Hitching a Ride





I needed a ride to get away from Harwich – from the prep school and from the little Vermont village for which the academy is named. I couldn’t just stand on the road at the edge of town and stick out my thumb. There would be too many questions. There would be no one, except perhaps a passing motorist, who did not know that there was a student trying to take a completely unauthorized excursion. I’ve seen it happen before.
Lumpy Peterson had been stopped before his escapade had even started. Lumpy – that’s a silly name, isn’t it? His name is really Charles but he came to Harwich with a built-in nickname that he personally revealed to everyone – Lumpy wanted more than anything to see a movie that had just premiered. It was playing in Montpelier, the state capital. I think it was one of those science-fiction films where the stars are machines.
Anyway, Lumpy decided that because there was not much regular public transportation through Harwich, his only chance was to hitchhike. So that morning, he walked down to the crossroad on Route 2, which bypasses the town, and waited for a car to come along.
Lumpy wears thick glasses that magnify his eyes so they fill the entire lenses out to the frames. He looks like a toad, and still he doesn’t see too well in the distance. So he didn’t know that the car that was coming down Route 2 was actually driven by our headmaster, Mr. Heathridge. Lumpy scrunched his fist into the universal hitchhiking gesture and held it out over the pavement. Old Heathridge’s five-year-old Buick came to a stop. Lumpy climbed in and he never did see that movie.
I didn’t want to spend the next month of weekends in that hot third floor classroom where Lumpy served his sentence for stupidity, and I didn’t have to. I have Will Crawford for a roommate, and I know his secret. He may be only 14, but he has his own car and has had it for a year.
“You going home this weekend?” I asked Will last night. He had come back from dinner – big slabs of roast beef and heaps of mashed potatoes with little lakes of gravy. They feed us well in the Harwich dining room. He was sitting in our darkened room, his face lit by the glow of the screen of his laptop, reading something. He didn’t answer.
“Yo, Craw Man! You hear me?”
He turned and looked at me, but I could see it took time for his brain to catch up to his eyes. He was still locked onto whatever he was reading. Finally, I saw the connection happening somewhere deep behind his face, and he smiled.
“Yeah, Benoit. I’m going. Why, you have plans for our room?”
“I was looking for a ride to Burlington,” I told him.
“They allow farmers in the big city now?” he asked.
Crawford doesn’t live in Burlington. His parents have a vacation home near Mt. Mansfield, where they ski in the winter and play golf and tennis in the summer. They live in Westchester County, a wealthy New York suburb, and they almost never visit the vacation home.
But Will has a key to the house, and he likes to use it as a retreat from Harwich, where’s he’s been a student for the last six years, since he was eight. He often says that without the Mt. Mansfield house, he couldn’t tolerate Harwich. I understand how he feels.
I knew that Burlington was out of Will’ way, but by now – after more than a year being his roommate – I know Will pretty well. He can be arrogant, and I guess that comes with having as much money as he has. He can buy anything he wants, and no one seems to check on what he is spending. But he likes to be generous, so he’ll do almost anything you ask.
“Hey, if it’s too much bother, I’ll find another ride,” I replied. “The Vermont Transit bus will come through after lunch and it will get into Burlington early enough for me to get to the library.”
“You don’t want to waste your time and money on the bus,” Will said. “It’s no problem. You be ready to leave after breakfast?”
We met back at our room in the morning.
“I have a surprise,” Will said. “Nutley is coming with us.”
I nearly gagged at the thought. John Nutley, a tenth grader, is a very nice kid, better than the average Harwich snob. He has one problem, and no amount of complaining seems to have any impact. Nutley has the worst body odor on the planet. The thought of being confined with him in Crawford’s Subaru for nearly an hour almost derailed my scheme.
“Can you insist he take a shower first?” I asked.
“You live with cows, for God’s sake, Benoit,” Will said. “I know what that smells like. It blows in here from the Harwich pastures, Man. Nuts doesn’t smell any worse than that.”
“You won’t do it then I will,” I said.
“Good luck, Puke Man,” Will said. “How’s a guy who hurls on command going to convince a guy who only smells rotten to change his ways?”
Will was right. I learned recently that you can raise your lunch – if you’ve had enough of it – just by visualizing your esophagus and stomach and causing them to ripple upward. The trick has earned my quite a reputation in the Harwich underworld. It has also won me a few admirers, so I wasn’t quite sure what problem Will thought it posed in getting Nuts to bathe.
I left the room and, climbing the stairs to the tenth grade corridor, I found Nutley’s room and knocked on the door. It opened, and I smelled him before I saw him.
“Nuts, Will wants you to take a shower before we go to Burlington,” I said.
“Can’t do it,” Nuts said. “No time. I was just coming down to your room. I need to be in the city by nine o’clock to catch a ride at the University. Gonna see my girl in Hartford tonight.”
“She’d be happier to see you if you bathed, Nuts.”
Nuts’s round face slumped. “You really think so?” he asked. “Maybe I’d better stop off at home when I get there for a quick shower. Can’t do it now, though, or I’ll miss my connection.”
Nuts picked up his bag and followed me back to my room. Will was ready, so we turned around and headed to downtown Harwich. The academy, which has been around forever, occupies what had been a farmstead north of town. The old farmhouse, built more than one hundred years ago, is the headmaster’s home. The barn that is attached to it – big and white – was remodeled a few years ago and has all the administrative offices. There is a gymnasium that looks like a barn that was donated by some wealthy alumnus. There are several “cottages” that serve as classrooms for the 120 Harwich students. And there are four colonial-style houses – two story with finished rooms in the attic – that are the dormitories. They sit part way down the hill toward town from the headmaster’s house, and each has a name. Ours is Purity. There are also Wisdom, Honor and Faith.
I know. Kind of makes your skin crawl.
Will led the way down the hill. We looked like any handful of kids hitting town on a Saturday morning, and the fact that we went to the barber shop probably would make people like Heathridge smile with confidence in the younger generation whose values they are shaping.
In fact, the barber , Claude – he is of French-Canadian heritage as am I – has a quite different idea about the values the young men of Harwich should embrace than Heathridge and his friends. Claude believes Harwich is a bit too restrictive, and he sees his role in the town as the source for we kids of that which Harwich will not provide.
One of his gifts is a garage for Will Crawford’s car. Maybe gift isn’t the right word. Claude, a stocky man in his forties with a thin, dark moustache and a high forehead bordered in dark, wavy hair, collects more than barbering fees in his shop.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Claude said when we came through the glass door of his storefront shop with an 802 phone number lettered on it. “Haircuts today?”
There was no one in Claude’s shop. The television was running. Cable news was playing, as it always is. The floor was swept and he was relaxing in his barber chair, the remote for the television in his hand.
“Why you need that thing?” Will asked, pointing to the remote. “You never change the channel.”
“Oh, I certainly do,” said Claude. “Only when you Harwich men are present do I limit the programming to that which will contribute to your social and moral improvement.”
“You are a man of great scruples,” Will said, snatching the remote from Claude. He tapped a couple of keys on the remote and the Jerry Springer show came on the screen. People were screaming.
“Don’t you see? I am here to save you from yourself,” Claude said, climbing down from his barber chair. He is shorter than I, although he is taller than both Will and Nuts. “Who’s first?”
“I need the garage key,” Will said. “We’ll be taking the submarine for a ride.”
“I think Mr. Nutley could use a trim first,” Claude said, waving Nuts toward his chair. “Empty chair, no waiting. Step right up, Mr. Nutley.”
“Sorry,” Will said, “Mr. Nutley is on a tight schedule. He has to catch a ride south in Burlington in an hour.”
“In that case,” Claude said, stepping across the linoleum tile floor, waxed as shiny as a skating rink, to his antique brass and marble cash register. He pressed one of its buttons to send the cash draw sliding open with a “ding”. He reached in the drawer with his thumb and forefinger as if selecting a pickle from a glass jar. Turning, he handed a common door key to Will. “Leave it on the doorsill as always,” he said.
I’ve driven tractors on our farm since I was ten, big Case tractors that tow hay balers and rakes and wagons in which we load the hay bales to haul them to the barn. I consider myself a pretty accomplished driver. Will could be driving a formula one car, he’s so smooth. After he opened the garage door, he backed the Subaru onto the side street next to the barber shop. He has tinted all the windows in his ride – he calls it the pale yellow submarine – tinted them dark so no one can see who is driving. He eased the car down to Main Street, which is parallel to Route 2, which bypasses the town. At the edge of town, where Main Street bends over to Route 2, he slowed and checked for traffic and then, obeying the speed limit, got up to cruising speed.
We were free.
I had grabbed the back seat, hoping to keep my breakfast down. I knew that if Nuts was in the rear, he would spend the next hour leaning over the seatback to talk with Will. Will gets along with the upper class guys like he was one of them. I don’t think it is the fact that he has a car. There is just something about him that they see him not as a ninth grader but as an equal.
Anyway, by choosing the back, I could keep my distance from the stink, and Nuts would occupy Will with endless chatter. The subject of this day could be categorized as: “What’s wrong with Harwich.” I didn’t have much to say. To me, there is nothing wrong with Harwich. There’s just something wrong with me being at Harwich.