The Book of Kills

by Ralph McInerny

  He returned with the excuse of seeing his professor, but he asked about Laverne and she was summoned. Soon the murmur of their conversation and sudden bursts of laughter came from the family room at the back of the house that overlooked Cedar Grove Cemetery. Freda and Otto looked at one another but said nothing. Those visits had become regular. Laverne would make popcorn and they would watch any silliness on television in order to remain in the family room and away from her parents in the front part of the house. They went out infrequently—as often as not to a movie shown on campus—but he was a graduate student living on a pittance. They developed the lugubrious habit of going across the backyard for long walks in Cedar Grove Cemetery.

  Ranke did not deny that the apparent direction of his daughter’s relations with Orion Plant affected his treatment of the young man. Like most graduate students, Orion had arrived with an inflated notion of the state of his knowledge. This was followed by a dip in the slough of despond when the extent of the ignorance they had brought with them was revealed in class and seminar. Orion skipped this second phase and thus never advanced to the third desirable condition when the demands of the discipline were understood and a chastened confidence began. Orion remained as he had come, unaware of the vast gaps in his learning. And then one day, in Ranke’s office, Orion casually mentioned that he had married.

  Hope leapt in the professorial breast. Laverne had gone off to visit a classmate in Detroit some days before. Had the young couple eloped? Was this his son-in-law who sat before him, simpering and foolish?

  “She’s from a local family. She works in the Huddle.”

  Otto Ranke had never confronted such a situation in his entire life. The father in him suggested bounding over his desk and throttling this callous fool. After a moment, his stolid Teutonic ancestry took over.

  “Well,” he said.

  “It came as a bit of a surprise to me too.”

  Had Laverne been told of this new attachment that had led so swiftly to the altar? Ranke did not press Orion for details. He diverted the conversation to academic channels. Nothing in his manner could have conveyed to his student the contempt he felt for him. His own honor seemed to have been compromised. But all this was suppressed as they turned to the amateurish paper to which Ranke had already given a mark far higher than it deserved.

  Laverne had not known. When she heard the news she languished. She became a recluse in her room. She took several days off from her job in the library and when she returned to the check-out desk she was, like so many females in library employ, one whose future was entirely behind her.

  A new modus vivendi established itself between professor and student. Orion was known as his protégé and Ranke could not bring himself to make known his true estimate of the young man’s prospects as an historian. He continued to dissemble with his colleagues. They came to count on him as Orion Plant’s champion. Colleagues had watched with dismay his defense of the unpromising Plant, but Ranke continued to shield the young man from the judgment that should have been passed on him. And so for years it had gone.

  Three months before, Ranke returned home, grunted at Freda, who tried to detain him, and went into his study. It was there that he heard emanating from the family room sounds that had seemed to be stilled forever. There was a young man with Laverne and that man was undoubtedly Orion Plante. Their conversation murmured as before, the outbursts of laughter recalled a better time. Ranke sat at his desk and did not know what to do. Later, when Orion had gone and Freda had retired with a cup of broth, Ranke confronted his daughter.

  “Was that Orion I heard back here with you?”

  “Yes.” She looked up at him with radiant, defiant eyes.

  “What was it all about?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Laverne, the man is married.”

  “Not in the Church!”

  “Not in the Church?”

  “It was impulsive, but he had the good sense not to enter into a real marriage.”

  “Has he proposed to you?”

  She wanted to say yes, he could sense that. One visit had wiped away the empty years. Things were back to status quo ante. The expectations she had, perhaps rightly, entertained before were back in full force.

  “I don’t want you entertaining a married man in this house.”

  He left her to ponder what he would have been happy to generalize into a Kantian universal. No self-respecting father would care to have his unmarried daughter murmuring and laughing with a married man in his home.

  It was some time before he learned that what he had thought was a solitary visit, a nostalgic return of the faithless beau, had been the first of a renewed series. Freda colluded with the young couple, moved by the status of Orion’s marriage. Not even an annulment would be needed, only a divorce as civil as the marriage.

  “Then he has proposed?”

  Freda seemed confused.

  “So he hasn’t?”

  “But, Otto, he is back . . .”

  Laverne was no more informative. She was openly defiant now, displaying that madness of the female in want of a mate. How powerful is the drive of nature that she could find the man who had broken her heart acceptable once more. There was something fresh and animated about her. She might have been wakened from a long sleep. Ranke repeated his order about her seeing Orion in his home, but it was no longer a Kantian imperative. Perhaps something could happen even now . . .

  The clandestine meetings continued. Months passed. Orion continued living with his wife and her family. Should Otto ask him what his intentions were?

  All indecision left him when the headstones in the cemetery were toppled and he learned that Laverne had been entertaining Orion while her father attended a lecture by a visitor to campus. Otto Ranke saw it all. His daughter had been cruelly used again, and the fact that she was unaware of it made it worse. She had provided a base of operations for the desecration in Cedar Grove. He was sure of it, intuitively certain. The canons of his profession did not warrant the inference, but doubt was a stranger in this matter. How easy to slip out of the house, into the cemetery, and then back again, unobserved by any campus patrol that might have been in the vicinity. A few days later, at the meeting of the graduate committee, Otto Ranke added his black ball to the others and Orion Plant was ejected. Laverne languished. There were no further visits. Professor Ranke found it difficult to rejoice in his Pyrrhic victory. His daughter, having twice taken leave of her senses, now took a leave from her post in the library. Freda was confused but silent.

  Professor Ranke was seated in his study, brooding, ignoring the sounds of pre-game celebration that turned the campus into swarming crowds of anticipation, when the call from Roger Knight came.

  9

  PROFESSOR RANKE SUGgested they meet in his home. He did not go to campus on game days.

  “Wait until the game has started, then come. The campus is deserted and the roads are passable.”

  Roger agreed. His usual mode of transportation on campus was a golf cart and, as the professor had said, it would be an easy matter to drive it from the apartment he and Philip shared in graduate student housing to the Ranke home on Angela. It was two-thirty in the afternoon when he set out. The trees were golden, falling leaves drifted in a variety of graceful spirals onto the campus lawns. From the stadium came as from a great distance the strains of band music and the low guttural sound of the eighty thousand spectators which from time to time erupted into a roar that seemed to shake more leaves from the trees. Not ten minutes after setting out, Roger rolled up the Ranke driveway and began the slow process of extricating himself from the cart. The front door opened and Ranke stood there, sweatered, slippered, smoking his pipe, waiting for Roger to approach.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  And he did. He lumbered toward his host and allowed himself to be helped up the steps and into the house. As they went on to the study, a wraithlike young woman looked at them from a d
oorway.

  “My daughter, Laverne.”

  Roger bowed. The wraith withdrew.

  “I have come on a curious mission,” Roger said when he had been eased into a large leather chair. The walls of the room were lined with books. The surface of the desk was cluttered in an attractive way. On either side of the chair, books were scattered on the floor, some open, some shut.

  “Forgive me for not meeting you on campus.”

  “Nonsense. I understand perfectly.” A distant roar went up in the stadium where Philip and his guests were following the fortunes of the game between Notre Dame and Florida State.

  “I see your property abuts the cemetery.” He had noticed this as he purred along the walk that passed the three entrances to Cedar Grove.

  “They will not have to carry me far.”

  Roger laughed, sensing this was a standard remark when the proximity of the house to Cedar Grove was mentioned.

  “Little else commends this location other than the fact that I can walk to campus. But on a day like today . . .” Ranke lifted his hands and let them drop. Earlier, game traffic had whisked along Angela Boulevard to the parking lots, but now the street was quieter than at any other time. Ranke settled back in his desk chair. “Most of my colleagues fled to the northern suburbs. Their houses look out on artificial lakes and golf courses. They insist it is charming. But I would have to drive.”

  “And look out on artificial lakes and a golf course.”

  Ranke smiled. “What will you drink?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I am going to have some beer.”

  “Do. I never take alcohol myself, but you must have your beer.”

  “Mrs. Ranke can serve you coffee.”

  “Perfect.”

  Roger had the sense that Ranke was trying to postpone whatever it was that had brought Roger here. Why did he think that Ranke already knew?

  “Once you mentioned a graduate student who was working on the early days of the university.”

  “He has been dismissed.”

  “Then he is Orion Plant.”

  “I forgot that I mentioned his name.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Roger sipped the hot strong coffee and put cup and saucer on the hassock before him. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. He told Ranke why he had come.

  “So they suspect Orion.”

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “What reason do they have?”

  “It is largely inference. He has retained a lawyer to contest his dismissal from the graduate school.”

  “Good God.”

  “He has no case?”

  “The department should be sued for pretending he had the capacity to be a historian. I should be. As his advisor I gave him the benefit of every doubt. Finally that became impossible.”

  “You agreed to his dismissal?”

  “I voted for it.”

  “Do you think it possible that he was responsible for what was done in Cedar Grove?”

  “Oh yes. But why such concern about actions which, however ignoble, would not be worth prosecuting?”

  “There are other things.”

  Ranke squirmed in his chair when Roger told him of the arrested wedding at the log chapel, but of course he had heard of that. But the kidnapping of the chancellor astonished him.

  “That is being kept absolutely confidential, of course.”

  “Of course. Let me see if I understand you.”

  Ranke had a gift for succinctness. But when the story was made short it had its unsavory aspect. The university intended to gather evidence, if there was any, that Plant had been behind these events. The kidnapping loomed largest. Then, rather than have Plant prosecuted they intended to use this information to undermine any suit Plant proposed to bring against the university.

  “That’s the idea,” Roger agreed.

  “This seems very large artillery to destroy an insect.”

  “Remember, I never met the man.”

  “It was only an analogy. Surely there are simpler ways to handle a man who threatens to bring a suit with absolutely no merit against the university.”

  “There is a larger target.”

  Ranke lifted his unbarbered brows and finished his glass of beer. His pipe had gone out and he began relighting it. He was waiting.

  “What had Plant discovered about the transfer of the land to Notre Dame?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I had hoped he had shown you his research as it was done. Isn’t that the usual procedure with a doctoral dissertation?”

  “He had long wandered away from the topic we had approved. He was an erratic student, subject to obsessions. The plight of the Indians, the alleged plight, became everything to him.”

  “Did you talk to him about it?”

  “I pressed him for chapters of the dissertation he was supposedly writing.”

  Roger had the feeling that Ranke could tell him more but would not. He had come in the hope that Ranke would prove a short cut to whatever might constitute the basis for an accusation that the university counsel was sure would be made, to the vast embarrassment of Notre Dame. Roger had no compunction in helping stave off that embarrassment. He had no doubt that Native Americans had been badly treated here, though he did not think this could be laid at Father Sorin’s door. In any case, attempts to reverse all the injustices of the past would make a shambles of the world as it had come to be. On the continent, in the Middle East, in Ireland, such disputes led to armed conflict that created fresh injustices for future generations to ponder.

  “I love your book on famous authors who lectured at Notre Dame.”

  Authorial vanity, fully justified in Otto Ranke’s case, altered the atmosphere in the study. His host called for more beer and coffee, which was brought by the broad and beaming hausfrau who was Mrs. Ranke. For two hours they sat happily recalling a golden past. When Roger rose—with Ranke’s help—to return to his apartment before the game ended, they passed once more through the living room to the front door. And, as before, the spectral Laverne looked accusingly at them as they passed her.

  10

  THE INCIDENT AT HALFtime was within the sight of all eighty thousand spectators in the stadium, but only a fraction took notice. While the Florida State band played there would of course be flag twirlers and other supernumeraries clothed in the somewhat romantic costumes in which the natives of the hemisphere were thought to have dressed, but no such garb was expected when the Notre Dame band, the oldest college band in the nation, as the announcer said in reverberating tones and, one hoped, with historical justification, took the field. Throughout the game the Leprechaun had pranced about dressed like a stage Irishman, wearing a cottony false beard, taking part with the cheerleaders. But the character that took the field as one band marched off and the other prepared to occupy the gridiron was a sight never before seen in that hallowed place.

  He might have been mistaken for the Leprechaun had it not been for the feathered headdress he wore. Onto the field he came, his body bowed back in what might have been mimicry of the bandleader, head so far back that his feathers seemed to brush against the grass of the field. In a moment it became clear that his was an unscheduled appearance. A hand went up to halt the band about to take the field. The feathered apparition advanced to the fifty yard line before coming to a halt. There, he bowed first to one side of the field, and then the other. There was a murmur of tentative laughter and those descending to the lower level for refreshments slowed their pace.

  Suddenly, with one deft movement, the figure divested himself of his green costume and was exposed in near nakedness, wearing only a breech cloth. His upper body was luridly painted and he spread his arms wide. Then, with obvious dexterity he began to unfurl the banner that had been wrapped around his ostensible baton. The wind caught the cloth as it was freed and then the banner floated free, its legend legible to those on the Notre Dame side. GIVE NOTRE DAME BACK TO THE IND
IANS.

  The reaction was equivocal until the uniformed security men who had been gathering on the sidelines converged on him. Some minutes were taken up in a comic pursuit, as again and again he eluded the hands that would take him captive. The crowd responded to an evident underdog and began to cheer his many escapes, but then he was subdued and taken in custody from the field. Boos were heard, and jeers directed at the captors rather than the captive. One florid-faced guard hastily wound up the offending banner. It was all over in a matter of minutes, but the scene had gone out over television to the ends of the nation.

  In the chancellor’s box, consternation reigned. Father Bloom, reminded of his recent ordeal, had gone pale and replied incoherently to the queries of his distinguished guests. Someone opined that it was a student prank and was surprised at the wild and angry glare he got from the chancellor. One of the chancellor’s handlers was heard to give orders that the culprit be detained.

  “What was that all about?” the wife of a trustee asked.

  “A student prank,” the chancellor managed to say, but he said it between gritted teeth.

  On the field, a planned program was executed by the band, but there was little appreciation in the box reserved for the officers of the university and their guests. It occurred to one of the proliferating platoon of assistant provosts that Noonan, chairman of the board of trustees, had been called from the box just before the first half ended. He had not yet returned. Nor had he returned when the halftime festivities were over and the opposing teams went to their respective sidelines to the cheers of their supporters.

  “Who was it came for Noonan?” the chancellor asked the priest for whom the title Advisor to the Chancellor had been invented.

  “An usher?” But there was doubt in the advisor’s voice.

  “Go find him.”