I started working off the hours on the second day of the rest of my life. Funderburk had Wheeler, Creature, myself, and most of the other hour-boys chipping ice off the walks. Jack Rafferty was also working hours (for skipping class), but he just strolled around sprinkling an occasional handful of salt here and there and doing as he pleased.

When Fundy was off making his rounds, Wheeler called Jack over. “Hey, why the fuck do you get the pussy job?” he asked.

“Because I wrenched my back lifting yesterday.”

“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you, Rafferty?”

“I don’t give two shits what you believe,” he said. “I’ve got Fundy believing it.”

As the trimester drew to a close, the pressure mounted and everyone started growing restless. Most of us were on probation, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to find a safe place to unwind. Two weeks before spring vacation, Jackie wrote me that the old man and Patty were on their way out to Arizona. Jack, Waltham, Jane, and I immediately forged parental permission slips and applied for passes to go home the following weekend.

That Saturday I made a set of directions for the guys, then Jane and I hitchhiked to my house. She almost didn’t make it. She wanted to go and I wanted her along, but Jack and Irving didn’t want a girl around to cramp their style. When I explained what the feeling was, Jane said, “Come on, Dunph, don’t be a jerk. I promise I won’t say anything.”

As Jane and I hitched closer to Pawtucket, I realized that I was a little ashamed to show where I lived. Jane didn’t concern me, she knew what to expect. Jack and Irving were in for a mild culture shock. The only whirlpool they were going to find in my house was in the toilet, if they were lucky enough to find it working. The old man had purchased the place in 1957 for nine thousand frogpelts. Their parents had cars that cost that much. And the old man probably couldn’t get more than nine for it today—furnished.

At the outskirts of the city I started growing very tense. All I could picture was the fluorescent pink triple-decker next door. Another house on the block was sloshed aqua-blue and another orange. It’s not just that my neighborhood didn’t harmonize with nature; it didn’t have any nature. The city had lined my street with baby elms in the late sixties but some gearhead sheared through every last one, like a slalom skier turning and twisting between gatelike telephone poles. The Pawtucket Times called him “The Midnight Lumberjack.”