We sat, talked, cracked, and crunched a while longer, rocking in the crisp autumn air. On the walk home, I pondered what had been said. Was I on a course to become a miserable old man like Dr. Groves? That thought was so appalling that it made my body shiver uncontrollably. That could not be my future. I would not allow it.
That night the Secret Sevens re-convened in the basement of the library to revel in our success.
Patrick started the meeting. “Congratulations, gentlemen! We have managed to pull off the party of the year without a hitch, and I have a feeling we may be onto something bigger than we’d originally imagined. From the comments I have picked up here and there, it sounds as if people are already asking when the next undercover dance will be. Of course, we cannot disappoint the people—especially the ladies. A job well done to all of you, and special kudos to Tom, who had the original idea.” With that, we passed around the customary bottle of whiskey to celebrate.
We decided to strike while the iron was hot and set a date for another dance a month away. The second dance would not be as elaborate as the first; we simply did not have the time. A motion was made to hire a set-up and tear-down crew. When I asked where the money would come from, the group laughed.
Patrick spoke up again. “Tom, the Secret Sevens have been around for over 100 years. It is part of the duty of each graduating class to leave behind a legacy for future members. People have left all manner of things, but across the years, alumni have left behind money in a fund that the current president has access to. There is a board of three graduated members who have access to the fund as well as the accountability for the use of the money. Many alumni of the Secret Sevens have done well for themselves in business and have gifted substantial amounts of money to the society in their later years. There is much more, but you will learn everything in good time. For now, know that money is not a problem and will not be at any time in the near future.”
It was hard to believe that for over 100 years there had been money accruing in an unknown account so that young men could play pranks and host parties. Of course, I could imagine such things, but to find out that such a fund really existed was rather remarkable. I wondered what other secrets still waited to be unveiled. I knew that somewhere there was a Secret Sevens house, but I had not yet been shown its location.
The next morning, I packed up a suitcase of my things to return home for Thanksgiving break. The first four months at Locklear had careened by at a breakneck pace. While other boys were picked up in limos and town cars, I walked the mile and a half to the train station and waited in the cool misty rain for my train to come. The weather outside perfectly mirrored my mood. I had no desire to return home to my silent, alcoholic father. But since students were not permitted to stay in the dorms, I had no choice; I had to leave. I was even tempted to ask Dr. Emory if I could spend the holiday with him and his wife but decided against it. I concluded that he would have extended the invitation if he wanted me there.
I read over my mid-term report card while waiting. So far, I had all B’s, which was just good enough to maintain my scholarship, but most of those grades were borderline. I expected a note from Dr. Grove’s office when I got back, reminding me of his expectations. I imagined showing my grades to mother. She would have been so excited for me, but I knew father would show no emotion. Probably just a “keep working hard, son. That’s the only thing to do.” Then he’d go pour himself a glass of whiskey.
CHAPTER 14
The Return
I PUSHED OPEN THE FRONT
door to the house, and all was quiet. It was mid-afternoon, and father was sure to be at work. While waiting for him to come home, I wandered around the house. It felt small, smaller than I remembered. I sat on the porch and smoked a cigarette out of habit. It felt strange. I looked at the table where I used to do all my writing. There was a strong feeling of nostalgia for a place I’d only departed a few months ago, but I felt like a stranger in my own home. I began to wonder if perhaps I had been a stranger there long before I left for college and just didn’t know it. I preoccupied myself with a good book until father arrived.
I went out to say hello, to try to bridge the gap between us. We stood and locked eyes. I saw that his hair was beginning to turn silver, which was a new transformation. He hung up his coat and turned back around to me. “Well, son, it’s good you are here. I can use some help in the store this week. Now go ahead and fix me something to eat for dinner.”
“Yes, Father,” I replied obediently. We split; he went to his study, and I went to the kitchen. Nothing had changed.
Thanksgiving week seemed to last forever. The days I spent working in the store were long and boring. I rushed about, grabbing bags of this and bags of that or a pound of this and a pound of that for customers. The cash register seemed to ding constantly as people bought piles of food. For us, there were no holiday festivities or family gatherings with giant carved turkeys and stuffing and all the other delicacies of Thanksgiving. No, we had cold turkey sandwiches with runny potato salad. Happy Thanksgiving.
I found myself out exploring the woods in the late afternoons. I hadn’t walked those woods since I was a boy. They too had changed. The trees didn’t seem quite so high, and the wind didn’t whistle as loudly. The little brook was barely a trickle, and the joy of skipping stones lasted only a short while. There is no question that it was beautiful. I still enjoyed the smell of rotting leaves and the feeling of them crunching beneath my feet, but they no longer held a mystical power over me. Gone was the urge to make an enormous pile of leaves to leap into. Gone was the desire to roll down the large grassy hill like a runaway log. Gone was the desire to skip and hop and run. Gone was the urge to yell, whoop, and holler. Long ago, this place had been a world of endless adventure, but my days of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were behind me. Those two set sail for further adventures, leaving me marooned in adult clothes with adult thoughts and adult worries in an adult world.
The ability to dream was gone, and in its place was a sense of lostness. So much had been lost. So much had been torn away. I longed to see the brook again as a raging river and sail tiny handmade rafts down its rapids. I longed to climb trees and emerge in the Amazon among the howler monkeys and a wild tribe of headhunters. But when I looked around, I could not see those things anymore. They too were gone.
It was with a great sigh of relief that I escaped the house and headed back to Locklear, which now seemed to me a safe haven. Of course, things are never as perfect elsewhere as we remember them to be. I was greeted by stories of twenty-pound turkeys, pumpkin pies, and enormous family gatherings that served as a harsh reminder of my pathetic family. At least I wasn’t the only one who had a miserable break. Charles came back in very low spirits. Apparently, his sub-par mid-term grades had caused his father to explode and berate him for his stupidity and irresponsibility, calling him a disgrace to the family name. The fact that all of this was said in front of his older brothers only made the belittling more painful. He and his father had not spoken the rest of the holiday, while his brothers chided him mercilessly.
We both struggled because of our fathers. His was overbearing and domineering, while mine was apathetic and absent. Both were failures. I felt bad for Charles. There was no way he could live up to his father’s expectations. He would never be like his older brothers, but his father was unable and unwilling to face that fact. My father, on the other hand, had no aspirations for his life or mine, so both Charles and I were rebelling against our fathers, just in opposite directions. This was, indeed, a rather strange predicament, leaving both of us feeling as if we clearly understood one another in our rebellions but thought the other rather odd in his approach to the general matter. Charles, while lacking drive, was far from stupid and could have done rather well for himself had he so fancied, but it was not to be. We both understood that to give in to our fathers was the ultimate defeat, and thus we struggled against them, as young men tend to do.
CHAPTER 15
The Summons
AS EXPECTED, ANOTHER NOTE FROM
Dr. Groves arrived in my box, and I once again found myself seated in front of his haughty features in a small chair. He looked down upon me, enjoying his position of power.
“Well, well,” he began, “it seems that you have managed to pass the first half of your semester by the skin of your teeth. Your academic career hangs desperately in the balance.” There was a long pause, as he seemed to delight in my dangerous proximity to possible termination, like a shark when it tastes blood in the water. “But, that is not why you are here today. It has come to my attention from a number of reliable sources that there was recently an unauthorized gathering in the basement of the library. I will not go into any more details, but since you are a student-worker in the library, I wanted to know if you heard of any such event or saw any peculiar behavior.”
“No, sir,” I said. “I didn’t notice anything. As usual, the library has been rather quiet.”
His hands worked back and forth over each other as if he was trying to wash them in an invisible basin. Suddenly, he stopped and stared at me. “I find that is quite surprising, Tom, because the little escapade took place on the very night when you were working, and somehow students were able to enter through the rear of the library through the locked door. There are only three students who have access to that door, you being one of them. So let me repeat my question again. ‘Do you know anything about the unauthorized gathering?’”
He glared down at me like a high inquisitor, as if I were a pathetic little wretch he intended to squeeze until I squealed. “No, sir,” I said, repeating my denial. “I didn’t know of any gathering, and I do not know how they gained access to the library door.”
“That is unfortunate, Tom. I was willing to administer grace if you admitted your guilt, but I can see that you do not intend to cooperate. I will be brief with you. If I hear of your involvement in the previous event—or future events, for that matter—then you need not wait for a C on your final report card to be expelled. I will be watching you even more closely than before. Now be gone.”
I relayed my meeting to the Secret Sevens later that evening. I glanced around, expecting to see glum looks, but instead they were all smiling. “You little rascal, you,” one of the members blurted out. “You went into the dragon’s layer and lied straight to his face and lived to tell about it. He’s notorious for making kids rat. Groves will be on the hunt more than ever now, but that means that we’re irritating him like a stone in his shoe. Oh, he hates knowing that things are going on behind his back that he can’t control. It’ll probably keep him up at night, wondering what we are planning next. We certainly can’t disappoint him.”
Someone else piped up. “I say we flaunt it in his face since he knows about it now. Let’s make a banner inviting people to the next Secret Sevens dance. We’ll just have to find a different location.”
Patrick took over from there. “Excellent. So our first order of business is...” He ended in an excited crescendo. “I like where this is heading, gentlemen. No guts, no glory.”
It was 3:00 a.m. two nights later and brutally cold. Wind whipped all about us as we stood on top of the roof, bundled head to toe. Four stories up, we unraveled a giant sign welcoming students to the next Secret Sevens dance. We lowered it over the side of the building with long ropes until it hung just above Dr. Groves’ office. We tied the ropes to large cinder blocks and placed a new padlock on the trap door to the roof to make sure it would take a while before maintenance could get to the sign. This was just one of three large signs placed around campus to ensure that Dr. Groves got the message. We were not scared of him. The thought of him squirming with discontent when he saw the sign made me smile.
Dr. Groves was not seen at all the following day. I imagined he was hiding inside somewhere, seething over the open insubordination of his students. We all knew it was war. Groves tripled the evening security on campus, making it much more difficult for us to navigate around, especially as a group, so we decided the best place for the dance was on the girl’s side of campus. It seemed he had overlooked that possibility.
We needed a girl to be our contact person. While there was a good deal of debate over whom we should choose, eventually we settled on Julia Stine. She was a sophomore, and everyone seemed to know her except for me. From some of the comments made, I figured she must be a looker. Had we been able to meet in person to discuss plans, things would have progressed much faster. But for the sake of anonymity, we were forced to correspond only through letters. Julia was eager to help and recommended that we use the basement of the freshman girls’ dorm. The head resident director was rather old and hard of hearing. She went to bed at precisely 9:00 p.m. every night, snored like a banshee, and was impossible to wake. The basement was used only in case of tornado warnings and was in need of some serious cleaning. We left it up to Julia to find a crew of helpers, and she assured us things would be ready. Three weeks after the banners went up, all was set. By the day of the event, we had spread the news by word-of-mouth channels, hoping to avoid being discovered by Groves and his known spies.
As an extra precaution, I was to be a decoy. Shortly after locking up the library, I passed the campus guard, who usually walked by on his rounds at about that time. Upon seeing him, I bolted in the other direction as if caught in an act of indiscretion, and, as expected, he spoke hurriedly into his walkie-talkie and then took off after me. By this time, I knew every inch of the campus; the security guard never had a chance to catch me. I continued to lure him away toward the lake and the dock house. We had set up lights in the windows and a record player that could be heard from a short way off. Once the guard was within a couple hundred yards of the dock house, I doubled back to make it look like I’d headed for the dock house. If he heard the music, we assumed he would contact Dr. Groves immediately. He would most assuredly want to be there to spot the perpetrators personally when the party was broken up.