Marty just shrugged and grinned. “I’m an officer of the court. I can’t lie!”
“Time for the verdict…” said Thad as he raised his gavel.
I squirmed some more. “Wait! Don’t I get to say something?”
Thad put down his gavel. “What could you possibly say about this crime?” He motioned and the hands holding me loosened slightly.
“Your honor, look at her!” I replied, nodding my head towards Marilyn. “Isn’t that a woman worth fighting for?”
Marilyn blushed deeply, and the other girls in the room roared and clapped their approval of my defense. Even Marty smiled and said, “Good move, Buckman.” There was much consternation in the room at this, and everybody was talking. I might actually beat this!
Thad pounded the gavel and silenced us. “You provide a powerful argument, Mister Buckman. The charges of un-Kegger-like behavior are dismissed.” The room erupted in a tumult, but was gaveled quiet again. I noticed that I was still being held prisoner. “However, I now charge you with making the rest of us look bad in front of the girls! How says the jury?”
Oh shit! The room exploded into catcalls and cries of “Guilty! Guilty!” and Thad and the others were laughing at me.
“Wait! Wait! What about him?” I yelled out. “If I was dueling, so was he!”
Mike looked surprised at that, even more so when Ricky commented, “He’s got a point there, your honor.”
Thad nodded. “He does. Grab him!”
Mike moved surprisingly fast, but ran into a wall of three guys at the doorway to the formal room. He was wrapped up and held squirming alongside me. There wasn’t even a pretense of a trial in his case. He was charged with dueling and immediately found guilty. We were immediately sentenced to become polar bears, at which point we both tried to squirm loose and run for it, but we had four or five guys holding us each and we were lifted off our feet and slowly carried towards the back door.
“Hold it, hold it, let me take off my shoes first!” I yelled. My captors stopped and I got Marilyn to come over. She grabbed my shoes and wallet and my glasses (I had totally forgotten them) and then one of the guys told her to grab my belt, too. She blushed when another one said she needed to know how to do that. Thus, properly prepared, I was carried outside to the pool.
Jesus, but it was cold out there! I noticed they had managed to fish a rope between the two holes. Marty told me as I was carried to the first hole, “Grab the rope and we’ll pull you out the other end.”
“What if he lets go the rope?” asked Marilyn.
“Then we’ll pull him out in the spring!” he replied. Oh shit! I grabbed the rope and wrapped it around my wrist as best I could, and then found myself unceremoniously turned upside down and dropped through the hole head first.
Oh my God, but that water was so cold it was painful! I couldn’t even think straight, but it felt like every hair on my head was on fire, and I was totally lost. I couldn’t even tell up from down. I barely felt the tug on my arm, and the next thing I knew I heard a bunch of guys yelling “Heave!” as I popped out the second hole. Hands grabbed me and yanked me up and out, amidst much congratulating. The rope was unwrapped from my wrist, and I turned my head around just in time to see Mike dumped into the pool with a giant splash. The rope was tugged and a few seconds later he was pulled out as well.
“I swear I’m going to kill you for this!” Mike promised me through chattering teeth.
“Right now that would feel good!” I replied. Mike ran into Grogans’, where his room was, and I was bundled inside the main house and up the back stairs to the second floor main bath. A couple of brothers already had a hot shower running, and I jumped underneath.
“You can join him,” somebody said, and I looked out of the shower to see Marilyn staring at me in amusement from the doorway. She was holding my shoes and stuff.
“No thanks. This is close enough,” she answered with a laugh.
My teeth were still chattering, but I was able to get her to run out to my car and bring in my duffel bag. By the time she got back, I had been joined under the hot water by a couple of sophomores who had become polar bears. When Mack Senack started undressing under the water (he lived upstairs on the third floor) Marilyn squealed and scampered away. I laughed and got out of the shower and stripped down. Somebody brought in a few towels and I dried off, and then changed into the spare clothing in my emergency bag. I left it and my wet clothes in the bathroom afterwards and went downstairs.
I found Marilyn chatting with a couple of the brothers and their girlfriends in the kitchen as I entered. Everybody clapped as I entered. I just grimaced and shook my head. “I can’t believe I did that!” I said.
“I think our movie night is out,” commented Marilyn.
I leaned down and gave her a quick kiss. “Sorry about that. I had no idea this was going to happen!” I looked around. “Do we have any big plastic bags? I need something to hold my wet clothes.” A garbage bag was scrounged up and I went back upstairs, to bundle up my wet clothing and stuff it into the duffel. I finished dressing and slipped my shoes on, and then carried my duffel downstairs again. The two sophomores who had become polar bears had already departed for their rooms to change. I dropped the bag in the coat room, and went in search of Marilyn. I found her on a couch in the living room. Surrounding her on the other couches were the rest of the polar bears, passing around a bottle of Jack Daniels and drinking straight from the bottle.
I’m not a big fan of bourbon, but I needed a drink. I flopped down next to her and tossed an arm around her shoulders. When the bottle got to me, I put it to my lips and took a healthy swig and passed it to her. She looked at it curiously, and put it to her lips, but barely had a sip in when she passed it along and said, “Yuck!” That got her a lot of laughs.
When the bottle came back around, I took another dose of medicine. “I’m certainly feeling warmer now than when I started.” I passed the bottle to Marilyn, but she simply handed it to the guy next to her, who I just now noticed was Mike Ghormley. He took a heavy swig and looked me in the eye and nodded.
“Cheers.” He took a second swallow. “You deserved it,” he told me.
“So did you,” I replied.
He just shrugged and gave me a wry smile. “Yeah, so what. Fuck it.”
I got a third swallow out of the bottle and was starting to feel mellow when Marilyn nudged me with her elbow. “I am not sleeping here on the couch again!”
I nodded in understanding. “Well, you can always drive us back to my dorm room and you can sleep there. We can kick out my roommate.”
“Forget it.”
“You can drive us back to your dorm room and we can kick out your roommates.”
“Not going to happen,” she replied.
“Maybe I need to do something other than drink more whiskey.”
She nodded. “I think that’s the right answer.”
I shrugged. An armchair opened up across from us, and we moved over there, with her sitting on my lap. Another bottle was produced for the polar bears, but this time I let it pass by. It was unfortunate, since this was a bottle of Canadian, but I just whined and whimpered as it went by. Marilyn just wagged her finger at me and I behaved.
It worked out however; by the time the second bottle was gone, everybody in the living room was drunk off their asses and passed out. We snuck into the formal room and made out for quite a while without anybody bothering us. Then I drove her back to Saint Rose, and we decided to go to the movies the next night.
Chapter 30: Second Semester
The next two months went by in a pleasant routine. I would call Marilyn from the pay phone down in the lounge every couple of days, since she couldn’t call me. Most weekends we would see each other, but a few times she had to beg off and go back home. I did notice that she usually came back to Saint Rose from these trips rather depressed. I had noticed this way back when, also, but hadn’t been smart enough to pay attention. I also knew that things were not improving on the academic front.