by John Coyne
"Let him get the pass," Borgus instructed Simpson. "Give him a yard maybe, then hit him high. I'll get him from behind." "What if he drops the ball? The fucker isn't any good." Nick Borgus looked up the field, toward the offensive team huddle. "I told Kohler to send it sailing up like a balloon. No one will rush him. He'll have all fuckin' day to throw it nice and easy so even Gardiner can't miss. And if he still misses it," Borgus shrugged, "hit him anyway."
Scott's number was called again on third down. They won't be expecting Gardiner again, Kohler, the quarterback, said, and Scott ran back to the line of scrimmage. They were going for long yardage this time. He was to fly straight down fifteen yards, then buttonhook, turn into the middle of the field. He could outrun them, he began to think. He was faster than Borgus, faster even than Simpson. At the snap Scott put down his head and raced, getting the jump on Simpson who had played him close to the line. It was only when he was ten yards into the secondary that he realized Borgus had dropped back and was racing across the open field, cutting him off. Scott crossed the third chalk strip, fifteen yards downfield, and cut left, buttonhooked into the field. The football was there. A soft floating pigskin. He leaped up and gathered the ball into his body, smothered it with both hands, holding tight. He could hear his team cheering. He would score, he thought, turning downfield. There were less than thirty yards to the goal. He shifted his hips, moving toward the end zone. It was wide open, an empty field before him. He could lope across. The second team would win. He would win. He laughed, unable to contain his pleasure, and then they hit him. Hank Simpson, coming from his blind side, caught Scott as he turned and hit him in the face with both forearms. The force of the blow popped off his helmet, left him dizzy. Nick Borgus caught him low and from behind, knocking his legs out. He was whiplashed between them, jerked off his feet as if he were on a string. At first he did not feel the pain. He was flying, tumbling in the air. He lost the football. It floated off, as if in slow motion, and he flipped over, then hit the ground with a flat thud, losing consciousness.
He was stretched out on the field, surrounded by faces. "What's your name, kid?" the coach asked. "Scott." "You got a last name?" Tagariello grinned, realizing the boy was okay. "Scott Gardiner," he whispered and tried to sit up. Now he felt the pain. It enveloped his body, wrapped the hurt tightly around his legs and up his spine. He could not find his tongue. "Welcome to Flat Rock, Gardiner," Tagariello said, still grinning. His whistle dangled around his neck and Scott tried to locate it, to grab hold and tighten it around the coach's throat, but his eyes kept seeing double. "You're okay," Tagariello announced, "just shook up." His voice did not register any concern. Scott nodded, but when he lifted his head, the pain shot across his chest. "Aw, shit," he exclaimed. "Easy, Scott." Bill Russell, the assistant coach, put his hands on Scott's shoulders and held him down. His voice was gentle. Scott nodded. Mr. Russell was his social studies teacher. "Take care of him, Bill," Tagariello instructed. "I'm going to run some field goal drills." He spoke in short bursts of speech, as if he were farting, Scott thought. "Nice catch, Gardiner," the coach said. "See what you can do without glasses?" He laughed, adding, "But Borgus and Simpson really stuck it to you, didn't they? Well, this isn't Pansy Prep. We play football at Flat Rock." Then he walked off, blowing his whistle, shouting to the other players. "Fucker," Scott whispered. "Easy, Scott," Bill Russell said. "You got pretty shook up on that catch." "'Those fuckers." "It's football, Scott. You have to expect to get banged up." Scott shook his head. "'They set me up. They had it all planned. Let me catch one going out of bounds, then get me in the middle of the field where I couldn't get away." "They weren't ganging up, Scott. You caught the pass and you were wide open. They both were covering you deep. I saw how the play developed. Both of them happened to get you at the same time. Remember, they're first team. They're two of our best players. And listen. You're not bad yourself. That was a hell of a catch." Scott had managed to sit up and could see the two teams at the other end of the field. Tagariello was still shouting, and his sharp voice, like a dog's bark, carried clearly in the cold late afternoon. He was nothing but a small, fat Grampus, Scott thought. He looked back at the social studies teacher. "They were ganging up," he said quietly. He had calmed himself down, and he took a deep breath even though it hurt his rib cage. The game didn't make any difference, but he wanted this teacher to know he wasn't a fool. "Simpson and Borgus and that second string quarterback, Kohler, all of them are seniors, all of them are buddies. They let me catch that first pass just so they could get me the next time deep in the secondary, out by myself, and then hit me." He knelt for a moment, gathering his strength, then pulled himself to his feet. He swayed dizzily, and the teacher steadied him. "Look, if you think it might do some good, I could mention this to Coach Tagariello...if you really think they did go after you." The social studies teacher was young and unsure of what to do. This was his first extracurricular assignment and he was uncertain of his authority. Scott waved off his suggestion and walked toward the locker room. "I can take care of them myself," he answered, not believing that he could. Well, maybe it had been his imagination. Scrimmage wasn't Hobgoblin. Football wasn't really a life-or-death war. From the far end of the field he heard several of the seniors shout; their voices in unison, and he glanced over his shoulder. They were waving at him and from the end zone he heard them shout, in falsetto, "Bye, bye, Preppie." He raised his arm, as if to wave back, then gave them all the finger.
Five
Barbara Gardiner worked late at the castle. Scott would not be home before six, she knew, and she enjoyed the quiet of the building after the tourists had gone and the office secretaries left. Derek appeared in the doorway while she worked. In his shirtsleeves, cuffs rolled up, he looked like a campaign poster of Bobby Kennedy. As a graduate student Barbara had worked on Kennedy's last campaign and at his death had felt herself orphaned. "Want to drive down to the Crossroads for a drink?" He smiled and pulled his tie loose, strengthening the Kennedy resemblance. She smiled, shaking her head. "Sorry, but I've got to go home." "Home? Come on, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Everyone deserves some time away from this mausoleum, even the resident princess of the tower." "Very funny, but I'm not the princess. I'm the Queen Mother, and I promised the crown prince that I wouldn't feed him anything frozen tonight." "Well, maybe the prince will turn into a frog and you can feed him some fresh flies." He continued to smile, but she could see he was disappointed. "Can I have a rain check?" she asked, trying to be nice, trying to show him that she did care. "Sure. Any time." He seemed nonchalant again, and for a moment she almost weakened, wanting to recapture his attention. But the moment was over. "Good night. See you tomorrow." He waved good-by. She listened to his footsteps disappearing down the long marble corridor. It was quiet then. She could hear the building settling down. A few more doors opened and closed, then silence, and she returned to her report, an opening section on why Fergus O'Cuileannain had selected this particular site for Ballycastle. For a dozen minutes she concentrated on her report, reworking the last few paragraphs once again, and it was only when she looked up, ready to type out the final draft, that she felt the full silence of the massive castle and a quick shiver of fear. She heard nothing. She felt nothing. Yet she was frightened. It was as if a cold hand had reached out and touched her flesh. She tried to relax. It was nothing, she told herself. There was no one to fear. She was safe in the castle. Barbara slid white paper into her typewriter and began to type.
Why Fergus O'Cuileannain selected this site for Ballycastle is unclear. In the 1920s Ballycastle was far from New York City (over three hours by train) and the piece of property too hilly for the ambitious farm we know he wanted to develop here on the western banks of the river. We do know that before reconstructing the main castle he ordered twenty-five feet of topsoil removed from the crest of the hill so that the foundations of the mansion could be built on solid rock, a construction device used earlier by John D. Rockefeller.
Barbara stopped typing. Now sh
e heard footsteps overhead, heard the opening and closing of doors, then the distant tumbling of locks and more footsteps on the cold marble staircase. Oh, God, she thought. She realized she had never before been alone in the huge house, and at once the stories Derek had told her about Ballycastle, all the folklore and rumors about the mansion, came rushing back to mind like cobwebs catching in her hair. Barbara stood immediately and walked out into the main hallway, thinking, this is foolish. She had been through the house; there was nothing at all to be afraid of. There were not many rooms in the old castle keep, where the office was located, and they were grouped around the wide entrance way and a second-story wooden balcony. The vastness of Ballycastle was in the newer north and south wings, two long halls that contained the ballroom, an art gallery, the library, a billiard room and guest quarters. Again Barbara heard sounds from the second floor. It was as if someone were dragging a metal chain along the length of the long hall. Derek had told her the rumor of how Fergus O'Cuileannain had kept an insane niece locked away on the third floor for years, and it was rumored the young girl had been chained to her bed. This is ridiculous, Barbara decided, forcing herself to keep her imagination in check. "Hello?" she shouted, wanting at least to hear the sound of her own voice in the silence of the huge building. There was no response, but at that moment the metal being dragged stopped, as if someone was listening. She called out again. Now there was nothing. She sighed, relieved, then turned toward her office. She reached the doorway when again she heard the dragging metal. Oh, God, she thought. She glanced at the office phone. She could telephone security, or try to locate Conor, the caretaker. Perhaps she should just leave, go home to the guest house, and phone Derek from the safety of her own kitchen. This was silly. How could she explain to Derek that she had been chased from the castle by her fear? The Foundation would expect her to be responsible, to investigate what that noise was. After all, the niece was dead; Fergus was dead. And there was no one, she told herself, upstairs. Barbara went into the main entrance hall and slowly up the stairway. At the top of the stairs, she hesitated and called out. In response she heard only the clanking of the chain. She could locate it now; it was coming from the end of the north wing. In spite of her rising panic, she tried to think clearly. What was in the north wing that could create that sound? The armor, she realized. It wasn't a chain. It was the sound of armor moving. The long north hallway was lined with weaponry from the fifteenth century, suits of plate armor, basinets and armets. She had catalogued this weaponry already, the armors from Lombardy, swords from Cologne and Milan, the long steel Ahspeiss spike and the Flemish sallets used by English knights in the War of the Roses. How could suits of armor move, she asked herself, and peered down the length of the hallway. The only light she had to see by was that which slanted through the high, narrow notches in the stone walls, small rectangles of sun splashing on the marble floor and the hallway rugs, but it was enough for Barbara to know that the hallway was empty. She called out once more, but now her own fright clutched at her throat. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears. Someone had to be there, she told herself, hiding behind the ancient armor. There could be no other explanation. She had to leave, she ought to run away, but even as her mind whirled with that thought, she moved forward, going cautiously from one suit to the next, peering on tiptoe into the darkness behind each piece of weaponry. To do so, she had to get up close to each one-put her face near each fiercelooking eyeless visor, resist the fear that the mailed arms would reach out and grab her. By the time she reached the end of the hallway her silk blouse was ruined with perspiration but she had found nothing out of place. All right, she told herself. She had done her duty. She had been responsible and now she could go home. She had started back along the hallway when again she heard the chain. This time it was being banged against a wall. There were rooms off the hallway, guest bedrooms and a small study used by Fergus O'Cuileannain during the last years of his life. The study was not opened to the public and the door was supposed to be locked at all times. Still, Barbara hesitated before the room and listened. She could not hear anything from behind the massive wooden door. Tentatively she pushed down on the medieval latch and shoved. The door did not move. She sighed with relief. Then the door gave way, swung silently open on the force of its own weight. No one was in the tiny room. Silent. In perfect order. Barbara stepped inside the doorway and glanced around. The study was one of her favorite places in the castle, filled with art objects and furniture that Fergus had collected from around the world. It was a cluttered room, but Barbara's trained eye could see everything was in place. The Oriental tapestries on the walls, couchant jaguars by the leather sofa, the teakwood desk from Beirut, two Moorish inlaid chairs, the ivory tusks from Mombassa, two small Hindu coffee tables, and his collection of Etruscan cooking pots. Barbara reached for the latch to pull the heavy door closed behind her when from the comer of her eye she saw the edge of the heavy tapestry move slightly as if rippled gently by a breeze. She flipped on the room lights. "Come out," she demanded, raising her voice. The heavy tapestry stirred, but no one emerged from the corner. At that end of the study, she recalled, there was a doorway and back staircase to the first floor kitchen. She waited. Her heart beat like a child's fist against her chest. Now she should run downstairs and telephone for help, she realized, but instead, against her common sense and her fear, she went further into the room, forced herself forward as if she were a tightrope artist compelled to step into space. She called out and again the thick Oriental tapestry stirred, as if beckoning her toward the dark corner and entrapment. She heard nothing. But fear grabbed her throat and tightened around the jugular. Yet she moved effortlessly, slipping behind the sofa, moving easily past the shelves of Etruscan pots and, with the strange fascination that attracts people to danger, pulled back the tapestry and revealed the hidden corner of the room. No one was hiding in the bare space, but the stairway door was open and Barbara could feel a cool breeze from the first floor whip around her legs. "Oh, Christ," she whispered and reached out to close and lock the entrance. In that instant, while she was reaching out, leaning slightly forward and feeling in the shadowy corner for the knob, the door flung back and a figure appeared, his arm already raised, holding high the long-bladed knife. "No, please." She threw up her arms, attempted to shield herself as she scrambled to get out of the dark cornea, but he had seized her elbow and held her tight. She struggled free of the man's grip, wrenched her arm from his and then turned as if to strike back, and saw that it was only Conor, the old caretaker of the estate. "What in God's name are you doing here? Why didn't you answer me, damn it?" She was trembling with rage. "I was fixin' the dagger, ma'am, and moving that chain mail hauberk down to my shop like I was told by Mr. Brennan. I always use this back way to the castle. It keeps me out of the way of them tourists." He sounded helpless and afraid, as if he had done something wrong. "Oh, for God's sake," she laughed, seeing then that the old man was carrying the Rondel dagger. She had even been in the office when Derek had spoken to Conor, asking him to fix the disc-shaped guard of the dagger and, while he was at it, to clean up the rest of the thirteenth-century knight's armor. "I'm sorry I frightened you, missus." He came into the room and edged around Barbara, as if he thought she might retaliate. "Well, what was all this sound of dragging chains I heard?" she asked at once, trying to reclaim some sense of authority. "Ah, well, that would have been the hauberk. It was too much for me to carry all the way to the shop, so I dragged it along behind me and the chain mail made a terrific clatter." He darted a glance at her, then looked down and away. Barbara did not like the man or his looks. He was small and slight with hard features, long, thin limbs and bulging eyes that distorted his face. He reminded her of a weasel with his quick, secretive ways. "And how's the lad, Mrs. Gardiner?" Conor asked, going about his work. He took the dagger over to the teakwood desk and set it down carefully, beside a half dozen other medieval weapons. "He's fine," Barbara replied curtly. She was not that way usually. She always felt intim
idated by service people, waiters and taxi drivers, employees like Conor. But she knew Scott had been befriended by the old Irish caretaker and their unlikely comradeship worried her. She would have thought her son would have been put off by the meddling old man, but until school had started they had been inseparable. It was the stories, she knew. Conor told endless tales from Irish myth and folklore, which fed into Scotty's passion for Hobgoblin. "I've made the lad a little thing in the shop," Conor went on, smiling. "Conor, I've seen his slingshot and I don't want my son having such dangerous objects around the house. Please don't give him any more weapons." "Aah, they aren't nothing at all, Mrs. Gardiner." "A shillelagh and slingshot are dangerous, Conor; at least I think so, and I don't want Scott having anything like them." She spoke quickly, as if summing up, and walked out of the study. "There's no harm in an old shillelagh," he called after. "'Tis just a plaything. The boy can't hurt himself." There was now a sharpness to his voice, as if he were fighting back. Barbara stopped in the hallway and turned to face him. "Nevertheless, Conor, I don't want my son having one." She knew she sounded blunt and disagreeable, and she hated it, but she couldn't let the caretaker influence Scotty. She had to protect her son from his own imagination. Conor nodded obediently, then tipped his black cap and tamed away without a word. Barbara watched him return to the study and lock the door behind him. He now seemed harmless, and she felt guilty. He was just an old man, she thought. The last surviving employee of Fergus O'Cuileannain, brought over from Ireland in the late twenties to care for the horses. He had worked his whole life on the estate, and the Foundation had kept him on as the caretaker. She guessed he resented her and the other Foundation people who had come onto the estate, into his world, and turned the castle and grounds into public property. He wasn't at all threatening, she realized. He was only an old man, poorly dressed and not very strong. One of his shoulders was slightly higher than the other, and he shuffled his feet when he walked. He resembled Chaplin's little tramp, and her fear of him was swept away by compassion. As she moved back along the north wing and then down the staircase she debated whether she should go after Conor and apologize. At the bottom of the stairs she caught sight of him in the main dining room, walking toward the pantry. She called out, her voice shatteringly loud in the empty building, and went after him, running across the room, then through the swinging pantry doors. He was neither there nor in the kitchen. She kept calling as she searched, looking in the ballroom, the laundry and the housekeeper's office. At the rear of the castle she looked out the windows toward the stables but did not see him in the yard or walking downhill to his apartment. "Damn," she said out loud. It was impossible for him to vanish that quickly. And she was certain he had heard her voice. Then she realized he might still be in the mansion hiding somewhere, spying on her, and again she was frightened, not for Scotty this time but for herself. She rushed from the kitchen, ran back across the main hall to her office and, without putting away her work, grabbed her coat and purse and left the castle. In the bright sunshine she immediately felt better. Derek was right, she thought. The castle was a mausoleum, full of ancient furniture and past lives. But it contained nothing threatening. It was her imagination, she thought, not Scotty's, that was creating phantoms, and she giggled at the absurdity of the situation. And in her pleasure at being outside and alive on such a beautiful day, she began to kick up the deep blanket of fallen leaves, forgetting Conor Fitzpatrick, the last Irish serf of Ballycastle.