All the Dead Yale Men Read Online Free PDF Page A

which one of the young men attached under the Cadillac, to part of the frame, and the driver threw a lever. The winch made a shrill grinding, and for a while it looked as though the car wasn’t going to be pulled out of the river but that the truck was going to be winched into the water. The oil slick was pretty big by now.
    Then the car emerged from the water, dripping like some kind of monster, half machine and half animal that was climbing from the slime of the river onto dry land to give birth. My father kicked through the window and the last of the water rushed out, like amniotic fluid, and he slithered out onto the grass.
    â€œWeren’t you scared?” said one of the young women.
    â€œScared?” said my father. “I can hold my breath forever.”
    â€œOh,” said the young woman. She hitched up her top a little more.
    â€œCome on,” said my father. “Let’s go up to the Wursthaus for a drink.”
    â€œI don’t think so,” said one of the young women.
    â€œWhy not?” said my father.
    â€œI’ve got to study,” she said.
    â€œOh,” said my father. “That. I wouldn’t worry about that.”
    â€œI don’t think you need anything more to drink,” said the young woman.
    â€œThat’s where you’re wrong,” said my father. “Just look at this mess.”
    He walked over the grass, his sneakers filled with water, which made a steady squish , squish as he came up to the sidewalk, went up to the boathouse, crossed the street, and walkedup to the Wursthaus in Harvard Square. He was still there when the Cambridge police came in. Both of them were in uniform, and while one was young and fit, as though he spent his off-hours biking along the river, the older one was heavy in the stomach and his skin seemed as pale and gray as an oyster. Their leather belts creaked, and their radios made some static that was interrupted every now and then by a dispatcher’s uninflected voice.
    â€œJesus, Chip, you’ve got to stop doing things like this,” said the older one.
    â€œCome on, Billy,” said my father. “Sit down.”
    â€œJesus, Chip. You’ve got to listen.”
    â€œNot yet,” said my father. “Not yet.”
    â€œWhen,” said Billy Meerschaum, “just when is that going to be?”
    â€œYou’ll see,” said my father.
    â€œWe’re going to have to cite you,” said the other, younger cop.
    â€œWhat for?” said my father.
    â€œLeaving the scene of an accident,” said the younger one. My father read the cop’s name tag, white letters on black plastic.
    â€œDrunk driving,” said Billy Meerschaum.
    â€œI’ve been here having a drink for a while now,” my father said.
    â€œYou did that on purpose,” said the young one.
    â€œProve when I had a drink,” said my father. “I know the law.”
    â€œYes, Chip,” said Billy. “But there’s more to life than that.”
    â€œYou’re kidding yourself,” said my father.
    The cops stood next to the table where my father sat. The Wursthaus had a sort of woody quality, and the dark wainscoting had a shine to it from the years of greasy food that had been cooked there. But now, according to what Billy Meerschaum told me at the funeral, the place seemed somehow frozen or suspended, as though this moment, which had come at the end ofa lot of moments with my father in Cambridge, was a variety of milestone; that while my father had been stopped for drunk driving and had even attended a course for people who had been arrested this way, he had never run into the river before.
    Meerschaum wrote out the ticket, just for leaving the scene of an accident. At the top, in his block printing, neat as an architect, he wrote, “May 25th.” Then he passed it over.
    â€œIn the merry month of May . . . ,” sang my father.
    â€œWe could arrest you,” said