Empire Falls

head spiderwebbing the window glass. Able at last to locate the elusive brake pedal, he was still unable to employ it, having been stunned senseless by the impact. So it was that Miles’s old friend Otto Meyer Jr. (the team’s second-string catcher) saved the day by lunging forward over the slumped body of the driver’s ed teacher and depressing the brake by hand. The car came to a screaming, skidding halt about a foot from the back wall of the garage, looking for all the world as if it had been Miles’s intention to park there from the start .
    “Is the car in Park?” Otto asked, his voice sounding strange down there in the passenger-side foot well .
    Miles put the car in Park. “Thanks, Otto,” he said .
    “That’s okay,” Otto said. “Pull me back up, all right?” The other two boys in the back obliged, and Miles then noticed that the pinky finger on Otto’s left hand was bent back at a rather unnatural ninety-degree angle. Otto himself noticed this when he switched the ignition off and the bent finger encountered the turn signal. “Darn,” he said, showing it to Miles, without the slightest ill will, before passing out .
    U NLIKE O TTO M EYER J R. , Mr. Brown did harbor a grudge, and he nursed it long after the impressive knot above his temple had receded. If he’d had his way, Miles would’ve been kicked out of driver’s education, at least until he learned to drive. It wasn’t just that he was such a lousy driver, Mr. Brown explained to the principal, or that the damn kid had nearly killed them all. Mr. Brown also had a baseball team to consider, one he hoped to take to the state tournament this year, a squad that now, thanks to Miles Roby, featured a shortstop with a sprained wrist on his throwing hand and a catcher with a broken pinky on his glove hand. Half his damn team was taking driver’s ed, and he saw no reason to risk certain injury and possible death or dismemberment by putting them in an automobile with a boy who didn’t have any better sense than to jump a curb, fly over a lawn and careen into a stranger’s garage. And how could he coach effectively with all these headaches he’d been getting now since the accident? No, he wanted Miles Roby out of the class and furthermore hoped some sensible policy might be enacted to ensure that, in the future, any kid who signed up for driver’s education had some vague idea of what to do behind the wheel .
    The principal at the time was Clarence Boniface, who was generally disliked because he wasn’t from Empire Falls or anywhere near Empire Falls. He’d been hired in preference to several local, in-house candidates, including Mr. Brown himself, because Mr. Boniface could boast (although he didn’t) an advanced degree and considerable administrative experience as the assistant principal of a large high school in Connecticut. In his two years at the helm of Empire Falls High, he’d proven himself to be serious, dutiful and competent. He was a good listener and slow to take offense—both excellent and necessary qualities in a high school principal, though they failed to gain him acceptance with the majority, who had determined he was an asshole even before he arrived. In any event, he listened soberly to his baseball coach’s solution to the “Roby kid problem,” waited patiently until he was sure Mr. Brown had finished making his case and then burst into violent laughter that rapidly became a full-blown fit of hysteria from which he could not be rescued. He hooted, then howled. His face grew red, tears streamed down his cheeks, and he soon was gasping for air. His secretary, greatly alarmed, brought him a glass of water, but he was shaking too badly to drink it .
    In the end they had to lay the principal facedown on the carpet, where at first he flopped about like a bass on the floor of a boat, then curled into a fetal position and lay inert, with just enough energy left to whisper, “Oh, God, oh, God. I’m so sorry, Mr. Brown. I never meant … I’m so sorry … I haven’t laughed like that since I was a child … my uncle used to tickle me until I wet my pants.” Finally he was able to sit up and lean back against the wall. “I must have been suppressing that laugh since the day I moved here,” he concluded .
    Mr. Brown had no idea what the man had or had not been suppressing, but he didn’t like being laughed at in general, and certainly not by someone from Connecticut, and having his principal cleanse his soul at