David Eddings: The Losers

Raphael began to unpack.

“J.D.’s the family patriarch,” Flood went on. “The whole damned bunch genuflects in his direction five times a day—except me, of course. I suppose I’ve never really forgiven him for tacking that ‘Junior’ on me, so I set out to be as unlike him as I could. He looks on that as a personal insult, so we don’t really get along. He started shipping me off to boarding schools as soon as I lost my baby teeth, though, so we only irritate each other on holidays. I tried a couple years at Pitt, but all that rah-rah bullshit got on my nerves. So I thought I’d saddle up old Paint and strike out for the wide wide west—What do you say to another drink?” He sprang up immediately and began mixing another batch of martinis.

Their conversation became general after that, and they both grew slightly drunk before they went to bed.

After Flood had turned out the light, he continued to talk, a steady flow of random, drowsy commentary on the day’s events. In time the pauses between his observations became longer as he hovered on the verge of sleep. Finally he turned over in bed. “Good night, Gabriel,” he murmured.

“Wrong archangel,” Raphael corrected. “Gabriel’s the other one—the trumpet player.”

“Did I call you Gabriel?” Flood’s voice had a strange, alert tension in it. “Stupid mistake. I must have had one martini too many.”

“It’s no big thing. Good night, Damon.” Once again, however, something in the very back of his mind seemed to be trying to warn Raphael. Flood’s inadvertent use of the name Gabriel seemed not to be just a slip of the tongue. There was a significance to it somehow—obscure, but important.

In the darkness, waiting for sleep and listening to Flood’s regular breathing from the other bed, Raphael considered his roommate. He had never before met anyone with that moneyed, eastern prep-school background, and so he had no real basis for judgment. The young men he had met before had all come from backgrounds similar to his own, and the open, easy camaraderie of the playing field and the locker room had not prepared him for the complexity of someone like Flood. On the whole, though, he found his roommate intriguing, and the surface sophistication of their first evening exhilirating. Perhaps in time Flood would relax, and they’d really get to know each other, but it was still much too early to know for sure.

iii

Raphael’s next few weeks were a revelation to him. Always before he had been at best a casual scholar. His mind was quick and retentive, and neither high school nor the community college he had attended had challenged him significantly. He had come to believe that, even as on the football field, what others found difficult would be easy for him. His performance in the classroom, like his performance on the field, had been more a reflection of natural talent than of hard work; everything had been very easy for Raphael. At Reed, however, it was not so. He quickly discovered that a cursory glance at assigned reading did not prepare him adequately for the often brutally cerebral exchanges of the classroom. Unlike his previous classmates, these students were not content merely to paraphrase the text or the remarks of the instructor, but rather applied to the material at hand techniques of reason and analysis Raphael had never encountered before. Amazingly, more often than not, the results of these reasonings were a direct challenge to the authority of the text or of the instructor. And, even more amazingly, these challenges were not viewed as the disruptions of troublemakers, but were actually encouraged. Disturbed and even embarrassed by his newfound inadequacy, Raphael began to apply himself to his studies.

“You’re turning into a grind,” Flood said one evening. Raphael pulled his eyes from the page he was reading. “Hmmm?”

“You study too much. I never see you without your face in some damned book.”

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“Not hardly.” Flood threw one leg over the arm of his chair. “A gentleman does not get straight A’s. It’s unseemly. Haven’t you ever heard the old formula? ‘Three C’s and a D and keep your name out of the newspapers’?”

“No. I hadn’t heard that one.” Raphael’s mind was yearning back toward the book. “Besides, how would you know here? They won’t let us see our grades.” That was one of the peculiarities of what was called the “Reed experience.”

“Barbarous,” Flood snorted. “How the hell can we be expected to maintain a proper balance if they don’t let us see our grades? Do you realize that a man could screw up? Stumble into so many high grades that his reputation’s ruined for life?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Damon. I don’t think you’re in any danger.”

“Don’t get shitty.” Flood got up quickly. “Let’s go out and get drunk—see if we can get arrested or something.”

“I’ve got an early class tomorrow.” Raphael turned back to his book.

“Talk to me, goddammit!” Flood said irritably, snatching the book from Raphael’s hands. “What the hell are you reading, anyway?”

“Kierkegaard.” Raphael reached for his book.

“The Sickness unto Death,” Flood read. “Now there’s a cheery little tide. What class is this for?”

Raphael shrugged. “It came up in a discussion. I thought I ought to look into it.”

“You mean it’s not even required?” Flood demanded incredulously, tossing the book back. “That’s disgusting, Raphael, disgusting.”

“Different strokes,” Raphael said, finding his place again and settling back to his reading. Flood sat watching him, his black eyes as hard as agates.

And then there was the problem of the girl. She sat across the room from him in one of his afternoon classes, and Raphael found his eyes frequently drawn to her face. It was not that she was exceptionally beautiful, for she was not. Her face was slightly angular with strong bones, and she was quite tall with a coltish legginess that made her seem somehow very young. Her voice, however, was a deep, rich contralto with a vibrance, a quality, that stirred Raphael immeasurably each time she spoke. But she spoke infrequently. Sometimes a week would pass without a word from her. While others in the class talked endlessly, arguing, discussing, pushing themselves forward, she would sit quietly, taking occasional notes and now and then stirring restlessly as Raphael’s gaze became warmly obvious.

He began to try to challenge her—to force her to speak. He frequently said things he did not actually believe, hoping to lever her into discussion. He did not even care what she said, but merely yearned for the sound of that voice, that rich, vibrant sound that seemed somehow to plunge directly into the center of his being. She began, in time, to return his glances, but she still seldom spoke, and the infrequency of her speech left him frustrated—even angry with himself for his absurd fascination. Her name, he discovered, was Marilyn Hamilton, and she lived off campus. Beyond that, he was able to find out very little about her.

“You’re Taylor, aren’t you?” a large, bulky man with a huge black beard asked him one afternoon as he came out of the library.

“Right,” Raphael replied.

“Name’s Wallace Pierson.” The big man held out his hand. “I understand you’ve played a little football.”

“Some.” Raphael shifted his books so that he could shake the man’s hand.

“We’re—uh—trying to put together a team,” Pierson said, seeming almost apologetic. “Nothing very formal. Wondered if you might be interested.”

“Intramural?”