Текст книги "Boy in the Water"

Автор книги: Stephen Dobyns

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“This must be your friend from Concord,” said Skander, reaching out his hand to Krueger. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his name.”

“Kevin Krueger.” Krueger shook Skander’s hand. He found himself staring at Skander’s necktie, which had the phrase “What, me worry?” printed over and over.

“This is a wonderful treat to have you here. I gather you’re having lunch with us.”

Krueger had heard nothing about this but he smiled nonetheless.

“Is everything okay with Frank?” asked Hawthorne.

“Yes, yes, he has plans for a new casserole. Something with winter squash. Really, he’s an absolute treat.” Skander started to move off, walking backward as he spoke. “I must dash, I’m afraid. Duty calls. Good to know that Concord really cares. Sometimes we’ve felt terribly isolated. Not anymore, of course.” At last he turned and ducked into a classroom.

Krueger watched him go. “Friendly fellow.”

“He’s been a great help.”

“Have you learned anything about the previous headmaster?”

“Pendergast, or Old Pendergast, as Skander calls him? He evidently saw which way the school was heading and resigned so he wouldn’t have the failure on his résumé.”

They had reached a large door with the word “Administration” printed on the oak panel in gold letters. “Here we are,” said Hawthorne. “I don’t know if I told you that the previous secretary left in October. I began to computerize the office and she panicked.” Hawthorne put his hand on the knob. “Skander again came to the rescue. His wife, Hilda, knows all about computers—pretty much, at any rate. So I gave her the job.”

Hawthorne pushed open the door. Krueger’s first glimpse of Hilda Skander was to see her start in surprise, then she gave a welcoming smile. She looked about forty, with short graying hair parted in the middle. There was something pointy about her face and Krueger had the sense of a somewhat pointy nose in the exact center of the circle. As he approached her, he became aware of the distinct smell of peppermint.

“You must be Kevin Krueger,” she said, getting up from her desk. “We’ve heard so much about you. When Dr. Hawthorne saw your car, he dashed out just like a racehorse.”

“I told them a special friend of mine was coming,” said Hawthorne.

Krueger tried to be hearty but he couldn’t quite manage it. Hilda Skander had bright little dark eyes that reminded him vaguely of an animal’s. He shook her hand and for several minutes they chatted about his first impressions of the school and what his drive up from Concord had been like. Krueger still smelled peppermint but he couldn’t imagine where it was coming from.

“Dr. Hawthorne is making a big impact on our little school,” said Hilda pleasantly, keeping her eyes on Krueger. “He’s our own campus radical. He loves to change things.”

Shortly, Hawthorne said something about keeping Hilda from her work and took Krueger into his office and shut the door.

“Whew,” he said, then grinned. “I think of her as my pet mole.”

“Mole?” said Krueger, misunderstanding.

“She looks a little like a mole, don’t you think? Those small dark eyes. It’s meant affectionately. She’s wonderfully energetic.”

“You seem surrounded by Skanders. Do you have any more of them employed?”

“You mean brothers and sisters? No. There’s a ten-year-old boy, but he has yet to engage himself with the school except to shoot baskets in the gym. But with Hilda’s help I’ve been able to put all the students’ files on disk. Faculty, staff—now it’s easy to look up anything.”

On the desk, Krueger saw a framed photograph of Hawthorne’s wife and daughter standing before a Christmas tree with unwrapped presents heaped around their feet. He thought again how pretty Meg had been. Although he hadn’t meant to say anything, he realized that Hawthorne was watching him look at the picture.

“It’s a nice photograph,” said Krueger, uncertain whether to say anything else.

Hawthorne opened his mouth, then, unaccountably, said nothing.

They sat down on the couch. Krueger kept trying to square Hawthorne’s optimism with the fact that he looked thinner and tired. He glanced quickly at Hawthorne’s wrist but it looked the same as ever, white and pink splotches of scar tissue protruding from his white cuff.

“And what’s that peppermint smell?” Krueger asked.

“Hilda has asthma. She claims the smell of peppermint helps her, so she sprinkles peppermint drops on her handkerchief. Often the whole office reeks of it.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

Hawthorne laughed. “It’s more aggressive than I’d like, but I’m getting used to it.”

Krueger sat back and looked around the office. It still appeared rather generic—a framed print of the school seal and two photographs of winter landscapes—as if Hawthorne had yet to put his stamp on it apart from the photograph of Meg and Lily.

“So tell me more about the people here.”

Hawthorne took off his glasses, held them up to the light, looking for smudges, then put them on again as he spoke. “At first they were suspicious, but that was only natural, especially considering all the talk about a book. Some wouldn’t come to my meetings and that was annoying. I had to tell myself it was reasonable for them to worry about their job security and for their worry to translate into ill will. The cook you saw talking to Skander troubled me to such an extent that I made some calls to see if he had any kind of record . . .”

“Prison?”

“Yes, but also mental institutions, treatment centers. He was too impulsive for my taste. Too hyperactive. And when he went at Chip, it was a scary sight. But there was nothing, so I felt I’d been overreacting. I’m glad nothing came of it, because he’s really a great cook.”

In the hour left before lunch, Hawthorne and Krueger continued to discuss the school, following up various points that one or the other had raised earlier. All the evidence suggested that Bishop’s Hill was improving, even if the endeavor was rather like raising the Titanic. Still, Krueger wasn’t entirely happy. Hawthorne didn’t look well, as if he were draining his own blood for the school’s transfusion. And Krueger knew Hawthorne well enough to believe that the deaths of Meg and Lily remained in the forefront of his thinking. But Hawthorne was also passionate about succeeding and that was fueled by his sense that he had failed at Wyndham.

Nor was Krueger happy with what he saw as the mood of the place, although he tried to tell himself that the raw autumn day made him overly pessimistic—those evil-looking gargoyles. It seemed clear that Hawthorne was being thorough. As far as the students were concerned, he was clearly achieving success. And when Krueger asked about funding and budget questions, here too Hawthorne’s answers were positive. Money was being raised. Applications and inquiries, while not streaming in, were a steady trickle. Although Krueger was here as a friend, he would also have to write a report that would eventually find its way to the accreditation board and, as he wrote that report in his mind, he was not displeased with what he saw. Then what bothered him?

Shortly before twelve o’clock the telephone rang, the first call to interrupt them. Hawthorne went to the telephone slowly and Krueger was struck by the hesitancy in his friend’s movements. When Hawthorne picked up the receiver and said hello, it was almost with fear. As he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line, his expression changed to dismay, then anger.

“Stop calling me! Who are you? Why are you doing this?” Then Hawthorne caught Krueger’s eye and hung up the receiver. He stood beside his desk, rubbing his forehead.

Before Krueger could speak, Hilda knocked quickly, then opened the door wide enough to stick her head through. “Is everything all right? I heard shouting.”

“Yes, yes, everything’s fine. Did you put that call through to me?”

“I was out of the office. It must have gone through automatically.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Of course, of course.” She looked at Hawthorne with motherly concern, then withdrew, quietly shutting the door.

“What in the world was that?” asked Krueger.

Hawthorne stood by the desk, half-turned from his friend. “Nothing important.”

Krueger hesitated, reluctant to push too deeply. But he had to push. “It frightened you. What was it?”

The expression on Hawthorne’s face shifted between anger and relief. “A woman keeps calling me; it’s happened five times. She tells me how much she loves me, how much she misses me. She says how she wants me to join her. She says it’s Meg, that it’s Meg calling me.”

“Good grief.”

“But it’s not Meg, it’s not her voice. The woman’s called twice in the middle of the night. Every time the phone rings I’m afraid it might be her.”

–

Frank LeBrun leaned back on the pumpkin-colored broken-down couch that, other than his bed, was the only half-comfortable place to sit in his studio apartment above the garage. In his left hand he held a small glass of tequila. He held it toward Jessica Weaver and she clinked her glass against his. They both drank. LeBrun swirled the tequila around in his mouth and smiled.

“We could cut his balls off,” he said conversationally, sticking his legs out in front of him and crossing his black cowboy boots. “Just cut them off and shove them in his mouth. I’ve read books where guys did that.”

Jessica coughed as the tequila burned her throat. “Wouldn’t he still be alive?”

“Bleeding pretty bad would be my guess. I don’t know if it’d kill him or not.”

“We wouldn’t have a lot of time.” Jessica took a little sip, then set her glass on the arm of the couch, where tufts of white stuffing pushed through the frayed fabric. She didn’t particularly like tequila but she didn’t want to offend LeBrun.

“Hey, he just about ate you up. Fucking babies—you don’t fuck babies. You hear what I’m saying? He deserves something with a lot of pain. It’d be a waste to kill him too quick.” For a moment LeBrun’s face grew still, then he wrinkled his brow and said. “Did I tell you what kind of sheep make virgin wool?”

“Yeah, ugly sheep. I didn’t like it.”

“Picky, picky, picky.”

LeBrun reached for the bottle of tequila and poured them both another shot. It was lunchtime, but he and his cousin Larry alternated lunch duty, and Jessica hadn’t felt like going to the dining room. She wanted to sort out some stuff with LeBrun—her business deal, she called it. His studio apartment had windows on three sides, but the shades were drawn and the overhead light made everything look yellow. LeBrun’s bed was unmade and dirty dishes were stacked on the table. There was a sweaty smell and a whiff of oranges gone bad.

“And we’ve got to work out when we do it. I mean, I can’t just take off anytime. It wouldn’t be responsible. I got friends here. Like, I got talents people want. I can’t just let them down.” LeBrun chuckled contentedly. “Besides, the money’s too good.”

“I don’t know about killing Tremblay,” said Jessica. “I just want to grab Jason and get out of there. If he gets killed and Jason is missing, the cops will be right after me.”

“Hey, two thousand bucks, basically you’re paying me to ice a guy whether you want an ice job or not. Maybe you could take your brother, then I could come back and finish up. Or maybe I could do Tremblay someplace else. Like a golf course, I never did a guy on a golf course.”

“It’ll be December,” said Jessica. Her eyes were running from the tequila and she wiped them with the back of her hand. “Guys don’t play golf in December.”

“They do in Florida.”

“Yeah, smarty, but this is Exeter, New Hampshire. There’ll be snow.”

LeBrun dropped his glass, spilling tequila on the sofa. His hand shot out and he grabbed the girl’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing it. “Don’t make fun of me, Misty. You just don’t know how mean I can get.” He held her briefly, then let go.

Jessica rubbed her jaw. “I was only joking . . .”

“Don’t talk to me about it.”

LeBrun picked up his glass from the cushion and poured himself more tequila. He stared straight ahead at the opposite wall. A thirteen-year-old calendar hung above his bed. It had a photograph of a covered bridge with snow on the roof and birch trees in the foreground and a blue sky. He had hung it there himself. He liked the picture; it looked like the sort of place he wanted to visit. He didn’t care about the year. What the fuck did he care what year it was?

“Then I’ll just pop him,” said LeBrun perfectly calmly, as if he had never gotten angry. “I’ll just come back the next day and put a nail in his head. Did I tell you why women have legs?”

Jessica had moved to the other end of the couch. She leaned forward, holding her tequila in both hands. Her glass was a jelly jar decorated with two purple dinosaurs. “Yes, you did. I didn’t like that one, either.”

“Come on, tell me. What’s the answer?”

Jessica didn’t look at him. “So they won’t leave snail tracks on the linoleum floor.”

LeBrun threw himself back and laughed. “Jesus, I love it. Can’t you just see it?” His laughter had a grating sound. “I could hear that joke again and again.”

Jessica watched him laughing. “I don’t think we should kill Tremblay,” she said, raising her voice to get LeBrun’s attention.

He turned to face her, surprised. “Why the fuck not? Doesn’t he deserve it?”

“I want to get away. I want to get Jason and disappear. I don’t want cops after me.”

LeBrun lit a cigarette. He offered one to Jessica but she shook her head. “Well, fuck, then the job’s not worth two grand. Maybe one, sure, but not two. You don’t want to pay me that much. You’ll be just throwing your money away.”

Jessica was uncertain whether he was serious. Sometimes she couldn’t tell with LeBrun. It was one of the things that had come to frighten her about him. You wouldn’t know whether he was serious or joking until it was too late. “That would be a help. I’d need money to live for a while.”

“That doesn’t mean there isn’t some other kind of payment I want.” LeBrun leaned forward and poured her more tequila. She looked up at him quickly and a few drops of the tequila spilled on the couch. “Hey, watch it,” he said, “that’s valuable stuff.”

“What kind of payment?” Jessica told herself this always happened sooner or later.

“How come you wear those baggy sweatshirts all the time? They make you look like a rag doll. You don’t look like a girl, you don’t look like nothing.”

“Maybe I like wearing them. What kind of payment are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s not worth the trouble.” He stubbed his cigarette out in a saucer. “It’s another job I’m doing for a guy. One of my buddies.” He laughed again.

“What kind of payment?”

“Stand up and turn around.”

Jessica set her glass on the floor and stood up. She wasn’t sure whether to make a joke of it or to be serious. She turned slowly, trying to imagine all the things she would do to get LeBrun to help her. She wondered who the other person was and what he wanted.

“Jesus, you’re a klutz. I can’t see a thing. Don’t you have a body? Take off the sweatshirt.”

Jessica removed the sweatshirt. She wore nothing underneath. It was cool in the room and her white flesh got goose pimples.

“Keep turning, Misty. Hold your arms out. Not much to you, is there?”

Jessica turned with her arms outstretched. She remembered how men had shouted to her in the club—banana body, tiny tits. She began to feel angry but she tried to give no sign of it.

“Turn faster,” said LeBrun.

Jessica began to turn faster, keeping her eyes focused on one spot so she wouldn’t get dizzy. She could feel her two peroxided braids bouncing on the skin of her shoulders.

“Faster, Misty. Come on. Pretend you’re a merry-go-round. Let’s go!”

Jessica turned faster, trying not to stumble. She didn’t want LeBrun to get mad. The rug seemed to drag at her sneakers. The muscles of her outstretched arms were already sore.

“Okay, stop!” LeBrun clapped his hands once.

Jessica stopped. The room was spinning a little. She bent over with her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. She could see her small breasts hanging down. “So you want to fuck me, don’t you? Are you going to do it now?”

LeBrun made a grunting noise. “You don’t fuck babies, didn’t you hear what I said? Wait till you’re grown. There’s something else I want you to do.”

“Like what? You mean I have to fuck somebody else?” She grabbed her sweatshirt from the floor. She felt furious and humiliated.

LeBrun lit another cigarette. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

–

At noon, Hawthorne led Krueger to the dining hall. They were late, and by the time they arrived everyone else was seated. Work-study students in white jackets carried large silver trays of food. The dark oak tables, dark wainscoting, and dark beams on the ceiling made the room appear dim. On the walls, the dark portraits of past headmasters seemed devoid of humor or benevolence: men in stiff suits with white hair and, here and there, a beard. The globe lights hanging from the ceiling were on because the day was so gray. Hawthorne took his place at the head table with Krueger on his right. Skander sat across from them. Three students and two adults were seated in the other places. Krueger shook hands and tried to focus on their names. There was Gene Strauss, who ran the admissions office, and Ruth Standish, one of the two mental health counselors; the students were Scott McKinnon and the two girls in charge of the yearbook. People looked at Krueger from the other tables. There was a lot of talking and general noise, and the smell of furniture polish mixed with the aromas of spices, tomato sauce, and fresh bread. Krueger still felt stunned, even horrified, by the phone call that Hawthorne had received less than fifteen minutes before. What sort of insanity would lead a person to pretend to be Hawthorne’s dead wife?

Unfolding his napkin, Krueger grew aware that Skander was speaking to him.

“I asked,” Skander repeated, “how you found our little school.” He held a slice of bread in one hand and a knife in the other, as if he couldn’t butter it until he had an answer.

“It seems quite lively.”

Skander beamed. “We have Jim to thank for that. He’s made changes that I’d never have dared to make, but then mine was no more than a caretaker government. Keeping the ship afloat was the most I could manage. But I tell my colleagues we haven’t sunk yet. There’s still hope.”

Krueger hardly heard him. He kept remembering the fear on Hawthorne’s face as he had listened to the woman on the phone. Now, however, Hawthorne seemed relaxed and was joking with Scott McKinnon. But Krueger felt certain he could see evidence of tension in how straight he was sitting and how he kept glancing around.

“What else has been going on?” Krueger had asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Practical jokes, that’s all. Nothing important.”

Hawthorne had looked away.

Krueger took a slice of bread and buttered it. The waiter began passing down plates of lasagna and green beans from one end of the table.

“You asked about Clifford Evings,” said Hawthorne, leaning toward Krueger and lowering his voice. “That’s him sitting at the head of that first table on the right.”

Evings appeared elderly and cadaverous in a rumpled brown suit. He ate very delicately, cutting his green beans with a knife and fork, and bringing them up carefully to his small, puckered mouth. Next to him was a man in his forties who was also thin and balding, though he had a mustache and small goatee. He wore a bright yellow shirt and a green necktie. A tan jacket hung on the back of his chair.

“That fellow on his left looks enough like him to be his son,” said Krueger.

“That’s Bobby Newland; he’s the other counselor.” Hawthorne lowered his voice a little more. “He and Evings are a couple. But he’s good in the group discussions and the kids like him.”

Krueger was struck by the evident composure he saw around him: everyone civilized and on their best behavior—Skander chatted affably with Ruth Standish, Gene Strauss spoke to the two girls about the yearbook. Outside it had begun to rain again and gray streaks scarred the tall windows. Practical jokes, Hawthorne had said. To pretend to be Hawthorne’s dead wife, to urge him to join her—surely that went beyond practical joking. It was raw malice. Krueger thought of what Hawthorne had endured in San Diego. Just what reserves of strength did he have left?

“I gather you were a student of Jim’s,” said Ruth Standish, leaning forward over her plate. She was a large woman and wore a dress with a pattern of pink peonies against a bed of leaves, which, to Krueger’s mind, made her seem upholstered like a couch.

With some relief he moved into the neutral topic and spoke about his time at Boston University. That had been less than six years ago, but it seemed that a century had gone by. As he talked, other images from that time returned to him. Hawthorne holding forth from the head of a seminar table, raising his voice above the sound of traffic on Storrow Drive. Hawthorne discussing his plans for books and articles. Hawthorne, Meg, and Krueger crowded onto the T, making their way to the North End in search of the perfect lasagna. He and Hawthorne driving through the Berkshires in a snowstorm to Ingram House, where Hawthorne had a surprise birthday party planned for Krueger. Although Krueger knew these times were past, it amazed him they had gone so completely. Krueger was married with children of his own. Meg and Lily were dead. And Hawthorne was working at a place that Krueger in his wildest dreams could never have imagined.

Hawthorne kept glancing around the room. For a moment he would watch Evings, then turn his attention to someone else. It was hardly more than a fluttering of the eye and he did it while discussing the need for new promotional material with Strauss or talking to Skander about putting someone in charge of alumni relations. It made Krueger more attentive and, as he looked around, he was astonished at how many mistrustful looks were aimed in their direction. If the student body seemed content, the faculty and staff were not. Not only were they unhappy with Hawthorne, they seemed fairly glum with one another.

At one point, Ruth Standish leaned across the table and remarked to Hawthorne, “I wish you’d say something to Alice Beech about her behavior in the group discussions. She’s far too direct. I doubt we need a nurse there anyway.”

“How do you find her ‘too direct’?” asked Hawthorne.

“A young woman—I won’t mention her name—was saying how she liked to purge herself, that was the word she used, after every meal except breakfast and Alice interrupted to say, ‘I find that a completely stupid thing to do.’”

Instead of agreeing, Hawthorne abruptly laughed. Then he stopped himself and took a drink of water. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that, but it sounded just like her.”

“So you see my point?”

“I can see it could create a complicated group discussion.”

“I don’t like it,” said Ruth, pursing her lips.

“I’d be patient. The students like her. Ask if anyone thinks she’s right or wants to say what’s wrong with her point of view. But it would be best to see her comments as a legitimate addition.”

Ruth Standish nodded but Krueger could see that she didn’t agree; now she was irritated with Hawthorne as well, though she said nothing more.

“So you have a family, Mr. Krueger?” asked Skander as the plates were being cleared. He sat back in his chair and unbuttoned his blue blazer.

Krueger nodded. “We have a son and a daughter.”

This information appeared to make Skander very pleased. “Children are such a happy addition, I find. What are their ages?”

“The girl is six and the boy is four. Actually, the boy—” Krueger was about to say that the boy had been named after Hawthorne, but Skander interrupted him.

“My wife and I have a ten-year-old boy. He loves to play the guitar. As a matter of fact, we’d hoped for a large family, five or six youngsters around the table, but that just wasn’t to be. Not that we’re not delighted with what we’ve got.” He turned to the boy beside him. “Tell me, Scott, do you have siblings?”

“I’ve got four sisters and they all suck.”

Skander erupted in laughter. “Isn’t that typical? Nobody ever likes what he has.” He then proceeded to ask about Gene Strauss’s children.

Krueger found himself wondering if Skander knew that Hawthorne had lost his wife and daughter. But he must have known. Hawthorne seemed to be listening attentively to Strauss’s answer about a boy who’d just started as a freshman in Durham and a daughter at home. But again Krueger felt he detected some strain in Hawthorne’s face, an inner sadness that he tried to conceal.

After lunch, Hawthorne gave him a tour of the rest of the school. The rain had decreased to a drizzle that showed no sign of stopping. Krueger’s least-favorite period of the year was between the time the clocks were set back and December 21, when the days started to get longer again. Now, though it was only a little after one, it seemed closer to four o’clock. They walked along the driveway, past Krueger’s car, to the chapel in Stark Hall. The bricks were streaked with water, which made shadowy designs on the building.

Stark Chapel was a severe horseshoe-shaped room with dark pews raked so that those in the back were at least twenty feet above those in the front, as if the pews had been placed to make certain that all students could be seen at all times. There was an aisle down the middle and aisles on both sides. Three golden chandeliers, each with some twenty candlelike bulbs, hung from the arched wooden ceiling, which was painted white and resembled the hull of a schooner. On both sides of the chapel, stained-glass windows depicted biblical scenes. One showed Abraham holding a knife to Isaac’s throat before the angel interrupted the sacrifice. Krueger asked himself what sort of message that had been designed to send to the students of Bishop’s Hill.

“The organ’s quite good,” said Hawthorne. “Rosalind Langdon, the music teacher, plays it every Thursday evening. She doesn’t like to call them recitals but they feel like recitals. They’re really one of the nicest things that happen here. Mostly she does transcriptions of popular songs—you know, ‘Ruby Tuesday’ and ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ but once she did Bach. I try to make it every week, though sometimes I can’t. Too many people wanting to see me with a new complaint.”

The front of the chapel was very plain, with a wooden altar and wooden cross. On the right side were pews for the choir and on the left was a pulpit flanked by two large oak chairs. Above the pulpit hung a painting of a slender, dour man dressed in black. He had a thin white beard covering little more than his jawbone and colorless lips like twin sticks.

Hawthorne pointed to it. “That painting of Ambrose Stark is one of at least four. He was headmaster for forty years and clearly spent a lot of time getting his portrait painted. Given the prominence of his picture, you’d think he was the object of worship.”

“Not what I’d call a fun-loving man.” Approaching the painting, Krueger saw that the frame was bolted to the wall. The bolts looked new. “What’s this?” he asked.

“I had the paintings of Stark tied down, as it were. A few of the faculty see it as a serious eccentricity on my part, but they had a way of wandering. I saw one staring at me from a window.”

“Good Lord, are you serious?”

“After it happened a second time, I had the paintings bolted to the walls, which was probably a mistake. But I was angry. You have no idea how frightening it was.”

“I can imagine. Was this another practical joke?”

“Not a very funny one. I assume someone was holding it up for me to see. I couldn’t be sure it was a painting at first, but it had to be. Anyway, the Reverend Bennett fits in quite well here—everything serious and repentant.”

“You get calls from someone pretending to be Meg and pictures of this old geezer keep popping out at you—what’s going on?”

Hawthorne began to walk back up the steps of the aisle. “Most simply, it’s someone unhappy with the changes I’ve been making.”

Krueger hurried after him. “And what are you going to do about it?”

“Well, I bolted down the paintings and have taken to prowling around the buildings late at night. I’ve become so watchful that my eyes ache. Otherwise, I’m trying to wait it out. Maybe I’ll catch the person.”

Once outside, Hawthorne pointed to the two faculty apartments at the back of Stark Hall. “The Reverend Bennett and her husband live in the biggest one. That fellow you met earlier, Bill Dolittle, wants to move into the one above it.”

They walked around the drive in front of Emerson toward the library in Hamilton Hall, directly across from Stark. It began to rain harder.

“What do you mean, someone’s unhappy with the changes you’re making?” asked Krueger. “Is this one person or several?”

Hawthorne stopped by the steps of the library. Raindrops glistened in his hair. “I told you that Mrs. Hayes resigned. Half the faculty thinks I fired her, just as I fired Chip. Even though a lot’s been done, the school’s barely hanging together. There’s endless gossip, and the rumor that I was writing a book didn’t help. One group is certain I’m fucking the language teacher, another thinks I’m messing around with the nurse, though she was purportedly a lesbian before I came. There’s probably a third group that believes I’m fucking them both, and a fourth is sure I’m having an affair with someone else entirely. Nearly forty people work here: faculty, staff, housekeepers, kitchen help. Half can’t stand me. They’re angry that I’ve taken away their perks, they’re angry I’ve given them more work, they’re angry I’m trying to get them to do what they’ve been hired to do.”

Hawthorne paused to wipe the rain off his face with the back of his hand. Splotches of water dotted the front of his white shirt.

“At least a dozen people think I’m getting rich on the place. Never in my life have I been so distrusted. I don’t really believe there’s a conspiracy against me, but at times it seems that way. As I say, there are people here I trust but then they become the focus of gossip. Beyond that, things turn up missing. A snow blower disappeared. Someone stole one of the new computers. Several telephones have been vandalized. Supplies vanish. Some of it can probably be blamed on students, but the rest, the vicious part, seems too sophisticated for students. Those telephone calls—I can’t believe a student would do such a thing.”