22

I saw something anomalous during the varsity game. Most of our JV team was seated in the last row of the stands, and from there we could look across the field to the grassy rise on its opposite side. When the visitors' lot outside Laker Broome's private entrance had filled, the parents had driven past it over the grass and parked their cars all along the yellow-green length of lawn which we often took as our way down to the Junior School for lunch. The snouts of Buicks and Lincolns and a few MG's pointed across and above the field toward the stands. Toward the end of the first half of the varsity game, I looked up at the row of grilles and bumpers facing us from the rise and saw a man standing between two of the cars.

He did not look like a Carson School parent. No chinos, no lamb's-wool Paul Stuart sweater, no Weejuns. The man was dressed in a long belted raincoat and an old-fashioned brown fedora hat pulled down low on his forehead. His hands were deep in his pockets. At first he reminded me of Sheldon Leonard in the television series Foreign Intrigue - in the fifties, way out there in the dry West, belted trench coats carried a whiff of glamour; they stood for spies, travel, Europe. Nothing about this exotic character suggested an interest in prep-school athletics.

Then I saw Del Nightingale's reaction to the man. Del was sitting beside Tom Flanagan three rows beneath me, and he looked up toward the rise a moment after I did. The effect on Del of the man dressed like Sheldon Leonard was startling: he froze like a bird before a snake, and I was sure that if you touched him you'd feel him quiver. He uttered a wordless noise - almost like an electronic beep. It was purely the sound of astonishment.

Skeleton Ridpath, seated on the bench in uniform, also appeared to be affected by the man's appearance on the rise. I thought he nearly fell off the bench. The man retreated backward between the cars and disappeared. Skeleton turned around and glared back at the stands. His head looked fleshless, the size of a grape above his shoulderpads.