The off-the-books trade: Axford's unanalyzable hatred, Hal's paper-thin custody

pivotal · STANDING, in force by 3 Nov YDAU

• When: STANDING arrangement, in force by 3 Nov YDAU (when the narration lays it out); the trade itself predates the scene, undated.
• What: Ingersoll is nominally in Trevor Axford's Big Buddy group, but Axford "found he so despised the Ingersoll kid for some unanalyzable reason that he was struggling against a horrible compulsion to put Ingersoll's little fingers into the gap by the hinges of an open door and then very slowly close the door, and came to Hal almost in tears." So Hal traded Todd ('Postal-Weight') Possalthwaite to Axford off the books for Ingersoll — "Though technically Ingersoll is still Axford's and Possalthwaite Hal's." Hal, too, "has to struggle with a strange urge to be cruel to Ingersoll, who reminds him of someone he dislikes but can't quite place." The arrangement's two facts — informally Hal's, technically Axford's — stand together and drive both the discipline arithmetic (event 9) and the dining-hall tableau (event 10).