Текст книги "Boy in the Water"

Автор книги: Stephen Dobyns

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

Six

Kate Sandler and Jim Hawthorne stood in the bell tower on the roof of Emerson Hall, looking out across the playing fields to the north. It was the Thursday afternoon following Krueger’s visit and Kate had a free period after lunch. The sky had cleared in the night, but a few clouds still lay far to the east over the mountains, where the treetops were dusted with snow. The bark of the leafless birches gleamed in the sunlight. The only greens were the pines scattered on the hillside. In the distance a red-tailed hawk rode the air currents in wide circles above the trees.

Kate and Hawthorne had just made the climb up the circular staircase that rose from the building’s fourth-floor attic. As they leaned their elbows on the wall, their breath made cottony shapes in the cold air. Both wore coats. The supports holding the roof formed an open square window, actually four joined windows facing in four directions. A dozen feet below was the wooden scaffolding where workmen were repairing the slate on the dormers, though no workmen had been seen for several days. Two fat gray pigeons paraded across the weathered lumber and cooed impatiently. All around was a vastness—to the north and east spread the national forest, and more forest lay to the west; to the south lay the tree-lined road to Brewster, and farther on—just a smoky blur on the horizon—was the small city of Plymouth.

Hawthorne turned to take in the entire panorama, stepping around the bell, which hung from a double chain. From the brace supporting the bell, a rope descended through a hole in the floor. “Incredible,” he said. Sunlight glittered on the lenses of his glasses.

“Too bad you weren’t up here during the height of color,” said Kate. “I felt like a smudge on a painter’s palette.” She wore a blue scarf with her red mackinaw and her black hair was gathered in a ponytail.

A white laundry truck with red lettering made its way up the driveway to the school. Dead leaves blew across the lawns. Three miniature students were throwing a football over by the gymnasium. Then, from far in the distance, Hawthorne began to make out the faint barking of dogs—a high chatter off to the west. They both looked.

“They’re over there in the woods,” said Kate, pointing. At first they saw only the empty playing fields and distant trees.

The barking got closer, a blended yapping that gradually began to separate itself into individual sounds, a baying and shrill yelps. The barking had a breathlessness, almost a hysteria. Then Kate stretched out an arm. “Look there.”

A deer burst from the trees on the western side of the playing fields. Trailing after it were eight dogs—so small from this distance that it was impossible to identify their breed or even color. One dog after another kept leaping at the deer, jumping at its belly. The deer would swerve and the dog fall back. If there was blood, they were too far away to see it.

Neither Hawthorne nor Kate said anything. The deer and the dogs raced along the edge of the field, weaving between the sunlight and shadow, becoming bright, then dark again. Away from the trees, the deer was able to draw ahead, its shape becoming increasingly horizontal as it picked up speed. The dogs were falling back. Hawthorne could almost see their pink tongues lolling from the sides of their mouths. Then the deer plunged again into the trees with the dogs in pursuit. In a moment it was as if they had never been. The distant barking grew fainter.

“They catch the deer in the trees,” said Kate matter-of-factly.

“Does it ever get away?”

“Very rarely. At least that’s what George says. He was always eager to have me go hunting with him. Anyway, the dogs can keep it up longer. They try to rip the deer’s stomach and get its intestines. Sometimes twenty or thirty feet will be dragging behind the deer. Eventually it collapses. Often the dogs eat the intestines even before they kill the deer.”

“They show no mercy?” asked Hawthorne, half seriously.

Kate smiled. “It doesn’t exist in that world.”

Hawthorne continued to look at the spot where the deer and the dogs had disappeared into the trees. “Destructivity is the result of an unlived life,” he said, mostly to himself.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a quote from Erich Fromm. ‘Destructivity is the result of an unlived life.’ It’s applicable to human beings but not to dogs.”

“What does he mean by ‘unlived’?”

Hawthorne leaned back against the wall, facing south, as if he felt more comfortable looking in that direction. “Let’s say someone has experienced a violent trauma or betrayal: a child has been raped by a parent or has witnessed the destruction of someone he loves or has been so traumatized by the possibility of beatings and punishments that he’s afraid to act. If the trauma is great enough, that person’s life may become frozen, emotionally frozen, even though he still gets up in the morning, is busy all day, and goes to bed at night. But there’s this empty space that begins to fill with rage, rage toward everyone—the perpetrator, the people in the world who haven’t suffered, even toward himself. Then he just wants to destroy, hurt others the way he was hurt. The rape victim becomes a person who rapes, the victim becomes a brutalizer.”

“Do all rape victims become rapists?”

“Of course not, but in many cases it happens, especially if the victim’s young enough. It’s far more common with boys than girls. I know of a serial killer who killed at least fifteen young women. He was young, handsome, and intelligent. His mother had been a high-class specialty prostitute catering to sadists and masochists. Some of her clients paid extra to have her son witness the beatings and abuse that she gave and sometimes received. This didn’t turn the boy into a killer of young women, but it was an influence, a bias, that pushed him in that direction. The awfulness in his past created this vacancy, an unlived life, a space where nothing could exist except violence.”

“Do you think that might have been the reason for Chip’s violence?” Kate took off her blue scarf, folded it, and put it in the pocket of her mackinaw.

“I really know nothing about him. There are many reasons for violence. This is just something that sometimes happen. We’d see it in treatment centers—the child who’d suffered something awful. Even in the best recovery there’d be a fear that everything would fall apart and they’d become victims again. And their final loyalty was to themselves. They couldn’t be forced. They preferred to wreck everything, preferred self-destruction to surrender.”

Kate and Hawthorne stood side by side, leaning against the wall of the bell tower. “Was this true of the boy who started the fire?” asked Kate.

“Stanley Carpasso? I’m not sure. I was too close to him and I’ve probably lost all objectivity. But he’d been sexually abused repeatedly—some boyfriend of his mother’s. And such a trauma could have created that frozen space. Stanley actually saw his way out of it. I was to be his savior. He could be very loving, very affectionate, stopping by my office to ask if there was anything he could do for me. Sometimes he brought me flowers. Then he began to save food at mealtimes—cookies and fruit and cake, a drumstick. He’d wrap it up and leave it for me in a bag hanging on my doorknob. It was both gruesome and touching.”

“I think they mentioned that in one of those articles.”

“He got a lot of attention—boy victim, boy aggressor. One article tried to show him as evil and another as innocent. It seemed impossible to believe that he was neither, that he was simply a damaged human being. As I told you, he wanted me to adopt him. The only trouble was that I already had a family.”

“So he started the fire . . .” Kate buried her hands in her coat pockets.

“It was more cunning than that.” Far to the south a plume of smoke rose up from the trees. The smoke rose straight upward, then the wind caught it and blew it eastward. At that moment Hawthorne realized he was going to tell Kate more of the story, part of what he had left out during their walk earlier in the woods.

“Our apartment at Wyndham was on the second floor, above the offices,” he began. “It had a heavy oak door. Presumably so nobody could easily break through it. And there were grates on the windows. I had meant to take them off but several people who’d been at Wyndham longer than I had urged me to keep them. Kids used to break in before the grates went up. The apartment was a temptation. Certainly other windows had grates as well. So I kept the grates and the keys were in my office.

“One day I came back to the apartment after work and found these heavy rings screwed to the doorjamb. I asked Meg about them but she had been out as well and knew nothing. I called a few people but no one could tell me anything. And of course it was the end of the day and people were scattered. I assumed the rings were there for a good reason. It was something I meant to find out about the next morning. I mean, it didn’t seem terribly important at the time. Lily was asking me to help her with her homework. I remember she had just begun to study fractions . . .”

Hawthorne paused. Beneath them half a dozen students ran down the steps of the library and along the driveway toward Emerson Hall, their excited voices drifting upward. Hawthorne leaned back against the wall, unbuttoning the top of his blue overcoat.

“That evening,” he continued, “I had to meet with a psychologist who had flown in from Boston to give a lecture at UCSD—a young woman I had known before moving to San Diego. She’d been a student in several of my graduate classes at BU. We were going to have dinner. Meg had meant to come, but she said she was getting a sore throat and decided to stay home. We went to a restaurant downtown run by Jim Croce’s widow that has a jazz bar. We had dinner and talked about Boston. She told me about her lecture, which I hadn’t been able to attend, then about nine o’clock we decided to stay for the first set.”

Hawthorne paused. In his many retellings he had always left out the part about Claire, so it was almost as if it had never taken place. He asked himself if he could forget it completely, erase that hour and the guilt that stayed with him—Claire’s face, her short dark hair, the scooped blue silk blouse showing the deep shadow between her breasts and the red stone hanging from a silver chain around her neck: all of it had become a fixed part of his interior landscape.

“That’s what I remember of this dinner,” continued Hawthorne, “I stayed an extra twenty minutes to hear this jazz quartet playing old standards. There was a young woman on the clarinet who was very good. When I got back to Wyndham, the main building was already burning. They were getting the kids out but the fire department hadn’t arrived. I didn’t see Meg or Lily. There was tremendous confusion.

“I ran inside and up the stairs. There was smoke in the second-floor hall but no fire. I reached our door. There was a chain across it. Someone had put a thick chain through the two rings and locked it with a padlock. The door couldn’t be opened. Meg and Lily were on the other side. Meg kept throwing herself against the door. There was a gap of about four inches and I could see part of her face. We could talk. I was afraid, but it seemed obvious they could still get out. Already we could hear the sirens of the fire trucks. Meg and I were able to clasp our hands through the narrow space. Lily kept asking me to open the door. I stroked her hair with one hand and held Meg’s hand with the other. As I say, the grates on the windows were locked and the keys were in my desk. Meg had opened the windows but couldn’t do anything about the grates.

“Downstairs, in the administration office, was a fire ax set into the wall in a little locked cabinet. I’d passed it a thousand times. Meg urged me to get it and to get the keys for the grates. I don’t know, I stayed too long holding her hand. But maybe it was only a minute. Not even that. Maybe it was ten seconds, no more. Then I ran down the hall. The smoke was thicker. I could hear sirens and men shouting. When I got to the office, the cabinet was empty. The glass was broken and the ax was gone. It was never determined whether Carpasso had taken it or if someone else had.

“My own office was on the other side of the administration office. I ran to my desk to get the keys to the grates. By now the electricity had gone out and the only light came from the window—emergency lights and the lights of the fire trucks. And it was smoky. I couldn’t find the keys right away. I ripped out the drawer and overturned it on the top of the desk. You know the junk you can accumulate—paper clips, pencils. All this took time. But the keys were there. I grabbed them and ran back to the stairs. The emergency lights up by the ceiling had come on but the smoke was worse. I ran back down the hall toward our door. If I could get the keys to Meg, she could open one of the grates and jump. What I didn’t know was that the fire was already inside the apartment.

“By now the hall ceiling was on fire and I could see flames through the smoke. I could hear Meg calling my name but it seemed very far away over all the noise. And I could hear Lily. Then the ceiling began to collapse, great segments of flaming acoustic tile were falling around me and the ceiling itself was sagging. I tried to keep running, jumping over stuff. Then I don’t know. Something hit me. I tried to keep moving. I could hear people shouting behind me as well. I knew I had to get her the keys. It was difficult to breathe. I don’t even remember being burned. I just remember Meg’s voice, how her calling changed to screaming. I only wanted to reach her, to grasp her hand. I don’t know if I thought we would all die. I’m sure I still thought I’d be successful. Then that was all. That’s all I remember. When I woke in the hospital and found they were dead, I felt I had been the most awful of traitors.”

Hawthorne stopped and looked around, almost surprised to find himself at Bishop’s Hill. Kate touched his shoulder, letting her hand rest there briefly before removing it. Hawthorne looked out across the front lawns toward the glistening water of the Baker River and beyond. He tried to focus on something but there was only the distance, the vastness. Again, he had left out part of the story.

“For weeks I could hear Meg calling my name. Other people spoke to me, of course, but her voice was loudest. And Lily too, I heard her voice. If I hadn’t waited so long. If I hadn’t stood holding her hand. If I hadn’t stayed to hear that jazz group. They played ‘Satin Doll,’ an Ellington-Strayhorn tune. Do you know it? It’s very sweet, and the woman on the clarinet played it beautifully. When I hear the song now, I feel horror. I’m amazed by its ugliness. After a while Meg’s and Lily’s voices became softer and my arm began to heal. I was almost angry that it was healing. I wanted it to stay raw and painful. But all that went away. At times I still hear their voices. I don’t mean that I remember them, I actually hear them. I hallucinate them. If I’m very tired or distraught or very sad. Or if something frightens me. But it’s softer, just a whisper. They were the only ones killed in the fire, which was Carpasso’s intention: to lock them up as he had been locked up. Most of the school was saved and I gather it’s been rebuilt or they’re working on it. I didn’t want to see it again.”

Hawthorne stretched out and touched the cold metal of the bell, let his hand slide down it to the rope. He had a sudden desire to ring it, swing it with all his strength so the clapper banged and banged. He was surprised by the violence of his emotion. Kate stepped away to the other side of the tower. She reached back and freed her hair from its ponytail, then shook her hair loose. From far away came the sound of a chain saw.

“Part of me was sorry that the whole place didn’t burn to the ground.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to work at a similar sort of place?” said Kate after a moment.

Tapping the bell with one knuckle, Hawthorne listened to its faint ringing. It was nearly as inaudible as the voices of Meg and Lily had become—nearly inaudible but not yet silent. Then he hit the bell harder, hurting his knuckle. Kate looked up at the sound.

“I failed at Wyndham School. I should have paid more attention to Carpasso, and maybe it was wrong to give the kids so much freedom, maybe they weren’t ready for it. I don’t know anymore. It’s as if I no longer have any credibility with myself. It’s as if I let my abstraction of the place—all my ideas and theories—take precedence over the physical reality. I came here to get back to that physical reality. Beyond that, there’s trouble in the whole field. Treatment centers are hugely expensive. Kids needing serious psychiatric care can be charged a thousand dollars a day—most of which comes from insurance companies, though they’re increasingly reluctant to cough up the money. More and more centers are being run privately, governed by the bottom line and the stockholders. For-profits, they’re called, as opposed to nonprofits. Some do good work, but a lot of the places exist only to milk the insurance companies. They talk about milieu therapy so everything that happens to the patient can be considered treatment and given a price. People do jobs they aren’t trained to do, and it’s far more profitable to hire two half-time or four quarter-time employees than one full-time. Dog groomers make more than child-care workers in this country. Emotionally disturbed children, retarded children, psychotic children—it’s a big business. There’s less public money and the funds available can only be used on the treatment itself. In Massachusetts, for instance, there’s no way to tell if a kid was helped or hurt by the treatment centers, no way to know what he’s doing a year after he’s left, five, ten, twenty years after. That’s considered research, and there’s no money for research. A large percentage end up in prison, but there’s no money to confirm the connection.

“I could get a job in a for-profit tomorrow and make four times what I’m making here. But it would mean betraying everything I believe in, at least everything I thought I believed in.”

“You sound angry.”

“I was angry. Maybe I’m still angry.”

“Why’d you come to Bishop’s Hill?”

“At best, I hoped I could do some good. At worst, I could hide and lick my wounds. It didn’t occur to me that I’d become public enemy number one.”

They continued to talk about the school: faculty who were difficult to work with, students who were troublesome. They walked from one side of the bell tower to the other, looking out across the playing fields or the Common or the front lawns. They could see sections of the Baker River, a glimmer of silver through the leafless trees. Now and then a car drove up to the school or another drove away. They saw students on their way to the gym or coming back. Several of the grounds crew were replacing a window in one of the dormitory cottages. Kate and Hawthorne were aware of the hundred and seventy or so students, teachers, and staff pursuing their various occupations far below, but they were separated from that. Perhaps they could have been seen from the ground or another building had someone looked carefully: one figure in a blue overcoat, one figure in a red mackinaw. They were careful not to get too close or touch each other.

Kate spoke about her ongoing difficulties with her ex-husband. George had called Hawthorne twice and accused him of sleeping with Kate. The second time he had been drunk and could hardly speak. Hawthorne had had a difficult day and was brusque. “One, I’m not having sex with her,” he said. “Two, if I did it’d be none of your business.” And the next morning, he asked Hamilton Burke to call George and remind him that his actions could have legal consequences. George hadn’t called again. As for who had sent George the anonymous note, that remained one of Bishop’s Hill’s little mysteries.

They talked about Evings and speculated about who had wrecked his office. Chief Moulton from Brewster had returned to ask more questions but Hawthorne had no idea whether he had learned anything. Hawthorne said nothing about the phone calls, the bags of rotten food hung from his doorknob, the reappearing image of Ambrose Stark. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t tell Kate, but it seemed part of his sense of isolation. He had even thought it was meant to happen, that these calls and bags of food and practical jokes were an aspect of his punishment. He linked them to his failure with Stanley Carpasso and Wyndham School. They were a result of the time he had spent with Claire in Croce’s and after. Sometimes he even wished these taunts would get worse, like a noise turned higher and higher till it became a scream, just so he would know how much he could take. And sometimes he wished he could strip away his emotional self, that part that still heard the voices of Meg and Lily, the part that was human.

Still, after one of the phone calls from the woman calling herself Meg, Hawthorne had dialed *69. Once he had the number, he called his caller back. The phone had rung and rung. Then a man answered, a postman in West Brewster—the phone was a public telephone outside the Brewster post office. And three times Hawthorne had hidden within sight of his door leading out to the terrace just to see if he could catch someone leaving a bag of food. He had waited about ten minutes and each time had felt like a fool.

These events were taking a toll. Hawthorne’s nerves were suffering; he had become jumpy—phobic, was how he described it to himself. And he knew that Kevin Krueger had looked at him with concern. Staring out over the fields, Hawthorne thought of Krueger’s suggestion that these pranks were bound to get worse. But how bad could they get, and wouldn’t they stop after people saw that the school was actually improving?

After Hawthorne and Kate had been up in the bell tower for nearly an hour, he opened the trap door and they descended the spiral staircase to the fourth-floor attic, going around and around in the dim light that filtered through louvers on the tower windows. At the bottom was the door separating the staircase from the attic. It had two dead-bolt locks so students couldn’t go into the tower and “fool around,” as Skander said. Hawthorne had locked one of the bolts behind them before going up into the tower, he was certain of it, but now as he inserted the key he found the door was open.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kate.

“I thought I had locked this. I must have been mistaken.”

“Who has keys?”

“I thought I had the only set. Maybe there are others in the office.”

They ducked through the low door. Hawthorne locked it and they descended to the third floor, where they stood for a moment at the low wall of the rotunda, looking down. Hawthorne wondered again about the unlocked door and what it might mean. A student hurried across the open space with a backpack slung over his shoulder, carefully stepping around the blue-and-gold crest with the letters B and H. Then the bell rang, signaling the end of fifth period. Doors began opening and voices rose toward them. Hawthorne and Kate continued down to the first floor to resume the business of their day.

–

When Hawthorne got back to his office he found Hilda Skander standing at the door waiting for him. She put a finger to her lips and pointed toward his inner office. “Reverend Bennett would like a word with you,” she said. “I told her to go in. I hope you don’t mind.” Hilda wore a denim skirt and a green sweater. The air around her reeked of peppermint.

“Of course not.” Hawthorne took off his overcoat, which Hilda hung in the closet.

“She seems very businesslike,” said Hilda. “You know, on a mission.”

Entering his office, Hawthorne found the chaplain studying the photograph of Meg and Lily posed in front of the Christmas tree.

“They were very pretty,” she said somewhat stiffly, as if annoyed to be caught snooping. She put the photograph back on the desk.

“Yes,” said Hawthorne, “they were.” He couldn’t think of more to say beyond that. “You have something you want to talk to me about?”

The chaplain sat down in the chair by the desk. She wore a gray blouse with a clerical collar and a voluminous skirt of a darker gray. She took off her rimless glasses and polished them on a handkerchief as Hawthorne sat down at his desk.

“It’s this business about Clifford. The students are quite worked up about it. And that policeman from Brewster has been asking questions. I can’t help but think that Clifford brought this on himself.” She tucked her handkerchief back in her breast pocket, then fussed with it for a moment to make sure that the point stuck up in the exact center.

“In what way?” asked Hawthorne, watching her straighten her handkerchief.

The chaplain gave him a forced smile. She spoke slowly, as if she felt that Hawthorne would otherwise have difficulty understanding. “Well, certainly he’s unpopular and there have been stories in the past about him being involved with students, though quite a few years ago. True or not, these get handed on. And you have to admit that he’s ineffectual: from what I hear he regularly falls asleep in your group therapy sessions. Then there’s his homosexuality.”

“What about his homosexuality?” Hawthorne had had few dealings with the chaplain. Her wish to control whatever came within her circle of influence, her air of disapproval—Hawthorne felt his task would be easier if he stayed out of her path. He knew she worked hard and was popular with some students. She taught a class in biblical history and another in comparative religion. And she led a weekly Bible study group that was attended not only by students but also by a few faculty and staff.

The chaplain touched her hair. Its wispy gray strands reminded Hawthorne of smoke and he observed the pinkness of her scalp beneath it. She wore no makeup and her face had a claylike pallor. On her left wrist was a gold Omega watch.

“It gets in the way of his effectiveness. Of course, Clifford makes no secret of being gay. That seems to be the current fashion. But unfortunately the students think of him as a homosexual before they think of him as a psychologist. And his manner is so . . . unattractive. Believe me, you’ve done very well at Bishop’s Hill, but now we have prospective students visiting with their parents. And this business of his office being vandalized is simply the last straw. Who knows what he did to cause some student to react so violently? I think it would be wise if you did for him what you did for Mrs. Hayes.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

“I think you should let him go.”

“I didn’t fire Mrs. Hayes, she resigned.”

“I know that’s what you’ve been saying . . .”

Hawthorne nearly lost his temper. Reaching into the drawer of his desk, he withdrew a copy of Mrs. Hayes’s resignation letter and handed it to the chaplain.

The Reverend Bennett glanced at the letter and returned it. “You must know, of course, that copies of this have been circulating. Some people say that she wrote it after she had been promised a retirement package.”

Hawthorne hadn’t realized the letter had become public. “Good grief, Reverend, if I say she resigned, she resigned. Why do you insist on thinking I’m not telling the truth?”

The chaplain became red in the face. “Do you deny you fired Chip Campbell?”

“That’s very different. He gave me cause. I twice caught him being violent to students. And I’ve since learned of other incidents.”

“It can easily be argued that Clifford’s ineffectuality is cause. He doesn’t do his job. The students have no respect for him—he’s a joke to them. As for the vandalism of his office, many think he deserved it.”

It occurred to Hawthorne that the chaplain had no belief in psychology. She believed in morality alone—right and wrong without gray areas or gradations. The God that occupied her heaven was a harsh divinity who toted up a person’s sins and after a certain number booted the unfortunate sinner down to hell.

When he spoke again, Hawthorne tried to soften his voice. “I can’t fire Clifford and I have no wish to. The board of trustees makes the ultimate decision on all firings, just as it did with Chip. We’re going through a difficult transitional period. This requires patience. Right now Clifford has a great deal of anxiety and the gossip doesn’t help. But soon I hope he’ll settle down. The person who deserves punishment is whoever wrecked his office. Not Clifford.”

“You know, of course, the vandalism could occur again.”

“We’ll be on the lookout. And if the person is caught, then he’ll be punished.”

But when the chaplain finally left, Hawthorne knew she hadn’t believed him. She took it for granted that he had unlimited power. And Hawthorne knew that if she herself had unlimited power, Evings would be gone in a shot. She would have no qualms about dismissing him. Mercy wasn’t a quality that the Reverend Bennett valued. And me too, thought Hawthorne, I’d be gone as well. But he felt troubled about Evings. He didn’t much like the man and Evings was doing a bad job. On the other hand, he was also suffering—both from his guilt at his failure as school psychologist and his anxiety about being fired. Then there was the destruction of his office.

Hawthorne looked forward to hiring a second psychologist, someone who could take over the burden of the work. Already ads had been placed. Once the new person arrived, Evings could be left to drowse in his overheated office with his novels. Next fall, if the school was still open, Hawthorne would talk to him about early retirement. In the meantime, Hawthorne again had to reassure Evings that his job was safe. He had to reduce the man’s panic.

In the fifteen minutes before his history class, Hawthorne signed papers and took care of immediate business. He had the sense of playing catch-up, that he was always behind in his work. When he left his office, he was late for class and had to remind himself not to run in the hall. Entering after the bell, Hawthorne caught Scott throwing an eraser at another student. But the students were livelier than earlier in the week. They preferred the vicious emperors to the sane ones, whereas Hawthorne could easily have spent a few more days with Marcus Aurelius.