The Stones of Summer  by Dow Mossman
Excerpt Part II

Willis Skokes would never play again, but then it didn't matter: he had become a legend and, besides, Eddie said he would probably be banging his girl Dixie Kakes again in a mere matter of hours anyway.

Only Ratshit died. He never recovered. He lay broken-backed over two auditorium chairs and laughed a high, echoing rill for nearly an hour. In the end, Dawes Williams carried him home and left him on his mother's stoop, like carrying a drunk with one separated arm and shoulder. He didn't come to school; and he didn't eat. He just lay in his room and became periodically hysterical. From the day he arose, Ratshit Rawlings believed firmly in Willis Skokes. He emulated him; studied him in the halls; talked about him incessantly. Finally, Ratshit even analyzed him. He discussed him, frankly, some years later, in terms of Christ-like salvation. It grew. It became mythic; and at the center remained always the image of Willis Skokes; Willis T. Skokes as the personification of -- "I could have done it all right, if I had so chosen: but fortunately for me and my being I did not so choose."

Because you weren't a fuck-off if you chose to become one. Anyone in Rapid Cedar could tell you that. Even Travis Thomas almost understood that. And so, from an early age, Ratshit Rawlings had chosen an unclassi­cal variation on a court-jester theme in which, by merely choosing to play the fool, he thought he would be able eventually to mock, enlighten, finally even rise above the king; the entire system of the king, his father, Mr. Harrison "Ratshit" Rawlings, Sr. Dawes Williams understood it. He watched it grow; he watched it all flower like a manure-headed weed until finally, breaking through, festering into a field of only sun after all of those years of rising through soil, it became suddenly self-conscious and merely eccentric. And that was ironic, or maybe it wasn't, because Ratshit Rawl­ings claimed some obscure New England Transcendentalist as ancestor and because, Dawes Williams thought finally, Ratshit must have inherited Willis Skokes like some brilliant seed of a gene that never quite bloomed; that refused to hatch back over in this dreaming, more technical air; that had somehow got choked, blackened, inverted and reversed somewhere along the way. In the end, Dawes Williams could remember Ratshit Rawl­ings talking of Willis Skokes in terms of being some kind of a secular oversoul.

Soon Dawes Williams, who was not really playing with Mrs. Rawlings' Newtonian steelies anyway, roused himself from his dreaming and began to watch Eddie, who was sitting over in the corner, watching him back. Eddie was looking back over at him, and they were beginning to watch each other think. Eddie, Dawes Williams knew without asking, was sitting over there thinking that Dawes Williams was dreaming up another of about the biggest batches of crap he had ever heard. Eddie knew that Dawes Williams liked to distort things, to make them complicated for the hell of it. He knew that Ratshit Rawlings was often a whipped-out bastard that couldn't cut it. He knew that there was just a lot of Ratshit Rawlings in Dawes Williams too, by God. He knew mostly that Ratshit Rawlings was only good for games when things got dull. And that he, Eddie himself, had a Welshman's liver and a limited explanation for things; and that although Dawes Williams was one of his best friends, he hated his guts....

It was still Saturday afternoon, and everyone was waiting, waiting for the Rawlingses to leave for Iowa City. Just then, however, everyone was watching as Mr. Harrison Rawlings, Sr., busily and drunkenly threw Rat­shit's entire allowance, a crisp ten-dollar bill, on the exact center of the carpet. Then Mr. Rawlings sat back, into the bemused distance of his chair, and watched as Harrison, Jr., went over, bent down, and picked it up.

Coming back into the circle of Newtonian steelies, sitting down Indian-style, Dawes could see Ratshit's face was bright red, glassy and stoned over. But soon even that passed because it was a football afternoon, the Evashevski era, and because everything was filtering into the grander design of stealing the car. Around twelve-thirty the Country Club set began coming past, and drifting in. They stopped in small, select caravans of Cadillacs, Lincolns and an occasional Mercedes convertible. There was a quiet parade of tasteful straw baskets with neatly checkered cloths, tweed coats and sleeveless V-necked sweaters, brown wing tips and an occasional lawyer's pipe. Silver flasks flashed in the Midwestern sun. The sun sank beyond noon, the fighting Hawkeyes had already kicked off, and everyone who was fourteen wished suddenly that the whole world would get its ass on the road.