The sweater, soaked through, was heavy in her hands. It smelled of wet wool and wood smoke, and she was aware of the same rancid odor that had come off him the first time, when Elizabeth had dropped two dollars in his hat. She yearned to help him as he fumbled with frozen fingers to unbutton his shirt, but the intimacy she’d felt when she’d peeled his sweater up over his head disturbed her, and Elizabeth, standing still by the door, pressing a hand against it so no one could enter, was watching her as if to see what strange thing she was going to do next. He finally managed to get his shirt off, let it fall to the floor. His skin was pale, not tanned like when she’d seen him naked in the river, and he had a wiry look, like a longdistance runner. Sylvia put the sweater over the back of her desk chair to dry and took her parka off and draped it over his shoulders.
He bent down to untie the laces of his boots, fumbling again. Doors were opening and closing in the hall, and footsteps and voices. It was dinner time, so girls were leaving the dorm for the dining hall. Impatient with his struggling, Sylvia knelt at his feet, pushed his hands aside, untied his laces, and pulled the boot off his foot. With it still in her hands she looked at Elizabeth, standing at the door. Their eyes met. Elizabeth shrugged. If a friend pushed on the door, she’d have to guess why Elizabeth wouldn’t let her in. Dope? Booze? A boy in the room? Sex?
Outside the door, it was quiet now. Elizabeth opened it just enough to put her head out. “All clear in the hall,” she whispered.
Sylvia realized she was still holding his boot. She dropped it, making a loud thudding sound. Elizabeth frowned. “Sorry,” Sylvia whispered, then giggled. All of a sudden this was funny—a comedy, whatever else it was. Elizabeth still frowned. Sylvia untied the other boot and pulled it off.
One on each side of him, they helped him into the hall. “We’ll just have to hope nobody’s still here,” Elizabeth whispered. Her tone said, See what you’ve gotten us into. Their hands in his armpits, propping him up, they headed toward the bathroom. He seemed almost weightless between them. In the piercing glare of light bouncing from the white tiles of the bathroom, Elizabeth held onto him so he wouldn’t fall down while Sylvia ran back to their room and came back with a chair and a towel. She put the chair in the shower stall and hung the towel on a rack and turned on the shower. “You can take off your clothes in there,” Elizabeth said, slipping Sylvia’s parka off his shoulders. The bathroom was already filling with steam. They helped him to the edge of the shower stall and, leaning in so only their arms got wet, lowered him down on the chair, then stepped back and pulled the curtain closed.
In less than a minute, the shower stopped. The curtain opened and he staggered out, wearing the towel like a skirt around his waist.
“Already?” Elizabeth said.
He nodded his head and mumbled something they couldn’t hear.
“Go back in!” Sylvia said, but he shook his head, refusing.
Yielding to him, they helped him back to their room and, closing their eyes so they wouldn’t see under the skirt of the towel, helped him up into Sylvia’s upper bunk where he would be less likely seen. They pulled the bunk curtain closed.
“We forgot his clothes!” Elizabeth realized. She rushed out of the room, came back a moment later, Christopher’s wet khaki trousers, boxer shorts and socks bundled in one hand, the chair in the other. She stuffed his clothes into a laundry bag along with enough of her own clothes so that if anybody did happen to open the dryer, Christopher’s wouldn’t be noticed. She left for the cellar where the washing machines and dryers were.
While she was gone, Sylvia, still worried about hypothermia, opened her computer to look it up:
HYPOTHERMIA; TREATMENT OF: Warm the victim up slowly. Do not immerse in hot water; this may cause serious disruptions to the normal rhythm of the heart.
Elizabeth returned, closed the door behind her. “I wish there wasn’t a rule against locks,” she muttered. Her eyes followed Sylvia’s to the computer. “So that’s why he turned the shower off almost right away!”
Sylvia went down the hall to the common room to make hot tea. She came back, handed the steaming mug to Elizabeth, pulled the curtain open, stood on tiptoes, and propped Christopher up while Elizabeth held the mug to his lips. He still smelled foul. He drank slowly, pushing the cup away several times to get his breath. Some of the tea spilled down onto his chest, wetting the hairs. Sylvia, feeling shy, tender, and repulsed all at once, wiped it away with the edge of the sheet. When there was no more tea in the mug, Sylvia let Christopher’s head back on the pillow, pulled the covers up to his chin, and turned away.
Elizabeth slid the curtain closed. “How many times are we going to have to sneak him into the bathroom with all this tea in him?” she whispered.
“So that’s why he let us take him to the shower!” Sylvia said, whispering too. “So he could pee without having to ask. He never got under the water. He took his clothes off to fool us.”
“Yeah, well, this blizzard better be over by the morning.”
“What if it isn’t? Suppose it goes on for days?”
“The equipment shed, obviously. Like we planned in the first place.”
“I suppose so—until the blizzard ends.”
They listened for footsteps in the hall. Elizabeth shrugged. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Moments later they heard their dormmates returning from dinner: footsteps, doors opening and closing, voices. Then a knock on their door. Elizabeth jumped up from her chair, took one step, and was beside the bunks, pulling the curtain partly open to look at Christopher. “Thank God!” she whispered. “He’s sound asleep.” She pulled the curtain closed again.
Sylvia opened the door. It was Eudora Easter.
“Aren’t you going to let me in?”
“Oh! Sorry.” Sylvia stepped aside. Then, trying to sound inviting: “Come on in.”
Eudora entered, regal as always. “I missed you at dinner. Everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” Elizabeth said. “We’d already eaten.”
“At my mother’s,” Sylvia said, regretting right away. Suppose Eudora commented on that to her mother? She wished she’d remembered to take her jeans and boots off. Eudora might wonder why they were wet. Just from walking to the Head’s House? Then why aren’t Elizabeth’s wet?
“I thought you might have eaten there,” Eudora said, glancing at Elizabeth’s lower bunk where she frequently sat down when she came to visit, then noticing the closed curtain, looking mildly surprised. “Anyway, in case you hadn’t, I brought you these.” She pulled two bananas and two apples from a pocket of her fur coat. “There was chocolate cake for dessert, but I didn’t bring you any. I knew I would just stop and eat it on the way.”
Elizabeth smiled. Sylvia faked a laugh.
“Even in a storm,” Eudora said, shaking her head in mock despair. She put the bananas and apples on the desk next to the open computer. “Hypothermia? You studying that in science?”
“No, we just got interested because of the weather,” Elizabeth said.
Eudora nodded. “Well, I’ll get out of your hair.” It was obvious she understood: sometimes kids just don’t want the company of grown-ups—frequently when they need it the most, even seniors about to go off to college. She moved to the door, put her hand on the knob. “Next time you decide not to go to dinner, tell me ahead of time, all right? So I won’t worry?” Her tone was more like a warning than a request.
“All right, we will,” Elizabeth said.
Eudora nodded again and left, leaving the door open.
“DO YOU KNOW how close that was?” Elizabeth whispered, closing the door. All Christopher had to do was turn over. Eudora would have heard. “We’d be getting kicked out of school right now. So shed, shmed! We have to get him off campus.”
“Okay. You’re right.” Sylvia sat down, breathed a great big breath in, and let it out. “I’ll call my aunt.”
Sylvia dialed Aunt M. She could come first thing in the morning and take Christopher to the VA where they’d try again to help him. Aunt M surely would know how to make that happen. From the phone, Aunt M’s recorded voice came on: “I’m unavailable right now. Leave a message. Keep it short.”
“Aunt M, this is Sylvia. Please come the minute you get this. It’s about that homeless man.” Sylvia ended the call and looked away from Elizabeth.
“Why didn’t we call your aunt the second we knew he’d come back? We knew he’d be trouble,” Elizabeth whispered.
Sylvia turned. Elizabeth really did look curious. “Let’s not go there.”
“I want to go there. I want someone to tell us we didn’t do this just to make ourselves into some kind of heroes.”
“Well, that’s not going to be my aunt. Maybe you should ask him,” Sylvia said, pointing to the upper bunk.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” Elizabeth whispered.
“No crazier than you. You’re no more about to throw him out into the cold than I am.”
Elizabeth didn’t answer, just stared.
“Are you?” Sylvia said. “No, of course you’re not.”
Elizabeth turned back to her desk. Behind the curtain, Christopher groaned and rolled over in his sleep.
“I’m going to take a hot shower too, but for real,” Sylvia said. “I’m still cold.”
UNDER THE STEAMED, soothing water, it came to Sylvia that she had saved a person’s life. Go ahead and punish her for that! No one else would have even tried. And no one else would have figured out how to get home. But she did! Just face the wind. It had been directly on her back on her way out. Then, on the way home, the wind blew even harder and she was even more blinded by the snowflakes, but she didn’t need to know where the school was. Just face the wind. She stayed under the water until she was warm right through to her bones, imagining herself on the stage at Morning Meeting, asking the school, How many of you would have dared?
Back in the room, she and Elizabeth agreed: Sylvia would set the alarm on her phone for four in the morning. They’d wake Christopher up and sneak him into the shed. There were warm clothes and plenty of dry food stored in there, the kind for when you don’t want to stop and cook: beef jerky, energy bars, and M&Ms, raisins, and peanuts mixed together, otherwise known as gorp. Tomorrow night Aunt M would come, get the key from Sylvia, and sneak him away when everybody was asleep.
Sylvia went to the cellar and retrieved Christopher’s clothes from the dryer. The snow hadn’t washed all the smell away nor the splatter from the shower, and the remaining heat of the dryer had made it worse. Maybe Elizabeth should have put them in the washer first, but that would have increased the time for someone to discover the presence of a man’s clothes in the dorm, and now it was too late to wash and then dry the clothes all over again. Then she realized: he’d have to pee or, worse, take a crap. How? They were going to have to leave the shed unlocked so he could go outside. The security guy would see it! Suppose she hadn’t thought of it!
The janitor’s equipment closet was also in the cellar. She found a bucket used for mopping the floor and carried it with the clothes to their room, and then put the bucket under Elizabeth’s bunk. Standing on her tiptoes, she put Christopher’s clothes next to him and shook him gently by the shoulder. He didn’t stir. She shook him again, harder this time. “Christopher, wake up!” she whispered. “You have to put your clothes back on!” He stirred, opened his eyes, looked at her, for a second or two, making no sign that he recognized her nor that even knew where he was, and closed his eyes again. “Christopher, your clothes!”
“Not so loud! Elizabeth hissed.
“Christopher! Christopher! Christopher!” Sylvia said, speaking quietly now, not whispering. His eyes opened. “It’s me,” she said, picking the bundle of his clothes up in both of her hands and placing them on his chest. “Put them on!” She turned away. Elizabeth turned out the light so they couldn’t see. They listened to the sound of his putting his clothes back on under the sheet.
Elizabeth turned the light back on. Christopher was lying flat on his back, motionless, the sheet pulled up to his chin. “Well, that’s something anyway,” Elizabeth whispered. She went to her desk, wrote a note and taped it to the outside of the door: Tired. Going to bed early. Please don’t disturb. Then Sylvia laid her sleeping bag on the floor, set her alarm for four o’clock—on vibrate only, of course—and crawled into her sleeping bag. Elizabeth turned out the light. Outside the wind still roared, but surrounded by goose down, Sylvia was warm.
CHRISTOPHER WAS GROANING. He was whimpering too. Thrashing up there in the upper bunk. Sounds of terror and despair in the dark. Sylvia thought she was just having a nightmare. She put her hands over her ears and scrunched herself further down into her sleeping bag, but even with her hands over her ears she heard the sounds of Christopher’s nightmare, while in her own she drove a spidery machine with a long, gray gun barrel, like a unicorn’s horn, protruding forward, over miles of yellow sand. It was a beach with no ocean. She wanted to hear the sound of surf.
Then she heard Elizabeth jump out of her bunk and woke up to see Elizabeth turned to face the upper bunk. Sylvia jumped up and stood beside her. Elizabeth reached into the upper bunk to lay her hand on Christopher’s shoulder and shake him awake.
The instant Elizabeth’s hand touched him, he sat up, but he kept on crying out. It was impossible to know whether he was awake or asleep. “It’s all right. It’s all right, Chris,” Sylvia said. “It’s just Elizabeth and me. You’re safe.” The sound of her own words comforted her. She repeated them and reached with both arms and hugged his head to her shoulder, hoping that would silence him, but he kept on crying. So close now, she smelled the rancid smell of him, remembering how he’d fooled them in the shower. “Shh,” she whispered, “shh,” but he cried out again. She put a foot on Elizabeth’s bed to climb. “Don’t!” Elizabeth said.
“If I don’t, he won’t stop,” Sylvia whispered, and climbed up, pushing herself through the smell. She lay down beside him, put her arms back around him. He stopped crying out, was totally silent, except for his breathing.
“Oh! All right then. Maybe you better stay up there, if that’s what’s going to keep him quiet,” Elizabeth whispered.
Below her, Sylvia heard Elizabeth getting back into her bunk. The weight of Christopher’s shoulders on her arm hurt, but she didn’t move it. They’d know soon enough whether anyone had heard.
Minutes passed. No one came running.
“Are you all right up there?” Elizabeth whispered.
“I’m okay,” Sylvia whispered. She was getting used to the smell.
Or maybe it was fading. After a while, she fell asleep.
MARIAN BICKHAM’S PLANE landed several hours late that Thursday night, almost midnight. Nevertheless, having heard the urgency in Sylvia’s tone, she was surprised that Sylvia didn’t answer her returning call. While still at the airport, she made a reservation for the first flight to Bradley Airport in the morning.
It was the last thing she wanted to do. There were a million other things that needed her attention. She had half a mind to call her younger sister and tell her: You take care of it, you’re the boss. So a kid steals stuff from the school and gives it to a homeless person? Give her an A+ for community service and invite the homeless person in for dinner in the dining hall.
And while we’re at it, why should anybody who graduates from your school go on to college? You didn’t teach them enough already for all that money? Maybe they should be homeless for a year or two instead. The tuition would be a whole lot less. They could put that in their journal.
She’d known all along she would receive a call for help from her niece, that Sylvia would take her project, the rescue of a helpless person, to a place of crisis where she was helpless too. That she didn’t know yet she was doing this to find out who she should be in the world was beside the point. The point was that Aunt M could help.
So of course she would.
ON FRIDAY MORNING, the early light came through the curtain, awakening Sylvia to Christopher’s smell. It flashed through her mind, a revelation as stunning as his presence next to her, their bodies touching all along their lengths, that his smell would be offensive only to people who hadn’t got used to it. She pushed the curtain open and sunlight poured down on his face. She would get out of bed, but he was still asleep, his head still on her shoulder. The haunted look she had assumed was his only expression was gone. He looked almost tranquil, breathing in, breathing out. And so, though her arm hurt, she kept on cradling him as one draws a puppy into one’s chest, or a wounded friend. No sound came from the bunk below her. Elizabeth, too, was still asleep.
Sylvia heard footsteps out in the hall, doors opening and closing. Everyone was coming back from breakfast. Eudora would notice Sylvia’s and Elizabeth’s absence at breakfast and would be here very soon to see if they were all right. Sylvia looked down at floor from her bunk. Her cell phone was still on the floor in her sleeping bag where, on vibrate only, it couldn’t be heard. For all she knew, it was still vibrating.
So why wasn’t she leaping out of the bunk, pulling the curtain closed, waking Elizabeth up to figure out what lie to tell Eudora?