He clapped me once on the shoulder. “Good man,” he said. He turned and walked back toward the party, leaving me alone on the hot hillside.
ON SUNDAY, SUVS CRAMMED full of luggage toiled up the Hill in steady succession to unload their bags along with their boys. Car doors slammed shut, and voices called out in greeting. The Hill seemed to sprout dozens of loud, cheerful teenagers in polos and baseball caps. Most grinned at one another and coolly directed their parents in furnishing their rooms. These were the old boys, the returning students inured to the idea of boarding school, their self-confidence almost palpable in comparison to the new boys, who were almost all third and fourth formers.
Each new student stood nervously by the family car, as if trying to keep in contact with something familiar for as long as possible before his parents abandoned him. Almost all of them had braces, or big feet, or skinny legs like toothpicks poking out of shorts that seemed three sizes too large. They had not yet grown into their bodies, which were racing along in the hormonal clutch of adolescence. They appeared both defiant and fragile as they slowly unloaded their cars, stubborn in the face of the long months ahead even as a night of frustrated tears and loneliness awaited them. They murmured rather than spoke, cowed by the brick buildings and the clean walkways that were filling with people who were obviously comfortable here.
The old boys, for the most part, succeeded in making the new boys feel more miserable, calling out excitedly to friends and playing trashcan lacrosse on the Lawn. Teary-eyed mothers did nothing to help the situation. I knew from experience that the new boys would be far too busy a week from now to feel homesick. And yet I couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for every boy with a sad, swollen face who walked grimly into Raleigh Hall or Lawson-Parker as if marching off to a deadly fate.
BRENDSEL DINING HALL IS a vast carpeted room of long dinner tables under a high-beamed ceiling. The first night at Blackburne, and every following Sunday night, students eat a formal, sit-down dinner in Brendsel with their advisors. Each student has a faculty advisor who tracks his grades and offers advice and encouragement—at least in theory. Some advisors were better than others. Sam Hodges was famous for taking his advisees to the Charlottesville malls once a month or so, while Stuart Downing, the longtime Latin teacher, basically ignored his advisees except at Sunday meals, and sometimes even then.
I met my advisees for the first time that night. I had inherited them from Keith Aspinwall, the English teacher I had replaced. A slip of paper with my advisees’ names lay on the stack of dinner plates at the head of the table, and when the dinner bell rang and students arrived at my table, I began counting off names. Soon all the places were filled, and I saw with a bright pop of recognition that one boy I had helped to move in that afternoon, Stephen Watterson, was in my advisory. He gave me an easy smile and waved as he sat down.
The loud hum of conversation dropped and then disappeared as the headmaster’s voice came over the PA system. Travis Simmons preferred rather severe suits of banker’s gray, and he seethed breeding and culture like an ancient, musty library. At the first all-faculty meeting, Dr. Simmons had shaken my hand with one as dry as chalk dust, inclining his head to me in a way that accentuated his stooped shoulders as he welcomed me back to Blackburne. But he could shine brightly in front of a group, speaking eloquently and waxing rhapsodic about the school and its mission. It was this unswerving, intensely personal loyalty to Blackburne that engendered widespread respect for him, even among the students. For some reason, though, I thought about Ren Middleton and his odd lesson about killing inertness and needing my help, the throwing of the golf ball down the fairway, and I glanced at my advisees, wondering how they would react to the headmaster’s voice. They sat quietly, some heads slightly bowed; a few faces were tilted up toward a speaker mounted on the wall.
“Gentlemen,” Dr. Simmons was saying, “I would like to formally welcome you to Blackburne. I trust today went well with moving into your rooms and getting settled. It’s an exciting time, and a busy one. I look forward to an excellent year with you. Please make the effort to turn to your masters for help of any kind. We are here for you.” A pause. “Let us pray.” Four hundred heads bowed in unison. “Lord, thank you for this good meal and for the hands that prepared it. Please be with all those who are less fortunate than we are. Watch over these students and guide them, and help them to strive for excellence. In your name we pray. Amen.”
At the final word, nearly forty new boys, clad in white waiters’ jackets and holding battered serving trays, rushed from their tables for the cafeteria door to pick up platters of food. The senior masters had tables close to the cafeteria and thus got their food quickly. I was back in a recess of the dining hall known as Graveyard Alley and wouldn’t get my dinner for a few minutes at least. I did note with a bit of wicked pleasure that Porter Deems was at the very back of Graveyard Alley, two tables farther away from the cafeteria than I was. I caught his eye and grinned. He scowled and flipped me the bird under the table.
The clanging of the serving trays, which rang through the dining hall as they were slapped down on the cafeteria counters or crashed into one another, seemed an appropriate, unofficial opening of Blackburne. It brought back memories of my own first year, when I had stood nervously in a starched white jacket, its collar scratching my jaw, as I waited to pick up the full tray and wondered how I would do it without spilling food everywhere. I smiled and shook my head. Then I looked at my advisees, a few of whom were looking at me as if waiting for me to speak. I nodded at a tall, dark-haired boy seated on my right. “All moved in okay?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said, brushing his hair out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “The room doesn’t matter as long as I’m on the same dorm and keep my roommate, Mack.” He gestured to a freckled redhead down the table.
I remembered then that there had been a mix-up with room assignments that morning and I’d had to ask this boy to move upstairs after he’d already started unpacking. The tall boy was named Hal Starr, and his roommate was the freckled redhead. “You’re Mack Arnold?” I asked, trying to look casually at the list of names in my hand.
The redhead nodded. “Sure you can’t move me out of Hal’s room? The guy snores.”
Hal rolled his eyes. “Better than what you do at night, pal.”