feels like it is on fire.

“A problem?” I say.

“Yes,” Coach B. says. “It seemed like you two were having a problem. It seemed like it might have something to do with you hitting our H. here.”
There is a fierce, proprietary sound in his voice, as though I've violated the contract stating that Coach B., and Coach B. alone, is allowed to abuse H. I know there is no way I can talk my way out of this situation, especially since I cannot clear my head, cannot stop thinking of what H. has now made clear to me—
I look like the guy who looked like Exley; I look like Exley
—and so I think once again of what I know about H. from M. and what M. would say in this situation, and then I say, “Harold here was telling me why they call it square dancing.”

Coach B. looks at H., who looks at me.
Please
, I say with my eyes. And just in case “please” doesn't work, I rub my thumb, index, and middle fingers together, to remind H. that I've already given him twenty dollars and so far have had no return on my investment. H. sighs, which I take to mean he understands my meaning. “They called it square dancing because it was done in the town square,” he says. “If there's no town square, there's no square dancing.” Then H. raises his hands to his shoulders, palms up, and looks around, as though to ask,
Where is the square
?

Coach B. takes a step toward H. “You know . . . ,” he growls. Then he draws in a big breath, releases it, and says, “I suppose you're going to tell me what we're doing is gym dancing and not square dancing at all.”

H. nods. “That does sound like something I would say,” he says.

 

 

A
fter the VA hospital, I went home and got out the phone book to look up the number of the bus company. While I was at it, I looked up Exley. I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before. There were no Exleys—not in Alexandria Bay, not in Watertown, not anywhere. But that didn't necessarily mean anything: Exley spent half his book sleeping on other people's davenports, living in other people's houses, talking, I guess, on other people's phones. Just because he wasn't in the book didn't mean he wasn't in Alex Bay. I'd just have to ask around once I got up there. Anyway, I found the number for the bus, called it, and found out there were no buses from Watertown to Alex Bay. I was trying to figure out what to do next when someone started blowing a car horn outside the house. I opened the front door and there was J.'s father, in the driver's seat of his white van.

I walked over to the van. “Hello, Mr. S.,” I said. I guessed S. was his last name, since it was J.'s.

“Don't call me that,” he said. I didn't know why not. Maybe he was one of those guys who didn't like to be known as mister anything. K. had said that my dad always told his students to call him Tom, not Mr. Le Ray and that he always made the corny joke about Mr. Le Ray being his father. “Get in.”

“I can't,” I said. “I have to figure out how to get to Alexandria Bay.”

“I'll drive you to Alex Bay,” he said. “Get in.”

I didn't exactly believe that Mr. S. was going to drive me to Alex Bay. But I didn't want to call him a liar, either. It's hard to call a guy who has no legs a liar. It's also hard to say no to a guy with no legs. So I got in the van.

“Come on,” Mr. S. said, and pounded the steering wheel. His seat was
higher than a normal car seat, and the dashboard was more complicated and busier than a normal dashboard. Mr. S. stepped on the gas by pushing on a lever with his hands and said, “Let's go make some noise.”

Mr. S. drove northeast on Pearl Street for a long time, where I didn't see anything worth thinking about until I saw a sign for Fort Drum, and soon after, a huge wire fence, and on the other side of the fence, tall pine trees. The road we were on ended there, and another one started. It followed the fence to the left and the right. We took a right and drove for a long, long time. I didn't know there was that much fence in the whole world. Finally, we came to a vehicle-sized hole in the fence and a small cabin next to the hole. I could see someone in the cabin. He looked like he was wearing a helmet. Above the hole and the cabin was a sign that said
FORT DRUM: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. Under the sign there was a road. There was a big white wooden arm across the road and two soldiers wearing helmets on either side of it. They both had rifles, which they held diagonally across their chests. We kept driving.

“My mother works here,” I said just to say something.

“No kidding,” Mr. S. said.

“But I've never been here before.” This was true. Whenever I asked about whether I could see where she worked, if I could see her office, Mother said, “It's not much to look at.” After the first couple of times, I'd stopped asking.

After a few more minutes of fence, we came to a sign that said,
FORT DRUM: AUTHORIZED VISITORS
. It was attached to two poles. In between the two poles, and under the sign, was a gate. The gate was also a fence, but it was on wheels. It was closed. There was no one around who seemed like he'd be the person to open it. There was no one around at all that I could see. Mr. S. pulled the van over to the side of the road, unbuckled his seat belt, and looked at me. “How about some help?” he said, and then jerked his thumb back toward the rest of the van. I saw the wheelchair was there, strapped to the wall of the van. I got out of my seat, freed the wheelchair, backed it in the direction of Mr. S. He'd swiveled his seat—the van seats could swivel, apparently—and with some help from me he managed to get into the chair, which he then pushed toward the back of the van. When he got to the back of the van, he reached down and grabbed what
looked like a stick and a traffic cone, put them both in his lap, then stared at the door. I was still standing toward the front of the van. I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I put them in my front pockets. But then that didn't seem right, so I put them in my back pockets. That seemed worse. I felt like a doofus. I didn't know what was wrong with me.

“Hey!” Mr. S. yelled. “Can you at least push the goddamn button?”

I walked to the driver's seat, saw there was a button labeled Rear Door, and pushed the button. I kept my finger on it until the platform was all the way out and then kept my finger on it until the platform lowered to the ground. Then I ran around and watched Mr. S. wheel himself off the platform. Mr. S. had a megaphone in his lap (it wasn't a traffic cone after all) and was holding a sign with a big stick attached to it, which I couldn't read because it was turned backward. Once Mr. S. was way away from the van, he told me to push the button again. I did, and the platform disappeared inside the van. “What are we doing here?” I asked Mr. S., but he didn't answer. Instead, he handed me the sign. I turned it around and looked at it. It said
NO MORE WAR
in big red letters.

“I hear you're pissed off,” Mr. S. said.

“What?” I said. I was still looking at the sign. I'm not sure I'd ever held one before. It was weird to think about that. A month or so earlier, Mother and I had watched one of the election conventions on TV. We watched it for about a minute before Mother said she couldn't stand it anymore and turned the TV off. But I'd seen enough to know what to do when you're holding a sign attached to a stick. I started raising and lowering the sign like I'd seen them do on TV.