join? During rush week I was invited to the Delta house so the brothers could look me over. Another candidate, Boylan “Sockhead” Bass from Bastrop, and I sat together on a leather sofa, hands on our knees while the brothers stood around courting us like virgins and at the same time eying us like heifers. Presently Walter beckoned to me and I followed him upstairs where we had a confidential talk in a small bedroom. Walter motioned to me to sit on the bed and for a long moment he stood, as he is standing now: hands in pockets, rocking back on his heels and looking out the window like Samuel Hinds in the movies. “Binx,” he said. “We know each other pretty well, don’t we?” (We’d both gone to the same prep school in New Hampshire.) “That’s right, Walter,” I said. “You know me well enough to know I wouldn’t hand you the usual crap about this fraternity business, don’t you?” “I know you wouldn’t, Walter.” “We don’t go in for hot boxes around here, Binx. We don’t have to.” “I know you don’t.” He listed the good qualities of the SAEs, the Delta Psis, the Dekes, the KAs. “They’re all good boys, Binx. I’ve got friends in all of them. But when it comes to describing the fellows here, the caliber of the men, the bond between us, the meaning of this little symbol—” he turned back his lapel to show the pin and I wondered if it was true that Deltas held their pins in their mouths when they took a shower—“there’s not much I can say, Binx.” Then Walter took his hat off and stood stroking the tricornered peak. “As a matter of fact, I’m not going to say anything at all. Instead, I’ll ask you a single question and then we’ll go down. Did you or did you not feel a unique something When you walked into this house? I won’t attempt to describe it. If you felt it, you already know exactly what I mean. If you didn’t—!” Now Walter stands over me, holding his hat over his heart. “Did you feel it, Binx?” I told him straight off that nothing would make me happier than to pledge Delta on the spot, if that was what he was getting at. We shook hands and he called in some of the brothers. “Fellows, I want you to meet Mister John Bickerson Bolling. He’s one of those broken-down Bollings from up in Feliciana Parish—you may have heard the name. Binx is a country, boy and he’s full of hookworm but he ought to have some good stuff in him. I believe he’ll make us a good man.” We shook hands all around. They were good fellows.
As it turned out, I did not make them a good man at all. I managed to go to college four years without acquiring a single honor. When the annual came out, there was nothing under my picture but the letters ΔΨΔ—which was appropriate since I had spent the four years propped on the front porch of the fraternity house, bemused and dreaming, watching the sun shine through the Spanish moss, lost in the mystery of finding myself alive at such a time and place—and next to ΔΨΔ my character summary: “Quiet but a sly sense of humor.” Boylan Bass of Bastrop turned out to be no less a disappointment. He was a tall farm boy with a long neck and an Adam’s apple who took pharmacy and for four years said not a word and was not known even to his fraternity brothers. His character line was: “A good friend.”
Walter is at ease again. He turns away from the window and once more stands over me and inclines his narrow hollowed-out temple.
“You know most of the krewe, don’t you?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact I still belong—”
“It’s the same bunch that go down to Tigre au Chenier. Why didn’t you come down last month?”
“I really don’t like to hunt much.”
Walter seems to spy something on the table. He leans over and runs a thumb along the grain. “Just look at that wood. It’s all one piece, by God.” Since his engagement, I have noticed that Walter has begun to take a proprietary interest in the house, tapping on walls, measuring floorboards, hefting vases. He straightens up. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you. All I can figure is that you’ve got me on your list.”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
“What is what?”
“Why in the hell don’t you give me a call sometime?