By the time I got to math class, the boys were giving me a wide berth. I slipped in the back row and took out my textbook.
After a lesson on congruent triangles, during which I struggled to keep my eyes open, Sam Feeney raised his hand. “Mr. Blane, I read an article about that professor you mentioned and his theory of pi ending. He’s presenting his theory at the Fall Mathematical Institute, in Boston. How do you think he’s going to show that pi ends?”
“Well, I’ve read quite a bit about it myself, and his theory is based on a trend that he has noticed in the most recently calculated digits of pi. Right now, we know pi to over seven hundred digits after the decimal point. But as you know, mathematicians are continuing to calculate more and more numbers.
“Professor Stanton has discovered that in the last one hundred digits of the most recent calculation of pi, the number one no longer appears. He believes that this trend will continue and that the numbers will continue to cease to appear until the entire number pi collapses in on itself and ends.”
I looked around the room to see if everyone else was as befuddled as I was. They were.
“Imagine, if you will,” Mr. Blane continued, “a pool table. There are fifteen numbered balls on the table. Each time one of the numbered balls is sunk in a pocket, that number ceases to play a part in the game. If balls continue to be knocked into pockets, eventually there will be no numbers left, and the game ends.”
Robbie Dean’s hand went up. “And Professor Stanton can prove that numbers will continue to disappear until the whole number pi ends?”
“That remains to be seen at the Fall Math Institute.” Mr. Blane’s eyes flashed with excitement. “It might make for a great field trip, if any of you are interested. There will be mathematicians there from all over the world. It could be the equivalent of Sir Galahad discovering the Holy Grail—or, rather, discovering that the Holy Grail doesn’t exist.”
“What if he’s wrong?” I asked. “How would someone disprove Professor Stanton’s theory?” I wasn’t really all that interested in Professor Stanton’s theory and didn’t really care if he was right or not. But in my mother’s words, I was being contrary, and it felt good to challenge what everyone else was so excited about.
“That would be called a proof by contradiction. Someone would have to find one of the numbers that is supposed to have disappeared. It would be like finding one of the missing pool balls. If it could be shown that a missing number was back in play, Professor Stanton’s theory would be contradicted and rendered invalid.”
There was a buzz around the room as boys considered the prospect. Then the bell rang.
“Class dismissed, gentlemen.”
I didn’t think Mr. Blane’s revelation would spark such discussion, but that evening in the dormitory, a few boys congregated in Sam and Robbie Dean’s room, relaxing on their Friday night. Granted, it didn’t start out as a discussion of pi, but rather as a sort of pie-eating event. Robbie Dean’s mother had sent an apple crumble pie for him to share among his friends, and there was a great deal of dispute over how big a slice each boy should get.
From the talk I overheard from my room next door, mainly through the vent that opened into both rooms, I gathered that Sam was insisting he should get a bigger piece because there was more of him to feed. Robbie Dean said his mother meant for him to share slivers, not full-fledged pieces. And Preston Townsend said that he had always been a favorite of Robbie Dean’s mother, and he was sure that she meant for him to have a healthy portion.
I sat reading a National Geographic magazine on Machu Picchu, trying to convince myself that I preferred having a room all to myself and that I enjoyed the quiet. But the noises from next door, the eating, the chatter, the banter, presented me with a head-on proof by contradiction that I was fooling myself. I was lonely.
“It’s too bad this pie isn’t never-ending,” said Preston. “I wonder what Professor What’s-His-Name would have to say about that. The one who believes that pi ends. Stanford? Sanbridge?”
That’s when I was called in.
“Hey, Baker,” Sam called. “Put your National Geographic down and come here.”
I shut my magazine and shoved it under my pillow, wondering how he knew what I was reading. It was true that most of my free time lately had been spent with my nose in a National Geographic, so it was a pretty safe guess. I poked my head in next door, trying to look casual and disinterested.
“Douglas Stanton,” I said, giving away the fact that I’d been listening. Glancing around, I saw that the room was identical to mine—two beds, two closets, a sink, and a desk. But their bedspreads were red, there were pictures on the wall, and—I breathed in deeply—it smelled of apple crumble pie.
“Yeah, well, if he’s like Sir Galahad, I’m a monkey’s uncle,” said Preston. “There aren’t very many people I’d put in the same category with him. Who would you say?”
“Robin Hood,” said Sam.
“The Three Musketeers,” countered Robbie Dean. “Four, if you count d’Artagnan.”
The three of them looked at me. “What about you, Baker?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’d rather pick somebody real, not just a character from a book.”
“Oh, well, that’s easy,” said Sam.
Then the three spoke in unison, saying one name.
I knew I was going to sound dumb, but I said it anyway. “Who’s the Fish?”
They looked at each other, confirming that I was both stupid and an outsider. Robbie Dean took on the role of the explainer. “The Fish—Number 67, class of 1943. He’s only the greatest athlete ever to walk the halls of Morton Hill Academy.”
Number 67. The boy in the trophy case.
“They retired his number, and that’s his boat in the Nook,” Sam added.
My eyes grew wide in disbelief. “The blue one? The Maine?”
“That’s the one,” said Robbie Dean. “We were all sixth graders that year. He was all-state in football, track, and rowing. But those pale in comparison to what he did in the Steeplechase.”
I took a breath, knowing I was only going to make myself look worse. “Steeplechase?”
This time they rolled their eyes and groaned. Preston spoke up. “For crying out loud, Baker, what rock have you been living under? Oh, yeah, you’re from Kansas.” He said it as if Kansas were in some remote tribal region inhabited by illiterate natives like the ones in my National Geographic magazines.
“Shut the door,” Preston ordered. I did and immediately regretted it. “Jeez, Baker. You smell like a medicine cabinet.”
“Sorry, it’s a kind of lotion for sore muscles,” I said, leaving Early’s name out of the mix.
The boys leaned forward with an air of secrecy as Robbie Dean set about relieving me of my ignorance. “The Steeplechase was a competition that used to be an annual event among the senior boys. It was named after the horse races that started in Ireland and England where the horses would run a course from one church steeple to another, jumping fences, ditches, creeks, and everything in between.”
“We’d be hard-pressed to use horses here”—Sam picked up where Robbie Dean left off—“because we don’t have any. But it’s the same idea. You start at the chapel, then head to Dinosaur Log—”
Robbie Dean smacked him on the back of the head. “Don’t tell him the course, you idjit.”
“If it’s an annual event, why is the course such a big secret?” I asked.
“Because they put the kibosh on the Steeplechase after Philip Attwater slipped off Dinosaur Log and nearly broke his neck,” said Preston.
“Yeah, he had to go and ruin it for everybody,” Sam grumbled. “That’s why anytime someone messes up in a way that messes it up for everyone else, we say, ‘Attaboy, Attwater.’ ”
Robbie Dean spoke up. “That’s what we should have said to Sam when he ate too many desserts at lunch and threw up. Now we each only get one.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Sam insisted. “Coach had us running laps in PE after lunch and—”
“Yeah, yeah, and I’m sure he apologized right after you hurled three helpings of cherry cobbler on his shoes.”
“So, does the Fish ever come back? Do you think he could still do the Steeplechase?”
The guys fell into an awkward silence. “No, he didn’t come back,” Robbie Dean answered, all the bravado gone from his voice. “After graduation, he enlisted. He took it on the chin in France. His whole squad was killed.”
Nobody said anything more after that, but their silence and their awkward glances at each other made it clear that they preferred not to have their all-star image of the Fish ruined by an outsider coming in and forcing them to view their legend outside the trophy case.
And no one seemed to have much of an appetite for any more pie.