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pleaded. His mouth smiled, but he had taken hold of Will’s arm again.
    â€œSorry,” Will repeated, prying himself loose. He started off down the hall and heard Chris’s voice following him.
    â€œOh, come on, Ingraham. It’s only a game …”

Chapter 5
    Will gazed out the window of the bus as it rattled up North Main. Once past the center of town the street became pitted, the trees sparse and stunted. Battered garbage cans vomited their frozen contents over the sidewalks like grotesque cornucopias. The city, once one of western New England’s prospering textile centers, had begun its decline when the mills moved to South Carolina. Then Springfield, its flourishing neighbor, dealt the fatal blow by siphoning off most of its remaining industries.
    Will rubbed his gloved hands together. Even the temperature inside the bus seemed to drop five degrees as they hit the North End ghetto. He glanced at the other passengers and noted that, as always by Myrtle Avenue, he was the only white person aboard. He stood, joints stiff with cold, and rang the bell. The bus shuddered up against the curb and expelled him through the back doors onto the littered sidewalk.
    Harvey’s school was only a block away, but Will stood at the bus stop trying to conjure up a tantalizing—and inexpensive—afternoon for the boy. He stamped his frozen feet—what a lousy day to experiment with spontaneity. Besides, for the first time in three years of weekly visits with this special little brother, he was late.
    Harvey Jackson had been searched out and assigned to Will by the college in what now seemed an ill-fated investment in culture clash. Take a black kid to lunch, pitch him a softball across the lush campus athletic fields, buy him a mug handsomely embossed with the school seal, and send him home to the rats and filth. Soon the novelty of playing social worker wore off, and one by one the volunteers opted for an afternoon working out at the track or guzzling beer at the student union rather than shattering their spinal columns on a North End bus. The program was officially canceled in letters citing academic pressures, signed personally by the president of the college and sent to each ghetto participant. Some of the notices reached their destination, some were stolen from broken mailboxes along with the welfare checks, and one was delivered, read, and incinerated over the gas stove of a weary woman with four young boys and no husband.
    But Will had made it to Harvey’s shabby apartment house before the letter did. Sometime during the first months of the Big Brother program, the seven-year-old child had taken up residence in an area of Will’s brain that was reserved for permanent tenants. The inhabitants there were few: Will’s grandfather; his brother, Sam; Marianne, his childhood friend and the sister of his soul until her car had crashed more than a year ago; the inspiring Edward French of the Red Falls Central High School English department; and now Harvey Jackson. Once one gained admittance to this guarded sector, eviction was impossible, so far even by reason of death. Certainly not by edict of a college administrator’s pronouncement that Will could quit chasing off to the North Side Elementary School every Thursday afternoon.
    Clusters of children began to spill around the corner, their noisy chatter jolting Will from his preoccupation. He headed toward the school, a curious sight—lanky young man with the western stride and sunstreaked hair loping upstream against the surge of laughing black faces.
    Harvey, ten years old now, but small for his age, was leaning against the building. The dark eyes registered recognition at the sight of Will, but nothing else.
    â€œSorry I’m late,” Will said, touching the boy’s thin shoulder briefly.
    â€œThat’s okay,” Harvey said.
    Will peered into the expressionless face. “You pissed off at me?”
    Harvey looked