A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [17]
Thus began a friendship that became a defining experience for me at Milton. We became, and are to this day, close friends, even though we’re from polar opposite worlds. Will could trace his roots to the earliest English settlers; grew up in affluent New Canaan, Connecticut; and would soon be the third generation of his family to attend Princeton. Despite our very different backgrounds, we both had open minds. We shared an interest in books (American and British). We were both enchanted and intimidated by pretty girls. We just connected.
That winter, we decided to take a Greyhound bus to his family’s one-room cabin on Squam Lake in New Hampshire. Will told his parents about our plan and got their permission. Deval is a gender-neutral name, so several days before we were to leave, Will’s parents called him and asked, “You are going with a guy, aren’t you?”
Left unsaid was that I was black. His parents are strong liberals, so Will did not expect a problem. It just never occurred to him to mention my race. But he was hypersensitive nonetheless. When the bus dropped us off in front of the bowling alley in the tiny, snow-covered hamlet of Holderness, at the foothills of the White Mountains, “Uncle Erk” White, an old friend of Will’s family, was there to pick us up. “Hello, boy,” he greeted me warmly as I stepped off the bus. Will was mortified.
“He calls everybody ‘boy,’ ” Will told me nervously. “Don’t worry.”
I smiled and told him to relax. I was learning to shrug off slights, real or perceived, and in this case none was taken. I was just glad Uncle Erk could meet us on that frigid winter evening and take us to the cabin.
I was not quite eighteen, not old enough to buy alcohol legally, but I prevailed on an older student to purchase a six-pack of beer and a few bottles of wine for our trip. They were snug in our backpacks with our other supplies as we piled into Uncle Erk’s truck. With Will in the front seat next to Uncle Erk and me in the back, we bounced along rutted roads for miles, and the bottles in my backpack started to clink guiltily against each other.
“You gotta lotta glass back there,” Uncle Erk observed.
Will, in a panic, searched for an explanation. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re bringing a lot of mayonnaise on our trip.”
I did all I could to stifle my laughter.
My good humor ended when we reached the end of our ride. Uncle Erk let us out at the end of an unplowed road that led a mile or more down to the lakeside fishing cabin where we would stay. We faced at least two feet of snow. We strapped on snowshoes, hoisted our packs, and started to hike down by moonlight. It was unspeakably cold and a little unnerving. What was a city kid from the South Side doing in the deep woods at night on snowshoes with a heavy backpack? But I got into the rhythm of the walk, and soon enough we arrived at the cabin, found the key, and settled in. We lit a roaring fire, which would blaze for most of our stay; in my sleeping bag I would snuggle up as close to it as possible on those frigid nights. The next morning, we used a pickax to cut a hole in the frozen lake for water to drink and cook with.
Squam Lake and its people meant a lot to Will, and still do. He had known the place all his life and felt a special bond that he wanted to share. During the day, we hiked around the woods and explored some of his favorite spots. We slogged up to Uncle Erk’s house and drank cocoa with him and his wife. The landscape was glorious. The experience of the snowshoes, cross-country skiing across the frozen cove, cooking steaks over a fireplace, reading silently by candlelight, not washing for days, being cold at night—it was all so new. I could not even pretend to be a woodsman. Will was clearly in charge.
We spent much of our time talking about girls and our failed or hoped-for romances, though we also talked about books,