Chapter 16
Sixteen
Arthur slept as poorly as he could ever remember, nodding off in snatches, then coming awake with the feeling of boiling in
his own skin. He tossed off the covers and dozed again. When next he lurched awake, he was a-tremble in a cold, rotten sweat.
He dreamt about helping Gwen with a college application, which for some reason had to be turned in on a strip of human skin,
red at the edges. Her personal information had to be tattooed on, but when he took the needle to that ribbon of skin it twitched
and wrinkled and tried to squirm away. Now and then he’d lurch awake, but soon he’d slip back down into sleep once more, and
always, the dream would be waiting for him, picking right up where it had left off. He dreamt that fucking dream all night
long.
He gave up a little after five in the morning. The world outside was dim and cottony, and the snow fell in great wet wads.
He put on three layers and tramped out. He felt like he had a fever, felt the snow should sizzle, like spit on a stovetop,
when it flew into his face.
The Brooks Library was open twenty-four hours for finals week, but at 6:00 a.m. there were only a few other students there
and a single student librarian on duty. Arthur did not ask to enter the Special Collection. It was the first time in months
he had showed up at the library without theft on his mind.
He spent an hour in a carrel with a cup of tea from the student center and the bylaws of Rackham College, latest edition, 1982.
He picked through nearly three hundred badly Xeroxed pages in a three-ring binder before he found what he was looking for, what he had half suspected would be there all along.
A good liberal arts college in the Northeast, famous for its early support of abolition and women’s suffrage, of course it was there.
When he finally found it, he was conscious of the feverish feeling finally passing, leaving him achy, tired . . . but not unhappy.
In the afternoon he climbed into the Christmobile. He threw on the headlights—it was already dark at 4:00 p.m.—and drove to
Gogan.
Gogan was only the next town over, but he didn’t know the roads and in a short time was lost. The Underfoot family were in
the phone book, and he had located their rough address in the grainy map helpfully printed in the back of the Yellow Pages.
But between the dark and the falling snow it was easy for a person to lose his way, and once he got off Gogan’s main drag,
it was a twisty maze of narrow lanes. The way the snow was falling, he didn’t dare do much more than fifteen miles an hour.
Once, a pack of three dogs chased his car, barking hysterically, for almost two blocks. He was keenly aware that Gogan was
not Podomaquassy.
Finally, feeling he was close, he slowed the car alongside a steep hill behind an abandoned brick mill. Kids sailed down the
hill on plastic sleds, whooping as they raced to the bottom of the nearly quarter-mile slope, which ended amid a tumble of
rusting auto parts. It looked like a great way to fly headlong into a case of tetanus, but Arthur thought maybe some of the
parents standing at the top of the hill could tell him where to find the Underfoots. There was a gravel lot up there, with
a few parked cars in it, headlights throwing illumination onto the sledding hill. He turned in and was surprised to see a
plow with a Rackham College decal on the driver’s-side door, the amber caution light revolving on the roof of the cab. He
parked and got out.
“Arthur!” Gwen hollered, and she held up a red plastic sled. “What are you doing out here! Did you get lost looking for a
place to score drugs?”
“Gwen Underfoot!” said Gwen’s mother. “You’re the one musta got lost. Went and got lost looking for your manners.”
Gwen didn’t pay her any mind. Mrs. Underfoot looked like a Lego figure in her puffy parka and snow pants, square hood over her head.
Arthur saw her almost every day at The Briars, and she routinely brought him and the others cocoa and lemon-coconut cake and peach-strawberry pie, and it occurred to him now he had no idea of her first name.
Gwen’s father was Martin, Arthur knew, because he had looked him up in the school directory, where he was listed among the groundskeepers in the back.
Her old man shook Arthur’s hand, his dark, bloodshot eyes both wary and weary.
“Mr. Underfoot,” Arthur said. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Mhm,” he said, which Arthur later realized was quite verbose for him.
“Where are the rest of them?” asked Mrs. Underfoot.
“It’s just me tonight.”
“Did you come to watch me break my neck?” she wanted to know. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“She won’t go,” Gwen said. “She says sleds are for kids, but what she really means is that fun is for kids. It kills me. Come on, Mom. We’ll go together. Just imagine it! The thrill of the speed! The darkness racing
by!”
Mrs. Underfoot glanced down the hill. “I’m imaginin’ a burst spleen and a buncha hospital bills we can’t pay. I didn’t give
up on fun, Gwennie. I gave up on being a hundred-and-ten-pound girl made of rubber. You go. I’ll stay up here with the first
aid kit.”
“I’ll go with you, Gwen,” Arthur said.
When Gwen turned her face to his, it shone with a mixture of delight and surprise. Her pleasure was so immediate and so undisguised,
he couldn’t help feeling a fresh, bitter spasm of shame. He didn’t deserve a look like that—a look of such gladness.
“Climb on,” she said, and dropped her cheap plastic sled on the snow. She settled herself in the front end. “You can be the
big spoon.” He got on behind her and put his legs to either side of her waist, his knees jutting over the sides.
“Anyone ever get hurt doing this?”
“All the time. Scott Carson from school hit the half-buried blade from someone’s table saw when he was nine.
Took off two fingers. Which is a reminder to keep your hands inside the sled at all times.
If we dump, try and throw yourself on top of me.
That way at least I can cop a feel before I die. You ready, old pal?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be, old buddy.”
He put his knuckles into the snow and pushed them forward, a foot at a time—but it was Mr. Underfoot who leaned in, gripped
the back of the sled, and launched them into the night. In less than ten seconds they were doing thirty miles an hour and
screaming their heads off.
At the bottom they ground to a slow, squeaky halt amid the litter of auto parts. They sat in the sled for a while, watching
kids half their age come rocketing down, howling all the way, sometimes toppling out while the sleds were still moving at
high speed. Finally, they climbed out and Arthur took the rope at the front of the sled to drag it while they trudged up the
slope.
“We hit that one bump so hard,” Arthur said, “I thought I was going to accidentally take your virginity.”
“Ha ha,” she said. “More like I’d accidentally take yours, Arthur.”
He thought of Tana and a sick feeling pulsed through him. He took a deep scouring breath of cold air and pushed his guilt
away.
He bumped her shoulder with his. “How are the college applications going?”
She gave him a sharp-eyed sidelong glance. “Polished and done. Kennebec, Husson, University of Southern Maine.”
“Not Rackham?”
When she spoke again, he thought she was clamping down on annoyance. “No, Arthur. It costs fifty thousand dollars a year to go to Rackham College. That’s more than my father’s annual salary, and
I don’t have the grades for a scholarship. You know this.”
“Unless one of your parents is faculty. Then you’re eligible for one of three different payment plans, all at massively reduced
rates.”
“My father isn’t a teacher. He plows the roads. In the summer, he pilots the riding mower.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Says who?”
“Says the college’s own bylaws. I’ve got a photocopy of the relevant clauses in the car if you want to look.”
Gwen thought it over, then shrugged.
“I doubt I have the grades. You wouldn’t believe how I’ve struggled in Spanish. I’ll be lucky to pull a C minus in Spanish III.”
“I can help you with Spanish. And one grade doesn’t matter that much. Especially when you’ve done five years of volunteering
with the Big Sisters of America.”
“I didn’t do that to impress the admissions department of Rackham College,” she said, with some heat.
“I know you didn’t. But they’ll take it into account all the same.”
“They don’t take townies.”
“Oh, will you quit with that college kids vs. the people who clean their floors bullshit?” he said, with an edge that surprised
both of them. “Makes you sound like Jayne Nighswander. All that matters is whether you got something in you worth building
up or not. And you do. You’re smarter than all of us put together. Can’t you at least try? What are the odds I’m going to
talk you into this?”
“About the same odds that you can get my mother to sled down this hill.”
“Copy that,” he said, and quickened his pace.
“Arthur?” she asked, hustling to keep up with him.
He didn’t speak until they were on top of the hill, both of them breathing hard, vapor steaming from their lips.
“Mrs. Underfoot?” Arthur asked. “Will you sled down this hill with me? I’ll take care not to steer us into anything that can
give you hepatitis.”
“Arthur Oakes, have you been drinking?”
“I’m dead sober, Mrs. Underfoot. What if I told you your daughter’s future happiness depends on the two of us taking this
sled down this hill, right now?”
Gwen said, “Do you have any shame at all?”
“None,” he said. “Mrs. Underfoot? I will not let you be hurt.”
Mrs. Underfoot cocked her head, studying him intently. “That’s not my concern. My question is whether Gwen is gonna wind up hurt?”
He thought of Tana, tasted bile in the back of his mouth, and swallowed it down. “Not a chance.”
Mrs. Underfoot stared at him a moment longer, a faint smile touching her lips.
“Arthur,” Gwen said, “for the record, you are an absolute rat.”
“He better not be,” Mrs. Underfoot said, and sat down in the sled. She looked back at her husband. “If I don’t come back,
Martin, return the videos to the corner store. They’re on the table by the TV. I don’t want no more late fees. And there’s
frozen mac and cheese in the icebox.”
“Mhm,” he said, and when Arthur sat behind Mrs. Underfoot, Martin took the back of the sled and began to run, thrusting them into
the darkness.
Mrs. Underfoot screamed and took Arthur’s hand as they fell off the edge of the world. She screamed so loudly, Arthur almost
couldn’t hear Gwen laughing behind them.