The Boy in the Tunnel

by Gardner Linn

14.

The complex topography of Wintertree Hall’s interior meant that room 79A was inaccessible from any of the hallways directly. For the first decade and a half or so of student residency in Wintertree, 79A was sealed off, the only evidence of its existence a peculiar hollow sound one could produce by standing on a chair perched on a desk and pounding as high up as one could reach on the wall in the curiously high-ceilinged 79B (which at the time was just room 79). Back in the early 80s, room 79 was one of the most in-demand dorm rooms on campus because, though its floorplan was as cramped as every other room’s, the 25-foot ceilings allowed residents to live vertically and lavishly.

Room 79 played host to a succession of ever-more-complicated lofts that came to resemble Swiss Family Robinson-style treehouses, as the structures were passed down to and added to by residents from year to year. By the time Peter Kirkland moved into 79 in 1984, the loft had multiple landings at different levels (including a breakfast nook and TV lounge), two hammocks, a pulley-and-bucket system for hauling up provisions, and a set of uneven bars for light gymnastics training.

Peter was intrigued by the apparent hollow area behind the upper half of the room’s west wall, so from a perch on the TV lounge landing he cut an opening into the hollow area just large enough to crawl through. He was astounded to find an entire second room, completely walled off—and though its ceilings were a little less than regulation height, it was otherwise just as big as 79. Peter instantly decided that he had found the official party room of Wintertree Hall.

And so on Friday and Saturday nights, the increasingly harried and frustrated RAs would search the halls, trying in vain to find the source of the thumping bass and crowd chatter that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere. The system was near-perfect. Parties were announced via coded for-sale notices on the Wintertree Free Speech Kiosk: “MINI-FRIDGE FOR SALE, GOOD WORKING ORDER THO NEEDS A LITTLE TLC” indicated the party was scheduled for a Friday; “BROWN COUCH, BARELY USED, UNIDENTIFIABLE STAIN ON CUSHION” meant Saturday. People would begin arriving at 8:00 in groups of no more than three, each guest carrying a thick Norton Anthology, and Peter would admit them one-by-one up the rope ladder to the TV lounge and through the hole (which was concealed by a Miss Resaca Beach 1983 poster) into the party room. Peter provided the basic ingredients for a trashcan punch, to which the guests would add various liquors from the flasks concealed in their hollowed-out Nortons, and the resulting potent, pungent brew became known as Hole in the Head (the room, of course, was dubbed The Hole in the Wall within minutes of the first party’s commencement, and Peter briefly adopted the style and personality of Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy, to the great annoyance of his friends). For two months, the Hole in the Wall parties continued unabated, and it seemed to the residents of Wintertree that they had finally found a way around DUH’s draconian restrictions.

There was one problem, however: Peter’s roommate. Franklin Arnett did not like the parties; he did not like Hole in the Head; he didn’t even like music (the one LP he owned was Queen’s Flash Gordon soundtrack, whose picture disc he kept framed, unlistenable, on the wall). Franklin was squat and elaborately bearded, and his appearance, coupled with the tree fort in his dorm room, earned him the nickname Ewok. (Fortunately, Franklin remained unaware of this appellation, or things would have ended up much worse for Peter. Franklin could hold a grudge like no other.) What Franklin did like was to spend his weekend nights playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with his similarly bearded friend Russell and Russell’s paraplegic girlfriend Tara (as one might expect, the tall, lumbering Russell was known to Hole in the Wall regulars as Chewbacca, and Tara, cruelly, as R2D2, though a cartoon of Russell carrying Tara on his back a la Chewie and C3PO in The Empire Strikes Back was a popular samizdat around Wintertree in the fall of 1984). Franklin hated the constant interruptions to his AD&D game by party guests clambering around what was in fact his bedroom, as he repeatedly pointed out to his indifferent roommate, and he hated even more when the guests were leaving, because that meant he had to endure a series of drunken jokes about hit points and charisma and elvish clerics. (Franklin thought the cruel specificity of these jokes betrayed a closeted AD&D obsession in many of his tormentors.)

It’s kind of amazing, in retrospect, that none of the Hole in the Wall gang ever called Franklin “Ewok” to his face, but even in their heights of intoxicated revelry they maintained a modicum of respect for Franklin as a resident of the room—a sort of gnomish gatekeeper on whose good side they needed to stay. This respect only extended so far, however, and Russell and Tara, though protected at first, became more and more enticing targets as the weeks went on, particularly once Russell (allegedly) broke both ankles and started using a wheelchair. The presence of two wheelchair-bound geeks in room 79 was more than some of the Hole in the Wall gang could take, especially after Eric Harris said he saw Russell walking around in the bathroom when he thought no one was looking. Debate over Russell’s motivations raged over three parties, and the consensus they reached was that Russell had not in fact broken his ankles, but that confining himself to a wheelchair was part of some kinky sex thing he and Tara had going on. (It was also speculated that Russell was using the wheelchair in a nobly misguided attempt to show solidarity with Tara, but that what was actually going on was that she had suggested it just to demonstrate her power over him.)

But so anyway it got to the point that Eric Harris, leaving the party late one November Saturday night, put on a fey British accent and said to Tara, who was rolling a 20-sided die, “I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookiee win.”

That was the last straw for Franklin. He kicked—literally kicked—Eric out of the room, and the next morning he marched into then-RLC Ron Marston’s office and told him everything he knew about the Hole in the Wall. Within three hours Peter was relocated to a basement room in Hayes Hall (it was within Marston’s rights to recommend expulsion, but Peter was privy to certain information that Marston was not eager to be made public), the hole was patched up and a new, larger door was cut and a ladder fixed to the wall, furniture was assembled, and two transfer students were installed in the newly designated room 79A. Russell moved into 79B with Franklin and they spent the better part of a month augmenting the pulley system to accommodate a wheelchair, with so much trial and error that Tara decided it would just be easier to break up with Russell. As he listened to Russell cry himself to sleep every night for the rest of the year, Franklin lay awake thinking maybe the Hole in the Wall wasn’t so bad after all.

*****************

The loft in 79B wasn’t the same now as it was 13 years earlier, but it was of similar construction, and Dick frequently employed the breakfast nook, up at the loft’s highest level, for pursuits that had little to do with the first meal of the day. He was engaged in these pursuits with the help of a Penthouse he kept stashed up there (Chet, mildly acrophobic, never ventured higher than his bed) when Drew poked his head up through the trapdoor in the landing.

“Oh Jesus fuck” sputtered Dick, and he zipped up so fast it hurt when he peed for three months afterward. Drew could be unnervingly calm when he wanted to be, so he just kept staring Dick in the face, pretty much enjoying watching the asshole suffer.

“Jesus, you faggot, what are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to see if you were free tomorrow night to go to a worship service.” Drew glanced at the Penthouse. “I think maybe it would do you some good.”

“Get the fuck out of here.” Dick drew back his foot to let Drew know that he had no problem kicking Drew down through the trapdoor if that’s what it took.

“Tomorrow night, Dick.” Drew lowered himself down from the breakfast nook and monkey-swung neatly down to the floor.

Back up in 79A, Drew opened his Handbook, which he had been reading cover-to-cover, to page 186.

The trees around the lake stand in mournful clumps. The lake lies flat and cold, its skin broken by bullfrogs plump and ignorant. They sink to you, chained and pale at the bottom, but push themselves back to the surface and take no notice of the intruder. Something is rising from slumber in the woods, to lumber shaggily to the lake and drink, to gaze lutescent into the body of the creature that is the lake and see you, white and water-engorged, tiny fish nibbling needle-toothed at your adipose flesh, eroding you inexorably to what you can’t help but be. The flocculent uliginous thing eases into the water and falls, amorphous and tendrilite, to where you are, scattering the fish and making your home its own. It smiles a sharp wet smile.

Look out the window.

There were no windows in 79A.

© 2005 Gardner Linn