Leonard lit up like a harvest moon and set down his milk. His upper lip was foamy. His eyes were bright. It seemed to Teddy he had grown more pure and perfect in his absence. “Why, yes I am, thank you for asking,” Leonard said. “My great uncle wants a set of Washington teeth. He knows a fellow who knows a fellow who knows someone who works at a famous history museum, which is actually located right here. Well, not here in New Hampshire, but here in the United States. Massachusetts, maybe.” Leonard leaned forward confidentially. “This could be a big break for me, Teddy. I mean, I’d still go to school here and get my history degree, but I’d have something waiting for me when I got out.” Leonard looked as if he might cry from joy and Teddy’s stomach did the same somersault it had the night he’d resorted to prayer. “Don’t say anything, promise? I know you won’t. You’re the best friend I’ve got here and I trust you.” Then Leonard reached out and touched Teddy’s hand on top of the table and answered a prayer. “You’re a good guy, Teddy.”
Teddy felt his hand go hot and his brain go cold. He shot up from the table with such force his tin plate clattered to the floor. “Don’t do that,” Teddy commanded. “Not ever.”
With that, Teddy ran from the Collective and out to the campus’s far field. When he made it halfway across, he stood in the damp morning grass and leaned over with his hands on his knees and was sick. He stayed that way for some time, fearing he might collapse if he straightened his spine. Bent over, Teddy fought against something inside himself that he couldn’t name and was sick again. Maybe the problem was that the horse hadn’t been trained at all. Maybe Teddy had let it out to pasture before it had learned a single thing. Teddy remembered the woman and the show horse. He remembered her whip, rare but ready. He wondered what kind of horse she had ever had to use it on. Maybe it wasn’t on one that was too wild, but on one that was too mild. Teddy spit into the grass and put his hands on his hips. He decided that was the case. If he didn’t act fast, Leonard would wither before Thanksgiving. Teddy frowned for a long time at a span of yellow maples. When he had come up with a good plan, he went on to class empty-handed so he wouldn’t have to go back and chance Leonard.
Teddy’s original plan was to feed Leonard a few pot brownies in the common room. A gathering of Collectives would put on some Pink Floyd, pass around a plate of cosmic fudge, and the next thing everyone knew, Leonard would break free of his cornhusk. It would be like attending the birth of a baby. Everyone Teddy ran the idea past thought it was the greatest undertaking the Collective could ever attempt. But then things got out of control. Teddy made the mistake of mentioning Leonard’s war hobbies. He made the mistake of mentioning the Washington teeth and Tecumseh and the goat in the chimney and the colonial boots. He made the mistake of picking Leonard’s dorm room lock while Leonard was at class and taking a bunch of Collectives on a tour of Leonard’s collectibles.
They tried on his wigs. They tried on his tricornered hat. They laughed and laughed until they had a better idea than pot brownies in the common room.
“A tea party,” someone suggested.
“Like a Boston one,” someone countered.
At that point, Teddy knew it was beyond him. But having it beyond him relieved him of responsibility, so Teddy gave his blessing. An enthusiastic one.
“Your only job is to get him there,” Howie Ames said.
“Dressed as George Washington,” Gavin Thomas said.
Leonard wasn’t too keen on going in uniform after what Teddy had told him about the original flower children, but after a few brownies, Leonard didn’t know Illinois from Nebraska.
“You look great, Peoria,” Teddy said, as he buttoned Leonard’s waistcoat. “More all-American than ever.”
Leonard didn’t respond. His eyes were big and black, as empty as a shark’s. Teddy equipped Leonard with a cardboard musket and straightened his wig and the two presidents went out to the far field where a bonfire the size of a teepee raged.
“They’re coming!” someone shouted, when they saw Teddy and Leonard approaching.
“Who’s coming?” a chorus asked.
“The British!” another chorus answered. “The British! The British are coming!”
Though incorrect, Teddy found this hilarious, but Leonard, in the flickering, distant glow, stopped in terror.
“Come on, Peoria,” Teddy said. “The party can’t go on without you.”
And that was when Leonard took off, fast and frantic. He had an unexpected agility, and Teddy thought, with some level of parental admiration, that maybe he had, once again, underestimated him. Maybe he knew nothing about him at all. He watched with awe and horror as Leonard made for the dark span of distant maples, where the far field met the wilderness. The Collectives, beyond inebriated, were delighted by this unexpected turn.
“Go, Nebraska, go!” someone hooted.
“All the way to Mount Vernon!” another shouted.
In the glow of the bonfire, all that Teddy could make out as he tried to follow Leonard’s retreat was the white wig bouncing in the night, growing smaller and smaller against the jagged silhouette of the forest like the terrified end of a cottontail. There was a chorus of laughter that followed when the wig could no longer be seen. It was laughter that soon faded to an intoxicated murmuring and later to a glazed glee of stupidity.
When the sun came up a few hours later, innocent over the woods, no one seemed to recall what had happened—to Leonard or themselves. The fire was now nothing but a handful of ashes. The discarded baking pans and tambourines dotted the scene like battle shields. The Collectives eventually rose up from beneath their dewy blankets and squinted out empty at the world, before staggering back into the dormitory for eggs and sleep.
Teddy’s fear unfolded with the day. At first his anxiety was manageable. He stayed out in the far field for the morning, picking up debris, pouring warm beer in the ashes, staring off at the maples in the hopes he’d soon see Leonard emerge, rumpled but golden, shaking his head in good humor, holding his flattened wig in one hand and waving Hello! Here I am, Teddy! with the other. But by noon, there was no sign of Leonard, neither in the Collective nor in the field, so Teddy went off into the woods on his own. He kept reminding himself of Leonard’s unexpected agility as he walked. He reminded himself that Leonard had grown up on a farm and had raised a cow from calf to bull. Teddy tried to imagine Leonard strolling over fallen trees and whistling with the birds, but instead he saw him pale and dead on a bed of crimson leaves. He tried to imagine Leonard sitting on a stump in his Revolutionary garb, buttoning his boots and reciting the Preamble, but again, Teddy saw him dead and white, his eyes open in a last moment of panic that Teddy had orchestrated.
Teddy came back from the woods in the late afternoon. By the time the sun began its descent, Leonard still had not returned and Teddy was near panic. He called a meeting of all the Collectives, but some were in too poor a shape from the night before to attend, and of those who did, nearly half of them found Leonard’s absence insignificant.
“Nebraska’s fine,” Gavin said. “Schoolchildren have eaten worse brownies.”
“He’s probably in town,” Howie said. “Have you even checked the diner? Twenty bucks he’s there right now drinking a six-pack of milk.”
Teddy gnawed his bottom lip. “I think we should tell the administration. Maybe campus security.”
There were some audible groans and Gavin shook his head. “Leave the school out of it. The kid’ll turn up eventually. Dapper and dumb as ever.”
The meeting adjourned without Teddy’s blessing. Teddy went up to Leonard’s room to see if he had crept back into the Collective when no one was watching. But Leonard wasn’t there. Teddy sat at Leonard’s desk and turned on the desk lamp. He tried on Leonard’s magnifying glasses. He scraped at a brass button with a dental tool. Then he took off the glasses and curled up on Leonard’s bed and prayed the prayer he’d prayed before, plus one more. Please let Leonard like me. Please let Leonard think I’m a good guy. Please let Leonard be alive.