The Heat of the Sun

extraordinary: deep, penetrating, an invitation into a darkness at once alarming and warm. Often, in times to come, I would wonder how to describe those eyes, so
peculiar, so immoderate, beneath the blond sweep of hair. They were not blue, not black: they were violet.
    On the cot, over the scratchy military blankets, the fellow had laid a silken quilt; on the partitions, he had tacked up colourful prints.
    ‘A Braque,’ I said, surprised. In those days, Americans knew nothing of modern art.
    The fellow tossed the sock up high and plucked it from the air. ‘Funny, isn’t it? What do you think it’s meant to be?’
    ‘Houses on a hillside.’ I had seen the picture in Paris.
    ‘Do you know, I believe you’re right.’ Leaning forward, the fellow inspected the flat, block-like shapes. Gracefully, the pale nape of his neck stretched from his collar, and I
feared for him, as if a neck so slender might easily be snapped. Should I tell him not to display these fineries? This was Blaze: all, I was certain, would be soiled and broken soon. Yet there was
something about the fellow that belied his fey appearance: a tensile strength.
    He held out a hand to me. ‘They call me Trouble. Don’t ask me why. I’m Pinkerton – Ben Pinkerton.’
    Trouble, or Pinkerton, was shorter than I, a good head shorter, but perfectly proportioned, a little man. Whether he was younger than I or older, it was hard to tell. His hand, as I shook it,
was dry and sleek, a delicate glove; there was a shock of cold from the ring. I wondered if he knew he would be sleeping in a dead boy’s bed. Others, I supposed, would tell him soon
enough.
    The next time I saw Trouble was at dinner. He had found himself at a table far from mine, with fellows I did not know. I was worried for him. I struggled to listen while Le
Vol told me something funny that had happened that afternoon in Literature with Mr Gregg. Often I glanced towards that distant table. How would others take to Trouble?
    There was one clue, and it puzzled me: laughter, sudden and sharp, loud enough to ride across the clamour all around – and then the applause of eager hands. Trouble tilted back his chair.
He grinned and someone slapped him between the shoulder blades.
    Le Vol said irritably, ‘Who’s the new guy?’
    Across the table from us a fellow called Elmsley, tight-collared with an acned neck, leaned forward and informed us in a low voice, as if it were a secret, that he had seen Trouble arrive that
afternoon. ‘In a big automobile – black, with windows all dark at the back. But you know who he is , don’t you?’
    I had disliked Elmsley from the first. The pustules on his neck were yellow half globes, buried in circles of reddened flesh; his teeth were brownish and sharp, like a rodent’s fangs, and
there was something rodenty, too, in his tapering nose, which wrinkled as he said: ‘Pinkerton. The senator’s son.’
    Le Vol slammed his knife against his plate. For a moment I thought he might leap up, denunciations at the ready, and rush to Trouble’s table. Dimly, I remembered a harangue he had
delivered one night in the dorm upon the subject of a certain Senator B. F. Pinkerton (Democrat, New York) and the wickedness of his policy on the Philippines.
    Elmsley sniggered, ‘He looks like a sissy. A preening sissy.’ And, as if to illustrate his own unlikely manliness, he speared a roast potato on his fork and stuffed it, whole, into
his mouth. Chewing rapidly, cheeks ballooning, Elmsley resembled more than ever a hairless, pustular rat.
    Things moved fast for Trouble after that. Soon he was surrounded by a circle of admirers. In the dining hall, his table was uproarious. Laughter exploded repeatedly; pellets
of moistened bread flew back and forth. In the dorm before lights out, and sometimes even afterwards, he played his phonograph. How well we came to know the oeuvre of Sophie Tucker!
    There was no stopping Trouble. Many were the tales of smoking, drinking, midnight expeditions out of bounds. There was one story, a myth perhaps, of Trouble and the Townsend twins returning in
the back of a farmer’s truck, on a Sunday morning, all the way from Burlington, reclining on hay. When Trouble was punished, it made no difference. Neither threats nor the swish of a
master’s cane deterred him. Never had a nickname seemed so apt. He said he had been tossed out of another school; that was why he had arrived at Blaze so late.
    My sympathy for Trouble withered