Out on Bennett’s Walk, Stoke tried to sit up. He got his upper body partway out of the water . . . and then lay back, full length, as if that icy, slushy water were a bed. He lifted both arms skyward in a gesture which was almost invocatory, then let them fall again. It was every surrender ever given summed up in three motions: the lying back, the lifting of the arms, the double splash as they fell back wide to either side. It was the ultimate fuck it, do what you want, I quit.
‘Come on,’ Skip said. He was still laughing but he was also completely serious. I could hear the seriousness in his laughing voice and see it in his hysterically contorted face. I was glad it was there, God I was glad. ‘Come on, before the stupid motherfuck drowns.’
Skip and I crammed through the doorway of the lounge shoulder to shoulder and sprinted
down the third-floor hall, bouncing off each other like pinballs, reeling, almost as out of control as Stoke had been on the path. Most of the others followed us. The only one I know for sure who didn’t was Mark; he went down to his room to change out of his soaked jeans.
We met Nate on the second-floor landing — damned near ran him down. He was standing there with an armload of books in a plastic sack, looking at us with some alarm.
‘Good grief,’ he said. That was Nate at his strongest, good grief. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Come on,’ Skip said. His throat was so choked the words came out in a growl. If I hadn’t been with him earlier, I’d have thought he’d just finished a fit of weeping. ‘It’s not us, it’s fuckin Jones. He fell down. He needs — ‘ Skip broke off as laughter — great big belly-gusts of it — overtook him and shook him once again. He fell back against the wall, rolling his eyes in a kind of hilarious exhaustion. He shook his head as if to deny it, but of course you can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants. Above us, the stairs began to thunder with descending third-floor cardplayers. ‘He needs help,’ Skip finished, wiping his eyes.
Nate looked at me in growing bewilderment. ‘If he needs help, why are you guys laughing?’
I couldn’t explain it to him. Hell, I couldn’t explain it to myself. I grabbed Skip by the arm and yanked. We started down the steps to the first floor. Nate followed us. So did the rest.
34
The first thing I saw when we banged out through the north door was that rectangle of yellow canvas. It was lying on the ground, full of water and floating lumps of slush. Then the water on the path started pouring in through my sneakers and I forgot all about sightseeing. It was freezing. The rain drove down on my exposed skin in needles that were not quite ice.
In Bennett’s Run the water was ankle-deep, and my feet went from cold to numb. Skip slipped and I grabbed his arm. Nate steadied us both from behind and kept us from tumbling over backward. Ahead of us I could hear a nasty sound that was half coughing and half choking. Stoke lay in the water like a sodden log, his duffle coat floating around his body and those masses of black hair floating around his face. The cough was deep and bronchial. Fine droplets sprayed from his lips with each gagging, choking outburst. One of his crutches lay next to him, caught between his arm and his side. The other was floating away in the direction of Bennett Hall.
Water slopped over Stoke’s pale face. His coughing took on a strangled, gargling quality.
His eyes stared straight up into the rain and fog. He gave no sign that he heard us coming, but when I knelt on one side of him and Skip on the other, he tried to beat us away with his hands. Water ran into his mouth and he began to thrash. He was drowning in front of us. I no longer felt like laughing, but I might still have been doing it. At first they were joking, Carol said. At first they were joking. Put on the radio, Pete, I like the oldies.