CHAPTER 27

Tuckahoe

Rain pattered steadily on the slate roof of a Saturday afternoon as I made my way down the shadowy corridor to the library to sit at a wooden table and read in the lamplight, a pleasure we were allowed on inclement weekends. Jesse caught up with me. “You’re gonna be approached,” he said. “I just got word. You’ll be asked to do something, some feat of bravery. Whatever it is, do it. After that, you’ll be left alone. But if you chicken out, they’ll make your life hell. Got it?”

“What is it? What do I have to do?”

“I don’t know. But whatever it is, Clyde, you’ve got to have chutzpah. You’re a junior now. You gotta have balls.”

I scowled at my friend. “I will. I do,” I said. He disappeared into the shadows again.

That night I lay awake mulling it over. My white-iron headboard was up against the wall under a drafty window and another bed was up against my footboard with Skelly Schwartz in it, two rows deep on either side of the center aisle. Manny Bergman on my right, Chick in front of me to the left of Skelly. A lot more snoring and plenty of farting in the junior dorm. A hundred-and-thirty boys, some whose balls hadn’t even dropped, others with great hairy balls and putrid body odor and feet that stank like Limberger cheese. I mulled it over. A feat of bravery. They might dare me to swim across the B. A. Creek. The guys knew I didn’t know how to swim. I might have to shimmy up the flagpole or sleep in a coffin in the basement. A rite of passage, Jesse said. Shit. Shorty Lapidus in the barn. Shit, piss, and corruption. The clank of his belt buckle rang in my ears like he was standing right next to me. His cackle sent a shiver down my spine. I felt a hand on my shoulder. Or was I just imagining it? Shit. “Shove over, Aronson.”